By analyzing the negotiation of femininities and masculinities within contemporary Hollywood cinema and by focusing on the largely neglected intersections between postfeminism and queer theory this volume presents diverse interrogations of popular cinema. The chapters in this collection position contemporary commercial production as a space where female empowerment is both celebrated and undermined, and signal the necessity of further debate surrounding the formation of gender identity in postmillennial Hollywood cinema.
The Danish director Lars von Trier is one of the world's most controversial filmmakers, and arguably so because of the depiction of women in his films. He has been criticized for subjecting his female characters to unacceptable levels of violence or reducing them to masochistic self-abnegation. At other times, it is the women in his films who are dominant or break out in violence.