“Billions in Debt and Still Surviving”: Curing the Female Shopper in Confessions of a Shopaholic

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2020.192

Keywords:

Confessions of a Shopaholic, Romantic Comedy, Compulsive Buying Disorder, Great Recession, Confession, Foucault

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.”


Author Biography

Meghna Sapui, University of Florida

Meghna Sapui is a Ph.D. student in the English Department at the University of Florida.

References

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Hogan, P.J., dir. Confessions of a Shopaholic. 2009; Burbank, CA: Touchstone Home Entertainment, 2009. DVD.

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Mortimer, C. (2010). Romantic Comedy. New York, NY: Routledge.

Negra, D. (2009). What A Girl Wants: Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism. New York, NY: Routledge.

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Published

2020-12-03

How to Cite

Sapui, M. (2020). “Billions in Debt and Still Surviving”: Curing the Female Shopper in Confessions of a Shopaholic. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 8(2), 14–44. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2020.192

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 2 (2020): Fall 2020

Section

Articles

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