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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... television demonstrates the importance of recognizing the pleasures of being addressed by mainstream culture and the necessity of understanding these processes within the context of power.4 Feminist critique fundamentally emphasizes the ...
... television , and popular music texts . As such , the volume engages with , and may be situated within , the rich body of feminist film and television studies publications that focus on popular culture and the politics of representation ...
... television ) tend to construct queerness as a lifestyle choice associated with affluent urban modes of con- sumption . Class , however , which raises the perilous specter of immobility and a ( relative ) inability to consume , remains a ...
... television studies can ill afford to restrict its focus to canonical , high- profile texts . We recognize that this collection cannot do justice to the full range of rep- resentational trends and forms associated with postfeminism , and ...
... television in this volume establishes . Indeed , some of the most quintessentially postfeminist genres , such as the wedding film , rely on out ( yet nonconfrontational ) gay men . As Elizabeth Freeman points out , for instance ...