Review of Wilcox, Rhonda V., Tanya R. Cochran, Cynthia Masson, and David Lavery, eds. Reading Joss Whedon. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2014. Print.

Uppsatsen är en analys där de två amerikanska science fiction-serierna Dollhouse (Joss Whedon, 2009) och Firefly (Joss Whedon, 2002), som sänts i både svensk och amerikansk tv har granskas. Syftet är att titta närmare på hur kvinnor och deras kroppar framställs i serierna och i reklamen för sagda serier. Genom en kvalitativ innehållsanalys granskas de båda serierna, där fokus har legat på hur de kvinnliga karaktärerna framställs i båda serierna men också på hur de marknadsförs i reklamen innan serierna har sänts. Uppsatsen är uppdelad i tre teman; ”den kvinnliga hjälten”, ”kvinnans roll” och ”den kvinnliga kroppen”. Serierna har valts ut eftersom de båda är gjorda av regissören Joss Whedon som tidigare gjort serien Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Joss Whedon, 1997), en serie som hyllats för sin positiva framställning av kvinnor. I slutdiskussionen finns sedan en sammanfattning på vad som uppsatsen har kommit fram till. Diskussionen innehåller även reflektioner över Joss Whedons ambition att framställa kvinnor på ett bra och accepterat sätt, men också hur andra serier idag gör framsteg i sina porträtt av kvinnor och deras kroppar.

Firefly, a television series created, written, and directed by Joss Whedon, premiered on the Fox network in 2002 and aired only eleven episodes before it was cancelled halfway through its first season. While it gained some on-air popularity, it was not until fans convinced Fox via online chatrooms to release the series on DVD that it gained posthumous acclaim. Whedon credits westerns as the inspiration for Firefly because frontier characters tend to be natural, flawed, complex human beings who question universal truths through widely recognized motifs of classic westerns. In a February 17, 2011 Entertainment Weekly interview, Firefly actor Nathan Fillion stated that if he won the lottery, he would buy the rights to Firefly, inadvertently rallying fans to bring back the series that was cancelled almost a decade before, mirroring the cowboy culture that Firefly emulates of marginalized individuals fighting for a cause. Despite its science fiction and space motifs, Firefly is no different from classic westerns in blending legend and reality, reinforcing the mixture of myth and fact that constitutes frontier ideology. Firefly, like the cowboy culture it represents, has become a cultural icon, romanticized because of its brief and nostalgic nature. This paper will look at the enduring appeal of Firefly through western motifs of frontier, displacement, and mobility, considering why westerns lend themselves to continued nostalgia and reinvention in contemporary popular culture.

This thesis seeks to respond to the existing dearth of work on practical matters of intersemiotic translation in translation studies thus far by turning to other disciplines that have explored comparable phenomena in greater depth. In particular, in the current atmosphere of media convergence and transmedia production, characterized by the ubiquity of adaptations, remakes, spin-offs, and sequels in the entertainment industry, cross-media adaptation represents one of the most common and prominent forms of intersemiotic translation. Therefore, the various fields of inquiry related to current phenomena of intersemiotic translation, including adaptation studies, film studies, fan studies, and media studies in general, offer relevant and informative models for expanding our understanding of success in intersemiotic translation. The methodology employed involves an interdisciplinary descriptive approach, using examples of cross-media adaptation found in the works of one successful intersemiotic translator, Joss Whedon. Acknowledging the contextually contingent nature of any such case study, the findings of this thesis identify all three participants in cultural production—form, producer, and audience—as active contributors in the successful production and perpetuation of intersemiotic translations. In particular, this thesis explores possible causes of success in relation to specific cross-media adaptations, proposes attributes of the successful intersemiotic translator, and examines how the reiterative behaviors of active audiences, such as rereading, reinterpretation, and rewriting, help to extend a work’s success. The capacity to inspire a continuing tradition of translation is itself a key contributing factor to the success of an intersemiotic translation and is most often performed with the collaboration of a community of interpreters. Achieving success is therefore a collective endeavor and a continual process of sustaining a work’s presence in the collective consciousness by renewing its value across temporal, cultural, and semiotic systems. Based on these findings, notions of form, production, and reception in intersemiotic translation are understood by proposing a model of convergent translation, the notion of the auteur-translator, and a collaborative understanding of the construction of a text and its significance through the afterlife of translation.

