Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular CultureDiane Negra, Yvonne Tasker Duke University Press, 2007 M11 2 - 360 pages This timely collection brings feminist critique to bear on contemporary postfeminist mass media culture, analyzing phenomena ranging from action films featuring violent heroines to the “girling” of aging women in productions such as the movie Something’s Gotta Give and the British television series 10 Years Younger. Broadly defined, “postfeminism” encompasses a set of assumptions that feminism has accomplished its goals and is now a thing of the past. It presumes that women are unsatisfied with their (taken for granted) legal and social equality and can find fulfillment only through practices of transformation and empowerment. Postfeminism is defined by class, age, and racial exclusions; it is youth-obsessed and white and middle-class by default. Anchored in consumption as a strategy and leisure as a site for the production of the self, postfeminist mass media assumes that the pleasures and lifestyles with which it is associated are somehow universally shared and, perhaps more significantly, universally accessible. Essays by feminist film, media, and literature scholars based in the United States and United Kingdom provide an array of perspectives on the social and political implications of postfeminism. Examining magazines, mainstream and independent cinema, popular music, and broadcast genres from primetime drama to reality television, contributors consider how postfeminism informs self-fashioning through makeovers and cosmetic surgery, the “metrosexual” male, the “black chick flick,” and more. Interrogating Postfeminism demonstrates not only the viability of, but also the necessity for, a powerful feminist critique of contemporary popular culture. Contributors. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Steven Cohan, Lisa Coulthard, Anna Feigenbaum, Suzanne Leonard, Angela McRobbie, Diane Negra, Sarah Projansky, Martin Roberts, Hannah E. Sanders, Kimberly Springer, Yvonne Tasker, Sadie Wearing |
From inside the book
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... Post”-ing Our contention is that postfeminism as a concept and a cultural phenomenon repays close interrogation; in the process, we wish to situate it alongside other “posts,” including postmodernism and post-civil-rights discourse. All ...
... discourse of virtuous familialism. Post-civil-rights discourse similarly provides an important context for the anthology as it seeks to draw out the racialized marking of postfeminist cul- ture. Kimberly Springer's essay explores the ...
... postfeminist culture . Post- feminism is , we contend , inherently contradictory , characterized by a double discourse that works to construct feminism as a phenomenon of the past , traces of which can be found ( and sometimes even ...
... postfeminist culture lies in its pervasive presence not just in film , television , and popular literature but in advertising , magazines , music , and political discourse . We recognize that a comprehensive analysis of current postfeminist ...
... discourse.32 In this context , we argue that postfeminism increasingly operates as a rationale for the brutalities of the emergent “ New Economies ” of both the United States and the United Kingdom . Marita Sturken and other critics ...
Contents
1 | |
27 | |
Some Reflections on Postfeminist Girls and Postfeminisms Daughters | 40 |
The Magic of Postfeminist Sisterhood | 73 |
Adultery Boredom and the Working Girl in TwentyFirstCentury American Cinema | 100 |
Feminisms Postfeminisms and Processes of Punk | 132 |
Rethinking Feminism and Film Violence | 153 |
Camp Postfeminism and the Fab Fives Makeovers of Masculinity | 176 |
8 Whats Your Flava? Race and Postfeminism in Media Culture | 201 |
Governing the Self in What Not to Wear | 227 |
African American Women in Postfeminist and PostCivilRights Popular Culture | 249 |
Aging in Postfeminist Culture | 277 |
Bibliography | 311 |
Contributors | 331 |
Index | 335 |