Written on the Body

The author considers two recent prize-winning films by women directors (one British and one American) with similar, if not identical themes. Placing them in the category first defined by David Considine as “the cinema of adolescence” the author considers the filmic traditions from which they arise. In both of the films under consideration—Fish Tank and Girlfight—the young female protagonists attempt to resist or subvert socially imposed restrictions. The author considers the way the entrapment of the working-class teenage girls at the centre of these films is represented by non-professional “actresses” selected because they come from the same milieu of run-down sections of cities as their on-screen characters. She explores the way in which these two writer-directors use their actresses to embody on screen issues of class, gender, ethnicity, and culture, and the near-impossible routes out of poverty. To do so, the author utilises theories from sociology, feminist theories of the body, as well as theories derived from film studies to examine these politically driven films.     

The “smart” body politics of Lena Dunham’s Girls

Since its 2012 debut Girls has received an extraordinary amount of attention and criticism from both academic circles and popular culture critics. It has been critiqued for its depiction of female nudity and its portrayal of female sexual subjecthood. At the center of these debates is how author–star Lena Dunham’s body is positioned and utilized aesthetically and politically. This essay examines the brand of body politics and mode of female sexual subjecthood that the series creates and performs. In order to track how Girls produces this body politics and female sexual subjecthood I position it in relation to earlier feminist television series and indie cinema. This essay argues that Girls’ particular brand of body politics and the mode of female sexual subjecthood it depicts is characterized by emotional intimacy, irony and reflexivity. Furthermore I contend that Girls’ gender politics is enabled by the series’ utilization of a low-key aesthetic and the “smart” tendency, more commonly discussed in relation to American indie cinema.     

Something Else Besides a Father

While heterosexuality has long been the assumed ideology of reproduction, the material existence of over thirty-three thousand US children a year born from sperm donation alone attests to a radical disjuncture between our conceptions of conception and how a good many children are actually conceived. Reproductive technologies, ranging from the aforementioned sperm donation to the more complicated processes of egg harvesting, surrogacy, and IVF, can thus be read as subverting our notions of the heteronormative family. As such, assisted reproductive technology evokes widespread cultural anxiety, especially for how it challenges notions of gender, sexuality, and parenthood.

Not surprisingly, popular culture has stepped in to allay some of these anxieties, and as such it is a productive site through which to examine debates around gender, sexuality, and parenthood. At the very least, the wide market of Hollywood cinema is evidence of the discursive pull of these debates. In an examination of three recent and representative Hollywood films, Baby Mama (2008), The Switch, and The Back-Up Plan (both 2010), I will analyze how they both challenge and reinforce the “socially foundational status of the male–female couple.” Through their (re)deployment of a variety of cinematic conventions, these films attempt to yoke the radical potential of reproductive technology to a conservative ideology incorporating post-feminism and new masculinity that insists on the emotive primacy of the heterosexual couple and its “language of naturalness.”     

Educational Pairings,Motherhood, and Women’s Relative Earnings in Europe

As a consequence of the reversal of the gender gap in education, the female partner in a couple now typically has as much as or more education compared with the male partner in most Western countries. This study addresses the implications for the earnings of women relative to their male partners in 16 European countries. Using the 2007 and 2011 rounds of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (N = 58,292), we investigate the extent to which international differences in women’s relative earnings can be explained by educational pairings and their interaction with the motherhood penalty on women’s earnings, by international differences in male unemployment, or by cultural gender norms. We find that the newly emerged pattern of hypogamy is associated with higher relative earnings for women in all countries and that the motherhood penalty on relative earnings is considerably lower in hypogamous couples, but neither of these findings can explain away international country differences. Similarly, male unemployment is associated with higher relative earnings for women but cannot explain away the country differences. Against expectations, we find that the hypogamy bonus on women’s relative earnings, if anything, tends to be stronger rather than weaker in countries that exhibit more conservative gender norms.     

