Gossip, women, film, and chick flicks

With the analysis of chick flicks, the book focuses on a genre, which is usually not taken seriously. Chick flicks are either dismissed as dull entertainment or used as proof of the mass media's power to manipulate its audience. This study approaches chick flicks from the perspective of aesthetic experience, claiming that the controversy determining the discourse on post-feminism and popular culture is constitutive for the genre as such. The female spectator is key to understanding the phenomenon of chick flicks. Dang shows that taking the media specificity of chick flicks into account is an important step towards understanding the pleasure for the spectator that derives from the genre and thus the popularity and significance of these films. By linking feminist theories to the aesthetic film experience, the study shows that women oriented media texts challenge the social concept of "woman" as a clearly definable category. This book provides a theoretical framework for the understanding of the film experience of the popular, yet undertheorized genre. It constitutes a substantial shift in the way chick flicks are usually approached.