[csaa-forum] Fiona Handyside (U of Exeter) Power Plaits: Katniss, Elsa and new forms of girl power on screen 24/09 10am NZT

[Rosemary Overell]

Kia ora

Please join us next Tues 24th Sept at 10am NZT (find your local time here<https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html?iso=20240923T220000&p1=264>) to hear Assoc Prof Fiona Handyside (University of Exeter) speak on Power Plaits: Katniss, Elsa and new forms of girl power on screen.

This event will be in Burns 4 at Otago and on Zoom (register here<https://forms.gle/PMziBNy8Ed4A65cN6> for link).

Power Plaits: Katniss, Elsa and new forms of girl power on screen
In this talk, I consider how the power plait – the thick single plait falling forward over the shoulder – has become an iconic hairstyle for two of the most significant girl characters to feature in blockbuster franchises of the 2010s, The Hunger Games (Ross, 2012) and Frozen (Buck and Lee, 2013). Katniss Everdeen and Queen Elsa live in imaginary worlds, but these are worlds clearly designed to evoke parallels with recognisable places. In the dislocation caused by the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent austerity regimes, climate breakdown, and the loss of confidence in the hopes of the Obama era, Katniss’s deadly arena and Elsa’s spiky ice palace are stylised hyperbolic representations of a crisis-ridden political landscape where the future seems foreclosed. Through their authenticity and their dynamism Katniss and Elsa demonstrate an extraordinary capacity for survival while remaining conventionally girlish, feminine and attractive.  The plait is styled for functionality, so that the heroine’s hair does not interfere with the (quasi)magical abilities of her hands, but at the same time the impressive volume and length of her hair remains visible for the audience. Discussing the highly skilled crafted of software engineering and highly technical hair-dressing that produced this plait in both its animated and live-action versions, this paper concludes that the expense, care and labour involved in its production testifies to its importance as the key indicator of these girls’ ability to compete in the competitive arena of twenty-first century neoliberal girlhoods.

Fiona Handyside is Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of Cinema at the Shore: The Beach in French Film (Peter Lang, 2014, reissued 2023) and Sofia Coppola: A Cinema of Girlhood (I B Tauris, 2017). Her forthcoming book is Girls’ Hairstories: Resilience and Sparkle in Contemporary Screen Cultures  (EUP, 2025).

Ngā mihi
Rosie.


Rosemary Overell<https://www.otago.ac.nz/mfco/staff/rosemaryoverell.html>
Senior Lecturer
Media, Film & Communication Programme
The University of Otago
Dunedin
New Zealand
9054

Latest publications:
Overell, R. (2024). ‘Don’t Worry Darling: The anxious question of what women want after #MeToo’. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society https://doi.org/10.1057/s41282-024-00461-5
Millar, I., Nicholls, B., Overell, R., & Tutt, D. (2023). Power and politics in Adam Curtis' Can't get you out of my head: An emotional history of the modern world. In C. Owens & S. Meehan O'Callaghan (Eds.), Psychoanalysis and the small screen: The year the cinemas closed<https://www.routledge.com/Psychoanalysis-and-the-Small-Screen-The-Year-the-Cinemas-Closed/Owens-OCallaghan/p/book/9781032223223>. (pp. 163-189). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Overell, R. (2022). Methodological Masturbation<https://lackorg.com/2022/08/26/methodological-masturbation/>. LACK: punctual musings. 26th August.

Google Scholar<https://scholar.google.co.nz/citations?user=ZW7oyEAAAAAJ&hl=en>
LinkedIn<http://www.linkedin.com/in/rosemary-overell-047786222>

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