Category Archives: Screening Prompts

Screening Prompts: Buffy/Dollhouse/Heroes

Screening Prompts for Buffy (pilot and final episode)

As Irene Karas suggsts, can we read Buffy as the “final girl for 3rd wave feminism”? By the close of the series, does this title still apply? Or is third wave feminism manifest through other characters in addition to/beyond Buffy?

Where/with whom can we locate abject horror/emotion? Where/with whom can we locate gender power?

How does fantasy work to express societal/cultural changes that might be taboo otherwise?

What models of masculinity are offered?

Screening Prompts for Dollhouse

How does Dollhouse transform Buffy’s representation of the third wave feminist heroine?

Who holds power in Dollhouse, and what is the nature of that power?

How is masculinity depicted, and how does its depiction impact the representation of femininity and female power?

Screening Prompts for Heroes (following on Supernatural and Buffy…)

How does the Heroes pilot compare with Supernatural & Buffy (in relation to the ideas raised by Williams and Clover)?

For example: Does Heroes still feature the feminized spectacle of abject horror?

Does it still feature final girls with masculine qualities?

Does Heroes suggest or re-establish an affinity between the monster and the female?

As with Supernatural, does Heroes offer Final Boys rather than a Final Girl? Does it disempower the Final Girl? Does Heroes perhaps suggest an affinity between the monster and the male?

Screening Prompts: Nightmare/Buffy/SPN

With Williams and Clover in mind

a) How do these media texts represent the female who actively looks/desires? How does the trope of the final girl play out in these texts? Do they all feature final girls? How about… final boys?

b) How do they represent the monster in relationship to masculinity, femininity, and normativity?

c) How do they represent relationship between the female and the monster?

d) Do these text feature the feminized spectacle of abject horror?

e) What role do you feel gender plays in your viewing of horror-inflected texts?

Screening Prompt: Gossip Girl & Mad Men (Season 1 Episode 6/Babylon)

Consider the episodes screened in class in relation to any of the following topics:

(You can just stick to one, or combine two if you see interconnections)

The Male Gaze
The Female Gaze
To-Be-Looked-At-ness
Female (as) spectacle
Male (as) spectacle
Female spectacle as power vs. the threat of the unseen female
The gaze as power vs. the look as desire
The woman’s look (at the male monster) as recognition of affinity with the monster

The possibilities of more fluid identification, or identification with characters who do not align with the viewer’s gender, race, or sexuality (i.e. Ask yourself: who do you identify with as you view? Does your identification line up along lines of gender, race, or sexuality?)

Reading Questions Set 5

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Post your questions for the Modleski and the Doane here.

Screening Prompts Week 3: Rebecca

Consider the nuances of Mulvey’s theory in relation to Hitchcock’s Rebecca:

What room is there for the female spectator in Rebecca? How about for the male spectator? Who is offered as an ego ideal? Who holds power in the narrative? Who is punished and how?

Whose gaze do you identify with? Does your interpellation/identification shift over the course of the film?

Does the film present the conflict between passive femininity and regressive masculinity (in terms of representation of its female characters)? Does the film offer other modes of femininity, beyond what Mulvey suggests?

Do you find yourself taking up a voyeuristic position as you watch this film? Is this voyeuristic position ever rendered problematic or uncomfortable?