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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Katharine Hepburn: Star as Feminist

Katharine Hepburn: Star as Feminist

Britton, Andrew
Wood, Robin

Paperback

Series: Film and Culture

Entertainment & Performing ArtsFilm Studies

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0231132778
ISBN13: 9780231132770
Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr
Published: Dec 30 2003
Pages: 256
Weight: 1.46
Height: 0.76 Width: 6.64 Depth: 9.76
Language: English

Of all the major Hollywood stars, Katharine Hepburn was the least conventional, conforming to none of the stereotypes of female superstardom. She was not an exotic outsider in Hollywood like Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich; nor was she a victim of the studios like Judy Garland or Marilyn Monroe; and she was certainly not a creature of the system like Joan Crawford and Lana Turner. Instead, she always appeared intelligent, willful and independent, able to develop her own persona within the confines of the studio system.

Andrew Britton proposes a feminist reading of Hepburn's films, arguing that her persona raises problems about class, female sexuality, and women's oppression that strain to the limits the conventions of a cinema ultimately committed to the reassertion of bourgeois gender roles. Hepburn's work is also used to explore more general issues, such as the functioning of the star system. This is one of the very few analyses of American cinema to focus on a film star rather than a director or a genre and as such is essential reading for anyone interested in the movies.

First published in the United Kingdom twenty years ago, this lavishly illustrated new edition features a foreword by the noted film critic Robin Wood.

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