In a recent article for The Guardian, Rafia Zakaria argues the current wave of expositional memoirs by women in the media — largely comedians — reduces feminism to insular and self-analytic “navel-gazing” wherein (upper-middle class, white) women attempt to subvert conventional gender norms — specifically, the expectation of coyness, delicacy, deference — by baring themselves emotionally in writing (and physically, on screen). The docile, obedient, chipper, squeaky-clean and atrociously dependent 1950s housewife becomes an acerbic, defiant, depressed, nasty, self-centered “modern woman.” Forget approval: the nastier the better, the edgier the more progressive. A reaction is necessary; let us womyn be as seen as our foremothers were unseen behind aprons and thick wooden doors of suburban duplexes. Let our voices be heard! But let them be heard saying only things that shock, awe, repulse. The unseen become the obscene, reinforcing the premise that women do not inherently deserve to be visible. The old caricature becomes its photographic negative and is therefore easily absorbed and promoted within the American cultural narrative. The notion that an independent woman is not socially acceptable has not changed, only now the independent woman is proudly, instead of shamefully, perverse. The Bronteian “madwoman in the attic” is lured out of the attic, but she is still incorrigible, only now she has an audience.
Karl Lagerfeld’s feminist “faux-test” during Paris Fashion Week 2014 testified to the reification of feminism as empty branding and the commodification of what used to be a movement for gender equity. The popularization of feminism has relied on making feminism “fun,” as Andi Zeisler, founder of Bitch magazine, argues. “The problem is — the problem has always been — that feminism is not fun… It’s not supposed to be fun. It’s complex and hard and it pisses people off. It’s serious because it is about people demanding that their humanity be recognized as valuable.” Contemporary calls for feminine empowerment in the form of “feminist” manicures and Beyoncé songs form a toxic, symbiotic relationship with the U.S. media and television industry, which honors them by producing films that routinely and casually present women as products of external validation or viewership rather than human beings in and of themselves.
Take the recent “How To Be Single,” a summer release that strings together various cinematic tropes and the occasional clever one-liner in a lengthy pastiche reminiscent of a watered-down “Sex and the City” Episode. Rate by viewers on RottenTomatoes as 3.3/5 (a solid C), it introduces four interwoven plot lines centered around “single life” in New York City (I don’t assume any of those points were for originality). In the central plot line, protagonist Alice (Dakota Johnson) breaks up with her college boyfriend to find her “true self” as a single woman: she moves to New York, effortlessly finds a job as a paralegal that somehow pays enough for a large, gorgeous studio and quickly befriends the spunky and promiscuous Robin (Rebel Wilson), who is single and loving it. Female “singleness,” in Robin, is a sophomoric recklessness comprised of late, booze-heavy nights and random and forgettable encounters with men. The foil to Alice’s tight-buttoned, doe-eyed “non-single” woman, Robin represents every implicit American cultural taboo for women in one convenient, Australian package: she is overweight, she is openly promiscuous, she flouts corporate authority, she is loud and aggressive, she is messy, she enjoys alcohol and, most defiantly, she is happy with her single self. She is independent, and so she cannot be characterized within the cultural mainstream: she must be reckless, juvenile, obscenely visible.
This is not to say that romantic comedies, particularly those on the lighter side of the intellectual spectrum, have ever been kind to women, but the fact that these simplistic and harmful characterizations are so casually drawn, and swallowed, by the U.S. public lends to the stagnation of any kind of real feminist movement. Characterizing an independent woman as necessarily lewd is not a step up from characterizing her as nonexistent: both dismiss women’s inherent humanity and frame them as creatures that rely on external viewership, be it by a man in their lives or by a squealing audience.
Perhaps it is a tall order to ask romantic comedies, or other fast-food big-blockbuster productions, to provide nuanced characterizations of women. American cinema is notoriously loud, gaudy and gauche, with as much corn syrup in mass-produced romcoms as you find in your average packaged food product. Cheap and easily sold, casual sexism may be too much of a popular mainstay to weed out; maybe the Motion Picture Association of America should just add another letter to their rating system: D, for Denigrating humor.
Tamar Ziff is a College graduate from the class of 2016.
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