‘Dream on princess': Cultural value, gender politics and the Hungarian film canon through the documentary Pretty Girls

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

Abstract

Post-socialist entertainment television became a focal medium to continue cultivating her myth in cultural memory, which involved re-circulating the documentary footage. This chapter's aims to investigate the Hungarian documentary and auteur canon to problematize the historiography of this area of Hungarian film culture through the close analysis of Pretty Girls' contradictory position in various discourses. Pretty Girls throws these problematic power relationships into sharp relief through the uniquely visible and explicit gender politics of the film, its production and authorial background and its cultural position. The historiography of Hungary's 1980s documentary film culture particularly illuminates this dynamic due to this era's complex entanglement with political-economic-cultural Westernization efforts. The documentary's unsubtlety in using the dead female body to produce authorship is exposed by its own purported aim to expose the ethics of masculine art and authorship.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Routledge Companion to European Cinema
EditorsGábor Gergely, Susan Hayward
Place of PublicationLondon
PublisherRoutledge
Chapter9
Pages96-108
Number of pages13
Edition1
ISBN (Electronic)9781003027447
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

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