The post-feminist myth : scores for serialized dramas (1995–2010)

My project, an investigation of music for serialized dramatic television shows from the years 1995–2010, examines a media response to an evident cultural shift on the definition and social expectations of women, especially in how this is enacted through the score. This era was part of a defining moment for television as an entertainment medium and as a mode of storytelling. Robert Thompson identifies this shift in television narratives and coins the term quality TV. For Thompson, quality TV is not regular TV and instead opts for artistry over formulaic stories. This emphasis on innovation also affected the ways women were portrayed on screen. Shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1998-2003), Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001), and Gilmore Girls (2000-2007), updated and transformed inherited female character representations on screen, which reflect not only changes in TV, but in the cultural feminist narrative. This work is especially concerned with the post-feminist era and the simultaneous, though contradictory truths of quantifiable improvements for women which are undermined by restrictions of feminine behavior. My dissertation addresses this in part by laying out a new typology of female characters which offers alternative ways of thinking about goals, agency, and subjectivity of female characters. In particular, I note how music depicts shifts in the narrative priorities for the new iterations of female characters, helps to define the new modes of quality TV storytelling, and echoes Angela McRobbie’s observations of “double entanglement” in supposed post-feminism during this era. My analysis shows that the music enacts such sociological dichotomies and simultaneous truths of post-feminism. While historically a handful of important shows like I Love Lucy (1951-1957), The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977), Cagney & Lacey (1981-1988), and Murphy Brown (1988-1998) featured independent female characters, a huge influx of female-centered storylines and hour-long primetime dramas began in the mid-1990s. Of the new series premiered in 1995 with female protagonists, most featured new tropes and storylines that emphasized success attained in the workplace and through personal fulfillment rather than just through romantic attachment or building a family. Additionally, previous representations were limited to only a single positive, or masculinized, trait, such as “strong” or “independent.” Complex representation in the mid-late 1990s allows for far more intricate character constructs, especially for contradictions without fear of a double standard being enforced through punishment. Music contributes greatly to endowing these new characters with a sense of extended subjectivity, and my work uses close analysis of this music to identify aural signifiers that mark the new goals, agency, and sense of self that distinguishes these characters from previous female characters on television. Considering female characters in film and television in terms of their role as love object or object of desire and the male gaze has been a useful analytical model for describing the function of women in the narrative. The music for women as the love object has been explored in terms of instrumentation, orchestration, thematic continuity, and clichéd restrictions meant to alert the listener to the favorable romantic choice , despite offering the vast majority of the agency to the male lead. These scoring practices acted as restrictive rules that dictated the ways in which women could be represented through music from Classic Hollywood through the Golden Age of Television. Quality TV embraced post-feminism by breaking these so-called rules and expanding female character representation even while contributing to the double entanglement by perpetuating gender roles or gender bending pre-existing stereotypes. This is partly due to the music accompanying these women which helps to reinforce gender constructs. The serialized dramatic television series that appeared from 1995–2010 were part of an important cultural shift in television for the United States that created new roles for female characters. This dissertation focuses on the musical scores to these shows, both original compositions and popular music, and examines how this music articulated a new level of subjectivity for these female characters, shaping the representation in television for this era. The central goal of this dissertation is to tease out the ways music influenced the female construction in these shows while working to situate them in a post-feminist cultural narrative. The music for these shows, which indicates a new increased subjectivity in comparison to previous female representation, suggests far more complex treatment of character than the existing critical literature allows. Additionally, the use of historical contextual framing helps to draw conclusions about the stakes of women’s politics during this decade. My dissertation not only opens a new field of analysis for music and media scholars, specifically the relatively underrepresented music and television, but it also allows for an increased discourse about the influence of music in complex narratives for media scholars.Musi