Open AccessThe Career Woman and the Princess
Author(s) -
Rachel Velody
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
networking knowledge
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1755-9944
DOI - 10.31165/nk.2018.111.526
Subject(s) - spectacle , romance , white (mutation) , art , gender studies , identity (music) , semiotics , pornography , performance art , art history , literature , sociology , psychoanalysis , psychology , aesthetics , law , philosophy , chemistry , linguistics , political science , gene , biochemistry
Fashioning is critical to explorations of television identities and American melodrama-thriller series Scandal (2012-17) provides opportunities to explore representations of ethnicity together with depictions of interracial romance and intercourse. Utilising semiotics I explore the contribution of costume designer Lyn Paolo to the construction of the Black-American heroine of the series, Olivia Pope, successful career woman and lover of a white, male President. Arguing for the potential of female spectacle and soft-core pornography as progressive I consider Paolo’s influences, suggesting that Olivia’s fashioning transformations illustrate her as dandy-flâneuse, one controlling the visualisation of her identity.