The Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted by Her Beauty to Notice - Brossura

Lord, M. G.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0802778631 ISBN 13: 9780802778635

Casa editrice: Walker Books, 2013

Riassunto

Countless books have chronicled the life of Elizabeth Taylor, but rarely has her career been examined from the point of view of her on-screen persona. That persona, argues M. G. Lord, has repeatedly introduced a broad audience to feminist ideas.

In her breakout film, "National Velvet" (1944), Taylor's character challenges gender discrimination: Forbidden as a girl to ride her beloved horse in an important race, she poses as a male jockey. Her next milestone, "A Place in the Sun" (1951), can be seen as an abortion rights movie--a cautionary tale from a time before women had ready access to birth control. In "Butterfield 8" (1960), for which she won an Oscar, Taylor isn't censured because she's a prostitute, but because she chooses the men: she controls her sexuality, a core tenet of the third-wave feminism that emerged in the 1990s. Even "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966) depicts the anguish that befalls a woman when the only way she can express herself is through her husband's stalled career and children. Other of Taylor's performances explore similar themes.

The legendary actress lived her life defiantly in public--undermining post-war reactionary sex roles; helping directors thwart the Hollywood Production Code, which restricted film content from 1934 to 1966; fund-raising for AIDS research in the 1980s; championing the right of people to love whomever they love, regardless of gender. Yet her powerful feminist impact has been hidden in plain sight. Drawing on unpublished letters and scripts, and on interviews with Kate Burton, Gore Vidal, Austin Pendleton, Kevin McCarthy, Liz Smith, and others, The Accidental Feminist will surprise readers with its originality, adding a startling dimension to the star's enduring mystique.

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Recensione:

For MG Lord, it's curvaceous, charismatic icons of femininity that hold her imagination hostage...What Lord did for Barbie, she now does for La Liz in The Accidental Feminist...Lord takes her readers on a chronological journey through the actress's signal performances, analyzing each film with a theory scholar's eye for telling detail, brightened with bloggerly brio, emotion, and use of the first person...When watching her significant films in succession, you see that, as Lord maintains, each serves as a cinematic Rorschach of social changes percolating through postwar society, in which Taylor stars as the protean blot...With The Accidental Feminist, MG Lord makes the intriguing case that for Elizabeth Taylor, too much was never enough--not for the woman, not for the actress and not for the society that produced the theater of her life. (The New York Times Book Review)

An affectionate portrait of Taylor and her event-filled life... an excellent, compact guide to Taylor's film roles. (The Wall Street Journal)

[An] intriguing thesis by the lively feminist cultural critic MG Lord...Lord writes with clarity, and her close analyses of every Taylor title from National Velvet and Cleopatra to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Little Foxes are a pleasure...La Liz would have loved the hubbub. (Entertainment Weekly)

This provocative feminist appreciation will surely tempt you to rent or download her best movies, to acquaint or reacquaint yourself with this marvelous force of nature. (The Associated Press)

M. G. Lord is a cultural critic with a sharp eye for the hidden meanings in American pop culture...The book raises Taylor from the realm of parody and seeks to install her in the pantheon of groundbreaking feminist heroines... [Lord] invites us to ponder the sometimes sensational details of Taylor's real life, but she also offers a deep reading of Taylor's film roles, which Lord calls an "under-the-radar challenge" to the assumptions and conventions about women in the 50s and 60s..."The Accidental Feminist," like all good film history and film criticism, will send the reader back to Netflix or TCM for a fresh viewing of some old favorites. (Jewish Journal)

Descrizione del libro:

From the brilliant cultural historian M. G. Lord, an intimate examination of the unexpected feminist content in Elizabeth Taylor's iconic roles.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Walker Books
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0802778631
• ISBN 13: 9780802778635
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 224