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Maiden USA is a multi-media presentation by writer and award-winning media artist Kathleen Sweeney. An exploration of images by and about American teenage girls, Maiden USA has been presented at colleges, universities, galleries and media art centers across the United States. Her book, Maiden USA: Girl Icons Come of Age, will be published in Fall/Winter 2007.
In an engaging, spontaneous and humorous style, Maiden USA explores powerful, contradictory pop culture icons of the past decade, which run the gamut from Mean Girls and their Endangered Victims to Superheroines and Ingenue Goddesses. Are girls of the Title IX Generation in need of Internet protection, Prom Mom killers, or Supergirls evolving beyond gender stereotypes to rescue us all?
Once relegated to the taboo arena of Nabokov’s, Lolita, collective desire for the teenage female body has become mainstream standard. In carefully scripted celebrity comings-of-age Lindsay Lohan and Christina Aguilera provide tarty covers for Rolling Stone as sexy teenage soap operas like the O.C. invade prime time. Boy-crazy innocents of the 1960s and 70s like Gidget and Marcia Brady have been karate-kicked off screen by the Girl Power of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Kim Possible, and Hermione Granger of the Harry Potter series. No longer wannabe adjuncts to the storyline, girls have emerged as front-and-center protagonists and supernatural heroines in recent blockbuster media.
2004 proved a banner year for women directors and writers at the Oscars, yet, according to Martha M. Lauzen’s annual “Celluloid Ceiling” study, that same year women directed only 7% of mainstream films. What does the impact of Sofia Coppola’s Oscar nomination and presence of women directors and writers in national box office hits have on the career choices of teenage girls? Maiden USA discusses recent teenage girl narratives by women directors in an exploration of The Female Gaze--do the camera moves differ, and what does this Girl Gaze do for the culture of spectatorship and the formation of female identity?
Another idie voice is emerging in videos produced by teenage girls in programs like Seattle’s Reel Grrls, Santa Fe’s GirlsFilmSchool, and Divas Direct of San Diego. Maiden USA includes a selection of innovative videos and PSAs by talented young women expanding the definitions of gender, power and Quicktime media.
Maiden USA: Lectures & Workshops
(selected)
Children’s Media Project, Poughkeepsie, NY
Colgate University, Hamilton, NY
Garrison Art Center, Garrison, NY
Girls Incorporated National Headquarters, Girls Make the Message Training, Indianapolis, IN
Hamilton College, Clinton, NY
Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY
Jacob Burns Film Center, Pleasantville, NY
Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY
Oakwood Friends School, Poughkeepsie, NY
Reel Grrls/911 Media Arts Center, Seattle, WA
San Francisco Cinematheque at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA
Summit 2000 for Youth and the Media, Toronto, Canada
Whidby Institute, Whidby, WA
To contact Kathleen Sweeney
for Maiden USA lectures, media literacy and video production workshops or teaching artist residencies: video.text@verizon.net
Kathleen Sweeney
video.text
15 Rock Street
Cold Spring, NY 10516
914-714-0404
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