Shelley Cobb | University of Southampton (original) (raw)
Books by Shelley Cobb
Shelley Cobb explores film adaptations directed by women (often working with women screenwriters,... more Shelley Cobb explores film adaptations directed by women (often working with women screenwriters, producers, and sometimes editors) that foreground the figure of the female author. Through analysis of the films themselves, and their reception and discussion of the cultural and industrial contexts in which these films were released, she sees the figure of the woman author functioning as a representative of female agency. A lively discussion of costume dramas to women's films, the figure of the woman author comes to the fore as a key site for expressing the authority of the woman filmmaker.
With the prominence of one-name couples (Brangelina, Kimye) and famous families (the Smiths, the ... more With the prominence of one-name couples (Brangelina, Kimye) and famous families (the Smiths, the Beckhams), it is becoming increasingly clear that celebrity is no longer an individual pursuit—if it ever was. Accordingly, First Comes Love explores celebrity kinship and the phenomenon of the power couple: those relationships where two stars come together and where their individual identities as celebrities become inseparable from their status as a famous twosome.
Taken together, the chapters in this volume interrogate the ways these alliances are bound up in wider cultural debates about marriage, love, intimacy, family, parenthood, sexuality, and gender, in their particular historical contexts, from the 1920s to the present day. Interdisciplinary in scope, First Comes Love seeks to establish how celebrity relationships play particular roles in dramatizing, disrupting, and reconciling often contradictory ideas about coupledom and kinship formations.
Reviews
“First Comes Love is one of the very finest edited collections that I have had the pleasure of reading. Its examination of celebrity couples is complex, diverse, provocative and challenging. Whether this be an examination of golden couple Brangelina, or the undressing of the gilded garments of Garbo and Gilbert, the book traverses the way celebrity couples are engaged with historically, textually, and globally. Each chapter is a critical delight, the footprints immaculately chosen, and the arguments and illustrations intricate and delicate in equal measure. Beautiful.”
– Sean Redmond, Associate Professor of Media and Communication, Deakin University, Australia.
“From Lombard and Gable to Brangelina and the Kardashian clan, power couples and famous families have occupied public attention while until now mostly evading analytical scrutiny. In First Comes Love, Shelley Cobb and Neil Ewen - or, as they may soon be known, Sheneil - bring together a sharp, lively crew of scholars, whose smart takes on celebrity couples and kin, and on topics ranging from racial politics and same-sex marriage to aging and neoliberalism, open new pathways in celebrity studies”
– Joshua Gamson, Professor of Sociology, University of San Francisco, USA and author of Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America
Table Of Contents
----------
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Introduction
Shelley Cobb, University of Southampton, UK, and Neil Ewen, University of Winchester, UK
I. Golden Couples
----------
Introduction
Shelley Cobb, University of Southampton, UK, and Neil Ewen, University of Winchester, UK
'Gilbo-Garbage' or 'The Champion Lovemakers of Two Nations': Uncoupling Greta Garbo and John Gilbert
Michael Williams, University of Southampton, UK
'The Most Envied Couple in America in 1921': Making the Social Register in the Scrapbooks of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
Sarah Churchwell, University of East Anglia, UK
'Good Fellowship': Carole Lombard and Clark Gable
Michael Hammond, University of Southampton, UK
II. Kinships
----------
Introduction
Shelley Cobb, University of Southampton, UK, and Neil Ewen, University of Winchester, UK
Filial Coupling, the Incest Narrative, and the O'Neals
Maria Pramaggiore, Maynooth University, Ireland
A Star is Born?: Rishi Kapoor and Dynastic Charisma in Hindi Cinema
Rachel Dwyer, SOAS, University of London, UK
Eddie Murphy's Baby Mama Drama and Smith Family Values: The (Post-) Racial Familial Politics of Hollywood Celebrity Couples
Hannah Hamad, King's College London, UK
Momager of the Brides: Kris Jenner's Management of Kardashian Romance
Alice Leppert, Ursinus College, USA
III. Marriage
----------
Introduction
Shelley Cobb, University of Southampton, UK, and Neil Ewen, University of Winchester, UK
Diana's Rings: Fetishizing The Royal Couple
Margaret Schwartz, Fordham University, USA
Behind Every Great Woman…?: Celebrity, Political Leadership, and the Privileging of Marriage
Anthea Taylor, University of Queensland, Australia
It's the Thought That Counts: North Korea's Glocalization of the Celebrity Couple and the Mediated Politics of Reform
David Zeglen, George Mason University, USA
Ellen and Portia's Wedding: The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage and Celesbianism
Shelley Cobb, University of Southampton, UK
Audrey Hollander and Otto Bauer: The Perfect (Pornographic) Marriage?
