There She Goes Again

Gender, Power, and Knowledge in Contemporary Film and Television Franchises

Aviva Dove-Viebahn

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781978836112, 9781978836129
• eBook ISBN: 9781978836136
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film History & Criticism

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Why Feminine Intuition?: The Gendering of Knowledge and Power
• 2. Seriality and “Strong Female Characters”: The Double Bind of Women’s Empowerment Narratives
• 3. From Girl Power to Intersectional Sisterhood: Exceptionalism and the Imperatives of Belonging
• 4. Motherhood and Myth: Inside and Outside the Family Circle
• 5. At the End of the World: Apocalyptic Bodies and the Feminine Sublime Conclusion
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index