What is ‘fun’ about the Hollywood version of girlhood? What kinds of pleasure
does this version of girlhood invite us to enjoy? Through re-evaluating notions of
pleasure and fun, this thesis forms a study of Hollywood girl teen films between
2000-2010. The aesthetic dimensions of commercial girl teen films are
particularly underexplored. This study identifies the key aesthetics of girl teen
film and articulates the specific types of tactile and kinaesthetic pleasures they
are designed to create.
Working outside of gendered hierarchies of pleasure and aesthetics, the thesis
focuses on ‘look and feel’. The study draws on recent literature that prioritises
the relationship between film, the body, and affect, in conjunction with Susanne
Langer’s (1953, 1957) concept and Richard Dyer’s (2002) application of
‘embodiments of feeling’, to present a new way of understanding the ‘fun’ in girl
teen films.
After situating the thesis in a film studies context, the five core chapters each
examine recurrent moments of ‘fun’ and fundamental aesthetic pleasures found
in these films. The opening chapter explores the influence of ‘Cinderella’s
Pleasures’ on girl teen film as a fairy tale framework in which pleasure is the main
concern and character visibility is the central reward. I suggest that the Cinderella character-icon is adorned in ways that invite audiences to enjoy the
tactile pleasures of accessories and clothing. In the second chapter tactility is
also central to the ‘Celebrity Glamour’ that surrounds the girls in these films and,
defining glamour, I consider the ways that visibility, space, and place are
constructed as appealing. In ‘Sporting Pleasures’ I analyse the ways that the
body of the Cinderella character-icon is itself a surface, rendered to generate
kinaesthetic pleasures grounded in physical work, perfection, and collective
synchrony. This interest in the potential to generate kinaesthetic pleasures
continues in the chapter on ‘Musical Address’, which examines how the musical
numbers in these films draw on the pleasures and capacities of the body in
relation to music and dance. The final chapter brings all of the key moments of
‘fun’ together and I analyse the relationship between music, dance, image, and
the body in more detail: exploring how ‘Music Video Aesthetics’ generate the
feelings of music and dance to make a spectacle of ‘everyday’, ‘feminine’
activities.
This research develops a new way of exploring ‘feminine’ forms of popular
culture. It questions the gendered hierarchies of pleasure that scholarship often
maintains, articulates the ‘fun’ version of girlhood that Hollywood presents, and
offers an understanding of the kinds of physical and affective pleasures that
these films invite us to enjoy