Lycra, Legs, and Legitimacy: Performances of Feminine Power in Twentieth Century American Popular Culture
LYCRA, LEGS, AND LEGITIMACY: PERFORMANCES OF FEMININE POWER IN TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE Quincy Thomas A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2018 Committee: Jonathan Chambers, Advisor Francisco Cabanillas, Graduate Faculty Representative Bradford Clark Lesa Lockford © 2018 Quincy Thomas All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Jonathan Chambers, Advisor As a child, when I consumed fictional narratives that centered on strong female characters, all I noticed was the enviable power that they exhibited. From my point of view, every performance by a powerful character like Wonder Woman, Daisy Duke, or Princess Leia, served to highlight her drive, ability, and intellect in a wholly uncomplicated way. What I did not notice then was the often-problematic performances of female power that accompanied those narratives. As a performance studies and theatre scholar, with a decades’ old love of all things popular culture, I began to ponder the troubling question: Why are there so many popular narratives focused on female characters who are, on a surface level, portrayed as bastions of strength, that fall woefully short of being true representations of empowerment when subjected to close analysis? In an endeavor to answer this question, in this dissertation I examine what I contend are some of the paradoxical performances of female heroism, womanhood, and feminine aggression from the 1960s to the 1990s. To facilitate this investigation, I engage in close readings of several key aesthetic and cultural texts from these decades. While the Wonder Woman comic book universe serves as the centerpiece of this study, I also consider troublesome performances and representations of female power in the television shows Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the film Grease, the stage musical Les Misérables, and the video game Tomb Raider.
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