Postfeminist Villainess: Patriarchal Fantasy or a Symbol of Resistance?

In recent years, popular culture has witnessed the proliferation of violent female characters, while female criminality has also received increasing attention from many critics and academics. These women remain a fascination for both mainstream culture and researchers as their acts go against cultur...

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Main Author: Irena Jurković
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Zadar 2020-12-01
Series:[sic]
Online Access:http://www.sic-journal.org/ArticleView.aspx?aid=646
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author Irena Jurković
author_facet Irena Jurković
author_sort Irena Jurković
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description In recent years, popular culture has witnessed the proliferation of violent female characters, while female criminality has also received increasing attention from many critics and academics. These women remain a fascination for both mainstream culture and researchers as their acts go against cultural conceptions and are even viewed as antithetical to femininity. And while the increasing presence of female violence in media and popular culture may be symptomatic of present-day society’s concerns about gender behavior, the portrayal of violent women still seems to be following genre conventions and familiar stereotypes that inevitably frame, and thus normalize, their acts within boundaries of traditional discourses on femininity. In that regard, Women Who Kill: Gender and Sexuality in Film and Series of the Post-Feminist Era presents itself as a particularly timely book that investigates the representation of women who kill in a so-called postfeminist context recognized principally by a tension between various feminist discourses. However, there is yet little agreement on what would be the central agenda and meaning of postfeminism. As a term that originates from within the popular culture and thus carries a certain market value, postfeminism is by some critics viewed as a backlash against second-wave feminism, while others see it as an evolution of feminist thought. Most of the controversy and difficulty in defining postfeminism can be linked to its entanglement with the contradictions of postmodernity and to what is perceived as its simultaneous articulation and repudiation of feminist ideas.
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spelling doaj-art-a330c092fbc04a9fa51e8cf6f97e1a112025-08-20T02:21:35ZengUniversity of Zadar[sic]1847-77552020-12-0111110.15291/sic/1.11.lc.11646Postfeminist Villainess: Patriarchal Fantasy or a Symbol of Resistance?Irena JurkovićIn recent years, popular culture has witnessed the proliferation of violent female characters, while female criminality has also received increasing attention from many critics and academics. These women remain a fascination for both mainstream culture and researchers as their acts go against cultural conceptions and are even viewed as antithetical to femininity. And while the increasing presence of female violence in media and popular culture may be symptomatic of present-day society’s concerns about gender behavior, the portrayal of violent women still seems to be following genre conventions and familiar stereotypes that inevitably frame, and thus normalize, their acts within boundaries of traditional discourses on femininity. In that regard, Women Who Kill: Gender and Sexuality in Film and Series of the Post-Feminist Era presents itself as a particularly timely book that investigates the representation of women who kill in a so-called postfeminist context recognized principally by a tension between various feminist discourses. However, there is yet little agreement on what would be the central agenda and meaning of postfeminism. As a term that originates from within the popular culture and thus carries a certain market value, postfeminism is by some critics viewed as a backlash against second-wave feminism, while others see it as an evolution of feminist thought. Most of the controversy and difficulty in defining postfeminism can be linked to its entanglement with the contradictions of postmodernity and to what is perceived as its simultaneous articulation and repudiation of feminist ideas.http://www.sic-journal.org/ArticleView.aspx?aid=646
spellingShingle Irena Jurković
Postfeminist Villainess: Patriarchal Fantasy or a Symbol of Resistance?
[sic]
title Postfeminist Villainess: Patriarchal Fantasy or a Symbol of Resistance?
title_full Postfeminist Villainess: Patriarchal Fantasy or a Symbol of Resistance?
title_fullStr Postfeminist Villainess: Patriarchal Fantasy or a Symbol of Resistance?
title_full_unstemmed Postfeminist Villainess: Patriarchal Fantasy or a Symbol of Resistance?
title_short Postfeminist Villainess: Patriarchal Fantasy or a Symbol of Resistance?
title_sort postfeminist villainess patriarchal fantasy or a symbol of resistance
url http://www.sic-journal.org/ArticleView.aspx?aid=646
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