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Gossip, Women, Film,

and Chick Flicks


Sarah-Mai Dang

Gossip, Women,
Film, and Chick
Flicks
Sarah-Mai Dang
Berlin, Germany

ISBN 978-1-137-56017-9 ISBN 978-1-137-56018-6 (eBook)


DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56018-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956872

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017


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To Caroline Wunderlich
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It all began in 2009 with my friend Caroline Wunderlich persuading me to


watch so-called chick flicks. This “women’s genre” had become the research
object of my dissertation on film, feminism, and experience, which I com-
pleted at the Department of Films Studies at Freie Universität Berlin in
2014. This book is based on a translation of chapter 3.
First and foremost, my sincere thanks go to my supervisors, who sup-
ported me throughout my years as doctoral candidate and research assis-
tant at Freie Universität Berlin. Hermann Kappelhoff believed in the
happy ending of the dissertation no matter what detour the project
took. I am highly grateful for his generous help, advice, and patience.
My discussions with Sabine Nessel, my second supervisor, and her persis-
tent inquiries have strengthened my line of argument and made the thesis
more precise. This book was also shaped by the many discussions in the
film studies colloquium facilitated by Hermann Kappelhoff. I particularly
would like to thank my colleagues Sarah Greifenstein, Hauke Lehmann,
Michael Lück, and Jan Bakels for their critical feedback on earlier drafts of
the German version. I also wish to thank Marc Siegel for generously
allowing me to read his doctoral dissertation A Gossip of Images:
Hollywood Star Images and Queer Counterpublics before publication. His
pioneering work on gossip and film proved to offer a productive perspec-
tive for my study of chick flicks.
This research was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG)
funding the Collaborative Research Center “Aesthetic Experience and the
Dissolution of Artistic Limits” (SFB 626) at Freie Universität Berlin, where
I finished the dissertation. I am particularly grateful to the Managing

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Director of the SFB, Georgios Binos, who helped handling the successful
application for the translation grant of the DFG.
Beyond the Freie Universität Berlin, I am indebted to Johannes von
Moltke from the University of Michigan for his extraordinary support
during my academic year as doctoral exchange student in the US.
Working with him at both the Department of Germanic Languages and
Literatures as well as Screen Arts and Culture has had a significant impact
on my understanding of film experience.
In addition, my dear friends Sylvia Müller, Sarah Schaschek, Kerstin
Beyerlein, and Lukas Engelmann have sharpened this book’s arguments
by reading and responding to various drafts of the dissertation. So did
Landon Little who helped me translating the German manuscript into
English. Thanks to Mercury Meulman for editing, proof reading, and
formatting the text at the very end.
At Palgrave Macmillan, I would like to thank my Commissioning Editor
Chris Penfold who believed in this project from the beginning and sup-
ported me in attaining funds for the translation of this study. I would also
like to acknowledge the help of Lina Aboujieb and Karina Jakupsdottir
with regard to the production process of this book. Thanks to the anon-
ymous reviewer for her generous time and insightful comments on the
manuscript.
I was able to endure this “intellectual marathon” due to the friendship
of the “Stabi Gang” and Ion Kozuch who always encouraged me to keep
going. I am also indebted to Caroline Wunderlich for her astute questions
and comments as well as her continuous support in all kind of matters. In
addition to introducing me to chick flicks, I have benefited tremendously
from her feminist points of view, which have not only influenced this study
but have also been an inspiration throughout our friendship. This book is
dedicated to her. And last but not least, I cannot possibly express enough
gratitude to my parents, Lydia Dang and Hieu De Dang, for their love and
support throughout my life.
CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1

2 Gossip as an Organizing Principle of Social


Order and Perception 9

3 Easy A—“A is for Awesome” 15

4 Emma—“A Match Well Made, a Job Well Done” 45

5 A Matter of Perspective 67

Index 73

ix
LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3.1 Screenshot from Easy A showing how the camera meanders
across a schoolyard 18
Fig. 3.2 Screenshot from Easy A presenting a teenage girl
accompanied by a group of loyal followers 20
Fig. 3.3 Screenshot from Easy A demonstrating how the protago-
nist’s books fall to the floor 20
Fig. 3.4 Screenshot from Easy A showing the protagonist appearing
in front of a webcam 21
Fig. 3.5 Screenshot from Easy A showing Olive and Rhiannon
in the girls’ bathroom 23
Fig. 3.6 Screenshot from Easy A demonstrating how Mary Ann
disrupts Olive’s and Rhi’s conversation 24
Fig. 3.7 Screenshot from Easy A showing Olive turning her head 25
Fig. 3.8 Screenshot from Easy A highlighting that rumors spread
incredibly fast 25
Fig. 3.9 Screenshot from Easy A showing how Olive becomes
the high school’s subject 26
Fig. 3.10 Screenshot from Easy A presenting Olive in black lingerie
that she has sewed into an only semi-appropriate outfit
with a red, hand-stitched “A” 34
Fig. 3.11 Screenshot from Easy A showing Olive’s friend Todd
asking Olive out 38
Fig. 4.1 Screenshot from Emma demonstrating how the fast
spinning globe marks the relativity of perspective 47
Fig. 4.2 Screenshot from Emma presenting Emma handing
over a handcrafted globe to the newly wedded Westons 47

xi
xii LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 4.3 Screenshot from Emma highlighting Emma as the center


of the film 49
Fig. 4.4 Screenshot from Emma showing Emma’s face
in a close up, mourning the “loss” of the beloved
Miss Taylor 50
Fig. 4.5 Screenshot from Emma presenting Frank Churchill
performing a duet with Jane Fairfax 54
Fig. 4.6 Screenshot from Emma presenting Frank Churchill
performing a duet with Emma 54
Fig. 4.7 Screenshot from Emma pointing out Ms. Bates senselessly
babbling at the ball standing among Emma, Mrs. Weston,
Mr. Churchill, and Jane Fairfax 56
Fig. 4.8 Screenshot from Emma presenting Emma and Mr. Knightley
as both observers and participants of the events 57
Fig. 4.9 Screenshot from Emma showing how Emma thinks
to realize her love for Frank Churchill 60
CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract In the introduction, Dang outlines the premise of the book,


which is to think about the relationship between gossip, women, and film
in regard to the genre of chick flicks. While the lack of women’s voices in
the general public sphere remains an issue, she argues, in regard to film the
female voice is very present in contemporary media such as in the genre of
chick flicks. Voice and verbality are of great importance in films such as
Emma (GB/USA 1996) or Easy A (USA 2010, Will Gluck) and thus for
the (female) spectator. In this study, Dang does not only look at how
gossip is staged in these films, but incorporates gossip as well as a theore-
tical model to analyze chick flicks.

Keywords Chick flicks  Gossip  Classic woman’s film  Genre  Film


experience  Feminism  Female voice

This book addresses the relationship between gossip, women, and film in
regard to the genre of chick flicks. Traditionally, gossip is a form of
communication that has been assigned to women and is consequently
disregarded. Gossip is mostly waved aside as nonsense, in contrast to
(male) speech or the written word (Spacks 1985: 16–18). “When people
talk about the details of daily lives, it is gossip; when they write about it, it
is literature,” says Esther Deborah Tannen (cited by Fritsch 2004: 9).
Particularly, feminist theory of the 1980s saw women silenced by men and

© The Author(s) 2017 1


S.-M. Dang, Gossip, Women, Film, and Chick Flicks,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56018-6_1
2 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

theory and thus language. I agree with this argument and consider this still
to be a very important issue. Women’s experiences and perspectives need
to continue to be heard and acknowledged. While the lack of women’s
voices in the general public sphere remains an issue, I argue, in regard to
film the female voice is very present in contemporary media such as in the
genre of chick flicks.
Specific chick flicks like Clueless (USA 1995, Amy Heckerling), Emma
(GB/USA 1996, Douglas McGrath), Legally Blonde (USA 2001, Robert
Luketic), Easy A (USA 2010, Will Gluck), and Sex and the City (USA
2008, 2010, Michael Patrick King) are dominated by voices: by ceaseless
talk about appropriate or inappropriate relationships, chitchat about
friends being absent, and whisper about people being present. The
characters—in particular female—are mainly acting on the sound level.
Voice and verbality are of great importance in these films and thus for the
spectator. But how exactly do voice and verbality shape the film experi-
ence? And how does the category of woman relate to this form of
communication? With this study, I seek to explore what role gossip
plays in the staging of chick flicks.
The definition of what makes a film a chick flick, however, varies widely
(Ferris and Young 2008: 1–25). The term itself emerged during the mid-
1990s, used to describe—more often than not in the pejorative sense—
American films with strong-willed, successful, and independent feminine
women in leading roles. Chick flicks are media productions of wide
commercial success largely associated with female audiences. Based on
the apparent emancipated protagonists, these films seem to speak particu-
larly to women growing up in the period of so-called postfeminism, a
period marking the emergence of new ways of thinking about women and
gender.1 Much like chick lit (chick literature, for example Helen Fielding’s
Bridget Jones’s Diary or Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City), chick flicks
are ascribed to contemporary women’s culture, and appear simultaneously
with the rise of postfeminism, also known as third-wave feminism, follow-
ing the second wave of the 1970s and 1980s (Genz and Brabon 2009;
Gillis et al. 2004).2
Remarkably, besides the classic woman’s film of the 1930s and 1940s—
films like Stella Dallas (USA 1937, King Vidor) or Mildred Pierce (USA
1945, Michael Curtiz)— the chick flick is the only film genre that has been
defined by its audience (with the exception of teen films, which are often
discussed in relation to chick flicks, Brecht 2004; Maxfield 2002). While
other genres are defined based on iconographic motifs, such as the open
1 INTRODUCTION 3

plains of the western film, or by their narrative structures, such as the


search for the murderer in the detective film, chick flicks are largely defined
by their audience—namely an audience that is assumed to be primarily
female. Like the classic woman’s film, the chick flick (or the contemporary
woman’s film) is constituted based on the debates on the female spectator
and her experience as a moviegoer (Dang 2014: 28–30; see also; Altman
1998, 2012 [1999]: 73).
As is the case with romantic comedies, chick flicks as a “woman’s
genre” are often marginalized and treated with suspicion as a phenom-
enon of mass media.3 When chick flicks have been interpreted as subjects
of analysis, media and cultural studies scholars have mostly used them to
reinforce their own political positions, especially as easy targets to under-
score the manipulative force of the culture industry.4 Since these films
present—though ambivalently—rather stereotypical portrayals of women
and mostly extremely feminine protagonists, they are viewed overwhel-
mingly as a point of political contention among scholars. Due to the
depiction of the kind of femininity feminist theory of the 1970s and
1980s sharply criticized (including the conventionally feminine blonde
as the quintessential object of the male gaze), scholars of media and
cultural studies identify this genre as post—or neofeminist cinema dis-
cussing whether or not these films are antifeminist or feminist (Radner
2010; Tasker and Negra 2007; McRobbie 2004). On the one hand chick
flicks are celebrated in their depiction of emancipation (Smith 2008;
Lenzhofer 2006), while on the other hand they are criticized as a
threatening backlash to the achievements to feminism (McRobbie
2009, 2010).
I find these different reactions to chick flicks worth considering, as well as
the unconventional, though seemingly traditional depiction of the female
protagonists (as shown in my dissertation, Dang 2014). This study, how-
ever, approaches chick flicks from a different perspective. Seeking to shed
light on an issue beyond the question whether chick flicks are good or bad
films, this book aims to demonstrate that much more is at stake in this
genre. It addresses this genre not as cheap entertainment or an object of
poor taste. Instead, it takes chick flicks as a mass media form as well as the
spectators of these films seriously and looks at what else is at stake when
staging women in leading roles. Besides the popularization of feminist
theory, I argue that these films deal with another important social and
political phenomenon, which has been rarely addressed: the meaning and
function of gossip.
4 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

In order to reflect on the relationship between gossip, women, and film in


regard to the genre of chick flicks, I consider two films in this book, Easy A and
Emma. Both films lend themselves particularly well to the analysis of gossip.
They both deal with female characters and processes of categorization, speci-
fically prejudices and gender stereotypes, and were very successful at the box
office. In Easy A and Emma, judgments are constantly being drawn about
who fits together (who is a match) and who is not, whispers are constantly
exchanged behind the backs of those who are present, while jokes are una-
bashedly made about those who are absent. Wagers, speculation, comments
made in passing, and observations are driving forces in Easy A and Emma as
films. With this study, I seek to demonstrate that hearsay plays a defining role
in the staging of these films and speech acts play a critical role in the film
experience. Processes of categorization in Easy A and Emma are tied to a
specific mode of perception of space and time. Moreover, during the course of
the viewing process, these films actively engage and influence the film specta-
tors and ultimately transform their attitudes toward the protagonists.
I argue that films—as audiovisual forms of media—have their own unique
way of making sense. While there are many different ways of defining what
film is, my approach to film in this book focuses on the specific temporality of
film as a media form consisting of moving images. As moving images, films
are produced during the duration of the spectator’s reception of them. Since
chick flicks are largely defined by their spectators, in this study, I seek to
account for the film experience that is realized while watching these films.
Thus, my analyses are based on the media-specific temporality of film.
Since Easy A and Emma are defined by processes of categorization,
speech acts, and a particular relationship between space and time, in this
book, I do not only look at how gossip is staged in chick flicks but
incorporate gossip as well as a theoretical model to analyze these films.
As a mechanism of social order and basic principle of perception, gossip
serves as a useful model to scrutinize how individuals are presented in
relation to a group and how communities are produced as spatiotemporal
constellations. Gossip, viewed as a performative speech act, defines power
relations, and determines inclusion and exclusion, but it also determines
how subjects are constituted. Gossip structures sociality through categor-
ization processes. When someone says something about someone, they
determine, consciously or not, who is included in the circle of participants
and who is excluded from the group. Gossip is a collective form of
communication that I explore in my analysis of Easy A and Emma as a
social phenomenon as well as an aesthetic form of expression.
1 INTRODUCTION 5

While gossip defines an act of communication, rumors represent the


content of what is communicated. Both gossip and rumors are deeply
intertwined with one another and are often difficult to differentiate, as are
the processes, the objects, and subjects of judgments. On the one hand,
rumors are spread through gossip, while on the other hand, rumors
become part of gossip since the participant becomes an object commu-
nicated through the act of hearsay (“I heard from so and so that. . . . ”).
Here the act, the participant, and the message—to communicate, the
communicator, and the disclosure of information—coincide (see also
Engell 2008: 327–328). In this study, I explore the social phenomenon
of gossip as an act of communication and as a process of categorization.
Based on this organizing principle of social order, my case studies on
gossip in Easy A and Emma look at how to grasp the relationship between
identity, subjectivity, and collectivity. However, in my analysis, I do not refer
to gossip as a form of collectivity that creates a “we” of the oppressed. This
study is not about advocating more participation for women, even though it
is important to consider gossip as a female mode of communication. In Easy
A and Emma, I analyze how gossip determines power structures more
generally. Thus, the question of how subjects and subjects’ identities are
constituted through gossip and how gossip works as a form of collectivity is
addressed without only considering gender. In this study, I analyze specifi-
cally how gossip is staged in film and how the film spectator experiences it.

