Gendering Science Fiction Films Invaders from the Suburbs [Paperback]

In the 1950s, science fiction invasion films played a complicated part in supporting and criticizing Cold War ideologies. By reading these invasion narratives as performances of middle-class, white Americans' excitement and anxiety about social and political issues, George shows how they often played out as another round in the battle of the sexes.1. Introduction: Gendering Science Fiction Invasion Films 2. Science Fiction Blue Prints for Cold War Gender Roles: Mystique Models and Team Players 3. Saturday Matinee Cautionary Tales: Science Fiction Vamps and Promethean Scientists 4. Invasion from Within: Mom, the Nuclear Family, and Suburban Masculinity 5. 'I'm Not the Monster Here!': Working Women after Rosie's Retirement and the Men They Work With 6. Post-War Prototypes: Alternative Heroes and Progressive Men 7. Keep Watching the Screens: Gender in Fifties Science Fiction Films and Beyond

Gendering Science Fiction Films reminds us that marginalized films, such as science fiction invasion films, are a rich site for cultural conversations about weighty social issues. Taking for granted that depictions of women are central to the genre, George's cogent analysis helps us see how in the 1950s these films often used genre conventions against themselves in order to address and challenge conflicting gendered concepts such as momism, female desire, and a bread-winner masculinity. - Sarah Projansky, Associate Dean and Professor of Film and Media Arts and Gender Studies, University of Utah, USA

Susan A. George is exceptionally knowledgeable and remarkably perceptive about films that almost everyone interested in movies has seen, but that few have recognized as culturally significant. By detailing both the SF silver screen's adherence to and resistance toward the dominant American ideologies of the Cold War era, George has created a thought-provoking, well researched work that is a must-have for college libraries, cinema scholars, and science fictiolSÑ