Annotated Bibliography
1. Arthurs, Jane. "Sex and the City and Consumer Culture: Remediating Postfeminist
Drama." Feminist Media Studies 3.1 (2003): 83-98. Web. 16 Feb 2010.
While this article mostly describes the female roles and friendship within the show
Sex and the City, it also provides commentary on female roles on American culture. It
explores the implications of hedonism and the dynamic of the four female group of the TV
show. It also critiques the "bourgeoisie bohemians" (84) nature of the women the fashion
and sex obsessions that the women on the show have. Arthurs comes to the conclusion
that, while the show may show women in power (at least superficially), but the women of
the show's faults (narcissism, consumerism) are highly exaggerated. As a final thought,
Arthurs adds that this is in some ways beneficial in that it forces women to examine their
own consumerism, contradictions and narcissism.
2. Bishop, Kyle. “Dead man still walking: explaining the zombie renaissance.” Journal of
Popular Film and Television 37.1. (2009): 16-26. Web. 8 Feb 2010.
Bishop's article focuses on the zombie genre and how it comments on culture. The
background information and history he provides within the article is very concise and wellwritten. He explains the popularity of zombies and how they force society to look within
itself, he says "Horror films function as barometers of society's anxieties" (17). In his
conclusion, he explains that, even though zombie movies' content has stayed fairly
constant, people are watching the movies differently than they were 40 years ago,
especially since 9/11 and threats of infection and biohazards.
3. England, Marcia. "Breached Bodies and Home Invasions: Horrific representations of the
feminized body and home." Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 13.4
(2006): 353-363. Web. 16 Feb 2010.
England's article takes a look at the horror movies through the "narratives of the
body and home" and " these narratives tell us about the way society conceptualizes the two
sites" (355). She uses I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Evil Dead II (1987) and The Others
(2001) as her subjects to make her argument. She examines the abjection of the body, and
the psychological breakdown that comes with home invasion and lack of personal borders.
He final conclusion is " So, while the hegemonic and gendered binaries may literally bleed
into one another in horror films they are, in the end, bandaged up and set back into place"
(362).
4. Harper, Stephen. “I could kiss you, you bitch”: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Resident
Evil and Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse.” Jump Cut: 49 (2007): Ejumpcut.org. Web. 3 Feb.
2010.
Harper's article examines the way that Alice and supporting female character, while being
powerful and somewhat feminist in nature, are also sexually objectified. Harper also
spends time on discussing the racist and homophobic things that he found while
researching the movies. He compares this sort of pseudo-feminism within the Resident Evil
universe as similar to that of Buffy. In his conclusion, he compared t Resident Evil series
with Romero's zombie movies. He asserts that Resident Evil has missed the mark on
providing valuable social commentary.
5. Harper, Stephen. “They’re Us”: Representations of Women in George Romero’s ‘Living
Dead’ Series.” Intensities: the Journal of Cult Media 3.Winter (2003): Intensities Three. Web.
3 Feb. 2010.
Most of this article deals with the way in which Romero mirrors society within each
of his zombie movies, with particular emphasis on Dawn of the Dead. He argues that
Romero doesn't emphasize female passivity in his films, and provides powerful females in
the movies. According to Harper, Romero often plays off of the vicious nature of patriarchal
aggression to show it in a dangerous and negative light and also shows women as
independent beings, rather than damsels in distress.
6. Keisner, Jody. "Do you want to watch? A study of the visual rhetoric of the postmodern
horror film." Women's Studies 37.4 (2008): 411-427. Web. 17 Feb 2010.
This article focuses on the reasons that people watch horror movies, and which
characters the viewer sympathizes with. Keisner uses the "Final Girl" scenario often found
in horror films as a way to comment on the way males and females react to watching
horror movies. Keisner also spends time examining the participation and satisfying
objectification of the victim (often times female) by the viewer of the film. The author uses
the movie Feardotcom (2002) as her main text.
7. Kilker, Robery. "All roads lead to the abject: the monstrous feminine and gender
boundaries in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining." Literature-Film Quarterly 34.1.Jan (2006):
54-64. Web. 16 Feb 2010.
The goal of this article is to analyze what is meant by the "male monster" and the
"monstrous feminine" in The Shining. In the film, as Jack's character become more detached
from reality, he begins to treat his wife more as an object, even calling her,"the ol' sperm
bank upstairs." Kilker argues that, while Jack is the madman, the horror of the practice of
"shining" is distinctly feminine. He also gives some consideration to Danny's sense of
masculinity and the rejection of his mother and also to the function of the gore as the film
progresses.
8. Nolan, Justin M., and Gery W. Ryan. "Fear and loathing at the cineplex: Gender
differences in descriptions and perceptions of slasher films." Sex Roles 42.1-2 (2000): 3956. Web. 17 Feb 2010.
This article is about a study done to examine the "perceptual and emotions effects"
on male versus female viewers of horror movies (3). Responses were measured by having
the viewers (30 female and 30 male Euro-American college students) summarize the
movie. The hypothesis was that female viewers would show more fear in general, and
especially when the victim in the film was intimate with their attacker; males would
describe more fear when the victim was attacked by a stranger. The authors use many
tables to illustrate their findings. Their conclusion was consistent with their hypothesis,
with women having greater fear, and men having greater feelings of "anger and
frustration" (54).
9. Owen, A. Susan. "Vampires, postmodernity, and postfeminism: Buffy the vampire
slayer." Journal of Popular Film and Television 27.2 (1999): 24-31. Humanities Full Text.
Web. 16 Feb. 2010.
This article deals with the gendered roles of Buffy characters and the feminized men
in the TV show. According to Owens, the show exhibits both feminist and anti-feminist
standpoints. Buffy is a powerful woman, but she also fits the cultural standard of beauty
and plays the damsel in distress several times. She argues that, while most TV shows
choose to sexualize and objectify women, Buffy does it to one of the main male characters,
Angel. In her conclusion, Owens's states that, even though Buffy can have feminist
tendencies, she doesn't have power because she is a woman, but more because she is a
vampire slayer.
10. Sutherland, Meghan. "Rigor/Mortis: The Industrial Life of Style in American Zombie
Cinema." Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 48.1. (2007): 64-78. Web. 16 Feb
2010.
This article's main focus is the zombie remake, the structure of the movie, the way
that zombie movies are a political allegory. One of her arguments is that "zombie films are
quite often about political structure enduring even in the afterlife of its chaotic
implosion"(72). Sutherland uses both the original and remake of Dawn of the Dead to make
her argument. Power, memory, and isolation are all discussed, particularly in how they
relate to the camera work and structure of the film.