'She kicks ass...in heels': Negotiating representations of femininity in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'

Much research in audience studies still tends to reinforce the traditional dichotomy of popular culture as false consciousness versus popular culture as radically, at least potentially, subversive of the status quo. These polarized arguments are particularly apparent when examining current representations of femininity in prime time programming. Many feminists argue that these representations are negative, while others argue for their radical potential. Rather than focus on this either/or dualism, I argue that it is a case of both/and: televisual constructions of femininity both reinscribe normative ideologies and offer a potentially subversive space within which to play with these constructed ideologies.;I undertake both a textual and contextual analysis of the popular television program Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS). Using qualitative interviews, I explore the participants' own understanding of how they pleasurably generate both textual (within the program) and contextual (their everyday lives) meanings of femininity, as well as how constructing these meanings may provide a relative sense of power. These ambivalent, and at times contradictory, meanings are discussed both within the program itself and in terms of how they inform, and are informed by, larger social concerns of gender. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...