Athena's Daughters: Television’s New Women Warriors

Television and Popular Culture

by Frances H. Early (Editor), Kathleen Kennedy (Editor)

This book is unique in its critical inquiry into the new woman warrior's appropriation of violence and the Western war narrative. Informed by feminist theoretical debates regarding women's new roles, the authors delve into the meaning of that appropriation for alternative storytelling. To date, television's "ferocious few" have received little scholarly attention. By inviting a variety of perspectives, editors Frances Early and Kathleen Kennedy provide a cutting-edge forum to recognize women's increasing role in popular culture as they are cast as action heroes. As a timely and accessible work, this book will appeal to scholars, feminists, cultural critics, and the general reader.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Buffy The Vampire Slayer

175 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2003

Reviews

[Andrea Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Those first few essays were so hard to read. A lot of this isn’t super relevant anymore and I couldn’t relate to really any of the examples.

[Buffy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays discussing the effect of the 1990's attempt to create a female just warrior that actually challenged the traditional patriarchal just warrior image. The warriors discussed were Xena, Buffy, Seven of Nine (and the two other Voyager female warriors to some extent) and Nakita (from La Femme Nakita). Each article discussed a different aspect of the changes a female just warrior brings, or should bring, to the just warrior mythology. An overall critique of the efforts made in the 90's was that the shows did a great job of removing the female warriors from ultimate patriarchal control (as awesome as Charlie's Angles were, they still answered to Charlie) but failed to address women as a whole, focusing more on "white women" (as many of these warriors are blond, which is the penultimate white) and the shows failed to have any real political feminist message.

However, I think the lack of a political feminist message is why I like these "warriors" so much. As Joss Whedon said when he created the show, "If I can make teenage boys comfortable with a girl who takes charge of a situation without their knowing that's what's happening, it's better than sitting down and selling them on feminism." I think people respond better when you just show them what you mean/want rather than tell them.

One article mentioned something in passing that made me completely change the way I view women and their makeup, hair, and accessories. The article was discussing race and the female just warrior in general and Buffy's "prettiness" specifically. The author mentioned that Buffy was in essence masquerading...pretending to be a normal teenager when in fact she was a warrior with a calling to serve. In essence Buffy was using her clothing and hair to "pass." I was first introduced to the concept of "passing" in reading race related articles and literature. "Passing" is when someone of color tries to "pass" as white. It specifically comes up a lot in relation to the "one drop rule" etc. But I have seen passing in many areas of life and am intrigued by the notion that women may use their make-up, accessories, and clothing to "pass" in a society that still has certain expectations of what women are suppose to look like even as its loosing up on what women are suppose to act like.

[Katherine Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this collection. Overall, I am happy that I read it, but I'm not sure how useful these essays were. My favorite essays, not surprisingly, were the ones on Buffy. In particular, the essay "Action, Chicks, Everything: On-Line Interviews with Male Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer" by Lee Parpart was the most useful to me, especially in her description of how she set up her own study. I can use this when writing articles about my research. I also found the discussions about fan fiction interesting.

I agree with another poster on Goodreads who talked about how useful the idea of masquerade is when looking at Buffy. That is a useful construct, and the same poster likened the idea of masquerade to "passing". Great analogy.

In the final essay, about Seven of Nine, the author argues that Susan Sonntag apparently believed that science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s was complicit in the use of the abhorrent. Wow--this seems so wrong to me. I can certainly understand seeing Star Trek and pointing out the military establishment, but some of us also think it is a socialist government. I'm going to ask my Star Trek fan friends to consider reading the article to get their feedback.

Maybe I'll say more later--I probably have to think about this some more.

[Renee · Rating 2 out of 5]

This probably would have been more impressive if I'd read it ten years ago.
Unfortunately, that's the problem with popular culture studies in general: most such hold up about as well as the cultural object itself, which is to say not very well.