The musical number as feminist intervention in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Abstract

In just four seasons, Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna’s musical dramedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015-present) has established itself as an important space for contemporary explorations of gender and genre on US television. In this paper, we examine how the musical numbers operate as a feminist intervention into a postfeminist diegesis. The musical numbers in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend often parody different popular music genres by simultaneously drawing attention to and subverting their conventions. In doing so, the series critiques the gender norms of traditionally patriarchal and heteronormative Hollywood musicals and misogynistic music videos. The Hollywood film musical genre is typically framed by a tension between the narrative and the numbers. The series exploits this tension to offer a feminist critique of how patriarchal neoliberal culture encourages women to invest in romantic love and postfeminist forms of appearance-based empowerment. This paper argues that the musical numbers in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend are a feminist space where the series critiques the postfeminist reality of its diegesis