The Unruly Woman in FX's Justified

The FX series Justified (2010-) is the most recent reworking of the western genre on television, with its narrative centering on deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens's (Timothy Olyphant) effort to establish law and order in Harlan County, Kentucky. Yet, the series also features strong, unruly female characters exhibiting range of complex character traits and compelling storylines that both subvert and adhere to archetypes of the western heroine. On the one hand, unlike typical western heroines who serve roles secondary to that of the hero, Justified's female characters play important, even central, roles in the narrative. On the other hand, the series' female characters are largely marginalized and victimized within the narrative. Hence, Justified advances paradoxical amalgam of pre-feminist (read: before the interventions of second wave feminism) and pro-feminist ideas. The goal of this essay, however, is not to categorize its female characters as either or antifeminist, but rather to call attention to the complexity and ambivalence of ideas portrayed in the series in the context of contemporary discourse.Merri Lisa Johnson, in her book Third Wave Feminism and Television, observes that the assessment of whether media text or character is feminist enough has been primary focus in recent decades (Johnson 10-12). Shifting from this focus, third wave feminism privileges less totalizing analysis by transcending such polarizing dichotomies of positive/negative, progressive/backlash, and feminist/antifeminist representations. Based on the acceptance that today's media texts offer a mixture of feminist, postfeminist, antifeminist and pseudofeminist motifs, third wave media critics typically incorporate feminism with poststructuralism, postmodernism, queer theory, and postcolonialism in an effort to investigate the conflicting dramatization of women's issues in contemporary film and television (Johnson 17-19). Amanda D. Lotz similarly advocates new approach through which media critics avoid binary paradigms of thinking, which reinforce hegemonic gender roles and patriarchal structure, and instead implement both/and thinking through an acknowledgement of the paradoxical, multifaceted nature of contemporary media culture. For instance, Lotz maintains that we currently exist in period of intermezzo. We have entered new era in feminism: one between the overwhelming structural impediments to gender justice that existed before the activist efforts of second wave feminism yet world in which complete equity has not been achieved (Lotz 72). Therefore, in order to explore complicated cultural constructions in this period of intermezzo, scholars need to utilize critical framework that allows for the interrogation of dominant, emergent, and residual ideologies simultaneously present in contemporary media texts (Lotz 80-81).Informed by third wave media theory, this essay analyzes the capacity and limitations of Justified's feminism by focusing on the central female characters in the series' first and second seasons, Ava Crowder (Joelle Carter) and Mags Bennett (Margo Martindale). Although confined by pre-feminist forms of gender discrimination, classism, and repressive local culture, Ava Crowder refuses to be helpless victim of unjust power relations and economic conditions. Ava's complex character arc involves her constant rejection of fixed feminine role in favor of female unruliness and agency. Ava's transformation deviates from typical passage to properly submissive woman in the essentially masculine western genre while demonstrating such pro-feminist ideas as self-reliance, independence, and defiance. This essay also examines the life and death of Mags Bennett, criminal matriarch who serves as the principal antagonist in season two. As complex character, Mags Bennett is an aggressive, yet generous matriarch who embodies pro-feminist ideas through her disruptive power and social influence extending beyond the limitations of domesticity and family. …