neofeminism - neofeminist cinema
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my report in Media 304: Media and Identities at the University of the Philippines Diliman PhD Media Studies program at the College of Mass CommunicationTRANSCRIPT
Neo-FeminismFemale|Feminine|Stealth Feminists
Neo-Feminist CinemaGirly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture
Chona Rita R. Cruz (CINDY) 86-16518PhD Media Studies
about.me/cindycruzcabrera en.gravatar.com/cindycatz
Media 304: Media and IdentitiesDr. Elizabeth Enriquez
• What are your looks for your everyday life / roles / places and spaces?
• How would you describe your personal style?• What type of clothes, bags, and accessories do
you choose for yourself?• Who are the women you can most identify
with, including the style angle?• What image/s of yourself do you cultivate for
your identity/ies?
Definition of Terms
• Female• Feminine• Feminist• Feminisms• Patriarchy• Girly Film• Four quadrants• Fun, fearless female• GIRL as identity – always in a state of “becoming”• Singleton
The FeminismsAlison Jaggar
Bell HooksSimone De Beauvoir
Betty FriedanShulamith FirestoneHelen Gurley Brown
Hilary Radner
• A collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women
• Equal opportunities for women in education and employment
• United against institutionalized practices of oppression, discrimination and biological determinism and the appropriation of female labor (within the patriarchy)
• Feminist theory aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining women’s social roles and lived experience
Liberal Feminism• Equality through legal reform• The integration of women into the existing
societal structure• A proposal for equality for men and women• “We may be women, but we have rights too.”• Asserts that all women are capable of
asserting their ability to achieve equality without altering the structure of society.
Radical Feminism• Important foundation for “feminist flavors”• Viewed the oppression of women as the most
fundamental form of oppression, which cuts across boundaries of race, culture, and economic class.
• A male-based authority and power structure responsible for oppression and inequality
• The woman’s body as the site of oppression• Total uprooting and reconstructing of society
Marxist Feminism
• Attributes the oppression of women to the capitalist / private property system
• Friedrick Engels “The Origin of the Family”• Women’s oppression will end only upon the
overthrow of the capitalist system• Gender oppression will disappear with class
oppression and exploitation (Marx)• Revolution to end capitalist mode of production
Socialist Feminism• The meeting of Marxist and Radical Feminism• Unequal standing in the workplace and the
domestic sphere holds women down.• The patriarchal system devalues women and
the work they do through institutionalized mechanisms and practices
• Oppression of women as a part of the larger pattern that affects everyone in capitalism
• Expresses the need to work alongside men and all other groups
Post-Colonial Feminism• Experiences endured during colonialism, including
"migration, slavery, suppression, resistance, representation, difference, race, gender, place and responses to the influential discourses of imperial Europe.”
• centers on racism, ethnic issues, and the long-lasting economic, political, and cultural effects of colonialism, inextricably bound up with the unique gendered realities of non-White non-Western women
• React against both universalizing tendencies in Western feminist thought and a lack of attention to gender issues in mainstream postcolonial thought
• First Wave Feminism – equality in suffrage, marriage, and sexual desire; overturning of legal obstacles to gender equality
• Second Wave Feminism – broadened the debate to cover a wider range of issues (sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, legal inequalities). 1960s (Women’s Lib)
• Third Wave Feminism – identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study; arose as a reaction to the often assumed universal female identity (upper middle-class white women and their experiences).
• Fourth wave feminism – happening now• Spiritually informed activism• Post feminism• Neo-feminism• Stealth feminism• Developments with Gen X, Gen Y,
Millennials
Neo-Feminism
And its set of practices and discourses that define a certain
position or “identities”
• “The tendency in feminine culture to evoke choice and development of individual agency as the defining tenets of feminine identity – best realized through an engagement with consumer culture in which the woman is encouraged to achieve self-fulfillment by purchasing, adorning, or surrounding herself with the goods that this culture can offer.”
• “Choice, particularly in the form of ‘shopping’, as a process of weighing and evaluating alternatives with a view to making a decision that optimizes the individual’s own position, is the fundamental principle that governs neo-feminist behavior.”
• JOHN FISKE: “It is worth noting that not only the pleasures are found in the ownership of commodities through which people can create or modify the context of everyday life and thus many of the meanings it bears, but also that the consumer’s moment of choice is an empowered moment. If money is power in capitalism, then buying, particularly if the act is voluntary, is an empowering moment for those whom the economic system otherwise subordinates…. [P]roduction may be essentially proletarian and consumption bourgeois.”
