From “can-do” girls to insecure and angry: affective dissonances in young women’s post-recessional media

Dobson, Amy Shields; Kanai, Akane

doi:10.1080/14680777.2018.1546206

Cited by 57 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 33 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…These changes are seen to combat the long-held masculinism of quality television as a system of evaluation that prioritises darkly realistic dramas premised upon male anti-heroes and the sexist and abusive treatment of women. Further, in centring "imperfect" and "vulnerable" women who are openly struggling with the commands of gendered neoliberalism that structure twenty-first century life, these representations push back-to an extent-against the postfeminist expectation for women to be resilient above all else (Rosalind Gill 2017; Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad 2018; Amy Shields Dobson and Akane Kanai 2018). The mere presence of this discourse is important in drawing attention to entrenched issues around gender representation and norms in global television industries, and the conversations around individual series and creators contribute to critical debates on the rise of "womencentric" media over the past decade (Kristen Warner 2019).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Independent women: from film to television

Perkins

Schreiber

2019

Feminist Media Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

"Independent Women: From Film to Television" explores the significance for feminism of the increasing representation of women on and behind the screen in television contexts around the world. "Independent" has functioned throughout film and television history as an important euphemism for "feminist," and this special issue investigates how this connection plays out in a contemporary environment that popular feminist discourse is constructing as a golden age of television for women. The original essays offer keen insight into how post-network television is being valued as a new site of independent production for women, and examine how the connotations of creative control that attend this orients perceptions of both female creators and their content as feminist. Together, they provide a compelling perspective on the feminist consequences of how independence and "indie" have intensified as cultural sensibilities that coincide and engage with the digital transformation of television over the past decade. KEYWORDS Television; feminism; independence; independent film; gender and media This special issue of Feminist Media Studies is motivated by our observation of a critical shift in the profile of women's television work over the course of the twenty-first century's second decade. In conjunction with the well-documented transformation of television to a non-linear, internet-delivered medium governed by the logic of the

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Independent women: from film to television

Perkins

Schreiber

2019

Feminist Media Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, we suggest that there are also productive cultural shifts here, in which upbeat, can-do and self-confident affects associated with neoliberal girlpower myths are critically examined and sometimes overtly eschewed. Such television may offer some important cultural spaces for the expression of young women's "affective dissonances", resentment, critique, and anger with both the material conditions and feeling rules of neoliberalism (Dobson & Kanai 2018, Negra & Tasker 2014.…”

Section: Culture Unboundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following Clare Hemmings (2012) we suggested the importance of highlighting such cultural representations in the process of a broader feminist cultural "affective divestment" in gendered neoliberal success narratives (Dobson & Kanai 2018) and mythologies of "the good life" (Berlant 2008(Berlant , 2011, through an analysis of the affective politics of contemporary media culture as a site for the collective symbolic investment in particular ways of life. For Hemmings, a feminist politics necessarily begins with a dissonance that is felt with the current social arrangements: effectively, "[I]n order to know differently we have to feel differently" (2012: 150).…”

Section: Culture Unboundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making do on not much: High Energy Striving, Femininity and Friendship in Broad City

Kanai

Dobson

2020

Cult. Unbound

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the years following the 2008 global financial crisis ("GFC"), feminist media scholarship has drawn attention to the gendered calls in Western media culture to remake subjectivity in line with imperatives of thrift required in conditions of austerity. In the shared symbolic environments that "gender the recession" (Negra & Tasker, 2014), media ranging from news, reality television, and film have placed further, intensified demands on women's domestic, affective, pa id an d unpaid labour, requiring attitudinal orientations combining future-oriented enthusiasm, positivity, entrepreneurialism, a continued faith in (budget-conscious) consumption and investment in the home and the family. This article considers the US comedy Broad City as an articulation of how young women are critically grappling with such shifts in gendered social relations and labour markets in the cosmopolitan setting of New York City. We suggest, in the depiction of the central female friendship between Abbi Abrams (Abbi Jacobson) and Ilana Wexler (Ilana Glazer) in Broad City, the show foregrounds the necessity of young women's "high energy striving" but produces an alternative configuration of the normative relation between femininity and labour. In the show, contra the "retreatism" Negra and Tasker document idealising women's work in the home as a means of combatting an austere future, the thrifty fun, care, support, and love Abbi a nd Ilana strive to create together spills across public spaces, spanning the streets of the city, outdoors in parks and on stoops. Abbi and Ilana are continually depicted labouring in some way, though such labour does not generally result in financial or career-based reward, but rather, produces psychic and emotional sustenance for the women's friendship and a means of affectively investing in each other. Thus, in Broad City's acknowledgement of the high energy striving required to survive, the show critically questions the relation of such feminine striving to the promise of career, financial success, and the idealised direction of such striving towards the domestic and hetero-patriarchal family. Instead, the show emphasises the material importance of such striving in relation to the bonds of women's friendship in conditions of material and social hardship, suggesting a different orientation to women's work and its place in recessional culture.

