Video Still

“We Have a Right to Be Angry” (2008)

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Using strategies of accumulation, collection, appropriation and juxtaposition, I explore the emotional and existential significance of mediated culture.

In this fanvid, I demonstrate that individualized meanings can be made from mass-media culture. I appropriate footage from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena: Warrior Princess, and Charmed. It is edited to “Invincible” sung by Pat Benatar. By uniting the fictional feminist icons of my adult life, Buffy, Xena, and the Halliwell sisters, with a real-life feminist icon from my childhood, Pat Benatar, I explore my own complicated position as a feminist in contemporary society. The women in the video vacillate between running, lying low, and fighting back, as Pat Benatar inspires and comforts them with her feminist anthem. As these women from different TV shows pass a sword around, they share collective power that extends beyond the boundaries of their fictional universes.  They are fighting cultural patriarchy on its own terms and they are doing it together.