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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... definition of a kind , thoughtful , and supportive editor ) and the staff at Duke Uni- versity Press , as well as the press's readers , who furnished the best kind of reports , those that blend challenge and encour- agement in equal ...
... defined feminism has been so overtly " taken into account , " as Angela McRobbie has noted , albeit in order " to emphasize that it is no longer needed . " 3 The limits of the kind of gender equality enacted within contemporary popular ...
... define postfeminism and its characteristic as- sumption that the themes , pleasures , values , and lifestyles with which it is associated are somehow universally shared and , perhaps more significant , universally accessible . If , as ...
... defined by exhaustion , uncertainty , and moral ambiguity . Thus , the postfeminist heroine is vital , youthful , and playful while her oppo- site number , the " bad " female professional , is repressive , deceptive , and deadly . In ...
... defined as a state of chronic tempo- ral crisis . 13 Going on 30 is only one of a number of media texts that special- ize in time - shifting fantasies that conflate youthfulness and the past . In this context of beset contemporary ...