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v1rgo's review
3.0
interesting read. definitely could've been better, though. firstly, i felt that the writing and structure were quite bad at times. in some chapters namely the earlier ones there was lots of quoting and little analysis. really wish the palimpset was discussed more in the later chapters as well. i also felt that there was much generalization: when this book discusses womanhood, it means white, bourgeois womanhood but doesn't name it as such. i also don't think the wave metaphor is especially useful. so yeah, very white and stuff. i also don't care about pop culture at all so like, two pages in i was kinda like "Why am i reading this" LOL... also, WHY was freud mentioned so much??? i feel like there's a lot that i missed solely because some of the texts they chose to reference made me sorta ??? whatever...
nevertheless, it did provide me with new ways to think about the portrayal of feminism in popular media. very cool since this was published in 2011, and ofc feminism's portrayal has changed quite a bit since then. i thought the book's observations related to a 'going back' related to popular culture's portrayals of traditional femininity post-9/11 and portrayal of the nation itself as a (white) woman was pretty interesting. the race piece is what i noticed personally; quite odd that the book itself never called this out? like, there is very clearly significance to the fact that post 9/11 there is so much cultural anxiety surrounding the white woman in a lot of popular newer works. (hint: nationalism!)
cool quotes and my thoughts:
“Friedan’s suburban housewife thus arises, ghostlike, from the stifled corpse of the first wave’s independent ‘New Woman’, and becomes, herself, the target of repeated feminist exorcisms – not least Friedan’s own in The Feminine Mystique.” - the book also discusses the portrayal of the exorcism within popular media. the exorcism is essentially used to 'cleanse' (white) women of sexual and general immorality. within friedan's work and second (and earlier) white feminist work as a whole conversely the exorcism is used as a metaphor for consciousness raising. interesting to consider. this persists IMO
“the re-prioritization of home, marriage and motherhood that she identifies in post-9/11 culture is readily discernible in ‘the vast expansion in popular culture material devoted to the celebration of cooking, cleaning, childcare, and other activities that take place largely in the home’ (Negra 118). This material, Negra argues, has an explicitly postfeminist cast, in that ‘it presumes female managerial capacity and choice and remakes domesticity around these qualities’. In such a context, ‘[d]omestic practice gains a “value added” status as highly capable, managerially minded women are invited to devote themselves to home and family in a display of “restored priorities” after the social fracturing attributed to feminism’ (118).” - domestic labor with a 'feminist' tint
“the powers attributed to the post-9/11 Gothic heroine are typically presented as supernatural extensions of her maternal function, which trade on, or appeal to, the ‘feminine’ capacity for sympathetic nurture.” - about return of traditionalism in popular media post-9/11. very cool. could also be thought about in relation to essentialist lines of 'feminist' thinking in this generation (gen z, tiktok, divine feminine, you know the drill)
“By conjuring up speculative futures to which only the heroine is privy, these series foreground the status of the young woman as the caretaker of the future. It is the young woman, then, who is haunted by horrors yet to come. Like the girl, she is a figure of possibility; in her Gothic guise, however, she is not only identified with the promise of the future, but is also responsible for safeguarding it from threat – a feat which she can only accomplish when she uses her ‘memories’ of the past and the future to negotiate the awkward terrain of the present.” - this is mostly present among young *white* women but nevertheless very interesting
“Deleuze and Guattari’s designation of the girl as a ‘line of flight’, ‘the in-between, the border’, which ‘carrie[s] us away [...] across our thresholds, towards a destination that is unknown, not foreseeable, and not pre-existent’, seems especially apt in the context of a discussion about representations of female possession. Following Brian Massumi’s gloss in his Translator’s Note to A Thousand Plateaus that ‘fuite’ (as in ligne de fuite) is ‘not only the act of fleeing or eluding but also flowing, leaking, and disappearing into the distance’ (xvii), the possessed girl emerges as the woefully incontinent embodiment of the ‘leaky’ line. Whether sweating, swearing, spitting, bleeding, blaspheming, or giving birth, her body – like the social system for which it is a metaphor – appears to ‘leak from all directions’.” - this one is wacky i WILL be reading
“Feminism may have lost some of its visibility in popular culture’s house of mirrors, but its unsettling and unexpected ghostly returns suggest that this remains a haunted house.” - *remembering that this is pre-trump* oh you know it
nevertheless, it did provide me with new ways to think about the portrayal of feminism in popular media. very cool since this was published in 2011, and ofc feminism's portrayal has changed quite a bit since then. i thought the book's observations related to a 'going back' related to popular culture's portrayals of traditional femininity post-9/11 and portrayal of the nation itself as a (white) woman was pretty interesting. the race piece is what i noticed personally; quite odd that the book itself never called this out? like, there is very clearly significance to the fact that post 9/11 there is so much cultural anxiety surrounding the white woman in a lot of popular newer works. (hint: nationalism!)
