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'The "selfish" mothers of contemporary French comedy
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Harrod, Mary (2022) 'The "selfish" mothers of contemporary French comedy. Genre en Series : Cinema, Television, Medias (12-13). doi:10.4000/ges.2994 ISSN 2431-6563.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.4000/ges.2994
Abstract
This article explores a salient trend for “selfish” behaviours featuring in comic depictions of motherhood and the female actors who embody it in French cinema and secondarily television in the late 2010s. I identify tensions between various postfeminist ideals and the self-sacrifice and morally exemplary behaviour associated with contemporary parenting norms, including as coloured by US influence, which combines in an exigent admixture with traditionally more draconian French approaches. Specifically, the article focalises the emergence of the “can-do” mother who combines maternity with professional and successful fulfilment in female-authored film, as well as the “mother behaving badly” informed by comparable Anglophone representations. In both cases, it homes in on the images of star actors (in particular, Julie Delpy, Catherine Deneuve and Marina Foïs but also Karin Viard, Virginie Efira and Juliette Binoche) as key determinants in the ideological resonance of the portrayals under examination, with their popular personae fleshing out and tending to endorse recently expanded parameters for contemporary French motherhood.
Cet article étudie les représentations récurrentes d’une maternité « égoïste » dans la comédie française de la seconde moitié des années 2010. Il met en lumière les tensions entre les idéaux postféministes et le modèle de dévouement et de comportement moralement exemplaire, au sein de normes parentales contemporaines contraignantes où l'influence américaine s'articule à une tradition française plus draconienne en la matière. Deux figures dominantes sont successivement examinées : celle de la mère « capable (can-do) » chez qui la maternité s'ajoute aux succès professionnel et sexuel, dans des films réalisés par des femmes, et celle de la « mère qui se comporte mal (mother behaving badly) », particulièrement répandue dans le paysage audiovisuel anglophone. Dans les deux cas, une attention particulière est portée aux actrices qui incarnent ces rôles (notamment Julie Delpy, Catherine Deneuve et Marina Foïs, mais aussi Karin Viard, Virginie Efira et Juliette Binoche), dont la persona et la popularité influent de manière déterminante la portée idéologique de ces portraits de mères « égoïstes », en leur donnant de la consistance et de l’attrait, contribuant ainsi à l’élargissement des normes de maternité dans la société française contemporaine.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > School of Modern Languages and Cultures > French Studies Faculty of Arts > School of Modern Languages and Cultures |
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Journal or Publication Title: | Genre en Series : Cinema, Television, Medias | ||||||||
Publisher: | Presses universitaires de Bordeaux | ||||||||
ISSN: | 2431-6563 | ||||||||
Official Date: | 1 October 2022 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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Number: | 12-13 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.4000/ges.2994 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 11 October 2021 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 22 November 2022 | ||||||||
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