Hardcover
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Public Privates focuses on public and private acts and spaces in media to explore the formation of geographies. Situated at the intersections of cultural geography, feminist geography, and media studies, Marcia R. England's study argues that media both reinforce and subvert traditional notions of public and private spaces through depiction of behaviors and actions within those spheres. Though popular media contribute to the erosion of indistinct edges between spaces, they also frequently reinforce the traditional dualism through particular codings that designate the normed and gendered socio-spatial actions appropriate in each sphere--producing geographical imaginations and behaviors.
England applies her immensely readable construction to a diverse and wide-ranging array of media including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Fast and the Furious, J-Horror, sitcoms, Degrassi, and reality TV. By examining the gendered representations of public and private spaces in media and how images influence imagined and lived geographies, England shows how popular culture, specifically visual media, transmits ideologies that disintegrate the already blurred boundaries between public and private spaces.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781496205803 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nebraska |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2018 |
| Pages: | 216 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Marcia R. England is an associate professor of geography at Miami University in Ohio.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Welcome to the Hellmouth
Paradoxical Spaces in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was my response to all the horror movies I had ever seen where some girl walks into a dark room and gets killed. So I decided to make a show where a blonde girl walks into a dark room and kicks butt instead.
— Joss Whedon
I became interested in the depiction of public and private spaces on Buffy the Vampire Slayer when — upon initial viewings — I noticed that there seemed to be an incredibly stark division between the two. Yet there also seemed to be contradictions in those depictions. The lead character was repeatedly shown alone and at night in what many women would typically consider to be threatening public spaces. Buffy seemed to be transgressing societal boundaries in regard to women's roles in public space, but upholding traditional roles in private.
By traditional, I mean roles that are patriarchally coded. These activities — when they differ from the expected — are deemed abnormal. Buffy theVampire Slayer follows the title character and her friends in their fight to save the world from demons and impending apocalypses in the fictional town of Sunnydale, California. I aim to offer a paradoxical reading of Buffy the Vampire Slayer from a feminist geographical perspective by detailing the spatial reproduction of patriarchy and resistance to it. This perspective speaks to feminist geography by arguing that it needs to consider telespace — spaces created by audiences watching television programs at the same time — while speaking to cultural studies of television.
The Slayer is a woman (only women are called to be Slayers) predestined to fight against evil. Along with elevated strength, the Slayer has a highly developed fighting ability and heightened intuition. As such, I argue that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an illustration of a woman taking part in public space and exercising the freedom to move around within it, and, by doing so, she subverts traditional gender roles. Yet Buffy the Vampire Slayer also serves to reinscribe those gender roles by depicting images of violence against women in public and private spaces. Private space is also portrayed in contradictory ways. The home is shown in ways that both challenge and affirm patriarchal gender roles, both as a site of invasion/violence and as a sanctuary. These representations of private space lead to a portrait of the home as a space in which one feels safe and therefore, they adhere to reasoning that believes that women should stay in the home while, at the same time, they show the home as a site of danger which supports feminist arguments regarding domestic violence.
Sunnydale, California, the fictional setting of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is founded upon a "hellmouth"— a portal between the mystical and the earthly realms. It functions basically as a demonic mecca. Due to Sunnydale's inopportune location on this hellmouth, attacks upon Sunnydale's inhabitants (both male and female) are numerous and the mortality rate is extremely high. Buffy, with her extraordinary physical strength as a Slayer, combats the demonic forces that threaten the residents of Sunnydale.
I argue that there is both reification and destabilization of geographies of women's fear portrayed in the telespace of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As Buffy claims and inhabits public space — despite very real (as opposed to imagined) threats of harm — she is providing an example of an active citizen, one who is free to move around as she pleases. The program highlights an example of an appropriation of public space within geographies of fear. Additionally, it both upholds and critiques the notion of the home as a sanctuary by discussing violence within the home, the space in which women are more likely to experience physical danger.
Media and Geographies of Fear
Buffy provides a useful example of how television informs geographical imaginations and how it can both reinforce and subvert dominant ideologies of gender and space. One's geographical imagination gets engaged when one mentally maps out the global, the regional, or the local. It is basically how one conceives space. While David Harvey originated the term, the way it is used here is based on Derek Gregory's redefinition as spatialized cultural and historical interpretation. Everyone has a geographical imagination — it is a way that we understand space and place.
Feminist geographers have made the link between media messages and geographical imaginations by arguing that geographical imaginations are influenced by the images and information broadcast by mass media. They are concerned with how audiences — especially women — are bombarded with images of what to look like, how to act, and where to go. Media are profound and often misperceived sources of cultural pedagogy: "They contribute to educating us about how to behave and what to think, feel, believe, fear and desire — and what not to. The media are forms of pedagogy that teach us how to be men and women ... how to react to members of different social groups ... and how to conform to the dominant systems of norms, values, practices, and institutions."
