The New Female Antihero: The Disruptive Women of Twenty-First-Century US Television

280 Pages·2022·3.906 MB·English

by  Sarah Hagelin, Gillian Silverman

The New Female Antihero

The New
Female Antihero
The Disruptive Women of
Twenty- First- Century US Television
sarah hagelin and gillian silverman
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2022 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief
quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact
the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2022
Printed in the United States of America
31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 1 2 3 4 5
isbn-1 3: 978- 0- 226- 81635- 7 (cloth)
isbn-1 3: 978- 0- 226- 81640- 1 (paper)
isbn-1 3: 978- 0- 226- 81636- 4 (e- book)
doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226816364.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hagelin, Sarah, author. | Silverman, Gillian D., 1967– author.
Title: The new female antihero : the disruptive women of twenty-first-century
US television / Sarah Hagelin, Gillian Silverman.
Description: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2022. | Includes index.
Identifiers: lccn 2021017523 | isbn 9780226816357 (cloth) |
isbn 9780226816401 (paperback) | isbn 9780226816364 (e-book)
Subjects: lcsh: Women antiheroes on television. | Television programs—
United States.
Classification: lcc pn1992.8.a65 h34 2022 | ddc 791.45 /65220973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021017523
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1 992
(Permanence of Paper).
To our sisters
Ilena, Mara, Suzanne, and Alisa
I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip,
self- destructive but above all else public is the most revolutionary thing in
the world.
—chris kraus, I Love Dick
What we see and hear on the screen is part of who we become.
— fred rogers
Contents
Prologue ix
Introduction: The New Female Antihero— The What, the Why, the How 1
part i: Ambition TV
1 The Limits of the Female Antihero in Game of Thrones 27
2 The Impossibility of the Marriage Plot in The Americans 49
3 Scandal and the Failure of Postracial Fantasy 72
4 Homeland and the Rejection of the Domestic Plot 95
part ii: Shame TV
5 Feminist Anti- Aspirationalism in Girls 117
6 Liberation and Whiteness in Broad City 140
7 The Difference That Race Makes in Insecure 160
8 Working- Class Identity and Matriarchal Community in SMILF 179
Epilogue 203
Acknowledgments 209
Notes 211
Index 253

Prologue
Elizabeth Jennings, Hannah Horvath, Olivia Pope, Nurse Jackie, Patty Hewes,
Annalise Keating, Chris Kraus, Cookie Lyon, Fleabag, Nadia Vulvokov, Gemma
Teller Morrow. The last ten years have presented television viewers with a
host of female characters the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Selfish,
vengeful, often deeply unlikeable, they fly in the face of our expectations for
women. They murder without justification; they pursue sex with abandon;
they reject marriage, children, and even job security. Yet still they survive—
from week to week, episode to episode—o ften garnering large fan bases even
as they shock and disappoint. These women are the outlaws and outcasts of
contemporary TV—t he new female antiheroes.
For viewers like us—r aised on Mary Tyler Moore, Roseanne Barr, and El-
len DeGeneres— this kind of female figure is thoroughly unfamiliar. Watch-
ing television in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, we thought we had seen a wide
range of heroines: funny women, scheming women, women more interested
in their careers than in relationships. But what passed for transgression then
seems, from the vantage point of today, to be deeply conventional. Linda
Carter’s Wonder Woman was strong but also (as her costume revealed) re-
lentlessly feminine; Murphy Brown was brassy but also completely commit-
ted to playing by the rules; Carrie Bradshaw refused to settle but also couldn’t
get past the dream of marriage and white picket fence (or co- op apartment,
in her case). This earlier generation of female protagonists was defined more
than anything by their pluck— they were willing to ask their bosses for raises,
sleep with men out of wedlock, and gun down bad guys. Impressive, but a far
cry from the murderous cruelty of Game of Thrones’ Cersei Lannister or the
abject delusionalism of Enlightened’s Amy Jellicoe.