NOTES
1. Postfeminism is a heterogeneous category being used for a number of
reasons in a number of various contexts (Gill 2007). One significant repre-
sentative of the so-called postfeminism is Judith Butler. Butler questions the
term ‘woman’ as a biological category by asking whether it serves as a useful
category for feminist critique (Butler 1999 [1990]). Butler’s work has led to
a divide between second-wave feminists and third-wave feminists.
2. Based on whether theorists interpret the history of feminism as ruptures
between different generations of women or as an enduring legacy of feminist
traditions, they refer to the term postfeminism or neofeminism or feminist
waves (the first wave, represented by women’s suffrage of the nineteenth
century; the second wave, championed by the women’s movement from the
1960s to the 1980s; and the third wave, the new generation of feminists,
prominently represented by Judith Butler). The positions each wave of
feminism has taken up are largely determined by specific historical circum-
stances and conditions.
6 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

3. Looking at the female figure in literature of the nineteenth century, Andreas


Huyssen has illustrated the extent to which mass culture in contrast to the
‘real and authentic’ masculine culture is traditionally associated with femi-
ninity and consequently disparaged (Huyssen 1986: 44–62). See also
Altman 2012 [1999]: 72.
4. One of the genre’s sharpest critics is Angela McRobbie (see McRobbie
2009).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Altman Rick. 2012 [1999]. Film/Genre. London: BFI.
Brecht, Christoph. 2004. Teenage Negotiations: Gender als Erzähltechnik in Amy
Heckerlings Teen Movie Clueless. In Hollywood Hybrid. Genre und Gender im
zeitgenössischen Mainstream-Film, eds. Claudia Liebrand and Ines Steiner,
67–90. Marburg, Germany: Schüren.
Brokoff, Jürgen, Jürgen Fohrmann, Hedwig Pompe, and Brigitte Weingart, eds.
2008. Die Kommunikation der Gerüchte. Göttingen, Germany: Wallstein
Butler, Judith. 1999 [1990]. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge.
Dang, Sarah-Mai. 2014. Chick Flicks. Film, Feminismus und Erfahrung. Berlin/
Hamburg: oa books/tredition.
Engell, Lorenz. 2008. Film und Fama—Citizen Kane.In Die Kommunikation der
Gerüchte, eds. Jürgen Brokoff, Jürgen Fohrmann, Hedwig Pompe, and Brigitte
Weingart, 322–337. Göttingen: Wallstein.
Ferriss, Suzanne, and Young. Mallory, eds. 2008. Chick Flick: Contemporary
Women at the Movies. New York: Routledge.
Fritsch, Esther. 2004. Reading gossip. Funktionen von Klatsch in Romanen
Ethnischer Amerikanischer Autorinnen. Trier: WVT.
Genz, Stéphanie, and Benjamin A. Brabon. 2009. Postfeminism: Cultural Texts
and Theories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Gill, Rosalind. 2007. Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility.
European Journal of Cultural Studies 10(2): 147–166.
Gillis, Stacy, Gillian Howie, and Munford. Rebecca, eds. 2004. Third Wave
Feminism: A Critical Exploration. Basingstoke, Hampshire, England/New
York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Huyssen, Andreas. 1986. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture,
Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Lenzhofer, Karin. 2006. Chicks Rule! Die schönen neuen Heldinnen in
US-amerikanischen Fernsehserien. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript.
Maxfield, Amanda L. 2002. The Quest for External Validation in Female Coming-
of-Age Films. In Film studies, ed. Alexandra Heidi Karriker, 141–178. Lang:
New York.
1 INTRODUCTION 7

McRobbie, Angela. 2004. Postfeminism and Popular Culture. Feminist Media


Studies 4(3): 255–264.
McRobbie, Angela. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social
Change. Los Angeles: Sage.
McRobbie, Angela. 2010. Top girls. Feminismus und der Aufstieg des neoliberalen
Geschlechterregimes. Wiesbaden, Germany: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Radner, Hilary. 2010. Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks, and
Consumer Culture. New York: Routledge.
Smith, Caroline J. 2008. Cosmopolitan Culture and Consumerism in Chick Lit.
New York: Routledge.
Spacks, Patricia Meyer. 1985. Gossip. New York: Knopf.
Tasker, Yvonne, and Negra. Diane, eds. 2007. Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender
and the Politics of Popular Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

FILMS
Clueless (USA 1995; directed/written by Amy Heckerling; actress: Alicia
Silverstone).
Easy A (USA 2010; directed by Will Gluck; script: Bert V. Royal; actress: Emma
Stone)
Emma (UK/USA 1996; directed by Douglas McGrath; script: Jane Austen/
Douglas McGrath; actress: Gwyneth Paltrow).
Sex and the City (USA 2008; directed by Michael Patrick King; script: Candace
Bushell et al.; actresses: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis,
Cynthia Nixon)
Sex and the City (USA 2010; directed by Michael Patrick King; script: Candace
Bushell et al.; actresses: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis,
Cynthia Nixon)
Legally Blonde (USA 2001; directed by Robert Luketic; script: Amanda Brown
et al.; actress: Reese Witherspoon)
Mildred Pierce (USA 1945; directed by Michael Curtiz; script: Ranald
MacDougall et al.; actress: Joan Crawford)
Stella Dallas (USA 1937; directed by King Vidor; script: Sarah Y. Mason; actress:
Barbara Stanwyck)
CHAPTER 2

Gossip as an Organizing Principle of Social


Order and Perception

Abstract In Chapter 2, Dang gives an overview on how gossip has been


examined in academic discourse based on both its negative and positive
effects. She thereby elaborates on the distinction between the spread of
rumors and gossip as a mode of communication. Referring to Marc
Siegel’s aesthetic-political approach to gossip and film, Dang proposes
gossip as a productive perspective for analyzing chick flicks which empha-
size verbal expression, such as Easy A and Emma. In addition, she explains
why these films are also well suited for understanding gossip as a theore-
tical film category and more generally for reflecting on gossip as a social
practice.

Keywords Gossip  Rumor  Communication  Community  Collectivity 


Speech act

Esther Fritsch (2004: 9, my translation1) defines gossip as “a process


wherein the formation and preservation of identities and social structures
can play a significant role and serves as a type of social regulation.”
Viewed in this sense, gossip can be just as affirming as it can be subversive.
In gossip, norms can be confirmed just as easily as they can be suspended.
In the spread of rumors, Hans-Joachim Neubauer (1998: 187) argues,
basic social norms are created and controlled and the propagation of
hearsay serves the constant assurance of these norms. Gossip qualifies as

© The Author(s) 2017 9


S.-M. Dang, Gossip, Women, Film, and Chick Flicks,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56018-6_2
10 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

a speech act that in many ways serves as “an intermediary between norms
and deviation, between power and marginality” (Neubauer 1998: 161,
my translation2). The reference source of “they say” supports this func-
tion since it always already postulates a collective, which is constituted
through hearsay. What was previously just an anonymous group of insi-
ders (if the message was already known or not does not matter) is
transformed through the act of communication into an intimate constel-
lation of confidants. (see Siegel 2006: 74; Spacks 1982: 29–30). This
study highlights how gossip as an object of analysis can offer profound
insight on social and political structures in society.
Whether or not gossip advances or undermines power structures, or
whether rumors have a positive or negative consequence, is evaluated
differently depending on the given context. As fama, the Roman goddess
of fame and rumor, usually presented with wings and trumpets, and
respectively pheme in Greek mythology, a rumor is ambivalent. It can
evoke a person’s fame as well as a person’s ruin, and thus can have both
positive and negative effects.
In academic discourse, gossip has been mainly examined based on its
negative effects, particularly as a form of character assassination or lie.
Only a few studies have looked at gossip’s positive sides, such as its
liberating potential as a subversive form, for example, how gossip can
felicitate self-expression. Furthermore, there are only a few approaches
that have analyzed gossip on an aesthetic level (Siegel 2013; Brokoff et al.
2008; Engell 2008; Weingart 2006; Kirchmann 2004). Fritsch (2004)
examines gossip as form of postcolonial feminine writing, and Marc Siegel
sees gossip as a form of inventing stories in order to situate one’s self both
performatively and autonomously in the world (Siegel 2006) as well as to
establish an aesthetic-political practice with film images (Siegel 2010).
Other scholars rejected the subversive potential of gossip outright, high-
lighting the normative dimension of gossip:

We remain unconvinced, however, that gossip has any such subversive or


deconstructive effect. For gossip, so far from pitting itself against author-
itative norms, always operates to reinforce them. (Finch and Bowen
1990: 16)

On the other hand, Patricia Meyer Spacks has identified gossip’s subver-
sive potential that can promote solidarity among women. Siegel (2006)
points out in regard to Spacks’ highly regarded work on gossip that
2 GOSSIP AS AN ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE OF SOCIAL ORDER AND PERCEPTION 11

according to Spacks, gossip was particularly important for those of histori-


cally limited sources to communicate their wishes, hopes, and interests or to
produce and promote knowledge about their own stories. For this reason
Spacks describes gossip as “a resource for the oppressed [ . . . ], a central form
of self-expression, a central form of solidarity.”

Spacks distinguishes between “good” and “bad” forms of gossip, differ-


entiating the (female) desire to gossip (see Spacks 1985: 4–5, 1982:
26–27) from the “idle talk” and “serious gossip” through which an
intimacy develops. While Spacks’ explanation helps in clarifying the inher-
ently ambiguous dimensions of gossip, she ultimately fails to provide a
clear-cut definition of what idle talk and serious gossip actually are.
Whether gossip is defined as idle talk or as serious gossip depends of
course on one’s perspective. To grasp gossip’s positive or negative effects
it is important to distinguish between the spread of a rumor, which can
cause a scandal, and a mode of communication between a group of people
through which a social bond is created and structured.
Marc Siegel’s dissertation A Gossip of Images: Hollywood Star Images
and Queer Counterpublics (2013) explores the role and function of gossip
in queer film culture. Siegel’s study looks primarily at gossip as a specific
way in which film is used. He therefore conceptualizes a gossip of images as
a mode of reflection (see Siegel 2010: 30–37). Siegel (2010: 9) defines
gossip of images as a “mode of image circulation” through which new
images and new forms of thinking develop. Addressing queer film culture,
Siegel (2010: 8) clarifies how

gossip functions as a structure—or logic—of thought that informs much of


queer film culture, from film—and videomaking, to film viewing, film-informed
performance, club culture, and everyday conversation.

My interest in gossip, in contrast, looks at how gossip serves as a way to


make the experience of film graspable. Thus, in this study, cinema as a
social practice is secondary. Drawing from Siegel’s work, I underscore that
the outcome of gossip can be just as positive as it can be negative. Gossip is
significant since it represents a very fine line between reception/produc-
tion, public/private, and affirmation/subversion. Thus, gossip as a social
phenomenon and political practice can be productively employed in social
and genre theory and aesthetic analysis (see Siegel 2010: 32).
12 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

Thinking about gossip as a performative speech act in film, I am


interested in the implications of hearsay not as something that is heard
but something that is seen. I am curious how the aesthetic realm of film
presents spectators with a type of hearsay, a visual type of “hearsee” (Siegel
2010: 55). What happens when the film spectator sees those who are
speaking? What meaning do messages have when they are inaudible or
remain unheard? What is the relationship between the omnipresence of
gossip and the invisibility of rumor? To what extent do film images
constitute a message? Can film itself be described as gossip? What film
experience arises out of cinematographic gossip?
Gilles Deleuze, as Siegel points out, sees a close affinity between film
and gossip (Siegel 2010: 50). Based on the linguistic and spatiotemporal
nature of rumor, specifically its socially based ordering qualities and ability
to spread quickly, Deleuze sees rumor as privileged to appear in an audio-
visual form. As gossip, the film’s montage organizes spatial and temporal
relations, in which a speech develops among people. Thus, film can be
defined as a typical speech act of gossip, which makes social interactions
and hierarchies visible (see Deleuze 1989 [1985]: 227–234).
Deleuze’s analysis of gossip seeks to explore the fundamental nature of
the film image. Deleuze (1989 [1985]: 227–230) proposes that through
the relationship of sound and image rumor itself emerges as a cinemato-
graphic object (see Siegel 2010: 93–94). He argues that the cinemato-
graphic speech act makes something in the image visible. In Cinema 2: The
Time-Image, Deleuze (1989 [1985]) argues that the defining point in the
transition from silent film to the talkie was that the speech act was not just
finally heard for the first time, but also seen for the first time. Deleuze
(1989 [1985]: 226) writes:

The speech-act is no longer connected with the second function of the eye,
it is no longer read but heard. It becomes direct, and recovers the distinctive
features of “discourse” which were altered in the silent or written film (the
distinctive feature of discourse, according to Benveniste, is the I-You rela-
tion between persons). It will be noticed that cinema does not become
audio-visual as a result of this. In contrast to the intertitle, which was an
image other than the visual image, the talkie, the sound film are heard, but
as a new dimension of the visual image, a new component.

What is heard is at the same time seen. What is seen can also be heard. In
the talkie, there is no longer a separation between speech, which appeared
2 GOSSIP AS AN ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE OF SOCIAL ORDER AND PERCEPTION 13

in the silent film as text in the intertitle, and the image of the speaker. In
the talkie, the audible speech act not only became visible, the visible
speech also became audible. Thus, in the talkie, hearsay and hearsee
come to be united in synchronicity (see Siegel 2010: 55).
The aesthetic, political, and social dimension of gossip delineated
above is applicable to Easy A and Emma. Due to the films’ subjects,
emphasis on verbal expression, and spatiotemporal nature, gossip serves
as a particularly helpful model to analyze these films. In addition, these
films are also well suited for understanding gossip as a theoretical film
category and more generally for reflecting on gossip as a social practice.
While Emma depicts a hermetically sealed world in which community is
constituted based on inclusion and exclusion, Easy A reflects a norma-
tive environment in which subjective perspectives are free to develop.
In Emma the controlling function of gossip is pushed into the fore-
front. In contrast, gossip in Easy A represents a form of emancipation
and serves as performative mode of self-expression. Particularly impor-
tant is how both films depict gossip as a genuinely female mode of
perception and creates an experience of subjective collectivity, as I will
demonstrate in the following analysis.

NOTES
1. Original quote: Gossip is “ein Prozeß, dem bei der Ausbildung und
Erhaltung von Identitäten und sozialen Strukturen eine Schlüsselrolle
zukommen kann und der als soziales Regulativ fungiert” (Fritsch 2004: 9).
2. Original quote: Gossip qualifies as a speech act that in many ways serves as
“die Schaltstelle von Norm und Abweichung, von Macht und Marginalität”
(Neubauer 1998: 161).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brokoff, Jürgen, Jürgen Fohrmann, Hedwig Pompe, and Brigitte Weingart, eds.
2008. Die Kommunikation der Gerüchte. Göttingen, Germany: Wallstein.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1989 [1985]. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Engell, Lorenz. 2008. Film und Fama—Citizen Kane. In Die Kommunikation der
Gerüchte, eds. Jürgen Brokoff, Jürgen Fohrmann, Hedwig Pompe, and Brigitte
Weingart, 322–337. Göttingen: Wallstein.
Finch, Casey, and Peter Bowen. 1990. “The Tittle-Tattle of Highbury.” Gossip
and the Free Indirect Style in Emma. Representations 31: 1–18.
14 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

Fritsch, Esther. 2004. Reading gossip. Funktionen von Klatsch in Romanen


Ethnischer Amerikanischer Autorinnen. Trier: WVT
Kirchmann, Kay. 2004. Das Gerücht und die Medien. Medientheoretische
Annäherungen an einen Sondertypus der informellen Kommunikation. In
Medium Gerücht. Studien zu Theorie und Praxis einer kollektiven
Kommunikationsform, eds. Manfred Bruhn and Werner Wunderlich, 67–83.
Bern/Stuttgart/Vienna: Haupt Verlag.
Neubauer, Hans-Joachim. 1998. Fama. Eine Geschichte des Gerüchts. Berlin: Berlin
Verlag.
Siegel, Marc. 2006. Gossip ist fabelhaft. Queere Gegenöffentlichkeiten und
“Fabulation.” Texte Zur Kunst 61: 68–79.
Siegel, Marc. 2008. Vaginal Davis’s Gospel Truth. Camera Obscura 23(1):
151–159.
Siegel, Marc. 2010. Die Leute Werden Reden. Joseph Mankiewicz’ filmischer
Klatsch. In Synchronisierung der Künste, eds. Robin Curtis, Gertrud Koch,
and Marc Sigel, 93–100. Munich: Fink.
Siegel, Marc. 2013. A Gossip of Images: Hollywood Star Images and Queer
Counterpublics. Doctoral Dissertation. Freie Universität Berlin.
Spacks, Patricia Meyer. 1982. In Praise of Gossip. The Hudson Review XXXV 1:
19–38.
Spacks, Patricia Meyer. 1985. Gossip. New York: Knopf.
Weingart, Brigitte. 2006. Wilde Übertragung. Texte Zur Kunst 61: 55–67.

FILMS
Easy A (USA 2010; directed by Will Gluck; script: Bert V. Royal; actress: Emma
Stone)
Emma (UK/USA 1996; directed by Douglas McGrath; script: Jane Austen/
Douglas McGrath; actress: Gwyneth Paltrow).
CHAPTER 3

Easy A—“A is for Awesome”

Abstract In Chapter 3, Dang explores how Easy A (USA 2010) thema-


tizes the power and effect of language. She argues that the film can be read
as a genuinely insightful study of gossip, in particular its treatment of the
function and effects of gossip as a form of communication. The film itself
can be defined as an aesthetic expression of gossip. Viewed as a social
principal of order and perception, Dang shows how gossip functions as a
common way of organizing the relations between individuals and groups.
This chapter demonstrates how gossip as a collective and participatory
practice of subjective imagination produces strong bonds and a sense of
belonging based on gender categories.

