Problematic
How Toxic Callout Culture Is Destroying Feminism
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
From Beyoncé’s Lemonade to The Force Awakens to the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, the entertainment industry seems to be embracing the power of women like never before. But with more feminist content comes more feminist criticism—and it feels as if there’s always something to complain about.
Dianna E. Anderson’s incisive Problematic takes on the stereotype of the perpetually dissatisfied feminist. Too often feminist criticism has come to mean seeing only the bad elements of women-centric pop culture and never the good. Anderson suggests that our insistence on feminist ideological purity leads to shallow criticism and ultimately hurts the movement. Instead, she proposes new, more nuanced forms of feminist thought for today’s culture, illustrated by examples from across the spectrum of popular music, movies, and TV, including Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and even One Direction. While grounding her inquiry in pop culture media and topics, Anderson draws on concepts of feminist theory to show how we can push for continued cultural change while still acknowledging the important feminist work being done in the pop culture sphere today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Anderson (Damaged Goods) delivers an astute and accessible analysis of feminist popular culture debates, arguing that the "hunt for perfect, ideological, purity" leads many feminists to "make the perfect the enemy of the good," and the label "problematic" in particular encourages feminists to boycott, rather than engage with, imperfect art and entertainers. In chapters that cover a wide range of media film, music, newspapers and magazines, sports, video games, and social media Anderson advocates for engaging "in good faith" with "problematic" cultural products. To dismiss, for example, One Direction as purveyors of the male gaze means ignoring the agency the active returned gaze of teenage girls. In "Selfie Game Strong," Anderson casts Kim Kardashian as a one-woman "femme rebellion" and suggests Kardashian should be a role model for children because she exhibits "a healthy love of self" and "a resistance to being shamed." Anderson's position isn't a knee-jerk disagreement with all condemnations: she says she still watches Chinatown despite Roman Polanski's abuse of a teenage girl, but can no longer tolerate Woody Allen's films; she asserts that bell hooks's critique of Beyonc 's Lemonade as compromised by its participation in capitalism and its commodification of black female pain asks too much of the performer but is also legitimate. This is an in-depth, insightful, and novel contribution to feminist debates about popular culture.
