First Advisor
Lawrence P. Wheeler
Date of Award
8-10-2019
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Communication Studies and University Honors
Department
Communication
Subjects
Lesbianism on television, Death in mass media, Lesbians in mass media, Television programs -- Social aspects, Structural anthropology
DOI
10.15760/honors.805
Abstract
Following an increase in queer characters over the last few decades, representation of the LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, etc.) community on television has become a particularly rich field of inquiry for interdisciplinary scholars. One area of interest, the death of contemporary lesbian characters, remains fairly underdeveloped. This thesis attempts to identify structural patterns in the deaths of lesbian characters by subjecting their narrative arcs to structural analysis, specifically a method of linguistic analysis developed by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. I identify structural patterns in the deaths of 6 lesbian characters which took place between the years 2013-2017, as they relate to narrative context, and extract meaning from those patterns. The stability of patterns’ features across the sample will be questioned, specifically how they relate to "the closet" originally discussed in Sedgwick (1990) and Joyrich’s (2009) work.
Rights
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Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/29370
Recommended Citation
Watt, Taylor D., "Tragic Ways of Killing a Lesbian: a Synchronic Analysis" (2019). University Honors Theses. Paper 787.
https://doi.org/10.15760/honors.805