Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema ed. by Marcelline Block (review)

Book Reviews163 hommes qui parlaient au nom des femmes et de l'islamisme ont peu à peu cédé la place à des universitaires éduquées dont le discours est plus aimable mais l'intransigeance intacte. Ce captivant cri du cœur doublé d'une solide documentation et d'un raisonnement sans faille mérite d'être attentivement écouté. Samia I. SpencerAuburn University (Alabama) Block, Marcelline, ed. Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. 381 pp. Price: $67.99. ISBN: 978-1-84718-664-5. www.c-s-p.org. Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema is an intriguing and far-reaching collection of fourteen essays that are divided into four categories: "De-Gendering the Gaze;" "Theorizing Terror;" "Postfeminist Interventions;" and "Re-Inscribing the Female Subject in History." The films examined, made in the United States, France, England, Belgium and Russia, range from the small independent film (Duras's Détruire, dit-elle, for example, has only recently been made available on DVD by Benoît Jacob Vidéo) to popular classics by such directors as Alfred Hitchcock to Hollywood blockbusters like Jurassic Park as well as recent films made by women, including Sofia Coppola. Jean-Michel Rabaté's essay, "Mulvey was the First ...," serves as the preface for the collection, whereby offering its focus: "Why is film theory so organically connected with psychoanalysis? Can this be attributed to Jacques Lacan's lasting impact on late twentieth-century culture, or to intelligent adaptations of his theories of the eye, the gaze and the screen by notable theoreticians like Laura Mulvey, Joan Copjec and Slavoj Zizek? Or is it because the subjective situations involved by psychoanalysis and the experience of watching a film in a theater are so close?" (X). In her introduction, editor Marcelline Block writes: "Contributors to the volume engage with and readdress classic tenets of feminist film theory. Several chapters explore its interaction with other critical perspectives such as psychoanalytic, queer, disability, postfeminist, quantum, trauma and chaos theories" (XVI). As such, this collection of essays engages scholars in reflecting upon and (re)viewing cinema's increasingly complex and far-reaching relationship with contemporary culture. As someone who has read extensively on Marguerite Duras and her narrative style, I was immediately attracted to Georgiana M. M. Colvile's article "Duras Ravaged, Ravished . . . Ravishing" in part four of the collection, "ReInscribing the Female Subject in History." This article proved to be particularly enlightening in regards to exploring fully the connections among Duras' modes of creative expression. Other chapters, such as Ian Scott Todd's "Hitchcock's 'Good-Looking Blondes': First Glimpses and Second Glances" (in part one of the collection, "De-Gendering the Gaze"), Monica Soare's "Return of the 1 64Women in French Studies Female Gothic: The Career Woman-in-Peril Thriller" (in part two of the collection, "Theorizing Terror") and Jeremi Szaniawski's "Laisse tomber les filles: (Post)Feminism in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (in part three ofthe collection, "Postfeminist Interventions"), provide the necessary balance of comparison and contrast to the collection as they will indeed help scholars and students of film studies to consider the feminist gaze and spectatorship in postwar cinema from a multitude of theoretical and cultural perspectives. Specifically, the interplay ofthe country of origin ofthe film as well as whether it was a small independent film or an industry blockbuster are brought to the forefront. Summing up, Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema is a valuable resource for advanced scholarly research and is recommended for motivated upper-division undergraduate students (by motivated, I mean those undergraduates that are up to a challenge), graduate students and faculty. The scope ofthe collection's articles is quite vast, and thus will have a broad appeal while at the same time offering substantive content to researchers looking to integrate new material into specific course design or research. Eileen M. AngeliniCanisius College De Crenne, Hélisenne. Les Épures familières et invectives et Le Songe. Ed. Jean-Philippe Beaulieu. Saint-Étienne : Publications de l'Université de Saint-Étienne, 2008. Pp. 187. ISBN 978-2-86272-489-8. 12 €. (Paper). Reprenant en les modernisant les...