Feminism Without Women: Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist" Age

by Tania Modleski

Overview

In a series of essays scrutinizing feminist and post-structuralists positions, Tania Modleski examines "the myth of postfeminism" and its operation in popular culture, especially popular film and cultural studies. (First published in 1991.)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138178540
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/07/2016
Series:	Japanese Studies
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Tania Modleski is Professor of English at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Loving with a Vengeance and The Women Who Knew Too Much, both published by Routledge.

Table of Contents

I. Theory and Methodology 1. Postmortem on Postfeminism 2. Femininity as Mas(s)querade 3. Some Functions of Feminist Criticism; or, the Scandal of the Mute Body II. Masculinity and Male Feminism 4. A Father Is Being Beaten: Male Feminism and the War Film 5. Three Men and a Baby M 6. The Incredible Shrinking He(r)man: Male Regression, the Male Body, and Film III. Race, Gender, and Sexuality 7. Cinema and the Dark Continent: Race and Genre in Popular Film 8. Lethal Bodies: Thoughts on Sex, Gender, and Representation from teh Mainstream to the Margins

Editorial Reviews

In the face of a self-proclaimed feminist criticism that leaps to embrace the often dubious pleasures of popular culture, Modleski calls for ``a feminist rethinking of the articulations of popular culture and political criticism.'' The book offers such a rethinking, first in terms of theory, then as applied to several recent film trends. Much of Modleski's ( Loving with a Vengeance ) sardonic ire is leveled against ostensibly pro-feminist men; she finds male critics in support of feminism ``most useful . . . where they analyze male power, male hegemony, with a concern for the effects of this power on the female subjectitals in text and with an awareness of how frequently male subjectivity works to appropriate `femininity' while oppressing women.'' The volume is at its best when dissecting ``profoundly regressive'' films like Three Men and a Baby and ``considering how various representations of masculinity that resist traditional patriarchal images and plots either contribute to or, on the contrary, undermine the feminist project.'' At other times, particularly in the last of the three theoretical essays, readers without a grounding in Lacan and Foucault will be utterly lost. (July)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Feminist critic Modleski, author of four titles on women and media (e.g., The Women Who Knew Too Much , Routledge, 1987), here takes on the assumptions of her ``postfeminist'' contemporaries who, she argues, are unwittingly participating in a backlash against the very values they claim to promote. Using examples as diverse as Manuel Puig's novel Kiss of the Spider Woman ( LJ 5/15/79), the Disney movie Three Men and a Baby , and Ann Douglas's highly regarded historical study The Feminization of American Culture ( LJ 8/77), she shows how women continue to be degraded and devalued in both popular and academic representations. Her discussions of race, gender, pornography, Pee Wee Herman, war films, the function of the critic, and bestiality and pedophilia in popular culture are always provocative and often brilliant, although she relies too heavily on psychoanalytic ideas for some tastes. Highly recommended for film and women's studies collections.-- Beverly Miller, Boise State Univ. Lib., Id.

Library Journal

Modleski explores "the myth of postfeminism" in contemporary popular culture--especially popular film--and its ramifications on women, men and feminism. Arguing that the goals of feminism have been far from attained, she shows how women are once again being relegated to the sidelines, not only of society, but also of feminist discourse--only this time, it is feminism itself that threatens to marginalize women. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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