There She Goes Again: Gender, Power, and Knowledge in Contemporary Film and Television Franchises

There She Goes Again: Gender, Power, and Knowledge in Contemporary Film and Television Franchises
ISBN-10
1978836139
ISBN-13
9781978836136
Category
Performing Arts
Pages
208
Language
English
Published
2023-12-15
Publisher
Rutgers University Press
Author
Aviva Dove-Viebahn

Description

There She Goes Again interrogates the representation of ostensibly powerful women in transmedia franchises, examining how presumed feminine traits—love, empathy, altruism, diplomacy—are alternately lauded and repudiated as possibilities for effecting long-lasting social change. By questioning how these franchises reimagine their protagonists over time, the book reflects on the role that gendered exceptionalism plays in social and political action, as well as what forms of knowledge and power are presumed distinctly feminine. The franchises explored in this book illustrate the ambivalent (post)feminist representation of women protagonists as uniquely gifted in ways both gendered and seemingly ungendered, and yet inherently bound to expressions of their femininity. At heart,There She Goes Again asks under what terms and in what contexts women protagonists are imagined, envisioned, embodied, and replicated in media. Especially now, in a period of gradually increasing representation, women protagonists demonstrate the importance of considering how we should define—and whether we need—feminine forms of knowledge and power.

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