Freelance Works

The millennial indie flick has, in its shadowing years, offered much for discussion in the realm of correctly crafting feminist characters. Amongst an innovative soundtrack and stylistically mundane narrative, swans in a picture of whimsical rebellion anointed with dyed hair and a carefree, jouissant attitude to the everyday. Where she finds herself untethered from traditionally restrictive modes of gender, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) in her aestheticized unconventionalism typically finds her shortfall in her attachment to the male protagonist. An archetype we’re all familiar with ascribed to films of the Mainstream Indie Ilk: Scott Pilgrim vs The World, 500 Days of Summer etc, the MPDG may transcend the bounds of simple objectification with the oh so ground-breaking concept that women possess personalities as well as a poetic pair of eyes, yet persists in finding herself tethered to the two-dimensional: a pseudo-sexual spirit guide for the nihilistically capitalist. I speak with a face of cringe when I announce my decision at 15, to attempt the haircut of Ramona Flowers on a school night with stationary scissors, and as much as I still love her outfits and forthright attitude six years on, I’ve learnt to scrutinise her purpose. As the film industry thankfully expanded its inclusion of women both in front and behind the screen over recent years, the politics and influences of this trope have gladly faded into ridicule. Female complexity, actions and consequences find themselves spotlighted and discussed, as minds such as Chloe Zhao and Greta Gerwig take the reins. I could praise the growth and criticise the still needed progress of cinematic feminism all day, but where my attentions lie, in my summer hibernation of minimal money and heat too thick to move, is the ever-growing obsession with the ‘Unhinged Woman’.
BookTok truly is, a delicious disease. A screen-time seemingly doubled and a TBR invading each crevice of my room. Those familiar, will know BookTok to be a sector of the severely addictive TikTok, fixated on the discussion and recommendation of books. And where the social media app has proved to be fundamental in distributing fashion trends and ascending music to the top of the charts, its reputation ceases to fail in its popularisation of certain genres of fiction. The most prominent I’ve found in recent months, is its celebration and compilation of ‘Unhinged’ feminist literature, where authors such as the infamous Ottessa Moshfegh, Chelsea G. Summers, Melissa Broader, amongst others, find themselves and their novels at the modern Genesis of the concept. I italicize feminist here as I hope to later consider the extent to which reader alignment and pursuit of these damaged, reckless individuals actually propels a regurgitated distortion of female value that find its roots in the MPGD.
As narratives that typically assert minimal plot, this genre find itself articulating both the subtle and non-so-subtle insurgences of women against the patriarchal and the capitalist. Rife with tropes of self-aware attractiveness, vacuous sexual encounters, an unfeeling existentialism and in certain cases, crime, the unhinged female asserts a modernity in her unresponsiveness towards catering masculine perception. Indeed, quite the opposite from her candyfloss haired predecessor, male characters offer very little and serve use minimally in the roles of sexual partners or victims. Selfishly existing, the woman unhinged offers no help to the world and expects nothing back in return- an outwardly delightful subversion.
You may ask then what I find issue with in these novels? Female rage and the occasional male violence are certainly no problem with me. Ironically these books coat my shelves- and where I don’t profess to have perused the full depths of the genre, those I have been called to read have
certainty been fascinating. For the majority of their construction, the typically unlikeable protagonist isn’t intended to be aligned with; entitled, self-obsessed and fickle, these literary women embody the nihilism of the cinematic men that once sought to romanticise them. The problem I feel however, is less so in these books themselves, but their misunderstood interpretation and the acceleration of such through the swipes of a certain social media app. Now I’m not one to tell people what to interpret a book- I spent the first two years of University attempting this before I realised how horrendously pretentious, I sounded. But where BookTok reaches a wide spectrum of readers, the miscommunicated meaning of these characters when distributed to younger readers may enact issues in terms of their exploration of women.
I find issue with the extremities of female behaviour used as an instrument of discovering an edgy and heightened personality. Profusely asserted as evidently unlikeable by their authors, the girlhood goddess-complex remains fastened to the TikToks of romanticised reading lists that witness a new age of the whimsical cool girls attempting to find excellence in the mentally ill. where the familiar whimsicality of the Manic Pixie embedded depression into its dreams, the vulnerabilities of mental illness fell quashed behind eccentric visuals and the masculinised delusion of the ‘complex’ female personality. Not so dissimilar to the Lolita’s and Clementine’s with the online insurgence of Coquette-core coming to fruition, contemporary ‘Unhinged’ fiction emerges to be a genre occasionally written but repetitively interpreted through the conjecture that mental anguish instinctually crafts superiority, desirability and a glorified individualism. Where the representation of mental illness in women of course calls to be represented in literature, what lacks emphasis, is the fact that the harsh truths and brutality of such issues must preside over the floral language and aestheticism that appear to carve the ‘chaotic cool girl’. In recent weeks, semi-unrelated TikTok has seen the self-removal of Fiona Apple’s entire discography from the app, rumoured to be in resilience against certain users transformation of female pain and mental illness into misunderstood glamourisation. Impressionable readers may rightfully so, read in existentialism of societies surrounding flaws, but unlike me, their fixational takeaway may not be so trivial and temporary as a bad haircut. Whether unhinged fiction alone acts as the problem, or more expansively, the ongoing machinery of micro-trends, this dainty, damaged sense of girlhood looks to have begun its 20 year recycle.
Where further misalignment lies in these heroines, is interestingly, in their privilege. It may be that my reading circle of such books has been too minimal, looking only at those ‘unhinged’ narratives that find themselves Tik Tok trendsetters, however we must ask why the prominence of those that find themselves as such persist for the majority, In white centred perspectives, with the addition of societally affirmed beauty and financial comfort. Within a socio-political climate that continues to churn on the debate of women’s rights, I understand the ubiquitous worship for the collective of subversive, rebellious women; at times I find their actions immaculate and their philosophies poignant. Yet, after consuming what almost feels like the same novel 10 times over about the same conventionally attractive women declaring her polished middle finger to the system whilst jawing on hamburger roadkill, I’m uninterested. The crucial aspect of My Year of Rest and Relaxation which I think finds itself missing in many youthful glorifications of the book, is its self- criticism, Moshfegh herself being Persian, her novel’s heroine: unnamed, unlikeable and unaware of her privilege, is crafted with the intention of reining criticism and yet where some content creators and reviewers come to realise this nuance, for the majority of its ascension to fame, the novel’s
dissection of western entitlement and caricaturistically rich cynicism, falls short to an almost religious idolatry towards being fucked up and not giving a fuck.
Perhaps we need more novels about non-white women, in non-western diasporas, offering a similar systematic rage for the weight of these narratives to delve deeper than the surface. If a large amount of these already exist, I ask why it seems to be predominantly white narratives that find themselves at the height of the modern literary canon? Or maybe the term ‘Unhinged’ should find itself abandoned completely; why do such narratives seek to push ‘unhinged’ actions as the central force for systematic resistance? Once again, the woman, despite a more gracious expense of exploration, remains at the mercy of her own mentality. Where she finds empowerment in detaching herself from men, her worth appears bound indefinitely to the ‘ornament’ that is her inner pain.