Suzanne Leonard | Simmons University (original) (raw)
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Papers by Suzanne Leonard
Keywords for Media Studies
The Craft of Criticism, 2018
Interrogating Postfeminism, 2020
Television & New Media
After a series of vile tweets, in 2018 comedienne Roseanne Barr was summarily dismissed from her ... more After a series of vile tweets, in 2018 comedienne Roseanne Barr was summarily dismissed from her eponymous sitcom Roseanne, a self-styled reboot of the original U.S. television show (running from 1988 to 1997). While Barr’s firing may seem like a rarified event, my concern is with the vexed position of the unruly comedienne in a paradoxical cultural moment in which feminist activism has impacted the media industries, yet misogyny and xenophobia are blatantly incarnated in U.S. political leadership. Barr’s brand of unapologetic comedy served as a foundational heuristic for the development of feminist television studies, yet her politics have been increasingly revealed as abhorrent. This article examines this puzzling disconnect between progressive political gains around gender, class, body size, and sexuality in the realm of media personalities, products, and theories, and the seemingly intractable position of regressive racism, a conflation that Barr’s brand of toxic provocation bot...
University of Illinois Press
This chapter explores how Bethenny Frankel's stabilization as an icon coincided with a sharp ... more This chapter explores how Bethenny Frankel's stabilization as an icon coincided with a sharp increase in reality television's encouragement for stars to monetize their so-called “personal lives” and with a distinctive phase of capitalistic production where entrepreneurship of the self reaped a compelling combination of economic and affective reward. In this respect, what may appear as the rising stardom of a singular, idiosyncratic personality should instead be read as having particular ramifications for feminized media culture. Dovetailing with an early-twenty-first-century cultural moment dominated by a worldwide economic recession, Frankel's success illustrates that economies of self can be leveraged as platforms on which to model female self-actualization, a pathway that inevitably involves the accrual of monetary gain.
Feminist Media Studies, 2014
Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity, 2014
Screening the Dark Side of Love, 2012
MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 2004
... more traditional or celebratory narratives of Chinese people, in part because he pictures him... more ... more traditional or celebratory narratives of Chinese people, in part because he pictures himself participating in an altogether different cultural legacy: "Donald Duk wants to live the late-night life in old black-and-white movies and talk with his feet like Fred Astaire" (1). Because ...
Feminist Media Studies, 2014
Interrogating postfeminism: gender and the politics …, 2007
... agency executive, unexpectedly inherits her dead sis-ter's children, a plot devi... more ... agency executive, unexpectedly inherits her dead sis-ter's children, a plot device, which, a la the 1980s phenomenon Baby Boom, teaches her" how to be a mom," whereas 13 Going onjo offers a time travel nar-rative that affords thirteen-year-old Jenna Rink (Jennifer Garner) a ...
Keywords for Media Studies
The Craft of Criticism, 2018
Interrogating Postfeminism, 2020
Television & New Media
After a series of vile tweets, in 2018 comedienne Roseanne Barr was summarily dismissed from her ... more After a series of vile tweets, in 2018 comedienne Roseanne Barr was summarily dismissed from her eponymous sitcom Roseanne, a self-styled reboot of the original U.S. television show (running from 1988 to 1997). While Barr’s firing may seem like a rarified event, my concern is with the vexed position of the unruly comedienne in a paradoxical cultural moment in which feminist activism has impacted the media industries, yet misogyny and xenophobia are blatantly incarnated in U.S. political leadership. Barr’s brand of unapologetic comedy served as a foundational heuristic for the development of feminist television studies, yet her politics have been increasingly revealed as abhorrent. This article examines this puzzling disconnect between progressive political gains around gender, class, body size, and sexuality in the realm of media personalities, products, and theories, and the seemingly intractable position of regressive racism, a conflation that Barr’s brand of toxic provocation bot...
University of Illinois Press
This chapter explores how Bethenny Frankel's stabilization as an icon coincided with a sharp ... more This chapter explores how Bethenny Frankel's stabilization as an icon coincided with a sharp increase in reality television's encouragement for stars to monetize their so-called “personal lives” and with a distinctive phase of capitalistic production where entrepreneurship of the self reaped a compelling combination of economic and affective reward. In this respect, what may appear as the rising stardom of a singular, idiosyncratic personality should instead be read as having particular ramifications for feminized media culture. Dovetailing with an early-twenty-first-century cultural moment dominated by a worldwide economic recession, Frankel's success illustrates that economies of self can be leveraged as platforms on which to model female self-actualization, a pathway that inevitably involves the accrual of monetary gain.
Feminist Media Studies, 2014
Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity, 2014
Screening the Dark Side of Love, 2012
MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 2004
... more traditional or celebratory narratives of Chinese people, in part because he pictures him... more ... more traditional or celebratory narratives of Chinese people, in part because he pictures himself participating in an altogether different cultural legacy: "Donald Duk wants to live the late-night life in old black-and-white movies and talk with his feet like Fred Astaire" (1). Because ...
Feminist Media Studies, 2014
Interrogating postfeminism: gender and the politics …, 2007
... agency executive, unexpectedly inherits her dead sis-ter's children, a plot devi... more ... agency executive, unexpectedly inherits her dead sis-ter's children, a plot device, which, a la the 1980s phenomenon Baby Boom, teaches her" how to be a mom," whereas 13 Going onjo offers a time travel nar-rative that affords thirteen-year-old Jenna Rink (Jennifer Garner) a ...