Popular culture is an integral part of our lives, in return our lives shape the products of popular culture. The subject of analysis of this master thesis is one of the former products, the television show Gilmore Girls, which presents to us the story of a single mother Lorelai Gilmore and her daughter Rory Gilmore, with whom she became pregnant at sixteen. The show is pertinent for its representation of femininity and female characters, that plays a key role in the everyday lives of its viewers. With its presentation of independent, ambitious protagonists and its focus on female characters, the show throws into question the theory by Laura Mulvey about the male protagonist, who makes things happen, and the woman, who is but an object for men’s viewing pleasures, and for which it was defined as feminist, all the while the critics have raised concerns about the problematic use of its narrow representation of female identities as pertaining race, sexuality and its constrictions of traditional values. With the help of the feminist film theory, the master thesis analyses the representation of femininity in the show, the focus being on its postfeminist individuality and the question of progressivity of its presentation. The analysis of Gilmore Girls reveals to us the multiplicity of meanings in the show and the different typologies of femininity, bound together by individuality and postfeminist emphasis on the meaning of personal choice.
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