Popular Culture & Feminist Pulps

Various: Slate has a critical review of Freethinkers, which I reviewed here. I replied here. The importance of care during the war on terror is suggested here, concerning problems with "evidence" used to seize an American lawyer for involvement in the Madrid bombings. Why the Medicare bill was a virtual "how not to" pass legislation is discussed in this report. An interesting discussion by Virginia Postrel of the "marriage penalty" and its application to gay marriage can be found here.

Disturbingly (for those of us guiltily enjoying the bloody payback), it suggests that what happened to Jennifer took away not her sanity but her humanity, leaving a calloused spot where her soul once was. ... The filmmaking is circa 1910, with silent-movie acting to match. I Spit on Your Grave makes people angry, disturbed, depressed (Ebert's word). Of course it does. The camera just stares, refusing to editorialize or to put a stylistic barrier between you and the cruelty. You are there, and you're not doing anything to stop it.

-- Review of I Spit On Your Grave, 1970s exploitation flick

A history professor once noted that pornographic (including various comments on lack of sexual prowess) underground comics and graffiti often was the most productive way to criticize the French royalty. This is just one example in which popular culture turns out to be a valuable commentary on social relations. For instance, though Scott Turow took part in and wrote a valuable book concerning a special commission set up in Illinois to examine capital punishment in that state, arguably his novels (including Reversible Errors, now a very good television movie, which concludes on Tuesday) were even more valuable. In fact, for good or ill, society arguably "learns" more about itself from fictional sources than nonfictional ones.

The value of certain sorts of popular culture surely is debatable, even if we accept their importance. I Spit On Your Grave, for instance, is one of the more controversial members of the exploitation genre that is often viewed as guilty pleasures. Likewise, the fact that gratuitous nudity in horror films grows out of their reflection of social norms about gender norms doesn't mean they send positive messages any more than the violence in Dirty Harry movies. All the same, popular sitcoms often examine important issues, even if the sitcoms themselves might be pretty trivial on various grounds. And, a look at the comics page of your local newspaper is sometimes more striking than the front pages, and not just Doonesbury.

The value of certain popular fiction genre is better accepted than others, and pulp novels (along with film noir) have for some time been of this character. During their heyday during the middle third of the 20th Century, pulps were seen as striking examinations of the social struggles of times, even as mainstream films and novels portrayed times of normalcy. The works examined the underside of society, the violence, sex, gender struggles, and so forth that was uncomfortably barely under the surface. The quasi-underground nature of the pulps also allowed them to examine material too controversial for mainstream literature. All the same, such works are generally seen as masculine, such as Chandler or Humphrey Bogart.

Feminist Press suggests differently with the re-release of a few works from the genre written by female authors (often, pulps -- so named because of the cheap paper they were written on -- were released under pseudonyms, so the sex of the author wasn't always clear). As explained by the interesting commentary supplied (each novel has an introduction from the publishers and an afterword commenting on the individual work), surely many pulps weren't great feminist works. They often followed stock themes that were if anything the opposite. FP in its "feminist pulp" series shows that many did provide strikingly modern examinations of the culture of the day.

The first three pulps in the series (more to come) include examinations of: working women torn between career and marriage (Skyscraper, written right after the Empire State Building was built; I have not yet read this book), dangerous men (In A Lonely Place, which inspired the Humphrey Bogart film, though the two are different in a key way), and young women moving to the big city (The Girls In 3-B). The final book examines the underside of the beat culture, provides a positive if 1950s style look at lesbianism,* and the underside of office romances as it describes what happens when three young women move to Chicago.

I found 3-B a well written, striking commentary of the times ... a good example of how fiction is a valuable way to get a taste of an era. In A Lonely Place was a bit lacking in way of plot, but quite interesting as a psychological look of a serial killer through his own eyes. The fact it was written by a woman and before modern day crime fiction made such a technique a typical one is particularly noteworthy. It too is a useful way to get a taste of its times, here post-WWII California, and the strong female characters adds value to the work.

Pulp and film noir is enjoyable on its own, but this series provides a useful perspective that provides an additional layer of meaning. A discussion of the series as well as a taste of its prose can be found here.

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* Topics such as lesbianism, interracial love, and other "forbidden" plots often were covered in pulp fiction, though usually as precautionary tales. The documentary Forbidden Love (1992) examines this issue, adding a "happy ending" that 3-B suggests actually was provided by a few select pulps of the day.