A Bewitching Time: Early Second Wave Feminism Through the Lens of Supernatural Sitcoms
| dc.contributor.author | Dias, Alexis | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2021-12-09T17:30:34Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2021-12-09T17:30:34Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2021-12-07 | |
| dc.description.abstract | In the early 1960s, second wave feminism began to organize and take root across the United States with an increasingly loud call for the advancement of women’s rights and roles in society. A new kind of sitcom began filling houses across the nation suggesting the virtuous and near perfect image of American domestic life previously televised was a little too picturesque. Supernatural sitcoms reinvented the genre by twisting the formulaic shows of the past to overtly and subconsciously encourage the audience to question what was previously considered to be normal and ideal images of the American family and lifestyle. In this paper, I argue that the supernatural women in My Living Doll, I Dream of Jeannie, and Bewitched are able to shed light on the role of American women in the 1960s and reflect the societal struggle to reconcile women's increasing demand for freedom with the dominant power’s desire to maintain authority and contain everyone else. Drawing on examples from primary and secondary sources, my analysis suggests that these stories gave credence to women wielding extraordinary power while also suggesting that women’s rightful place was in the domestic realm where their influence was limited to their home, love interest, or immediate community. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10125/80410 | |
| dc.title | A Bewitching Time: Early Second Wave Feminism Through the Lens of Supernatural Sitcoms | |
| dc.type | Article | |
| dc.type.dcmi | Text | |
| prism.number | 1 | |
| prism.volume | 6 |
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