It Takes a Classless, Heteronormative Utopian Village: Gilmore Girls and the Problem of Postfeminism

Abstract

Just as the television industry faces pressure to maintain competitiveness in an increasingly fragmented market, feminist scholarship faces its own imperatives to stay relevant among conflicting definitions of feminism and identity in the study of media texts. Through an intersectional analysis of family narratives on the popular television series Gilmore Girls, the author demonstrates how the program's utopian, postfeminist ideology reflects a narrow vision of family that excludes the diverse body of feminisms today. Specifically, the author identifies 3 intersecting narrative strategies in Gilmore Girls as representative of the postfeminist effect on popular culture: heteronormative sensibility, upward class mobility, and post-race relations. By interrogating the gendered, classed, and raced contradictions in the series—as well as in academic arguments about—Gilmore Girls, the author provides an example of how critical intersectionality can expose and break down normative ideals of the family in popular culture and reinvigorate feminist scholarship.

Notes

¹ All but the final season of Gilmore Girls aired on the WB, when that network merged with UPN to form the CW in 2006.

² Heteronormative discourse assumes heterosexuality, and therefore families led by heterosexual parents, as the norm.

³ I do not mean to imply that Hall, nor any researcher using his model, is separated from the method. However, Hall's model is expressly concerned with the production and consumption of mediated texts, not the reflexive process of researching.

⁴ Dow (1996) addressed and used this inductive approach of series as artifact in her multiseries analysis of various primetime programs: “[I]t becomes possible to do the kind of close reading that reveals patterns of plot and character, recurring rhetorical strategies, and ultimately, repetitive rhetorical function …” (p. 22).

⁵ These include the Independence Inn, Kim's Antiques, Miss Patty's Dance Studio (where weekly town meetings are held), Weston's Bakery, Gabby's Garage and Gabby's Flowers. By Season 4, the elderly owner (and onetime surrogate grandmother to Rory) Mia sells the Independence Inn, leading the way for Lorelai and Sookie to open The Dragonfly.

⁶ In Season 2's “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” [2.03], Luke bids on Lorelai's picnic lunch basket in a Stars Hollow annual fundraiser. The two eat lunch together and laugh about how Luke saved Lorelai from a number of less worthy suitors. In Season 4, Luke assumes responsibility for moving Rory's belongings to Yale and lends Lorelai $30,000 to complete construction on the Independence Inn.

⁷ Christopher does occasionally return to Stars Hollow, which makes Luke visibly jealous, especially in Season 6 when he and Lorelai are planning their wedding. Around the same time, Luke learns he has his own adolescent daughter, April, by an ex-girlfriend. The ensuing drama results in a Luke and Lorelai break-up, with Lorelai running into Christopher's arms for comfort. In Season 7, the final season, viewers are finally treated to an exploration of the 6-year-long “what-if” possibility regarding the union of Lorelai and Christopher, as the two spontaneously marry while on a trip to Paris.

⁸ While this article privileges the Lorelai plot devices, as her character has been articulated by critics and fans as the ideal postfeminist mom, story lines surrounding the teenage characters' sexual choices and their consequences also point to a corrective, heteronormative ideology. For example, Rory's decision to sleep with her married, ex-boyfriend Dean is met with deep disappointment by her mother. Rory's friend Paris is denied an Ivy league admission in the same episode Paris loses her virginity to her boyfriend. Most telling, though, is the immediate pregnancy with twins that results from Lane's first time having sex with her husband, on their honeymoon.

⁹ “As of March 2008 the “Lorelai and Luke” thread at TWoP [Television Without Pity] has more than 1,590 pages with more than 23,800 posts, compared with the 117 pages and just over 1,700 responses in the “Lorelai and Christopher,” “Lorelai and Rory,” and Lorelai and Emily” threads combined.” (Mabry, 2010, p. 288)

¹⁰ In the pilot, Rory has been accepted to the prestigious Chilton School, a private, expensive academy for the brightest students. However, when Lorelai receives the tuition bill, she thinks twice and calls Chilton to work out a payment plan. When that option fails, Lorelai must turn to her estranged parents, whom she and Rory visit only at holidays, despite living 30 min away. At various times throughout the series Lorelai explains that she wants Rory to have as normal a life as possible, without the pressures that high society and wealth bring to already troubling adolescence, from which Lorelai rebelled and ended up pregnant at 16 years of age.

¹¹ The Gilmores agree, but on one condition—that Rory and Lorelai join them weekly for Friday night dinners. As Emily explains, “Education is the most important thing in the world. Next to family.” During the first of what are to become these regular torture fests for Lorelai, she argues with Emily, after Mr. Gilmore, Richard, talks about the success of Rory's father (who is out in California and visits periodically) and refers to Lorelai's place of employment as a “motel” rather than the more respectable “inn.” Lorelai tells Emily that she will not tolerate Friday night dinners being used as an opportunity to attack her on a regular basis, especially if the attacks involve comparisons between Christopher's success and her own.

¹² Stars Hollow mayor and owner of the town market, Taylor Doose, proclaims following Rory's graduation from Chilton that the Stars Hollow community birthed her from “our collective womb” [“Let the Games Begin” 3.08].

¹³ When Rory is accepted into Yale, Lorelai decides she must delay putting money down on a bank loan with Sookie to purchase an old property to renovate into an inn. Family, specifically Rory's education, takes priority over fulfilling her individual dream. Hard work is important, but in the fulfillment of keeping the family intact. However, this time, Rory goes against her mother's wishes and asks her grandparents for her own loan. They oblige, with the same conditions they did with her mother four years before. In the same episode, Richard surprises Lorelai on her birthday with a check for $75,000 from an investment he made in her name at her birth. She uses it to pay back the Chilton loan, which ceases her and Rory's obligation of Friday night dinners. Emily is furious but able to quickly rebound with Rory's request.

¹⁴ The irony is that Lane, secretly a drummer in a garage band, ends up marrying Zack, the slacker American lead singer, and becomes pregnant on her honeymoon—her first time having sex. Over the course of the series' run, Lane discloses the truth to her mother about being in the band. Mrs. Kim eventually warms up to Zack.