Catherine Driscoll (The University of Sydney) au séminaire "Performances culturelles du genre", le vendredi 13 octobre, de 10h à 12h, à la MSH, au 54 bd Raspail, 75006 Paris.
Pour sa quatrième saison, le séminaire "Performances culturelles du genre" s’ouvrira avec cette séance exceptionnelle !
This paper considers the “Hunger Games” films as a spectacular hybridization of teen film and action film which, in its contemporary media environment, could only have a girl hero. Their particular blend of action film conventions with elements of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and romance genres takes both coherence and force from images of and ideas about adolescence and in particular from the spectacular transformations of narratives about girlhood across the twentieth century. It situates these films as a crescendo in a long trajectory of representing girl heroes on screen.The paper focuses on three conjunctions of the terms spectacle, risk and girl-heroism. First : the spectacle of youth-at-risk, particularly as it is filtered through the long history of ideas and images of girlhood vulnerability and a now significant history of reversing that figure for impactful images of girl heroism. Second : the spectacle of Katniss Everdeen’s heroism in the films, as it is self-consciously presented with reference to both the uses and risks of spectacle for politics. And finally : at a meta-textual level and in the discursive context of the films’ reception, the pervasive framing of girls’ agency as ambivalently, if not dubiously, tied to spectacular forms of commodity culture.
La séance aura lieu à la MSH, au 54 bd Raspail, 75006 Paris (salle à confirmer). Venez nombreux !