• DOI:10.1080/14680770120042891
• Corpus ID: 42315858

Postfeminist Television Criticism: Rehabilitating Critical Terms and Identifying Postfeminist Attributes

@article{Lotz2001PostfeministTC,
  title={Postfeminist Television Criticism: Rehabilitating Critical Terms and Identifying Postfeminist Attributes},
  author={Amanda D. Lotz},
  journal={Feminist Media Studies},
  year={2001},
  volume={1},
  pages={105 - 121}
}

• A. Lotz
• Published 1 January 2001
• Art
• Feminist Media Studies

Confusion and contradiction mark understandings of feminism in US popular culture at the turn of the 21st century. Surveying the terrain of both feminist theory and popular discussions of feminism, we seem to have entered an alternate language universe where words can simultaneously connote a meaning and its opposite, where labels are more signi® cant than theory behind the label. This is the contemporary theoretical context in which scholars deliberate feminism, anti-feminism, postfeminism, third-wave feminism, women-of-color feminism, and power feminism, to name but a few. Although not new formations, second-wave feminist perspectives, such as liberal feminism, radical feminism, cultural feminism, and socialist or Marxist feminism, persist as well. Variant uses of the same term, sometimes as a result of the national context of the writer, further confound contemporary confusion about what the term feminism means and its many modi® ers indicate. Members of the academy and activist organizations mainly debate the complexity of the contemporary profusion of feminist perspectives, although popular media also address the general public with some of these permutations of feminism, such as a reference to postfeminism on the dramatic teen television series Dawson’s Creek or in a People magazine article. These media outlets are able to distribute their messages widely, but rarely acknowledge the signi® cance of invoking a term such as postfeminism or describe its meaning to readers unfamiliar with theoretical debates. Such confusion over terminology may signify one of the key obstacles facing feminist advances at the dawn of the 21st century, but despite terminological confusion, feminism remains a vital perspective for recognizing and addressing contemporary oppressions and inequities (see Sarah Gamble 1999). This theoretical confusion over what one means when invoking the term feminism results mainly from evolution in the theoretical perspectives and the lived experiences of women since the height of second-wave feminism. Such change and development is only to be expected. For feminist media scholars, not only have the theories changed, but so too have the objects of study. For many years academic analyses of feminist representations focused on the a new womano character type, with US critics commenting most expansively upon Mary Richards of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. But feminist critics writing on the television characters and programs emerging at the end of the 1990s need new tools and perspectives to explain US television phenomena such as Xena: Warrior Princess (1995± ), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997± ), Ally McBeal (1997± ), Sex in the