Chick TV - (Television and Popular Culture) by Yael Levy (Paperback)

About the Book

"Drawing on the potential of both temporality and antiheroinism to invoke feminist resistance, this research suggests a correlation between televisual temporality and antiheroinism in early 2000s US television drama series, examines that correlation, and explores the feminist politics of these two narrative apparatuses"--

Book Synopsis

Tony Soprano, Don Draper, and Walter White ushered in the era of the television antihero, with compelling narratives and complex characters. While critics and academics celebrated these characters, the antiheroines who populated television screens in the twenty-first century were pushed to the margins and dismissed as "chick TV."

In this volume, Yael Levy advances antiheroines to the forefront of television criticism, revealing the varied and subtle ways in which they perform feminist resistance. Offering a retooling of gendered media analyses, Levy finds antiheroism not only in the morally questionable cop and tormented lawyer, but also in the housewife and nurse who inhabit more stereotypical feminine roles. By analyzing Girls, Desperate Housewives, Nurse Jackie, Being Mary Jane, Grey's Anatomy, Six Feet Under, Sister Wives, and the Real Housewives franchise, Levy explores the narrative complexities of "chick TV" and the radical feminist potential of these shows.

Review Quotes

Chick TV reveals the relationship between narrative structure and gender representation in exciting new ways, making an important contribution to feminist TV studies.-- "Elana Levine, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee"

A very timely, original and important piece of work. . . . Levy's focus on heroines and antiheroines represents an important feminist intervention into debates around 'quality' and 'complex' TV.-- "JP Kelly, University of London"

Exciting, detailed, and far-reaching, Chick TV is sure to provide scholars and students much to discuss for years to come.-- "Paul Booth, DePaul University"

About the Author

Yael Levy is a teaching fellow at the Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University, where she teaches courses in television studies, race, and feminist theories. Her works have appeared in Feminist Media Studies and Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, among others.