The ENTIRE Veronica Mars paper

Women are from Mars: Veronica Detects Gender

In a postfeminist culture, where feminism is “so yesterday,” a cultural text like Veronica Mars (CW, Rob Thomas) that deals explicitly with the “F” word is a rarity. The broadest definition of postfeminism is that feminism has accomplished its goals, is over, and that a new sort of feminism must be created to address what it means to be a woman in the ever changing now. The dichotomy is past/feminism and present/postfeminism needs to be expanded to address 1) “F”eminism’s association with the white middle class protesting academic, thus lacking diversity and the concepts of plural feminism(s) and 2) an exploration of cultural femininity, including media images; consumer culture; chic, chick and grrl feminisms. Even this extended definition is a simplified version of a contested category, which necessitates a definition of feminism that resists a homogenous label and has room within itself for multiple shades and identities.

Veronica Mars approaches feminism from a specific generic and historical background: the breakout of the little blonde girl from detective fiction to the Hell Mouth of high school. Veronica’s movement between hero and victim interacts with discourses of feminism, the body and crime noir. Veronica’s body becomes the site of discursive and representational tensions as she struggles against the threat of physical attack in the pursuit of truth. Veronica channels the ghosts of Nancy Drew, Buffy and Scully and foreshadows Claire Bennet’s appearance as the invulnerable blonde cheerleader in Heroes (NBC, Tim Kring). Although it condemns feminism for its excessiveness, Veronica Mars doesn’t embrace the defeatism of postfeminism either. Instead, like a shopper at mall, the show selects aspects of each complicated wave of feminism. It embraces the cultural history of ass kicking blondes, the idea of image as weapon, and the basic bond of feminine identity.

In the third season of the CW cult hit, Veronica finds herself embroiled in messy college politics. A rapist is on the loose at Hearst College and everyone is too busy pointing fingers to search for the truth, so Veronica takes the case to heart. As a private investigator, Veronica pieces together the truth and negotiates her way through antagonistic groups: the Feminists (Lilith House), the Frat boys, the Sorority girls, the Dean, and Veronica’s own group friends. Veronica herself is outside, lower class, disenfranchised, against the status quo and the social/government structure. Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Warner Brothers, Joss Whedon) and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (ABC, Hartbreak Films) privileged normalcy through white mid-upper class worlds that were invaded by “others.” The “girl” aspect of postfeminism, the eternal girl on the verge of womanhood, deals with power relations and female identity in a world after second and third wave feminism. Veronica’s wild, playful yet still kicking “grrrl” postfeminism derives from a problematic legacy of “white chick backlash that denies class, avoids race, ignores (older ) age, and ‘straight’-jackets sexuality” (Holmlund 9). Despite Veronica’s own outsider status, diversity in the fictional California town of Neptune consists of stereotypes: Wallace (aka Watson to Veronica’s Sherlock), the black basketball player; Jackie, the spoiled black girl, also a teen mother and the daughter of a famous basketball player; and Eli, the Latino gang leader/criminal/janitor. In high school, Veronica was outside the “haves” and associated with the “have-nots.” In college she is situated between gender extremes: the angry feminists and the sexist frat boys, neither of which can see the shades of gray that build Veronica’s world.

The members of Lilith House, the feminist student group, continue the trend of stereotyped diversity, but this time the feminists threaten Veronica’s gender status instead of her class status. The Lilith House girls are stereotypical versions of second wave feminists, marked as alternative and militant through multiple piercings, short masculine haircuts, different (read non-white) ethnicities, and abrasive political activities (spray painting "male chauvinist pig!"; throwing eggs). In one interesting conversation, Veronica begins to spout feminist ideology much to Logan’s disgust. “Oh boy, nudity,” Logan says when he sees the campus paper with a picture of the protesting Lilith girls. “If you have words written on yourself, it's not nudity, it's political speech. Taking control of one's body to turn the objectifying male gaze back on itself,” Veronica responds, only to have Logan interrupt: “Okay, no more college for you” (3.3, “Wichita Linebacker”). Logan clearly implies that Veronica’s political stance is not appealing, but they both agree to mock the pretentious academic talk. A clear feminist association is dangerous for Veronica, who has already assumed traditional roles of masculine power. After all, she is a private dick. Veronica’s heroic mission has caused tension with Logan before because of his inability to save, rescue and protect her- or Veronica’s failure to be a proper victim. One afternoon he even quips: “I really shouldn't have pushed for the Clint Eastwood marathon. Now I've ruined you. I didn't think it was possible to make you more butch. Stupid, stupid Logan” (3.1 “Welcome Wagon”).

