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Reframing Todd Haynes

Feminism’s Indelible Mark

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a Camera Obscura book

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Book

Pages: 360

Illustrations: 49 illustrations

Published: April 2022

Editors: Theresa L. Geller, Julia Leyda

Contributors: Patricia White, Rebecca M. Gordon, David E. Maynard, Jess Issacharoff, Patrick Flanery, Sharon Willis, Danielle Bouchard, Jigna Desai, Lynne Joyrich, Bridget Kies, Mary R. Desjardins, Noah Tsika, Nick Davis

For three decades, award-winning independent filmmaker Todd Haynes, who emerged in the early 1990s as a foundational figure in New Queer Cinema, has gained critical recognition for his outsider perspective. Today, Haynes is widely known for bringing women’s stories to the screen. Analyzing Haynes’s films including Safe (1995), Velvet Goldmine (1998), Far from Heaven (2002), and Carol (2015), as well as his unauthorized Karen Carpenter biopic, Superstar (1987), and the television miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011), the contributors to Reframing Todd Haynes reassess his work in light of his long-standing feminist commitments and his exceptional career as a director of women’s films. They present multiple perspectives on Haynes’s film and television work and on his role as an artist-activist who draws on academic theorizations of gender and cinema. The volume illustrates the influence of feminist theory on Haynes’s aesthetic vision, most evident in his persistent interest in the political and formal possibilities afforded by the genre of the woman’s film. The contributors contend that no consideration of Haynes’s work can afford to ignore the crucial place of feminism within it.

Contributors. Danielle Bouchard, Nick Davis, Jigna Desai, Mary R. Desjardins, Patrick Flanery, Theresa L. Geller, Rebecca M. Gordon, Jess Issacharoff, Lynne Joyrich, Bridget Kies, Julia Leyda, David E. Maynard, Noah A. Tsika, Patricia White, Sharon Willis

Praise

“I love Reframing Todd Haynes. It was an extraordinary experience to fall down the rabbit hole with this book and revisit the films I thought I knew so well! Each chapter brought something fresh and provocative to Todd’s work. I highly recommend it.” - Christine Vachon

“Todd Haynes is one of the most brilliant and innovative filmmakers working today, stretching the limits of genre, film form, and understandings of sexuality. Theresa L. Geller and Julia Leyda have provided us with a collection of incisive and probing essays by exceptional and influential scholars. The chapters trace the intersection of Haynes’s cinematic ‘thinking’ with constantly evolving feminist discourses and reveal the complex interweaving of politics, aesthetic form, affect, and critique that subtends his work.” - Mary Ann Doane, author of Bigger Than Life: The Close-Up and Scale in the Cinema

“Reframing Todd Haynes sets out to assess the influence of feminism, primarily, on Haynes’s oeuvre. Wide-ranging in its themes, methods, and insights, Geller and Leyda’s collection dispels all doubts that a single-director focus might restrict scholarly ambition. . . . The contributors’ patient interpretations make clear that the most meticulous methods for deriving meaning from art often are the most pleasurable to encounter.” - Jean-Thomas Tremblay, Los Angeles Review of Books

“The essays collected here open a variety of new avenues through which to understand Haynes as a feminist filmmaker as much as he is a queer one. . . . Reframing Todd Haynes shows the benefits of re-engaging with what lies in plain sight. The result is a consistently insightful volume that . . . should leave an indelible mark on future studies of Haynes’s work.” - Edward Jackson, US Studies Online

"An impressive array of scholars in women’s, gender, cinema, and media studies explore Haynes’s influences, interlocutors, and intersections. . . . This is a solid addition to the literature. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals." - J. I. Deutsch, Choice

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Theresa L. Geller is a Scholar-in-Residence at the Beatrice Bain Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of The X-Files.

Julia Leyda is a Professor of Film Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and editor of Todd Haynes: Interviews.

Table Of Contents

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Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. Feminism's Indelible Mark / Theresa L. Geller  1
Part I. Influences and Interlocutors
1. Lesbian Reverie: Carol in History and Fantasy / Patricia White  31
2. Playing with Dolls: Girls, Fans, and the Queer Feminism of Velvet Goldmine / Julia Leyda  51
3. Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore: Collaboration and the Uncontainable Body / Rebecca M. Gordon  72
4. Oh, the Irony: Tracing Chrsitine Vachon's Filmic Signature / David E. Maynard and Theresa L. Geller  91
5. “The Hardest, the Most Difficult Film”: Safe as Feminist Film Praxis / Theresa L. Geller  111
Part II. Intersections and Interventions
6. “Toxins in the Atmosphere”: Reanimating the Feminist Poison / Jess Issacharoff  137
7. “All the Cake in the World”: Five Provocations on Mildred Pierce / Patrick Flanery  158
8. The Politics of Disappointment: Todd Haynes Rewrites Douglas Sirk / Sharon Willis  173
9. All That Whiteness Allows: Femininity, Race, and Empire in Safe, Carol, and Wonderstruck / Danielle Bouchard and Jigna Desai  200
Part III. Intermediality and Intertextuality
10. Written on the Screen: Mediation and Immersion in Far from Heaven / Lynne Joyrich  221
11. It's Not TV, It's Mildred Pierce / Bridget Kies  243
12. The Incredible Shrinking Star: Todd Haynes and the Case History of Karen Carpenter / Mary R. Desjardins  256
13. Having a Ball with Dottie: Queering Female Stardom from MGM to Todd Haynes / Noah A. Tsika  281
14. Bringing It All Back Home, or Feminist Suppositions on a Film concerning Dylan / Nick Davis  299
Filmography  317
References  321
Contributors  341
Index  345

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Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-1800-1 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-1539-0 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-2262-6 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478022626