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‘Forget it’s between two women’: negotiating a queer Virginia Woolf in Chanya Button’s Vita & Virginia

Lisa Smithstead

Celebrity Studies, Pages: 1 - 15

Swansea University Author: Lisa Smithstead

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DOI (Published version): 10.1080/19392397.2024.2310305

Abstract

This article explores the gendered authorial negotiations at work in adaptations of Virginia Woolf’s works and celebrity image in screen media, focusing on a case study of Vita and Virginia (2018) directed by British filmmaker Chanya Button. The article discusses Button’s film’s textual and promotio...

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Published in: Celebrity Studies
ISSN: 1939-2397 1939-2400
Published: Informa UK Limited 2024
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa66557
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spelling v2 66557 2024-05-31 ‘Forget it’s between two women’: negotiating a queer Virginia Woolf in Chanya Button’s Vita & Virginia 93398d7d636683958868319f391a8260 Lisa Smithstead Lisa Smithstead true false 2024-05-31 CACS This article explores the gendered authorial negotiations at work in adaptations of Virginia Woolf’s works and celebrity image in screen media, focusing on a case study of Vita and Virginia (2018) directed by British filmmaker Chanya Button. The article discusses Button’s film’s textual and promotional strategies, considering how it adapts both Eileen Atkins’ 1995 play of the same name and original historical correspondence between Woolf and the writer Vita Sackville-West. It draws upon critical models of literary celebrity, the celebrity biopic, and the concept of adaptation networks to argue that Button’s strategic choices in cinematography and details of mise-en-scène formulate an ‘archival’ gaze in order to forge connections between Woolf and Button as gendered authorial and celebrity personas. This creates a visual dialogue between women authors across media and time. The article suggests that Button’s processes of adaptation work to destabilise the essential queerness of the epistolary material and literary celebrity images as a result of this archival technique. This produces a representation of queer desire that distances body and mind and privileges an intellectual romance above a physical, desiring and embodied queer sexuality. This ultimately reinforces rather than reframes or reimagines a popular image of Woolf’s literary celebrity, focused instead on her status as a melancholic, suffering figure. Journal Article Celebrity Studies 0 1 15 Informa UK Limited 1939-2397 1939-2400 31 1 2024 2024-01-31 10.1080/19392397.2024.2310305 COLLEGE NANME Culture and Communications School COLLEGE CODE CACS Swansea University SU Library paid the OA fee (TA Institutional Deal) Swansea University 2024-10-21T11:37:08.6216286 2024-05-31T17:22:30.4997105 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Culture and Communication - Media, Communications, Journalism and PR Lisa Smithstead 1 66557__30509__61fa1146cc28477a9d40c6415b3b8e47.pdf 66557.VoR.pdf 2024-05-31T17:25:49.1795820 Output 643927 application/pdf Version of Record true © 2024 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License. true eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
title ‘Forget it’s between two women’: negotiating a queer Virginia Woolf in Chanya Button’s Vita & Virginia
spellingShingle ‘Forget it’s between two women’: negotiating a queer Virginia Woolf in Chanya Button’s Vita & Virginia
Lisa Smithstead
title_short ‘Forget it’s between two women’: negotiating a queer Virginia Woolf in Chanya Button’s Vita & Virginia
title_full ‘Forget it’s between two women’: negotiating a queer Virginia Woolf in Chanya Button’s Vita & Virginia
title_fullStr ‘Forget it’s between two women’: negotiating a queer Virginia Woolf in Chanya Button’s Vita & Virginia
title_full_unstemmed ‘Forget it’s between two women’: negotiating a queer Virginia Woolf in Chanya Button’s Vita & Virginia
title_sort ‘Forget it’s between two women’: negotiating a queer Virginia Woolf in Chanya Button’s Vita & Virginia
author_id_str_mv 93398d7d636683958868319f391a8260
author_id_fullname_str_mv 93398d7d636683958868319f391a8260_***_Lisa Smithstead
author Lisa Smithstead
author2 Lisa Smithstead
format Journal article
container_title Celebrity Studies
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publishDate 2024
institution Swansea University
issn 1939-2397
1939-2400
doi_str_mv 10.1080/19392397.2024.2310305
publisher Informa UK Limited
college_str Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
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hierarchy_top_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_top_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchy_parent_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_parent_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
department_str School of Culture and Communication - Media, Communications, Journalism and PR{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences{{{_:::_}}}School of Culture and Communication - Media, Communications, Journalism and PR
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description This article explores the gendered authorial negotiations at work in adaptations of Virginia Woolf’s works and celebrity image in screen media, focusing on a case study of Vita and Virginia (2018) directed by British filmmaker Chanya Button. The article discusses Button’s film’s textual and promotional strategies, considering how it adapts both Eileen Atkins’ 1995 play of the same name and original historical correspondence between Woolf and the writer Vita Sackville-West. It draws upon critical models of literary celebrity, the celebrity biopic, and the concept of adaptation networks to argue that Button’s strategic choices in cinematography and details of mise-en-scène formulate an ‘archival’ gaze in order to forge connections between Woolf and Button as gendered authorial and celebrity personas. This creates a visual dialogue between women authors across media and time. The article suggests that Button’s processes of adaptation work to destabilise the essential queerness of the epistolary material and literary celebrity images as a result of this archival technique. This produces a representation of queer desire that distances body and mind and privileges an intellectual romance above a physical, desiring and embodied queer sexuality. This ultimately reinforces rather than reframes or reimagines a popular image of Woolf’s literary celebrity, focused instead on her status as a melancholic, suffering figure.
published_date 2024-01-31T11:37:07Z
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