Men Who Hate Women and Women Who Kick Their Asses

Description

Stieg Larsson was an unabashed feminist in his personal and professional life and in the fictional world he created, but The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest are full of graphic depictions of violence against women, including stalking, sexual harassment, child abuse, rape, incest, serial murder, sexual slavery, and sex trafficking, committed by vile individual men and by corrupt, secretive institutions. How do readers and moviegoers react to these depictions, and what do they make of the women who fight back, the complex masculinities in the trilogy, and the ambiguous gender of the elusive Lisbeth Salander?

These lively and accessible essays expand the conversation in the blogosphere about the novels and films by connecting the controversies about gender roles to social trends in the real world.

Sujets

• Gender Studies
• Media Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Literature
• Sociology

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 15 juillet 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826518514
• Langue: English

Extrait

MEN WHO HATE WOMEN AND WOMEN WHO KICK THEIR ASSES
MEN WHO HATE WOMEN AND WOMEN WHO KICK THEIR ASSES
Stieg Larsson s Millennium Trilogy in Feminist Perspective
Edited by Donna King and Carrie Lee Smith
Vanderbilt University Press | Nashville
2012 by Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee 37235
All rights reserved
First printing 2012
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file
LC control number 2011038284
LC classification PT9876.22.A6933Z78 2012
Dewey class number 839.73 8-dc23
ISBN 978-0-8265-1849-1 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8265-1850-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-8265-1851-4 (e-book)
For Donna s son, Alex, who told her it was time for another book
For Carrie s husband, Sean, who listened to her talk endlessly about Stieg Larsson and this collection
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Misogyny and Mayhem
1 Always Ambivalent
Why Media Is Never Just Entertainment
Abby L. Ferber
2 Kick-Ass Feminism
Violence, Resistance, and Feminist Avengers in Larsson s Trilogy
Kristine De Welde
3 Lisbeth Salander as Final Girl in the Swedish Girl Who Films
Karen A. Ritzenhoff
4 Accounts of Violence against Women
The Potential of Realistic Fiction
Roberta Villal n
5 State Complicity in Men s Violence against Women
Patricia Yancey Martin
Part II. Gender and Power in the New Millennium
6 The Gender Ambiguity of Lisbeth Salander
Third-Wave Feminist Hero?
Judith Lorber
7 Third-Wave Rebels in a Second-Wave World
Polyamory, Gender, and Power
Mimi Schippers
8 Men Who Love Women
Pro-feminist Masculinities in the Millennium Trilogy
Michael Kimmel
9 Tiny, Tattooed, and Tough as Nails
Representations of Lisbeth Salander s Body
Catherine (Kay) G. Valentine
10 Hacker Republic
Cyberspace and the Feminist Appropriation of Technology
Sophie Statzel Bjork-James
11 Is This What Equality Looks Like?
Working Women in the Millennium Trilogy
Diane E. Levy
Part III. Swedish Perspectives
12 Corporations, the Welfare State, and Covert Misogyny in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Anna Westerst hl Stenport and Cecilia Ovesdotter Alm
13 Lisbeth Salander and Her Swedish Crime Fiction Sisters
Stieg Larsson s Hero in a Genre Context
Kerstin Bergman
14 Is Mikael Blomkvist the Man of the Millennium?
A Swedish Perspective on Masculinity and Feminism in Larsson s Millennium Trilogy
Sara K rrholm
Part IV. Readers Responses
15 An Open Letter to the Next Stieg Larsson
LeeAnn Kriegh
16 Pippi and Lisbeth
Fictional Heroes across Generations
Meika Loe
17 Feminist Bloggers Kick Larsson s Ass
Reading Resistance Online
Jessie Daniels
18 Feminist Avenger or Male Fantasy?
Reading the Reception of the Millennium Trilogy
Caryn Murphy
Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
This book was conceived and birthed in feminist collaboration. We especially thank the members of Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS). Their enthusiastic and inspiring responses to Donna s online query about the Millennium trilogy provided not only the idea for this book but the connections and contributions that made it real. We also thank Leslie Hossfeld and Carole Counihan for their early encouragement, and Michael Ames, our editor at Vanderbilt University Press, for believing in this project right from the beginning. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge Carrie s course release award from the Faculty Grants Committee, Millersville University, and Donna s summer research initiative award from the College of Arts and Sciences, University of North Carolina Wilmington.
Introduction
M en Who Hate Women and Women Who Kick Their Asses got its start in the summer of 2010, when the final installment of the Millennium trilogy was released in the United States, fueling sales of all three volumes. People could be seen reading Stieg Larsson s books on planes, in trains, at the beach, in backyard lounge chairs, and in bed, sitting up late into the night. What struck us in our own readings of Larsson was the unexpected combination of familiar crime fiction devices-rape, murder, mayhem, etc., often at women s expense and described in excruciating detail-served up with a distinctly feminist flavor and with some remarkable feminist characters. The juxtaposition was jarring, yet strangely compelling, and the question it raised more than any other was What do other feminists think about these books?
