Abstract
This paper analyses P.J. Hogan’s Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009) in three sections. In the first section, it studies how the film maps shopping as an illness that needs to be cured onto the body of its female heroine. It does so, as is argued here, by portraying her as a patient suffering from Compulsive Buying Disorder (CBD). In the second part, it traces how Confessions necessitates the cure of the female shopper, given its background of the Great Recession and how this holds generic significance for the romantic comedy. The paper then concludes by charting the heroine’s cure in group therapy as predicated upon the principle of the Foucauldian confession and how this then resolves the narrative as, what Diane Negra calls, one of “adjusted ambitions.”
Highlights
The adult Rebecca Bloomwood, in the very beginning of Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009), muses about how a store is more consequential to her happiness than a man: “You see, a man will never love you or treat you as well as a store.” While her best friend, Suze, is happily dating someone, Rebecca is not even concerned with a dating life or her lack thereof
Stores are enough for her — they make her feel even better than the “warm butter sliding down hot toast” feeling that a man provokes. They awaken in her a “lust” — a man who does not fit in one’s life can be exchanged for a “gorgeous cashmere sweater” — and most importantly, “a store always smells good.”. This is a heroine who has completely divested herself of any sexual desires directed towards the male sex and instead redirected the same desires towards buying luxury items — be it a $120 scarf, cashmere coats, Pucci boots, handbags, or even gloves — and is perfectly content with this state of being
The problem of such a heroine, owes itself to the fact that this Rebecca Bloomwood is an American woman conspicuously buying luxury items at a time when the country is trying its very best to overcome a recession that the thenpresident had attributed to “a culture of irresponsibility.”1
Summary
The adult Rebecca Bloomwood, in the very beginning of Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009), muses about how a store is more consequential to her happiness than a man: “You see, a man will never love you or treat you as well as a store.” While her best friend, Suze, is happily dating someone, Rebecca is not even concerned with a dating life or her lack thereof.
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