To dissent against Medovoi, I want to play his discussion off of Susan Douglas’s. In particular I want to discuss two things: the depiction of “rebel girl” characters and the “How do we get to the identity politics movement of the 60s/70s?” discussion from Medovoi’s conclusion.
First, the “rebel girls.” Medovoi talks about four in detail: Silver from Girls Town, Sarah Jane from Imitation of Life, and the titular Gidget and Tomboy. In the case of each, Medovoi articulates how the character in question “rebels” against things like traditional femininity, domestic suburban familiality, and heteronormative relationships with boys. Silver, for instance, eludes “good girl” chastity and enjoys a certain agency granted by her sexuality, although ultimately the relationships she ends up with are of a much more desexualized, familial nature. Tomboy is able to be “one of the guys” in the Harps gang and precariously negotiates the hinterland between the misogynistic and sexually aggressive men and the powerless, promiscuous “debs” whom they use for sex; Tomboy acknowledges that to enter into a sexual relationship would feminize her, make her a “deb” and thus powerless.
Now, I couldn’t help but wonder how Douglas would respond to these characters. I believe she would respond to them in much the same way that she responds to girl characters from Peter Pan, Father Knows Best, and so on. Douglas’s point in criticizing such characters is clear: they offer girls in the audience constricting and often conflicting options for femininity: “American women today,” Douglas explains, “are a bundle of contradictions because much of the media imagery we grew up with was itself filled with mixed messages about what women should and should not do, what women could and could not be” (9). In light of this, I think Douglas would look at Medovoi’s “girl rebels” and conclude the same thing: they’re just as much a “bundle of contradictions” as non-rebel girls and don’t offer full or appealing opportunities for womanhood. Their sexuality is a problem, their trying to have power or be men’s equals is a problem, and their negotiation of having a full life and a romantic relationship is a problem. So, rebels they might be, but positive women characters they’re not.
Granted, Medovoi does concede, “This overarching narrative of girls in revolt possessed both limitations and strengths (314, emphasis added). He’s right here: we shouldn’t expect—and he doesn’t suggest—that these 50s “girl rebels” can be seen as great, strong, full, feminist role models. Still it seems clear that these “rebel girl” characters don’t offer girls in the audience any better identification than their more passive, traditional counterparts.
Secondly, we have Medovoi’s conclusion, in which he takes a stab at a question he introduces in the introduction to his book: how can we understand the 60s/70s identity politics movement as having grown from, or as somehow rooted in, these 50s rebels? Ultimately I didn’t find his efforts to answer this question mollifying. Granted, to be fair once again to Medovoi, that’s one hell of a tough question to answer. Still, he spends most of his time in the conclusion describing what happened in the 50s-present “identity movement” rather than suggesting how that big change came about. He offers us various constitutive elements for us to consider: Fordism, de-industrialization, third-world freedom struggles, the move away from “liberation” and toward “multiculturalism” and “diversity” rhetoric. But these elements still don’t answer the question; I’m still not clear on what 50s rebellion has to do with identity politics movements.
Douglas does a much better job of this. Although arguably her task is easier, she establishes a link between the 50s and feminism in a straightforward, convincing way: “The truth is that growing up female with the mass media helped to make me a feminist, and it helped to make millions of other women feminists too [. . .]” (7). After her brief discussion of the “identity crisis” that media brought about in women of this era, I was convinced. Feminism came about, Douglas tells us, partly due to women viewing, reacting to, responding to, and rejecting mediated ideology about womanhood in the 50s-60s. Medovoi has nothing to offer like this.
Medovoi comes closest to actually addressing the question when he says that 50s rebels “were not very different from the political activists of the late sixties and early seventies, excepting for the vital fact that the latter’s ‘emergent selves’ deployed the politicized value of ‘identity’ on behalf of social constituencies whose interests were strongly served for several decades by the force of its claims” (323). Um, okay, Medovoi. But what we really want to know is, how and why did that “politicized value of ‘identity’” change in the 1950-1970 scene? How did a teenage boy’s disappointment in his dad’s frilly domesticity become “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”? Can we, as a class, consider some possible ways to respond to this question?
