Mamma Mia! The Movie (2008) was one of the top international box-office hits of its year and the fastest selling DVD in British history. Responses were passionate but polarized: while legions of fans participated in celebratory sing-along screenings, critics dismissed it as a 'Super Pooper'. The critical split often ran along the fault line of gender, with 'snobbish and misogynist' male critics initially unimpressed by the uninhibited, tongue-in-cheek frivolity of this rare film written, produced and directed by women. When won over, critics termed the triumph of emotion over intellect as a seduction, evoking the question of the film's theme song: 'How Can I Resist You?' This welcome first book on a twenty-first-century cultural phenomenon explores these diverse responses to Mamma Mia!, ranging from enthusiastic embrace to utter repudiation, and investigates key issues such as the film's representation of female friendship, its depiction of maternal and paternal identities and the focus on the older female protagonist, as well as its status as 'jukebox' musical, queer text and product of female authorship.
Empire magazine's critic Ian Nathan concluded his bemused account of the film's unprecedented success by stating: 'Mamma Mia! is not like other films'. This book aims to explore exactly how and why that is the case.
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
Facing our Waterloo: evaluating Mamma Mia! The Movie - Louise FitzGerald and Melanie Williams
1) Everyone listens when I start to sing: gender and ventriloquism in the songs of Mamma Mia! - Malcolm Womack
2) Mamma Mia!'s female authorship - Melanie Williams
3) See that girl, watch that scene: notes on the persona and presence of Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia! - Deborah Mellamphy
4) Knowing me, knowing you: reading Mamma Mia! as feminine object - Caroline Bainbridge
5) The power of sisterhood: Mamma Mia! as female friendship film - Betty Kaklamanidou
6) Embracing the embarrassment: Mamma Mia! and the pleasures of socially unrestrained performance - Ceri Hovland
7) The same old song?: exploring conceptions of the 'feelgood' film in the talk of Mamma Mia!'s older viewers - Kate Egan and Kerstin Leder
8) My my, how did I resist you? - I. Q. Hunter
9) Not too old for sex: Mamma Mia! and the 'older bird' chick flick - Claire Jenkins
10) Dancing queens indeed: when gay subtext is gayer than gay text - Georges-Claude Guilbert
11) The hero of my dreams: framing fatherhood in Mamma Mia! - Sarah Godfrey
12) What does your mother know?: Mamma Mia!'s mediation of lone motherhood - Louise FitzGerald
13) Afterword: When all is said and done - Sue Harper
Bibliography
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