This project argues that there is a previously unnamed canon of literature called Magical Feminism which exists across many current popular (even lowbrow) genres such as science-fiction, fantasy, so-called realistic literature, and contemporary television and film. I define Magical Feminism as a genre quite similar to Magical Realism, but assert that its main political thrust is to model a feminist agency for its readers. To define this genre, I closely-read the image of the female magic user as one of the most important Magical Feminist metaphors. I argue that the female magic user–commonly called the witch, but also labeled priestess, mistress, shaman, mambo, healer, midwife– is a metaphor for female unruliness and disruption to patriarchy and as such, is usually portrayed as evil and deserving of punishment. I assert that many (although not all) of the popular texts this genre includes are overlooked or ignored by the academy, and thus, that an important focus for contemporary feminism is missed. When the texts are noticed by parts of the academy, they are mostly considered popular culture novelty acts, not serious political genres. As part of my argument, I analyze third wave feminism’s attempt to reconcile traits previously considered less than feminist, such as the domestic. I also deconstruct the popular media’s negative portrayal of contemporary feminism and the resulting reluctance for many young women to identify themselves as feminist. I also argue that this reluctance goes hand in hand with a growing attempt to seek new models for empowering female epistemologies. My assertion is that these texts are the classrooms where many readers learn their feminism. Finally, I list a short bibliography as a way of defining canon of texts that should be considered Magical Feminist.

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Individuals who consider themselves both scholars and fans represent not only a subculture of fandom but also a subculture of academia. These liminal figures seem suspicious to many of their colleagues, yet they are particularly positioned not only to be conduits to engaged learning for students but also to transform the academy by chipping away at the stereotypes that support the symbolic walls of the Ivory Tower. Because they are growing in number and gaining influence in academia, the scholar-fans of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Buffy) and other texts by creator Joss Whedon are one focus of this dissertation. Though Buffy academics or Whedon scholars are not the only ones of their kind (e.g., academic- fan communities have cropped up around The Simpsons, The Matrix Trilogy, and the Harry Potter franchise), they have produced more literature and are more organized than any other academic-fan community. I approach all of my subjects—fandom, academia, fan-scholars, and scholar-fans—from a multidisciplinary perspective, employing various methodologies, including autoethnography and narrative inquiry. Taking several viewpoints and using mixed methods best allows me to begin identifying and articulating a rhetoric of scholar-fandom. Ultimately, I claim that Whedon academic-fans employ a discourse marked by intimacy, community, reciprocity, and transformation. In other words, the rhetoric of Whedon scholar-fandom promotes an epistemology—a way of knowing—that in Parker J. Palmer’s paradigm is personal, communal, reciprocal, and transformational.

Individuals who consider themselves both scholars and fans represent not only a subculture of fandom but also a subculture of academia. These liminal figures seem suspicious to many of their colleagues, yet they are particularly positioned not only to be conduits to engaged learning for students but also to transform the academy by chipping away at the stereotypes that support the symbolic walls of the Ivory Tower. Because they are growing in number and gaining influence in academia, the scholar-fans of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Buffy) and other texts by creator Joss Whedon are one focus of this dissertation. Though Buffy academics or Whedon scholars are not the only ones of their kind (e.g., academic- fan communities have cropped up around The Simpsons, The Matrix Trilogy, and the Harry Potter franchise), they have produced more literature and are more organized than any other academic-fan community. I approach all of my subjects—fandom, academia, fan-scholars, and scholar-fans—from a multidisciplinary perspective, employing various methodologies, including autoethnography and narrative inquiry. Taking several viewpoints and using mixed methods best allows me to begin identifying and articulating a rhetoric of scholar-fandom. Ultimately, I claim that Whedon academic-fans employ a discourse marked by intimacy, community, reciprocity, and transformation. In other words, the rhetoric of Whedon scholar-fandom promotes an epistemology—a way of knowing—that in Parker J. Palmer’s paradigm is personal, communal, reciprocal, and transformational.