This is the first book to consider Gerwig as a writer-director. It argues that her three feature films to dateLady 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 culturethrough 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, décor and architecture. They feature women who rebel by fashioning independent lives as fabricatorsthose who shape their worlds rather than being shaped by them. Considered together, Gerwigs three features form a developing oeuvre tracing the contours of feminist refashioning.
Arvustused
Ferriss's book will become the benchmark for studies of Gerwig's oeuvre. Written with characteristic clarity and brio, this study is as entertaining to read as it is informative and eloquent. I am certain this book will be indispensible not only to those studying and writing on Gerwig, but also to those working within feminist film and media studies as well. Highly recommended. * Anna Backman Rogers, Professor of Aesthetics, Culture and Feminist Theory, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. *
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: fashion, self-fashioning, fabrication
1. Self-fashioning
2.Fabricated lives
3. Crafting change
4. Refashioning culture
Conclusion: Greta Gerwig, Filmmaker
Bibliography
Filmography
Index
Suzanne 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 Womans 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.
