Core Post 4 - Charlotte

A through line across all three readings is the emphasis on the construction of postfeminism as a commercial/capitalistic process. Banet-Weiser discusses the function of including diverse representations in commercial media as a means to increase profit. As such, gender and racial identities are presented "as a kind of product one can buy or try on" (Banet-Weiser). This necessitates an emphasis on individual empowerment rather than a focus on justice or liberation, as (at least in my view) intersectional feminism exists in direct opposition to capitalism. As such, including intersectional rhetoric in commercial settings could hinder profits. Rather than push against social movements these social movements, however, commercial entities have co-opted the basic logic of movements (gender equality is good, racism is bad, etc.) and used these almost universally agreeable statements as a means to simultaneously de-tooth feminism or anti-racism of anything revolutionary while using the remaining essence to their corporate advantage. 

I get the same five ads on Hulu, one of which is for the Indeed, an online job search service. The ad depicts women in four workplaces: one chef, one working in a more 'conventional' office, one in what is clearly a start-up style office, and one working in leadership in a hotel. All of them excitedly engage with their work, smiling as they supervise lower level employees and answer phones. The only white woman is the chef (which leads me to think that the ad is hyper-conscious of depicting people of color in only blue collar positions, a representation likely to be called out in a Buzzfeed article or on Twitter). Text across the screen tells us that "when more women are in the workforce, our economy grows." Other text discusses the increased profit and happiness associated with an increased amount of women in the workforce. Then, the same workspaces are shown without the women, as we are informed that women lost 5.3 million jobs last year. This ad represents labor as something pleasurable and positive, with increased profits represented as inherently positive. The ad is not about the consequences of job loss amongst women, and the potential financial and emotional burdens of unemployment. By framing labor as a space for female empowerment, and not around the exploitative realities of capitalist labor, the ad asserts the postfeminist logic central to the theories of postfeminism.   

Indeed ad link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jhzfIDfGm4

Core Response #5 - Sebastian

    A few days ago, I mentioned to a friend that I needed to write a blog post about post-feminism for this class. She jokingly responded, “You should write about post-feminism and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.” So, here we go; let’s talk about The Clone Wars (kind of). In fairness, I’ve seen probably less than half-a-dozen episodes of the show, so I’m not sure I’m really qualified to write about it at any great length. That said, however unintentionally, my friend’s suggestion did get me thinking about what a television show like The Clone Wars might have to offer in relation to the discourse surrounding post-feminism. 

    At the most basic level, all three of this week’s readings seemed to present post-feminism as a neoliberal betrayal of the feminist movement, especially as embodied by second-wave feminism. In “Post-Feminism and Popular Culture,” Angela McRobbie writes, “[P]ost-feminism positively draws on and invokes feminism as that which can be taken into account, to suggest that equality is achieved, in order to install a whole repertoire of new meanings which emphasise that it is no longer needed” (255). This seems to be one of the key issues with which all three readings grapple. Post-feminism presents itself in almost utopian terms, positing a world where gender inequity is no more, thereby making the husk that remains of feminism marketable as essentially an affect. As Sarah Banet-Weiser notes in “What’s Your Flava? Race and Postfeminism in Media Culture,” companies like Nickelodeon tap into “commodity-driven empowerment by targeting aspects of personal identity (such as gender and race) as a way to be inclusive” (203). Yet, to the best of their ability, these companies attempt to erase the actual specificities of lived experiences related to gender and race because to represent these specificities would potentially be unprofitable. A militant feminism that actively denounces continued manifestations of patriarchy (and patriarchy’s intertwinement with capitalism, white supremacy, colonialism, etc.) isn’t about to make Nickelodeon money. But the “feel good” and uncombative nature of post-feminism is.

    What I find striking about this week’s readings is the way post-feminism’s apparent utopianism becomes a central and contentious issue, especially in so far as it also implicates sex-positive feminists. Jess Butler’s “For White Girls Only? Postfeminism and the Politics of Inclusion” discusses at great length the different sides of the 1980s sex wars. On the one hand, the “protection argument” posits that “since women are constructed as objects for male pleasure from the start, the call for women’s sexual freedom renders their objectification invisible and further naturalizes their oppression” (38-39). On the other hand, the “sex-positive argument” suggests that “focusing on victimization and oppression… only furthers the perception of women as sexual objects” and ignores the ways in which “objectification works to constrain women’s sexual agency, exploration, and adventure” (39). While Butler doesn’t claim that sex-positive feminists are innately post-feminist, she does seem to have some reservations about the “positivity” of the sex-positive perspective. When writing more broadly about third-wave feminism, Butler notes that this movement was “meant to provide women with a comfortable, inclusive – and… fundamentally neoliberal – space where they can cultivate individual feminist identities without all the strident negativity of ‘old-school’ feminist activism” (42). Given how easily the shallow positivity of post-feminism can be used to serve the interests of capitalist hegemony, this concern seems far from unwarranted.

