The language may have changed, but the sentiment remains the same: Women have always wanted to see (and create) complex representations of ourselves onscreen., Still urgent. prove the conversations we're having today aren't new. to point out the outdated elements of the cross-gender identification that Tennessee Williams came to define-incompatible not only with the awareness of women's cultural representations in the late twentieth century, but also with the increasingly visible fight for LGBT rights that followed the Stonewall riots of 1969., Books like From Reverence to Rape by critic Haskell. She explores the tensions and potentialities of heterosexual relationships, as portrayed in the movies, with such humorous, sympathetic skill that both sexes can enjoy, and profit from, her work., Haskell. ![]() earned third-edition printing., One of the things that fascinates me about From Reverence to Rape is that, in addition to being about what it's about-the image and treatment of women throughout movie history-the book is also about what's shown and what's withheld, what's said and what's unspoken, and what effect that all has on the viewer., Haskell, a former critic at The Village Voice and Vogue and author of the groundbreaking study From Reverence to Rape, is also, famously, an auteurist and cinephile who has spent a lifetime swooning over (frequently European) cinematic depictions of the complicated, erotic ways of men and women., book is short on militant rhetoric and long on wise, constructive insight. without a compensating understanding of how to deal with the new freedom, or with a woman's body-or her mind.' The book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of film and feminism in America., Haskell was an early champion of European art cinema and its prized auteurs, and is one of the great feminist film critics her pioneering study From Reverence to Rape. I find myself underlining every other sentence: 'A woman who could compete and conceivably win in a man's world would defy emotional gravity, would go against the grain of prevailing notions about the female sex' 'A movie heroine could act on the same power and career drives as a man only if, at the climax, they took second place to the sacred love of a man' 'On the screen, sex has been demystified. ![]() ![]() The book's third edition, with a forward by New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis, was recently published, and many of Haskell's sharpest insights feel (sadly) more relevant now than ever. This is a fun title to be carrying on the subway: Film critic and historian Haskell's landmark 1974 book From Reverence to Rape.
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