Redesigning Women

by Lotz, Amanda D.

• ISBN13: 9780252030673
• ISBN10: 0252030672
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-05-11
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

In the 1990s, American televison audiences witnessed an unprecedented rise in programming devoted explicitly to women. Cable networks such as Oxygen Media, Women's Entertainment Network, and Lifetime targeted a female audience, and prime_time dramatic series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Judging Amy, Gilmore Girls, Sex and the City, and Ally McBealempowered heroines, single career women, and professionals struggling with family commitments and occupational demands. After establishing this phenomenon's significance, Amanda D. Lotz explores the audience profile, the types of narrative and characters that recur, and changes to the industry landscape in the wake of media consolidation and a profusion of channels.Employing a cultural studies framework, Lotz examines whether the multiplicity of female-centric networks and narratives renders certain gender stereotypes uninhabitable, and how new dramatic portrayals of women have redefined narrative conventions. Redesigning Womenalso reveals how these changes led to narrowcasting, or the targeting of a niche segment of the overall audience, and the ways in which the new, sophisticated portrayals of women inspire sympathetic identification while also commodifying viewers into a marketable demographic for advertisers.Amanda D. Lotz is an assistant professor of communication at the University of Michigan. She has contributed to the Encyclopedia of Television, 2nd ed., and other books and journals.

Author Biography

Amanda D. Lotz is an assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: Female-Centered Dramas after the Network Era	1	(36)
Women's Brands and Brands of Women: Segmenting Audiences and Network Identities	37	(31)
Fighting for Families and Femininity: The Hybrid Narratives of the Action Drama	68	(20)
Sex, Careers, and Mr. Right in Comedic Dramas: The ``New'' New Women of Ally McBeal and Sex and the City	88	(30)
Same Story, Different Channel? Returning Home and Starting Over in Protagonist-Centered Family Dramas	118	(26)
Of Female Cops and Docs: The Reformulation of Workplace Dramas and Other Trends in Mixed-Sex Ensembles	144	(21)
Epilogue: The 2001--2 Season and Beyond	165	(6)
Conclusion: U.S. Feminist Television Criticism in the Post-Network Era	171	(10)
Notes	181	(22)
Works Cited	203	(12)
Index	215