    Nevertheless, Butler’s comment made me wonder about the potential for television to be truly utopian when it comes to race and gender without falling into the commodifiable and disingenuous traps of the post-feminist and post-racial approach. In other words, is it at all possible for television to imagine a utopian world where gender and racial equality exist without going down the Nickelodeon route and essentially denying the real-world existence of vastly inequitable structures and systems for the sake of corporate interests? Which is where The Clone Wars reenters the conversation. Now, to be clear, The Clone Wars is not that show. Nor is the more recent Star Wars foray into television, The Mandalorian. While the Star Wars franchise’s depiction of race and gender could probably fill multiple volumes, suffice it to say that both The Clone Wars and The Mandalorian import many of the aforementioned inequitable structures and systems into their own world. Sometimes they seem to be aware of this and offer some form of critique or commentary, but just as often these systems and structures go relatively unquestioned. 

    Yet I can’t help but wonder about the potential of the narrative and world-building forms that manifest in Star Wars. On a conceptual level, the franchise’s universe has no real connection to our world or its political and social structures; it exists “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” As already noted, that doesn’t mean those structures don’t still get imported into that universe. Star Wars is, after all, still made by humans who exist in (and often benefit from) those very structures. But, theoretically, could the expansiveness of the Star Wars universe and its distance from our own universe give storytellers (and, indeed, fans) the opportunity to explore radically utopian futures without becoming post-feminist and post-racial? For instance, could it allow us to imagine the comfortable, inclusive, and sex-positive spaces that Butler associates with third-wave feminist thought without the attendant neoliberalism that she also identifies? And would those spaces be worth exploring in that context, or would they always be inherently naïve (and maybe even irresponsible) regarding the lived realities of the here and the now? 

    The more I think about it, the more I worry that this latter concern might be insurmountable. For one thing, my supposition imagines that a franchise like Star Wars isn’t controlled by corporate interests, but it obviously is. Still, I find it difficult not to be intrigued by the potential of this mode of storytelling. And I wonder if there are places where this is already being enacted. Perhaps in its better entries, Star Wars is already embodying some of this potential. I suspect that there are other properties that are less dominated by corporate interests where this mode of storytelling has been able to flourish even more. Likewise, I wonder about which forms of media best facilitate this mode of storytelling. I know members of my cohort who have spoken both about the potential and limitations of tabletop role-playing games. While I have never played them, I wonder if they even more so allow fans to shape and control these utopian imaginings. 

Supplemental Post 3 - Sabrina Sonner

I recently watched Bridgerton with my partner over Netflix Party, watching one or two episodes a week until we reached the end of the series. Talking with my friends about it, I had the weirdest experience of feeling like I had somehow watched it wrong for not binge watching it, as almost every person I talked to said they had watched it in a sitting or a weekend. In spreading out the viewing this way, though, the show had me thinking about binge watching culture and how shows are made to accommodate it. My partner and I were both talking about how it was unusual but fun to have a show to anticipate, and have something to watch on a schedule that couldn’t be watched at another time. There was something special about being only able to access the show at certain times. I additionally found myself wishing there were “next time on” and “previously on” sort of segments at the start and end of each episode. I’m bad at watching things, and even the show I’m watching now multiple episodes at a time really helps me out by starting and concluding episodes this way. I think there was also something interesting about the way the show technically has episodes that center around one section of the plot, but is truly building on one full plotline, almost like a very long movie instead of feeling like shows with weekly episodes. Don't get me wrong, I still love having a full season of a show available to watch a time, since generally I have limited self-control in my media consumption. And my feelings on this viewing experience being nice are also probably related to having a nice time hanging out with my partner while watching it. But on the whole, it was neat to remember what it's like to watch something on a schedule and as a weekly event.

