Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Institutionalising the ‘Bad’ Postfeminist: Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag from Stage to Television

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Adapting Television and Literature

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture ((PSADVC))

  • 35 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter investigates the process of normalisation and de-sensationalising manifested in the television adaptation of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s tragicomic one-woman play, Fleabag (2013), arguing that the media transformation of her experimental monologue into an award-winning 2016/2019 TV Series, sponsored by the BBC in the UK and Amazon Prime in the US, exhibits a process of institutionalisation and content moderation inherent in the modern screen entertainment industry. From its premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe, to its critically-acclaimed, commercially popular adaptation on the small screen, Fleabag garnered a number of prestigious awards, including multiple BAFTAs and EMMYs. The factors involved in this precipitous rise to fame have been attributed, amongst others, to audience manipulation, direct address, narrative control, and the ‘precarious girl’ phenomenon. While these elements play important roles in the stage play and its televisual transformation, this chapter identifies a process of commercialism and normalisation, defusing various provocative issues in the play and relocating them in the heteronormative rom-com genre. This chapter finds that the gradual sanitising of controversial content to meet the demands of televisual media and its viewer ratings performs the role of arbiter of public morals, assimilating the despair of people who share the tribulations of the protagonist into the mainstream of situation comedy, thereby diluting the angst of the contemporary, alienated young woman.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    William J. Simmons, “Bad Feminism: On Queer-Feminist Relatability and the Production of Truth in Fleabag,” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 61, no.1 (Spring 2020): 32, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/759022

  2. 2.

    Phoebe Waller-Bridge, “Introduction,” in Fleabag (London: Nick Hern Books, 2017), v.

  3. 3.

    Sarah Cardwell, “Literature on the Small Screen: Television Adaptations,” The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen, ed. Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 183.

  4. 4.

    Simone Murray, The Adaptation Industry: The Cultural Economy of Contemporary Literary Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2012), 6.

  5. 5.

    Waller-Bridge, “Introduction,” vi.

  6. 6.

    Shelley Cobb, “‘I’m nothing like you!’ Postfeminist Generationalism and Female Stardom in the Contemporary Chick Flick,” Women on Screen, ed. Melanie Waters (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 32, https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230301979_3

  7. 7.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag, 7. References to Fleabag are to the play text, published in 2017 by Nick Hern Books.

  8. 8.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag, 12.

  9. 9.

    Inge Van De Ven, “Intimate Distractions: Fleabag’s Manipulations of Audience Attention,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 35, no. 3 (March 2021): 455, https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2021.1889465

  10. 10.

    These adaptations were produced in 2016 by Two Brothers Pictures for BBC Three, a digital channel which targets “the fifteen to thirty-five groups with a variety of youth-oriented programming” and in 2019 by the digital streaming platform, Amazon Prime Lez Cooke, British Television Drama: A History, 2nd ed. (London: BFI, 2015), 238.

  11. 11.

    Linda Hutcheon and Siobhan O’Flynn, A Theory of Adaptation, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2013), 47.

  12. 12.

    Waller-Bridge, “Introduction,” vi.

  13. 13.

    Jessica Beaumont, “Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag(s): Direct Address and Narrative Control from Stage to Small Screen,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 22, no. 2 (March 2021): 107, https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol22/iss2/1

  14. 14.

    Waller-Bridge, “Introduction,” v.

  15. 15.

    Cardwell, “Literature on the Small Screen,” 194.

  16. 16.

    Waller-Bridge, “Introduction,” vi

  17. 17.

    Van De Ven, “Intimate Distractions,” 456.

  18. 18.

    Beaumont, “Direct Address,” 107–08.

  19. 19.

    Beaumont, 115.

  20. 20.

    Simmons, “Bad Feminism,” 32.

  21. 21.

    Ada S. Jaarsma, “Fleabag’s Pedagogy of the Gimmick,” Open Philosophy 5, no.1 (January 2022): 90, 104, https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0156

  22. 22.

    Jaarsma, “Fleabag’s Pedagogy,” 103.

  23. 23.

    Produced by Jack Maple and Brian Zeilinger-Goode for MZG Theatre Productions, directed by Alastair Knights, and starring Janie Dee.

  24. 24.

    Arifa Akbar, “All on Her Own Review—Denied Love Explodes with a Voice Beyond Death,” The Guardian, February 15, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/feb/15/all-on-her-own-review-denied-love-explodes-with-a-voice-beyond-death

  25. 25.

    Michael Billington, “Monologue,” The Guardian, January 16, 2002, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2002/jan/16/theatre.artsfeatures

  26. 26.

    R.D., “‘The Vagina Monologues’, 20 Years On,” The Economist, January 9, 2018, https://www.economist.com/prospero/2018/01/09/the-vagina-monologues-20-years-on

  27. 27.

    R.D., “‘The Vagina Monologues’.”

  28. 28.

    Fleabag was invited to be the opening performance of the 2014 D.FESTA, Daehangno Small Theater Festival. It was staged four times (November 19 to 22) in the Sangmyeong Art Hall in Daehangno street.

  29. 29.

    Soonja Heo, “Twenty-first Century Anti-Heroine on the Brink in Fleabag” [Byeolang kkeut-e seon 21segi Anti ban-Heroine], Korea Theatre Journal 76 (2015): 66–67, http://www.ktheatrecritics.com/html/sub02_02.asp

  30. 30.

