| dc.description.abstract | Period Shift: How Streaming Era Film and Television Reinvent and Subvert Menstrual Tropes is a study of original content from commercial streaming networks, and how they represent menstruation and the female body. This master’s thesis looks at how historically menstruation and menstruating bodies have been represented in on screen media through a patriarchal lens, that vilifies the feminine and created the trope of the Menstrual Monster. Through a limited study, using feminist film and literature theory from a psychoanalytical approach, which includes Laura Mulvey’s theories of the male gaze, Julia Kristevas abjection theory, and Barbara Creed’s theory on the Menstrual Monster trope in horror, this thesis seeks to answer the question: How has the representation of menstruation and female bodies changed in the post Me Too streaming era in Anglocentric film and television? This question is approached with a close textual analysis on menstrual representation in Disney +’s original film Turning Red, Netflix’s original animated sit-com Big Mouth and HBO Max’s original series I May Destroy You, and how they subvert and reinvent menstrual tropes. The way menstruation is shown, discussed and treated on the streaming screen is moving away from a patriarchal depiction of menstruation as embarrassing, disgusting and funny to a more realistic representation, through a female gaze, of menstruating being mundane, normal and simply a part of life. | eng |