The Villainesses covered in this anthology are certainly entertaining and compelling for many reasons. However, entertainment is not neutral, and as one can see, mass entertainment holds the values of a given time. It is not a precise mirror to the real, but these Villainesses, when taken in comparison, can shed light on how anger in women a powerful tool can be to show a lack of or excess of desire. A woman who desires something, even beyond revenge, can be dangerous to the status quo. Once thought of as less-than, lack of artistic value, mass culture reveals a lot about the pleasure that women gain from emotional, interrelational stories. The Villainesses cover the range of feminine desires; they may “suffer” from the trappings of womanhood or maybe railing against the curse of too much feminine embodiment. Elektra Abundance seeks revenge on her former partner and community for not allowing her to replicate what she sees as femininity; Valerie Solanas’ anger and revenge may seep in a desire to not express herself creatively and her perception that her political message may be impeded by masculine power.     

Dr. Kimberly Shaw may be a victim of her own success, succumbing to the pressure of the promise of having it all. To be a successful doctor, wife, and mother all at the same time is incongruent with the reality of her role as a woman, essentially making her “crazy” at the thought of losing one of those goals. Who, then, is the victim here? Blowing up an apartment complex is not forgivable, but that it is in the soap opera experience allows for a cathartic experience.

What does popular culture representation of women and anger do to the socialization of younger girls and teens? Does The Evil Twin revenge storyline in Sweet Valley High offer a relatable disruption to the continued message of perfection, beauty, and consumerism? These texts, and many more, provide a space of emotional experimentation of anger and catharsis for character and audience.

Full bibliography and further reading

Arthurs, Jane. “Sex and the City and Consumer Culture: Remediating Postfeminist Drama.” Feminist Media Studies 3, no. 1 (January 2003): 83–98.

Brown, Jeffrey A. Dangerous Curves: Action Heroines, Gender, Fetishism, and Popular Culture. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011.

Coddington, Lynn. “Wavering Between Worlds: Feminist Influences on the Romance Genre.” Paradoxa 3, no. 1–2 (1997): 58–77.

Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. Sexual Cultures. New York: New York University Press, 2005.

Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra. Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study. McFarland, Jefferson, N.C, 2011.

Hobson, Janell. Body as Evidence: Mediating Race, Globalizing Gender. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2012.

hooks, bell. “Introduction: Race Talk.” From Killing Rage: Ending Racism. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1995, pp. 1-7.

Miklitch, Robert. “Gen-X TV: Political-Libidinal Structures of Feeling in Melrose Place.” Journal of Film and Video 55, no. 1 (Sring 2013): 16–29.

Levine, Elana. Cupcakes, Pinterest, and Ladyporn: Feminized Popular Culture in the Early Twenty-First Century. University of Illinois Press, Chicago, 2015.

Modleski, Tania. “The Search for Tomorrow in Today’s Soap Operas.” In Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women. New York: Routledge, 2008, pp. 77-101.

Mumford, Laura S., and Inc NetLibrary. Love and Ideology in the Afternoon: Soap Opera, Women, and Television Genre. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1995.

Robertson, Pamela, 1964. Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna. Duke University Press, Durham, 1996.

Ross, Andrew. “Uses of Camp,” in No Respect: Intellectuals & Popular Culture. Routledge, 1989.

Russo, Mary J. The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, and Modernity. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Sellers, Susan. Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women’s Fiction. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Sonnet, Esther. “‘Erotic Fiction by Women for Women’: The Pleasures of Post-Feminist Heterosexuality.” Sexualities 2, no. 2 (April 1999): 167–87.

Spiers, Emily. Pop-Feminist Narratives: The Female Subject under Neoliberalism in North America, Britain, and Germany. First edition. Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs. Oxford, United Kingdom, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Rivers, Nicola. Postfeminism(s) and the Arrival of the Fourth Wave: Turning Tides. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Switzerland, 2017.

Serano, Julia. “Skirt Chasers: Why the Media Depicts the Trans Revolution in Lipstick and Heels”. In Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. 2007, Kindle Ed.

Swanstrom, Lisa. “Nora Unchained and “Margo Rising”: Evil Twins at the Limits of Genre in Francine Pascal’s Young Adult Franchise.” Extrapolation, vol. 58, 2017, pp. 181–208.

Tally, Margaret, Rise of the Anti-Heroine in TV’s Third Golden Age. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, GB, 2016.

Thwaites, Rachel. “Making a Choice or Taking a Stand? Choice Feminism, Political Engagement and the Contemporary Feminist Movement.” Feminist Theory 18, no. 1 (April 2017): 55–68.

Traister, Rebecca. Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger. New York, NY Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Warner, Sara. “Scummy Acts: Valerie Solanas’s Theater of the Ludicrous.” in Acts of Gaiety: LGBT Performance and the Politics of Pleasure. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2012, 31-71