Gerhards, Lea Postfeminism and Contemporary Vampire Romance (1350215686)

<p>In this book, Lea Gerhards traces connections between three recent vampire romance series; the <i>Twilight </i>film series (2008-2012), <i>The Vampire Diaries</i> (2009-2017) and <i>True Blood</i> (2008-2014), exploring their tremendous discursive and ideological power in order to understand the cultural politics of these extremely popular texts. <br><br>She uses contemporary vampire romance to examine postfeminist ideologies and discuss gender, sexuality, subjectivity, agency and the body. Discussing a range of conflicting meanings contained in the narratives, Gerhards critically looks genre’s engagement with everyday sexism and violence against women, power relations in heterosexual relationships, sexual autonomy and pleasure, (self-) empowerment, and (self-) surveillance. She asks: Why are these genre texts so popular right now, what specific desires, issues and fears are addressed and negotiated by them, and what kinds of pleasures do they offer?</p>