Popular Culture Criticism
One of the side-effects of doing emotionally engaged research is that the researcher may come to experience symptoms resembling post-traumatic stress. Psychologists refer to these effects as a form of trauma called compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, or vicarious trauma. One of the many strategies for coping I have developed is reveling in the pleasures of television and gaming. When working on my dissertation, I de-stressed by watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and playing Tomb Raider. Both Buffy Sommers and Lara Croft are young women who, despite their conventional feminine vulnerability, are remarkably powerful and resilient. They offered an antidote to the seemingly endless stories of trauma of heard and read.
Eventually, I turned from simple escapism to thinking more carefully about how gender and race are represented in these forms of popular culture. I published "Utopian Fantasy and the Politics of Difference" in World of Warcraft and Philosophy: Wrath of the Philosopher King, Eds. Cuddy and Nordlinger, Open Court, 2009, and "Throwing Like a Slayer: A Phenomenology of Gender Hybridity and Female Resilience in Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in Slayage: The Journal of Whedon Studies 14.1 [43]. I also frequently use examples from popular culture in my teaching.
"Utopian Fantasy and the Politics of Difference"
Although World of Warcraft utilizes ethnic and gender stereotypes in the construction of its playable characters, the structure of the gaming environment provides a modest utopian vision that is structurally just, maximizing both liberty and equality among participants in a way consistent with John Rawls's Theory of Justice. As a result, class, race, and gender are much more a matter of human (humanoid) variety, rather than a tool for hierarchically differentiation. Nevertheless, in players' engagement with the game, class, race, and gender differences take on meaning well beyond the structure of the Warcraft universe demonstrating how real world values infect our imagination.
In 2015, I taught a Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies senior seminar focused on gender in popular culture. Our core text was Sharon Crasnow and Joanne Waugh's (eds.) book Philosophical Feminism and Popular Culture, which I reviewed for the APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy (15(1). 16-17). Each of us, the four students and I, critically examined the work of Joss Whedon, and presented our papers at the 2015 Joss in June conference held at Middle Tennessee State University. Leah Lenk and Denise Lynch co-authored “’Yes Men’? Rape Myths and Gender Stereotypes in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Rachel Melnyk wrote “’You Always Hurt the One You Love’: A Disobedient Reading of Romance in Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and Robyn Rowley wrote “’I’m Still Free’: Models of Autonomy in Whedon’s Firefly.” The papers by Leah and Denise and Rachel were published in Watcher Junior and my essay, "Throwing Like a Slayer," was published in Slayage.
A Phenomenology of Gender Hybridity and Female Resilience in Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
To determine whether or not Buffy Sommers represents a successful subversion of femininity, I draw extensively upon seminal works in feminist phenomenology, which describe feminine embodiment as a collection of disciplinary practices that produce a subordinate subject. In sections one and two below, I use these aspects of feminine embodiment to analyze how Buffy the Vampire Slayer both reflects and challenges these norms, concluding that Buffy represents a gender hybrid, one who melds feminine and masculine being-in-the-world. Then, in section three, I examine what this depiction of gender hybridity offers for ordinary young women, that is, those without the mystically endowed powers of the Slayer, through a deconstruction of the episode “Helpless” (3.12). I argue that, instead of presenting a “docile body” inspiring sexual objectification and victimization, Buffy the Vampire Slayer offers viewers a representation of female resilience.
Fangs for the Memories, Buffy: Series Gave Fans Much to Sink Their Teeth Into
by Rita Kempley, washingtonpost.com, May 20, 1993, page C01
[...] Debra Jackson, a professor at California State University, Bakersfield, uses the characters' dilemmas to introduce her students to philosophical concepts such as liberty versus determinism.
Spike, one of Sunnydale's most ferocious fiends, is figuratively defanged when a covert government agency plants a make-nice chip in his brain. Poor fellow falls madly in love with the slayer and, with human throats forbidden him, must feed on pig's blood from the neighborhood butcher.
"The chip not only prevents Spike from causing pain, but curbs what he wants to do. This gets them to think about the effect of socialization on our free will and also helps them to realize that they have thought about philosophical issues before," Jackson says of her students. […]