Beccy Collings, University of East Anglia, UK
IV. Love
----------
Introduction
Shelley Cobb, University of Southampton, UK, and Neil Ewen, University of Winchester, UK
The Return of Liz and Dick
Suzanne Leonard, Simmons College, USA
'Brad & Angelina: And Now . . . Brangelina!': A Sociocultural Analysis of Blended Celebrity Couple Names
Vanessa Diaz, University of Michigan, USA
Jane Fonda, Power Nuptials, and the Project of Aging
Linda Ruth Williams, University of Southampton, UK
The Making, Unmaking and Re-Making of 'Robsten'
Diane Negra, University College Dublin
The Good, the Bad, and the Broken: Forms and Functions of Neoliberal Celebrity Relationships
Neil Ewen, University of Winchester, UK
Index
Funded Research Project by Shelley Cobb
AHRC research project Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary UK Film Culture, 2000-2015. This ... more AHRC research project Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary UK Film Culture, 2000-2015. This is a four-year project investigating women working in contemporary UK film. It involves both quantitative and qualitative analysis of women filmmakers, as well as the wider culture of women’s film in the British context. Women have always been a part of the production of cinema in the UK, but statistics on directors and screenwriters from the British Film Institute suggest that in the twenty-first century numbers remain woefully low. This is true despite the fact that, in the contemporary period, British women have produced everything from influential art films to blockbuster hits. This project seeks to understand this disparity between low numbers and exceptional success, and to construct a foundational history of women's filmmaking in the UK since 2000.
PI: Dr Shelley Cobb
Co-I: Prof Linda Ruth Williams
Articles / Chapters by Shelley Cobb
This chapter argues that the images of Ellen and Portia’s same-sex wedding, refigure lesbian iden... more This chapter argues that the images of Ellen and Portia’s same-sex wedding, refigure lesbian identity within the ‘postfeminist culture [that] both assumes and creates a female subject who desires marriage’. At the same time, their high-profile celebrity wedding helped to mainstream the same-sex marriage equality campaign through their mutual celebrity brand. Paradoxically, then, their celebrity lesbian marriage is both a political act against heteronormativity and a neo-conservative image of homonormativity and postfeminist female identity. If, as Dana Heller has shown, the ‘celesbian’ (defined as a celebrity who is ‘known or alleged’ to be a lesbian) is a ‘disruptive laborer within the affective economies that organize the intimate celebrity logic of capitalism’, then the ‘celesbian couple’ is the ultimate labor force of neoliberal capitalism in their ability to ‘make queer feeling (or feeling queer) appropriate through performances that allow them to draw together that which has been kept apart—the homo and the hetero, the celebrity system and queer politics—within the norms of global capitalism’.
Numerous accounts in recent years have announced (often zealously) the death of the chick flick, ... more Numerous accounts in recent years have announced (often zealously) the death of the chick flick, a genre whose output has conspicuously slowed since a peak in the 1990s. We analyse here two recent hits from the " post-epitaph " phase in order to understand the kinds of generic updates such films are attempting and how they place women in regard to changing gender norms and the conditions of neoliberal capitalism. We find that in Trainwreck (2015) and The Intern (2015) female protagonists' affiliation with patriarchal power structures is reconfirmed and both films ultimately retain a commitment to a rigid order unwilling to countenance female sexual agency or envision more flexible economic arrangements.