    Billy Holzberg and Aura Lehtonen, “The Affective Life of Heterosexuality: Heteropessimism and Postfeminism in Fleabag,” Feminist Media Studies 22, no. 8 (2022): 2, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2021.1922485

  31. 31.

    Murray, The Adaptation Industry, 45.

  32. 32.

    Holzberg and Lehtonen, “The Affective Life,” 6.

  33. 33.

    Murray, 6.

  34. 34.

    Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures (London: Sceptre, 2021), 1. References to Scriptures are to the television script Fleabag: The Scriptures.

  35. 35.

    Murray, 5.

  36. 36.

    Harry Bradbeer, “Harry Bradbeer (‘Fleabag’ director) on Channeling ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘The Godfather’,” interview by Daniel Montgomery, Gold Derby, August 7, 2019, audio, 16:09, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtdLAQQtMJE

  37. 37.

    Bradbeer, interview.

  38. 38.

    Bradbeer, interview.

  39. 39.

    Bradbeer, interview.

  40. 40.

    Bradbeer, interview.

  41. 41.

    Bradbeer, interview.

  42. 42.

    Bradbeer, interview.

  43. 43.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag, 31.

  44. 44.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S1. E1. 8. References to series and episode numbers in Fleabag: The Scriptures are indicated by S (series) and E (episode), followed by the page number.

  45. 45.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S2. E1. 236.

  46. 46.

    Bradbeer, interview.

  47. 47.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S2. E6. 407.

  48. 48.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag, 29.

  49. 49.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag, 36.

  50. 50.

    Murray, 22.

  51. 51.

    Clark Collis, “The Crown Star Olivia Colman Wants to be in the New James Bond Movie,” Entertainment Weekly, August 17, 2019, https://ew.com/movies/2019/08/17/olivia-colman-james-bond-the-crown/

  52. 52.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag, 21.

  53. 53.

    James Chapman, Contemporary British Television Drama (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 3, 135.

  54. 54.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag, 21.

  55. 55.

    Cobb, “‘I’m nothing like you!’,” 31.

  56. 56.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S1. E1. 29.

  57. 57.

    Cobb, 31.

  58. 58.

    Holzberg and Lehtonen, 7.

  59. 59.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S1. E1. 29.

  60. 60.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S1. E1. 17.

  61. 61.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S2. E3. 304.

  62. 62.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag, 6.

  63. 63.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S1. E6. 192.

  64. 64.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S2. E6. 400.

  65. 65.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S1. E1. 29.

  66. 66.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S2. E2. 269.

  67. 67.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S2. E2. 270.

  68. 68.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S1. E4. 128.

  69. 69.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S1. E6. 191.

  70. 70.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S1. E6. 192.

  71. 71.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S2. E2. 266.

  72. 72.

    Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures, S2. E4. 338.

  73. 73.

    Holzberg and Lehtonen, 8.

  74. 74.

    Chapman, Contemporary British Television Drama, 7.

  75. 75.

    Cardwell, 192.

  76. 76.

    Xiaoyan Kuia, Huihao Lva, Zhengliang Tang, Haowen Zhou, Wang Yang, Jinqiu Li, Jialin Guo, and Jiazhi Xia, “TVseer: A Visual Analytics System for Television Ratings,” Visual Informatics 4, no. 3 (September 2020): 1, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468502X20300279

  77. 77.

    Kuia et al., “TVseer,” 1.

  78. 78.

    Beyond the Fringe transferred to London’s West End, South Africa (1962), and America (1962–63). It was successfully revived in Los Angeles in 2000–01, and recreated for a scene in Netflix’s The Crown (2017), when Harold Macmillan (the Prime Minister) is verbally abused by Peter Cook.

  79. 79.

    This sketch was part of the first Secret Policeman’s Ball benefit—A Poke in the Eye—at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London’s West End, in which a number of Python sketches were performed. Eric Idle was not present in these Amnesty International shows. His place in the courtroom sketch was taken by Peter Cook.

  80. 80.

    Hannah James Parkinson, “Farewell Fleabag: The Most Electrifying, Devastating TV in Years,” The Guardian, April 8, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/apr/08/farewell-fleabag-the-most-electrifying-devastating-tv-in-years

  81. 81.

    Simmons, 32.

  82. 82.

    Faye Woods, “Too Close for Comfort: Direct Address and the Affective Pull of the Confessional Comic Woman in Chewing Gum and Fleabag,” Communication, Culture & Critique 12, no. 2 (June 2019): 198, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcz014

  83. 83.

    Alan Sepinwall, “‘Fleabag’ Season Two Review: A Heaven-Sent Sequel.” Rolling Stone, May 14, 2019, https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/fleabag-season-2-review-833975/

  84. 84.

    Murray, 16.

  85. 85.

    James Naremore, “Film and the Reign of Adaptation.” Indiana University Institute for Advanced Study. Distinguished Lecture Series 10, Indiana University (1999), 8.

  86. 86.

    Julie Sanders, Adaptation and Appropriation, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2016), 33.

  87. 87.

    Holzberg and Lehtonen, 13.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, South Korea

    Heebon Park-Finch

Authors
  1. Heebon Park-Finch
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Heebon Park-Finch .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oxford, UK

    Blythe Worthy

  2. MCCALL, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW, Australia

    Paul Sheehan

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Park-Finch, H. (2024). Institutionalising the ‘Bad’ Postfeminist: Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag from Stage to Television. In: Worthy, B., Sheehan, P. (eds) Adapting Television and Literature. Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50832-5_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation