Talkies, road movies and chick flicks : gender, genre and film sound in American cinema / Heidi Wilkins.

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Includes bibliographical references.

Offers a detailed and innovative discussion of film sound and gender in mainstream US cinema. The representation of gender in film remains an intensely debated topic, particularly in academic considerations of US mainstream cinema where it is often perceived as perpetuating rigid, binary views of gender, and reinforcing patriarchal, dominant notions of masculinity and femininity. While previous scholarly discussion has focused on visual or narrative portrayals of gender, this book considers the ways that film sound - music, voice, sound effects and silence - is used to represent gender. Taking a socio-historical approach, Heidi Wilkins investigates a range of popular US genres including screwball comedy, the road movie and chick flicks to explore the ways that film sound can reinforce traditional assumptions about masculinity and femininity, impart ambivalent meanings to them, or even challenge and subvert the notion of gender itself. Case studies include Mildred Pierce, Aliens and The Deer Hunter.

Acknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter One: Talking Back: Voice in Screwball Comedy; Chapter Two: All That Jazz: The Diegetic Soundtrack in Melodrama; Chapter Three: The Alienated Male: Silence and the Soundtrack in New Hollywood; Chapter Four: Brothers in Arms: Masculinity and the Vietnam War Movie; Chapter Five: Subversive Sound: Gender, Technology and the Science Fiction Blockbuster; Chapter Six: Girl Talk: The Postmodern Female Voice in Chick Flicks; Conclusion; Bibliography.

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