... Cobb, Shelley (2012) What would Jane do? Postfeminist media uses of Austen and the Austen rea... more ... Cobb, Shelley (2012) What would Jane do? Postfeminist media uses of Austen and the Austen reader. In, Dow, Gillian and Hanson, Clare (eds.) Uses of Austen: Jane's Afterlives. Basingstoke, GB, Palgrave Macmillan. (In Press). Full text not available from this repository. ...
Social Semiotics, 2012
This paper discusses cosmetic breast surgery in relation to reconstructive surgery of the mastect... more This paper discusses cosmetic breast surgery in relation to reconstructive surgery of the mastectomized breast. We will show how both kinds of surgery participate in what we are calling “the makeover metaphor,” because both can be seen as an aesthetic practice. We are interested in tracing some of the ways that women undergoing both procedures experience a disconnect between the rhetoric and the experience. We argue that the makeover metaphor overshadows the difficult decisions and bodily experiences of surgery – both for breast cancer and cosmetic purposes. We explore the rigidity and hypocrisy of the metaphor as it structures both of these forms of surgery, and argue that it produces contradictory and incommensurate effects.
A Companion to Literature, Film, and Adaptation, 2012
... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > En... more ... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > English. ID Code: 79454. Deposited By: Ms Shelley Cobb. Deposited On: 16 Mar 2010. Last Modified: 27 Mar 2010 03:23. Associated Staff Only: edit my ePrint. ...
... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > En... more ... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > English. ID Code: 147727. Deposited By: Ms Shelley Cobb. Deposited On: 26 Apr 2010 13:51. Last Modified: 27 Apr 2010 10:26. Repository Staff Only: item control page. ...
... Jan. 19, 2000) reprinted by permission of Judith Lewis. Interview by Lizzie Francke originall... more ... Jan. 19, 2000) reprinted by permission of Judith Lewis. Interview by Lizzie Francke originally published in Sight and Sound (“Dangerous Liaisons,” 13.11: 16–19), reprinted by permission of Lizzie Francke and Sight and Sound. ...
... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > En... more ... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > English. ID Code: 64878. Deposited By: Ms Shelley Cobb. Deposited On: 21 Jan 2009. Last Modified: 27 Mar 2010 02:00. Repository Staff Only: item control page. ...
... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > En... more ... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > English. ID Code: 79455. Deposited By: Ms Shelley Cobb. Deposited On: 16 Mar 2010. Last Modified: 27 Mar 2010 03:23. Repository Staff Only: item control page. ...
Adaptation, Jan 1, 2010
This article argues that despite the growing and articulate chorus of adaptation scholars who cri... more This article argues that despite the growing and articulate chorus of adaptation scholars who critique the language of fidelity and its consequential denigration of adaptation as an art form, some of these contemporary scholars continue to repeat reductive cultural hierarchies and the binary structure of fidelity criticism. I suggest that where this does happen, it does so because of a cultural binary that structures the language of fidelity: masculine/feminine. Consequently, critical discourses of adaptation often utilise a gendered language that constructs a masculine/feminine hierarchy between novel/film and frames the problems of fidelity and adaptation studies as feminine.
Genders Online Journal, Jan 1, 2008
... Item Type: Article. Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Hu... more ... Item Type: Article. Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > English. ID Code: 79452. Deposited By: Ms Shelley Cobb. Deposited On: 16 Mar 2010. Last Modified: 27 Mar 2010 03:23. Repository Staff Only: item control page. ...
Articles / Chapters / Short Pieces by Shelley Cobb
In this piece we consider the intersection of relationships, nostalgia, and generational identiti... more In this piece we consider the intersection of relationships, nostalgia, and generational identities as structuring elements in celebrity culture, through a small sample of high-profile Gen X examples.
A decade after her divorce with Brad Pitt was finalized, Jennifer Aniston -the world's most famou... more A decade after her divorce with Brad Pitt was finalized, Jennifer Aniston -the world's most famous single woman of a certain agefinally married again last month. And yet, even as her wedding to Justin Theroux took center stage on celebrity gossip news sites and made headlines on established news outlets like CNN and the BBC, 2015 might instead be remembered as the best year in ages for celebrity breakups. Like any other year, there has been a spate of routine splits -Megan Shelton. But the last few months have witnessed a number of more meaningful separations of high profile, long-lasting relationships. The second iteration of Bennifer (Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner) ended amid allegations of an affair between Affleck and their children's nanny; the long-time rockstar couple Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale parted with gossip about his infidelity; and the 20year marriage of veteran Hollywood partners Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith ended in divorce. Perhaps the most upsetting news of 2015, however, was the bombshell that, after 40 years, the romance between Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog was overpossibly forever.
