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Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley , editors; Berg Publishers, Oxford and New York, 2006, 256p,
ISBN 978-I-84520-223-I
, £17.99 (Pbk);
ISBN-10 1845-2022-36
, £50 (Hbk)
Feminism in Popular Culture explores (not surprisingly) the relationship between feminism and popular culture, examining feminism's place within (and outside of) 'contemporary commonsense', and asking whether feminism can learn from popular culture and vice versa. As the authors argue in the introduction, most people's awareness and knowledge of feminism are commonly gleaned from a wide variety of texts that nonetheless share a narrow 'world-view', texts such as Cosmopolitan magazine, Charlie's Angels and Madonna (pp. 1-2). How is 'feminism negotiated with popular culture' (p. 2) in texts where there are frequently no positive portrayals of feminists or feminism? This is the question that occupies many of the chapters.
The book is divided into three sections: Inter-generational Relations of Feminism; Coming to Terms with Feminism; and Negotiating and Resisting Feminisms. The chapters cover a wide range of subjects from cookery programmes to sex workers, from Ally McBeal to female Quake players, leaving the reader wondering initially if these occasionally long leaps from topic to topic can be successfully achieved. There is, however, a clear rationale for including them, in that, while there are some overlaps between...