Mismatched Women
The Siren's Song Through the Machine
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Book Presentation:
In Mismatched Women, author Jennifer Fleeger introduces readers to a lineage of women whose voices do not "match" their bodies by conventional expectations, from George du Maurier's literary Trilby to Metropolitan Opera singer Marion Talley, from Snow White and Sleeping Beauty to Kate Smith and Deanna Durbin. The book tells a new story about female representation by theorizing a figure regularly dismissed as an aberration. The mismatched woman is a stumbling block for both sound and feminist theory, argues Fleeger, because she has been synchronized yet seems to have been put together incorrectly, as if her body could not possibly house the voice that the camera insists belongs to her. Fleeger broadens the traditionally cinematic context of feminist film theory to account for literary, animated, televisual, and virtual influences. This approach bridges gaps between disciplinary frameworks, showing that studies of literature, film, media, opera, and popular music pose common questions about authenticity, vocal and visual realism, circulation, and reproduction. The book analyzes the importance of the mismatched female voice in historical debates over the emergence of new media and unravels the complexity of female representation in moments of technological change.
About the Author:
Jennifer Fleeger is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at Ursinus College where she teaches courses in the film studies program. Her first book, Sounding American: Hollywood, Opera, and Jazz, also appears in Oxford's Music/Media Series.
Press Reviews:
"Jennifer Fleeger's Mismatched Women is a must-read for anyone interested in musical women, performance studies, and media culture." --Marcia J. Citron, Rice University, Music and Letters
"Mismatched Women sings with intelligence, originality, and depth." --Claudia Gorbman, co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics
"Fleeger complicates previous theories of the female voice, rethinking the 'match' between sound and body, technology and voice. Linking seemingly disparate singers and modes of performance - ranging from opera to animated film to radio and reality TV - Fleeger shows the way in which mismatched women challenge gender stereotypes and mechanisms of pity associated with having, or being, the wrong body." --Pamela Wojcik, Director of Gender Studies and Professor of Film at the University of Notre Dame
"[T]he blend of recorded music history with the analysis and interpretation that Fleeger offers marks her book as unique...Fleeger's rigorous academic analysis represents a much-needed addition to the music and performance analysis in scholarly literature...I recommend this book for any academic music or media library as well as scholars who wish to study women and music, women and mass media, women and popular culture, or sound recording history."--Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal
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