Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular CultureThis 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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Page 1
... processes that a model of backlash , with its implication of achievements won and then subsequently lost - cannot effectively incorporate within the linear chronology of social change on which it seems to be premised .
... processes that a model of backlash , with its implication of achievements won and then subsequently lost - cannot effectively incorporate within the linear chronology of social change on which it seems to be premised .
Page 4
It also seems important that we assert the material consequences of postfeminism in the academy . While McRobbie suggests that feminist work is now canonized within university curricula , we are more cautious in our optimism.o Indeed ...
It also seems important that we assert the material consequences of postfeminism in the academy . While McRobbie suggests that feminist work is now canonized within university curricula , we are more cautious in our optimism.o Indeed ...
Page 5
... evident erasure of feminist politics from the popular , even as aspects of feminism seem to be incorporated within that culture ( and how feminism itself is understood within such formulations is not , of course , insignificant ) .
... evident erasure of feminist politics from the popular , even as aspects of feminism seem to be incorporated within that culture ( and how feminism itself is understood within such formulations is not , of course , insignificant ) .
Page 12
... women face significant challenges to their economic well - being , hard - won reproductive rights , and even authority to speak , while popular culture blithely assumes that gender equality is a given , seems to us self - evident .
... women face significant challenges to their economic well - being , hard - won reproductive rights , and even authority to speak , while popular culture blithely assumes that gender equality is a given , seems to us self - evident .
Page 14
( a claim founded , it seems , on increased levels of body and fashion awareness and of course - consumption among men ) . Whether in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy , British dramas such as Life Begins ( 2004 ) ...
( a claim founded , it seems , on increased levels of body and fashion awareness and of course - consumption among men ) . Whether in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy , British dramas such as Life Begins ( 2004 ) ...
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Bibliographic information
| Title | Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture Console-ing Passions Console-ing passions : television and cultural power |
| Editors | Yvonne Tasker, Diane Negra |
| Contributors | Yvonne Tasker, Diane Negra, Lynn Spigel, Angela McRobbie |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Duke University Press, 2007 |
| ISBN | 0822340321, 9780822340324 |
| Length | 344 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |