| dc.description.abstract | American entertainment often presents heroines who still conform to the
confining stereotypes of passivity, docility, sexual objectification, and ultimate
dependence on the hero, offering patriarchal narratives in popular culture. This thesis
investigates American girlhood entertainment - a subset of popular culture - in
comparison to the newly popular genre of Japanese comics, shojo manga, which also
targets a girl audience. By focusing on gender issues - power distribution, agency, and
gender roles - and utilizing a mixed methodology of rhetorical and quantitative analysis,
my research explores the rhetorical devices and narrative structures that empower or
constrain heroines, structure power distributions, and assign gender roles.
To better understand shojo's recent popularity among teenage girls, this research
provides 1) a close critical analysis of shojo texts to examine the messages and rhetorical
devices featured in these narratives, and 2) an analysis of audience reception through a
participant survey and an analysis of audience-generated message boards. This research
participates in Girlhood Studies, Intercultural Studies, and Narrative Criticism as I
analyze narratives that target an American girl audience and enact entertainment globalization. My analysis suggests that shojo develops from feminist motives,
encourages a pro-feminist reality, and successfully markets itself to an audience of
American girls, who form parasocial relationships and wishfully identify with the
heroines because of their empowered characteristics and the portrayal of equality within
romantic relationships. | en |
