Nothing's Gonna Give? Age, Gender, and Cultures of the Screen

Authors

Christine Scodari
Becky Mulvaney

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Christine Scodari's and Becky Mulvaney's "Nothing's Gonna Give? Age, Gender, and Cultures of the Screen" investigates the 2003 romantic comedy Something's Gotta Give, written and directed by Nancy Meyers as exceptional in its featuring a fifty-something woman as leading actress. Beginning with an analysis of the filmic text itself, the authors do not confine themselves to it, but go on to critically engage with its reception in both the press and academia. While the focus is thus shifted from the film to the "meta-" and "para-texts" produced in the course of its reception and promotion, the underlying questions asked by Scodari and Mulvaney persist: What are the relationships between age, gender, and contemporary screen cultures? How are these relationships necessarily determined and by what agency? Acknowledging the many dimensions in which these questions have to be posed, the article continues by reporting the results of a series of focus groups taking the form of "casting" a hypothetical Hollywood Blockbuster. Again, the relationship between age, gender, and the hegemonic type of film narrative are approached from a number of angles, taking into account the demographic composition of the groups involved. The authors' multi-faceted inquiry is rounded off with a survey of online discussion groups' reception of Something's Gotta Give and a conclusion bringing together the various perspectives taken in the course of the overall argument.

Recommended Citation

Scodari, Christine, et al. "Nothing's Gonna Give? Age, Gender, and Cultures of the Screen." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, vol. 5, no. 2, 2005, pp. 1–27.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol5/iss2/7