show abstract

Section: Culture Unboundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following Clare Hemmings (2012) we suggested the importance of highlighting such cultural representations in the process of a broader feminist cultural "affective divestment" in gendered neoliberal success narratives (Dobson & Kanai 2018) and mythologies of "the good life" , through an analysis of the affective politics of contemporary media culture as a site for the collective symbolic investment in particular ways of life. For Hemmings, a feminist politics necessarily begins with a dissonance that is felt with the current social arrangements: effectively, "[I]n order to know differently we have to feel differently" (2012: 150).…”

Section: Culture Unboundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

2020

Cult. Unbound

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

often exemplified through the authors' own children and grandchildren, specific heat waves, hurricanes, droughts, and floods are used as examples of the disastrous effects of climate change. In this thematic section of Culture Unbound, we therefore explore the uses of examples as an approach to examining how the cultural meaning of climate change is produced and maintained. Exemplifying examples Chapter 3 in the already mentioned IPCC Special Report on the 1.5 degree target adds textboxes containing a number of examples of how a warmer climate will affect different regions of the world to the highly synthesized body text (Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2018). The textboxes on the consequences of rising temperature in sub-Saharan Africa, increased vulnerability of water supplies for small island states, decline of warm water coral reefs, and the impact of climate change on the global economy all tell the same story: A global temperature rise of 2 degrees at the end of this century will have huge impacts on nature and society, while the impacts of a 1.5-degree rise will be more moderate. The information presented in the textboxes does not differ substantially from the descriptions in the body text of the report. The difference is that the figures and numbers are substituted by examples. One of the textboxes is entitled "Droughts in the Mediterranean Basin and the Middle East". It presents the area as "an example of a region with high vulnerability where various adaption responses have emerged" (Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2018: 200). The textbox continues: Exemplifying Climate Change 300 Culture Unbound Journal of Current Cultural Research zations collapsed, and rural settlements re-emerged with agro-pastoral activities and limited long-distance trade. This illustrates how some vulnerable regions are forced to pursue drastic adaptive responses, including migration and societal structure changes. (Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2018: 200) The textbox concludes that "[r]isks of drying in the Mediterranean region could be substantially reduced if global warming is limited to 1.5 degree compared to 2 degrees or higher levels of warming […]. Higher warming levels may induce high levels of vulnerability exacerbated by large changes in demography" (Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2018: 201). Thus, the collection of examples of drought in the eastern Mediterranean brings a threefold lesson: The change in precipitation from 1960 and onwards illustrates a global climatic tendency, the description of the drought between 2007 and 2010 as the "longest and most intense" in 900 years indicates the size of this tendency, and the reference to the drought 3,200 years ago shows the possible consequences for civilization. The historical description of droughts in the Middle East constitutes the background for future predictions on drought in the region, as well as for the societal consequences of such droughts. One reason why these examples work so efficiently is that they are presented as facts. The drought between 2007 and 2010 is indisputable. It was observed and m...

show abstract

From “can-do” girls to insecure and angry: affective dissonances in young women’s post-recessional media

Cited by 57 publications

References 33 publications

Independent women: from film to television

Independent women: from film to television

Making do on not much: High Energy Striving, Femininity and Friendship in Broad City

Untitled

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About