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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... suggests a more complex relationship be- tween culture , politics , and feminism than the more familiar framing concept of " backlash " allows . Feminist activism has long met with strategies of resistance , negotiation , and con ...
... suggests , postfeminism is white and middle class by default , anchored in consumption as a strategy ( and leisure as a site ) for the production of the self . It is thus also a strategy by which other kinds of social difference are ...
... suggests , on the talents of young women ( and men ) conversant with feminist critiques of representation . Recent books such as those by Kim Akass and Janet McCabe ( 2004 ) and Ariel Levy ( 2005 ) exemplify the emergence of popu ...
... suggests that feminist work is now canonized within university curricula , we are more cautious in our opti- mism.10 Indeed , we suggest that the very dynamics that McRobbie identifies in relation to popular culture , whereby feminism ...
... suggest with respect to postmodernism , the posting of feminism means that feminism itself remains in the frame . They write : " We all have heard the word postmodernism . It is in the news . And yet it cannot be just the news , what is ...