Keywords Subjectivity  Collectivity  Objectivity  Sense of belonging 


Speech act theory  Gender  Judith Butler

Gossip implies a collectivity, which is always constituted through subjec-


tive practices of communication. Since gossip plays such a significant and
integral role in chick flicks, it is worth considering how this genre creates a
film experience of subjective collectivity. The source of gossip “they say,”
which already presupposes a collective, permeates the diegesis and film
experience in Easy A and Emma.
In Easy A—and also in Emma—gossip functions as an object of my
analysis. Easy A can be read as a genuinely insightful study of gossip, in

© The Author(s) 2017 15


S.-M. Dang, Gossip, Women, Film, and Chick Flicks,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56018-6_3
16 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

particular its treatment of the function and effects of gossip as a form of


communication. The film itself can be defined as an aesthetic expression of
gossip. In my view, Easy A depicts gossip also from a theoretical perspec-
tive. This analysis considers to what extent the film addresses the theore-
tical problem of how gossip relates an “I” to a “we.” Thus, in this study I
reflect on the relationships between theory and film as well as film specta-
tor and protagonist.
Easy A consists of five chapters. The development and spread of
gossip is depicted as a balancing act between extremes: between defa-
mation and emancipation as well as affirmation and subversion.
Through this dramaturgy, the film resembles a didactic study of gossip.
The film’s prologue (0:00:00–0:01:51) establishes a typical gossip per-
spective that enfolds between an objective and subjective narrative
position of the first-person narrator showing that despite the ubiquity
of gossip, the I, remains invisible. The film’s prologue is followed by
the first chapter (0:01:51–0:08:13), “The Shudder Inducing and
Clichéd, However Totally False Account of How I Lost My Virginity
to a Guy at a Community College,” dedicated to the origin, formation,
and uncontrollable spread of a rumor. Chapter 2 (0:08:13–0:24:15),
“The Accelerated Velocity of Terminological Inexactitude,” depicts the
omnipresence of rumors and how the spread of rumors creates a sense
of belonging for those who are involved. Chapter 3 (0:24:15–0:46:35),
“A Lady’s Choice and a Gentleman’s Agreement,” deals with the
transformation of a rumor and shows how the object becomes the
subject; gossip as a speech act is shown as a form of self-expression.
Chapter 4 (0:46:35–1:18:33), “How I, Olive Penderghast, Went from
Assumed Trollop to an Actual Home Wrecker,” demonstrates the
destructive side of gossip, and finally chapter 5 (1:18:33–1:28:22), “Not
With a Fizzle but With a Bang,” depicts the climatic resolution of the rumor.
The film experience in Easy A is generated through a series of questions
that address topics, such as point of view and interpretation, the role of
reality and fiction, the relationship between mass media and privacy, as
well as subjectivity and collectivity. Easy A thematizes the power and effect
of language. It demonstrates how gossip as a collective and participatory
practice of subjective imagination produces strong bonds and a sense of
belonging. In this regard, the film exposes the extent to which gossip as a
collective practice of communication requires a collectivity, which is simul-
taneously constituted in the act of sharing information with others. For a
rumor to spread it must be shared with others, through which a mode of
3 EASY A—“A IS FOR AWESOME” 17

participation takes shape that is experienced as a form of belonging,


despite the fact that in this moment there is no real basis for this experi-
ence. Easy A shows that in order to experience a sense of belonging, there
is no need for a common identity or a shared experience as feminist
theories often claim in discussions on solidarity. The film shows how
gossip functions as a collective practice of imagination that structures
social space and allows alternative concepts of subjects. In this sense, I
argue, the film shows that gossip must not always be based on opposition
or resistance, as highlighted by Marc Siegel (2010: 36):

praising the imaginative work accomplished by the circulation of gossip does


not necessarily mean relegating minoritarian gossipers to purely imaginary
resistance against conventional or oppressive social structures. Rather, it can
allow us to see how a collective process of speculation and imagining could
be intricately bound up with the production of new and/or alternative social
contexts—however fleeting or provisional—within which new possibilities
for the self can be tested out in practice.

As Deleuze underscores in how talkies visualize the speech act, what is


productive about the aesthetic analysis of gossip is how gossip reflects on
sociality, regardless of how provisional or brief this sociality might be. By
analyzing Easy A in relation to the film experience, I consider how the film
stages belonging through the sharing and passing on of information.

3.1 THE INVISIBLE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOSSIP


Easy A is a about a teenager who consciously ruins her own reputation and
through the use of the internet manages to end the spread of rumors
through her own authorship (i.e., her own agency). The protagonist,
Olive Penderghast (played by Emma Stone), is a high school student at
Ojai North High School. Olive is also a virgin. However, Olive leads her
best friend Rhiannon to believe that she had sex for the first time, but
when unintentionally overheard, this lie immediately pushes Olive to the
center of attention at school. Before, Olive had been invisible and experi-
enced a virtually anonymous existence. Naturally, the spread of rumors
about Olive quickly spins out of control and threatens her social existence.
As a character, Olive walks a very thin line between fame and slander.
Olive’s change in reputation initiates a change in the film experience.
While the events stage a subjective perspective, over the course of the
18 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

film a more objective perspective gradually comes into being. Determining


whether or not the film tells a personal story or if it simply brings together
fictional “facts” becomes increasingly difficult for the spectator to deter-
mine. In the film, the spectator is confronted with subjective and objective
perspectives which collide and are difficult to distinguish from one
another.
Despite the change in perspective from a subjective point of view to an ever
more objective point of view, the relationship between the spectator and
protagonist does not change. The spectator sympathizes with Olive’s situation
from the beginning, as the spectator essentially shares Olive’s point of view
throughout the film. The spectator’s sympathy for the protagonist is high-
lighted by the spatiotemporal situations, which I define as “invisible omnipre-
sence,” “collective interaction,” and “fabulous subjectivity” as outlined above.
From the beginning of Easy A, a mode of gossip is established that
makes subjectivity and objectivity difficult to distinguish. The film’s pro-
logue shows images that make it difficult to recognize who is speaking and
through whose perspective the spectator is looking. This is followed by a
short montage sequence (a traffic intersection, the American flag, oranges,
orange groves, a town sign, a school bus), which establishes the setting as a
small town in California. The camera meanders across a schoolyard, pas-
sing students and trees (Fig. 3.1). The camera is then accompanied by a

Fig. 3.1 Screenshot from Easy A showing how the camera meanders across a
schoolyard
3 EASY A—“A IS FOR AWESOME” 19

female voice-over who confesses, “I used to be anonymous. If Google Earth


was a guy, he couldn’t find me if I was dressed up as a 10-story building.”
Who exactly is speaking and who the protagonist is remains unclear
until the end of the sequence. In the prologue, due to the camera angle
and the encounter of various obstacles (the trees, the students, the stones)
the camera movement can neither be defined as point of view of a diegetic
character, as Edward Branigan (2007 [1984]) defines it, nor as an objec-
tive perspective because the camera movement in this sequence resembles
the angst of a fearful teenager.1
Even though the perspective in the prologue is not immediately con-
nected to a single character, a narrative subject is nonetheless created
through the voice and camera movement. As the spectator hears that I was
anonymous and that if Google Earth had been a guy he could not have
found me, even if I would have been a 10-story building, the spectator
accompanies the narrator across the schoolyard. Though the authorship of
the protagonist is ubiquitous, the I, as the disembodied voice-over high-
lights, remains invisible. The film underscores this by putting the spectator in
the position of the singular “I,” in which spectators cannot see themselves
(one cannot see one’s own body, and yet one has a body). The spectator
experiences what the voice-over introduces as the diegetic background of a
narrative character; the I is omnipresent, but invisible.
The invisible I, and thus the spectator, meanders through the groups of
students. The camera passes these groups and approaches a teenage girl
accompanied by a group of her loyal followers (Fig. 3.2). For a brief
moment, a point of view is established, wherein the meandering gaze is
brought together with the teenage girl as a viewing subject. However, this
link of images proves incorrect. This confident teenage girl does not claim
the leading role; instead, it is the student who is shoved by this girl causing
her books to fall to the floor (Fig. 3.3). In this moment, the voice-over
vows to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, “starting now.” In
the collision of these two girls, the spectator experiences the relationship
between omnipresence and simultaneous invisibility, which is typical for
gossip, through the diegetic character. Here two realities collide with one
another. The weightlessness of being invisible, as depicted in crossing the
schoolyard, is confronted with diegetic reality, the freedom of narrative
with the power of facts. The objective/subjective dimension of gossip
takes shape through the protagonist Olive Penderghast.
Shortly following this collision, which wakes the film’s protagonist as
well as the spectator, a change in perspective occurs for the film spectator.
20 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

Fig. 3.2 Screenshot from Easy A presenting a teenage girl accompanied by a


group of loyal followers

Fig. 3.3 Screenshot from Easy A demonstrating how the protagonist’s books fall
to the floor
3 EASY A—“A IS FOR AWESOME” 21

Fig. 3.4 Screenshot from Easy A showing the protagonist appearing in front of a
webcam

The protagonist then appears in front of a webcam and presents the


following events as well as the preceding events as a part of her webcast
starting with part one (Fig. 3.4). Here the perspective of a tangible first
person narrator and the retrospective view of a teenager are established.
Whether the story is depicted from a subjective perspective, the teenager’s
point of view or the events just witnessed are objective facts remains unclear.
These different perspectives come together and cannot be differentiated
from one another. By staging the interplay between these different perspec-
tives, Easy A brings the indissoluble relationship between subjective and
objective view to light, between an individual and an objective reality.

3.2 COLLECTIVE INTERACTION


In the film’s first sequence, there is a shift from a general perspective of a
first person narration to an individual female protagonist. The invisible,
perceiving, and perceivable body of the “I,” be it an “it” or a “she,” is
embodied through a false “they” (the teenagers), and then transforms into
the first person “I,” who at the end of the prologue—mediated through
the presence of the webcam—is made visible to the film spectator as a
diegetic character. Based on the prologue, the film is structured on the
22 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

basic tension between subjective and objective perspectives. Also on the


level of plot, the protagonist remains invisible and unacknowledged, as she
herself admits. As one among many, she is anonymous; as a narrator, she is
invisible while being ubiquitous.
To step out of anonymity and become somebody Olive joins the
conversation, which becomes the basis of the film that is essentially her
own webcast.2 Olive is pushed to the center of events when she tells
her friend Rhiannon (who, according to Olive, defines herself through
her breasts) that she had lost her virginity. In order to avoid a weekend
camping trip with Rhiannon’s family, Olive says that she has a date. What
begins as an innocent excuse develops through the course of the film into
school-wide rumor that Olive sleeps with many boys, when in reality, she
accepts money and gifts for just saying she had sex with them. Here the
film’s self-reflexivity becomes apparent. The film essentially takes shape
through the rumors that spread about a lie.
As Olive tells Rhiannon in the girl’s bathroom that she really did go on the
date (0:05:20–0:06:03), her excuse to avoid camping transforms into a real
event. In this moment, the mood of the film suddenly changes. Suddenly her
friend is all ears. Through the ongoing repetition, first through Olive, then
through Rhiannon, and then through the whole school (which is simulta-
neously constituted as such), Olive’s statement becomes reinforced. What
began as an excuse of a single person becomes a common story through the
interaction of two friends, which eventually strengthens into the level of rumor.
It begins with the insistent questioning and assumption of Rhiannon,
to whom Olive gives in and admits that yes, “we did it.” With this
admission, an image already begins to take shape of “super sluts,” the
term Rhiannon assigns them both. The spectator witnesses the forma-
tion of a collective reference, which has no factual basis, but is based
on a lie. A deep attachment suddenly develops between Olive and
Rhiannon as well as with the spectator as confidant (Fig. 3.5). Only
later does it become clear that Rhiannon has also never had sex,
although she defines herself through it by inventing stories about her
excessive sexual experiences that the spectator actually never witnesses.
What the spectator does however hear about are her sexual exploits in
“motorboating.” Based on this scene and the film viewed as a whole, it
becomes clear that the film is about passing on stories, the invention of
stories, and the interaction between those involved in gossip. Rumors
develop on the basis of an accepted truth, not on facts. Here, the speech
act establishes facts.
3 EASY A—“A IS FOR AWESOME” 23

Fig. 3.5 Screenshot from Easy A showing Olive and Rhiannon in the girls’ bathroom

Through this talk in the girls’ bathroom a close connection develops


between a circle of insiders, who distant themselves from the others and
who become “others” in this moment. The girls’ bathroom as a space and
the closeness of Olive and Rhiannon reinforce the demarcation between
“inside” and “outside.” With the sensitive nature of the conversation and
the narrow, dimly lit space, a feeling of trust and intimacy forms, which is
then abruptly interrupted. Gossip makes the two friends trusted listeners
since rumors form a basis of trust and stabilization in the relationship as a
connecting interaction between the participants (see Siegel 2006: 74;
Spacks 1982: 29–30). However, the spectator witnesses how speech acts
take on a life of their own, when Olive—and then the whole school—all of
the sudden cannot stop talking about her “first time.”
In this moment the film keeps certain details of the girls’ discussion secret
from the spectator, instead Olive’s voice-over comments self-ironically on her
conduct, “I don’t know why I did it. I guess maybe it was the first time I had
sort of felt superior to Rhi. I just started piling on lie after lie. It was like
setting up Jenga.” With Olive’s voice-over the film spectator is reminded that
they are actually “watching” Olive’s webcast. Through the vivid immediacy
of flashbacks via the webcast, which the various subchapters and voice-overs
continually disrupt, the film merges both insider and outsider perspectives,
modes of reporting and commenting, as well as past and present time.
24 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

Fig. 3.6 Screenshot from Easy A demonstrating how Mary Ann disrupts Olive’s
and Rhi’s conversation

Easy A reinforces the fluidity between “inside” and “outside,” public


and private, as well as the intimacy constituted between the two girls
during their conversation by interrupting the conversation between the
friends when another girl, who has been listening to their conversation,
enters the scene (Fig. 3.6). The girls’ bathroom proves to be only a semi-
private space as Mary Ann, the chair of the school’s Christian Club,
suddenly emerges from one of the bathroom stalls. Mary Ann’s unex-
pected appearance highlights gossip’s uncontrollable spread and power.
The film underscores on a narrative as well as on an aesthetic level that it is
difficult to grasp who communicates—or will communicate—with whom
and how gossip will spread. It also remains unclear when and where
messages are created and how they are passed on.
Rumors spread incredibly fast. Easy A emphasizes the spatiotemporal
dynamic with a time lapse sequence that shows each new disclosure.
Olive turns her head (Fig. 3.7), the camera continues this move via
eyeline match and flies weightless through the filmic space. The filmic
space illustrates a feature of gossip, an invisible ubiquity that emerges
through collective interaction. The camera quickly travels across the
school from one group to the next, across the lawn, and through class-
rooms (Fig. 3.8) before finally returning to the protagonist (Fig. 3.9).
Olive, whose perspective is shared by the spectator, is staged as the
3 EASY A—“A IS FOR AWESOME” 25

Fig. 3.7 Screenshot from Easy A showing Olive turning her head

Fig. 3.8 Screenshot from Easy A highlighting that rumors spread incredibly fast

initiator as much as the object of the rumor itself, the communicator and
the message. Olive thus occupies both the position of an observer as well
as participant engaged in the events. In this sense, Olive functions as a
spatiotemporal personification of gossip.
26 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

Fig. 3.9 Screenshot from Easy A showing how Olive becomes the high school’s
subject

In gossip a constant exchange is performed between the first and third


person. The person who conveys information immediately becomes part
of the content. One becomes part of rumor oneself (“I heard that he is
getting married”; s/he said or s/he heard that he is getting married). In
this sense, the testimony of an individual has an effect that reaches beyond
each single conversation. Siegel (2006: 77–78) describes this process as a
fundamental part of oral discourse, which creates a collective dimension:

Through the modulation of oral discourse the first person “I” becomes the
third person and hence a figure. However, the creation of this figure
through rumor is a third person of greater efficiency. Since others contribute
to the transformation of this figure, it serves as a type of “collective expres-
sion” as Gilles Deleuze would say, therefore a figure that represents sig-
nificant political and social relevance (my translation).3

Siegel’s comment, in my view, underscores how the film experience creates


a subjective collectivity. Siegel describes a specific manner in which one as a
subject relates to the world. This suggests that collectivity, which is con-
stituted through gossip, is inconceivable without a subjective dimension,
and reversely, as the film suggests, the subject cannot be defined without a
collective.
3 EASY A—“A IS FOR AWESOME” 27

This omnipresence in space and time that enfolds rapidly through the
spread of rumors resembles the popular image Andreas Paul Weber
sketched of the Fama. Weber’s image shows a monstrous being with a
long nose, devil-like ears, and a serpentine body that flies through street
canyons, where numerous mini monsters fall out the windows and become
part of that flying monster, the rumor. Gossip is defined by this rapid
weightlessness because gossip is not about passing something new to
somebody, but about experiencing a sense of belonging, which is con-
stituted by passing on information. The film makes clear that gossip is
above all about the act of communication. Communication is what con-
stitutes and shapes a community and a collective, which before was only an
anonymous mass.
Kay Kirchmann (2004: 74, my translation4) notes that rumors in con-
trast to news do not have an initiator, or if they do, they can no longer be
corroborated, meaning rumors are essentially “to be understood as
unchecked and unsupported forms of information sharing.” What Easy
A foregrounds is that gossip is not about whether rumors are true or not,
but much more about the interactive connection between those involved.
In contrast to Kirchmann, I do not think that gossip comes to a standstill
when it can be verified whether or not a rumor is true; instead, like Siegel,
I suggest that gossip stops when there is no longer any interest in the act of
speculation and the desire to tell stories. Siegel (2010: 119) notes,

Gossip thus loses its currency not because it’s untrue, but because no one
really cares enough about it to circulate, embellish and make something
fabulous out of it. Believing gossip then presupposes a desire to take its
speculations as true and relevant to the self.

