Women's Voices in Digital Media: The Sonic Screen from Film to Memes

Jennifer O'Meara

Published by University of Texas Press 2022

Women's Voices in Digital Media

The Sonic Screen from Film to Memes

Jennifer O'Meara

https://doi.org/10.7560/324431

Overview
Contents

About this book

In today’s digital era, women’s voices are heard everywhere—from smart home devices to social media platforms, virtual reality, podcasts, and even memes—but these new forms of communication are often accompanied by dated gender politics. In Women’s Voices in Digital Media, Jennifer O’Meara dives into new and well-established media formats to show how contemporary screen media and cultural practices police and fetishize women’s voices, but also provide exciting new ways to amplify and empower them.

As she travels through the digital world, O’Meara discovers newly acknowledged—or newly erased—female voice actors from classic films on YouTube, meets the AI and digital avatars in Her and The Congress, and hears women’s voices being disembodied in new ways via podcasts and VR voice-overs. She engages with dialogue that is spreading with only the memory of a voice, looking at how popular media like Clueless and The Simpsons have been mined for feminist memes, and encounters vocal ventriloquism on RuPaul’s Drag Race that queers and valorizes the female voice. Through these detailed case studies, O’Meara argues that the digital proliferation of screens alters the reception of sounds as much as that of images, with substantial implications for women’s voices.

Author / Editor information

Jennifer O'Meara is an assistant professor in Film Studies at Trinity College Dublin. She is the author of Engaging Dialogue: Cinematic Verbalism in American Independent Cinema.

Reviews

O’Meara provides a timely and novel assessment of how women’s voices mediate the relationship between past and present screen technologies, exploring how voices of the cinematic past circulate throughout contemporary digital networks. Original in its approach and scope, Women’s Voices in Digital Media expands the remit of gender-oriented film studies to incorporate both auditory and digital screen cultures. It has a great deal to offer scholars in sound, gender, media, and film studies.

— Marie Thompson, The Open University, author of Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism

Jennifer O’Meara’s Women’s Voices in Digital Media is a rare scholarly achievement that reboots and redirects a vital area of interdisciplinary study. Existing at the nexus of sound studies, voice studies, and media studies, O’Meara's text makes an important contribution to all three, mobilizing feminist media scholarship to investigate a fascinating set of digital case studies, including ASMR videos, film history podcasts, GIFs, celebrity Instagram accounts, virtual reality, and virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri. The result is a bracing refresh of old theory and a clear-eyed assessment of new digital phenomena. Throughout the book, O’Meara is attentive to the dynamics of vocal labor, the possibility for digital forms to open discursive spaces for women’s voices, and the nuances of vocal performance. A must-read for anyone interested in sound studies and the cultural politics of mediated voices.

— Jacob Smith, author of Eco-Sonic Media

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction: Proliferating Screens and a New Vocal Vortex Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1. Film Voices + Time: Excavating Vocal Histories on Digital Platforms Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
Chapter 2. The (Post)Human Voice and Feminized Machines in Anomalisa, The Congress, and Her Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
Chapter 3. The Expanded and Immersive Voice-Over Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
Chapter 4. Karina Longworth and the Remixing of Actresses’ Voices on the You Must Remember This Podcast Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
Chapter 5. Meme Girls versus Trump: The Silent Voices of Subtitled Screenshots Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
Chapter 6. RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Queered Remediation of Women’s Voices Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	202
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
Filmography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
Digital Artifacts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	258

Language: English
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 320
Illustrations
- Other: 30 b&w photos
Keywords: voice studies; women in media; podcasting; screen studies; media studies; Gender Studies; Communications Gender Studies; dubbing; female voice

eBook

Published: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 9781477324455