The New American Studies Research in the Era of the New Media: Reading the Re-Writing of the Female Detective Protagonist of The Closer (TNT, 2005-2012) in The Closer Fanfiction

To overlook the proliferation of the new media in the twenty-first century in American Studies research negates the fact that American Studies today is American Studies in the era of the new media. This article aims to offer an alternative textual research on the representation of American television female detectives by analyzing how the representation of the female detective protagonist of the American television police procedural drama series The Closer (TNT, 2005-2012) is read by the fanfiction writers in The Closer Fanfiction in re-writing the female detective protagonist of The Closer TV series as the original text. The analysis shows that the fanfiction writers take similar dominant-hegemonic reading position of the representation of The Closer’s female detective protagonist with the series’ female viewers. Many of the writers explore the feminine sides as well as the feminine vulnerabilities of the female detective protagonist in their fiction works and the readers’ comments show that the representation fits the expectation. The result affirms the maintaining of the ideologies of femininity in the life experience of American women.