Postfeminism Analysis

The Television series Charmed can be interpreted as a postfeminist text in popular culture. Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra’s book “Interrogating Post Feminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture” (2007) discusses the importance of post feminism in contemporary popular culture. In this book, Tasker and Negra focus mainly on film, television and advertising. According to the article “The Myth of Postfeminism”, the United States entered a postfeminist era around 1990. (Hall, J. E. (2003) p. 878) In America Charmed was television series which ran from 1998 up until 2006. Post-feminism, also known as third wave feminism emerged after second wave feminism and was a response to what second wave feminism excluded. The shows central characters are three sisters who are witches, the show is hailed as a feminist text because of its portrayal of strong female characters, and the fact the

One of the sisters, Phoebe, is made out to be infatuated by sexual desires due to being linked with a man killing demon, known as a ‘Succubus’. The demon kills men for their testosterone, while trying to reveal the demon, Phoebe’s sister Prue gets transformed into a man. Also interesting in this particular episode is that the men who are disrespectful towards the women are the ones that are killed. While stereotypically women were displayed on television in a way that facilitated the “male gaze” in this episode both the male and female gaze are seen, giving a sense of gender equality. The sisters stare with desire at their neighbour Dan while at a dating event and likewise when Prue turns into a man she gazes at women, rather than men. In a short summary this episode really highlights the power of the women, as they are able to beat the demon and are not represented in a stereotypical way, they are sexually free and very much