Feminism and Popular Culture: Investigating the Postfeminist Mystique

Feminism and Popular Culture maps the fraught and often unpredictable relationship between popular culture, feminism and postfeminism. From the shadowy city spaces of Mad Men and Homeland to the dystopic suburbia of The Stepford Wives and American Horror Story, the authors trace the maniacal career women, hysterical housewives and amnesiac daughters who roam the postfeminist landscape. Through recourse to these figures, they illuminate postfeminism's obsessive resuscitation of seemingly anachronistic models of femininity and ask why these should today be gilded with new appeal. Analysing postfeminism's historical slippages and haunted temporalities, the book not only takes account of the complex ways in which popular culture negotiates ongoing debates within and about feminism, but also explores its implications for feminism's future.