Core Post #4-- Michael Feinstein

  Angela McRobbie’s argument that postfeminism— and the pop culture that was created during 1990s and early 2000s— took feminism “into account” while simultaneously repudiating and denouncing it as a relic from the past (“spent force”), of course, made me consider whether the television we consume today would still qualify as postfeminist. Shows like Ally McBeal and Sex and the City, according to McRobbie, used “tropes of freedom and choice” (255) to give the impression that those things that first and second wave feminist were fighting for had already been successfully achieved and are thus were no longer a concern. The  individual sexual and professional empowerment of Ally McBeal and Carrie Bradshaw were smoke-screens covering the actual political and structural obstacles faced by women that it chose to ignore. As Sarah Banet-Weiser states, “the normalization of feminism has prevented it from existing as a discrete politics; rather it emerges as a kind of slogan or generalized “brand” (208). These ideas certainly still ring true for most of the television shows featuring strong, capable female leads that have come out in the years since Sex and the City went off the air. Shows like Girls, Euphoria, Fleabag, New Girl, and many others, center their stories around women with an unprecedented amount of freedom, choice, and access. They can say what they want and they can do what they want and—for the most part— these are freedoms that they just simply have, as opposed to ones they (or the generations of women before them) have had to earn. Additionally, historical dramas that do deal with systemic sexism and cultural misogyny, like Mad Men and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, ultimately do the same work of presenting these struggles as antiquated and passe’. Even if these shows often do attempt to make parallels between the past and the present and viewers could read these political and structural critiques as somewhat relevant the hurdles that the women on the show have to overcome are still relegated to and obscured by the past. 

However, I think there are certain shows from the last 10 years that don’t neatly fall into this postfeminist bin as described by McRobbie. 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation both dealt with the structural and political forces that prevented the two shows’ leads from accomplishing their jobs. 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon, a show runner for a network late night sketch show, has to deal with the sexism and misogyny of both her boss and the mostly-male writing staff that she is in charge of. Additionally, Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope, a civil servant, is constantly depicted contending with the all-boys club of local politics and the show makes clear how she is held back in the political arena because she is a woman. However, these shows still both largely focus  on the “individual empowerment” of its’ characters and, one could argue, that the fact that these women are in these places of power in the first place negates certain feminist critiques. Still though, these shows and others like HBO’s Blackish, I May Destroy You, and Veep not only take feminism into account but also seem to engage with the idea that gender equality has not been fully achieved and there is still some ways to go.