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Investigating Veronica Mars: Essays on the Teen Detective Series
During the course of its three seasons, Veronica Mars captured the attention of fans and academics alike. The 12 scholarly essays in this collection examine the show's most compelling elements. Topics covered include vintage television, the search for the mother, fatherhood, the show's connection to classical Greek paradigms, the anti-hero's journey, rape narrative and meaning, and television fandom. Collectively, these essays reveal how a teen television show—equal parts noir, romance, social realism and father-daughter drama—became a worthy subject for scholarly study.
- GenresNonfiction
212 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
3 people are currently reading
176 people want to read
About the author
Rhonda V. Wilcox
10 books11 followersDr. Rhonda V. Wilcox is a Professor of English at Gordon State College in Barnesville, Georgia.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 17, 2022
i could read essay collections on veronica mars all day
content/trigger warnings; ableism. mentions and discussions of rape, sexual assault, rape culture, drugging, misogyny, classism, racism, homophobia, incest, murder, alcoholism, child abuse, child abandonment, trauma, grief, child sexual abuse,
love the essays about veronica and keith’s relationship, veronica as an anti-hero, and defending veronica not rethinking the “getting even part”. love the criticism of the use rape/violence against women storylines to the point of exploitation and the negative and conservative leaning portrayal of anti-rape feminists in season three. love the acknowledgement of veronica’s continual victimization, but i wish more than one single author had acknowledged that veronica was repeatedly violated, not just raped the one time, at shelly’s party. love the appreciation of weevil and his relationship with veronica and a callout of how terrible the season two finale was for him.
one author says “veronica learns to accept help and rely on friendships in a way no noir detective or adolescent male literary figure does”, which is a core part of the show that makes the ending of season 4 incomprehensible. rob thomas really just used season 4 as a kickoff for the possibility of making a classic noir show with the typical alienated loner mc and undid everything that made veronica mars veronica mars in order to do it.
it did get a bit repetitive, as some of the essays were very similar to each other. i wish there had been more of a variety of topics covered, there are so many characters and dynamics and topics and themes that are not touched in this collection, while other topics get several essays dedicated to them. i didn’t care for how some essays instead of incorporating other works or theories or methods of analyzing/criticizing while discussing veronica mars, just had pages of explanation of and background information for those things before even getting into veronica mars. it felt infodumpy and lost my interest several times.
it really bothers me that one author insisted that veronica mars fans felt raped by the network canceling the show, despite admitting to not finding a single fan ever using that word to describe how they felt. fans feeling betrayed or upset or tricked etc. by the show being canceled was referred to as them feeling “figuratively raped”, and them not knowing the show was being canceled at the time the finale aired was referred to as them feeling “figuratively ghbed”. the author puts these words into the fans’ mouths only to prove them invalid at the end; “there is no such thing as a non-consensual relationship between a story, a fan, and a network”. too bad no one even expressing that.
my biggest issue though is the insistence from nearly every author that veronica and duncan had consensual sex the night of shelly’s party. one argues they were of “equally diminished capacity”, but if that were true, don’t you think veronica would have remembered it, like duncan did? they were both drugged, yes, but veronica had also been fed alcohol all night and had no memory. how is that the same level of “diminished capacity” as someone who remembered the night to avoid veronica out of shame for what he believed to be was incest?
further, one cannot consent when one is that inebriated. again, she was drugged and fed alcohol all night to the point of memory loss. she did not consent to anything. the fact that she was conscious doesn’t mean it was consensual. it wasn’t rape in the way that cassidy raped her while she was unconscious, but it definitely was not consensual sex, either.
the closest this is to being described for what it is is one author describing it as “voluntary although troubling circumstances” and “questionable” and adding that given cassidy’s telling of the night turned out to be a lie, “duncan’s reading of consensual sex between himself and veronica is again open for revisitation and scrutiny”, but unfortunately the author does not expand on that or further examine the situation, which would have been infinitely more interesting and refreshing to read than some of the essays that felt like slightly altered copies of each other.