Gossip deals much more with what people want to believe than with actual
knowledge, which creates its own collective discourse. The truth of a
rumor does not matter so much since the origins of rumors usually remain
unknown. Probability plays a much more significant role than truth, and
perhaps most important is the act of communication. That said, the
content of gossip is by no means insignificant, as Easy A shows.
However, the communication shown is not based on the truthfulness of
disclosure, but the possibilities of interpretation. In this regard, gossip
serves as an exchange of individual opinions, subjective statements, and
the creation of a common consciousness. Gossip is not about knowledge;
28 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

it is about community building through the collective expression of indi-


vidual subjects (see Bühl 2000: 253).
Olive’s high school is a small universe that is easy to grasp as a narrative
space. Despite the uncontrollable spread of rumors, the film presents a
clearly tangible space. Easy A is not just a coming of age story; it is a
complex study of communities, of inclusion and exclusion, of imagined
communities, in Benedict Anderson’s words.5 Through the production of
rumors, the school turns into a sociotope, which is structured according to
distinct rules. This is why rumors spread so fast since not only is the
content of the rumor more or less known, the circle of those gossiping
to some measure already exists. In Easy A it is less about building new
communities and developing sociality than it is to structure and order
those that already exist. The film shows to what extent rumors determine
who belongs and who does not.

3.3 FABULOUS SUBJECTIVITY


Easy A reveals that the communication of rumors is not just about passing
on a message; it is also about the act of disclosure itself. Siegel (2013: 43)
notes that, “indeed, often the only thing that links the disparate details
joined together in gossip’s serial story-telling is the subjective perspective
of the gossiper him or herself.” Gossip is as much about individual
participation as it is about the general possibility of interpretation, as
demonstrated by the girls’ bathroom scene. The spectator hears Olive’s
confession only in part, but can attest to the fact that Olive spent the
weekend in her room as the film shows, meaning that the film invites the
spectator to participate in the gossip. Though spectators know better, they
cannot help themselves from imaging that the date actually did happen, or
at least that it—that is, Olive losing her virginity—could have happened. In
this sense, gossip is realized through the hearsay in the production of
images through the film experience. The bathroom scene creates a mode
of imagination that does not deal with facts, but with that which is heard.
In this manner a subjective perspective is constituted, which is also of
collective or even general validity. In this scene the spectator sees who is
speaking, but only hears fragments of what they are saying in the bath-
room. This is why the spectator becomes a participant in the act of gossip
who passes on what is overheard.
The girls’ bathroom scene makes clear that gossip and the spread of
rumors is not about actual “news;” it is rather a collective play with ideas
3 EASY A—“A IS FOR AWESOME” 29

that despite their fallaciousness do not lose their affective power. To


reiterate Siegel’s (2008) emphatic argument, which he bases on the per-
formance art of Vaginal Davis, gossip is not about true or false statements;
it is about the temporality and ambiguity of “affective and imaginative
pleasures.” During the course of the film Easy A shows, on the one hand,
that it is not about an ultimate truth which describes a meaningful relation
to the world, but a truth that is constituted through the subjective inven-
tion of stories. On the other hand the film highlights the social conditions,
which make subjective expression possible.
The performative dimension of gossip can, according to Siegel, redirect
external ascriptions. Though Siegel does not deny the destructive poten-
tial of gossip, he sees in the formation of rumors the possibility of personal
and social transformation. Siegel 2008 understands gossip as:

fabulous, as a form of fabulation—allows us to recognize it as a performative


mode of oral discourse that produces highly resonant characters, mythic
types, or legendary figures whose embodied particularities are the stuff out
of which others nourish their hopes and desires for ever more and varied
ways of being in the world.6

In reference to Patricia Meyer Spacks, Siegel (2006: 74, my translation7)


writes that:

those engaged in gossip, those who [use] speaking about others as a means
of self-reflection, to express amazement and uncertainty, to locate certainties
and broaden their knowledge of others. This type of gossip can, like the
other forms, use elements of a scandal, but their objective is aimed only in
little measure beyond the world of those who speak—except the dimensions
of the world they are concerned of.

Siegel’s remarks lend themselves particularly well to the analysis of the


multilayered meaning of gossip in Easy A. The film shows that those who
are engaged in gossip draw from a world that directly affects those
involved and only in a “little measure beyond the world of those who
speak” (Siegel 2006: 74). The school is depicted as its own universe, apart
from an outside reality. In fact, the school only exists because of gossip; it
is the direct product of gossip. There is no outside of the school. Only
Olive’s family represents a site of the diegesis that is not directly connected
30 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

to high school, meaning it is the only aspect of the film that stands apart
from the circulation of rumors.
Easy A also presents gossip as a means of self-expression. On a narrative
level gossip is presented “as a means of self-reflection, to express amaze-
ment and uncertainty” (Siegel 2006: 78), and so represents the growth of
a teenager, who tests the boundaries of her gender identity. The film
shows that gossip is subject to strict rules and is not solely a means of
creating new identities. The film’s story demonstrates that it is impossible
to define oneself as a subject separate from either prevailing or recogniz-
able conceptions of gender.
Since Olive is both subject and object in the spread of rumors, as well as
medium and participant, she is responsible—at least in the beginning—for
officially confirming that she goes to bed with her fellow students. (Except
for Rhiannon, no girl seems to care about her reputation, and boys only
seem eager to build up a good reputation and gain fame and thereby
partake in the circle of insiders and develop a sense of belonging.) In
exchange for restaurant gift cards and other favors, Olive begins to spread
false rumors about her sexual encounters with other male students. Only
as a sexual being, so the film shows, does Olive come to be recognized as a
subject. Through the course of the film it is not just the image of the boys
that transforms, but Olive’s image. Although the truth behind the gossip
threatens to collapse with the increasing number of participants, surpris-
ingly, the rumors do not lose their effect. The rumors simply change, and
thereby their effect. Those involved increases in number, and those
excluded diminishes. Since Olive has supposedly slept with everyone, a
date with her loses its currency as anything special. Nevertheless, Olive’s
favor remains desirable amongst the student body. As the group of those
who belong grows and the group of those who are excluded shrinks, the
protagonist’s perception of herself and of others changes.

3.4 SPEECH ACTS AND THE FEELING OF BELONGING


In Easy A, a feeling of belonging is depicted as a necessary condition of
subjectivity. To belong is thematized throughout the film as an elementary
point of reference within the dichotomy of gender. Easy A illustrates how
the heterosexual matrix, which is based on gender concepts of desire only
toward the opposite sex and on the basis of reproduction, serves as a
structuring model of social order. As Judith Butler argues, the heterosexual
matrix makes the binary construction of sexuality invisible by rendering this
3 EASY A—“A IS FOR AWESOME” 31

gender dichotomy as natural. The construction of gender identities is


assumed through dichotomical structures of desire. When one as a female
(a biological gender definable as female) desires a man, one becomes—in
line with the heterosexual matrix—a (social) woman; when one as a male
desires a woman the (social) identity of a man is constituted (see Butler
1999 [1990]: 23–44). Easy A shows that in order to belong, one must
desire the other sex according to a binary understanding of gender. The
moment that Olive “loses her virginity” she becomes visible as a “woman.”
Identity is described as an effect of collective processes of communica-
tion. The intention of the individual is less significant than conventions.
Easy A engages Butler’s reading of John L. Austin’s speech act theory
(Austin 1975 [1962]). According to Butler, utterances must conform to
norms to achieve their intended effect. They are only efficacious if they
conform to established rules. At the same time, they establish rules by
constantly performing them and thus create a performative reality. Butler
argues that performance is enacted through constant repetition, which is
how norms are produced in the first place. At the birth of a child, upon
declaring, “it is a girl,” a gender is assigned to the child that it did not
previously have. This speech act essentially expresses the imperative “Be a
girl!” or perhaps more accurately “Become a girl!” The constant repetition
“it is a girl” consolidates this gender classification. Accordingly, gender is
understood as a given, even though it is actually an effect of a discursive
system, a practice of attribution, and thus determined culturally. In con-
nection to Austin’s work, Butler further suggests that words are just as
powerful as actions. Words do not just serve as a means of describing
reality; words establish the world we live in. Hannelore Bublitz (2002: 23)
explains in her introduction to Butler’s work,

Denomination and execution come together as one. Thus, performative


speech acts produce what they denominate. Language has an actual effect.
The spoken word becomes a social fact (my translation8).

For a speech act to be a performative act that produces a reality it must


relate to existing linguistic conventions, words, or denominations.
Repetition is similar to citation. However, since repetitions are never one
hundred percent identical in what they repeat, there is always, according to
Butler, a subversive moment of potential change and shift of meaning.
Even though performative acts are determined by discursive power, they
are neither arbitrary nor fully intentional since repetitions never totally
32 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

conform to norms. Norms are historic, processual, and ambiguous. This is


why the subject that is produced through the performative power of
language can reject normative denominations and insults.
In line with Butler and Austin, it becomes clear that speech acts take
place regardless of individual agents (and their intentions), meaning that
speech acts always take place within a social and cultural context. Jonathan
Culler (2007: 149) notes how:

the performative breaks the link between meaning and the intention of the
speaker, for what act I perform with my words is not determined by my
intention but by my social and linguistic conventions.

While on the other hand, individuals have the possibility of reinterpretation.


Though Austin does not address literary speech acts, but instead
focuses on concrete social contexts and functions (see Culler 2007:
148), analogies can nonetheless be drawn between everyday communi-
cation and fictional forms of speech. Since the prevailing conventions—
and not the intentions of individuals—are of primary importance, every-
day communication functions in a similar manner to fictional modes. As
Barbara Johnson points out (cited by Culler 2007: 59), “the performa-
tive utterance automatically fictionalizes its utterer when it makes him
the mouthpiece for a conventional authority.” This implies that speech
acts are always a form of fictionalization, which raises the question of
how fictional forms, such as literature or film, can be grasped as perfor-
mative speech acts.
Based on plot, Easy A can be interpreted as follows: through the
repetition and spread of rumors that Olive lost her virginity the hetero-
sexual matrix is solidified as efficacious fact. Thus, the film shows how the
remaining students must by means of gossip participate in the advance-
ment of gender norms in order to be validated as subjects and to achieve a
sense of belonging. To attain this necessary gender identity the boys
pretend (through the spread of rumors) to have slept with Olive, who
thereby has become a “woman.”
By staging dichotomous gender categories as the product of a compli-
cated and risky process of rumor exchange, Easy A underscores that
gender is a complex and unstable construction. Thus, the oppressive effect
of the heterosexual matrix is shown to be a normalizing fiction. Norms,
the film suggests, are effects of a collective process of communication that
continually need to be kept in check in order to persist. In order to
3 EASY A—“A IS FOR AWESOME” 33

participate in the community each must participate in the perpetuation of


these norms, even though everyone knows about their unchecked founda-
tion in reality. For example, the bathroom scene shows how the rumor
that Olive had sex for the first time takes shape without any factual basis.
Thus, Olive experiences a sense of belonging without any solid point of
reference. Woman as a category is shown as abstract, though not insignif-
icant. This point bolsters the argument that through the interaction of
gossip a form of collectivity takes shape, which is not based on an actual
shared experience or common identity.
Through the spread of rumors Olive suddenly experiences a sense of
belonging; though exactly with what or with whom she feels connected
remains unclear. The obvious assumption is that the connectedness
pertains to the experience of coming into adulthood, of becoming a
woman, and though this point is not thematized, it is clearly percepti-
ble. The spectator sees, hears, and feels it. In particular, the film stages
the feeling of belonging through participation, but participation in
something that takes shape merely in the moment rumors take shape.
To partake, as the film makes clear, does not necessarily mean belong-
ing. One can participate without belonging. When the protagonist can
finally participate in the conversation, or at least acts like she can, she
does not only contribute to the topics of conversation, but herself
becomes the topic of the conversation. Here a community of those
who know develops, which also includes Olive. This comes across as a
gendered initiation. The “first time” can be compared with the gossip
laden “they say” since the “first time” as a paradigmatic sign of gender
also presupposes a collectivity (of those with the same experience and
knowledge). Shortly after this feeling of belonging has been established,
all the “others” want to do and become exactly what the protagonist—
via the spread of gossip—did and be part of the club of their supposedly
sexually active peers.
In Easy A, to be part of the conversation means visibility, and
visibility means to be someone, to become a subject. The more Olive
becomes the subject of conversations the more visible she becomes. In
the beginning of the film Olive is hardly noticeable; with the spread of
rumors, she becomes both more seen and heard. This reaches a narra-
tive climax when she arrives at school in black lingerie that she has
sewed into an only semi-appropriate outfit with a red, hand-stitched
“A” that tantalizes the innerdiegetic as well as extradiegetic audience
(Fig. 3.10).
34 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

Fig. 3.10 Screenshot from Easy A presenting Olive in black lingerie that she has
sewed into an only semi-appropriate outfit with a red, hand-stitched “A”

The communication practice depicted in Easy A shows how gossip can be


transformed from a negative to a positive and vice versa. What at first appears
as a potential counterpublic, as a tactical possibility of self-expression,
becomes for the protagonist an increasingly a hermeneutically closed space
in which the “identity-eradicating effects of participation” (Siegel 2008:
153). As the destructive side of the spread of rumors continues to increase,
Olive decides to end the rumors for once and all by releasing a webcast that
exposes everything. In the end, the film reads as a reflexive rubric, an internet
show of a teenager. Thus, it can be argued that gossip grinds to a halt the
moment the message becomes known as true or false. Nonetheless, Olive’s
decision shows that she has no more interest in the practice of imagining. In
this sense, I see Olive’s webcast as an emancipatory speech act in which the
protagonist evades defamation.
The film’s reflections on gossip explore the workings of a heterosexual
matrix and in this sense the film engages concepts of gender identity and
the conditions under which they function. In addition, Easy A thematizes
the creation of reality through speech acts as well as through images and
ideas.
The rumor that Olive lost her virginity, which originates in the girl’s
bathroom, is shown later in the film (0:29:19–0:35:00) to be consciously
staged and shaped as a form of self-expression at the will of the
3 EASY A—“A IS FOR AWESOME” 35

protagonist. Once it is common knowledge that Olive sleeps around—or


says that she does, her gay male friend asks Olive for a favor. Together at a
party they stage a spectacle, albeit behind closed doors. Jumping around
together on a bed they grunt and scream, while a crowd gathers outside
the bedroom door to catch an ear-full of the events behind the door. This
is how rumors take shape. With this event, the eavesdropping group
transforms from what can only be deemed an undefined mass of people
to a circle of confidants and participants in the spread of rumors. This
scene highlights that it is not about actually having sex, but rather, the
formation of subjective imagination that believes one is having sex.
To make this coupling believable Olive must moan and imitate the
sexual act in order to feed the spread of rumors and help her gay friend
establish a heterosexual identity in the eyes of his fellow students. After
this event it is sufficient just to tell everybody that they had sex in order to
maintain the rumor and thus keep the self-made identity intact. The
speech act becomes a fact, similar to an action. Having sex and talking
about having had sex implies the exact same consequences. Thus, con-
stative utterances become performative utterances.
Similar to the television series Sex and the City (USA 1998–2004,
Darren Starr), Easy A reveals that talking about sex is more significant
than having sex. Nonetheless, the verbal exchange concerning matters
of sex functions much differently in Easy A than in Sex and the City
since conversations do not occur within a trusted group of girlfriends,
but among the entire student body of Ojai North High School. In Sex
and the City, conversations—that could also be construed as a form of
gossip—constitute a community of women that is not based on a man–
woman relationship, but instead on a type of “womanhood” that is
realized through talking with other women about sex between men and
women, whereas in Easy A conversations take place between high
school students.9
What serves as an individual means of becoming visible at Ojai North
High School is used by many—at least by the male students—to become
somebody and to be recognized as a subject. The aim of Olive and her
fellow students as outsiders is to become participants though the means
of gossip. What is notable about Easy A is that there is no objective
perspective of inclusion and exclusion as there is in the film Emma.
Already in the prologue of Easy A, subjectivity is emphasized as the
basic relationship to the world. At the same time, Olive’s voice-over
that articulates the feeling of anonymity, a sense of not being seen, relates
36 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

to the diegetic world. Subjective perception in Easy A is shown as the


essential reference point to the world, which is not just a matter of
imagining. It is in this regard understandable that neither the conse-
quences of gossip nor the motivation of the participants is a central part
of the film’s plot. The spectator does not see how boys actually become
“men” in the eyes of their fellow classmates, nor how Olive’s gay friend is
taunted and teased, or the other problems experienced by those who are
overweight or otherwise deemed unattractive. What the film shows is
how rumors shape identity, not how high school problems are resolved.
As highlighted in the girl’s bathroom scene, Easy A makes what is
communicated and what is heard a part of the visual image. In this
sense the film itself can be understood as speech act.
What is shared and communicated determines the filmic space in Easy A,
which are both realized on various levels, including the subject, theme, and
aesthetics of gossip. Olive could have just dated a boy (and actually had sex
with him), which would have spared her the effort of doing favors for other
boys by pretending that she had slept with them. In the film, gossip
becomes so effective and omnipresent that there seems to be little room
for actual actions. Gossip itself is the primary action. When a fellow student
offers to pay Olive for an actual kiss, the request seems both strange and
disturbingly inappropriate for the spectator. This strong reaction highlights
how the film is about the efficacy of speech acts, the rumor, that Olive
prostitutes herself via gossip. The film shows how fiction becomes the
means of objective measurement.

