The Evil Twins of American Television
eBook - PDF

The Evil Twins of American Television

Feminist Alter Egos since 1960

  1. 139 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Evil Twins of American Television

Feminist Alter Egos since 1960

About this book

The Evil Twins of American Television examines evil-twin depictions in over fifty years of television, comparing male twins to female twins and male-writer depictions to female-writer depictions. Kristi Rowan Humphreys evaluates The Patty Duke Show, Bewitched, Gilligan's Island, I Dream of Jeannie, and The Brady Bunch, among other television programs that use the twinning trope to explore themes of feminism and identity. Employing traits identified by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique as belonging to the "evil" side of her "schizophrenic split" theory, Humphreys analyzes the ways in which these alter ego characters embody the desire for a separate self and independence through loose inhibitions, career interests, political interests, intellectual prowess, and assertiveness. This book then compares female-written twin episodes to male-written twin episodes, finding that when "evil twin" episodes are written by women writers, the twins are presented less as oppositional binaries and more as compatible, often symbiotic binaries. Thus, the women writers of these shows offer a compelling response to Friedan's text, one that acknowledges and underscores the many complexities of women—the image of which cannot in reality be so easily split into two oppositional binaries. Humphreys then connects 1960s depictions to more current evil-twin examples, including those in Friends, Knight Rider, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

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Yes, you can access The Evil Twins of American Television by Kristi Rowan Humphreys in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Television. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Figures
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. Introduction
  5. 1The Patty Duke Show
  6. 2Bewitched
  7. 3I Dream of Jeannie
  8. 4Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch,and Doctor Who
  9. 5Male Television Writers vs. FemaleTelevision Writers
  10. Conclusion
  11. Bibliography
  12. Index
  13. About the Author