Young Women, Girls and Postfeminism in Contemporary British Film

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In the 21st century, films about the lives and experiences of girls and young women have become increasingly visible. Yet, British cinemas engagement with contemporary girlhood has - unlike its Hollywood counterpart - been largely ignored until now. Sarah Hills Young Women, Girls and Postfeminism in Contemporary British Film provides the first book-length study of how young femininity has been constructed, both in films like the St. Trinians franchise and by critically acclaimed directors like Andrea Arnold, Carol Morley and Lone Scherfig. Hill offers new ways to understand how postfeminism informs British cinema and how it is adapted to fit its specific geographical context. By interrogating UK cinema through this lens, Hill paints a diverse and distinctive portrait of modern femininity and consolidates the important academic links between film, feminist media and girlhood studies.

Reviews

Given its centering of contemporary representations of girlhood in British cinema, Sarah Hills monograph is a welcome addition to girls media studies, which heretofore has been dominated by research on American texts, not to mention British film studies, which has focused overwhelmingly on adult-centered texts. With close attention to nationally specific class and gender politics, as well as creative traditions and transformations, this book offers new ways for understanding recent mediated depictions of British girlhood within their specific industrial and sociocultural contexts. -- Mary Celeste Kearney, University of Notre Dame, USA, and author of Girls Make Media and editor of Mediated Girlhoods
In this important and refreshing examination of girlhood in contemporary British cinema, Sarah Hill both valuably contributes to and disrupts the existing work on postfeminism, highlighting the need for context-specificity in feminist understandings of postfeminist film culture. Drawing attention to a significant body of girl films dismissed by critics as trivial, and overshadowed by the common academic focus on US cinema, this book reveals their peculiarly British inflection of postfeminist femininity. With a lucid and accessible writing style, Hill rightly throws into question the common-held assumptions of sparkle, glamour and cliques that we associate with onscreen girlhood in order to show the dynamic and diverse depiction of contemporary young femininity in British film. -- Melanie Kennedy, Lecturer in Media and Communication, University of Leicester, UK
Sarah Hill provides an essential account of contemporary British cinemas engagement with youth and femininity that will be of enormous value to scholars of both girlhood studies and British film studies. Examining the national specificities of a number of different postfeminist tropes and conventions, Hill offers insightful close readings of a diverse range of recent British films with young female protagonists, from historical dramas to dance films, and draws out their underlying connections. Young Women, Girls and Postfeminism in Contemporary British Film marks an important and original intervention in the interconnected fields of gender studies and film studies. -- Melanie Williams, Film Historian, University of East Anglia, UK

Author Bio

Sarah Hill is Early Career Academic Fellow in the School of Arts and Cultures at Newcastle University, UK. Her research interests include British cinema, feminist media studies, female authorship and girlhood.