Women Audiences in Film and Television

Catalog description

The massive success of contemporary novel and film adaptations like Hunger Games, Divergent, Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey as well as television series such as Scandal have generated new interest in media targeted to female audiences. Historically considered a low-form genre, women's media was not considered a legitimate object of academic study until the 1970s and 1980s when feminist media scholars shed crucial light on low form texts such as daytime soaps, Harlequin romance novels, and family melodramas, insisting that each impacted female audiences in a multitude of surprising and significant ways. Through an analysis of historical and contemporary readings, films, and televisual texts, we will explore how media designed for women specifically targets women viewers. We will identify the current debates around women's spectatorship. We will evaluate and offer a multitude of pleasures. (PMA-HTC)