The Millennium trilogy revolves around two main protagonists, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. In book 1, we are introduced to Blomkvist, a middle-aged investigative journalist recently convicted of libeling a powerful businessman. In trying to extricate himself from this legal mess, he crosses paths with Henrik Vanger, a formerly powerful industrialist who offers to support Blomkvist in exchange for help in unraveling a family mystery. Through his involvement with the Vanger family, Blomkvist eventually meets Lisbeth Salander, a freelance hacker and investigator with a punk, tattooed appearance and a mysterious past. As the trilogy unfolds, we learn more about Salander and her troubled background, which includes a horrifically abusive father and a victimized mother, a sadistic state psychiatrist who enjoyed torturing her while she was under his care, a guardian who rapes her, a violent and thuggish half-brother, and a corrupt criminal justice system intent on prosecuting her for murders she did not commit. Salander saves Blomkvist s life early in the trilogy, and Blomkvist later gathers a small but devoted group of friends and allies to work on Salander s behalf.
Along the way, we meet a remarkable cast of supporting characters. There is Erika Berger, who is Blomkvist s friend, his married lover, his colleague, and his editor in chief at Millennium , and Miriam Wu, a half-Swedish, half-Asian lesbian with whom Salander is both friend and lover. There are good men (such as Salander s first guardian and her former boss) and there are bad men (such as her father, her half-brother, and a cast of assorted goons and thugs). We meet strong women who stand up for themselves and defend themselves, and we meet many nameless women who are victims of men s sexual abuse and human trafficking.
Some critics argue that many of the trilogy s characters are one-dimensional and lack complexity. For instance, Salander s father and half-brother are simply evil and devoid of any goodness. In contrast, Salander s first guardian is a kind and gentle man who views her as an equal and provides her with wise counsel. While some characters lack nuance, Larsson s ability to pack many different social issues and controversies into his complex stories keeps us talking about them. Violence against women takes center stage, and Larsson also examines shoddy journalism, out-of-control capitalism, incompetent law enforcement, and a Swedish state that fails to protect its citizens. Racism, sexism, the role of cutting-edge technology, and the ability of hackers to penetrate into any system are also some of the topics he addresses. While Salander attracts most of the attention from critics, Larsson s wide-ranging social critiques strike us as equally responsible for popular interest in the trilogy.
Men Who Hate Women and Women Who Kick Their Asses uses a variety of feminist approaches to examine the tensions inherent in many of the issues Larsson s work raises. For example, is the explicit portrayal of violence against women a predictable convention intended to sell the books? Is it simply encouraging voyeurism? Or is Larsson providing an unvarnished view of a harsh reality that more people need to recognize in order to stop the violence? Is Salander a hero for women everywhere, with her gender ambiguity and her feminist avenging power? Or is she a cautionary tale about body hatred and the consequences of going it alone in the face of sexual abuse and harassment? Is Sweden a bastion of social progressivism, gender equity, and sexual freedom? Or is it a haven for reactionary misogynists, neoliberal free-marketeers, and corrupt state officials?
Larsson s work also raises broader questions about the relationship between individuals and society. We see various characters challenging social norms. Salander is perhaps the best example of this: she designs her appearance to be decidedly unfeminine and nonprofessional, she scorns established social institutions, and she adheres to her own set of rules about ethics and justice. Blomkvist and Berger s relationship is clearly outside the norms of monogamy or adultery, women such as Harriet Vanger are successful corporate leaders, and the misfits of the underground group Hacker Republic uncover hidden secrets and rescue friends.
Yet, there are also many characters who fail to confront or change societal norms. Salander herself displays a strong unease with her body and decides to get breast implants. Berger is unable to transform the aggressively hypermasculine workplace culture of mainstream journalism, Harriet Vanger has to fake her own death to escape from her sadistically abusive brother, and the hackers-while successful at bringing down corrupt and unsavory individuals-fail to transform existing social structures.
How do we make sense of this? Larsson portrays a complex world in which defying norms is not a straightforward matter, and social structures seem impervious to change. Even as some are challenged, others are reinforced (w