The  Greek post-#MeToo era’s staging of diva citizenship in Milky Way, by Vassilis Kekatos

Konstantinos Argyriou

doi:10.46661/revintpensampolit.12749

Authors

Konstantinos Argyriou Universidad Rey Juan Carlos https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0578-7960

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46661/revintpensampolit.12749

Keywords:

Milky Way, Greece, rural life, postfeminism, modelling

Abstract

Vassilis Kekatos's melodrama series Milky Way (2024) narrates the life of Maria, a pregnant teenager in a fictional Greek village, whose “Athenian dream” is to join Eurovision singer Eleni Foureira's dance troupe. The figure of Foureira, prevailing in the current post-feminist framework, finally appears as a deus ex machina in a vision. Foureira herself developed an Athenian dream, countering a xenophobic context through exceptionality. The present reflection uses critical content analysis to offer answers as to how female subjectivity is formulated in the series, how Kekatos uses its tropes to address female gendering and upward mobility, and what implications the series has in a post-#MeToo Greek context. Specifically, it encompasses Foureira's staging within the framework of what Lauren Berlant (1997) has called "diva citizenship". The main contribution lies in the analysis of how adolescent role models must be filtered through the complex contradictions and challenges inherent in postfeminist settings.

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