Unflinching, hard-charging feminist criticism.
A deep dive into misogyny in popular culture, from timeless myth to contemporary horror flicks.
The second book by feminist commentator Doyle (Trainwreck: The Women We Love To Hate, Mock, and Fear…and Why, 2016) is wide-ranging but operates from a simple premise: Western culture tends to perceive women as unruly monsters who can’t be trusted as girls, wives, or mothers. In exorcisms—and, by extension, the horror classic The Exorcist—Doyle observes a cultural urge to barricade girls from puberty and sexual independence. She draws a throughline from Celtic myth to Romantic poets to true-crime touchstones like the Laci Peterson case, showing how each represents a fear of women and urge to bring them to heel. In the case of serial killer Ed Gein (the inspiration for a host of horror tales, Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs most famously), Doyle notes how the blame for his actions often shifts to his mother, routinely portrayed as “fanatically religious, permanently enraged, a castrating, sexless, son-warping harpy.” The author sometimes approaches her source material, particularly movies, with wit and humor: She revels in rooting for the momma T. Rex in Jurassic Park and roasts Ben Kingsley’s turn in the terrible sci-fi film Species, as he “visibly chokes down every line of dialogue with a barely contained rage that says ‘I played Gandhi, damn it.’ ” But Doyle recognizes how much of our misogynistic, transphobic cultural id is revealed in our trashiest cultural products, and she never loses sight of how the social norms they promote have led to feelings of fear and entrapment at best and countless deaths at worst. The author’s accounting of the death of Anneliese Michel, the inspiration for The Exorcist, is especially chilling. A lengthy appendix serves as both a casebook of her sources and a recommendation list for further research both high (Julia Kristeva) and low (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).
Unflinching, hard-charging feminist criticism.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61219-792-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
How can the loss of the Chantbury Pyx, a priceless reliquary stolen from a Bath gallery, be related to the murder of Mrs. Pryce, a vicious old biddy whose complaint to Lance Tyler's private inquiry agency about flowers purloined from her garden makes it all too easy for Tyler's partner, Joanna Mackenzie, to identify her when she's struck down with a hammer? Inspector James Carrick, Joanna's former superior officer and former lover (she lost her CID job over the affair), is thunderstruck by the possibility that the same hammer may have been used in both crimes. He's struck in other, more dramatic ways as well: After a brutal attack in her home leaves Mackenzie nearly dead, Carrick, returning to the flat to check the windows, ends up joining her in sick bay. Which of Mrs. Pryce's neighbors—the sweet-toothed agoraphobe with a biker boyfriend, the boorish fan of raucous modern music, the nursing home matron whose cats have a high accident rate, the army veteran subject to blackouts, or Carrick's own retired schoolmistress—can be responsible for a series of felonies ranging from stolen flowers and poisoned cats to murder? Duffy (Who Killed Cock Robin?, 1990, etc.) etches her unlovely characters so sharply that it's a shame the plot keeps snatching you away from them just as you're getting nicely acquainted. Plucky, angry Mackenzie in particular would be well worth a sequel.
Pub Date: Dec. 16, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11295-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An alarming and inspiring message that will hopefully spur much-needed action.
The story of one woman’s call to ease the atrocious human suffering in the Congo.
Settling in Portland, Ore., in her late 20s, photographer Shannon thought her life was in place. Everything shifted, however, when she learned of the war and unthinkable tragedies taking place in the Congo, a conflict borne out of the Rwandan genocide that had become muted in the international community. Already running from her father’s death, she decided to run 30 miles and raise 30 sponsorships for Congolese women through Women for Women, an international NGO for female survivors of war. Hoping to spark a movement, she created a foundation called Run for Congo Women and traveled through the country to meet the women she helped sponsor. Shannon presents images of the uncensored horror stories that, to many Congolese, have become regrettably routine: Congo’s vile colonial history and the Rwandan genocide spillover that has caused the murders of more than five million Congolese people; children forced to kill and rape in their own communities; daily child deaths from easily curable illnesses; grisly murders of men and children in front of their wives and mothers; families burned alive inside their homes; women who must choose between rape and watching their children starve. The author writes from a place of determination and clarity, despair and breakdown, overwhelming love and hope. Juxtaposing brutality with beauty, Shannon’s direct prose is a stirring reminder that these horrors are real and ongoing.
An alarming and inspiring message that will hopefully spur much-needed action.Pub Date: April 5, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58005-296-2
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2010
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