Postfeminism and the South African Context through the Prism of a Bloodsoaked Imagination

Queen Sono: Netflix Original as postfeminist South African spy thriller

“…By analysing the local contexts of these feminine performances and women’s varied access to material means, Dosekun (2015, 2021) both insists on the transnational circulation of postfeminist media cultures and demonstrates that this sensibility isn’t uncritically embraced by women in the Global South (or North) but adapted and integrated into local histories and contexts. Even as Beschara Karam (2018: 52) agrees that postfeminist images travel globally, she critiques its applicability to the South African context as she argues that media should instead address ‘postcolonial and decolonial gender issues’ that impact women’s daily lives rather than uncritically adopting ‘this colonial, Western, postfeminist aesthetic’. A postfeminist aesthetic consists of hyperfemininity (a desire to-be-looked-at), hypersexuality (woman as an empowered sexual subject), heterosexuality (core desire of women to engage in sex with men including romance and marriage), and the exclusivity of this aesthetic that is available solely to young, white, able-bodied women.…”

“…Queen’s bodily portrayal flirts with Western notions of feminine beauty informed by her light-skinned blackness, her model-thin-and-tall proportions, her access to middle-class resources, and her youth – the preferred attributes of postfeminism outlined by both Gill (2007) and Karam (2018). While on a recon mission at the gala dinner for the Zimbabwe president’s 95 th birthday, Queen exploits her hyperfemininity (to be looked-at-ness) and hypersexuality to catch an illicit arms dealer in the act.…”

“…And while she at times questions Shandu’s commitment to liberating Africa from corruption and neocolonialism, she maintains this romantic and conventional relationship as the moral center of the series. The heteronormativity established in Queen Sono that extends beyond Queen to include her friends, colleagues and even the Russian Gromova family serves as ‘a marker of postfeminism with other choices negated or excluded’ (Karam, 2018: 47). As an exclusive and limiting aesthetic, heteronormativity reinstates conservative and patriarchal ideals.…”

“…To undermine the status quo constructed by the spy thriller genre and the postfeminist aesthetic contained in Queen Sono , Karam (2018: 52) argues that cultural texts ‘should be used as a means of addressing postcolonial and decolonial gender issues rather than simply embracing this colonial, Western, postfeminist aesthetic’. This textual analysis has begun this process by examining how the conventions of the spy thriller are both maintained and broadened to incorporate a female spy and the local context of (South) Africa.…”