Papers by Shelley Cobb
New review of film and television studies, Jan 2, 2024
University of Texas Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2008
Shelley Cobb explores film adaptations directed by women (often working with women screenwriters,... more Shelley Cobb explores film adaptations directed by women (often working with women screenwriters, producers, and sometimes editors) that foreground the figure of the female author. Through analysis of the films themselves, and their reception and discussion of the cultural and industrial contexts in which these films were released, she sees the figure of the woman author functioning as a representative of female agency. A lively discussion of costume dramas to women's films, the figure of the woman author comes to the fore as a key site for expressing the authority of the woman filmmaker.
With the prominence of one-name couples (Brangelina, Kimye) and famous families (the Smiths, the ... more With the prominence of one-name couples (Brangelina, Kimye) and famous families (the Smiths, the Beckhams), it is becoming increasingly clear that celebrity is no longer an individual pursuit—if it ever was. Accordingly, First Comes Love explores celebrity kinship and the phenomenon of the power couple: those relationships where two stars come together and where their individual identities as celebrities become inseparable from their status as a famous twosome.
Taken together, the chapters in this volume interrogate the ways these alliances are bound up in wider cultural debates about marriage, love, intimacy, family, parenthood, sexuality, and gender, in their particular historical contexts, from the 1920s to the present day. Interdisciplinary in scope, First Comes Love seeks to establish how celebrity relationships play particular roles in dramatizing, disrupting, and reconciling often contradictory ideas about coupledom and kinship formations.
Reviews
“First Comes Love is one of the very finest edited collections that I have had the pleasure of reading. Its examination of celebrity couples is complex, diverse, provocative and challenging. Whether this be an examination of golden couple Brangelina, or the undressing of the gilded garments of Garbo and Gilbert, the book traverses the way celebrity couples are engaged with historically, textually, and globally. Each chapter is a critical delight, the footprints immaculately chosen, and the arguments and illustrations intricate and delicate in equal measure. Beautiful.”
– Sean Redmond, Associate Professor of Media and Communication, Deakin University, Australia.
“From Lombard and Gable to Brangelina and the Kardashian clan, power couples and famous families have occupied public attention while until now mostly evading analytical scrutiny. In First Comes Love, Shelley Cobb and Neil Ewen - or, as they may soon be known, Sheneil - bring together a sharp, lively crew of scholars, whose smart takes on celebrity couples and kin, and on topics ranging from racial politics and same-sex marriage to aging and neoliberalism, open new pathways in celebrity studies”
– Joshua Gamson, Professor of Sociology, University of San Francisco, USA and author of Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America
Table Of Contents
----------
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Introduction
Shelley Cobb, University of Southampton, UK, and Neil Ewen, University of Winchester, UK
I. Golden Couples
----------
Introduction
Shelley Cobb, University of Southampton, UK, and Neil Ewen, University of Winchester, UK
'Gilbo-Garbage' or 'The Champion Lovemakers of Two Nations': Uncoupling Greta Garbo and John Gilbert
Michael Williams, University of Southampton, UK
'The Most Envied Couple in America in 1921': Making the Social Register in the Scrapbooks of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
Sarah Churchwell, University of East Anglia, UK
'Good Fellowship': Carole Lombard and Clark Gable
Michael Hammond, University of Southampton, UK
II. Kinships
----------
Introduction
Shelley Cobb, University of Southampton, UK, and Neil Ewen, University of Winchester, UK
Filial Coupling, the Incest Narrative, and the O'Neals
Maria Pramaggiore, Maynooth University, Ireland
A Star is Born?: Rishi Kapoor and Dynastic Charisma in Hindi Cinema
Rachel Dwyer, SOAS, University of London, UK
Eddie Murphy's Baby Mama Drama and Smith Family Values: The (Post-) Racial Familial Politics of Hollywood Celebrity Couples
Hannah Hamad, King's College London, UK
Momager of the Brides: Kris Jenner's Management of Kardashian Romance
Alice Leppert, Ursinus College, USA
III. Marriage
----------
Introduction
Shelley Cobb, University of Southampton, UK, and Neil Ewen, University of Winchester, UK
Diana's Rings: Fetishizing The Royal Couple
Margaret Schwartz, Fordham University, USA
Behind Every Great Woman…?: Celebrity, Political Leadership, and the Privileging of Marriage
Anthea Taylor, University of Queensland, Australia
It's the Thought That Counts: North Korea's Glocalization of the Celebrity Couple and the Mediated Politics of Reform
David Zeglen, George Mason University, USA
Ellen and Portia's Wedding: The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage and Celesbianism
Shelley Cobb, University of Southampton, UK
Audrey Hollander and Otto Bauer: The Perfect (Pornographic) Marriage?
