[ecrea] Mamma Mia collection CFP

>CFP: Edited collection
>â¬ÜDigginâ¬" Dancing Queens and Wedding Scenes: The Phenomenon of Mamma Mia!
>
>Call for abstracts deadline:  19th April 2010
>Full name: Louise FitzGerald
>
>Contact email: (louise.fitzgerald /at/ uea.ac.uk)
>
>
>
>This cfp invites submissions for a proposed 
>collection exploring the 2008 film
>Mamma Mia! and the cultural phenomenon that surrounded it. To date, the film
>is positioned as the 42nd highest grossing film 
>of all time, the most successful
>musical of all time, and the 5th highest 
>grossing film of 2008. In Britain, the
>box office success of Mamma Mia surpassed the phenomenal success of
>Cameronâ¬"s 1997 film Titanic and it has been 
>estimated that at least one in four
>British households owns a DVD copy of Mamma Mia. Indeed, on the day of the
>filmâ¬"s DVD release, Amazon reported that it had become the fastest selling
>product. Reports from America, Sweden, Finland, Japan, Australia, Germany,
>France and Greece have also testified to the phenomenal success of the film.
>
>Critics debating the filmâ¬"s outstanding success have suggested that its
>popularity resulted from the dire economic recession that was enveloping so
>many countries in 2008 ( the idea of the musical functioning in terms of
>escapism has been debated since at least the classical Hollywood period).
>The film offered relatively cheap, escapist entertainment that, as many have
>argued, raised the spirits of audiences dealing 
>with higher mortgage payments,
>bankruptcy and the threat of unemployment.  Despite Mamma Miaâ¬"s
>outstanding international success amongst filmgoers, film critics have lauded
>the musical as a â¬Scumulative weight of 
>terribleness⬝ and warned that those
>who loved the film would have to â¬Sprove their 
>intelligence⬝. Such sentiments
>reflect an established tension that functions to 
>polarize films as either â¬Ühighâ¬"
>or â¬Ülowâ¬" brow entertainment, and the 
>audiences as either critically engaged or
>an uneducated mass of consumers.  These sentiments are often couched in
>gendered terms and serve to reinforce the idea that films addressed to a male
>audience have more cultural capital than those addressed to women.
>
>This edited collection aims to study Mamma Mia! in terms of its success, and
>how this success can also be contextualised 
>within the filmâ¬"s cultural politics.
>Indeed, the film has often incited debate at the 
>level of gender politics, and
>can variously be read as empowering â¬Ümatureâ¬" 
>woman, as rejecting marriage as
>the pinnacle of young womenâ¬"s lives and as foregrounding a more positive
>representation of cinemaâ¬"s lone mother figure.  However others have
>commented on its apparent infantilization of Greek characters, and have
>pointed to Mamma Mia as an example of the cultural reiteration of regressive
>post-feminist gender politics.  As such, this 
>collection will explore the ways in
>which issues of class, gender and popular culture are articulated in Mamma
>Mia and debates about it. Topics might also 
>include (but are not restricted to);
>
>The mother and daughter relationship
>Portrayals of the â¬Üolderâ¬" woman
>The music and cultural status of ABBA
>Spectacle and the liminality of the filmâ¬"s Greek location
>The filmâ¬"s representation of homosexuality
>Mamma Mia! and the contemporary musical
>Critical reception
>Audience reception/fan culture
>Adaptation
>Female authorship
>Stardom
>
>Contributor guidelines:
>Please provide a chapter abstract (maximum 500 words) and a brief biography
>(250 words).  These should be submitted by e-mail to
>(Louise.Fitzgerald /at/ uea.ac.uk) by 19th April, 2010

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Nico Carpentier (Phd)
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.56
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401a
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European Communication Research and Education Association
Web: http://www.ecrea.eu
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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