Lost Angels

In ost Angels , Vicky Lebeau re-reads Freudian theories of femininity to develop a remarkable contribution to spectatorship theory. Lebeau discusses Freud's distinctive preoccupations with female fantasy and femininity - from his studies on hysteria and the female romance' at the origins of psychoanalysis to the analyses of mass psychology in the 1920s and 1930s. Lost Angels exposes how Freud's accounting of femininity is intimately tied to his changing representation of the paternal, and explores his ensuing differentation between masculine and feminine fantasy through critical and feminist theories of spectatorship and cinema. Discussing three popular youth' films of the 1980s - John Hughes' Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish and Tim Hunter's River's Edge - Lebeau works through issues of sexual difference and social identification and creates a dialogue between feminism, psychoanalysis and the critical theory of the Frankfurt school. Intervening in current debates on femininity, fantasy and identification, Lebeau suggests that, for Freud, femininity is always both a sexed and a social category which cannot be understood outside of its relation to the father. Lost Angels is a ground-breaking addition to feminist film theory and essential reading for all students of film, gender and cultural studies.