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Women in Neoliberal Postfeminist Television Drama pp 71–100Cite as

Marvel’s Agent Carter: [Peggy Punches Him in the Face]

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Abstract

In discussing Agent Carter, this chapter will explore the ways in which the series’ historical setting, as well as its location within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), facilitates its apparently ‘feminist’ tone. It will demonstrate that Agent Carter’s construction of a pleasurable yet politically empty version of second wave feminism simultaneously affirms feminist discourses and yet undermines their political goals. Drawing on scholarship around female spies, female action heroes and postfeminist gender identities, it will discuss the depiction of Peggy Carter as a viable feminist hero, yet one whose narrative depiction is constrained by the ideological and aesthetic ideals of postfeminism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Here there are links back to Bletchley, in that both series feature a female main character confronting her changed post-war role and that both utilise masculinity as a foil in the construction of those main characters.

  2. 2.

    For a detailed analysis of the MCU, see Koh (2014).

  3. 3.

    For further discussion of postfeminism’s use of irony, see Abel (2012).

  4. 4.

    For further discussion of this, see Heller-Nicholas (2011), Henry (2014), Mee (2013) and Read (2000).

  5. 5.

    This is despite suggestions of a potentially queer reading of his relationship with his best friend, Bucky Barns (Sebastian Stan). For discussion of this popular fan reading of the Captain America franchise, see Robinson (2016).

  6. 6.

    There are some parallels here with Lady Ellen Hoxley’s storyline in Land Girls (BBC 2009–2011). In both cases singledom is associated with grief and loss.

  7. 7.

    See also Banet-Weiser (2018).

  8. 8.

    For notable examples of Peggy’s aggressive fighting style, see ‘Now is Not the End’ (2015a) when she uses a stapler as a weapon and throws another assailant out of a window, ‘A Sin to Err’ (2015f) in which she incapacitates a room full of SSR agents sent to capture her, using plates, chairs and glass bottles as weapons to knock them unconscious, and ‘The Lady in the Lake’ (2016a) in which she knocks Dottie Underwood unconscious using a bag of coins.

  9. 9.

    See Ralina Joseph’s discussion of Tyra Banks’ movement through various postfeminist identities (2009).

  10. 10.

    Due to a plot device in Endgame, Peggy’s timeline is complex. This will be explained in detail later in the chapter.

  11. 11.

    The term ‘stuffed into the refrigerator’ comes from a story line in Green Lantern Vol 3 #54 in which the main character’s girlfriend is killed and placed into his refrigerator for him to find (Simone 1999).

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  1. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Cat Mahoney

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Mahoney, C. (2019). Marvel’s Agent Carter: [Peggy Punches Him in the Face]. In: Women in Neoliberal Postfeminist Television Drama. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30449-2_4

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