This is the first book to consider Gerwig as a writer-director. It argues that her three feature films to date-Lady Bird (2017), Little Women (2019) and Barbie (2023)-engage with debates about feminism and femininity through cinematic aesthetics. Her films are linked by heightened attention to material culture-through costume, production and set design. They meticulously recreate imagined worlds that resonate with viewers in the present for what they have to say about identity and relationships in contemporary culture, particularly how our lives, especially those of women, are fashioned through clothing, decor and architecture. They feature women who rebel by fashioning independent lives as fabricators-those who shape their worlds rather than being shaped by them. Considered together, Gerwig's three features form a developing oeuvre tracing the contours of feminist refashioning.
About the AuthorSuzanne Ferriss is an emeritus professor at Nova Southeastern University. Her publications include two volumes on the cultural study of fashion, On Fashion and Footnotes: On Shoes, and two companion volumes on "chick culture": Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction and Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies. In addition to editing The Bloomsbury Handbook to Sofia Coppola, she is the author of The Cinema of Sofia Coppola: Fashion, Culture, Celebrity and the BFI Film Classics volume on Lost in Translation.
Book InformationISBN 9781399553490
Author Suzanne FerrissFormat Hardback
Page Count 208
Imprint Edinburgh University PressPublisher Edinburgh University Press
Series Visionaries: The Work of Women Filmmakers