Core Response #4 - Kallan

The pieces by McRobbie, Banet-Weiser, and Butler felt particularly timely this week. After finishing Butler’s article, I opened Instagram and quickly came across a story that perfectly spoke to Rosalind Gill’s conception of “postfeminism as a sensibility” (Butler, 44). In this story, the (white female) poster showed her followers a set of candles in the shape of what can only be described as dismembered female torsos. These “body candles” all have huge breasts but otherwise, I found, come in three sizes: impossibly thin (Lulu, "known as our Femme Candle”), “curvy” (Freya, “a goddess who represents love & beauty), and pregnant (Mama, "This cute feminine body candle looks great in a bathroom or baby nursery). The instagram bio for the seller reads: “We believe you are enough,” “Learning to Love Our Human Form” and “Empowered. Vegan. Light.” The candles come in a range of skin-tones, including an impossibly white ivory and, for some reason, lavender. Also for sale are “Identity Cubes,” which are candles that look like Bucky balls and claim to represent “all the facets of your identity.” Everything about the website and Instagram page screamed commodity feminism to the point of satire—the seller equates the purchase of candles in the shape of nude female torsos with empowerment. It reminds me of what, in my head, I call “the turn to boobs,” when all of the sudden every woman that I knew had an illustrated art print of boobs of different shapes and sizes hanging on their wall (including me—I bought a throw pillow with a line drawing of boobs in the fall of 2018).

I don’t mean to pick on this particular candle business—which seems to be less a company than it is one white woman in Seattle—but it’s just such a good example of the kind of knowing postfeminist naturalization of the objectification of the female form that pervades daily life now and that, I think, has taken on a new timbre in the Instagram age. As Butler discusses, this naturalization implicitly suggests that debates within feminism about sex and sexuality are settled, a thing of the past. It also positions the “empowerment” gained from purchasing a “body candle” as separate from any material or bodily realities connected to struggles for actual empowerment. This candle producer is not by default un-feminist but represents the complexity, contradiction, and ambivalence of contemporary postfeminist discourse. This complexity emerges on Instagram as a particularly contemporary version of the idea that “women ‘get it’ about objectification, and because of this understanding it is acceptable—indeed, even ironically empowering—to objectify women’s bodies in the most blatantly demeaning ways” (Banet-Weiser, 211). While part of me would like to dive wholeheartedly into critical candle studies, the relevant media studies point is that these are products made for our contemporary Instagram/Etsy moment, a visually driven avenue to tap into the present’s “generationally specific notions of cool” (McRobbie, 60). These notions manifest in my corner of the white millennial female demographic as an Instagram persona who is savvy but #spiritual, body positive and pro-nudity (#freethenipple), unproblematically comfortable with commodity feminism, and “inclusive” of all races, even if they are primarily targeting their candles/skin care products/self-help courses/meditation videos towards other white women. Cultural capital in my Instagram feed is built on a performative (and often commodified) “getting it” about both race and feminism. 

This is a form of visual representation that is tied to TV (and filmic) representation. The body candles took on a new light when, in the same Instagram scrolling session, I came across Variety’s article on Hollywood’s complicity in the racist, anti-Asian, misogynistic mass murders in Atlanta. While one white woman is aligning the purchase of dismembered torso candles with “smashing the patriarchy,” six Asian women were murdered by a racist misogynist who engages post-racial language to deny his racism and excuse his sexualized violence. The racist hate speech in the comments of the Variety post, including the many white women who code their racist outrage as sensible post-racial anti-PC straight-talk, was so disgusting and disheartening that it’s hard not to feel that, no matter how far ahead work by scholars like Butler, Banet-Weiser, and McRobbie push feminist discourse within academic circles, it will be a long (and violent) time until these debates meaningfully reach the public, let alone prevent murderous assholes from carrying on, with sympathy from the police. I’m not sure what to do to change this or even just to feel less depressed about it, other than to maybe step back from social media. I do still feel certain that work that grapples with the complexity of contemporary feminisms and postfeminism is necessary, and I’m grateful that scholarship like we read for this week exists. And if anyone wants to (ironically?) buy a curvy torso candle you can check out @soulecandles. 

Core Response #3-Tiana Williams

The declension approach to the history of feminism that allows for the positioning of  postfeminism as some vague answer to all of our "feminist problems," begins with an overall  misunderstanding of second-wave and third-wave feminism, and how the trajectory of each movement has brought us into this current landscape of postfeminism as a "neoliberal discursive formation" (Butler, 36). This misunderstanding allows for a certain level of shock to emerge when we witness occurrences such as the exposed footage of the NCAA's March Madness weight room disparities, that have been made into a sort of postfeminist spectacle—where the contemporary cultural consciousness regarding feminist issues are disrupted by such imagery, and then restored to its previous "postfeminist" spirit with a simple apology from the NCAA and the unveiling of a new weight room for the women’s basketball teams. Situating this particular uncovering of inequality in discussion with Butler's investigation into postfeminism by way of rapper Nicki Minaj as a figure that has the potential to "rupture postfeminism's discursive boundaries" (Butler, 36), I kept wondering to myself what does it mean to be 'empowered' within popular conversation? Moreover, how can the conflation of "girl power" and "flava" as a supposed space of diversity (as Sarah Banet-Weiser points out in their article) enfranchise the youth if there is an overall unclear understanding of the history and functions of feminism to begin with?  

