Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession

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A collection of poignant, perceptive essays that expertly blends the personal and political in an exploration of American culture through the lens of our obsession with dead women.In her debut collection, Alice Bolin turns a critical eye to literature and pop culture, the way media consumption reflects American society, and her own place within it From essays on Joan Didion and James Baldwin to Twin Peaks, Britney Spears, and Serial, Bolin illuminates our widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies dead and alive are used as props to bolster a man s story.From chronicling life in Los Angeles to dissecting the Dead Girl Show to analyzing literary witches and werewolves, this collection challenges the narratives we create and tell ourselves, delving into the hazards of toxic masculinity and those of white womanhood Beginning with the problem of dead women in fiction, it expands to the larger problems of living women both the persistent injustices they suffer and the oppression that white women help perpetrate.Sharp, incisive, and revelatory, Dead Girls is a much needed dialogue on women s role in the media and in our culture. Download Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession By Alice Bolin – kino-fada.fr Let s call this one two and a half stars Alice Bolin is smart and talented I can say that confidently but she s doing too much at one time How she landed on the title is completely beyond me, because the Dead Girls to which she is referring are mentioned only sparingly A better title for this book would be I Moved to L.A and it Made Me Sad, with the subtitle Can I mention every one of Joan Didion s published works in 250 pages And that s not to say that I WOULDN T want to read that Let s call this one two and a half stars Alice Bolin is smart and talented I can say that confidently but she s doing too much at one time How she landed on the title is completely beyond me, because the Dead Girls to which she is referring are mentioned only sparingly A better title for this book would be I Moved to L.A and it Made Me Sad, with the subtitle Can I mention every one of Joan Didion s published works in 250 pages And that s not to say that I WOULDN T want to read that bo...Mispackaged and mismarketed, Dead Girls is at its most interesting when author Alice Bolin strays from her essay collection s ostensible theme The pieces on representations of white girlhood and womanhood in popular culture stand out as highlights, from Bolin s analysis of Britney Spears s music videos to her discussion of MTV reality shows By contrast, the essays on the trope of the so called Dead Girl are intellectually lazy, in that the author raises several promising claims but fails to Mispackaged and mismarketed, Dead Girls is at its most interesting when author Alice Bolin strays from her essay collection s ostensible theme The pieces on representations of white girlhood and womanhood in popular culture stand out as highlights, from Bolin s analysis of Britney Spears s music videos to her discussion of MTV reality shows By contrast, the essays on the trope of the so called Dead Girl are inte...I cannot believe I m only giving this two stars How is that even possible I was so sure this would be one of my top reads of 2018 I felt like I read a different book than what was advertised though.I wanted to read Dead Girls based off the part of its blurb that saidFrom essays on Joan Didion and James Baldwin to Twin Peaks, Britney Spears, and Serial, Bolin illuminates our widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies dead and alive are I cannot believe I m only giving this two stars How is that even possible I was so sure this would be one of my top reads of 2018 I felt like I read a different book than what was advertised though.I wanted to read Dead Girls based off the part of its blurb that saidFrom essays on Joan Didion and James Baldwin to Twin Peaks, Britney Spears, and Serial, Bolin illuminates our widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies dead and alive are used as props to bolster a man s story Unfortunately, only about 25% of the book is actually about that And that s being generous.The other three quarters of the book is about the author s experience of moving to Los Angeles, her various LA roommat...I received this book for free as part of an Instagram tour TLC Book Tours specifically I did to promote the book.Despite the title, this isn t really a book about dead girls It sa book about girls in pop culture, but also a book about the author s experiences in LA However, even that doesn t seem to adequately describe this book It s kind of just a collection of essays that are very loosely connected Basically, I felt a bit confused by this collection The essays themselves were I received this book for free as part of an Instagram tour TLC Book Tours specifically I did to promote the book.Despite the title, this isn t really a book about dead girls It sa book about girls in pop culture, but also a book about the author s experiences in LA However, even tha...Even though this book didn t examine the dead girl trope as much as I wanted it to, it s still an incredible examination of the forces that create an environment that allows the dead girl trope to thrive She also looks at the ways white women and white feminism are both trapped by, perpetuators, and by products of the male gaze Honestly, it s one of the most critically interrogative essay collections I ve read in a while She even points out and examines the inherent problems of the personal Even though this book didn t examine the dead girl trope as much as I wanted it to, it s still an incredible examination of the forces that create an environment that allows the dead girl trope to thrive She also looks at the ways white women and white feminism are both trapped by, perpetuators, and by products of the male gaze Honestly, it s one of the most critically interrogative essay collections I ve read in a while She even points out and ex...I thought this would be a convicting critique of a genre I really like, but the real reasons I had to stop reading was a she appeared to have watched read at least two of the subjects she was critiquing maybe one time and her analysis shows it She talks about Twin Peaks typical centering of the male narrative and she s totally right But she didn t bring in the panned, unpopular film follow up Fire Walk with Me, which tells the story of Laura Palmer s death entirely from her POV The fact I thought this would be a convicting critique of a genre I really like, but the real reasons I had to stop reading was a she appeared to have watched read at least two of the subjects she was critiquing maybe one time and her analysis shows it She talks about Twin Peaks typical centering of the male narrative and she s totally right But she didn t bring in the panned, unpopular film follow up Fire Walk with Me, which tells the story of Laura Palmer s death entirely from her POV The fact that she completely disregarded this piece makes her complicit in her own criticism why even talk about an attempt to reframe a male centric narrative Why did nobody want to see that What were the shortcomings of a man s attempt to tell a story from the dead girl viewpoint What a waste.Also she writes a fiveish page essay about how The Big Lebowski is ...3.5 5 Alice Bolin is undoubtedly a very talented literary critic and writer and I enjoyed reading this overall, but I can t help but feel misled by the marketing of this book The subtitle and blurb promise a thorough exploration of the Dead Girl trope so prevalent in pop culture, but only a couple of essays actually focus on this Most of the other texts are about Los Angeles and depictions o...i don t understand how she ended up with the title of this book i d say about 40 pages are dedicated to the american obsession of the dead girl trope and then the rest segues into bolin s self indulgent memoir that truly has no direction she writes about her father, then her move to LA, her boring white girl problems, AND THEN throws in basically every piece joan didion has every written, seeming to idolize her, then drags her for being classist, which actually made me laugh out loud because ...The blurb on the back of the book explains that the book will take you through dead women in fiction and the larger problems of living women And I suppose it does, kind of, do that, starting by dipping its toes in the waters of Dead Girl Shows like True Detective and Twin Peaks, then devolving into dissections of books, movies, and songs where women have some sort of troubling presence all lo...This isn t quite the meditation on dead girls and women as a particular obsession of our culture that I wanted There are a handful of essays that touch on it, but this is mostly the navel gazing of a privileged white girl who read too much Joan Didion, moved to Los Angele...

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession
  • 17 September 2019
  • ebook
  • 288 pages
  • 006265716X
  • Alice Bolin
  • Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession