Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular CultureYvonne Tasker, Diane Negra Duke University Press, 2007 M11 2 - 344 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 |
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... critical and cultural contexts . We have been guided by what we regard as the necessity of looking beyond journalistic canons of postfeminist culture ( which are reliant on high - profile television series such as Sex and the City or ...
... critical attention within feminist media studies ( Kate and Leopold [ 2001 ] , French Kiss [ 1994 ] , Some- one Like You [ 2001 ] ) . 40 Both the critical exclusion of texts directed specifically at African American women and the ways ...
... critical prac- tice that expands feminism as much as it critiques it ? Accordingly , some of the essays in this volume point to the ways in which the feminist project has stalled but then abundantly demonstrate the continuing ...
... critical and journalistic writing are selected as significant on the basis of factors such as widespread commercial appeal , top box - office performances , and so on . While this is both understandable and productive , we ( also ) live ...
... critical commentary continues to pose questions about the meaning of popular texts in either - or terms . Thus , texts from Buffy to Britney are either progressive or regressive , liberating or containing . Underpinning this anthology ...