Transmission: Premium Television Characters Outside of the Gender Binary

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

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Year dc:date.available

2014

Author dc:creator

• Ketchum, Daniel L.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Rodney Buxton, Ph.D.
• Tony Gault
• Elizabeth Henry

• Gender
• Genderqueer
• Non-binary
• Representations
• Television
• Transgender
• Film and Media Studies
• Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Statement dc:rights

• <p>Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.</p>

Language dc:language

en

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/336

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.du.edu:etd-1335