Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power and Popular Culture

by Jane Caputi

The essays in Goddesses and Monsters recognize popular culture as a primary repository of ancient mythic energies, images, narratives, personalities, icons, and archetypes.  Together, they take on the patriarchal myth, where serial killers are heroes, where goddesses—in the form of great white sharks, femmes fatales, and aliens—are ritually slaughtered, and where pornography is the core story underlying militarism, environmental devastation, and racism.  They also point to an alternative imagination of female power that still can be found behind the cult devotion given to Princess Diana and animating all the goddesses disguised as popular monsters, queen bitches, mammies, vamps, cyborgs, and sex bombs.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Mythology, Gender, Gender and Sexuality

448 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2004

Reviews

[Minli · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has a great title--however, it doesn't really describe what I read in the book. If it did, the title would be something like "Why American popular culture is so fucking messed up because of white male hegemony" because that's what it feels like. The tone was sometimes nonsensical, sometimes borderline offensive, most of the time I was rolling my eyes and going, "really?" There isn't much analysis of myth at all--or history, before the sexual revolution. Actually, the culture Caputi references mainly falls between the sexual revolution and the mid 90s, so maybe it will strike stronger chord with older folks.

Here's my thing with popular culture: I don't follow it. Vampires and werewolves? Don't care. Celebrity marriages and babies? So what. Reality tv is an entire different world to me. It's not that I am a snob, I just don't have a personal stake in it. I recognized a lot of the works up for analysis, but never watched or read them. Of the ones I was familiar with, I was bothered at Caputi's singular interpretation of them, as cultural interpretations are never singular, especially as someone who doesn't participate in the mainstream. (The anthro alarm button went off.)

Finally, it's not that Caputi is wrong. She brings up a number of interesting points that are well-worth pondering. But she is at an extreme end of a spectrum, and her book articulates that end. My issue is that it's not articulated well; in fact, Caputi states in her intro that some essays were left "in their original form," and by original it means NOT EDITED. Proofreading mistakes, repetitive sentences, the barest sense of structure, and an entirely absent conclusion. It was an absolute toll to get through.

The most interesting essay is the one with the same title as the book, "Goddesses and Monsters." The rest is skimmable.

[Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome

[Micah Moore]

I am reading this concurrently with A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis.
Very interesting juxtaposition.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting stuff, but doesn't quite live up to the intriguing title.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of original ideas, but some were too far-fetched for me personally.