Homing blogs as ambivalent spaces for feminine agency

This article discusses a form of lifestyle blogging where women blog about their homes and everyday lives. In these homing blogs, self-representations are characteristically spatially demarcated within the private sphere of the home. As these repeated representations of women in their homes take place in the public space of the internet, homing blogs work towards naturalizing the home as a women’s sphere. Written and commented on mostly by other women, homing blogs represent a feminine form of self-expression and communication that functions as a discursive expression of ongoing social, economic, and cultural changes in affluent Western societies. In this article, Finnish versions of these homing blogs are analysed in the cultural and political context of contemporary Finland, and discussed as a form of intimate publics that reverses the gender politics of other historical, semi-public spaces for the exercise of women’s agency, such as the salon.     

The Postfeminist User

This paper is part of a preliminary investigation toward a postfeminist analysis of “the user.” It critically examines the pervasive liberatory rhetoric of interactivity through situating it within a widespread cultural context also rife with liberatory rhetoric: postfeminism. Two media properties, heavily marketed for interactivity, are examined: the first three films of the Final Destination film series and the reality television program Big Brother (US). I situate each as postfeminist texts, and then analyze their interactivity through this lens, demonstrating the utility of applying postfeminism to technology study. Following the feminist method of analyzing popular texts as modes of understanding feminine ideals, thereby articulating contours of a feminine subject position, I argue that analyses of postfeminist culture are productive broadly applied to cultural products, such as interactive media, augmenting feminist media theory. To understand ideals of technological usership, one must understand the culture in which they are embedded. Therefore, articulating the contours of the user as a subject position benefits from understanding postfeminist cultural sensibilities. Through this analysis, I describe the user, contrary to much new media theorizing, as exhibiting an illusory rhetoric of agency, hyperembodiment suffused with temporality and mobility, and an interactivity better understood as ongoing assessment and adjustment.     

Gender Monstrosity

Deadgirl (2008) is based around a group of male teens discovering and claiming ownership of a bound female zombie, using her as a sex slave. This narrative premise raises numerous tensions that are particularly amplified by using a zombie as the film's central victim. The Deadgirl is sexually passive yet monstrous, reifying the horrors associated with the female body in patriarchal discourses. She is objectified on the basis of her gender, and this has led many reviewers to dismiss the film as misogynistic torture porn. However, the conditions under which masculinity is formed here—where adolescent males become “men” by enacting sexual violence—are as problematic as the specter of the female zombie. Deadgirl is clearly horrific and provocative: in this article I seek to probe implications arising from the film's gender conflicts.     

Monstrous schoolteachers: women educators in popular cultural texts

From the drooling Mrs Green in the children’s picture book, The Teacher from the Black Lagoon to the best scarer of all time, Dean Hardscrabble from Monsters University, monstrous female teachers leap out from around the corners and under the desks of popular imaginings of school. In this paper, I focus on the figure of the female monster teacher in popular cultural texts and media produced for and/or consumed by North American youth, including picture books, television, film, and other cultural texts. Although these monster teacher narratives are produced for children and youth, they also work as a form of popular pedagogy for adults. The stakes of these representations are many, including the misogynistic representation of women in power as monstrous, the devaluing of teaching as “women’s work” or “child care,” and, the figuring of boys as “in crisis” in relationship to a predominately female workforce. I argue that, the female monster educator in popular cultural texts offers a corporeal curriculum that seeks to discipline the body of the teacher and to obfuscate the radical potential of teachers as professional women.     

“I'm Nobody”

Television and film writer Joss Whedon has produced a number of popular culture works which explore representations of what female bodies are seen to be capable of and how these representations affect what female bodies can do. Texts such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), Serenity (2005), and Dollhouse (2009–2010) are as much celebrated for subverting gender and genre conventions as they are criticized for reinforcing sexualized images of women and violence. Instead of approaching Whedon's texts in terms of their representations of gender, and how feminist or otherwise these representations are, this paper explores the ways in which Whedon's texts suggest that subjectivity is textually and discursively constructed. In particular, I will stage a reading of his latest television program, Dollhouse, as a representation of the somatechnical construction of bodies and identity. Somatechnics refers to the inextricable connection between the soma, the material corporeality of bodies, and the techne or techniques and technologies through which bodily being is produced and lived. By making visible the somatechnics of bodily being and the ways gender and embodiment are experienced through and produced by cultural and discursive technologies, Dollhouse emphasizes the role of power in the construction of embodied identity rather than something which always or inevitably oppresses and constrains bodies gendered as female.     

