Abstract
This chapter argues that feminist vigilance entails staying alert to the appeal of dominant narratives of domestic and intimate partner violence and the way familiar film genres perpetuate those narratives. Shoos demonstrates feminist vigilance as a proactive force for transforming genre conventions and intervening in dominant storylines and social practices through a close review of the independent film, The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open. It is by staying alert to the opportunities such narratives offer for altering how we understand and ultimately, how we respond to oppression and abuse that feminist vigilance offers a hopeful and proactive perspective.
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Notes
- 1.
Global statistics are even more disturbing: The 2018 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime indicates that more than 50,000 (58 percent) of the approximately 87,000 homicides of women and girls worldwide in 2017 were caused by intimate partners or family members. The report also states that the likelihood of women being killed by relatives or intimate partners has increased by more than 10 percent since 2012, with women in the Americas and Africa most at risk.
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Shoos, D.L. (2020). Watching with Feminist Vigilance: Media Genres of Male Partner Violence Against Women. In: Sotirin, P., Bergvall, V.L., Shoos, D.L. (eds) Feminist Vigilance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59793-1_6
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