Dickason Thesis
“YOU KNOW YOU LOVE ME”: SURVEILLANCE AND SPECTATORSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY TEEN GIRL TV A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English By Cara Dickason, B.A. Washington, DC April 24, 2015 Copyright 2015 by Cara Dickason All Rights Reserved ii “YOU KNOW YOU LOVE ME”: SURVEILLANCE AND SPECTATORSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY TEEN GIRL TV Cara Dickason, B.A. Thesis Advisor: Caetlin Benson-Allott, Ph.D. ABSTRACT Contemporary teen girl television shows about surveillance allow for an exploration of how girls constantly negotiate between their own positions as spectators and their objectification through surveillance and in media representation. From celebrity photo leaks to magazine covers on sexting, public discourse on girls, surveillance, and technology is riddled with anxiety about privacy, visibility, and sexuality. Mainstream media obsess over the many dangers besetting girls today, their vulnerability to exploitation by surveillance, and their corresponding need for protection and policing. Simultaneously, however, that same media insists both on girls’ constant visual and sexual objectification and their position as empowered, independent consumer- spectators. This thesis traces such themes of surveillance and spectatorship through Gossip Girl (2007-2012), Pretty Little Liars (2010-present), and Veronica Mars (2004-2007), three popular prime time teen dramas that centralize girls’ relationship to surveillance and visibility. I will explore how surveillance functions to objectify, value, and control teenage girls, and how female viewers’ relationship to the shows complicates and recapitulates those functions. These teen girl TV shows ultimately allow for the consideration of the complex ways that surveillance both exerts control over and affords agency within girls’ relationships to their own visibility.
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