One of the lovely things about working on this project with Heather is that we both love cinema. Frequently we will send text messages to each other about a recent release. We both love film for what pleasures it offers as well as how it stimulates ideas about sociological issues that we are engaged with. Very frequently these texts articulate things that our academic language cannot – similar to the ways in which Heather has written about fiction. Recently we both watched a film that generated very different reactions, as discussed by Heather in her recent blog on Gone Girl‘s Amy. In this post, Kim responds by exploring her anger at the film’s misogyny. (Please note there are spoilers so don’t read this if you are yet to see the film.)

It seems like everyone’s blogging about the movie Gone Girl, arguing over whether the central character Amy Dunne is a symbol of how much Hollywood (and the world) hates women or an icon of feminism or postfeminism. All of these responses seem to ignore Amy herself. In this blog Heather suggests that we should try harder to see Amy and other femme fatales on their own terms rather than insisting on reading them simply as symbols of something else.