ABSTRACT
Cinema and gender are concepts with a long and complicated relationship that extends to every aspect of filmmaking-production, representation, exhibition, spectatorship, reception, and distribution. The volume at hand approaches this relationship through the diverse and dynamic field of feminist film studies-from psychoanalytic and semiotic to phenomenological and Deleuzian approaches, and from studies of genre and reception to the practices of digital culture. The relationship between cinema and gender is never static. Rather, it has perpetually shifted in relation to emerging practices, technologies, and recognition of the limitations of prevailing intellectual paradigms at any given moment. From the early years of cinema, the medium has reflected and constructed ideals of
both femininity and masculinity (a fact often forgotten in the feminist paradigm’s closer association with femininity). Over the course of the twentieth century, cinema has not only reiterated raced and classed gender norms, but constructed them as well. These norms typically took the form of privileging Western geographies and white histories, not least because, since the medium’s emergence, Hollywood established itself as the world’s dominant film industry. At the same time, even with the dominance of Western geographies and white histories, cinema often served as a venue where provocative challenges to the status quo of gender inequality (as well as its links to race, class and sexuality) were leveled, sometimes in clandestine ways. For instance, a closer inspection of women’s roles in 1920s and 1930s Hollywood films reveals a complex spectrum of female agency, exemplified in the figures of Mae West, Lillian Gish, and Marlene Dietrich. Women were active, if often uncredited, participants in film production throughout Hollywood’s history. Furthermore, recent efforts by feminist film historians have uncovered a significant number of women film pioneers from around the world, writing women’s film histories where previously there were none (for more on these issues, see the essays by Pravadelli, Smyth, Hennefeld, Bobo, and Gaines in this volume). These efforts at uncovering the hidden transcripts of film history should not be taken as implying that women did not experience structural gender-based discrimination in the industry. Quite the contrary, the fact that the film industry is still predominantly white and male speaks to the ongoing importance of the feminist intellectual project at hand.