First, the “rebel girls.” Medovoi talks about four in detail: Silver from Girls Town, Sarah Jane from Imitation of Life, and the titular Gidget and Tomboy. In the case of each, Medovoi articulates how the character in question “rebels” against things like traditional femininity, domestic suburban familiality, and heteronormative relationships with boys. Silver, for instance, eludes “good girl” chastity and enjoys a certain agency granted by her sexuality, although ultimately the relationships she ends up with are of a much more desexualized, familial nature. Tomboy is able to be “one of the guys” in the Harps gang and precariously negotiates the hinterland between the misogynistic and sexually aggressive men and the powerless, promiscuous “debs” whom they use for sex; Tomboy acknowledges that to enter into a sexual relationship would feminize her, make her a “deb” and thus powerless.
Now, I couldn’t help but wonder how Douglas would respond to these characters. I believe she would respond to them in much the same way that she responds to girl characters from Peter Pan, Father Knows Best, and so on. Douglas’s point in criticizing such characters is clear: they offer girls in the audience constricting and often conflicting options for femininity: “American women today,” Douglas explains, “are a bundle of contradictions because much of the media imagery we grew up with was itself filled with mixed messages about what women should and should not do, what women could and could not be” (9). In light of this, I think Douglas would look at Medovoi’s “girl rebels” and conclude the same thing: they’re just as much a “bundle of contradictions” as non-rebel girls and don’t offer full or appealing opportunities for womanhood. Their sexuality is a problem, their trying to have power or be men’s equals is a problem, and their negotiation of having a full life and a romantic relationship is a problem. So, rebels they might be, but positive women characters they’re not.
Granted, Medovoi does concede, “This overarching narrative of girls in revolt possessed both limitations and strengths (314, emphasis added). He’s right here: we shouldn’t expect—and he doesn’t suggest—that these 50s “girl rebels” can be seen as great, strong, full, feminist role models. Still it seems clear that these “rebel girl” characters don’t offer girls in the audience any better identification than their more passive, traditional counterparts.
Secondly, we have Medovoi’s conclusion, in which he takes a stab at a question he introduces in the introduction to his book: how can we understand the 60s/70s identity politics movement as having grown from, or as somehow rooted in, these 50s rebels? Ultimately I didn’t find his efforts to answer this question mollifying. Granted, to be fair once again to Medovoi, that’s one hell of a tough question to answer. Still, he spends most of his time in the conclusion describing what happened in the 50s-present “identity movement” rather than suggesting how that big change came about. He offers us various constitutive elements for us to consider: Fordism, de-industrialization, third-world freedom struggles, the move away from “liberation” and toward “multiculturalism” and “diversity” rhetoric. But these elements still don’t answer the question; I’m still not clear on what 50s rebellion has to do with identity politics movements.
Douglas does a much better job of this. Although arguably her task is easier, she establishes a link between the 50s and feminism in a straightforward, convincing way: “The truth is that growing up female with the mass media helped to make me a feminist, and it helped to make millions of other women feminists too [. . .]” (7). After her brief discussion of the “identity crisis” that media brought about in women of this era, I was convinced. Feminism came about, Douglas tells us, partly due to women viewing, reacting to, responding to, and rejecting mediated ideology about womanhood in the 50s-60s. Medovoi has nothing to offer like this.
Medovoi comes closest to actually addressing the question when he says that 50s rebels “were not very different from the political activists of the late sixties and early seventies, excepting for the vital fact that the latter’s ‘emergent selves’ deployed the politicized value of ‘identity’ on behalf of social constituencies whose interests were strongly served for several decades by the force of its claims” (323). Um, okay, Medovoi. But what we really want to know is, how and why did that “politicized value of ‘identity’” change in the 1950-1970 scene? How did a teenage boy’s disappointment in his dad’s frilly domesticity become “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”? Can we, as a class, consider some possible ways to respond to this question?
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