Knock Me Up Knock Me Down

No longer is pregnancy a repulsive or shameful condition in Hollywood films, but an attractive attribute, often enhancing the romantic or comedic storyline of a female character. Kelly Oliver investigates this curious shift and its reflection of changing attitudes toward women's roles in reproduction and the family. Not all representations signify progress. Oliver finds that in many pregnancy films, our anxieties over modern reproductive practices and technologies are made manifest, and in some cases perpetuate conventions curtailing women's freedom. Reading such films as Where the Heart Is (2000), Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), Palindromes (2004), Saved! (2004), Quinceañera (2006), Children of Men (2006), Knocked Up (2007), Juno (2007), Baby Mama (2008), Away We Go (2009), Precious (2009), The Back-up Plan (2010), Due Date (2010), and Twilight: Breaking Dawn (2011), Oliver investigates pregnancy as a vehicle for romance, a political issue of "choice," a representation of the hosting of "others," a prism for fears of miscegenation, and a screen for modern technological anxieties.

The image of a heavily pregnant woman, once considered ugly and indecent, is now common to Hollywood film. No longer is pregnancy a repulsive of shameful condition, but an attractive attribute, often enhancing the romantic or comedic storyline of a female protagonist. Kelly Oliver investigates this curious shift and its reflection of changing attitudes toward women's roles in reproduction and the family.

From New York Times bestselling author Kasey Michaels comes an engaging Regency romance. Pleased to meet you … Immediate attraction. Instant love. Strangers one moment, lovers the next. Possible, or only a romantic dream? Adam Dagenham, Marquis of Daventry, can barely believe his good fortune when he meets, woos, and hastily weds the beautiful and irresistible Sherry Victor. But can such a hasty union last when outside forces plant seeds of mistrust in a groom’s head? How does a woman prove herself innocent when she doesn’t know how or why she’s been branded as guilty? Yes, the devil can be in the details, even in love and marriage… and as Adam and Sherry find out, the only way to beat this particular devil is by learning that trust and love go hand-in-hand. Are they up to the battle? … hope you guess my name.

America's often-unspoken morality codes make many topics taboo in "the land of the free." This book analyzes hundreds of popular culture examples to expose how the media both avoids and alludes to how we derive pleasure from our bodies. Flatulence ... male nudity ... abortion ... masturbation: these are just a few of the taboo topics in the United States. What do culturally enforced silences about certain subjects say about our society—and our latent fears? This work provides a broad yet detailed overview of popular culture's most avoided topics to explain why they remain off-limits and examines how they are presented in contemporary media—or, in many cases, delicately explored using euphemism and innuendo. The author offers fascinating, in-depth analysis of the meaning behind these portrayals of a variety of both mundane and provocative taboos, and identifies how new television programs, films, and advertising campaigns intentionally violate longstanding cultural taboos to gain an edge in the marketplace.

A driver picks up a young man crossing Europe. Two police officers work a surveillance case. A passenger directs her taxi to the edge of a bridge. Three conversations grow increasingly uneasy. From award-winning writer Gabriel Gbadamosi comes a visceral and poetic new play, exploring a time of distrust where the lines blur between conversation and interrogation. Stop and Search explores our deep ambivalence about the ways we police each other.

The eight essays contained in Philosophical Feminism and Popular Culture explore the portrayal of women and various philosophical responses to that portrayal in contemporary post-civil rights society. The essays examine visual, print, and performance media—stand-up comedy, movies, television, and a blockbuster trilogy of novel. These philosophical feminist analyses of popular culture consider the possibilities, both positive and negative, that popular culture presents for articulating the structure of the social and cultural practices in which gender matters, and for changing these practices if and when they follow from, lead to, or perpetuate discrimination on the basis of gender. The essays bring feminist voices to the conversation about gender and attests to the importance of feminist critique in what is sometimes claimed to be a post-feminist era.