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Unlikeable Female Characters
Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate | Anna Bogutskaya
7 posts | 7 read | 5 to read
"A fresh feminist appraisal of the pop culture canon." Publishers Weekly How bitches, trainwrecks, shrews, and crazy women have taken over pop culture and liberated women from having to be nice. Female characters throughout history have been burdened by the moral trap that is likeability. Any woman who dares to reveal her messy side has been treated as a cautionary tale. Today, unlikeable female characters are everywhere in film, TV, and wider pop culture. For the first time ever, they are being accepted by audiences and even showered with industry awards. We are finally accepting that women aregaspfully fledged human beings. How did we get to this point? Unlikeable Female Characters traces the evolution of highly memorable female characters, examining what exactly makes them popular, how audiences have reacted to them, and the ways in which pop culture is finally allowing us to celebrate the complexities of being a woman. Anna Bogutskaya, film programmer, broadcaster, and co-founder of the horror film collective and podcast The Final Girls, takes us on a journey through popular film, TV, and music, looking at the nuances of womanhood on and off-screen to reveal whether pop cultureand societyis finally ready to embrace complicated women. Praise for Unlikeable Female Characters: "Fascinating, insightful, and kick-ass." Emma Jane Unsworth, internationally bestselling author of Grown Ups and Animals "Beautifully written." Chelsea G. Summers, author of A Certain Hunger "Part-cultural expos, part-Taylor Swift album." Clarisse Loughrey, Chief Film Critic at The Independent "Brilliant masterpiece breaking down the tired tropes of TV and beyond." Aparna Shewakramani, author of She's Unlikeable and star of Indian Matchmaking
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Kimberlone
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Mehso-so

I never felt like the author had anything really all that insightful to say about the female character archetypes she sought to examine in this book. There were some sections more interesting to me than others, but I did find myself skimming a lot in some parts. The author‘s inclination to dissect historical/period characters from an intersectional/2024 modern feminist lens was flimsy at best and disingenuous at worst.

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shawnmooney
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REPollock
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Pickpick

Honestly this probably would have been 5* if I‘d read the book instead of listening to the audiobook. Ironically I found the narrator (who is not the author) unlikeable.

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Brooke_H
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Pickpick

Breakdowns of nine "negative" tropes characteristically pushed onto female characters in pop culture. Examples from mostly films and TV shows for each one are given. Sometimes the plots of these are broken down kind of exhaustively. (Prepare for every movie and TV show in which an "unlikeable" woman appears to be completely spoiled. LOL) But it was very conversational and interesting.

25 likes1 stack add
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Brooke_H
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Pickpick

Breakdowns of nine "negative" tropes characteristically pushed onto female characters in pop culture. Examples from mostly films and TV shows for each one are given. Sometimes the plots of these are broken down kind of exhaustively. (Prepare for every movie and TV show in which an "unlikeable" woman appears to be completely spoiled. LOL) But it was very conversational and interesting.

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NotCool
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Mehso-so

This author and I do not read the same books or like the same movies. There‘s some interesting things here. But the author just called Kat from 10 Things I Hate About You a “pick me” twice and I‘m ready to riot.

8 likes1 stack add
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kaysworld1
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The woman pop culture want you to hate.
This one sounds very interesting.

#bookrecommend
#booktimerecommendations
#femaleauthors
#books
#reading

29 likes2 stack adds