Mass media help to paint a picture in the mind's eye of what places society deems safe for women. In many cases, public space is constructed as off-limits at certain times due to threat or fear of violence, while the home is portrayed as safe. Yet these images are not monolithic, as there has been resistance. This resistance is shown by collective and individual protests (e.g., Take Back the Night) in addition to the promotion of ideas that do not conform to conventional gender norms. This issue of fear ties into feminist debates regarding the social construction of public and private spaces. For Nancy Duncan, "The public/private dichotomy (both the political and the spatial dimensions) is frequently employed to construct, control, discipline, confine, exclude, and suppress gender and sexual difference preserving traditional patriarchal and heterosexist power structures." Media often help to form understandings of public and private spaces through the mental maps they cultivate.
Mental maps of fear are constructs that one uses to make daily decisions. They accumulate throughout a lifetime. These maps are informed in any number of ways, but especially through everyday contact with people and the media: "Direct involvement with violence; the 'but-nothing-happened' encounters; observation of other women's degradation; the impact of the media and cultural images of women; and shared knowledge of family, friends, peers, acquaintances, and coworkers all contribute to assessment of risk and strategies for safety."
Television plays a key role in forming these maps by playing on normed codings. As argued earlier, television reinforces and inscribes gender ideology onto the viewer and society. Television also helps to strengthen the hegemonic division of public and private by fortifying patriarchal geographies of fear that construct the public as dangerous and the private as safe for women: "Social critics, feminists, and academics all assert that the mass media contribute to the prevalence of fear of crime, and more specifically to female fear. They reason that the attention the media give crime and violence teaches women to fear, and continually reinforces those lessons though frequent portrayals of violence against women."
Media, especially television, are important sources of information about the world around them for many people. Research on the relationship between television viewing and fear of crime show that those viewers who watch programs that depict high amounts of crime have social understandings that reflect their television experience. These viewers estimate crime and violence rates to be higher than they are and this leads to a cultivation of fear as well as a limitation of movement, including not walking in their neighborhoods alone at night and the complete avoidance of other neighborhoods altogether. Programs with high occurrences of violence teach viewers "to fear being a victim. Heavy viewing may lead to aggression, but for some individuals it will lead to fear and apprehension about being victimized by aggression."
By promoting images of danger or harm in certain public spaces, women are discouraged from fully entering public space. These public spaces are contingent upon time of day and whether one is alone or not. Spaces that can be entered in daylight may not be ventured into at night and especially if on one's own. These places typically include those in which there are not many people about or those which are dark or dimly lit or areas that are known/perceived to have high crime rates.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer portrays geographies that exemplify the mental maps or the geographical imaginations of many women. These mental maps, when based on fear, can limit the actions of women and keep them from fully participating in all aspects of public life. This fear of physical threat (although statistically more likely to happen to men) shapes the activities of women's lives. Men are assaulted more frequently than women in public space, while women are assaulted more in the home. The home is not a sanctuary for some women. Many times, women limit their activities because they fear crime in the public sphere and segregate themselves in the home, yet as Gerde Wekerle and Carolyn Whitzman point out: "Despite media focus on public violence and attacks by strangers, the most dangerous place, especially for women and children, is still the home. Violence against women takes place primarily in the home, the last refuge for women increasingly fearful in most public spaces. This often results in an escalation and culmination of fear levels, as women realize that they are at risk everywhere and that no place is safe." Buffy the Vampire Slayer helps to play into this notion as well as refute it.
Women tend to avoid certain public places because they perceive them to be dangerous or unfit for a woman. Many women are careful to enact geographies of everyday life that "skirt" around areas that signify risk. These areas can range from such places as a high crime section of a city or to a neighborhood street after dark. Although these places may have few incidences of violence or harassment, their perceived image is one of threat for women. Local place mythologies are constructed based on these images transmitted through a variety of media, including news reports, movies, and television.
The geography of women's fear has implications on many scales. It affects ideologies regarding the body, the home, the street, and the city. The body can become a possible site of invasion; the home can be viewed as a refuge; the street and the city become places to be feared and avoided. By avoiding public space, women restrict themselves from being full participants in public life. Fear forces women into a balancing act between public and private, between inclusion and exclusion, between fear and courage. Yet these binaries are not static and can blur and blend together to dissolve the original distinctions. Dissolution can happen by the transgression of norms within a category.
On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy Summers negotiates the above balancing act on a daily basis. She constantly acknowledges the tension between resistance and capitulation. Buffy the Vampire Slayer serves as an example of a "telespace" in and through which geographies of fear and sanctuary are constructed. Sarah Radcliffe and Sallie Westwood use telespace to denote a space created by an audience watching television programs at the same time. I employ this term as a useful spatial metaphor for the television-viewing community as well as a way of describing constructions of space and place within television programs.