When Veronica assumed the male role of the private investigator, it was an act of self-defense in the face of a corrupt world. The police are obviously biased, if not incompetent as well. Movie stars, politicians, police, sports stars, business men- all the rich white privileged men- abuse the system biased in their favor for sexual and financial gain. Veronica is sucked into case after case because of Neptune’s dishonest institutional system cannot address the personal injuries to her loved ones. Veronica’s life is constantly interrupted by violence, starting with the death of her best friend Lily in season one. The show contains nostalgic flashbacks to that period before Lily’s death, for the long blonde hair, the wide eyed innocence, the cheerleading uniform, and the football playing boyfriend. Veronica and her friends are denied access and are forced to seek their own resolution. Thus, Veronica helps people who are disenfranchised (cannot go to the police because they are gay, Hispanic, etc) or have a personal problem (a cheating spouse, a missing dog) that is deemed unworthy of the police. As an all too human and vulnerable vigilante, Veronica is compelled to expose corruption and injustices in a dark, unfair, noir world.

Crime noir uses the private investigator theme as a way to piece together clues about how a woman relates to society, what her sexuality means, how a girl becomes a woman, how a man fits into a woman’s life- as a vampire to be fought, a criminal to be caught, or a lover. Bobbie Ann Mason argues that for female detectives like Nancy Drew, “mysteries are a substitute for sex, since sex is the greatest mystery of all for adolescents” (84). Veronica sneaks into Mac’s dark room to get some tickets knowing that Mac’s roommate, Parker, is with a guy. Veronica leaves, interpreting the scene she just interrupted as consensual sex, but later realizes Parker was being raped at that very moment. What constitutes sex? In the context of the show, rape happens while women are unconscious. Sex becomes amnesia and passivity is horrifyingly re-invoked. After all, Veronica was drugged the night she lost her virginity and the “truth” of that night has been under question before. “You want to know how I lost my virginity?” asks Veronica, “So do I” (1.1 Pilot).

Veronica’s quest is to understand her own agency in the world, what she can and cannot change, the tension between her role as victim and hero. As a private dick, she lives in a world of violence; as an adolescent, she is a girl struggling to grow into womanhood. “The crime film is a genre in which violence is the central trope of relationships between the sexes and in which the transgressive woman, as femme fatale or female dick, has long served as a register for anxieties about female sexuality and power. It is the genre most likely to expose both the limitations of the postfeminist heroine and the nasty sex and gender issues that her presence supposedly precludes” (Mizejewski 15). The rapes at Hearst College are an obvious rupture in the postfeminist text that assumes gender equality has been achieved. But which role will win out as Veronica hunts the rapist: victim or hero? Veronica can help others, yet she can’t escape being the victim of a sex crime. Every man becomes a possible rapist (including boyfriends) and she must be rescued in the end by a boyfriend and the surrender (suicide) of her rapist, also a victim of sexual abuse (by the empowered white male, the common enemy). Veronica investigates the nuances of gender relations: “Always tenuous and often deadly, the quest of classical noir is twofold: to solve the mystery of the villain and of the woman” (Hibbs 51).

Veronica’s power as a feminist hero resides in her ability to maneuver within male dominated systems of power. In Kicking Ass is Comfort Food, Patricia Pender links the spectacle of female violence with a feminist agenda. She concentrates on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, arguing that “if one of the primary goals of third wave feminism is to question our inherited models of feminist agency and political efficacy, without acceding to the defeatism implicit in the notion of ‘postfeminism,’ then Buffy provides us with modes of oppositional praxis, of resistant femininity…” (164). Veronica Mars too resists defeatism and empowers Veronica as an independent and successful character. However, Veronica and Buffy as heroes present two different ideas. Buffy has an unapologetic feminist appeal: “for the feminist viewer, the spectacle of Buffy kicking ass is similarly comforting; equally, exhilarating and empowering, Buffy provides the compound pleasures of both the hot chick and her super powers” (Pender 167). Veronica, too, has “super powers”- her uncanny intelligence, endless bravery, and chameleon appearance. In a sense, being a “hot chick” is one of Veronica’s powers and thus makes it okay for her to be an object of desire because she is consciously manipulating the gaze. The viewer is waiting for this masquerade, to watch Veronica fool the gullible suspect, all the while knowing that the brilliant PI is hiding underneath the cheerleader getup. Veronica combines third wave resistance with a postfeminist emphasis on image as another tool in the feminist arsenal.

