Fierce Females on Television
A Cultural History
-
- $35.99
-
- $35.99
Publisher Description
A fascinating deep-dive into how shows from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to The Equalizer have changed the way women are portrayed on television.
The last three decades of television have been a formative and progressive time for female characters, as stronger, more independent women have appeared on screen to guide a new generation of viewers into their own era of power. These characters battle vampires, demons, corrupt government officials, and scientific programs all while dealing with the same real-world concerns their audiences face every day.
In Fierce Females on Television: A Cultural History, Nicole Evelina examines ten shows from the past thirty years to unveil the enormous impact they have had on the way women are portrayed on television. She reveals how Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Alias, Nikita, Agent Carter, Jessica Jones, Homeland, House of Cards, Orphan Black, and The Equalizer feature extraordinary lead characters who are at the same time utterly relatable, facing surprisingly familiar questions in their everyday lives regarding sexuality, gender, and how to fight back in a patriarchal world.
Fierce Females on Television shows how, even with their captivating mix of melodrama, mystery, magic, and martial arts, these shows nevertheless represent the audience’s own desires and fears. Finally, viewers of science fiction, fantasy, spy, and political shows have strong, modern women to watch, admire, and emulate.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This entertaining study from novelist Evelina (Sex and the City) surveys how, since the mid-1990s, a new crop of shows has centered around "stronger" and "more independent" female leads than the medium had previously seen. She suggests that such shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alias, and Jessica Jones foreground the concerns of ordinary women, even when their protagonists have extraordinary abilities, marking a shift from the working mothers (Clair Huxtable in The Cosby Show) or unrelatable superheroes (The Bionic Woman) that had been the norm. Buffy, Evelina argues, was a "poster child" for third-wave feminism, remarkable for both her "determination to make her place in the world on equal terms with men" and for her relatability (the supernatural plotlines, Evelina suggests, allegorized boyfriend troubles and other trials of growing up). According to Evelina, Agent Carter and Orphan Black use extraordinary circumstances to explore questions of equality and autonomy, with the former focusing on the eponymous character's efforts to be taken seriously by her male colleagues at the fictional CIA-esque agency she works for, and the latter depicting women clones striving to free themselves from the control of the biotech corporation that owns them. The analysis is smart, though the opening section introducing the shows' characters and major plotlines with minimal commentary is a bit of a slog. Still, fans will enjoy the fresh insights into some old favorites.
