Michele Meek – författare

Teen films of the 1980s were notorious for treating consent as irrelevant, with scenes of boys spying in girls' locker rooms and tricking girls into sex. While contemporary movies now routinely prioritize consent, ensure date rape is no longer a joke, and celebrate girls' desires, sexual consent remains a problematic and often elusive ideal in teen films.In Consent Culture and Teen Films, Michele Meek traces the history of adolescent sexuality in US cinema and examines how several films from the 2000s, including Blockers, To All the Boys I've Loved Before, The Kissing Booth, and Alex Strangelove, take consent into account. Yet, at the same time, Meek reveals that teen films expose how affirmative consent ("yes means yes") fails to protect youth from unwanted and unpleasant sexual encounters. By highlighting ambiguous sexual interactions in teen films—such as girls' failure to obtain consent from boys, queer teens subjected to conversion therapy camps, and youth manipulated into sexual relationships with adults—Meek unravels some of consent's intricacies rather than relying on oversimplification.By exposing affirmative consent in teen films as gendered, heteronormative, and cis-centered, Consent Culture and Teen Films suggests we must continue building a more inclusive consent framework that normalizes youth sexual desire and agency with all its complexities and ambivalences.

Teen films of the 1980s were notorious for treating consent as irrelevant, with scenes of boys spying in girls' locker rooms and tricking girls into sex. While contemporary movies now routinely prioritize consent, ensure date rape is no longer a joke, and celebrate girls' desires, sexual consent remains a problematic and often elusive ideal in teen films.In Consent Culture and Teen Films, Michele Meek traces the history of adolescent sexuality in US cinema and examines how several films from the 2000s, including Blockers, To All the Boys I've Loved Before, The Kissing Booth, and Alex Strangelove, take consent into account. Yet, at the same time, Meek reveals that teen films expose how affirmative consent ("yes means yes") fails to protect youth from unwanted and unpleasant sexual encounters. By highlighting ambiguous sexual interactions in teen films—such as girls' failure to obtain consent from boys, queer teens subjected to conversion therapy camps, and youth manipulated into sexual relationships with adults—Meek unravels some of consent's intricacies rather than relying on oversimplification.By exposing affirmative consent in teen films as gendered, heteronormative, and cis-centered, Consent Culture and Teen Films suggests we must continue building a more inclusive consent framework that normalizes youth sexual desire and agency with all its complexities and ambivalences.

Independent Female Filmmakers collects original and previously published essays, interviews, and manifestos from some of the most defining and groundbreaking independent female filmmakers of the last 40 years. Featuring material from the seminal magazine The Independent Film and Video Monthly—a leading publication for independent filmmakers for several decades—as well as new interviews conducted with the filmmakers, this book, edited by Michele Meek, presents a unique perspective into the ethnically and culturally diverse voices of women filmmakers whose films span narrative, documentary, and experimental genres and whose work remains integral to independent film history from the 1970s to the present.Independent Female Filmmakers also includes a biographical profile of each filmmaker, as well as an online resource with links to additonal interviews and a sample course syllabus. The filmmakers in this book include: • Lisa Cholodenko (High Art, The Kids Are All Right) • Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl, Real Genius, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge) • Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman, Stranger Inside) • Miranda July (The Future, Me And You And Everyone We Know) • Barbara Kopple (Harlan County USA, Wild Man Blues) • Maria Maggenti (The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love) • Deepa Mehta (Fire, Earth, Water) • Trinh T. Minh-ha (Surname Viet, Given Name Nam, Night Passage) . . . and more!

Independent Female Filmmakers collects original and previously published essays, interviews, and manifestos from some of the most defining and groundbreaking independent female filmmakers of the last 40 years. Featuring material from the seminal magazine The Independent Film and Video Monthly—a leading publication for independent filmmakers for several decades—as well as new interviews conducted with the filmmakers, this book, edited by Michele Meek, presents a unique perspective into the ethnically and culturally diverse voices of women filmmakers whose films span narrative, documentary, and experimental genres and whose work remains integral to independent film history from the 1970s to the present.Independent Female Filmmakers also includes a biographical profile of each filmmaker, as well as an online resource with links to additonal interviews and a sample course syllabus. The filmmakers in this book include: • Lisa Cholodenko (High Art, The Kids Are All Right) • Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl, Real Genius, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge) • Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman, Stranger Inside) • Miranda July (The Future, Me And You And Everyone We Know) • Barbara Kopple (Harlan County USA, Wild Man Blues) • Maria Maggenti (The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love) • Deepa Mehta (Fire, Earth, Water) • Trinh T. Minh-ha (Surname Viet, Given Name Nam, Night Passage) . . . and more!

The Ambiguity of Consent: Consent Puzzles in Film, Television, Public Discourse, and the Law explores the complex, often-contradictory nature of consent in contemporary society.This collection examines how consent is expressed and debated across media, legal systems, and public discourse, particularly in the height of “consent culture” in the 2020s. It interrogates the assumptions behind familiar frameworks like affirmative consent and informed consent and raises critical questions about power, communication, and interpretation. Through case studies and cultural analysis, this book addresses issues such as the blurred lines between “Bad Sex” and assault, the instability of consent for minors, and how normative models often fail to account for structural inequalities. It invites readers to rethink consent not as a fixed standard, but as a site of ongoing negotiation and ambiguity.This book is ideal for students and researchers in Gender Studies, Media Studies, Law, and Politics, as well as anyone interested in the ethical, legal, and cultural dimensions of consent.