Fracturing Tina Fey: A Critical Analysis of Postfeminist Television Comedy Stardom

Abstract

Tina Fey is arguably the most visibly successful female comedian in contemporary U.S. media, and this article explores how her star text, Fey's public image as constructed through various media, functions discursively within a postfeminist media environment. Fey's star text must be understood in terms of both Fey-as-star and her character Liz Lemon on 30 Rock, because comedy stardom is idiosyncratic. Comedians, such as Fey, perform biographical material that invites conflation between comics and the characters they play. This research shows that the popular media blur the boundary between Fey and her television persona, Liz Lemon, and thus this study takes up both sides of Tina Fey in a discussion of her star persona. Fey-as-star and Lemon-as-character are simultaneously alike and incoherent, and this disjuncture exposes the contradictions of postfeminist discourse, which simultaneously constructs Tina Fey as both heterosexual sex symbol of postfeminist achievement and as undisciplined (read: ugly) example of postfeminist consequence. Fey's star text is ideologically significant because it highlights and challenges the gendered labor of comedy stardom, as well as the feminized space of television stardom. Tina Fey's fractured star text ultimately points to the limits of postfeminism and denies a reality in which gender equality has been achieved.