As a young girl, I recall singing the theme song for the Flava dolls commercials with my sisters, naively viewing the dolls as "cool" and “different—so excited to the point where my sisters and I would point to the TV and plead with my Mom to get us one of the dolls for Christmas. The racial diversity that was presented in this doll line was not that much different than the Bratz dolls or even the MyScene dolls that had been released a couple years prior; however, the major difference between the three doll companies that attracted my sisters and I to the Flava Dolls in particular was the component that relied on a "hip, cool, urban, "postracial" style" (Banet-Weiser, 214). From the companies' slogan "What's Your Flava?" to the RnB sound that the theme song employed, the dolls appeared to be something we could relate to. Similarly, networks like Disney Channel and Nickelodeon heavily utilized "commodity-driven empowerment by targeting aspects of personal identity (such as gender and race) as a way to be inclusive" (BanetWeiser, 203) and attract our attention, a prime example of this strategy being the Disney Channel original movie, The Cheetah Girls. Along with the diverse cast and hit songs such as "Girl Power" and "Cinderella" that emphasized independence and self-determination, the film's urban setting and representation of young girls struggling with their individual and collective identity indeed takes "diversity into account" (as Banet-Weiser coins with inspiration from Angela McRobbie) and it does so by leveraging race but positioning it within ambiguity rather than specificity (as Banet-Weiser examines with Nickelodeon programming). In speaking of racial ambiguity, I'd like to note that I am specifically understanding/utilizing the phrase in relation to Blackness as a historically distinct racial marker; for instance, the ethnicities of characters Galleria and Chanel are completely disclosed within the film, and done so perhaps to situate the specifics of the stereotypes represented by their family structures on screen as well as each of their light brown complexions (Galleria is Afro-American and Italian, while Chanel is Puerto Rican, Colombian, and Dominican I think  they say in the film?? Sorry, it’s been a minute since I’ve watched it). The other two characters, Dorinda and Aqua, are never spoken about in terms of ethnicity in the film, although it is assumed that Dorinda is simply white and Aqua is black (specifically for Aqua, this assumption comes with visual stereotypes as well). The inclusivity and diversity strategy used with the cast of The Cheetah Girls brought my sisters and I back to the TV screen each time they dropped a movie or an album, but in terms of ‘empowering’ us to the point where we felt we could one day be "just like a Cheetah Girl," this wasn’t entirely the case, as questions of race and insecurities with complexion still arose in our minds, in which we realized we weren't really being included, represented, or empowered since none of the girls on the screen actually looked like us. While I personally do not urge a type of representation “where visibility in the media takes precedence over “real” politics” (Banet-Weiser, 208), I do think it is important to discuss how even with these “diverse” representations, the decision to predominantly portray Blackness as light complexioned curly haired young girls, speaks volumes to the falsehood of postracialism.   

In short, while the songs, the urban space and representation of struggles with identity in The Cheetah Girls glued my sisters and I to the TV in those particular moments, the postfeminist and postracial commodity strategy of the film was a disservice to us as we continued to grow and still experience an array of microaggressions and uncomfortable situations in reality, and then when we looked to Disney Channel or Nickelodeon for solace, our insecurities were confirmed as we we were unable to specifically locate ourselves within these representations and walk away from the viewing experiences with any sort of  "political certainty" (Banet-Weiser, 203). This struggle with representation that I’m sure many dark-skinned girls have had to endure, is a combination of “the displacement of feminism as a political movement" (McRobbie, 258) and the postracial assumptions that contemporary TV widely possesses. 

Peripheral Post #2 - Daniela is obsessed with the Sopranos. Please get her professional help! Somebody call Lorraine Bracco!!!

 My life has been consumed by a show that ended 14 years ago. About a month ago I started watching The Sopranos and I have thought of nothing else since then. The first two seasons dragged a bit for me, but it certainly picked up for me in season 3 and blew my mind the rest of the way through. While I would love to talk non-stop about The Sopranos, what I wanted to write about was the many ways in which I am not only consuming the show (on my computer, through my tv), but also the other forms through which I am consuming information about the show as well. 

