Before/After/Between: uncovering the abject in the Hollywood makeover film

This thesis explores relationship between the Hollywood makeover of the late 1990s and early 2000s to identity and body through the lens of abjection. This thesis argues that the makeover’s attempt to separate the self into the neat categories of before and after is troubled by the individual, as the abject always returns and the self resists division. The makeover narrative endures in the cinematic imagination, often using narrative and formal elements such as the makeover montage to enable viewers to witness the fantasy of becoming the best version of themselves. Therefore, the makeover film simultaneously reinforces normative beauty standards and represents examples of women and girls attaining success within a neoliberal capitalist framework. Using five central case studies: The Princess Diaries (Marshall, 2001), The Devil Wears Prada (Frankel, 2006), Miss Congeniality (Petrie, 2000), Jawbreaker (Stein, 1999), and Mean Girls (Waters, 2004), each chapter deploys textual analysis and feminist psychoanalysis as a principal method to unpick the film text and assess how identity is formed, critiqued, surveilled, and negotiated on screen. Despite some commonalities, each film produces specific articulations of how aesthetic transformation impacts the individual, ranging from the regal to the monstrous. The research questions raised and answered by this thesis are: where can we find abjection in the makeover film, and what is its significance to the makeover subject? How does the abject function as a tool of identity formation in the makeover film, particularly as a contrast to glamour? Through its use of the abject, to what extent can the makeover film be read as horror? And what is the relationship between abjection in the makeover film and neoliberal postfeminism?