The aim of this paper is to raise questions about how cinema can allow us to rethink our relationship with the environment in the context of what is known today as the Anthropocene. In the discussion, I chart the current debates about the ecological in the humanities, with a particular focus on new materialisms, to argue that cinema can be fruitfully thought of as part of what anthropologist Anna Tsing (2015) calls the “arts of noticing”. I then turn to a consideration of the potential influx of affect theories on ecocriticism and film studies, before sketching out possible approaches to studying film from an affective, new materialist and postanthropocentric perspective. These approaches might have wider implications for rhetorical perspectives on cinema, especially for those investigating emotional appeals.

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Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers examines the significance of women’s contribution to genre cinema by highlighting the work of US filmmakers within and outside Hollywood – Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola, Nancy Meyers, Karyn Kusama and Kelly Reichardt, among others. Exploring genres as diverse as horror, the war movie, the Western, the costume biopic and the romantic comedy, Katarzyna Paszkiewicz interrogates questions of ‘genre’ authorship; the blurring of the borders between commercial and independent cinema and gendered discourses of (de)authorisation that operate within each sphere; ‘male’–‘female’ genre divisions; and the issue of authorial subversion in film and popular culture in a wider sense. With its focus on close analysis of the films themselves and the cultural and ideological meanings involved in the reception of genre texts authored by women, this book expands critical debates around women’s cinema and offers new perspectives on how contemporary filmmakers explore the aesthetic and imaginative power of genre.

2.1 Jennifer's jaw as vagina dentata 2.2 Jennifer as a popular girl 2.3 Needy's gaze 2.4 Postfeminist regime exposed 2.5 The brutalised Final Girl 2.6 Becoming-monstrous: Needy at the hotel 3.1 Eye and vision come under critical scrutiny in The Hurt Locker 3.2 James as the heroic figure in the untamed landscape who asserts mastery over the environment 3.3 All eyes are on James 3.4 The violence of the gaze 3.5 Dilated temporality: the Western trope made eerie 3.6 Guns as metaphor for cameras: meta-cinematic reflection on the war film 4.1 The gendered organisation of space: men withdraw to deliberate over the course, while women look on from a distance 4.2 The duel of the gazes 4.3 Sheer duration: superimposed images in Meek's Cutoff 4.4 Flat affect and underperformed emotions 4.5 Haptic inhospitability of the land(scape) 5.1 Luxurious footwear in Marie Antoinette 5.2 The abundance of shoes and accessories in The Bling Ring 5.3 Orlando as a frosted blue cake Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only. figures vii 5.4 Marie Antoinette blends and disappears into the ornate floralpatterned wallpaper 190 5.5 Marie Antoinette's direct mode of address 191 5.6 The palace is destroyed, but Marie Antoinette (temporarily) escapes punishment 197 6.1 The Intern's central couple: Jules and Ben 222 6.2 What men want: bromantic protagonists in The Intern 224 6.3 Jules's eyes track up to the top of the skyscraper in front of her,she then looks to Ben, communicating her unease about the forthcoming interview 234 6.4 Ben invades the feminised space of 'pink girlhood' 243 6.5 Happy to be lost in another world: Ben shedding a tear over Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds's performance of 'You Were Meant For Me' Helena González and Marta Segarra. Without their encouragement and guidance, this book might never have existed. For various forms of support over the years it took to complete this book, I thank Elena Losada, who continues to inspire me in all sorts of ways. I am also grateful to Cristina Alsina, Rodrigo Andrés, Francesco Ardolino, Isabel Clúa and Joana Sabadell, who helped at different stages and in different ways. Thank you for your kindness and friendship.Along the way I have been honoured by the generous suggestions of people I respect and admire, which have certainly propelled the project forwards. I benefited especially from my research visits to the University of Melbourne and the University of Pennsylvania. I thank Barbara Creed, Karen Beckman and Timothy Corrigan for this opportunity and for a warm welcome. Many colleagues have shared feedback on my work at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and Doing Women's Film History and Television conferences, as well as other meetings over the years. I sincerely thank my friend Dawn Hall, who helped with ideas and encouragement. I am also grateful to Christine Gledhill and Christina Lane for inspiration and support, and to Patricia White, who generously shared her manuscript, Women's Cinema, World Cinema, with me, and from whom I learnt so much.Not for distribution ...

This chapter examines the discursive circulation of Kathryn Bigelow's 2008 film The Hurt Locker and the debates that broke out about the suppression of gender in her 2010 Academy Award acceptance speech. It considers how the success of The Hurt Locker and the varied responses provoked by Bigelow's receipt of the Best Director Oscar has renewed scholarly and critical interest in women's filmmaking and the position of women directors within the predominantly male Hollywood industry. In her piece titled “Kathryn Bigelow: The Absentee Feminist,” Susan G. Cole accused Bigelow of making no reference to the significance of her accomplishment for feminism. According to Christina Lane, Bigelow seems quite conscious of feminist politics and willing to engage with feminism, but she remains ambivalent about labeling her films in terms of gender politics. This chapter considers how Bigelow's work puts into tension the conjunction of women's filmmaking, gender, film genre, and feminism, something dramatized by her nomination for the Best Director Oscar for The Hurt Locker in 2010.