One
of my favorite academic texts of the last few years is Susan Douglas’s Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message
that Feminism’s Work is Done. As a
follow-up project to Where the Girls
Are: Growing up Female with the Mass
Media (a book that studied representations of women in popular culture from
the 1950s-1980s), Enlightened Sexism
traces media imagery from the 1990s to present.
In one of her opening passages she aptly summarizes her findings:
Something’s out of whack
here. If you immerse yourself in the
media fare of the past ten to fifteen years, what you see is a rather large gap
between how the vast majority of girls and women live their lives, the choices
they are forced to make, and what they see – and don’t see – in the media.
Ironically, it is I just the opposite of the gap in the 1950s and ‘60s,
when images of women as Watusi-dancing bimbettes on the beach or stay-at-home
housewives who need advice from Mr. Clean about how to wash a floor obscured
the exploding number of women entering the workforce, joining the Peace Corps,
and becoming involved in politics. Back
then the media illusion was that the aspirations of girls and women weren’t
changing at all when they were. Now the
media illusion is that equality for girls and women is an accomplished fact
when it isn’t. (4)
Throughout
the book she contrasts the pop culture depictions of women against their
reality, focusing heavily on depictions of professional women in the media –
depictions that occur at a rate far more frequent than reality would
dictate. While powerful, professional women are
abundant on television shows and in film, the real world statistics reflect a
very different world. Consider for a
moment these figures that Douglas provides toward the end of her text:
Nancy Pelosi aside, only 17
percent of Congress was female in 2009.
Women are still only 14 percent of all police officers, and only 1
percent of police chiefs are. How many
female CEOs are there at Fortune magazine’s top 500 companies? Fifteen.
Law schools may be graduating more women than ever – almost the same
number as men – but in 2005 only 17 percent o the partners at major American
law firms ewer women. Women account for half of all medical students, but in
2007 only 20 percent of new surgeons were women. What this means is that, in addition to over representing
female achievement by showcasing doctors and lawyers instead of secretaries and
day care workers, TV also overstates women’s conquest of the profession. (279)
Douglas
is careful not to completely demonize media creators in pointing out this
imbalance. She writes:
There
is not a cabal of six white guys in Hollywood saying, ‘Women are getting too
much power; before they get too far let’s buy them off with fantasies that will
make them think they’ve already made it and will get them to focus on shopping
and breast implants instead of eying the glass ceiling.’ On the contrary, what
we see and hear from the media comes from the most noble intentions of certain
writers and producers to offer girls and women strong role models and from the
most crass commercial calculations to use illusion of power to sell us, well,
pretty much everything. (Douglas 18)
But ultimately
she is concerned with how the plethora of fictional women prancing around the
small and big screens in all their professional glory, might be providing young
men and women today with a skewed depiction of gender equality.
As the
past television season drew to a close I thought often of Douglas’s claims and
longed to add my own insights to them.
In noting, as she did, the bevy of high powered women dominating the
fictional landscape, I also observed something else that Douglas did not
specifically touch on. While these
fictional characters – female lawyers, politicians, doctors, and more – in many
ways did reveal a false utopia of female potential, they all also contained
scripted flaws that worked to undo their powerful (arguably feminist)
characterizations. When I began to study
the “feminist” characters on primetime television I quickly realized that
despite all of their professional accomplishments, they often did not seem all
that different from female characters who frequented daytime soap operas,
melodramas, sitcoms, and dramas in decades past. Despite the fact that these characters were
brilliant, witty, strong, and independent women (in many ways), the storylines
about their professional conquests often came second to that of their romantic
woes. While they could outperform males in
the courtroom, the elections, and the operating room, their lives often
unraveled because of a man. In fact,
many of these figures were willing to walk away from their successes because of
a love gone wrong.