Establishment of the Neo-Feminist Paradigm
• Marrying later in life• Holding salaried positions, now active
participants in the global economic system• Devoted to the pursuit of pleasure• Sexuality redefined as “a means of self-
realization rooted in pleasure and unconnected to reproduction”
• Emergence of the single girl as a feminine ideal
• Achieves her identity outside marriage and does not define herself in terms of maternity
• Sexual pleasure is a right• Defined through consumerism and her
function in feminine consumer culture• Replacement of “maternal” as the defining
trait of femininity• GIRL (or “yummy mommy”, as the case may
be)
Neo-Feminist Ideals
• Emphasis on “femininity” and the feminine culture vs. a feminist culture
• Pursuit of happiness as an entitlement• Woman at the center of her universe• Pragmatic approach to men• Identity achieved through achievement and
fulfillment• Disassociates herself from traditional notions
of patriarchy and the family, but remains convinced that her identity is largely defined in terms of her intimate relations with others
• The preservation and enhancement of glamour as a sign of the new and revitalized feminine identity
• Self-fulfillment in CHOICES – singlehood, motherhood, or other roles
• Normalizes sex as simply a fact of life and an entitlement of pleasure for a woman
• Youthful, girlishness, a prolonged adolescence• Participation in the feminine consumer culture
Post-Feminism/Neo-FeminismShared Qualities
• An obsessional preoccupation with the body• The emphasis upon self-surveillance,
monitoring and discipline• Women present as active and desiring
subjects• A focus upon individualism, choice and
empowerment• a dominance of the makeover paradigm• The articulation or entanglement of feminist
and anti-feminist ideas
• A resurgence in ideas of natural sexual difference
• A marked sexualization of culturue• An emphasis on commodification and the
commodification of difference• Irony and knowingness
Neo-Feminist Icons and Trendsetters
Helen Gurley Brown
Bond Feminism
Madonna http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn4g28fisz0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s__rX_WL100 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMqIQhiJdvs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P51LunEV3Sk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RROzUp8kjI
Jennifer Lopez http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYfkl-HXfuU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_66jPJVS4JE
Chick Lit and Chick Flickshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9rbadSnlVc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS0KyTZ3Ie4http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKx_14vJNZg
Neo-Feminist CinemaFeatures and Implications
• Chastity no longer a valued characteristic• Self-interest at the forefront – prioritizing
oneself• Power of choice• Love (and a man) is an angle lovely to have but
ultimately not necessary• Friendships• Relations with and among women• Cinderella success – work and love• Boyfriend / marriage plot• Do-over, repeated reinvention
• Conspicuous consumption tied to identity formations, transformations, renewals, shifts
• Happiness in material goods and surroundings – fashion, abode and workplace design
• Fulfillment in acquisition of material goods• Makes the aspirational accessible• Films do not situate themselves against
feminism but are indifferent to social and political concerns that set feminists apart from “strivers”
Traits of the Genre
• Heroine at the center of her universe• Female bonding, female friendship• Redefined “marriage plot”• Protagonist usually a single woman who works
for a living, and whose work defines her• Girlish personality and looks• Consumer culture and consumer-culture
competence are crucial elements in the setting• Consumer culture as a central aspect of the
plot or as an incidental detour
• Thematically often exhibit a profound ambivalence about certain issues – role of romance, marriage, or work
• Set in well-defined geographic locations that are urban in nature (New York, LA, Manhattan)
• Concerned with theme of transformation – magical makeover – to give expression to an internal process of education (thus linked to consumer culture)
• Do-over – past mistake is rectified• Intertextuality and nostalgic perspective for
the past
Neo-Feminist Girly Films / Chick Flicks
followed by Hilary Radner’s review
• The girly film illustrates how popular culture for women may constitute a way of thinking about issues that might be called women’s issues outside the context of academic or political debate.
