Research Seminar: ‘Blame, guilt and shame: inequality, memory and intergenerational feminisms in US cinema of the long 2010s’

This event is part of the School of Media and Communication research seminar series

Mid-budget US cinema of the long 2010s—from the financial crash to the COVID pandemic—deals in varied, fascinating and at times complex ways with questions of inequality, coupling gender to frames of class and, less often, race and ethnicity. The retelling, reworking or adaptation of events and works set/produced in earlier periods of US history allows for an opening up of issues to do with intergenerational feminisms as well as an intersectional framing of gender. This talk explores different dimensions of this use of past settings, read in terms of generational tension, popular memory and the highlighting of gendered inequalities within frames of class and race.

I discuss a diverse group of mid-budget female-led films, several of which also involve women in key creative roles - The Bling Ring (2013), Jackie (2016), Battle of the Sexes (2017), I, Tonya (2017), Hustlers (2019), Bombshell (2019) and She Said (2022) - highlighting common threads and themes. Each reworks an event or news story whether scandalous, notorious or otherwise achieving publicity, attention and fame. Discourses of female celebrity and of “ordinary” femininity play out here across arenas including sports, politics, journalism, showbusiness and sex work.

I argue that these films all employ, manage and at times question postfeminist tropes of empowered femininity, framing these in terms of stark economic realities and social inequalities. The presence/absence/rupture of female and feminist solidarities is a striking feature of some. Nestled within these films—and to some extent critical responses to them—are questions of intergenerational blame, but also affective dimensions of loss, guilt and shame.

Yvonne Tasker is a Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds. Her research explores feminism and gender cultures through popular media. She has published widely on women filmmakers, postfeminist media and the gendering of popular genres. She has authored or edited ten books including Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and Action Cinema (1993), Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema (1998), Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture (ed. with Diane Negra, 2007), Soldiers' Stories: Military Women in Cinema and Television since WWII (2011), Gendering the Recession: Media Culture in an Age of Austerity (ed. with Diane Negra, 2014) and The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film (2015).