Date of Award

8-1-2014

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences

First Advisor

Rodney Buxton, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Tony Gault

Third Advisor

Elizabeth Henry

Keywords

Gender, Genderqueer, Non-binary, Representations, Television, Transgender

Abstract

Five fictional characters have emerged on the U.S. premium-pay-cable channels that blur the traditional male-or-female gender divide. The basics of queer theory (sex, gender, orientation, and transgender) and critical/cultural studies (encoding, decoding, and reading a text) are explained as a basis for the analysis of the characters, which seeks to answer the research question: does the premium-pay-cable television format offer truly empathetic non-binary transgender characters that challenge the dominant American ideologies about gender identity and expression? If so, how? If not, why not?

Shane McCutcheon from Showtime’s lesbian melodrama The L Word (2004- 2010), Lafayette Reynolds from HBO’s supernatural drama-comedy True Blood (2008- 2014), Roscoe Kaan from Showtime’s corporate drama-comedy House of Lies (2012-), Brienne of Tarth from HBO’s political-fantasy-epic Game of Thrones (2010-) and Job from Cinemax’s pulpy action-thriller Banshee (2013-) are rigorously scrutinized, revealing their surprisingly complex, confident, and transgressive queer power.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Daniel L. Ketchum

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

262 p.

Discipline

Gender studies, Film studies, Communication

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