3.5 IMAGES OF GOSSIP


In the final chapter of Easy A “Not With a Fizzle but With a Bang” a basic
change in perspective takes place. The visual inserts of the chapter and
Olive’s auditory commentary that speak to the extradiegetic film audience,
are integrated into the diegesis. In the end Olive calls on the entire school
to tune in to her web cast at 6 o’clock to share an important announce-
ment. Here the film’s extra- and innerdigetic audiences are addressed for
the first time as the same viewing audience. Spectators anticipate that the
protagonist will finally be seen having sex. Because of the consistent
repetition of speech acts and the spread of gossip, which takes over the
film’s diegesis, the speech act has also unfolded its efficacy on the spectator
during the viewing process. This is why the spectator anticipates some
form of factual proof that confirms the rumors about Olive. Although film
3 EASY A—“A IS FOR AWESOME” 37

spectators know better (i.e., that Olive has not slept with anyone), they
can nonetheless still imagine that Olive will appear naked on her webcast.
Due to the gossip’s efficacy, the spectator now expects a visualization of
the gossip which is now considered a fact. Even though I have argued
gossip is not about content and the question of whether something is true
or not, but about collective interaction, the ending of Easy A shows that
nonetheless gossip is also driven by an unyielding desire to know the truth.
This is exactly why the film spectator is also excited about the “resolution”
of the gossip and thus becomes part of the diegetic community constituted
through gossip. With the final chapter of Easy A, the feeling of belonging
is also realized for the extradigetic audience since as spectators we also
participate in the practice of collective imagination.
At the beginning of the film the students of Ojai North High School
stood alone for themselves outside of a social network, but by the end of
the film they are brought together as a seeing and hearing collective, as an
audience. The film shows the entire community including students’
families in different locations as they wait for Olive’s webcast. What they
behold, in stark contrast to their vivid expectations, is Olive explaining her
side of the story. The film’s conclusion reveals that all of the events
witnessed in Easy A are Olive’s retelling of them for her web cast audience.
In this final scene, Olive presents her side of the story, which is not an
individual story, but a story of the community, a community which has
been created through the telling of such a story.
When Olive states in her webcast, “That’s what the movies don’t tell
you: How shitty it is to be an outcast,” her web cast merges with the film’s
diegesis. This merging of personal and communal points of view produces
a new level of reality. What is interesting is that Easy A does not end with
the final broadcast of Olive’s web cast. Although Olive is no longer
narrating the events, she still occupies a fictional reality that very much
resembles a movie. Suddenly Olive turns from the camera and looks out
her window to see her old friend Todd standing in front of her house and
holding two computer speakers above his head. The filmic space becomes
a space of action as Olive finishes her webcast, leaves her room and goes
outside. Todd is presented “like in a movie” with a lawn mower and and a
twenty-first century stand in for a boom box—exactly as Olive has
dreamed of (Fig. 3.11). Thus Easy A ends with a typical romantic scene.
In this final scene, different levels of reality are at play. By ending the
webcast, Olive dissolves the fictitious, innerdiegetic community constituted
via gossip and the development of which is unknown since the logic of gossip
38 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

Fig. 3.11 Screenshot from Easy A showing Olive’s friend Todd asking Olive out

dissolves. By reflecting how the innerdiegetic community was constructed


through gossip and is thus an effect of speech act, the film spectator is
addressed as part of the diegesis. When Olive looks “outside” and then
runs off with Todd on the lawn mower, the film introduces another fictional
dimension. The self-reflective demonstration of gossip is pushed aside, and
the film now points to a meta level of mass media circulation of images. The
spectator does not experience the scene with the lawn mower merely as part
of the diegesis, but also sees the clichéd staging of romance in film, which is
however no less real than the diegesis constructed through gossip seen in the
film. The ending of Easy A suggests that there is no “outside” of imagina-
tion. Fiction and facts become of equal value and in the end are not
distinguishable from one another. At the end of the film, the spectator
realizes that the reality presented by mass media is just as real and imagined
as gossip. They both open up the possibility of relating to the world. In Easy
A, the spectator experiences fiction producing a reality, not in spite of but
because of its constitutive character. Thus, mass media images present
collective ideas as the effect of imagination: gossip images.
Siegel developed the term gossip image to describe how images and the
representation of stars are created through commentary, conjectures, and
the pleasure of embellishment and fabulation. Siegel locates a utopian
dimension in this type of image circulation, which allows for the creation
of alternative identities and a queer counterpublic beyond a mass media
3 EASY A—“A IS FOR AWESOME” 39

reality (see Siegel 2010: 5–8). On the one hand, Siegel’s research looks at
the interaction with images of stars in film, videos, and performances, in
which the images develop, change, and form anew. On the other hand,
Siegel shows how this change and transformation of aesthetics produced
through these interactions opens up an ambiguity of representation. Siegel
considers the use of film images and their constitution of an aesthetic as a
form of gossip, that is, a collective mode of communication. These types of
images he calls gossip images,

Like cruising in Daney’s account, gossip, I would argue, is an image-producing


activity. Thus, gossip-images, are also generated “at the border of two force
fields;” as image they are indeterminate. That is, gossip-images lack some-
thing, namely the independent authority of the self-evident, and as such they
rely on the collective process of speculation and desire among intimates for
their conviction. This is to say that gossip’s images both demand substantiation
through words from a trusted friend and solicit extension in the speculations of
the next confidant. In a queer counterpublic, gossiping can function as a
speculative process of imagining and imaging difference. (Siegel 2010: 20)

While Siegel generally sees mass media’s production of reality skeptically


stressing the potential of gossip producing intimacy as a possible counter
pole, I argue that contemporary mainstream cinema has a clearly political
side to it. The film experience of gossip in Easy A incorporates the type of
image production that Siegel describes. The film, in this sense, is designed
to win over the spectator as a type of ally in the practice of imagining. The
spectator is a participant in the speculative pleasure (the “speculative
process of imagining”), but the film’s ending also shows various alterna-
tives of “imagining difference.”
Easy A does not end just because the truth comes to light; while desire
to know plays a critical role, the actual truth is not that important. Instead
Olive’s public announcement uncovers the mechanisms of gossip and in
so doing allows for the possibility of appropriation. Olive’s use of a
webcam is a means of claiming authorship, which does not allow for any
additional individual interpretations or collective statements. The practice
of communication no longer serves as linking interactions. The social
dynamic of inclusion and exclusion is thus broken apart. With Olive’s
webcast announcement, the informal dimension of discourse, which had
become the official discourse, disappears. Olive’s public announcement
gives her voice effective power. Unlike the female protagonist in Nathaniel
40 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, to which Easy A is somewhat referring to,


Olive does not remain silent. While the rumors about Olive take on an
uncontrollable omnipresence, she appears by means of her webcast as a
mass medial incarnation of a single voice. Olive forges a public space that
fights against oppressive gender discourse in a way that Patricia
Mellencamp might appreciate. As Siegel (2010: 35) writes,

According to Mellencamp, to valorize gossip as a function of intimacy for the:


subordinated, is to attempt to pacify women with imaginary pleasures, rather
than to incite them to more direct and public forms of political activism. As she
writes, “This tactic of valorization, called resistance, might serve to prevent
women from speaking out, in public and private, directly.”10

In this sense, the last chapter of Easy A shows how gossip can equally be used
a means of self-invention, through which oppressive structures not only
become visible, but can be canceled out: A is not for adulteress, but for
awesome. Therein lies the film’s emancipatory potential, which is realized
through an experience of empowerment in the film’s conclusion when the
protagonist ends the self-destructive potential of gossip. What Easy A makes
clear is that the relationship between the “I” and the “we” is essentially a
constantly perpetuated fiction. If one understands gossip as a spatiotemporal
manifestation, which is realized through film experience, one can frame chick
flicks in relation to gossip. As Siegel (2010: 30–37) suggests, gossip images
are “a mode of image circulation” through which new types of images come
into being and are accompanied by new ways of thinking (Siegel 2010: 8–9).

NOTES
1. It is difficult to apply the concept of the free indirect discourse here, as in the
analysis of Emma, since the voice-over and the amorphous movement of the
camera relate to an “I” (and not to a third person).
2. Easy A thematizes how in order to become an individual and thus a subject
one must step out of the mass. This always implies the risk of failure.
Nevertheless, Easy A does not correspond to Robert Warshow’s (1962
[1948]) analysis of the gangster film and the notion of “becoming some-
body” within a class-based society. Instead the film looks at the ramifications
of “becoming somebody” based on gender.
3. Original quote: “Durch die Modulation des oralen Diskurses wird die erste
Person, ‘ich’, zur dritten Person – und damit letzten Endes eine Figur. Doch
diese durch Klatsch produzierte Figur ist eine dritte Person mit größerem
3 EASY A—“A IS FOR AWESOME” 41

Wirkungsgrad. Denn dadurch, dass andere durch ihre Positionierungen zur


Verwandlung dieser Figur beigetragen haben, fungiert sie als eine Art
‘kollektive Äußerung’, wie es Gilles Deleuze ausdrücken würde, mithin
eine Figur, die für viele politisch und soziale Relevanz erhält” (Siegel
2006: 77–78).
4. Original quote: Rumors are essentially to be understood as “Form der
ungesicherten und ungeprüften Informationsweitergabe zu verstehen” Kay
Kirchmann 2004.
5. Political Science scholar Benedict Anderson defines nations as “imagined
communities,” which presume a shared identity and a sense of belonging to
a specific, well-defined geopolitical space, in which ideology and indoctrina-
tion cover the real social inequalities of individuals and present nations as
natural and given. Even though nations are the effect of power, institutions,
and techniques, they are understood as original and preexisting (see
Anderson 2006 [1983]).
6. Siegel (2008, 158) explains in an endnote: “Unfortunately, Tomlinson and
Galeta chose to translate the French word fabulation [in Deleuze’s Cinema
2, 1989 [1985]] into English as ‘story-telling,’ thus diminishing many of
the term’s resonances.”
7. Original quote: Siegel writes that “[am] Klatsch Teilnehmende ‘die Rede
über andere’ [benutzten], um über sich selbst zu reflektieren, um Erstaunen
und Unsicherheit zum Ausdruck zu bringen, Gewissheiten zu verorten und
ihr Wissen über andere zu erweitern. Diese Art von Klatsch kann, wie die
anderen Formen, Elemente des Skandals benutzen, aber ihre Ziele richten
sich nur im engeren Maße auf die Welt jenseits der Sprechenden selbst –
außer auf die Dimensionen der Welt, die sie betreffen” (Siegel 2006: 74).
8. Original quote: “Bezeichnen und vollziehen fallen zusammen. Performative
Sprechakte erzeugen demnach das, was sie bezeichnen. Sprache hat hier also
wirklichkeitserzeugenden Charakter. Das gesprochene Wort nimmt den
Status einer sozialen Tatsache an” (Bublitz 2002: 23).
9. The role of conversation in Sex and the City can also be understood as a
possibility for women within a heterosexual world to establish a feminine
collectivity. Following the work of Monique Wittig, one could argue that
the formation of a feminine identity a “man” must serve as the point of
reference in order for the “woman” to feel a sense of belonging. Based on
Wittig’s logic a lesbian identity cannot theoretically exist in a heterosexual
world since a “woman” is always defined based on the desire of a man and
this means a woman’s desire of another woman is categorically excluded,
since this would imply a subject that cannot be understood as a “woman”
(Wittig 1992 [1976]). I argue that in chick flicks a shift in the definition of
“woman” takes place. In chick flicks women are represented less as com-
plementary or as opposites, meaning they are not framed in terms of “the
42 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

second sex,” instead gender differences as part of a dichotomous predeter-


mined system are drawn into question. Instead they are reflected upon as
taking shape on a multidimensional level. In this regard women in chick
flicks are reflected upon based on their relationality as relational subjects.
10. On the critique of mass media and gossip, see Mellenkamp 1992: 155–166.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, Benedict R. 2006 [1983]. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Austin, John L. 1975 [1962]. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Branigan, Edward. 2007 [1984], Die Point-of-View-Struktur. Montage/Av 16(2):
45–70.
Bublitz, Hannelore. 2002. Judith Butler zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius.
Bühl, Walter. 2000. Das Kollektive Unbewusste in der Postmodernen Gesellschaft.
Konstanz, Germany: UVK Medien.
Butler, Judith. 1999 [1990]. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge.
Culler, Jonathan. 2007. The Literary in Theory. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1989 [1985], Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Kirchmann, Kay. 2004. Das Gerücht und die Medien. Medientheoretische
Annäherungen an einen Sondertypus der informellen Kommunikation. In
Medium Gerücht. Studien zu Theorie und Praxis einer kollektiven
Kommunikationsform, eds. Manfred Bruhn and Werner Wunderlich, 67–83.
Bern/Stuttgart/Vienna: Haupt Verlag.
Mellenkamp, Patricia. 1992. High Anxiety: Catastrophe, Scandal, Age, & Comedy.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Siegel, Marc. 2006. Gossip ist fabelhaft. Queere Gegenöffentlichkeiten und
“Fabulation.”. Texte Zur Kunst 61: 68–79.
Siegel, Marc. 2008. Vaginal Davis’s Gospel Truth. Camera Obscura 23(1):
151–159.
Siegel, Marc. 2010. Die Leute Werden Reden. Joseph Mankiewicz’ filmischer
Klatsch. In Synchronisierung der Künste, eds. Robin Curtis, Gertrud Koch,
and Marc Sigel, 93–100. Munich: Fink.
Siegel, Marc. 2013. A Gossip of Images: Hollywood Star Images and Queer
Counterpublics. Doctoral Dissertation. Freie Universität Berlin.
Spacks, Patricia Meyer. 1982. In Praise of Gossip. The Hudson Review XXXV 1:
19–38.
3 EASY A—“A IS FOR AWESOME” 43

Warshow, Robert. 1962 [1948]. The Gangster as Tragic Hero. In The Immediate
Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre & Other Aspects of Popular Culture, 83–88.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wittig, Monique. 1992 [1976]. The Category of Sex. In The Straight Mind and
Other Essays, 1–8. Boston: Beacon Press.

FILMS
Easy A (USA 2010; directed by Will Gluck; script: Bert V. Royal; actress: Emma
Stone).
Emma (UK/USA 1996; directed by Douglas McGrath; script: Jane Austen/
Douglas McGrath; actress: Gwyneth Paltrow).
Sex and the City (USA 1998–2004; directed by Michael Patrick King et al.; script:
Darren Star; actresses: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia
Nixon).
CHAPTER 4

Emma—“A Match Well Made,


a Job Well Done”

Abstract Chapter 4 further demonstrates how gossip functions as a useful


concept in order to understand chick flicks. It presents a case study on
Emma (UK/USA 1996, Douglas McGrath). As a film adaptation of one
of Jane Austen’s novels, which have traditionally been associated with a
female readership, the film Emma is an excellent example for thinking
about how gender plays a role in the understanding of subjectivity. While
Dang’s reading of Easy A deals with the performative dimension of gossip,
her analysis of Emma focuses on the speculative and normative functions
of gossip. In addition, this chapter focuses on the subject of dance as an
organizing social principle and analyzes the relation between the female
protagonist and the community.

