Recently, I was given the opportunity to write an undergrad thesis for my fields of interests. I decided to merge my major and minor which are Television, Film, & Media Studies, along with Women’s Gender, & Sexuality Studies.
The purpose of this project is to research and analyze the long-term effects of three American network television series from the 1990s and the early 2000s. The focus of this project will pertain to the first nine seasons of The X-Files (1993-2002), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), and Charmed (1998-2006). The effects that will be analyzed are in regard to the portrayal of the protagonists from each series by combining methods of gender and media studies to evaluate the culmination of efforts to push women’s narratives forward in network television. Since the beginning of network television, women have been portrayed through a limited palette of characteristics and a long list of toxic tropes that worked hard to suppress the roles of women. By analyzing the three main characters, Dana Scully, Buffy Summers, and Prue Halliwell, my goal is to navigate how far the impact on women in television has come. I will also apply this knowledge to my comparison of current-day examples. Throughout this process, I asked myself the following questions that may also be helpful to any readers:
- What were the qualities that set each character apart from other female protagonists who came before them?
- What was so appealing about each series in terms of gender portrayals?
- How often do we encounter gender studies to play a role in the media we consume?
In the 1990s and early 2000s, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Charmed, offered television viewers female protagonists who were written in ways television had never done before. While harmful tropes were nowhere near being eradicated, the “female lead” was being re-written in ways that made her more than just eye candy for the male viewer. Dana Scully was using science to investigate matters of monsters and demons as she battled with concepts of her faith and her persona. Buffy Summers was doing research in her high school library as she discovered new ways to conquer vampires through her own use of textual analysis. Prue Halliwell, the oldest of her sisters, led her siblings through battles with demons as she discovered her own supernatural abilities as a witch who was already unsure of how to navigate her own life as it was. All three protagonists share the quality of being thrown into supernatural and fantasy worlds from the comfort of their “normal” lives all while dealing with the frustrations of what it meant to be a woman in their respective worlds, the worlds that we mostly related to as audiences. While we may not have had experiences with demons and vampires or alien crime scene remnants to investigate in labs, most of us probably have related to having to deal with the monsters in our own lives. The lenses provided by gender studies allow us the tools to understand why these protagonists left the mark they did, both in television and in the minds of the women who drew inspiration and curiosity from these series.
