Third Wave Feminism and Television Jane Puts It in a Box

by Johnson, Merri Lisa Lisa

• ISBN13: 9781845112455
• ISBN10: 1845112458
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-03-15
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris

Summary

The sexual politics of television culture is the territory covered by this ground-breaking book the first to demonstrate the ways in which third wave feminist television studies approaches and illuminates mainstream TV. Leading voices in third wave feminism focus on innovative US television shows, includingThe Sopranos, Oz, Six Feet Under, The L Wordand the reality-TV showThe Bachelorto take a closer look at the contradictions and reciprocities between feminism and television, engaging as they go in theoretical and critical conversations about media culture, third wave feminism, feminist spectatorship, the sex wars, and the politics of visual pleasure. The book offers an exuberant and accessible discussion of what television has to offer today's feminist fan. It also sets a new tone for future debate, turning away from a sober, near-pessimistic trend in much feminist media studies to reconnect with the roots of third wave feminism in riot girl culture, sex radical feminism, and black feminism, tracing too the narratives provided by queer theory in which pleasure has a less contested place.

Author Biography

Merri Lisa Johnson  has published widely on representations of female sexuality in literature and popular culture.  She is Editor of Jane Sexes It Up (2001) and of two online collections: a special issue of Women Writers on  "Autobiographical Literary Criticism" and a special issue of The Scholar and Feminist on "Feminist Television  Studies:  The Case of HBO".  She is Director of the Center for Women's Studies at the University of Carolina-Upstate.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. vii
Foreword	p. viii
Introduction Ladies Love Your Box: The Rhetoric of Pleasure and Danger in Feminist Television Studies	p. 1
Gangster Feminism: The Feminist Cultural Work of HBO's the Sopranos	p. 28
Female Heterosexual Sadism: The Final Feminist Taboo in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter Series	p. 56
Primetime Harem Fantasies: Marriage, Monogamy, and a Bit of Feminist Fanfiction on ABC's the Bachelor	p. 91
Getting Wet: The Heteroflexibility of Showtime's the L Word	p. 119
Queer as Box: BOI Spectators and Boy Culture on Showtime's Queer as Folk	p. 147
HBO's OZ and the Fight Against Prisoner Rape: Chronicles from the Front Line	p. 166
"The Room" as "Heterosexual Closet": The Life and Death of Alternative Relationalities on HBO's Six Feet Under	p. 189
About the Contributors	p. 218
Index	p. 221
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.