Table of Contents

Part 1 Introduction - feminism and popular culture - the structure of the book: narratives of transformation - the rape-revenge cycle; from romance to revenge - sleeping with the enemy. Part 2 "Pre-feminism": rape-revenge and mass cultural fictions of femineity - the silent era to 1970, rape, the silent era - 1915-1929, the sound era - 1930-1970, rapists and their victims, transformation, revenge. Part 3 "Feminism": popular film/popular feminism - the critical reception of the rape-revenge film - "The Accused", "Thelma and Louise"; frontier femmes -rape-revenge and the western variations on vengeance - frontier femmes and the "vengeance variation", hard women and soft men - post-modernism, post feminism and backlash. Part 4 "Post-feminism": rape-revenge in post-modern Hollywood - having it all - "The Last Seduction", of vamps and avengers - "Batman Returns"; from feminism to family values - the maternal avenger - the maternal avenger and the vigilante-mom made-for-TV film, melodrama and the maternal avenger. Conclusion: textual and theoretical negotiations. Filmography of primary and secondary texts.

About the Author

Jacinda Read is Lecturer in Media Studies at De Montfort University