Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T13:42:32.914Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Feminist Cringe Comedy: Dear Dick, The Joke Is on You

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2018

Lori Marso
Lori Marso*
Affiliation:
Union College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Feminist cringe comedies eschew the conventions of romance and sentimentality in favor of comedy that discomforts. Cringe comedies are one example of what I call feminism's visual realisms, so named for doing feminist political work by evoking laughter and the cringe. The cringe pulls us inward in our posture, while laughter opens us to others. This bodily response to cringe comedies interrupts the fantasies of the male gaze and makes space for spectators to acknowledge the excessive, complicated, and seemingly shameful realities of female desire. My primary example is Jill Soloway's television adaptation of Chris Kraus's I Love Dick, a series that builds on the feminist legacy of avant-garde director Catherine Breillat. Departing from politically correct narratives and comforting or sentimental affect, I Love Dick achieves feminist community through the appeal, the cringe, and the irruption of laughter.

Keywords

Feminist filmcomedydesireLuce IrigaraySimone de Beauvoir
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 107 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Lori Marso is the recipient of the APSA Politics, Literature, and Film Section's Pamela Jensen book award for her recent publication, Politics with Beauvoir (Duke 2017). She also received the Wilson Carey McWilliams award for Politics, Literature, and Film for her “Dear Dick” article now appearing in Politics & Gender. She presented an earlier version of this article at the American Political Science Association Meeting in 2017 and at the Johns Hopkins Political Theory workshop in early 2018. She would like to thank several people for helpful comments on these two occasions and whom she solicited separately: Bonnie Honig, Jane Bennett, Sam Chambers, Perry Moskowitz, Davide Panagia, Jennifer Culbert, William Connolly, Luci Lobe, George Shulman, Lida Maxwell, Laurie Naranch, Torrey Shanks, and Tom Lobe. She especially thanks Mary Caputi and three anonymous reviewers for Politics & Gender..

References

REFERENCES

de Beauvoir, Simone. [1949] 2011. The Second Sex. Trans. Borde, Constance and Malovany-Chevallier, Sheila. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Berlant, Lauren. 1998. “Intimacy: A Special Issue.” Critical Inquiry 24 (2): 281–88.Google Scholar
Berlant, Lauren, and Ngai, Sianne. 2017. “Comedy Has Issues.” Critical Inquiry 43: 233–49.Google Scholar
Bradshaw, Peter. 1999. “Romance.” The Guardian, October 8. https://www.theguardian.com/film/1999/oct/08/5 (accessed July 2, 2018).Google Scholar
Brinkema, Eugenie. 2006. “Celluloid Is Sticky: Sex, Death, Materiality, Metaphysics (in Some Films by Catherine Breillat).” Women: A Cultural Review 17 (2): 147–70.Google Scholar
Constable, Liz. 2004. “Unbecoming Sexual Desires for Women Becoming Sexual Subjects: Simone de Beauvoir (1949) and Catherine Breillat (1999).” MLN 119 (4): 672–95.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. [1974] 1985a. Speculum of the Other Woman. Trans. Gill, Gillian C.. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. [1977] 1985b. This Sex Which Is Not One. Trans. Porter, Catherine. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Frank, Priscilla. 2017. “Your Guide to the Feminist Films and Video Art Featured in ‘I Love Dick’: The Art History Lesson Begins Here.” Huffington Post, May 12. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/i-love-dick-feminist-art_us_590232c9e4b0af6d718cc8b4 (accessed July 2, 2018).Google Scholar
Gorton, Kristyn. 2007. “The Point of View of Shame: Re-viewing Female Desire in Catherine Breillat's Romance (1999) and Anatomy of Hell (2004).” Studies in European Cinema 4 (2): 111–24.Google Scholar
Harper, Phillip Brian. 2015. Abstractionist Aesthetics: Artistic Form and Social Critique in African American Culture. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Honig, Bonnie, and Stears, Marc. 2011. “The New Realism: From Modus Vivendi to Justice.” In Political Philosophy versus History? Contexualism and Real Politics in Contemporary Political Thought, eds. Floyd, Jonathon and Stears, Marc. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 177–205.Google Scholar
Ince, Katherine. 2006. “Is Sex Comedy or Tragedy? Directing Desire and Female Auteurship in the Cinema of Catherine Breillat.” In Thinking through Cinema: Film as Philosophy, eds. Smith, Murray and Wartenberg, Thomas E.. London: Blackwell, 157–64.Google Scholar
Karlyn, Kathleen Rowe. 1995. The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Lane, Anthony. 2008. “Carrie.” The New Yorker, June 9 and 16. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/09/carrie (accessed July 2, 2018).Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Catherine A. 1989. “Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: ‘Pleasure under Patriarchy.’” Ethics 99 (2): 314–46.Google Scholar
Marso, Lori Jo, 2017. Politics with Beauvoir: Freedom in the Encounter. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Mizejewski, Linda. 2014. Pretty/Funny: Women Comedians and Body Politics. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Mulvey, Laura. 1989.Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Mulvey, Laura. 2006. Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image. London: Reaktion Books.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Emily. 2017. “What Women Want on ‘I Love Dick.’” The New Yorker, June 26. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/what-women-want-on-i-love-dick (accessed July 2, 2018).Google Scholar
Sandberg, Sheryl. 2013. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. 2017. How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Chicago: Haymarket Books.Google Scholar
Wheatley, Catherine. 2010. “Contested Interactions: Watching Catherine Breillat's Scenes of Sexual Violence.” Journal for Cultural Research 14 (1): 27–41.Google Scholar
Willet, Cynthia, and Willet, Julia. 2013. “The Seriously Erotic Politics of Laughter: Bitches, Whores and Other Fumerists.” In Philosophical Feminism and Popular Culture, eds. Crasnow, Sharon and Waugh, Joanne. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 15–36.Google Scholar
Wilson, Emma. 2002. “Deforming Femininity: Catherine Breillat's Romance.” In France on Film: Reflections on Popular French Cinema, ed. Mazdon, Lucy. London: Wallflower Press, 145–57.Google Scholar