Remaking Feminism: Or Why Is Postfeminism So Boring?

Abstract

This article poses questions which have exercised me over the past few years, partly because of my work with chick lit and other popular fiction, partly as a result of my experience of viewing and teaching chick flick film adaptations, and also because of my interests in the development of Second Wave feminist thought. 1 The motivation to actually try to make sense of and connect these ideas came about in response to watching the recent remake of The Women (2008). This film might be viewed as an adaptation of both Cukor's classic 1939 film and Clare Boothe's 1936 play, which itself experienced a Broadway revival in 2002, starring Sex and the City's Cynthia Nixon. The proximity of this film's appearance to the release of the film adaptation of Sex and the City (2008), invited comparisons between the two which yielded much common ground; in addition to these I will also reflect upon the remake of The Stepford Wives (Frank Oz, 2004; also a novel by Ira Levin, 1972) which again utilises a successful text from a previous era to arguably postfeminist ends. In recent years a number of commentators 2 have revisited the scope and meanings of post-feminism as well as examining its successful deployment in mass cultural texts. The three films mentioned above are being used here as representative examples of the deployment of discourses of postfeminism in popular forms and suggest that a new generation of chick flicks are capitalising on a significant proportion of 1

The affective, cultural and psychic life of postfeminism: A postfeminist sensibility 10 years on

“…Catherine Lumby (2011) asks us to move ‘past the post’. Imelda Whelehan (2010) expresses her ‘frustration’ and ‘ennui’ with the notion, suggesting that the activity of critique has become tedious since ‘the message requires little unpacking and lies prominently on the surface’ (p. 159). This has not been my experience: on the contrary, contemporary culture appears to be intensely complex and to be rapidly changing.…”

Postfeminism, Men, Masculinities and Work: A Research Agenda for Gender and Organization Studies Scholars

“…Yet, in postfeminist media culture, the idea that women's practices are freely chosen is at the heart of postfeminist discourses which position women as autonomous, no longer constrained by gendered inequalities of the ‘past’ (Gill, ). For this reason, Whelehan (, p. 156) deplores how the world of work is generally portrayed within postfeminist media culture, as ‘allowing female success, but there are glimpses of sexism which present enough problems that women have to solve for themselves or in consultation with their close girlfriends’. Negra () and Gill () agree also, with Gill () noting how work settings within the cultural and creative industries are shaped by a dominant postfeminist sensibility that suggests ‘all the equality battles have been won’, rendering inequality increasingly difficult for women to voice or speak about.…”

The Single Woman's Choice as a Zero-Sum Game

“…6 One of the most problematic aspects of post-feminist storylines is that when these acts are articulated as choices, they are considered feminist acts and in this way empty feminism of its collective political contents (McRobbie 2004, Whelehan 2010, Gill 2011.…”