Beccy Collings, University of East Anglia, UK
IV. Love
----------
Introduction
Shelley Cobb, University of Southampton, UK, and Neil Ewen, University of Winchester, UK
The Return of Liz and Dick
Suzanne Leonard, Simmons College, USA
'Brad & Angelina: And Now . . . Brangelina!': A Sociocultural Analysis of Blended Celebrity Couple Names
Vanessa Diaz, University of Michigan, USA
Jane Fonda, Power Nuptials, and the Project of Aging
Linda Ruth Williams, University of Southampton, UK
The Making, Unmaking and Re-Making of 'Robsten'
Diane Negra, University College Dublin
The Good, the Bad, and the Broken: Forms and Functions of Neoliberal Celebrity Relationships
Neil Ewen, University of Winchester, UK
Index
AHRC research project Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary UK Film Culture, 2000-2015. This ... more AHRC research project Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary UK Film Culture, 2000-2015. This is a four-year project investigating women working in contemporary UK film. It involves both quantitative and qualitative analysis of women filmmakers, as well as the wider culture of women’s film in the British context. Women have always been a part of the production of cinema in the UK, but statistics on directors and screenwriters from the British Film Institute suggest that in the twenty-first century numbers remain woefully low. This is true despite the fact that, in the contemporary period, British women have produced everything from influential art films to blockbuster hits. This project seeks to understand this disparity between low numbers and exceptional success, and to construct a foundational history of women's filmmaking in the UK since 2000.
PI: Dr Shelley Cobb
Co-I: Prof Linda Ruth Williams
This chapter argues that the images of Ellen and Portia’s same-sex wedding, refigure lesbian iden... more This chapter argues that the images of Ellen and Portia’s same-sex wedding, refigure lesbian identity within the ‘postfeminist culture [that] both assumes and creates a female subject who desires marriage’. At the same time, their high-profile celebrity wedding helped to mainstream the same-sex marriage equality campaign through their mutual celebrity brand. Paradoxically, then, their celebrity lesbian marriage is both a political act against heteronormativity and a neo-conservative image of homonormativity and postfeminist female identity. If, as Dana Heller has shown, the ‘celesbian’ (defined as a celebrity who is ‘known or alleged’ to be a lesbian) is a ‘disruptive laborer within the affective economies that organize the intimate celebrity logic of capitalism’, then the ‘celesbian couple’ is the ultimate labor force of neoliberal capitalism in their ability to ‘make queer feeling (or feeling queer) appropriate through performances that allow them to draw together that which has been kept apart—the homo and the hetero, the celebrity system and queer politics—within the norms of global capitalism’.
Numerous accounts in recent years have announced (often zealously) the death of the chick flick, ... more Numerous accounts in recent years have announced (often zealously) the death of the chick flick, a genre whose output has conspicuously slowed since a peak in the 1990s. We analyse here two recent hits from the " post-epitaph " phase in order to understand the kinds of generic updates such films are attempting and how they place women in regard to changing gender norms and the conditions of neoliberal capitalism. We find that in Trainwreck (2015) and The Intern (2015) female protagonists' affiliation with patriarchal power structures is reconfirmed and both films ultimately retain a commitment to a rigid order unwilling to countenance female sexual agency or envision more flexible economic arrangements.
