Abstract

This chapter aims to survey and evaluate various approaches to feminist philosophy of film and to offer suggestions of new topics and directions for research. The focus is on feminist philosophy of film as it pertains to contemporary popular cinema. The first part of the chapter comprises an overview of feminist critique of mainstream films. Five broadly construed areas of interest are examined: images of women, spectatorship and the male gaze, audience-text negotiation, cognitivism, and ideology critique. The second part of the chapter engages with the question of how mainstream films can contribute to a constructive feminist philosophy of film. There are three themes that are drawn out here: subversion of patriarchal ideas, development of a resistant imagination, and expansion of the feminist imagination.