Frida and the Postfeminist Artist Biopic

Abstract

Postfeminism expresses the ‘intersection of feminism with postmodernism’ (Brooks, 1997: 4). Films that can be described as postfeminist therefore share many features of other postmodern genres. Roberta Garrett argues that since the late 1980s a version of ‘feminist cinematic postmodernism’ has emerged (2007: 46). One feature of this style of work is ‘the tendency to work within, rather than reject, traditional generic forms — in particular, to re-inflect those already deemed popular with women with a more obvious feminist approach’ (Garrett, 2007: 51). The previous chapter explored how one of the characteristics of the postfeminist biopic is that it re-inflects aspects of the classical female biopic, overlaying the genre with a distinctively postfeminist interpretation of the protagonist. In this chapter the discussion of the postfeminist biopic is extended to the film Frida (Julie Taymor, 2002), about the painter Frida Kahlo.¹