Playmates and Polygamists

This paper explores the feminine reclamation of polygamy seen in female-oriented American television shows Big Love, The Girls Next Door, and Sister Wives in terms of their commentary on contemporary gender roles in neoliberal society. Reception discourses suggest these programs respond to feminine frustrations with the burdens of work and domesticity and the isolation associated with hyper-individualist late capitalist society. Using textual strategies associated with feminine media forms and contemporary feminine culture, such as the investment in the female group, the female gaze at the female body, and the reclamation of feminine history, these shows demonstrate femininity's capacity to critique as well as support mainstream society. Still, femininity's tendency to merge escapism and cultural critique, seen in all three shows, points to the difficulty of considering it progressive or regressive, instead suggesting that it should be considered as a different conceptual and social space, as a varied set of structures, practices, reading protocols, and an ethics of self that patriarchal cultures cannot easily co-opt.     

“I’d like an abortion please”: rethinking unplanned pregnancy narratives in contemporary American cinema

Released in 2014 and 2015, respectively, the American indie films Obvious Child and Grandma each feature a central protagonist who is dealing with an unplanned pregnancy and is pursuing an abortion. These pro-choice narratives not only challenge Hollywood cinema’s repetitive depiction of unplanned pregnancies that result in motherhood, but they critique the dominant political and societal discourses surrounding abortion and women who choose to terminate pregnancies. Tracing the history of cinematic portrayals of unplanned pregnancy, and reflecting upon how post-feminist culture has positioned the notion of choice, this paper notes the significance of Obvious Child and Grandma as films that not only feature abortion as a central theme, but utilize comedy in their navigation of a controversial subject. Furthermore, this paper argues that in their frank and positive engagement with termination as a potential resolution to an unplanned pregnancy, these films offer important attempts to destigmatize the subject of abortion.     

The undying ideologies of race and gender: the zombie apocalypse in Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season One

Telltale Games’ narrative-based The Walking Dead: Season One portrays Lee Everett, an African American male, fighting through the zombie apocalypse. In addition to providing an intriguing character, the game pushes back against racial stereotypes frequently seen and further establishes a zone of oppositional politics. In addition to race, TWD: Season One’s gender ideologies also open up spaces of counterhegemonic politics, specifically through its presentation of abortion. Overall, the seemingly “undying” ideologies of race and gender are reconfigured and questioned in the space of the zombie apocalypse, providing alternative visions of identity politics.     

From humor to horror: genre and narrative purpose in abortion stories on American television

A recent increase in the number of comedic films and television programs that include abortion stories has prompted a cultural conversation about whether this is an appropriate treatment for such a topic: Can abortions be funny? Are there any genres that should not include plotlines about abortion? Indeed, most prior examinations of abortion on television have focused on dramas and their impact, without explicitly exploring the ways different genres offer a range of types of stories and creative opportunities. Using a comprehensive data-set of abortion plotlines on American television, this analysis provides a historical overview of how varying genres have addressed abortion in the past, as well as closer case studies within each of five genres: drama, soap opera, horror, science fiction, and comedy. This paper provides insight into the different narrative functions of abortion stories, with consideration of how such narratives support (in)accurate and (de)stigmatizing cultural ideas about abortion.     

Shameless television: gendering transnational narratives

The UK television drama Shameless (Channel 4, 2004–2011) ran for eleven series, ending with its 138th episode in 2011. The closing episode did not only mark an end, however, but also a beginning – of a US remake on Showtime (2011-). Eight series down the line and carrying the weight of critical acclaim, this article works to consider the textual representations and formal constructions of gender through the process of adaptation. Paying close attention to the structural elements of recaps, voiceovers, and final sequences of Shameless’ first series, while drawing on the work of feminist narratologists and transnational TV theory, we argue that the examination of gender in narrative reveals differing cultural values between the UK and US.     

