Women are angry! Lizzie and Sarah as feminist critique

White, Rosie (2013) Women are angry! Lizzie and Sarah as feminist critique. Feminist Media Studies, 13 (3). pp. 415-426. ISSN 1468-0777

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Abstract

This essay examines the BBC comedy pilot Lizzie and Sarah as a dissonant account of contemporary femininities. With reference to work on the grotesque, and to contemporary television comedy's use of the grotesque as a strategy, I argue that this uncommissioned pilot episode offers an incisive critique of contemporary anxieties about middle-aged women and teenage girls. While the narrative employs parody and hyperbole to humorous ends, critical commentary around the show, from its producers and from broadsheet journalists, indicates that it overstepped boundaries in terms of its account of heterofemininity. Comparing Lizzie and Sarah to makeover shows on British television, the episode constitutes an ironic feminist makeover, with its protagonists choosing to kill their oppressors rather than submit to the disciplinary regime of heterofemininity. A close analysis of the dialogue, costumes and mise-en-scene is deployed to read this comedy as a scathing commentary on the continuing limitations of television femininities.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Online first.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	television, comedy, feminism, grotesque, age
Subjects:	L300 Sociology P300 Media studies
Department:	Faculties > Arts, Design and Social Sciences > Humanities
Depositing User:	Ay Okpokam
Date Deposited:	25 Feb 2013 16:52
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2019 19:24
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/11205

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