Whenever I get obsessed with some form of media that has a large cult or mainstream following, I immediately go on Etsy and other websites to see what weird fan made items I can buy to show my intense appreciation for the show. Among my favorites is this Satriale's scarf  

and these Tony Soprano sweat pants

 .

While this is basic capitalistic consumption, another form of consumption that is becoming more and more popular is the rewatch podcast. And not just any old rewatch done by fans, but podcasts done by the actual stars of the show. The first notable rewatch podcast is "Office Ladies". This Office rewatch podcast is hosted by Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey, both who were series regulars on all 9 seasons of the incredibly popular NBC show. This podcast often appears on the top of the podcast charts and with good reason- it is actually really well done. But back to The Sopranos: in my obsessive drive to consume more of the show after finishing it, I found myself looking for Sopranos podcasts on apple podcasts. I was surprised to see that there was not one, but two Sopranos rewatch podcasts. One is titled "Made Women", hosted by Drea de Matteo (who played fan favorite Adriana on the show) and Chris Kushner (who did not work on the show). The other podcast (that I am obsessed with) is called "Talking Sopranos", which is hosted by Steve Schirripa (Bobby Baccalieri) and Michael Imperioli (Christopher “Chrissy” Moltisanti). This show is the most popular and they have had great guests from Edie Falco to David Chase.
 

“Talking Sopranos” began in the beginning of April 2020, right as the pandemic “got real” for Americans. While they have stated that they had been planning a rewatch podcast well before the pandemic hit, there seems to be something prescient about the timing of this podcast and many others of its kind. I even saw that a Parks and Rec rewatch podcast has been started as well. What is it about this desire to take audible deep dives of older shows that were incredibly popular in their time? Has this new television landscape become too much? I often feel overwhelmed by the “pressure” to watch all these new television shows that boast great actors and indie directors and auteur show runners and !!!! I completely understand why these rewatch podcasts are so popular, and even mores now due to the pandemic. In an already stable world, we want to latch onto the shows that gave us joy and comfort in the past. I can’t say this is the case for me with The Sopranos because I barely watched it for the first time 2 months ago, but oddly enough it still fits into this nostalgia for the days when TV had little to no prestige. I remember hearing about The Sopranos in the periphery of my childhood. I remember the day that James Gandolfini passed away. I was a child when The Sopranos ended. The life of the show had ended, yet my life was really only getting started. Those days are long gone now.
 

The intended theme of this post was obsession and consumption, but my mind took me elsewhere. I wish I had something more profound to say, but honestly this post has just become a form of therapy for me. Someone or something to talk to while in quarantine. Will I love Tony and Chrissy so openly and freely once we are able to safely roam the streets again? Or has the loneliness and monotony of quarantine led me to contemplate spending $80 + shipping on sweatpants with the face of a television character splattered all over it? Only time and my debit card will tell.

Supplemental Response #1: Julia

This has been brought up a lot in discussion posts for this course, so my interest was piqued. I finally watched Wanda Vision, and I loved it. Generally speaking, I am not a big Marvel fan. I have watched a few Marvel movies with friends in the past, but nothing really drew me in the way Wanda Vision has. 

One of my favorite things about the show, is the way in which Wanda Vision evokes the idea of trauma and its connection to television. During our reality TV session, my group discussed the notion of trauma framed in the context of reality TV exploitation and manipulation. However, a narrative series like Wanda Vision frames the idea of trauma not only within the content itself, but as being rooted within the very nature of television. Much like Wanda in the show, I think many people feel drawn to television as a way of coping with everyday pain and sadness. Wether on a personal level when we seek to distract ourselves with sitcoms or childhood nostalgia, or in the context of national trauma, such as watching the latest US election unfold, where we turn to CNN anchors to calm our anxieties. There is a soothing nature to the television that we access inside our homes that allows for a processing of trauma to take place. 

Wanda's processing of grief matches our own relationship to television. In the show, she is able to construct a reality for herself within which she can establish a semblance of normality that helps soothe her pain. Anything that threatens to disrupt the comfort of this televised reality is to be eliminated immediately, in a kind of extreme coping mechanism. In some ways, the lengthy and unending nature of television is somewhat dissociative. Time passes and emotions are filtered, and before you know it a season has passed. Of course this dissociative state cannot last, but Wanda is able to create a space and a time for herself to shield herself from the traumatic state of affairs in her real life. 

While television's content can sometimes misrepresent trauma or evoke it gratuitously, I think that the inherent form of television in its use of temporality and formulations allows it to function as a powerful tool for coping with real life trauma. The medium is the message!