Chicks,Dicks, and Contradictions

This essay examines Playgirl as a rich, yet overlooked, archive in the history of American pornography. Although the magazine often is dismissed as the token attempt of a masculinist industry to equalize its representational politics, I argue instead that a significant synergy exists between Playgirl and entwined debates over pornography, gender, and commercialized sexuality in 1970s America. Employing established conventions of the women's magazine, Playgirl utilized that form toward granting women access to explicit images. Yet given its “better lifestyling” advice on how the sexually liberated woman might find empowerment by viewing male nudes, Playgirl's reluctance to display full-frontal nudity until the midpoint of its first year fashioned an initially compromised aesthetic. Not only were women interpolated as untutored viewers within this regime of genital obstruction, but models also were all but emasculated. Consequently, the degree of male exposure that could be handled by both viewers and models was questioned, critiqued, and debated across Playgirl's letters to the editor section, aptly entitled “In-ter-course.” As an artifact of sexual media history, Playgirl is invaluable because readers are able to trace throughout its pages the ways in which changing tides of gendered power began to problematize pornography's routine dichotomy between masculine subjectivity and female objectification.     

Fixing Gwen

In this project I present a case study of (trans)gender mediation—a discourse analysis of news around the murder of Gwen Araujo, a “transgender teen,” in Newark, California, 2002–2006—and I read that discourse in the context of larger contemporary cultural dynamics and movements around trans and genderqueer politics. News narratives around the Araujo case had some progressive implications, as residual marginalization tropes for gender nonconforming identities were sidelined and a hate crime frame was constructed in news for the murder. However, the discourse also manifested a persistent tendency to contain and restrict gender meanings and to recuperate critical gender challenges back into conventional binary categories. I identify and discuss some of the gender “fixing” strategies mobilized in this discourse, including the mobilization of “wrong body discourse” as an overarching (and problematic) explanation for gender nonconformity. Like Matt Shepard's murder a few years before, the Araujo case represents a critical discourse moment in genderqueer media politics, illuminating, in microcosm, some critical dynamics in the mediation of (trans)gender politics more generally.     

Critical feminist hope: the encounter of neoliberalism and popular feminism in WWE 24: Women’s Evolution

Scholarship has pointed to contemporary feminism’s popularity and cultural “luminosity.” While this research has highlighted the limitations of feminist politics in a context of neoliberal individualism, this paper seeks to ask what possibilities for critiques and transformation of gender inequalities might be enabled by feminism’s visibility in neoliberalism. Using a framework of critical feminist hope, we highlight that capitalism’s embrace of feminism inarguably limits its political scope, but it may also open up opportunities for new forms of representation. To illustrate this, the paper analyses WWE 24: Women’s Evolution, a “brandcasting” documentary made to mark the rebrand of the sport entertainment promotion’s women’s division in 2016. While never naming it directly, the documentary draws heavily upon the signifiers of popular feminism. Although this mobilisation is often highly limited, a critically hopeful feminist reading allows us to move beyond dismissing this text as an example of feminism’s “co-optation” by neoliberalism. We highlight the documentary’s scathing critique of past failings in the representation and treatment of women performers, and, more importantly, the way feminism is used to make the case for corporate re-structure and change.     

Cinderella's Having a Ball

“Ugly Betty Mania” has created numerous versions of this telenovela across the globe. This paper explores the representational schema within the franchise's Cinderella/Ugly Duckling narrative, whilst focusing on the exclusionary notions of beauty in Mexico's hit 2006 production La Fea Más Bella (“The Most Beautiful Ugly Girl”). By reading the slapstick comedy within this version through feminist theories of laughter, this paper identifies representational modes that challenge traditional Manichaean formulas within the Mexican telenovela, which are tied to notions of good (beauty) and evil (ugliness). Examining this telenovela's popularity through a cultural and industrial analysis, this paper uses data from interviews with industry professionals to consider how an increasingly disengaged Mexican telenovela viewership may have been recaptured through the slapstick gender dynamics of La Fea Más Bella.     

“A Girl Alone in a man's World”

War films were one of British cinema's mainstays throughout the 1950s, and one of the most iconic of the cycle is Ice Cold in Alex (1958). This particular film overturned some of the already familiar conventions of the genre, not least by allowing a female character, the nursing sister Diana Murdoch (played by Sylvia Syms), to play a more important role than women were usually granted. This article deploys close textual analysis to examine the representation of Diana, and suggests how this character not only reflects various competing and often self-contradictory discourses of 1950s femininity but also offers a rare depiction of women's contribution to the war effort from the decade following it.