... Cobb, Shelley (2012) What would Jane do? Postfeminist media uses of Austen and the Austen rea... more ... Cobb, Shelley (2012) What would Jane do? Postfeminist media uses of Austen and the Austen reader. In, Dow, Gillian and Hanson, Clare (eds.) Uses of Austen: Jane's Afterlives. Basingstoke, GB, Palgrave Macmillan. (In Press). Full text not available from this repository. ...
Social Semiotics, 2012
This paper discusses cosmetic breast surgery in relation to reconstructive surgery of the mastect... more This paper discusses cosmetic breast surgery in relation to reconstructive surgery of the mastectomized breast. We will show how both kinds of surgery participate in what we are calling “the makeover metaphor,” because both can be seen as an aesthetic practice. We are interested in tracing some of the ways that women undergoing both procedures experience a disconnect between the rhetoric and the experience. We argue that the makeover metaphor overshadows the difficult decisions and bodily experiences of surgery – both for breast cancer and cosmetic purposes. We explore the rigidity and hypocrisy of the metaphor as it structures both of these forms of surgery, and argue that it produces contradictory and incommensurate effects.
A Companion to Literature, Film, and Adaptation, 2012
... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > En... more ... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > English. ID Code: 79454. Deposited By: Ms Shelley Cobb. Deposited On: 16 Mar 2010. Last Modified: 27 Mar 2010 03:23. Associated Staff Only: edit my ePrint. ...
... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > En... more ... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > English. ID Code: 147727. Deposited By: Ms Shelley Cobb. Deposited On: 26 Apr 2010 13:51. Last Modified: 27 Apr 2010 10:26. Repository Staff Only: item control page. ...
... Jan. 19, 2000) reprinted by permission of Judith Lewis. Interview by Lizzie Francke originall... more ... Jan. 19, 2000) reprinted by permission of Judith Lewis. Interview by Lizzie Francke originally published in Sight and Sound (“Dangerous Liaisons,” 13.11: 16–19), reprinted by permission of Lizzie Francke and Sight and Sound. ...
... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > En... more ... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > English. ID Code: 64878. Deposited By: Ms Shelley Cobb. Deposited On: 21 Jan 2009. Last Modified: 27 Mar 2010 02:00. Repository Staff Only: item control page. ...
... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > En... more ... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > English. ID Code: 79455. Deposited By: Ms Shelley Cobb. Deposited On: 16 Mar 2010. Last Modified: 27 Mar 2010 03:23. Repository Staff Only: item control page. ...
Adaptation, Jan 1, 2010
This article argues that despite the growing and articulate chorus of adaptation scholars who cri... more This article argues that despite the growing and articulate chorus of adaptation scholars who critique the language of fidelity and its consequential denigration of adaptation as an art form, some of these contemporary scholars continue to repeat reductive cultural hierarchies and the binary structure of fidelity criticism. I suggest that where this does happen, it does so because of a cultural binary that structures the language of fidelity: masculine/feminine. Consequently, critical discourses of adaptation often utilise a gendered language that constructs a masculine/feminine hierarchy between novel/film and frames the problems of fidelity and adaptation studies as feminine.
Genders Online Journal, Jan 1, 2008
... Item Type: Article. Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Hu... more ... Item Type: Article. Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > English. ID Code: 79452. Deposited By: Ms Shelley Cobb. Deposited On: 16 Mar 2010. Last Modified: 27 Mar 2010 03:23. Repository Staff Only: item control page. ...
In this piece we consider the intersection of relationships, nostalgia, and generational identiti... more In this piece we consider the intersection of relationships, nostalgia, and generational identities as structuring elements in celebrity culture, through a small sample of high-profile Gen X examples.
