Mismatched Women

Abstract

Abstract Whether they are fictional creations in books or films or actual performers on television and radio, singers with voices that do not match their bodies are essential to the success of technologies for preserving and sharing music. Beginning with Trilby's operatic embodiment of phonography's promise and ending with Susan Boyle's rapid rise to online fame, each chapter pairs a mismatched woman with a machine in order to analyze her importance to the era of her popularity. Mismatched Women thus offers a new narrative about the history of sound recording with women like Deanna Durbin, Kate Smith, and the Disney Princesses at the center of the story. Broadening the traditionally cinematic context of feminist film theory to account for literary, animated, televisual, and virtual subjects, the book reimagines the value of women's voices apart from theories of narrative and assumptions about maternity. It analyzes the importance of the mismatched female voice in historical debates over the emergence of new media and unravels the complexity of female representation in moments of technological change.

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