Keywords Subjectivity, collectivity, and objectivity  Community 


Speculation  Free indirect discourse  Dance  Jane Austen

My analysis of Emma further demonstrates how gossip functions as a


useful concept in order to understand chick flicks. As a film adaptation,
Emma is an excellent example for thinking about how gender plays a role
in the understanding of subjectivity since the novels of Jane Austen have
traditionally been associated with a female readership (see Radway
1984).

© The Author(s) 2017 45


S.-M. Dang, Gossip, Women, Film, and Chick Flicks,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56018-6_4
46 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

While my reading of Easy A deals with the performative dimension of


gossip, my analysis of Emma focuses on the speculative and normative
functions of gossip. In Emma the film’s characters are driven by specula-
tion, reckoning, judgments, and prejudgments. While gossip is often
conceptualized as a practice of communication primarily associated with
women, it is noteworthy that in Emma as well as in Easy A men are shown
to be just as much involved in the spread and circulation of gossip as the
women are. Building on my analysis of Easy A, I consider the role of
gender differentiation in Emma and how gossip can be grasped as a form
of collectivity and community. Moreover, I consider the protagonist’s role
in shaping the film experience. In my analysis of Emma I show how the
experience of gossip is produced through the film’s staging of time and
space. The analysis highlights how the film dramaturgy constitutes a film
experience of a collective subjectivity. Drawing on Pierre Pasolini’s con-
cept of free indirect discourse, which resides between a general and a
personal point of view, I focus on the subject of dance as an organizing
social principle and analyze the relation between the female protagonist
and the community.

4.1 THE STAGING OF FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE


Emma is staged in the early nineteenth century. The film’s protagonist is
Emma Woodhouse, a young woman from a good home whose favorite
pastime is matchmaking. During the film credits (0:0:18–0:04:17) the film
immediately establishes a subjective perspective which is at the same time
also objective. The film shows a limitless view of the universe. One sees the
black galaxy filled with stars. A quickly rotating globe slowly moves
towards the spectator (Fig. 4.1), and as it approaches, it appears as a
painted map that the camera meanders across to reveal all the important
places and characters of the following events. The globe begins to quickly
spin again, and replacing its location in space, the globe is suddenly
dangling from Emma’s hand as she gifts the hand painted globe to a
bride (Fig. 4.2).
The film’s first scene introduces the temporal and spatial dimensions of
gossip, through the relativity of time and space, the inseparability of
subject and object, and the creation of a community through conversa-
tions in small circles. The fast spinning globe marks the relativity of this
perspective, the quicker the speed, the smaller the space and the slower the
time. In addition, the zooming and the tactility of the handcrafted globe
4 EMMA—“A MATCH WELL MADE, A JOB WELL DONE” 47

Fig. 4.1 Screenshot from Emma demonstrating how the fast spinning globe
marks the relativity of perspective

Fig. 4.2 Screenshot from Emma presenting Emma handing over a handcrafted
globe to the newly wedded Westons
48 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

as well as the voice-over of the female narrator underscore the subjectivity


of these images:

In a time when one’s town was one’s world and the actions of a dance
excited greater interest than the movement of armies, there lived a young
woman who knew how this world should be run.

The film introduces Emma as both the subject and the object of the film,
as a viewing character as well as a character who is viewed. The film’s
voice-over strengthens the impression of a spinning and rotating globe
and emphasizes the subjective perception. The images capture the prota-
gonist’s point of view, while at the same time the film speaks of Emma in
the third person. This first scene in Emma establishes a way of seeing the
world that resembles Easy A but is rather to be defined in relation to free
indirect discourse.
Pier Paolo Pasolini adopted the literary term free indirect discourse for
film studies (see Pasolini 1976). Free indirect discourse is the thoughts of a
character expressed without the use of quotation marks, which makes it
difficult to determine whether it is the author or the character who is
speaking (e.g., Is it really too late?). In a film context, free indirect
discourse is staged as a narrator’s perspective in between a subjective
character’s point of view and the objective gaze of the camera. Gilles
Deleuze defines such a cinematographic perspective as perception-image.
Deleuze (1986 [1983]: 76) states:

Knowing whether the image is objective or subjective no longer matters: it is


semi-subjective, if one wishes, but this semi-subjectivity does not indicate
anything variable or uncertain. It no longer marks an oscillation between
two poles, but an immobilization according to a higher aesthetic form.

While Deleuze underscores the “immobilization” of semi-subjectivity, the


status of the images—and thus the position of the spectator—changes over
the course of Emma. Nevertheless, the tension between the subjective and
the objective perspective remains inherent in the images. Without consider-
ing the discussions on the visual and auditive point of view and the role of
the camera in film studies here in greater detail, I wish to underscore that in
Emma as well as in Easy A understanding the film experience requires
considering whether an omniscient voice or an innerdiegetic character is
heard, that is, whether the spectator is confronted with an objective or a
subjective dimension.
4 EMMA—“A MATCH WELL MADE, A JOB WELL DONE” 49

Emma continues in the perspective of free indirect discourse. During


the wedding scene, the film resembles a stage in the theater. The camera
functions like a curtain by revealing a spectacle and distancing itself
slowly from the film’s protagonist. To the left stand the newly wedded
Westons and the babbling Miss Bates, an old friend of Emma, and to the
right huddle Emma’s father, Mr. Woodhouse, and Mr. Elton, the clergy-
man. By placing the protagonist at the center of the image, the film
underlines Emma’s vital function as the member of the community.
Wedding guests are seen passing from both sides, in the foreground
and background (Fig. 4.3). Here, the film introduces the subject of
inclusion and exclusion of people, as it depicts people coming and
going through doors and gates throughout the film. The scene ends
with a shot, in which the pleasantries, the polite congratulations, and
wishes transcend into an individual speech. When Emma’s face is shown
in a close up, mourning the loss of the beloved Miss Taylor, now Mrs.
Weston, accompanied by melancholic violins, the spectator’s distance
from the protagonist dissolves (Fig. 4.4). The scene’s ending refers to
an individual feeling. By staging the wedding through free indirect
discourse, the spectator experiences a typically subjective dimension of
gossip.

Fig. 4.3 Screenshot from Emma highlighting Emma as the center of the film
50 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

Fig. 4.4 Screenshot from Emma showing Emma’s face in a close up, mourning
the “loss” of the beloved Miss Taylor

4.2 EMMA AS A FILMIC FIGURATION OF A COMMUNITY


The characters in Emma are constantly talking about other people, both
those who are present and those who are absent. A conversation begins in
one place and continues somewhere else, sometimes even by another
person. Group constellations continuously change in the film as does
time and location in each scene. The film thereby creates a network of
characters through a circumscribed space: the village of Highbury.
The collective interactions and social networking in Highbury are over-
seen by the film’s protagonist Emma Woodhouse. Emma’s efforts lie in
making matches through means of gossip, and she is therefore constantly
engaged in passing on what she has seen and heard. Emma’s conjectures
soon become facts, which ultimately culminate—when successful—with
relationships. Emma is always listening to find out who is talking to
whom, when, and why. The film thereby shows how participants in gossip
themselves become the objects of hearsay (see also Spacks 1985: 165).
Similar to the way the protagonist in Easy A embodies the “first time”
that initiated and structured the collective communication practice of an
entire student body, Emma is the central point of reference of “one says” in
Highbury. The protagonist is both object and subject. On the one hand, as
4 EMMA—“A MATCH WELL MADE, A JOB WELL DONE” 51

in Easy A, the spectator sees Emma as a diegetic character; on the other


hand, the spectator sees the world through her eyes. This means the
spectator sees Emma and also sees with Emma. However, neither of these
perspectives can be defined as clearly subjective because an objective dimen-
sion is also implied, nor can the spectator’s view of Emma be understood as
only objective. The film constantly changes between an individual’s point of
view and a general, objective point of view. The film thereby produces an
experience typical of gossip: a collective subjectivity. While Easy A produces
a film experience that refers to an individual as a subjective feeling of
belonging via participation, Emma points to a more general dimension by
reflecting on how collectivity is actually produced.
Following this line of argument, it becomes questionable how much
influence Emma actually has as an individual in her matchmaking. The
protagonist seems to function more as a figuration of a collective commen-
tary and representative of a community, as the free indirect discourse estab-
lished in the film’s first scene suggests. The film also addresses the extent of
Emma’s actual influence as a matchmaker on the narrative level. At the film’s
beginning in the intimate space of a wooden library, Mr. Knightley and
Emma’s father question whether Emma really initiated the wedding of the
Westons. “It was nothing but a lucky guess,” Mr. Knightley states. Emma
responds that maybe it was exactly due to these speculations, the “lucky
guess,” that a wedding took place on that day. In order to bring Miss Taylor
and Mr. Weston together, Emma claims she had “promoted Mr. Weston’s
visits” and encouraged the union.
The following scene, however, suggests that Emma does not influence
events in exactly the way she intends. When Emma invites Mr. Elton, the
clergyman, to her home to match him with her friend Harriet Smith, there
is no evidence that they will fall in love. Mr. Elton has lively conversations
with all the guests at Emma’s house except Harriet. Another party scene
shows Mr. Elton paying a lot of attention to Emma when Harriet is not
present. It becomes obvious that he has the intention of marrying Emma
instead, but after Emma strongly rejects Mr. Elton’s affections on the way
home in a carriage, the clergyman ends up marrying a wealthy woman
from Bath. According to the logic of how the film presents the protago-
nist, I argue, Emma cannot marry Mr. Elton nor anyone else since at this
point in the film she functions more as a narrative device in organizing the
community of Highbury than as an actual participant at the society.
Emma is focused on commenting on the events and making sense of
who is meeting with whom. In doing so, the film stages her as the
52 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

pivot of the community that she constitutes at the same time. In other
words, the events unfold according to Emma’s aims and thus through
her point of view. Like Olive in Easy A, Emma cannot be grasped as an
agentic individual, but is rather to be understood as a mediator. Emma
is always present. Her role as a protagonist is to influence and shape
events and relationships between characters. No conversation in the
film takes place without her. Since matchmaking structures the social
relations of the community, Emma’s cupid’s play in fact constitutes the
society itself.

4.3 TALKING, RAMBLING, SILENCE


The film stages how communication practices among all the inhabitants of
Highbury revolve around the protagonist. While Easy A deals with the
performativity and effects of speech acts, Emma focuses on how speech
acts function. In Emma, the effects of speech acts derive more from those
participating in gossip than from what is actually being said. In Emma, acts
of hearsay and their interpretation are more significant than the statements
themselves.
Deleuze points out that speech acts are not only about making state-
ments or describing the world, but also about the possibility of articulation
and the interaction with one another (Deleuze 1989 [1985]; see also
Siegel 2010: 43). Deleuze (1989 [1985]: 227) writes:

Interactions make themselves seen in speech-acts. Interactions do not simply


concern the partners in a speech-act precisely because they are not explained
through individuals, any more than they derive from a structure: rather it is
the speech-act which, through its continuous circulation, propagation and
autonomous evolution, will create the interaction between individuals or
groups who are far away, dispersed, indifferent to each other.

Speech acts are not be understood as conversations in the sense of indivi-


duals’ actions and reactions, but as social relations. By presenting char-
acters that never stop talking, I argue that like Easy A, Emma reflects on
the organization of sociality through how a community comes to life. By
presenting a world that is relatively easy to grasp due to its size, the film
shows how speech acts constitute a community. When and how a char-
acter talks in Emma is of decisive consequence. For example, when Emma
4 EMMA—“A MATCH WELL MADE, A JOB WELL DONE” 53

accuses Miss Bates of senseless babbling at the picnic, all the lively con-
versations that were going on stop at once. The interactions are inter-
rupted, and no socializing seems possible anymore. One after another,
attendees leave the picnic with poor excuses and disappear from the scene.
In Emma, speech acts are the basis of the community. Who is heard and
seen determines who is included and excluded and thus determines how
society is structured.
In Emma, the characters embody a community that is constituted by
gossip. Who is seen with whom and when, that is, who is participating in
the exchange of news and opinions, matters as much as the question who
is falling in love with whom. As in Easy A, in order to be part of the
community it is essential to be the subject of conversation as well as
participate in the gossip of Highbury. To be part of Highbury’s gossip
one has to be an eligible marriage candidate. Thus it is only possible to
belong to the community through a relationship that is produced via
gossip. Therefore it is of no coincidence that the babbling Miss Bates and
her deaf-mute mother, who embodies the role of the poor spinster, are
marginalized within the community. They are not able to perform ade-
quate speech acts in order to participate in the daily conversations. While
Miss Bates talks without pause, though never manages to say anything
meaningful, Jane Fairfax, Miss Bates’ niece, is also speechless and
remains silent. She is also excluded from Highbury’s society until it is
later revealed that she is secretly married to Frank Churchill, the son of
the freshly married Mr. Weston. Jane Fairfax’s voice is only heard in a
duet that she performs with Frank Churchill. This duet can be inter-
preted as a clue that she will marry him and become part of the commu-
nity (Fig. 4.5). However, the film also suggests that Emma and Frank
could make a great couple based on the witty and intimate conversation
they share during their first encounter. They both enjoy speculating
about who is going to marry next and talk also about Jane Fairfax, even
though Frank’s speculations turn out to be lies since he of course already
knows about his own engagement to her. The seeming intimacy reaches
its climax when Emma and Frank also sing a duet together just before
Jane Fairfax and Frank do (Fig. 4.6). Staging both possibilities, Frank
and Emma as a potential couple as well as Frank and Jane Fairfax, the
duet scene highlights how the film invites the spectator to also speculate
since the images always present a subjective perspective that can prove
untrustworthy.
54 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

Fig. 4.5 Screenshot from Emma presenting Frank Churchill performing a duet
with Jane Fairfax

Fig. 4.6 Screenshot from Emma presenting Frank Churchill performing a duet
with Emma
4 EMMA—“A MATCH WELL MADE, A JOB WELL DONE” 55

4.4 THE DANCE AS A FILMIC MODE OF SOCIAL ORDER


In Emma, the motif of dancing also plays an important role in the question
of how gossip structures society. The film presents dancing as a form of
conversation that structures the community of Highbury. Dancing plays a
crucial role as a subject and in the staging of time and space. I interpret the
film’s beginning, when the credits accompany the fast spinning globe
slowly moving towards the spectator, as a movement that resembles
dance. This dance-like movement culminates with the female narrator’s
voice-over that states that there once was a time “when one’s world and
the actions of a dance excited greater interest than the movement of
armies, there lived a young woman who knew how this world should be
run.” This sequence, introduces dance as a narrative motif as well as a part
of the film image. Music is also an important element in Emma and
functions as an additional form of commentary in each scene, for example,
when Emma says goodbye to her former governess and the flute plays a
sweet and melancholic tune.
Music, dance, and the social order come together at the Westons’ ball
(1:12:40–1:20:32) in one exemplary scene that shows how an experience
of gossip is produced in Emma. In this scene, the film’s characters are seen
entering the ballroom in various configurations (in pairs, in a group of
three or more) and in different styles of communication (intimate, public,
disharmonious, symmetric, dynamic). Their configurations and behaviors
show what positions they inhabit within the society of Highbury. Frank
Churchill and Emma speak just outside the house together, and then Mrs.
Weston, the former Miss Taylor, takes over the conversation and walks
into the house with Emma. When Miss Bates appears, she silences the
gossiping twosome (Fig. 4.7). Miss Bates’ trite commentary leaves no
room for other guests to pick up the conversation even as Frank reenters
the scene with Jane Fairfax, at which time Miss Bates begins to heap
meaningless praise on him. Her failed contributions interrupt the dynamic
interaction of the scene.
This scene can be understood as a filmic figuration of a collective
utterance that is based on a permanent transformation from a first
person to a third person. It also presents a temporality that is typical
for gossip and that merges past and future. Siegel writes, “I will become
‘him’ or ‘her’ who has done something, was something or did some-
thing.” (Siegel 2006: 77, my translation1). In this sense, the narration
56 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

Fig. 4.7 Screenshot from Emma pointing out Ms. Bates senselessly babbling at
the ball standing among Emma, Mrs. Weston, Mr. Churchill, and Jane Fairfax

cannot begin until Miss Bates leaves the scene to welcome another
guest. The characters enter and leave the scene, and as in the first
scene, doors serve as an important element of the mise en scène.
In Emma, community and society mean the same thing. When the
music plays, couples come together on the dance floor. They mark the
center of the filmic space. Emma dances with Frank Churchill after making
sure that Harriet was not left standing alone outside of the action. After
Mr. Elton rejects Harriet, Mr. Knightley asks her to dance and thereby
integrates her into the community. Later in the film, the friendly farmer
Mr. Martin asks Harriet to marry her.
After the dance Emma and Mr. Knightley leave the room to get some
fresh air and discuss the events of the evening; they stand together in the
darkness and look through the window toward the illuminated dance floor
(Fig. 4.8). This images capture both Emma’s and Mr. Knightley’s roles as
observers as well as participants of the events. Both are shown as part of
Highbury’s society, but also as trying to make sense of what is going on
within it. The spectator experiences something akin to having been in the
middle of the dance floor and then of leaving the ballroom to serve as
an observer of both the scene inside and the intimate conversation
between Emma and Mr. Knightley. The change in the spectator’s position
4 EMMA—“A MATCH WELL MADE, A JOB WELL DONE” 57

Fig. 4.8 Screenshot from Emma presenting Emma and Mr. Knightley as both
observers and participants of the events

does not create distance from the film characters as one might expect, but
rather, reinforces the spectator’s curiosity and desire to see a relationship
develop between Emma and Mr. Knightley.
The drawn out coming together of couples is a critical element of the
film’s dramaturgy, which correlates to how gossip points to the future.
The spread of rumors always implies a forward movement. It is not as
important to bring a message to another person as it is to continue the
exchange of news and opinions. The term hearsay implies that both the
reception and the dissemination of a rumor are going on at the same time.
Gossip is driven by a future-oriented force that derives from a “speculative
relation to the past” (Siegel 2013: 96, my translation2). Focusing on the
coupling of Emma and Mr. Knightley, the film is driven towards this ends.
Already knowing that Emma and Mr. Knightley would make a perfect
couple and having to wait nevertheless until the end of the film, raises the
intensity of the spectator’s experience of impatience.
According to Casey Finch and Peter Bowen (1990: 2), a rumor is
“a secret that is no secret.” On the novel Emma, they write:

Gossip travels fast because in a sense it is always already known; it is not


news at all but part of a social agenda already recognized by the commu-
nity and already unconsciously internalized by what Austen – underscoring
58 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

the theatricality of gossip – calls the “principals” of the marriage plot


(Finch and Bowen 1990: 1).

