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The 1960s was a decade of massive political and cultural change in Western Europe, as seismic shifts took place in in attitudes towards sexuality, gender, and motherhood in everyday life. Through case studies of British and French films, Pepsi and the Pill offers a fresh vision of a pivotal moment in European culture, exploring the many ways in which political activity and celebrated film movements mutually shaped each other in their views on gender, sexuality, and domesticity. As the specter of popular nationalism once again looms across Europe, this book offers a timely account of the legacy of crucial debates over issues including reproductive rights, migration, and reproductive nationalism at the intersection of political discourse, protest, and film.
“This elegantly written and extensively researched book thoughtfully dissects cul- tural and political framings of motherhood in 1960s’ British and French film… Through a series of fascinating and sensitive discussions of how films associated with the French New Wave and British social realist cinema engage with mother- hood, pregnancy and abortion, Oliver-Powell reveals the political scaffolding be- neath these representations at a crucial period in the development of reproductive legislation and rights… Faced with the current precarity of reproductive justice around the world and the undermining of LGBTQ+ rights, this is an important and extremely timely book.” • H-Soz-Kult
“This is a beautifully written and meticulous work of research. Melissa Oliver-Powell excavates and gives voice to the repressed feminine of two determinedly priapic cinematic histories (British and French new waves); by offering compassionate and assiduous attention to the figure of the mother, Pepsi and The Pill renders apparent the political and social narratives that underpin and inform our conceptions of motherhood – as social construction and institution – in vehemently patriarchal societies and cultures.” • Anna Backman Rogers, University Gothenburg, Sweden
Melissa Oliver-Powell is a lecturer in Film and Literature in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. She has previously lectured at the University of Exeter, and taught within film, literature and gender studies at UCL, where she received her PhD in 2018.
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Generation Pepsi
Part I: ‘Conception’
Chapter 1. Maternal Products and the British Kitchen Sink
Chapter 2. The Mass-Reproduction of Mothering: Une Femme Mariée and Le Bonheur
Part II: ‘Gestation’
Chapter 3. The ‘Permissive’ Myth: Conservatism, Change, and Contraception in Swinging London
Chapter 4. Scene and Unscene: Reimagining Abortion in La Génération Pepsi
Part III: ‘Delivery’
Chapter 5. Whose Lineage is it Anyway? Migration and Racist Futurities
Chapter 6. Queer Communities and Queer Failures in British Film
Conclusion: Reproducing the Future
Bibliography
Filmography