Nan Enstad has an interesting and productive take on consumer culture, showing the ways in which people adapt the tools at hand to radical means. The women striking in New York took common themes and stock characters and used them to model brave and virtuous behavior on the picket line. I was especially excited by Enstad's argument that the chastity of working girls in fiction helped them form an early resistance to sexual harassment in the work place (around p 141). Although a contemporary reader might see these books as sexually conservative, they provided a model for standing up to corrupt managers at a time when mentioning sexual activity made a woman complicit in it.
Enstad gives us a model of social activity that revises the traditional narrative (young Jewish socialists instigating labor strikes), while at the same time it appeals to common sense. Naturally, people have to work with the forms they have. While these narratives are not totally radical and were commercial products, these women adapted generic forms to their needs at the time. I'm glad that Enstad carefully avoids claims that popular culture and fashion radicalized these women, instead giving the women credit for using fashion and novels for radical means. In a way, she provides a great argument against Adorno's thoughts on consumer culture as a dehumanizing and dominating horror show that no one can resist. Enstad points out how popular culture can be used as a tool for many purposes.
Which leads me to a question that I've been thinking about: can we radicalize popular culture, or will we radicalize it only when the shit hits the fan? Working women at the turn of the century were already radicalized by the extreme exploitation they faced in the work place, which led to their use of popular culture as a model for strong behavior. What narratives and forms will be most productive in future political movements? Unfortunately, we have a lot fewer media representations of working class women comparable to working girl fiction. The closest might be strong female country singers (like Reba McEntire and Dolly Parton), but that still constitutes a niche market. But maybe, Lady Gaga will lead the revolution:
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