The feminine sneak manages to combine adventure and domesticity, masculinity and femininity. Veronica gets to be the daring, courageous sleuth (the masculine) because she is tiny blonde and dainty (the feminine). She can mock the Sorority Girl image at the same time that she is compelled by that inclusive, feminine realm. “Tasteful floral dresses?,” she reads off the rush invitation. “All my florals are trampy. Seriously, I don't have a thing with a flower that's not in the tube top or hot pant family” (3.2 “My Big Fat Greek Rush Week”). Veronica gains entrance to the sorority house by manipulating her blonde, beautiful, idealized body for the sake of “truth.”

Veronica plays with her ability to be the object, to attract and use the gaze for her own profit. Within the text of the show, posing as different personalities allows Veronica to gain information. Kristen Bell, the actress that plays Veronica, also makes a personal profit for her image, such as the lingerie shoot for Maxim. The contradictory combination of “female agency” and sex appeal is made into a profitable commodity, acknowledging the male voyeur/viewer. This is the double talk of postfeminism, where the male gaze is attracted and manipulated at the same time. But Veronica Mars consciously addresses a female audience and caters to their taste, which is reflected in Veronica’s clothing and appearance. After all, most female fans would acknowledge that “Buffy’s hair is part of the point…Buffy offers female bodies as spectacle, but their primacy and activity means that they are not simply passive objects” (Jowett 23) The play with image is as enticing as the play with power- image is power. The body can be an active tool, which is why the threat of rape is so potent. Rape forces passivity, it takes away agency, it nullifies the power of women to use their own bodies to evoke the kind of desire they want.

Veronica’s voice over frames a female and heterosexual point of view, allowing the female fan to identify with Veronica’s desire and denaturalize the male gaze as the viewer comes to see through Veronica’s eyes. Veronica is at liberty to desire a male body. In one episode, Veronica travels to a film set to interview a suspect who also happens to be an action star. Upon seeing him without his shirt, she drools, “I don't know if Connor's smile cost a million, but his six-pack abs are worth at least double that. Damn. I repeat, damn” (1.10, “An Echolls Family Christmas”). Veronica is aligned with the camera’s point of view. Her financial evaluation and admiring gaze are a shameless appreciation of assertive desire. The female fans are certainly not shy about what they want either. The websites are full of LoVe (Logan plus Veronica) supporters. Veronica Mars reflected their desire by banishing Duncan, Logan’s competition, to Mexico.

But Veronica lacks one obvious heroic ability: she cannot kick any ass. Cristina Stasia divides the hero into two categories: the private and the public. The private action hero, the crime noir investigator, takes on a subterranean role to gather knowledge and images- the watching eye, the huge camera, the ability to capture images from a distance.

Only when the body is threatened is direct involvement justified. The private hero responds to personal attacks from the outside world: “the private female action hero is a victim-hero. She is spurred into action because of personal harm and thus acts defensively” (Stasia 179). Borrowing from the 1970s rape-revenge plot, private action heroes act because violence has invaded their world and they have no choice- an inherent vulnerability demands a move for protection. This can be seen in Veronica’s remarkable anti-Buffy need for rescue. At the climax of every plot point, once her investigation has finally revealed the villain, Veronica becomes a cowering little girl in need of rescue. Her father jumps through fire to rescue her from Aaron Echols; Logan holds her in his arms as Cassidy first aims to kill and then commits suicide. The private female hero doesn’t attack. She searches for balance: her quest is to expose the truth, not to blame anyone. To protect her vulnerable body, Veronica must investigate, capture images, and re-pattern memories to include the “truth.”

Veronica's status as a victim constantly changes as her body, “the body of the investigator," becomes "not just the site of conflict and controversy but the topos where the narrative plays out” (Mizejewski 15). Veronica has to fight various bad guys because their public influence invades her private spheres. This "invasion" occurs on the most elemental level: the threat of rape. In the first season, Veronica is drugged and wakes up without her underwear. After a long investigation her, first love, Duncan, reveals that they had sex that night but it was consensual. In the second season, Veronica contracts syphilis and realizes that she was raped that fateful night. Her attacker was Cassidy, a troubled youth who had been molested as a child and commits suicide after holding Veronica hostage on the roof.

