Persephone in Heroine Television: The Post-feminist Impasse

Abstract

If the Persephone myth is invoked in debates over feminine identity, then the retelling of her story in heroine television fits with traditional preoccupations of this space, for, as Brunsdon argues, even if not selfconsciously occupied with ‘addressing feminism,’ heroine television concerns itself with ‘addressing the agenda that feminism has made public’ (1997, 34). Yet, with the emergence of ‘post’ feminist ideas in the seminal dramedy Ally McBeal, heroine television begins to express not simply what feminism has made public about women, but ideas about feminism within this public discourse. Ally thus denotes a significant shift in the network of influence between critical feminist discourse, public cultural commentary, and the dramatization of women in media texts — one that produces an impasse in traditional feminist methods of analysing women in media texts. This chapter demonstrates how this shift exposes the limits of feminist cultural criticism applied to representations of women in media when those representations articulate a critique of the feminist ideas upon which feminist cultural criticism operates.