Women are not allowed the same access to space as men because of cultural messages that dictate where they can or cannot go in order to be or to feel safe. For the majority of a woman's life, she is "groomed" as to her role in society and thus, public space. These messages are transmitted through a variety of ways. Although it is acknowledged that these messages come from many sources, including parents, teachers, and peers, messages conveyed by television are the focus of this chapter.
The Slayer and Her Watcher
The first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer sets up the mythology for the series, including the legend of the aforementioned hellmouth upon which Sunnydale sits and the roles of the Slayer and the Watcher. The Slayer has two responsibilities: (1) to defeat the various demons who inhabit and congregate in Sunnydale and (2) to protect the world from imminent destruction. To aid her, the Slayer has an appointed Watcher who is designated as her mentor and trainer. The Slayer and Watcher work together as a team, with the Slayer usually performing the physical and the Watcher the mental functions of their mission. This formula becomes a bit blurred in the relationship between the Slayer Buffy and her Watcher, Giles, because he takes a more active role than most Watchers. The relationship between Buffy and her Giles is explained in more detail below.
The character of Buffy started out as a fifteen-year-old girl who was called to be the next Slayer, much to her chagrin. Buffy's strongest desire during the first season was to be "normal." To Buffy, being normal meant not having to patrol for vampires nightly, not having a sacred birthright, and not having to always wash the blood of others out of her clothing. She wanted a boyfriend, to be popular, and to be on the cheerleading squad. In the episode "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date," Buffy expresses her desire to be a typical teenage girl rather than the Slayer, a responsibility which fills her days and nights. In a conversation with her Watcher, Giles, she complains, "Clark Kent has a job. I just wanna go out on a date."
Buffy's Watcher, Rupert "Ripper" Giles, plays an important function in Buffy's life as well as to the plot. He initially sought out Buffy to show her the role she would play in Sunnydale. Giles originally was the only source of knowledge regarding the preternatural until the "Scooby Gang" (consisting of Buffy, Willow, Xander, and their significant others) became research savvy. Giles supervised the Sunnydale High School library, which — until its destruction in "Graduation Day, Part 2" — contained volumes and volumes of manuscripts regarding demons, demonic activities, and rites. Following graduation and obliteration of the high school, he runs the Magic Box (a store specializing in selling spell books and associated supernatural accouterments).
Giles fills a more parental role than does Buffy's mother, who through the first two seasons of the show was unaware of her daughter's status as the Slayer. Giles acts as a mentor, teacher, and surrogate father (after the Summerses divorced, Hank Summers played a virtually nonexistent role in Buffy's life) to Buffy in his role as her Watcher, in addition to training her in the ways of the supernatural. Although emotional attachments between Watchers and Slayers are not encouraged, Buffy and Giles have a caring relationship. Buffy turns to Giles in times of emotional crisis and he was the first person she called upon after discovering her mother's dead body ("The Body"). Due to the limited contact Buffy's father has with his daughter, Giles stepped in as the male authority figure for Buffy as well as her friends.
Season Synopses
The first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer explores the obstacles Buffy faces in her quest to be a "normal" girl. The relationships between Buffy and those around her are the focus, especially her relationship with Angel (a vampire with a soul and her love interest) and her two best friends, Willow and Xander. Willow and Xander, along with Giles, become a support team for Buffy — a rare occurrence for a Slayer. As Spike, her archenemy in later seasons, stated, "a Slayer with family and friends. That sure as hell wasn't in the brochure" ("School Hard").
Buffy, fulfilling a prophecy, dies in a pool of water only to be revived shortly thereafter by Xander in the final episode of the first season ("Prophecy Girl"). This episode reiterates that Buffy is not in control of her own life — that she is bound by her fate — a despairing thought for a teenage girl. Buffy's death, although brief, leads to another Slayer arriving in Sunnydale in season two. For as the legend goes, once a Slayer dies, another is called.
Drusilla and Spike, two vampires from Angel's past, arrive in Sunnydale to wreak havoc upon the town in season two ("School Hard"). Angel and Buffy grow closer in their fight against Drusilla and Spike, cumulating in a sexual interlude between the two ("Innocence"). This night of passion causes Angel to lose his soul, as he has been cursed — if he experiences one moment of true happiness, then his soul will be lost. Angel reverts back to his evil former self, Angelus, and becomes Buffy's worst enemy. He terrorizes her and her friends and eventually kills Giles's girlfriend, Jenny Calendar. The killing of Ms. Calendar proved that no one was safe in Sunnydale, including major characters.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Public Privates"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Welcome to the Hellmouth: Paradoxical Spaces in Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2. Home Is Where the Heart Is: Fast and Furious Geographies 3. Scared to Death: Spaces of J-Horror 4. Visions of Gender: Codings of Televisual Space 5. Navigating Degrassi Community School: Socio-Spatial Identities in Degrassi 6. Big Brother Is Watching You: Why You Should Be Watching Reality TV 7. Kinky Geographies: Sexuality in Mediated Spaces 8. Public Privates Exposed: Media, Gender, and Space Appendix: Filmography Notes Bibliography Index