• A means of expressing and interrogating the terms of an evolving feminine identity in contemporary culture
• Often offer satirical and critical perspectives of neo-feminist culture
• Highly self-deprecating, mocks itself
• Fairy tale• Becomes a template for feminine dreams of
achievement• Instrumentalism negated by fantasy -
impossible endings• A relationship that begins with fellatio can end
with a kiss.• Girlishness as a mode of being (independent
of age)
• Film evolves out of an ironic, critical perspective
• Undermines and ridicules the values and perspectives represented by “Michelle”
• Ability to mock itself while paradoxically sustaining and reproducing its objects of derision
• Fantasy in which consumer culture might come to fulfill the need of women in a world that undermines traditional models for femininity without offering new possibilities
• Lowly “working girls” who struggle to make ends meet, surviving on a limited budget while admiring and attempting to emulate the lives of “It Girls”
• “failure” to find adequate employment and husbands
• Appear to be immune from the kinds of material concerns that plague others
• Engage feminine consumer culture in fashion garments that they construct themselves
• Ambiguous lesbian film
• About the idea that a person’s worth can’t be judged one way or the other by what they look like, how they dress, what their vocabulary is….”
• “Clueless” goes to Harvard (education is a luxury rather than a necessity)
• Heroine moves outside the marriage plot• The ability to change her look [for her goals] is an
important weapon in her cultural arsenal.• Empowerment and sisterhood… creating a
connection to cross class boundaries• Appearance is crucial to a woman’s career, while
implying that Elle’s focus on style is somehow an anomaly.
• The Latina as the “other white” in the nation’s “dream of integration”
• She is invisible in her maid’s uniform.• A man is important but a career is even more so. • “We’ve got to prove our mothers wrong.”• Differences in “race” can be accommodated
through the acquisition of appropriate consumer culture items and become arbitrators of status in a system of privilege that depends solely upon a subject’s individual economic achievement.
• The film, in typically girly manner, stresses both a work ethic that is almost Protestant in its fervor and also the need to be true to one’s self.
• Coming-of-age tale about a smart Cinderella named Andy who undergoes a total makeover.
• Meryl Streep on Miranda Priestly: “Most of the models for the character were on the male end of the species.”
• The movie, while noting that she can be sadistic, inconsiderate and manipulative, is unmistakably on Miranda’s side.
• The film promotes the fantasy through these endless do-overs, that girlishness as the sign of perpetual adolescence, with its promise of change and development and its rejection of stasis and fixity as the fate of the mature woman, offers a desirable and attainable identity, biological age notwithstanding.
• These young women, unmarried and with an income whose primary purpose is their sustenance and gratification, represent an important market for the selling of consumer non-durables.
• This persona highlights how neo-feminism assumes that men are disadvantaged within the feminine realm, and thus must be managed and manipulated, according to Cosmo tradition, or need to be educated.
• An example of masculine self-absorption and insensitivity, and hence unworthy of the viewer’s sympathy.
• Representation of masculinity as something that must be tamed or surmounted if the neo-feminist heroine is to reach her goals.
My Critique
• Offers an accurate and comprehensive discussion (not “all-encompassing” but broadly representative) on the observations (and accompanying implications) of American female society and perhaps a segment Philippine female consumerist society
• Radner makes a diagnosis of a stealth feminist “response” or “tendency” (as opposed to an organized movement) that arose from rebel and visionary trends in popular culture appropriated for profit by capitalists
• While the author makes the book a comfortable read, she draws from feminisms and may at times assume prior knowledge
• Prompts self-examination as a member of a post-colonial society attuned to American pop culture and a participant/survivor in the capitalist mode of production
• Push for the development angle – conscientious, enlightened consumerism, if it not politically progressive
References• Hilary Radner. Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks, and Consumer Culture • Alison Jagger. Feminist Politics and Human Nature.• “Who’s a Stealth Feminist” in StealthFeminist.com http://stealthfeminist.com/who/• “Alison Jaggar” in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Jaggar• “Bell Hooks” in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_hooks• “Kinds of Feminism” in the University of Alabama in Huntsville
http://www.uah.edu/woolf/feminism_kinds.htm• “Feminism’s Fourth Wave” in UTNE Reader
http://www.utne.com/community/feminisms-fourth-wave.aspx#ixzz2mMlL99pr• “What is Feminism? Introduction to Feminism” in iFeminists.net
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/ • “Feminism” in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism• “First-Wave Feminism” in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-wave_feminism• “Second-Wave Feminism” in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-wave_feminism• “Third-Wave Feminism” in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_feminism• “Feminist Ideologies and Movements” in Wikipedia. http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movements_and_ideologies