cool quotes and my thoughts:
“Friedan’s suburban housewife thus arises, ghostlike, from the stifled corpse of the first wave’s independent ‘New Woman’, and becomes, herself, the target of repeated feminist exorcisms – not least Friedan’s own in The Feminine Mystique.” - the book also discusses the portrayal of the exorcism within popular media. the exorcism is essentially used to 'cleanse' (white) women of sexual and general immorality. within friedan's work and second (and earlier) white feminist work as a whole conversely the exorcism is used as a metaphor for consciousness raising. interesting to consider. this persists IMO
“the re-prioritization of home, marriage and motherhood that she identifies in post-9/11 culture is readily discernible in ‘the vast expansion in popular culture material devoted to the celebration of cooking, cleaning, childcare, and other activities that take place largely in the home’ (Negra 118). This material, Negra argues, has an explicitly postfeminist cast, in that ‘it presumes female managerial capacity and choice and remakes domesticity around these qualities’. In such a context, ‘[d]omestic practice gains a “value added” status as highly capable, managerially minded women are invited to devote themselves to home and family in a display of “restored priorities” after the social fracturing attributed to feminism’ (118).” - domestic labor with a 'feminist' tint
“the powers attributed to the post-9/11 Gothic heroine are typically presented as supernatural extensions of her maternal function, which trade on, or appeal to, the ‘feminine’ capacity for sympathetic nurture.” - about return of traditionalism in popular media post-9/11. very cool. could also be thought about in relation to essentialist lines of 'feminist' thinking in this generation (gen z, tiktok, divine feminine, you know the drill)
“By conjuring up speculative futures to which only the heroine is privy, these series foreground the status of the young woman as the caretaker of the future. It is the young woman, then, who is haunted by horrors yet to come. Like the girl, she is a figure of possibility; in her Gothic guise, however, she is not only identified with the promise of the future, but is also responsible for safeguarding it from threat – a feat which she can only accomplish when she uses her ‘memories’ of the past and the future to negotiate the awkward terrain of the present.” - this is mostly present among young *white* women but nevertheless very interesting
“Deleuze and Guattari’s designation of the girl as a ‘line of flight’, ‘the in-between, the border’, which ‘carrie[s] us away [...] across our thresholds, towards a destination that is unknown, not foreseeable, and not pre-existent’, seems especially apt in the context of a discussion about representations of female possession. Following Brian Massumi’s gloss in his Translator’s Note to A Thousand Plateaus that ‘fuite’ (as in ligne de fuite) is ‘not only the act of fleeing or eluding but also flowing, leaking, and disappearing into the distance’ (xvii), the possessed girl emerges as the woefully incontinent embodiment of the ‘leaky’ line. Whether sweating, swearing, spitting, bleeding, blaspheming, or giving birth, her body – like the social system for which it is a metaphor – appears to ‘leak from all directions’.” - this one is wacky i WILL be reading
“Feminism may have lost some of its visibility in popular culture’s house of mirrors, but its unsettling and unexpected ghostly returns suggest that this remains a haunted house.” - *remembering that this is pre-trump* oh you know it
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