The spectator at least senses from the film’s very beginning that Emma and
Mr. Knightley will ultimately be united but not only because they know
the outcome of the original novel or because as a love story it’s expected to
end with unifying the two characters always at odds with one another. The
spectator also anticipates the happy ending because of how the film stages
the relationship between Emma and Mr. Knightley, who are often seen in
conversation and positioned in a symmetric, harmonious manner as is
typical for the staging of romantic couples in a screwball comedy (see
Greifenstein 2013). Emma is portrayed in a similarly harmonious manner
with Frank Churchill, which frustrates any sense of certainty on whom
Emma will end up with at the end.

4.5 THE DRAMATURGY OF PARTICIPATING OBSERVATION


The film’s dramaturgy is based on a tension between subjective and
objective perspectives, public and private spheres, as well as between
community and society and thus shapes a viewing position of participation
and observation. The film’s dramaturgy determines how the spectator feels
towards the film and its protagonist. Emma’s point of view transforms
throughout the film, as does the attitude of the spectator towards the
protagonist. While at first the film presents Emma as a narrative device that
connects the characters of Highbury for the duration of the film, she
increasingly takes on more substance as a character and becomes more
personally involved in the plot beyond her role as matchmaker. The film
depicts a transformation that captures a more objective than subjective
point of view. At first, the spectator is able to observe and criticize Emma’s
opinions, but with the progression of the film, the spectator begins to take
more interest in the protagonist’s personal affairs and to develop feelings
for her. The more the film emphasizes Emma’s individual desires and the
more she participates in the matchmaking game, the more the spectator
loses sight of who is getting engaged with whom. Whether Frank
Churchill or Mr. Knightley is Mr. Right remains unresolved for most of
the film.
At the same time, the relationship between public and private spheres
becomes more and more ambiguous. In Emma, the private is public and
the public is private, as Finch and Bowen have observed in regards to the
4 EMMA—“A MATCH WELL MADE, A JOB WELL DONE” 59

novel and pointed out as typical for gossip presented in the form of the
novel. They write:

Highbury’s adoption of individual citizens’ concerns [ . . . ] marks how


deeply private acts and family correspondence are inscribed within commu-
nity affairs. In fact, the principle of gossip, the gesture by which anyone’s
business is made everyone’s, provocatively questions the very nature of
private business or, rather, the business of privacy. And if everyone—a term
that must remain as univocal as it is anonymous—is curious about the
community’s members (both leading and lesser citizens), all of this takes
place in a novel that [ . . . ] no one seems to narrate. While the free indirect
stylist blurs the narrative distinctions between objective and subjective dis-
course, she blurs too the proprietary difference between communities and
individuals. For if the power of the community is enforced and represented
by voices that seem to be everywhere and nowhere at once, the voice of the
individual, the community’s most private property, is represented in publicly
circulating letters and interior monologues that somebody, although it is
never clear who, overhears. (Finch and Bowen 1990: 10)

Individual affairs become collective affairs; private happiness determines


the social wellbeing. Rumors are omnipresent since everywhere people are
talking, while at the same time rumors remain invisible given that there is
no obvious path of transmission nor reliable source of origin. By showing
how the community of Highbury discusses private relationships, the first
part of the film demonstrates that private relationships are of public inter-
est. In contrast, the second part of the film, which begins with Frank
Churchill’s arrival, shows how public affairs become private ones. With the
second half of the film the events begin to concern Emma directly, such as
when Mr. Elton asks her to marry him instead of Harriet; Emma finds out
that Frank Churchill is already engaged to Jane Fairfax; or Emma becomes
jealous of the fun Harriet and Mr. Knightley are having. By making
people’s relationships more and more of Emma’s concern, the film under-
lines how gossip influences individual lives and thereby reflects on the
relationship between the individual and society.
To elaborate on this point, I analyze the film’s middle part (0:44:14–
1:02:3), when Frank Churchill appears and the story takes a change of
course. The first scene of the film establishes a theater-like staging that
depicts the speech act as an individual’s utterance and an aesthetic mode of
diegetic subjectivity. Here speech can be related to Deleuze’s discussion
on speech acts as part of the visual image. The tension between these two
60 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

modes is transformed as Emma becomes more and more aware of her own
subjectivity and thus changes her actions and attitude towards the events
accordingly. The second half of the film draws the spectator into the
communication processes so that it is impossible to maintain a critical
distance to the events in the first part of the film. With the appearance of
Frank Churchill, the aesthetic mode of the film changes and with it the
status of the film’s images. While the semi-subjective point of view in the
first part of the film made the diegetic world appear transparent, the
increasing subjectivity of the film’s second part causes the spectator’s loss
of orientation in social affairs. As soon as Emma becomes involved in
Highbury’s community and becomes herself an object of gossip, the
mood of the film turns to drama. The second part of the film consists of
numerous close ups of the protagonist, inner monologues, and dark
intimate rooms decorated with mirrors. The subjective dimension of
these images reaches a climax when Emma thinks to realize her love for
Frank Churchill while she is seated alone in a dark room illuminated only
by candles (Fig. 4.9).
After the disappointment of finding out that there will be no wedding
between Harriet and Mr. Elton, which was obvious for the spectator but
not for the protagonist, Harriet and Emma hide out in the stable. This is
an interesting scene to consider especially in how it emphasizes how the

Fig. 4.9 Screenshot from Emma showing how Emma thinks to realize her love
for Frank Churchill
4 EMMA—“A MATCH WELL MADE, A JOB WELL DONE” 61

status of the film’s images can suddenly change. This scene compresses
time and space. The site and the dynamic of conversation, which are based
on where it takes place and whom is involved, is shown to change from
one second to the next. Dialogues begin here, continue there, and are led
by different characters. This scene shows the independent nature of the
speech act, which does not rely on individuals or sites of discourse. Or in
Deleuze’s (1989 [1985]: 228) words, “The film appears as an indetermin-
able speech-act (rumor) which circulates and spreads, making visible the
live interactions between independent characters and separate places.”
In Emma, gossip is realized as a film experience wherein subjective and
objective becomes more and more indistinguishable. Who will marry
whom (Mr. Knightley and Harriet, or Harriet and Mr. Churchill, or Mr.
Churchill and Jane Fairfax, or Mr. Churchill and Emma, or Emma and
Mr. Knightley, or Harriet and Mr. Martin) remains for the film characters
as uncertain as it does for the spectator. Not until the film’s ending are all
potential relationships realized. Only when the community’s speculation
finally ends, does it become a community. The final kiss between Emma
and Mr. Knightley marks the end of the social theatrics. The moment they
kiss Emma becomes a full member of the community since she gives up
her position as the observer. At the same time, spectators also relinquish
their critical perception of the events and can enjoy the anticipated uni-
fication of the couple.
Similar to Easy A, Emma shows how a sense of belonging is also created
through participation, whereby the spectator experiences an experience of
collectivity. With the transformation from objective to subjective images,
it becomes clear that Emma’s point of view represents the view of the
community. Emma’s point of view is Highbury’s view, which correlates
also to that of Emma (see also Finch and Bowen 1990: 8).

4.6 NORMALIZING UBIQUITY


Looking at how Emma acts and reacts, the spectator experiences gossip as
a collective practice of communication as well as a subjective form of
expression, which creates a network between the film’s characters and
locations and thus establishes the film’s specific time and space. In one
sense, as a protagonist Emma is at the center of the film, but as a narrative
device she is omnipresent. The film thereby highlights another essential
characteristic of gossip, the omnipresence of rumors. Finch and Bowen see
this characteristic rather critical due to its, they argue, normalizing effect.
62 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

They understand gossip as a mode of controlling social order by which


people are included and excluded. They write:

Gossip marks an oblique mode of control, a socio-discursive practice that both


defines the community of its participants—solidifying, as Patricia Spacks has it,
‘a group’s sense of itself by heightening consciousness of “outside” . . . and
“inside”—and regulates the community from within by insinuation, rumor,
threat of ostracism, and cover pressure. Rather than operating through overt
acts of force imposed from without upon its subjects, gossip coerces by being
irresistibly assumed by its subjects, taken up and passed on in an endless system
of circulation. (Finch and Bowen 1990: 2)

In many ways I agree with Finch and Bowen. As demonstrated in my


readings of Easy A and Emma, gossip constructs an “outside” and an
“inside” of a community. However, while Easy A underscores how gossip
can effect reality in various ways, Emma stages the negative site of gossip
by showing how it works as a mechanism of self-control and produces a
hermetic seal in the community. The private is political, and the political is
expressed by the private sphere. For example, the ball serves as a public
stage for private relationships that always also relate to the community; so
too the scene in which homeless thieves try to rob Emma and Harriet in
the woods, but fail, underlines just how fundamentally impenetrable the
social structure of Highbury is.
It is important to distinguish between the practice of gossip and its
object, the rumor. While gossip can be defined as an interaction of a group
of people, it always implies the exclusion of people, and thereby defines a
community, in contrast, the rumor works beyond a group and is autono-
mous and difficult to control. In light of this argument, it becomes clear
why Emma’s Highbury functions as a “mild system of surveillance and
self-control” (Finch and Bowen 1990: 7–8) because Emma is much more
about the practice of gossip than about its object, the rumor (when
compared to Easy A).
In Emma, there are usually only two or three characters present in one
scene when news is exchanged. Rarely there is a larger group when gossip
is shared, with the exception of the dinner scene at the Woodhouse
residence. News presented within a group of more than two or three
people are constative statements rather than speculations or opinions,
like the news of Frank Churchill’s arrival in Highbury. As pointed out
above, who is present and thus the communicative dynamics in Emma are
4 EMMA—“A MATCH WELL MADE, A JOB WELL DONE” 63

changing all the time. Thus, the spectator has difficulties in reconstructing
how, to whom, and from whom the rumor has been disseminated.
Speculations become omnipresent and move on independently, while
the origin and the object of gossip have taken a back seat. Finch and
Bowen locate a normalizing function of gossip based on the fact that at
one point the rumor cannot be traced and it thus becomes ambiguous
whether a message is an opinion or news.
Analyzing Austen’s novel, Finch and Bowen conclude that the perspec-
tive of free indirect discourse, which is expressed in the film adaption
through gossip, naturalizes power structures. How the protagonist speaks
both as an individual as well as for the entire community makes it difficult
to distinguish whether she represents a single or a general opinion. This
establishes an ambiguity, Finch and Bowen argue, which renders the
origin of a rumor invisible making it difficult to trace it back to its original
source and proving its reliability. Gossip thus becomes a normalizing
mechanism that presents processes of inclusion and exclusion as a given
and unchangeable.
Finch and Bowen criticize Austen’s novel for how it presents gossip as a
typical women’s practice of communication and thus naturalizes gender.
In their view, gossip reinforces patriarchal power structures. They write:

But if gossip in Emma tends to operate as a hidden form of authority, at the


same time the novel’s gossips are often perfectly visible, and still more often
visibly female. For while gossip functions as a mode of social authority by
hiding its agency, convention, as well as the novel itself, tends to gender
female (and therefore specific and visible) the practice and the practitioners
of gossip. (Finch and Bowen 1990: 2–3)

The novel trivializes gossip as a women’s practice, Finch and Bowen (1990: 3)
argue:

Thrown surprisingly into relief, then, is the phenomenon of a conventionally


female mode operating ultimately to reinforce patriarchal norms concerned,
among other things, to trivialize gossip. Perhaps still more significantly, by
simultaneously trivializing and privileging gossip, Austen effectively natur-
alizes this mode of exchange and renders its “truths” inevitable.

When it comes to the film Emma, gossip does not appear as an alternative
form of communication as for example Marc Siegel points out in regard
64 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

to Patricia Meyer Spacks’ understanding of gossip. Siegel (2010: 33)


writes:

For women and others who were typically denied access to venues of public
expression, gossiping fostered meaningful relationships by which they could
test and exchange perspectives on the outside or official world.

However, Easy A and Emma also demonstrate that gossip is not just a
typical practice of communication among women. The spectator experi-
ences gossip, as an exchange of opinions and news that serves as the basis
of a community. Emma shows how characters and locations are connected
through verbal communication and thus constitute the community of
Highbury. While gossip is widely seen as a form of denunciation, or a
useless pastime, the film stages speculation as a legitimate view of the
world. That being said, gossip nevertheless serves as a system of surveil-
lance and self-control as Finch and Bowen describe gossip in the novel.
Emma does not stage gossip as a utopian form of communication, as a
practice of testing and exchanging points of view, but instead as a mechan-
ism that determines who is allowed to participate in a community and who
is not. Drawing on Deleuze’s concept of how cinematographic speech acts
make interactions visible, I argue that in Emma gossip shows how hier-
archical structures are at work in society.
Highbury’s inhabitants are occupied by exchanging news, opinions,
and speculations with family members, acquaintances, and friends. While
in Emma the speculative form of gossip is performed primarily by the
female characters, the male characters function more as an organ of the
existing order. For example, Emma’s father is staged as a character who
due to his age knows the facts and keeps a distance from the community’s
matchmaking. As the clergyman, Mr. Elton is responsible for the official
legitimation of social relationships. Thus, he represents the social order
of class. Frank Churchill only participates in gossip because he does not
want anybody to know about his engagement to Jane Fairfax. Like
Emma, Mr. Knightley embodies both a subjective and a general point
of view, but during the course of the film, Mr. Knightley’s individual
feelings come more and more into play. In the end, he and Emma
represent both the individual and the community. By depicting Emma
and Mr. Knightley as a harmonious couple, the film initiates a transfor-
mation of the spectator’s point of view. While the film shows how
Emma’s individual point of view transforms into a more general point
4 EMMA—“A MATCH WELL MADE, A JOB WELL DONE” 65

of view, Mr. Knightley’s general perspective of events becomes more


personal. Making Emma and Mr. Knightley a couple and thus bringing
together each perspective, on the one hand, Emma shows how the
individual becomes totally absorbed by the community and thus affirms
if not conforms to existing power structures. On the other hand, the film
demonstrates that there is no such thing as a pure individual or a pure
objective point of view.

