Remaking Feminism: Or Why Is Postfeminism So Boring?

Abstract

This article poses questions which have exercised me over the past few years, partly because of my work with chick lit and other popular fiction, partly as a result of my experience of viewing and teaching chick flick film adaptations, and also because of my interests in the development of Second Wave feminist thought.1 The motivation to actually try to make sense of and connect these ideas came about in response to watching the recent remake of The Women (2008). This film might be viewed as an adaptation of both Cukor‘s classic 1939 film and Clare Boothe‘s 1936 play, which itself experienced a Broadway revival in 2002, starring Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon. The proximity of this film‘s appearance to the release of the film adaptation of Sex and the City (2008), invited comparisons between the two which yielded much common ground; in addition to these I will also reflect upon the remake of The Stepford Wives (Frank Oz, 2004; also a novel by Ira Levin, 1972) which again utilises a successful text from a previous era to arguably postfeminist ends