Home Is the Most Dangerous Place for Women: Contemporary Hollywood and Domestic Violence against Women
Barbara Szczekała
barbara.szczekala@gmail.comindependent researcher (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9576-9629
Abstract
The article is an analysis of the multidirectional relations between contemporary popular cinema and domestic violence against women. Starting from social research and sociological approaches (M. P. Johnson’s typology of domestic violence, paradigms of symmetrism and feminism in domestic violence studies), the author carries out a critical discourse analysis of screen representations of domestic violence. Leveraging the feminist-oriented film narratology, she describes key plot and narrative devices, and identification strategies (moral objectivity, narrative unreliability, de-narration). The author also focuses on the films’ ethics and reception, especially the affective potential of domestic violence representations and the controversies around It Ends with Us. Assuming that domestic violence in Hollywood cinema is privatized and deprived of critical and systemic analysis (’post-awareness’ as proposed by D. L. Shoos), the article attempts to describe the ideological and productional context of this impasse, presenting the challenges of cinema as an institution of social responsibility.
Keywords:
contemporary cinema, domestic violence, violence against women, intimate partner violence, feminism, traumaReferences
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Authors
Barbara Szczekałabarbara.szczekala@gmail.com
independent researcher Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9576-9629
Film scholar with a PhD in the arts; author of the book Mind-Game Films. Gry z narracją i widzem [Mind-Game Films: Games with Narration and the Viewer] (2018), awarded by the Polish Society for Film and Media Studies as Best Debut. Vice editor-in-chief of Ekrany magazine. Her research focuses on contemporary cinema, film narration, and audience experiences.
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