Veronica Mars privileges the individual private investigator over the public community and distances Veronica’s mission from a feminist agenda. The generic structure for a crime fiction requires an isolated hero learning to look through magnified eyes and see what others ignore. The “chosen one” complex prioritizes individual action over community, the organized base of feminist activism: “the emergence of a postfeminist culture has both depended on and contributed to the privatized, individualized frame of reference that has played a part in dismantling our sense of a shared academic/activist feminist community” (Tasker and Negra 3). Veronica Mars contrasts the effective postfeminist individual against the outdated, academic, and activist feminist community to solve a crime of female subjecthood: the status of the rape victim. But Veronica Mars doesn’t simply pick a side. Instead it tangles itself in a history of feminism in an attempt to work out Veronica’s place in the world.

In the third season, Veronica's individual investigation of the rapes is more accurate and effective than the feminists. Despite the feminist’s activist protests and marches, they continue to accuse (the frat boys) and defend (the girl who cried rape) the wrong people. Lilith House aims their criticism at the Dean's office, demanding the removal of the frats and threatening a law suit. Veronica is opposed to their methods and wishes only to find the truth. Thus, “self-defense does nothing to affect the institutional structures that maintain violence against women. As such, the private female action hero advocates individual battles instead of public action, self-defense instead of political agitation” (Stasia 181). Veronica helps her friends and family by working around the corrupt institutional systems rather than attempting any reform. Although she urges her father to run for sheriff, Keith refuses to fight dirty. The Mars sense of honor keeps them out of institutional power. The PI code details a distance, a surveillance, rather than participation. A million times Veronica responds by gathering leverage and power over the other person, settling through private means (the lecherous male teacher(s) are simply fired, not prosecuted).

The Lilith House attachment to feminism obscures their ability to see the truth. In fact, they go as far as faking rapes so that they can sue the school. This "fake" implies that women/feminists are not the victims they claim to be and that their political stance is inauthentic. The “fake rape” story line involves Veronica Mars in controversial debate about rape and feminism. In the book The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism, Katie Roiphe “used the rape debate to posit a critique of feminism that she claimed celebrated women as victims” (Ullman 30). Roiphe argued that “campus feminists produce endless images of women as victims- women offended by a professor’s dirty joke, women pressured into sex by peers, women trying to say no but not managing to get it across” (quoted in Ullman 30). By faking rape, the Hearst feminists produce an image of women as deceptive victims, a dangerous metaphor linked to the old traitor Eve.

Veronica Mars contains within it the double consciousness that women are both victims and heroes at the same time. They can save others but there is always still someone else who needs saving Veronica’s personal vendetta is to solve the continuing sex crimes against women as a targeted group. By linking community, body and identity, Veronica Mars participates in a complicated “subgenre of popular feminism, the abuse survival narrative” which reflects the “four key tenets of liberal second wave feminism: (1) recognition of women as an oppressed group; (2) commitment to social and political change; (3) emphasis on sexual/body politics; and (4) a woman centered perspective” (Badley 66). Veronica Mars picks and chooses tools from among different feminisms. The show recognizes women as an oppressed group and emphasizes sexual/body politics, but contains a problematic female perspective and skims around commitment to social and political change. The campus rapes have to be solved through “grrrl” femininity, not political marching, activism, or capital F feminism. They are about looking, about bodies, about identity. The rapist attacks the female image as well: he shaves off his victim’s hair, fetishizing their femininity.

Veronica is compelled to protect the innocence of other girls, like herself, who face the ultimate abuse of femininity. She is called in to protect and serve: “romantic ruin evokes nostalgia for a past order and it whips up the tidying impulse. A girl sleuth is a kind of gardener for tragic victims” (Mason 80). Veronica both attempts to untangle and experiences “romantic ruin” herself. The rapist at Hearst leaves a whole slew of “tragic victims” in his wake and threatens to reduce Veronica to a victim yet again. However, the feminists on campus refuse to take on this status. In their opposition to victimhood, the feminist groups is loud and aggressive, and the sin of sins to Veronica, untruthful. The “fake” rape violates all detective codes- and it also creates a mess.

