ABSTRACT
While Riot Grrrl as a public movement was both short lived and three decades hence, the persistence of associated sonic tropes particularly in televisual narratives centered on the end-of-days mise en scène continues unabated. Finding deep roots in the much-engaged Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), this chapter traces themes of sound and embodiment through subsequent series that engage apocalyptic themes from a host of scientific and supernatural threats — and that place young women at the center of the narrative. Examining the thematic music, underscoring, and sound installation as it influenced subsequent series, particularly the speculative dystopian Orphan Black (2013–17) and supernaturally-inflected, gaming-styled Doom Patrol (2019–22) and Crazyhead (2016–16), the analysis looks at the adoption of both musical and verbal tropes from Riot Grrrl through Buffy to subsequent generations of televisual heroines. The analysis then pushes further, to examine recent media responses to contemporary young female activists engaged in some of the most cataclysmic of contemporary issues, including Greta Thunberg, Autumn Peltier, and Malala Yousafzai, to examine the ways in which now long-standing cultural tropes of ‘Grrrl’ have been deployed both to empower and to dismiss or suppress young female-identified voices in media culture. Ultimately, taking on the persistence of the media trope is to confront the ways in which the sonic embodiment of young female televisual characters has pushed back in the media landscape to frame public reception of contemporary cultural movements in which the voices of young women resound at the centre.
