“Counter cinema” in the mainstream

ABSTRACT

Hollywood’s women directors have received very little academic attention. The focus of much feminist scholarship is on those women filmmakers who have produced politicised films, and Hollywood histories have focused on the work of male filmmakers. This article argues for attention to be paid to Hollywood’s most financially successful directors as they have the potential to disrupt the patriarchal structures that govern the Hollywood film industry. Using writer-directors Amy Heckerling, Nora Ephron, and Nancy Meyers as case studies, this paper considers the industrial context within which these filmmakers have worked, and their films, in order to demonstrate the way in which women working within mainstream cinema have offered a form of counter cinema. The paper argues that Heckerling, Ephron, and Meyers have capitalized on industry discourses that position them away from blockbuster cinema and that they offer a knowingness in their representation of romance and desire in order to create women’s narratives that function as a counterpoint to Hollywood’s dominant values.

KEYWORDS:

• Women directors
• hollywood
• counter cinema
• desire
• romance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Claire Jenkins

Dr Claire Jenkins is Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at University of Leicester. She has published work on family values in American film, older bird chick flicks, wedding dresses and film, and metrosexuality on British television. She is author of Home Movies: The American Family in Contemporary Hollywood (IB Tauris, 2015). She is currently working on Hollywood’s Women Directors: $100 Million Women (Routledge, forthcoming). E-mail: [email protected]