NOTES
1. Original quote: “Ich werde zu dem “er” oder zu der “sie”, die irgendetwas
getan hat, gewesen ist oder gesagt hat” (Siegel 2006: 77).
2. Original quote: Gossip is driven by a future-oriented force that derives from
a “spekulativen Beziehung zur Vergangenheit” (Siegel 2013: 96).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Deleuze, Gilles. 1986 [1983]. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1989 [1985]. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Engell, Lorenz. 2008. Film und Fama—Citizen Kane. In Die Kommunikation der
Gerüchte, eds. Jürgen Brokoff, Jürgen Fohrmann, Hedwig Pompe, and Brigitte
Weingart, 322–337. Göttingen: Wallstein.
Finch, Casey, and Peter Bowen. 1990. “The Tittle-Tattle of Highbury.” Gossip
and the Free Indirect Style in Emma. Representations 31: 1–18.
Greifenstein, Sarah. 2013. Tempi der Bewegung—Modi des Gefühls. Expressivität,
heitere Gefühle und die Screwball Comedy. Doctoral Dissertation. Freie
Universität Berlin.
Kirchmann, Kay. 2004. Das Gerücht und die Medien. Medientheoretische
Annäherungen an einen Sondertypus der informellen Kommunikation. In
Medium Gerücht. Studien zu Theorie und Praxis einer kollektiven
Kommunikationsform, eds. Manfred Bruhn and Werner Wunderlich, 67–83.
Bern/Stuttgart/Vienna: Haupt Verlag.
Pasolini, Pier P. 1976. “The Cinema of Poetry”. In Movies and Methods. An
Anthology, ed. Bill Nichols, 542–548. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London:
University of California Press.
Radway, Janice A. 1984. Reading the Romance. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press.
Siegel, Marc. 2006. Gossip ist fabelhaft. Queere Gegenöffentlichkeiten und
“Fabulation.”. Texte Zur Kunst 61: 68–79.
66 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

Siegel, Marc. 2010. Die Leute Werden Reden. Joseph Mankiewicz’ filmischer
Klatsch. In Synchronisierung der Künste, eds. Robin Curtis, Gertrud Koch,
and Marc Sigel, 93–100. Munich: Fink.
Siegel, Marc. 2013. A Gossip of Images: Hollywood Star Images and Queer
Counterpublics. Doctoral Dissertation. Freie Universität Berlin.
Spacks, Patricia Meyer. 1985. Gossip. New York: Knopf.

FILMS
Easy A (USA 2010; directed by Will Gluck; script: Bert V. Royal; actress: Emma
Stone).
Emma (UK/USA 1996; directed by Douglas McGrath; script: Jane Austen/
Douglas McGrath; actress: Gwyneth Paltrow).
CHAPTER 5

A Matter of Perspective

Abstract In the conclusion, Dang revisits the key arguments put forward
in the analysis of Easy A and Emma. She sums up how these films reflect
on gossip as a form of perception in order to relate to the world and
oneself and at the same time demonstrate how gossip works as a mechan-
ism of power that creates and structures society. Dang argues that the films
present gossip as a way of viewing the world based on a specific relation-
ship between an “I” and a “we.” This is how, she concludes, Easy A and
Emma do nothing less than stage the question “And who am I?”

Keywords Mechanism of power  Gender identity  Empowerment  Film


experience  Society

Films allow different viewing experiences and different manners of engage-


ment. By exploring chick flicks as a film and media scholar I sought to
critically engage with popular culture without neglecting the visual pleasure
that can be derived from it. By choosing to explore the genre of chick flicks
beyond the black-and-white polarization of a regressive critique or a pro-
gressive satisfaction, I sought to provide an alternative approach for looking
at this genre. By analyzing how gossip, women, and film are interrelated, I
sought to push a subject into the center of critical discussion that has rarely
been taken into account in the field of scholarship or in the broader discourse
on popular culture. It is my sincere hope that my findings in this study serve

© The Author(s) 2017 67


S.-M. Dang, Gossip, Women, Film, and Chick Flicks,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56018-6_5
68 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

in challenging the assertions that chick flicks as mass media forms work
against the legacy of feminism and render feminist theory obsolete.
Even though the protagonists of Easy A or Emma are incredibly different
characters—in their appearance, world view, and even their life style—there
are, as I have demonstrated, many legitimate reasons to bring these films
into conversation with one another. Both films, Easy A and Emma, create a
diegesis that is based on categorizations. The films invite the spectator to
participate in these processes of categorization by sharing the characters’
points of view as well as reflecting on them. They force spectators to
immediately take a position on the protagonists’ appearance and behavior.
The spectators of Easy A and Emma do not have to make up their minds
whether something is feminist or anti-feminist, but rather whether an event
is depicted from a subjective or objective perspective. These films demon-
strate how a specific point of view determines how one sees the world.
Easy A and Emma focus on the practice of communication and the
participants involved. While it is worth considering the constative dimension
of categorization processes presuming given social structures (“It has always
been like this—and will always be.”) (Dang 2014), this study looked at the
performative sites of categorizations. In doing so, it demonstrated how the
film experience evoked in Easy A underscores the creative dimension of
gossip, whereas Emma points to the speculative dimension of gossip.
Analyzing Easy A and Emma, I demonstrated how gossip, mainly
associated with women, is a productive method in understanding the
complexity of chick flicks and how gossip is expressed through the film
experience of chick flicks. Gossip works quite differently in each of these
films. Both Easy A and Emma reflect on gossip as a form of perception in
order to relate to the world and oneself. At the same time, these films
demonstrate how gossip works as a mechanism of power that creates and
structures society. The films show how gossip can be an affirmative as well
as a subversive practice. While Emma depicts a rather hermetically sealed
society, Easy A provides an image of a society that is variable to a certain
extent. Emma shows how gossip conforms to norms and helps perpetuate
them, whereas in Easy A gossip helps deconstruct images of gender. Easy
A’s affective dramaturgy reveals how prejudices are at work when it comes
to images of gender in a society based on a heterosexual matrix. At the
same time, the film underscores how gender identities are nevertheless an
important point of reference. Easy A reflects on women as representations,
the circulation of images and the feminist paradigm of “femininity=ima-
gery” by showing that the protagonist can only be recognized as a (visible)
5 A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE 69

subject when presenting herself as an intelligible woman. The film shows


how Olive and other students can only become subjects when complying
with the existing dichotomous order of gender. The film shows that a
woman can only be represented as a representation (de Lauretis 1987: 20).
In this sense, Easy A produces a film experience of “undoing gender”.
Based on my analysis of the film experience of gossip, it would be
interesting to look at recent television series such as Gossip Girl (USA
2007–2012) or Sex and the City (USA 1998–2004) and the feature-length
film adaptations Sex and the City (USA 2008, 2010), where voices and
verbality, ceaseless talk and chitchat about and among friends also dom-
inate the film images.
The film experiences of Emma and Easy A can be defined by the
spectator’s change of attitude toward the protagonists who also change
along with the staging. The more Emma’s and Olive’s points of view
change, the more the spectator’s attitude toward them changes too.
Thus, how the protagonists in Emma and Easy A view things determines
how the films are perceived by the film spectator. As the protagonists’
points of view change so does the film spectator’s perspective changes
from an observing to a participating mode of seeing the world. What the
spectator hears and sees and what the film announces and shows are
synchronized; the spectator imagines and speculates, as the innerdiegetic
characters of the films do.
The films present gossip as a way of viewing the world based on a
specific relationship between an “I” and a “we.” Thus, the first person
becomes the third person. Subjective perspectives are realized through
the film experience of gossip, which always implies a collective dimen-
sion, and are thereby staged as a legitimate way of relating to the world.
Collectivity is experienced through a process in which one becomes a
subject. While Emma reflects on this relation to the world by pointing
out the normative effects of gossip, Easy A underscores the emancipa-
tory potential of gossip by showing the individual as the site of the
speech act. Olive represents the community, which she at the same time
constitutes. But she regains her authority through the broadcast of her
individual voice via web stream, and through this, the spectator experi-
ences empowerment. The female protagonist in Easy A is transformed
from an object into a subject. Thus, the woman makes herself visible
and audible.
Even though Emma and Easy A shed light on different aspects of
gossip, both films make clear that gossip is “everywhere and still is
70 GOSSIP, WOMEN, FILM, AND CHICK FLICKS

different from the norm and thus marginal” (Fritsch 2004: 9, my transla-
tion1). This can be seen as an analogy of chick flicks more generally.
Gossip as well as chick flicks are a part of popular culture since they are
everywhere and still they are marginalized by oppressive discourses on
differences of high and low culture. Emma and Easy A work against
these differentiations by demonstrating how gossip implies a collective
form of communication that constitutes a social order. The spectator
experiences gossip as a daily speech act and as a genuine perception of
the world. Emma and Easy A both show, though in different ways, that
meaning is derived from subjectivity. Subjectivity is the precondition of
being in the world. The films describe an imaginary and fictive relation to
the world, which nevertheless is real. In other words, the films show that
subjectivity and objectivity go hand in hand and cannot be separated.
By staging subjectivity as a genuine way of perceiving the world, the
films demonstrate that even if identities are imaginary they have actual
effects. Through the film experience of gossip, the spectator sees how a
self-confident “I” that can express oneself through a given language as an
individual begins to awaken. The films reveal that the “I” is mere fiction,
an effect of a collective practice of communication, which is determined by
specific social structures however emancipatory or restrictive those might
be. Emma and Easy A depict stories that imply a “we,” a dimension of
collectivity, from the beginning. The spectator experiences through
Emma and Easy A how the “I” is constituted through a “we.” These
films do nothing less than stage the question “And who am I?”

NOTE
1. Original quote: Rumors are “überall und weichen doch vom ‘guten Ton’ ab
und sind somit marginal” (Fritsch 2004: 9).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dang, Sarah-Mai. 2014. Chick Flicks. Film, Feminismus und Erfahrung. Berlin/
Hamburg: oa books/tredition.
De Lauretis, Teresa. 1987. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and
Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Fritsch, Esther. 2004. Reading gossip. Funktionen von Klatsch in Romanen
Ethnischer Amerikanischer Autorinnen. Trier: WVT.
5 A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE 71

FILMS
Easy A (USA 2010; directed by Will Gluck; script: Bert V. Royal; actress: Emma
Stone).
Emma (UK/USA 1996; directed by Douglas McGrath; script: Jane Austen/
Douglas McGrath; actress: Gwyneth Paltrow).
Gossip Girl (USA 2007–2012; directed by Mark Piznarski et al.; script: Stephanie
Savage et al.; actresses: Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley, Chace
Crawford, Ed Westwick).
Sex and the City (USA 1998–2004; directed by Michael Patrick King et al.; script:
Darren Star; actresses: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia
Nixon).
Sex and the City (USA 2008; directed by Michael Patrick King; script: Candace
Bushell et al.; actresses: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis,
Cynthia Nixon).
Sex and the City (USA 2010; directed by Michael Patrick King; script: Candace
Bushell et al.; actresses: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis,
Cynthia Nixon)
INDEX

A Collectivity, 5, 13, 15, 16, 26, 33,


Aesthetics, 4, 10–13, 16, 17, 24, 36, 41n9, 46, 51, 61, 69, 70
39, 59–60 Community, 4, 13, 16, 27, 28, 33, 35,
Anti-feminist, 68 37, 38, 41n5, 46, 49, 50–53, 55,
Audience, 2–3, 33, 36–37 56, 58–65, 69
Austen, Jane, 45, 63 Constative utterance, 35
Austin, J.L., 31, 32 Construction, 31, 32
Authorship, 17, 19, 39 Counterpublic, 11, 34, 38
Creative dimension, 68
Culler, Jonathan, 32
B Culture industry, 3
Backlash, 3
Belonging, sense of, feeling of, 16–17,
27, 30–36, 41n5, 41n9, 51, 61 D
Body, 19, 21, 27, 30, 35, 50 Dance, 46, 55–58
Bowen, Peter, 57, 58, 61–64 Deleuze. Gilles, 12, 17, 40n3, 48, 52,
Butler, Judith, 5n1, 5n2, 31, 32 59, 61, 64
Difference, 39, 41n9, 70
Discourse, 10, 26, 27, 40, 40n1,
C 46–51, 61, 63, 67, 70
Category, 2, 5n1, 13, 33 Dramaturgy, 16, 46, 57, 58–61, 68
Category of woman, 2, 5n1
Chick flicks, 1–4, 15, 40, 41n9,
45, 67–70 E
Cinema, 3, 11, 12, 39 Effect, 10, 11, 16, 26, 30–36, 38,
Class, 40n2, 64 41n5, 52, 61, 62, 69, 70
Classic woman‘s film, 2–3 Emancipation, 3, 13, 16
Collective form, 4, 70 Emancipatory, 34, 40, 69, 70

© The Author(s) 2017 73


S.-M. Dang, Gossip, Women, Film, and Chick Flicks,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56018-6
74 INDEX

Empowerment, 40, 69 M
Exclusion, 4, 13, 28, 35, 39, 49, Male gaze, 3
62, 63 Matchmaking, 46, 51, 52, 58, 64
Moving image, 4

F
Fabulous subjectivity, 18, 28–30 N
Femininity, 3, 6n3, 68 Neofeminist, 3
Feminism, 2, 3, 5n2, 68 Normative, 10, 13, 32, 46, 69
Fiction, 16, 18, 32, 36–38, 40, 70 Norms, 9–10, 31–33, 68, 70
Film experience, 2, 4, 12, 15–17, 26,
28, 39, 40, 46, 48, 51, 61, 68–70
Filmic figuration, 50–52, 55 O
Finch, Casey, 57, 58, 61–64 Omnipresence, 12, 16, 17–21, 27,
First wave feminism, 5n2 40, 61
Free indirect discourse, 40n1, 46–51, 63 Oppressive, 32, 40, 70
Fritsch, Esther, 1, 9, 10, 13n1, 70, 70n1

P
Participation, 5, 17, 28, 33, 34, 51,
G
58, 61
Gender, 2, 4, 5, 30–34, 40, 40n2,
Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 46, 48
41n9, 45, 46, 63, 68–69
Patriarchal power structures, 63
Genre, 1–4, 6n4, 11, 15, 67
Patriarchy, 63
Perception, 4, 9–13, 30, 36, 48, 61,
68, 70
H Perception-image, 48
Hearsay, 4, 5, 9–10, 12, 13, 28, 50, Performance, 29, 31, 39
52, 57 Performative, 4, 10, 12, 13, 29, 31,
Heterosexual matrix, 30–34, 68 32, 46, 68
Highbury, 50–53, 55, 56, 58–62, 64 Performative utterance, 32, 35
Perspective, 2, 3, 11, 13, 16–19,
21–22, 23, 24, 28, 35, 36, 46–49,
I 51, 53, 58, 63, 65, 67–70
Imagery, 68 Political practice, 10, 11
Images of gossip, 36–40 Popular culture, 67, 70
Inclusion, 4, 13, 28, 35, 39, 49, 63 Postfeminism, 2, 5n1, 5n2
Individual, 4, 21, 26, 28, 31, 32, 35, Power, 4, 5, 10, 16, 19, 24, 29, 31,
37, 39, 40n2, 41n5, 49, 51, 52, 32, 39, 41n5, 63, 65, 68
58, 59, 61, 63–65, 69, 70 Practice, 10, 11, 13, 15–17, 31, 34,
Interaction, 12, 18, 21–28, 33, 37, 39, 37, 39, 46, 50, 52, 61–64,
50, 52, 53, 55, 61, 62, 64 68, 70
INDEX 75

Private, 11, 24, 58, 59, 62 Speech act, 4, 10, 12, 13, 13n2, 16,
Public, 2, 11, 24, 39–40, 55, 58, 17, 23, 30–36, 52, 53, 59, 61, 64,
59, 62 69, 70
Speech act theory, 31
Subjectivity, 5, 16, 18, 28–30, 35, 45,
R 46, 48, 51, 59–60, 70
Reality, 16, 19, 21, 22, 29, 31, 33, 34, Subversive, 9, 10, 31, 68
37–39, 62
Reception, 4, 11, 57
Representation, 38–39, 68–69
Rumor, 5, 9–12, 16, 17, 22–30, T
32–36, 40, 41n4, 57, 59, Temporality, 4, 29, 55
61–63, 70n1 Theory, 1–3, 11, 16, 31, 68
Third wave feminism, 2, 5n1, 5n2

S
Second wave feminism, 2, 5n1, 5n2 U
Sex, 2, 17, 22, 31, 33, 35, 36, Undoing gender, 69
41n9, 69 Utterance, 31, 32, 35, 55, 59
Sexuality, 30
Siegel, Marc, 10–13, 17, 23, 26–30,
34, 38–40, 41n6, 41n7, 52, 55,
57, 63–64, 65n1 V
Social phenomenon, 4, 5, 11 Viewing process, 4, 36
Society, 10, 51–53, 55, 56, 58, 59, Visibility, 33
64, 68 Visual pleasure, 67
Spacks, Patricia Meyer, 1, 10, 11, 23,
29, 50, 64
Speculation, 4, 27, 46, 51, W
53, 61–64 Womanhood, 35

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