In the last episode of the fall season, “Spit and Eggs” (3.9), the rapist is finally revealed. Veronica hides in a room until the rapist, Mercer, arrives. Veronica attacks him with a plastic unicorn, plunging it into his thigh. This classic symbol of girlhood, the feminine fantasy, becomes a puncturing weapon reenacting the act of rape. However, in the end Veronica needs to be rescued. The long sequence of VM her running through dark alleys brings to mind the much repeated Joss Whedon quote where he describes his vision for Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “I would love to see a movie in which a blond wanders into a dark alley, takes care of herself and deploys her powers” (Jowett, 20). Veronica is somewhere between that stupid blonde (she did decide to corner a violent serial rapist by herself without telling anyone) and ass kicking Buffy. Buffy’s female fans enjoy the pleasurable spectacle of the little blonde girl “kicking ass” and dissolving evil with the plunge of the wooden stake (which Veronica mimics with the unicorn horn). Veronica’s power is not as clear: the show plays with the tension of her status as a hero or a victim, never quite coming down on one side or the other. This confusion is reflexively acknowledged when Fern, a member of the Lilith House group, asks: “What do you want, Buffy...Tiffany...whatever your name is?” (3.8, “Lord of the Pi’s”). A feminist representative questions Veronica’s identity as a hero (Buffy) or a victim (Tiffany, a typical “fluff” name). The ambiguous horror scene reinstates the blond girl running in horror motif that Buffy reacted against but also focuses on a “real” threat to girls (i.e. rape instead of the undead vampire, although it could be argued that sex/rape was always the underlying source of fear on Buffy) and proposes a real solution- an activation of the female network of other victims, a sort of sisterhood/agency as a last, desperate resort when male guardianship fails.

Veronica is the smart blonde who followed the clues to find the correct villain, but once she’s found him, she is not equipped to deal with the physicality of male violence. Such a confrontation has to be delayed and experienced vicariously through Veronica’s aggressive male counterpart, Logan. The police failed to respond to Veronica’s bomb alert from the dorm, her attempt to get the police to come and rescue her. So Logan takes a baseball bat, a big phallic symbol, and hits another symbol of masculinity: the police car. Through this violence, Logan works out the masculine inability to “rescue” the victimized women, who had to rescue each other. Logan deliberately puts himself in jail so that he can attack Mercer and Moe. His vigilante solution exposes the crisis of masculinity when the men in charge are the ones committing crimes. In the CW chat room, Danny 73 writes: “I've always loved Logan, but now I love him even more. Sweet! Come hell or high water, he'll find some way of taking care of Veronica. Now that's definitely what I'd call love. I want my own Logan! LOL.” This quote reveals a female viewer’s desire for an onscreen character but it also points to a troubling desire for a more traditional gender relationship between LoVe. Bugaboo 2 echoes the same uneasiness with Veronica’s domination of the narrative and her insistence on independence: “Tonight Logan made everyone understand why we love him so fraking much! He was amazing at the end! What a hero. Gosh he loves Veronica. NO matter what she thinks he is always there for her.” Even the fans are unsure whether Veronica should be the victim or the hero.

After running through the alley, Veronica makes it to Wallace’s dorm only to be invited into the accomplice’s room- Moe, the Resident Assistant who offers women soothing mugs of drug-laced tea. Once drugged, Veronica desperately tries to get help but no one answers her calls. As a last resort, she blows a rape whistle. The Lilith House group gave them out earlier in the day and although Veronica scorned their usefulness, she tucked one into her pocket. Parker, the girl who Veronica failed to rescue while she was being raped, is the one who hears the whistle and screams a warning. With the whistle, Veronica activates the victim network that she was so disdainful of, admitting her need for the female community. Mercer talks his way out of trouble but Parker’s scream (her voice, her primal shout, her agency) keeps him from victimizing Veronica.

In this scenario, the essence of feminism is recuperated as a valuable community of women offering support to each other. Veronica was still a victim in need of rescue, but this time a fellow victim came to her side. In the end, women discovered and defeated the men trying to make them vulnerable. The stories of girlhood focus on the struggle to interpret gendered body through genres focused on discovering “truth” and fighting “evil.” In Veronica Mars, the gendered body articulates the complications of postfeminism for the postmodern girl. In the dark world of film noir, where the battle between the sexes leaves a path of victims, gender equality is once again in danger. Veronica’s gonna have to save the day.