Reframing Todd Haynes

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For three decades, award-winning independent filmmaker Todd Haynes, who emerged in the early 1990s as a foundational figure in New Queer Cinema, has gained critical recognition for his outsider perspective. Today, Haynes is widely known for bringing women’s stories to the screen. Analyzing Haynes’s films including Safe (1995), Velvet Goldmine (1998), Far from Heaven (2002), and Carol (2015), as well as his unauthorized Karen Carpenter biopic, Superstar (1987), and the television miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011), the contributors to Reframing Todd Haynes reassess his work in light of his long-standing feminist commitments and his exceptional career as a director of women’s films. They present multiple perspectives on Haynes’s film and television work and on his role as an artist-activist who draws on academic theorizations of gender and cinema. The volume illustrates the influence of feminist theory on Haynes’s aesthetic vision, most evident in his persistent interest in the political and formal possibilities afforded by the genre of the woman’s film. The contributors contend that no consideration of Haynes’s work can afford to ignore the crucial place of feminism within it.
Contributors. Danielle Bouchard, Nick Davis, Jigna Desai, Mary R. Desjardins, Patrick Flanery, Theresa L. Geller, Rebecca M. Gordon, Jess Issacharoff, Lynne Joyrich, Bridget Kies, Julia Leyda, David E. Maynard, Noah A. Tsika, Patricia White, Sharon Willis This volume reassesses the film and television work of award-winning independent filmmaker Todd Haynes in light of his longstanding feminist commitments and his exceptional position as a director of women’s films. Theresa L. Geller is a Scholar-in-Residence at the Beatrice Bain Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of The X-Files.
Julia Leyda is a Professor of Film Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and editor of Todd Haynes: Interviews. Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. Feminism's Indelible Mark / Theresa L. Geller  1
Part I. Influences and Interlocutors
1. Lesbian Reverie: Carol in History and Fantasy / Patricia White  31
2. Playing with Dolls: Girls, Fans, and the Queer Feminism of Velvet Goldmine / Julia Leyda  51
3. Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore: Collaboration and the Uncontainable Body / Rebecca M. Gordon  72
4. Oh, the Irony: Tracing Chrsitine Vachon's Filmic Signature / David E. Maynard and Theresa L. Geller  91
5. “The Hardest, the Most Difficult Film”: Safe as Feminist Film Praxis / Theresa L. Geller  111
Part II. Intersections and Interventions
6. “Toxins in the Atmosphere”: Reanimating the Feminist Poison / Jess Issacharoff  137
7. “All the Cake in the World”: Five Provocations on Mildred Pierce / Patrick Flanery  158
8. The Politics of Disappointment: Todd Haynes Rewrites Douglas Sirk / Sharon Willis  173
9. All That Whiteness Allows: Femininity, Race, and Empire in Safe, Carol, and Wonderstruck / Danielle Bouchard and Jigna Desai  200
Part III. Intermediality and Intertextuality
10. Written on the Screen: Mediation and Immersion in Far from Heaven / Lynne Joyrich  221
11. It's Not TV, It's Mildred Pierce / Bridget Kies  243
12. The Incredible Shrinking Star: Todd Haynes and the Case History of Karen Carpenter / Mary R. Desjardins  256
13. Having a Ball with Dottie: Queering Female Stardom from MGM to Todd Haynes / Noah A. Tsika  281
14. Bringing It All Back Home, or Feminist Suppositions on a Film concerning Dylan / Nick Davis  299
Filmography  317
References  321
Contributors  341
Index  345

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