content/trigger warnings; ableism. mentions and discussions of rape, sexual assault, rape culture, drugging, misogyny, classism, racism, homophobia, incest, murder, alcoholism, child abuse, child abandonment, trauma, grief, child sexual abuse,
love the essays about veronica and keith’s relationship, veronica as an anti-hero, and defending veronica not rethinking the “getting even part”. love the criticism of the use rape/violence against women storylines to the point of exploitation and the negative and conservative leaning portrayal of anti-rape feminists in season three. love the acknowledgement of veronica’s continual victimization, but i wish more than one single author had acknowledged that veronica was repeatedly violated, not just raped the one time, at shelly’s party. love the appreciation of weevil and his relationship with veronica and a callout of how terrible the season two finale was for him.
one author says “veronica learns to accept help and rely on friendships in a way no noir detective or adolescent male literary figure does”, which is a core part of the show that makes the ending of season 4 incomprehensible. rob thomas really just used season 4 as a kickoff for the possibility of making a classic noir show with the typical alienated loner mc and undid everything that made veronica mars veronica mars in order to do it.
it did get a bit repetitive, as some of the essays were very similar to each other. i wish there had been more of a variety of topics covered, there are so many characters and dynamics and topics and themes that are not touched in this collection, while other topics get several essays dedicated to them. i didn’t care for how some essays instead of incorporating other works or theories or methods of analyzing/criticizing while discussing veronica mars, just had pages of explanation of and background information for those things before even getting into veronica mars. it felt infodumpy and lost my interest several times.
it really bothers me that one author insisted that veronica mars fans felt raped by the network canceling the show, despite admitting to not finding a single fan ever using that word to describe how they felt. fans feeling betrayed or upset or tricked etc. by the show being canceled was referred to as them feeling “figuratively raped”, and them not knowing the show was being canceled at the time the finale aired was referred to as them feeling “figuratively ghbed”. the author puts these words into the fans’ mouths only to prove them invalid at the end; “there is no such thing as a non-consensual relationship between a story, a fan, and a network”. too bad no one even expressing that.
my biggest issue though is the insistence from nearly every author that veronica and duncan had consensual sex the night of shelly’s party. one argues they were of “equally diminished capacity”, but if that were true, don’t you think veronica would have remembered it, like duncan did? they were both drugged, yes, but veronica had also been fed alcohol all night and had no memory. how is that the same level of “diminished capacity” as someone who remembered the night to avoid veronica out of shame for what he believed to be was incest?
further, one cannot consent when one is that inebriated. again, she was drugged and fed alcohol all night to the point of memory loss. she did not consent to anything. the fact that she was conscious doesn’t mean it was consensual. it wasn’t rape in the way that cassidy raped her while she was unconscious, but it definitely was not consensual sex, either.
the closest this is to being described for what it is is one author describing it as “voluntary although troubling circumstances” and “questionable” and adding that given cassidy’s telling of the night turned out to be a lie, “duncan’s reading of consensual sex between himself and veronica is again open for revisitation and scrutiny”, but unfortunately the author does not expand on that or further examine the situation, which would have been infinitely more interesting and refreshing to read than some of the essays that felt like slightly altered copies of each other.
September 23, 2012
Great series of essays! I really liked this tv series and was sad when it ended. When I found out that this book was available I immediately wanted to read it.
It has some excellent essays in it that very much made me rethink some of the characters. I especially liked the essay that said that the character of veronica mars has effected pop culture in ways similar to angela from ”my so called life”.
It has some excellent essays in it that very much made me rethink some of the characters. I especially liked the essay that said that the character of veronica mars has effected pop culture in ways similar to angela from ”my so called life”.
March 10, 2019
I’m a VM superfan and feminist media critic/theorist so this was right up my alley. It’s academic in tone and the essays range from profound to somewhat lacking or meandering. I enjoyed it and found a lot of fantastic reference material for my writing on VM.
May 5, 2012
Didn't enjoy it as much as "Neptune Noir" but I'm grateful that there was another book coming out in 2011, 4 years after the show got killed off.
May 17, 2012
Interesting read. Needed more variety, however. Many of the essay topics became redundant since they were so similar to the other essays.
August 15, 2016
Very interesting essays critiquing the show. Using it in my course on Gender in Pop Culture this year!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews