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Feminist Cringe Comedy: Dear Dick, The Joke Is on You

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2018

Lori Marso
Lori Marso*
Affiliation:
Union College
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Abstract

Feminist cringe comedies eschew the conventions of romance and sentimentality in favor of comedy that discomforts. Cringe comedies are one example of what I call feminism's visual realisms, so named for doing feminist political work by evoking laughter and the cringe. The cringe pulls us inward in our posture, while laughter opens us to others. This bodily response to cringe comedies interrupts the fantasies of the male gaze and makes space for spectators to acknowledge the excessive, complicated, and seemingly shameful realities of female desire. My primary example is Jill Soloway's television adaptation of Chris Kraus's I Love Dick, a series that builds on the feminist legacy of avant-garde director Catherine Breillat. Departing from politically correct narratives and comforting or sentimental affect, I Love Dick achieves feminist community through the appeal, the cringe, and the irruption of laughter.

Keywords

Feminist filmcomedydesireLuce IrigaraySimone de Beauvoir
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 107 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2018 

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Footnotes

Lori Marso is the recipient of the APSA Politics, Literature, and Film Section's Pamela Jensen book award for her recent publication, Politics with Beauvoir (Duke 2017). She also received the Wilson Carey McWilliams award for Politics, Literature, and Film for her “Dear Dick” article now appearing in Politics & Gender. She presented an earlier version of this article at the American Political Science Association Meeting in 2017 and at the Johns Hopkins Political Theory workshop in early 2018. She would like to thank several people for helpful comments on these two occasions and whom she solicited separately: Bonnie Honig, Jane Bennett, Sam Chambers, Perry Moskowitz, Davide Panagia, Jennifer Culbert, William Connolly, Luci Lobe, George Shulman, Lida Maxwell, Laurie Naranch, Torrey Shanks, and Tom Lobe. She especially thanks Mary Caputi and three anonymous reviewers for Politics & Gender..

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