Bad girls

Bad girls–bad because of their aggressive sexuality, their violent tendencies, and their transgression of other social conventions–have largely been represented as the antagonists in our cultural texts (eg. the Lilith figure, the femme fatale). Yet these figures are increasingly being portrayed as protagonists and heroines across a range of popular media, and are being gathered together as the role models of "postfeminist" subcultures.

This interdisciplinary course will examine "bad girl" heroines of contemporary "postfeminist" popular culture with a focus on popular fiction and film, supplemented by popular music, comic books, television and webpages. We will concentrate on texts from the 1980s and 90s while briefly considering historical precedents for this figure. The central issues of sexuality, violence, and the body will be accompanied by other theoretical concerns such as the role of the reader versus the producer of these images; the gender of the creator(s); the relationship between subcultures and mainstream culture; the use of devices such as intertextuality, mimicry and appropriation; and the importance of genre (eg. the proliferation of these figures in crime novels, film noire, horror, science fiction and cyberpunk). The term "postfeminism" itself--whether it is an extension or a rejection of feminism--will be a central theoretical focus throughout the course.