Stop Cheering for Cheer: Gender, Class, and Conservative American Culture
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Date
2020
Authors
Nykanen, Anika Taylor
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Depictions of cheerleading as the essence of normative, American femininity in film have created fecund ground for reality and docuseries productions about the cheer world. Netflix’s Cheer (2020) has been lauded for overturning archetypal depictions of cherry-pie, white, feminine, middle-class, heterosexual cheerleaders in favor of portraying the individual histories of diverse cast members. This project works to fill in the gap in the glowing reception Cheer has generated by analyzing the formal devices deployed by the show to render reductive depictions of women and working-class people. I pull from a variety of theoretical frameworks to deconstruct the show’s formal techniques and revivify the nuanced performance of women characters representing their lived experience of oppression.
Description
65 pages
Keywords
Television, TV, Gender, Male Gaze, Disidentification, Cheer, American Culture