Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television - Softcover

Helford, Elyce Rae

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0847698351 ISBN 13: 9780847698356

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000

Synopsis

Fantasy Girls seeks to explore as well as challenge the power and the promises of this recent media phenomenon. Such TV programming offers the exciting opportunity to rethink established gender norms, but how far is it really pushing the limits of the status quo? Amidst the exuberant optimism of fanzines and doting fan websites, the contributors to this volume endeavor to provide us with a much needed critical analysis of this contemporary trend. These essays explore the contradictions and limitations inherent in the genre, forcing readers to take a fresh and critical look through a variety of lenses including girl power, postfeminism, cyborg feminism, disability politics, queer studies, and much more. Programs covered are Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Disney's Cinderella, Lois and Clark, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Star Trek: Voyager, The XFiles, Third Rock from the Sun, and Xena: Warrior Princess.

About this title

About the Author:

Elyce Rae Helford is associate professor of English at Middle Tennessee State.

Review:

In this imaginative volume, Fantasy Girls boldly maps the emergent gender terrains characterizing new fantasy and science fiction TV. Combining close textual with rigorous theoretical analysis, this volume is the new feminist media studies at its best. It will be indispensable for teachers and scholars searching for the most up-to-date treatments of gender and television, including issues of sexuality, race, ethnicity, and the body. Fantasy Girls addresses head-on the tough issues facing feminists and others concerned with television and its impact. (Andrea Press, associate director of media studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

The essays collected in Fantasy Girls look to some of the most popular and innovative television programming of the late twentieth century to see how issues of gender are represented and imagined in the future. At their most compelling, the essays expose the operations in popular television that sometimes actively mute and at other times only selectively incorporate the force of feminist insights, particularly as these insights are quietly incorporated into the fantasy representations of gender and gender politics within science fiction. At their most critical, they indicate the powerful role of television in keeping us tethered to the categories and assumptions of the past even as we imagine the future. (Herman Gray, author of Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for 'Blackness')

The essays are consistent in quality and approach, and . . . yield astute if not necessarily novel or groundbreaking readings of the various programs. (CHOICE)

Fascinating and very readable critical anthology. (The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts)

Regardless of why you are interested in this media phenomenon,Fantasy Girls is a must-read. (Review of Communication)

Covering television shows as diverse as Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, to The X-Files, to Xena, Warrior Princess and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, the essays in this collection offer a thought-provoking exploration of gender roles in today's science fiction and fantasy television programming. Anyone interested in women's changing roles in the popular media should find something of interest in this stimulating anthology. (Sherrie A. Inness, Professor of English, Miami University)

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0847698351
• ISBN 13: 9780847698356
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288