Study questions for Tania Modleski:

Tania Modleski Femininity as mas(s)querade: a feminist approach to mass culture

• 1. What does Modleski see as the role for feminist criticism in relation to the study of popular culture?

   

  2. How are mass culture and the feminine "bound" together?

   

  3. What does Modleski see as the limitations of the approach used by Ann Douglas in The Feminization of American Culture?

   

  4. Modleski proposes a feminist analysis of popular culture:

  "an alternative strategy which might consist of deconstructing the hierarchical relation that exists in the oppositions production/consumption and writerly/readerly in order to search out the radical potential of the subordinate terms, each of which ... is associated with the feminine."

  What does she mean by this?

  How does her analysis of Kiss of the Spider Woman illustrate her "alternative strategy"?

  What other oppositions (i.e. "production/consumption" etc.) are important for us to consider when thinking about popular culture?

   

  5. Baudrillard declares "the death of the social." Modleski disputes the value of this "revolution" for women. On pages 50-51, she points to the fact that "there is little reason to be sanguine about the possibilities of a revolution based on the mute tactics of the eternal "feminine." What are the implications of this argument?

   

  6. At the top of page 51 Nancy Miller is quoted. What is the main point she has to make?

   

  7. What is "phallogocentrism"? (Look up "phallus" "logos" "centrism.")

   

  8. "Women are victimized in many and complex ways in mass culture" (p51), according to Modleski. What examples can you think of which develop this argument?

   

  9. The conclusion of this essay points to the importance of "recognising and challenging the dubious sexual analogies that pervade a wide variety of discourses." What does Modleski mean by this?