Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-jwnkl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T07:40:54.639Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Amy Heckerling's Place in Hollywood: Issues of Aging and Sisterhood in I Could Never Be Your Woman and Vamps

from Part III - Femininity, Aging, and Postfeminism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2016

Betty Kaklamanidou
Affiliation:
University of Thessaloniki
Get access

Summary

Amy Heckerling's two most recent films as writer/director, I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007) and Vamps (2013), constitute a slight departure from her family and teen comedies. The first follows the conventions of the romantic comedy genre with elements of fantasy, and the second is a hybrid narrative, mixing the basic structure of the female friendship film with elements of horror. In this essay, I will examine the ways Heckerling negotiates issues of female aging and sisterhood in these two texts, using textual analysis as well as analysis of specific cinematic codes—mise-en-scène, editing, and cinematography—to reveal Heckerling's preferences and style, while utilizing gender theory to assist in the contextualization of the narratives. I will be basing my arguments mainly on Samantha Holland's Alternative Femininities (2004), and Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff's collection New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity (2011), because I find the use of the term “femininities” that the books’ authors use inclusive and appropriate in contemporary discussions on gender. Instead of femininity being treated as a monolithic and absolute concept, its plural avoids “notions of essentialism,” and “ideas that femininity equates with young, white, slim, heterosexual, ablebodied women.” I would add that the plural also assists in the exploration of various fictional feminine performances created by the same agent, in the case of this study a single filmmaker. Heckerling's heroines may share common traits, yet they also contradict themselves and differ in interesting ways, more often than not in the same narrative, performing various aspects of femininities. Second, Gill and Scharff draw useful connections between postfeminism and neoliberalism, stressing that “the autonomous, calculating, self-regulating subject of neoliberalism bears a strong resemblance to the active, freely choosing, self-reinventing subject of postfeminism.” Because the representations I will be discussing were produced and consumed in the same sociopolitical context, it will be useful to examine the interconnections, if any, among the subtle yet pervasive influences of neoliberal principles on female agency. Indeed, as Gill and Scharff argue, “to a much greater extent than men, women are required to work on and transform the self, to regulate every aspect of their conduct, and to present all their actions as freely chosen.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2016

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×