A decade after her divorce with Brad Pitt was finalized, Jennifer Aniston -the world's most famou... more A decade after her divorce with Brad Pitt was finalized, Jennifer Aniston -the world's most famous single woman of a certain agefinally married again last month. And yet, even as her wedding to Justin Theroux took center stage on celebrity gossip news sites and made headlines on established news outlets like CNN and the BBC, 2015 might instead be remembered as the best year in ages for celebrity breakups. Like any other year, there has been a spate of routine splits -Megan Shelton. But the last few months have witnessed a number of more meaningful separations of high profile, long-lasting relationships. The second iteration of Bennifer (Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner) ended amid allegations of an affair between Affleck and their children's nanny; the long-time rockstar couple Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale parted with gossip about his infidelity; and the 20year marriage of veteran Hollywood partners Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith ended in divorce. Perhaps the most upsetting news of 2015, however, was the bombshell that, after 40 years, the romance between Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog was overpossibly forever.
New review of film and television studies, Jan 2, 2024
University of Texas Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2008
This article argues that (cis-, hetero, abled, middle-class, white) men – as a group and as an id... more This article argues that (cis-, hetero, abled, middle-class, white) men – as a group and as an identity category – are the structuring absence of inequality discourse and, as a consequence, it is ‘diverse’ persons who bear both the burden of and any hope for changing the film industry. By ‘rereading’ gender inequality data, diversity initiatives and inclusion rhetoric, this article shows the ways they elide men’s domination of the film industry and perversely reinforce it as the norm. Articulating how data on gender representation behind the camera can both illuminate inequality and can be used to obfuscate it, the article looks closely at selected reports to see what they do and do not tell us about gender inequality and the unequal presence of men in the industry. As the dominating demographic of the filmmaking workforce, the white middle class male is also the structuring absence of inclusion rhetoric which maintains the status quo of inequality in the film industry by interpella...
Adaptation, Authorship, and Contemporary Women Filmmakers
The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication, 2020
While 1970s/1980s feminist film theory questioned the representability of women within a male-dom... more While 1970s/1980s feminist film theory questioned the representability of women within a male-dominated industry, renewed interest in early film history revealed unexpected numbers of women film makers. The international Women Film Pioneers Project (WFPP), an ever-growing database housed at Columbia University, New York, documents research into the pioneering work of women in cinema's first crucial decades as it became a mass and transnational medium. A surge of monographs has followed, focusing on women's diverse careers, the gendering of film studio organization and practices, and the cultural impacts of female audiences, campaigners, journalists, and critics. These discoveries are emerging in festival and film theater programming, film education, and local cultural activity. In Britain, the Women's Film & Television History Network-UK/Ireland, encourages research across the barriers between silence and sound, cinema and television. In what follows, the Network records key issues and figures emerging from the project of women's film history. Feminist theory's encounter with film history questions the gendered assumptions that determine historical methods and what counts historically. Following Gertrude Stein, Jane Gaines (2018) asks: How does the historian know? The term "history" is ambiguous, referring both to what happened and its narrativization as "story." Where we look for evidence and how it is interpreted depends on the questions asked, underlying gendered expectations, and the conventions of narrative construction. Historical knowledge is provisional: new questions emerge; new discoveries are made that contradict or alter the known. So, asked Shelley Stamp at the 2018 Doing Women's Film and
Television & New Media, 2018
With the passing in 2014 of the twentieth anniversary of its debut episode, the iconic millennial... more With the passing in 2014 of the twentieth anniversary of its debut episode, the iconic millennial sitcom Friends retains a rare cultural currency and remains a crucial reference point for understanding the concerns of Generation X. This special issue, therefore, interrogates the contemporary and historical significance of Friends as a popular sitcom that reflected and obfuscated American fin de siècle anxieties at the time, and considers the lasting resonance of its cultural afterlife. Its abiding impact as millennial cultural touchstone can be seen in its persistent ability to find new generations of viewers and its manifest influence on myriad extratextual phenomena.
A lively discussion of costume dramas to women's films, Shelley Cobb investigates the practic... more A lively discussion of costume dramas to women's films, Shelley Cobb investigates the practice of adaptation in contemporary films made by women. The figure of the woman author comes to the fore as a key site for the representation of women's agency and the authority of the woman filmmaker.
