Sound warrior Voice, music and power in Dark Angel

Dark Angel, a high-budget, American cyberpunk serial set in a near-future, post-apocalyptic and dystopic Seattle, has been grouped with a number of late 1990s and early 2000s television programmes as featuring powerful female heroes. Several academics have noted this significant wave in programmes that include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xena: Warrior Princess and La Femme Nikita. While analysis has focused predominantly on narrative and visual cues, the role of sound and music in constructing these `feminine' warriors has been largely unexplored. This article analyses the Dark Angel series to illuminate how sound elements, including voice-over and music soundtrack, interplay with the visual to suggest gendered meanings in the text.