My work of Print Literature under analysis is Tina Fey’s Bossypants. Although this book has been very popular, it’s biographical style has not made it optimal for screenwriting. Therefore, all of my ideas for adaptation have been original! I wish I could say the same for the reviews I have read of Bossypants. They are almost always 50-90% quotes from the book. Although, I don’t blame them because I expect that my blog Part Deux will be very similar in nature.
The first review I read, written by the New York Times, portrays Fey as a strong-armed powerhouse with an axe to grind. They repeat her responses to ignorant internet reviews and critics. The author then proceeds to mention every SEO search term of Fey’s popular career – SNL, Second City, Sarah Palin. This wouldn’t be so bad if she had done it in a meaningful way by tying it back to the overarching themes within the memoir. But alas, she did not. The conclusion is packed in with a comment on Fey’s chapter about how photo-shoots are fun (which I don’t feel advances the story-line), and the final quote is a non-sequitur: “But if you have an opinion, please feel free to offer it to me through the gap in the door of a public restroom. Everyone else does.”
However, never fear! The internet is huge! And I found a more obscure review which I felt did some justice to Bossypants. The review focuses on Fey’s brand of “Tough Girl Feminism” that leads her to success. Roiphe remarks,
Fey’s strategy for dealing with everything from entrenched discrimination to garden-variety chauvinism is to write a joke, a better joke than the other people in the room. You see, some of us have forgotten this basic point: Responding to a situation with humor, as opposed to, say, dead-serious self-righteousness, is a rhetorically effective way to get a political point across.
The review goes on to align Tina Fey with other influential feminists such as Mary McCarthy and Rebecca West. It’s dynamite – portraying Tina Fey as the bad-ass third wave feminist she is!
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