First Comes Love : Power Couples, Celebrity Kinship and Cultural Politics
This chapter argues that the images of Ellen and Portia’s same-sex wedding, refigure lesbian iden... more This chapter argues that the images of Ellen and Portia’s same-sex wedding, refigure lesbian identity within the ‘postfeminist culture [that] both assumes and creates a female subject who desires marriage’. At the same time, their high-profile celebrity wedding helped to mainstream the same-sex marriage equality campaign through their mutual celebrity brand. Paradoxically, then, their celebrity lesbian marriage is both a political act against heteronormativity and a neo-conservative image of homonormativity and postfeminist female identity. If, as Dana Heller has shown, the ‘celesbian’ (defined as a celebrity who is ‘known or alleged’ to be a lesbian) is a ‘disruptive laborer within the affective economies that organize the intimate celebrity logic of capitalism’, then the ‘celesbian couple’ is the ultimate labor force of neoliberal capitalism in their ability to ‘make queer feeling (or feeling queer) appropriate through performances that allow them to draw together that which has been kept apart—the homo and the hetero, the celebrity system and queer politics—within the norms of global capitalism’.
Love Across the Atlantic, Feb 28, 2020
... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > En... more ... Divisions: Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities > English. ID Code: 79454. Deposited By: Ms Shelley Cobb. Deposited On: 16 Mar 2010. Last Modified: 27 Mar 2010 03:23. Associated Staff Only: edit my ePrint. ...
Adaptation, Authorship, and Contemporary Women Filmmakers, 2014
International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication, 2020
Co-authored with Melanie Bell, Christine Gledhill, Shelley Cobb, Rashmi Sawhney, Laraine Porter, ... more Co-authored with Melanie Bell, Christine Gledhill, Shelley Cobb, Rashmi Sawhney, Laraine Porter, Ulrike Sieglohr. While 1970s/1980s feminist film theory questioned the representability of women within a male-dominated industry, renewed interest in early film history revealed unexpected numbers of women film makers. The international Women Film Pioneers Project (WFPP), an ever-growing database housed at Columbia University, New York, documents research into the pioneering work of women in cinema's first crucial decades as it became a mass and transnational medium. A surge of monographs has followed, focusing on women's diverse careers, the gendering of film studio organization and practices, and the cultural impacts of female audiences, campaigners, journalists, and critics. These discoveries are emerging in festival and film theater programming, film education, and local cultural activity. In Britain, the Women's Film & Television History Network-UK/Ireland, encourages r...
Adaptation, Authorship, and Contemporary Women Filmmakers, 2014
Journal of American Studies, Jan 1, 2008
The AHRC-funded project Calling the Shots: women and contemporary film culture in the UK, 2000-20... more The AHRC-funded project Calling the Shots: women and contemporary film culture in the UK, 2000-2015 is finding and counting all the women in six key roles (director, writer, producer, exec-producer, cinematographer and editor) on British films in production during the years 2003-2015. Knowing that it is black women who have often been lost or side-lined in feminist research, we strive for our data collection to take into account and highlight intersectional identities (Crenshaw). So far, our research has shown that women of colour, and black British women in particular, are severely under represented in the UK’s filmmaking workforce. For 2015, the percentages of women in each category listed above are as follows: directors - 13%, screenwriters - 20%, editors – 17%, cinematographers – 7%, producers – 27%, exec-producers – 18%. In each of those roles, BAME counted for less than 2% of the entire workforce; and in fact, there were no BAME women cinematographers.
This paper will use the above data as context for case studies of some of the women of colour working in these roles in British film production. Looking at the overall career trajectories and with some reference to interviews conducted by Calling the Shots, we seek to foreground the work that black women do in the industry and to raise the profile of women working in less high-profile roles beyond the director. In addition, we consider patterns of employment and collaboration along race and gender lines, and when and how these identity markers appear most significant in securing work (or not) for black women. We analyse the sort of films that black women work on, particularly in regards to country of origin and budget level and show the possibilities of our dataset for monitoring the inclusion of black women in the UK film production sector. With the African American Film Critics Association declaring 2016 a “bonanza year” for black cinema (Scott), we argue that it is important to ensure that black women are taking up positions off-screen as well as on.