Out of all the Sex and the City women, high-powered lawyer Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) is the most unlikely to become a mother. Turning up at Laney Berlin’s (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) baby shower with a gift packet of condoms, Miranda’s attitude toward mothers and babies is playfully prophylactic (“The Baby Shower,” episode 10). Sitting on the steps, away … Read more
Six Feet Under‘s central trope is the body—dead ones, reconstructed ones, sexual ones—which function as the vehicle through which to articulate a critical realism that challenges cultural and social normative codes. Critical realism is a mode of representation that Robin Nelson argues offers the most productive strategy for generating social change though TV drama. The … Read more
No getting away from it: Claire Fisher (Lauren Ambrose) is one confused young woman. She takes drugs, is drawn to psychotically dangerous young men, pinches a severed cadaver foot to place in a classmate’s locker for lovelorn reasons, may or may not be an arsonist, drives around in that lime-green hearse (what’s that all about?), … Read more
In an interview with The Sopranos‘ creator David Chase in early March of this year, Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air asked if any scene in the series had been particularly misinterpreted by the public. His mind went immediately to “University” (episode 32) about the murder of a young exotic dancer named Tracee. This answer does not surprise me, as … Read more
When Soprano consigliere Silvio Dante complains that his daughter Heather protests his ownership of the Bada Bing! strip club on the grounds that it “objectifies women,” we know that there has been a seismic shift in the sexual landscape of the gangster narrative (“Down Neck,” episode 7). Indeed, a number of scholars argue that The Sopranos reinvents … Read more
Akass, Kim and Janet McCabe, eds. Reading Sex and the City. London: I.B. Tauris, 2004. Ball, Alan and Alan Poul, eds. Six Feet Under: Better Living through Death. New York: Melcher Media, 2003. Barreca, Regina. “Why I Like the Women in The Sopranos Even Though I’m Not Supposed To.” In A Sitdown with The Sopranos: Watching Italian American Culture on TV’s … Read more
The Shows Sex and the City Six Feet Under The Sopranos International Responses to Women and Media African Women’s Media Center Arab Women Media Center International Women’s Media Foundation Network of Women in Media, India WomenAction Representations of Women About Face Media Watch Power Up Woman Vision Women’s Image Network Women Working in the Media … Read more
“[T]he self-analysis involved in the kind of feminist criticism I would advocate may well provide an antidote to the narcissism I suspect to be at the heart of much reader-oriented popular culture criticism—a criticism which, although claiming a certain objective validity by appealing to the pleasures and tastes of others, often seems to be based … Read more
While the first two volumes of The Scholar & Feminist Online grew directly out of the Center’s programming, volume 3.1 represents the rewards of our first open call for proposals. We felt extremely fortunate when we received Lisa Johnson’s outline for an issue exploring sex, gender and desire on recent HBO series. Professor Johnson’s proposed investigation into … Read more
From the traveling photo-text exhibit and book:Love Makes a Family: Portraits of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People and their FamiliesFor information on how to bring this exhibit to your college or community, visit Family Diversity Projects. Jang-Otto Family “When I started to speak in Chinatown, I knew that my parents would hear about it so … Read more
