“People Are All We’ve Got”: Negotiation of Postfeminism and Construction of Meaning in Post-Recession Women’s Indie Television Pubblico
Mayfield, Katy (Spring 2022)
Published
Abstract
Over the course of the 2010s a distinct character archetype came to predominate women’s television comedy. This thesis argues this extended-adolescent figure, variously referred to as the “precarious girl,” “can’t-do girl,” and “girl-loser,” is characterized by her affective palette of “ugly feelings” and frequent failure, including failure to live up to the postfeminist careerist model the previous era of woman protagonists established, and morally inflected failure in her interpersonal relationships. I first name this character the “woman dirtbag” and establish her as an entangled result of and response to that postfeminist model, who embodied gendered neoliberal norms like consumerism, self-optimization, careerism, and adherence to “feeling rules.” Next, I interpret the distinct affect of the woman dirtbag shows as indicative of her processing her constrained subjecthood in a post-Recession landscape where achievement of the postfeminist mode is materially impossible. Finally, I identify the interdependent ethos these shows put forth, which positions investment in interdependent interpersonal relationships as the new normative and moral center of millennials’ lives.
Table of Contents
Introduction 2
Chapter One: Postfeminism and its Discontents 9
The Expectational World of Women’s Work 11
The Expectational World of Women’s Affect 15
Recession and the Weight of Meaninglessness 18
Chapter Two: Post-postfeminist Entanglements and Affects 21
Abjection 24
Choice Guilt 25
Grief and the Weight of Meaninglessness 27
Negotiation of Postfeminism: a Case Study in Fleabag and Girls 29
Chapter Three: Finding Meaning Beyond Perfection 35
The Loneliness of Ideal and Failed Neoliberal Subjecthood 36
Dirtbaggery and its Discontents 38
Coming to Goodness 41
Unlearning Postfeminism 44
The Interdependence of Forgiveness 51
Conclusion 51
Bibliography 55
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