Full Description
This book interrogates the hyper-visibility and stubborn endurance of the wedding spectacle across media and culture in the current climate.
The wide-ranging chapters consider why the symbolic power of weddings is intensifying at a time when marriage as an institution appears to be in decline - and they offer new insights into the shifting and complex gender politics of contemporary culture. The collection is a feminist project but does not straight-forwardly renounce the wedding spectacle. Rather, the diverse contributions offer close analyses of the myriad forms and practices of the wedding spectacle, from reality television and cinematic film to wedding videography and bridal boutiques. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, the chapters illuminate the paradoxes, contradictions, disappointments, cruelties and pleasures that are intimately bound up with the wedding spectacle.
Written by leading and emerging feminist scholars, the chapters range across different national and cultural contexts to explore how the gender politics of weddings are changing and adapting to a new cultural and social landscape. This in-depth analysis of the wedding spectacle will appeal to academics and researchers in the fields of gender and mass media, cultural studies, feminist studies, and intercultural communication.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Contributors
Abstracts
Something Old, Something New: The Gender Politics of the Wedding Spectacle
Jilly Boyce Kay, Melanie Kennedy and Helen Wood
The Bride Wore Dread: Dissent and Desire for the Wedding Spectacle in Sex and the City, from the Box to the Big-screen
Deborah Jermyn
Making a Spectacle of Yourself: British-Asian Wedding Videography as Alternative Archives of Belonging
Jilly Boyce Kay and Kajal Nisha Patel
Weddings, Anti-Heroines, and Postfeminist Cynicism
Suzanne Leonard
Say Yes to the Dress and the Affective Rhythms of Repetition and Reflection
Natasha Whiteman and Helen Wood
Big Fat Royal Weddings: Kate the "Commoner" Princess and Classed Moral Economies
Laura Clancy
"Time for all of us to Walk into the Sunshine Together": Glee, Same-sex Wedding Spectacle and the Imagining of Queer Futures
Kate McNicholas Smith
Tailored for Marriage, Ready for the Stage: Frames of the Family Regime on "The Marriage Show
Feyza Akınerdem
Keeping it Classy: Wedding Dresses and Distinctions
Jenny Thatcher
Tailor-made Suits and "Crappy Drag Queens": Constructing Gay and Lesbian Weddings in Reality TV
Michael Lovelock
Spectacular Virgins: Purity Porn and the Making Uncanny of the White Wedding
Melanie Kennedy
On Blushing Brides and the Compulsory Logics of Hetero-Femininity: The Glow in Transatlantic Media Culture
Brenda R. Weber
Index
