Does Television Belong in Academia?

Check out this awesome post!

Nikki Stafford writes television episode guides. She was also a featured speaker at Slayage. Here is a link to her great blog post, as she answers the question, Does Television Belong in Academia?

I say “hell yea” and she agrees.

My favorite part is when Nikki asserts that people who criticize those to write/speak about television academically are watching the wrong television shows.

Slayage, Power, Gender Issues. . . .

One of the reasons I started this blog was to “have a chat about TV.” I guess it is going to start out as a monologue, until I get people to start reading it. Last month I attended the Slayage Conference in Arkadelphia Arkansas. This academic conference was about the television programs created by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel & Firefly). It was there that I got inspired to start writing about television and popular culture, instead of internalizing all of my thoughts. This blog will also help me curb the desire to have the occasional face-to-face discussion with someone that doesn’t care about the homoerotic subtext in Smallville.

Why I haven’t added to the blog, until recently is that I had an online class that kept me busy writing a lot and I didn’t have the energy to have any additional computer time. The course was titled, Communication and Power. It was a very interesting course and I will use some of that critical theory I learned to add to the discussion here.

Below is an excerpt from a post I made for my online class. It kind of thing fits within my whole, talking about television theme of this blog. The topic of the discussion board post is images of women in the media.

This academic conference was about the television programs Buffy, Angel & Firefly. Many presentations I attended focused on the staging of gender in those TV series. Papers topics included: Girlie Feminism, Violence and the Slayer, the Limitations of Buffy’s Feminism, Hegemony and the Performance of Gender, Buffy & Nancy Drew—Development of Strong Female Role Models in Adolescent Literature, Consumer and Domestic Stereotypes in Buffy, the Damaged Man in Angel, and Gazing at Male Vampires—Bodies as Spectacle.

Here is what I think when using that show as a lens to view media images of women. Power is a huge theme within the Buffy series. Although the Buffy character does fit the little, cute, blonde image that popularized in the media that stereotype is subverted. The character does have extreme physical power and yet she works on keeping her outside appearance girlish and sexualized. Buffy can be strong and yet have power in various aspects of her life. Although that issue is one tiny aspect of the program there are many more issues surrounding gender roles of men and woman on Buffy and its spin-off series Angel. What makes the show especially interesting is that it doesn’t give simple, “afterschool special” life lessons—but forces the audience to think about issues of gender and power in revealing ways. This show creates a dialogue about gender and other societal issues. If you never have seen the show, I suggest you watch it.