Feminism Without Women: Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist" Age 9780415904162, 9780415904179, 9780203699379

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FEMINISM WITHOUT WOMEN

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FEMINISM WITHOUT WOMEN Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist "Age

TANIA MODLESKI

ROUTLEDGE

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First Published 1991 by Routledge Published 2014 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Published in Great Britain by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Transferred to Digital Printing 2009 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright© 1991 by Routledge

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Modleski, Tania, 1949Feminism without women I Tania Modleski. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-415-90416-2; ISBN 978-0-415-90417-9 (pbk.) I. Women in motion pictures. 2. Sex role in motion pictures. 3. Feminism and motion pictures. 4. Women in popular culture. 5. Motion pictures-Social aspects-United States. I. Title. 302.23'082---dc20 91-13126 CIP British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Modleski, Tania 1949Feminism without women : culture and criticism in a "postfeminist" age. I. Feminism I. Title 305.4201 ISBN 978-0-415-90416-2 ISBN 978-0-415-90417-9 (pbk) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.

To the women

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

lX PART I: THEORY AND METHODOLOGY

CHAPTER ONE:

POSTMORTEM ON POSTFEMINISM

3

CHAPTER TWO:

FEMININITY AS MAS(S)QUERADE

23

CHAPTER THREE:

SOME FUNCTIONS OF FEMINIST CRITICISM; OR, THE SCANDAL OF THE Mum BODY

PART CHAPTER FOUR:

II:

MASCULINITY AND MALE FEMINISM

A FATHER Is BEING BEATEN: MALE FEMINISM AND THE WAR FILM

CHAPTER FIVE: CHAPTER SIX:

THREE MEN AND BABY M

FILM PART

76

90

III: RACE, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY

CINEMA AND THE DARK CONTINENT: RACE AND GENDER IN POPULAR FILM

CHAPTER EIGHT:

61

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING HE(R)MAN: MALE REGRESSION, THE MALE BODY, AND

CHAPTER SEVEN:

35

115

LETHAL BODIES: THOUGHTS ON SEX, GENDER, AND REPRESENTATION FROM THE MAINSTREAM TO THE MARGINS

135

Notes

165

Index of Films

183

Index

Vll

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PREFACE

In a recent book on popular culture entitled The Female Gaze, a collection of essays by a new generation of avowedly feminist critics, many of the contributors hold a preceding generation of feminist critics responsible for depriving them of the enjoyment of much popular culture. Insisting on the right to the pleasures promised women by the culture industry, one contributor proposes that "Joan Collins [in her role in Dynasty] represents a far-reaching challenge to feminism." Participating as it does in a growing reaction against the politicized culture criticism of the 1970s and early 1980s, such a "challenge" cannot be dismissed, even if it cannot be taken up on its own terms. It would seem to offer one more sign that the time is right for a feminist rethinking of the articulations of popular culture and political criticism. The essays in this book were each designed to shed light on different facets of the "postfeminist" moment by looking at mass culture (mostly movies) in the context of various developments in cultural criticism. I attempt to show the latter's complicity with the former in assuming the goals of feminism to have been attained-an assumption that seems premature, to say the least. By juxtaposing two very different kinds of discourse-the theoretical and the popular-I do not intend to make the former trivial, or to deny important differences. It has, however, always been: my firm conviction (one which I spell out in Chapter 3) that the critic is never wholly outside the culture she analyzes, or completely resistant to its forces, retrograde as these may often be. If Jean-Paul Sartre was right that the "surest way to be bowled over by one's age is to tum one's back on it," then a radical cultural politics might begin to face its age by examining its connection to even the lowest forms of culture, rather than disavowing any implication in it (orwhat amounts to the same thing-