Two
examples of this “flawed feminist” persona easily come to mind in ABC’s Scandal and CBS’s The Good Wife. Scandal (2012-present) focuses on a
D.C.-based crisis manager, Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington). Although individual episodes center around
her team’s efforts to manage high-profile, complicated legal situations, the overarching
narrative is really a will they-won’t they, star-crossed lover, storyline about
her affair with the President of the United States, Fitzgerald Grant (Tony
Goldwyn). Olivia’s character (and
Washington’s acting) is fabulous. Her
lightening quick retorts and long-winding monologues showcase her confidence,
power, and charisma. But when she shares
the screen with her presidential lover she regresses into a weak-in-the-knees
school girl, desperate for the relationship they cannot have. Although she does, admittedly, repeatedly put
his career before their potential union (believing in the good he can do for
the country), she is unable to move on past him and she often finds herself
comprising her professional morals to see that his political reputation remains
intact.
The Good Wife (2009-present) is a legal drama
revolving around the law firm of Gardner & Lockhart. The main character is Alicia Florrick
(Julianna Marguiles) and while individual episodes feature specific cases, the
overarching plot is concerned with her career and family, and, more often than
not, her love life. The series starts
with her returning to law after having been a stay-at-home mother and
politician’s wife for much of the past two decades. She is a public figure having stood by her
husband, Peter Florrick (Chris North), after it was revealed that he had sexual
relations with prostitutes while seated as the state’s attorney. The first few seasons find her estranged from
Peter and focus on her attraction to her boss, Will Gardner (Josh Charles), her
former love interest and law school peer.
The love triangle escalated this season as Alicia began working toward
reconciliation with Peter even as her feelings for Will (after a short lived
affair) continue to resurface. The
season finale found her walking away from her newly earned partnership at the
firm so that, apparently, she wouldn’t act on her feelings for Will and
terminate her marriage.
In
talking to friends who watch both shows, I’ve heard sentiments that seem to
hint at the strange mismatch between the public/professional characterizations
of these women and their personal/emotional characterizations. One friend bemoaned the never-ending
storyline about Olivia and Fitz’s impossible love story. Another balked at the idea that Alicia could
return to a husband that cheated on her with prostitutes. Although neither commenter probably realized
it, they were pointing out the classic “flawed feminist” depiction which is
readily available in popular culture today.
Although
I’ve long noticed this pattern, what surprises me is that I often don’t find
the storylines to be unappealing (even when I realize the danger they could be
doing). As I’ve mentioned in previous
posts, perhaps I simply know that the kiss of death for a series that centers
on a romantic pairing is to allow the couple to be romantically paired. If there is a super couple, their power can
only remain so long as fate finds them torn apart. While they can have momentary unions along
the way, they can only find their happily ever after as the show reaches its
end because to find it sooner will lead to viewer disinterest and limited plot
possibilities.
But
perhaps my inability to hate these storylines stems from another place. Having always been fascinated by the tales of
JFK’s affair with Marilyn Monroe, maybe Scandal
appeals to me on some other level.
Perhaps I root for Peter Florrick to win back his life because he’s
played by the actor who played Big in Sex
and the City (and who didn’t root for Carrie and Big to get together? Although, while I’m thinking of it, we
probably shouldn’t have because he was sort of a jerk in that series also).
Regardless,
these shows are extremely popular and the televisual staple of the “flawed
feminist” is alive and well in countless narratives. Maybe this is a product of what Douglas calls
“enlightened feminism”: “a response,
deliberate or not, to the perceived threat of a new gender regime, “ one that “insists
that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism – indeed, full
equality has allegedly been achieved – so now it’s okay, even amusing, to
resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women” (9). But were these stereotypes ever really dead
to begin with? Did they need
resurrecting? Maybe Alicia’s and Olivia’s
exist because they have always existed. It
leads me to wonder: in continuing, as I
do, to enjoy these depictions are we helping to forever cement them in the pop
culture iconography? But maybe we can
embrace the positive aspects of these characterizations while still criticizing
the negative ones. This flawed feminist scholar
certainly hopes so because these programs are already programmed into my DVR as
I eagerly await their return this fall.
No comments:
Post a Comment