Shelley Stamp and Serial Heroines

In Shelley Stamp’s essay “An awful struggle between love and ambition: Serial heroines, serial stars and their female fans” she explores how the narratives in serial films, as well as the personal lives of the actresses who interpreted serial heroines, challenged gender roles and helped reshape societal norms regarding femininity. Stamp explains that serial offered a radical representation of female characters. These films were characterized for having strong, independent, athletic female leads that refused to follow outmoded notions of femininity and longed to find adventure outside of marriage. According to Stamp the circumstances of these female characters “strongly echoed the economic and social autonomy increasingly experienced by many women living away from their families for the first time in urban centers” (212). Although these screen narratives portrayed women as self-sufficient they also emphasized the inevitability of marriage, the determinacy of familial ties, and the danger of women having independence. The plots of these films follow a pattern characterized by three things, which can be clearly observed in the film Perils of Pauline. First, serial heroines are never fully independent, their adventures always leads them to situations where they are in danger and hardly have control over the situation; hence, depicting household and the men in their lives as places of safety. Second, their familial bond never allows them to fully explore or experience complete financial independence. Lastly, matrimony is the inevitable closure of their adventures and the films. Therefore, “while the women appear to live beyond the strictures of domestic femininity, in fact their exploits are heavily circumscribed by the parameters of familial life” (Stamp, 215).

Serial films are a clear example of the interdependence of visual culture and society. Films have the capacity to deeply influence how people think about certain topics. However, it is also evident how society has deeply influenced the narratives in cinema. Serial had the success they had because there were women who could identify with the longing for independent and who needed the reassured that women can and are capable of being as self-sufficient as serial heroines. Nonetheless, in order to be profitable, these films had play with societal conventions that allowed the viewer to comfortably suture into the story world.

But what truly made these narratives “revolutionary” was how by drawing attention to the personal lives, as well as the work lives, of the serial heroines these films were able to redefine notion of womanhood in serial fan culture. Studios convinced the viewers that the actresses performed their own stunts; therefore, actresses were thought to be skilled, brave, athletic, and fearless. This assertion sent the message that all women could be like these serial heroines; these characters became pioneers of female empowerment. In terms of the actresses work lives, they were very vocal about the need for women in film production; Mary Fuller stated that the women’s creative influence is the only way actresses are going to get a more diverse selection female characters. This struggle of women in a male-dominated industry was incredibly prominent in ideas of womanhood in the fandom discourse (Stamp, 219). Nonetheless, in their personal lives these actresses were portrayed as followers of the “standard” conventions of femininity and domesticity. This led to reconceptualization of notions of femininity and womanhood, were women refused to be defined and influenced by one singular aspect of their lives. Serial heroines and the rapid change of women’s role in society contributed to a revolution of female characterization and the establishment of new narrative convention and codes overall.