Film, Fashion & Consumption - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2012

This paper considers the representation of Stanford in Sex and the City and Nigel in The Devil Wears Prada and analyses whether or not they differ from the early stereotypes of homosexuality portrayed in Hollywood narrative cinema. The paper will argue that these stereotypes play an important role as defining others for the female leads, especially in relation to fashion. Both Sex and the City and The Devil Wears Prada can be described as 'fashion films' in that they are pro-fashion texts, proclaiming the joy and pleasure that fashion and consumption can offer the post-feminist, metropolitan woman. However, while both the leading female characters and the gay men demonstrate a love of fashion, the women's consumption of designer clothes is represented in the film texts as making them more 'attractive' while the gay men's adoration of fashion has the very opposite effect.

Over the last fifteen years there has been an increase in the number of positive portrayals of gay people, including teenagers, on television. This article takes as a case study the characters Justin Saurez from Ugly Betty (2006-10, created by Silvio Horta) and Kurt Hummel from Glee (2009-11 (ongoing), created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuck and Ian Brennan) and addresses the role that fashionable clothing and appearance plays in the formation and discussion of their sexual orientation. It argues that the very matter of their fashionability acts as a shorthand to announce their teenage sexuality.

In 2011, the popular and trade press reported a dispute between costume designer Amy Westcott and creators of fashion label Rodarte, Kate and Laura Mulleavy, following the decision that the fashion designers were only to receive a back-end credit for their work on psychological thriller Black Swan (Aronofsky, 2010). This article traces the coverage of the Black Swan controversy in order to demonstrate that press discourses surrounding the costume designer perform a series of cultural functions, often having a somewhat detrimental effect on the cultural legitimacy of costume design. Drawing on recent work in the field of feminist production studies, I seek to contribute to the body of work which examines theories of professional identity. Consequently, I argue that the coverage of Westcott's response to initial reports was framed in such a way as to re-establish these traditional value systems upon which economic structures for production are based. As such, I demonstrate that the press discourses surrounding the Black Swan controversy perpetuate certain problematic assumptions in respect to gender, labour and authorship.

This article considers the intersection of biographical myth, music and gender politics through a discussion of the film The Runaways (Floria Sigismondi, 2010). In focusing in particular on themes of gender identity and fashion, it not only aims to uncover the ways in which this film presents the individual biographical stories of lead band members Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, but also to retell these histories through what it will argue is a clear 'post-feminist' lens. In doing so, the film cultivates a number of cultural myths about the participation of women in the music industry. This article is ultimately interested in how music as a particular cultural space has been idealized, romanticized and thus overestimated as a place where such issues could be addressed, and how critical engagement with music fails to fully consider the position of women within the industry. Consequently, popular culture becomes an important reference point for audiences' understanding of women's lives within music, the reality of which can be obscured because of the retrospective stance of biographical film in particular. Importantly, this article is concerned with the consequences of such positions, which locate issues of gender inequality in music in the past rather than the present.

This article studies the emerging links between fashion, consumption and film pornography. Drawing on recent work on the 'pornification' of popular culture, it situates its discussion around the ongoing influence of pornography on mainstream consumer culture and the emergence of branded consumer goods from the American pornographic film industry. It considers recent controversy concerning the impact on pornography on the style and appearance of young western women but also develops these ideas around an analysis of both how American pornographic films sell related product such as T-shirts, baseball caps and sweatshirts as well as how the mise-en-scène of these texts is customized in order to accommodate such marketing strategies.

Reference is made to Playboy, Hustler and Vivid Video, but the central case study is an analysis of the role of less-established American production companies such as Anabolic Video in creating and commodifying their products in a range of ways beyond the basic manufacture of hard-core pornographic films. This is located alongside other companies that draw on the transgressive appeal of pornography past and present as a way to differentiate their products (the 'Porn Star' clothing range and the use of soft-core pornographic techniques and hard-core performers in the marketing campaigns of American Apparel).

Hollywood Catwalk: Exploring Costume and Transformation in American Film, Tamar Jeffers McDonald (2010) London/New York: I.B. Tauris, xii, 240 pp., ISBN 978-1848850408, Paperback, £16.99

Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture, Hilary Radner (2011) London: Routledge, ISBN13: 978-0-415-87774-9, RRP£23.99 221 pp.