Undressing Cinema: Clothing and identity in the movies - Hardcover

Bruzzi, Stella

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415139562 ISBN 13: 9780415139564

Publisher: Routledge, 1997

Synopsis

From Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy, to sharp-suited gangsters in Tarantino movies, clothing is central to film. In Undressing Cinema, Stella Bruzzi explores how far from being mere accessories, clothes are key elements in the construction of cinematic identities, and she proposes new and dynamic links between cinema, fashion and costume history, gender, queer theory and psychoanalysis.
Bruzzi uses case studies drawn from contemporary popular cinema to reassess established ideas about costume and fashion in cinema, and to challenge conventional interpretations of how masculinity and femininity are constructed through clothing. Her wide-ranging study encompasses:
* haute couture in film and the rise of the movie fashion designer, from Givenchy to Gaultier
* the eroticism of period costume in films such as The Piano and The Age of Innocence
* clothing the modern femme fatale in Single White Female, Disclosure and The Last Seduction
* generic male chic in Goodfellas, Reservoir Dogs, and Leon
* pride, costume and masculinity in `Blaxploitation' films, Boyz `N The Hood and New Jack City
* drag and gender confusion in cinema, from the unerotic cross-dressing of Mrs Doubtfire to the eroticised ambiguity of Orlando.

About this title

Review:

"Surprisingly compelling, this one is for cinephiles and fashion fans alike."
-"Shift Magazine

Synopsis:

From Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy, to sharp suited gangsters in Tarantino movies, clothing is central to film. Clothes are not mere accessories, but are key elements in the construction of cinematic identities. Undressing Cinema focuses on the narrative significance of clothes in film, and proposes new and synamic links between cinema, fashion and costume history, gender, queer theory and psychoanalysis. Udressing Cinema explores the difference between the referential relationship of film and fashion, and the notion that clothing, in such films as The Piano and The Age of Innocence , can be a repressive or expressive statement of sexualtiy. Discussing new film noir, the gangster movie and New Black Cinema, Bruzzi analyses assumptions about feminity and masculinity and examines the relationship between gender and dress in recent cinema: the emergence of the modern femme-fatale in Basic Instinct, Disclosure and The Last Seduction ; generic male chic in Goodfellas, Reservoir Dogs, Nikita and Leon ; and pride, costume and masculinity in Malcolm X, Boyz 'N the Hood and New Jack City .

The concluding chapters further problematise gender identities through a consideration of drag in films, proposing a radical differentiation between the unerotic cross-dressing of Mrs Doubtfire as opposed to the eroticised ambiguity of the androgynous Orlando . Undressing Cinema challenges and reassesses the received notions of costume and fashion in film. It radically departs from conventional interpretations of how masculinity and femininity are constructed through clothes and reconsiders the role dressing up plays in the manufacturing of gender, identity, sexuality and desire.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0415139562
• ISBN 13: 9780415139564
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248