A website (organised by a woman!) devoted to the delectable Diana Rigg
I have been inspired for many years by The Avengers and its most famous character Emma Peel. In this dissertation I will be debating Emma Peel’s status as a valid feminist icon and whether she is simply a cult icon with no real importance within the twentieth century and beyond. I will be looking at her in the context of The Avengers and its other characters, her importance as a feminist and how the clothes she wore communicated her identity." Elizabeth Eggleston, 2002
INTRODUCTION
In 1964, the producers of a successful British television show discovered a young actress from the Royal Shakespeare Company. She had not been the first choice for the part but luckily her abilities as an actress shone through and she was presented to the public as a ready-made fashion icon and a truly modern woman in her time. The programme itself had been very successful, but the heights it reached with her surpassed anything else British television could offer. It became the first British show bought by the American market and was the first worldwide successful British export. The programme was The Avengers and the actress was Diana Rigg. She was only with the programme from 1964-67 and was a mere one out of six actors who assisted the long standing Patrick Macnee, yet the Emma Peel era on the show was defining and arguably the most popular. In the forty years since, the character Emma Peel has become a byword for feminism, fashion and fetishism and was recently voted as one of the Top 100 Television Characters of all time and the number one television sex-bomb by Channel 4.
Her appeal and relevance throughout the forty years since her first appearance in leather Catsuit and fencing mask is a fascination for many who wish to define her as one thing or another. To some, she is an icon of sexuality; fetish, perversion, domination and physical beauty, to others, she is an icon of late twentieth century feminism, and to the rest, Emma Peel is simply a definition of 1960’s cool and kitsch. Here I will look at all these elements of her character and go some way to understanding her timeless appeal and to identifying her as an icon of the twentieth century, as important as Marilyn Monroe and Catwoman. There are three main aspects of this subject that I am discussing. The first is Emma Peel as a feminist icon in the 1960s and in the subsequent forty years. The character is cited as a pioneer of the modern television woman and she is an icon for many who follow The Avengers as a cult. However, it is important to look at the character’s importance in different contexts if I am to conclude that she is an icon or simply a generic female assistant on a fondly remembered cult television classic. Was it simply her status as a fashion icon that has afforded her such adulation and acquired her such a following? Or was Emma Peel more than a space-age dolly girl; more than her name; more than “man-appeal”? By looking at Emma Peel in context, I will be looking at her importance to the world within her own timeframe of the mid-sixties, understanding the cult tag that has been attached to her and her importance to the world since the mid-1960s will help develop ideas of her classification as a style and feminist guru. Is this something that she can be described as or is it a superficial gloss over a flimsy, lightweight 1960s television phenomenon?
I will also be looking at her character in relation to the other two main Avengers girls: Cathy Gale and Tara King. These two were the other most famous co-stars and create an interesting balance when looking at Emma Peel. By looking at Cathy Gale I will be tracing the development of the character of Emma Peel and identifying where the character came from. Cathy is often forgotten by modern publicity about the show and Honor Blackman is more easily identified with the character of Pussy Galore in Goldfinger. However, she is by far and away the original action woman of television and originated many characteristics we associate with Emma Peel and her modern counterparts. In this chapter I will look at these in comparison to the Peel seasons and later to the Tara King/Linda Thorson seasons of the late 1960s. Tara King was a more glamourous and traditional female star and her resemblance to Diana Rigg’s Emma Peel in looks and little else is a fascinating subject when attempting to put the programme in context. It reveals much about the inherent sexism of television producers and shows how forward thinking and stubborn the former actresses had been to push forward their own strength and intelligence.
One of the most identifiable factors about Emma Peel is her wardrobe. She was conceived in an era of pop culture and throwaway fashion, at a time when appearance was everything and everyone aspired to a particular template of perfection. The Avengers was certainly stylish and is often regarded as one of the ultimate icons of this superficiality, relying on its kitsch for its success. I want to consider how the style of Emma Peel represents her identity and others perception of her. Her period on The Avengers saw the introduction of colour film mid-production and her entire wardrobe from 1964 to 1968 represents a cultural development within its own representation of character development. By tracing the style of the character I hope to determine her appeal and her importance more and the overall substance of the show. Hopefully, more understanding of her strengths and weaknesses can be gained, how she represents herself with clothes and how they give us an insight into her sexuality, physical strength and intelligence...
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