Gender in French Banlieue Cinema

This book analyzes the treatment and transformation of gender in French banlieue cinema at the intersection of race, body politics, ethnicity, religion, and social/economic class. The contributors explore films from 1995 to today with special emphasis on recent films providing innovative representations of banlieue identities. This edited volume investigates the reconfiguration of gender in French banlieue cinema, interrogating whether the films produced over the last two decades provide new and viable models of resistance to dominant modes of power. Contributors take a critical approach which identifies gender as a marker of both body and identity politics to highlight the need to overcome a binary approach to banlieue aesthetics, which limits inquiry into the basis of conflict. Given that a feminization—and, to some extent, queering—of the once exclusively-masculine space is underway, contributors ultimately conclude that the banlieue and its on-screen representations cannot be properly understood unless intersectionality as a systematic approach is applied as an interpretive lens. Scholars of film, gender studies, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.