State of Affairs: A Pastiche of Post-9/11 Television

I’m always excited when the televisual powers-that-be launch shows that fit nicely within my academic theories so this year’s debut of two new programs featuring crisis-averting political narratives about the “behind-the-scenes” actions of the White House thrilled me.  NBC’s State of Affairs debuted after CBS’s successful launch of Madame Secretary and therefore had a relatively high bar set for it.  So, I wasn’t necessarily surprised when it didn’t live up to the hype. 

I wanted to like the show.  As a longtime fan of Grey’s Anatomy, I still have a soft spot for Katherine Heigl and wanted to see her make a successful transition back to television and to drama after her last decade of unremarkable romantic comedies.  (Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen just about every one and tolerated them well enough, but still feel they did nothing to develop her acting career).  I wasn’t sure if I could buy her in this new role as Charleston Tucker, the president’s daily CIA briefer, but I was willing to try.  And, as I thought, it was hard narrative to swallow. 

In some ways the role isn’t unlike what she’s been playing lately as most of her romantic comedy roles find her playing a serious, uptight, smart (though oftentimes simultaneously ditzy) woman opposite a chauvinistic or buffoon-like male lead.  And so part of this new persona wasn’t too removed from all that as she again plays a professional, serious, female at odds with her male counterparts.  She also got to resurrect her role as a distraught romantic mourner (ala Grey’s Anatomy and the popular Denny Duquette storyline), as the pilot revealed that Charleston is not only the president’s briefer but she was also to be her daughter-in-law prior to her son’s sudden death (which occurred while they were all ambushed in a convoy in Kabul during a pre-election campaign circuit).

I almost gave up on the show after the first few episodes but I hung with it.  I still feel the acting is a bit strained and I don’t yet like the characters as much as I do those on the other new Fall programs I am following, but the plot is intriguing enough that I’m tuning in to see if could live up to its potential.  (For example, critics note that Alfre Woodard is being underutilized in her powerful role as the first black female president of the United States of America). 

In all truth, the show is really a collage of all the recent post-9/11 narratives, which makes it a bit unoriginal.  But, perhaps because I like all those shows State of Affairs is unabashedly borrowing from I’m able to enjoy it.  It’s episodic “national problem of the week” set-up is very similar to Madame Secretary and its pacing and attempt at filmic aesthetics reminds me of The Blacklist (especially with the start of each episode setting up the plot issue at hand).  The subplots about political power struggles mirror various moments from House of Cards.   The storyline concerning a mole within the counterterrorist unit recalls any given season of 24.   And the show is most definitely trying to add some soap operatic melodrama into its mix in ways that seem almost Scandal-esque.   But, most of all, the main plot parallels Showtime’s Homeland. 

There are echoes of Homeland’s Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) in State of Affair’s Charleston.  While Carrie suffers from bipolar disorder, the first episodes show Charleston suffering from PTSD as she struggles to recall the events leading up to her fiancé’s death.  Both are even shown using a similar problematic coping mechanism:  alcohol-infused one night stands.  [Spoiler] Like Homeland, State of Affairs also focuses on the reliability of a CIA asset.  Three years prior to the narrative start of State of Affairs, Charleston’s off-the-books field work included attempting to turn a high profile terrorist, Omar Fatah (Farshad Farahat).    He was released with Charleston convinced that their “enhanced interrogation methods” had successfully worked, despite her partner (and later lover), Nick Vera (Chris McKenna), believing otherwise.  When it is revealed that Omar Fatah was present at the attack on the convoy, Charleston then feels all the more responsible for her fiancé, Aaron’s death.  This is further complicated when her memories return and she realizes that Fatah pulled her out of the convoy to safety and then shot Aaron in self-defense. 

I’m not sure I’m exactly endorsing this show, but I suppose if one didn’t have time to watch all the exemplary programs State of Affairs steals from that this could serve as a short cut substitute.  And, perhaps it will still grow into something of its own.

The most pressing question I was left with as I caught up this show that had been taking up room on my DVR, was the one I always wrestle with:  why are these post-9/11 political/governmental rescue shows so popular?  Their sheer numbers are impressive and the number of accolades some of them have acquired are equally so.  It’s a question that I’m not sure I can quite answer even on an individual level:  do I watch because I enjoy seeing how these shows fictionalize the everyday headlines (of debates concerning torture, privacy rights, drone strikes, and oil pipelines)?  Do I enjoy the catharsis of watching worst-case scenario perils thwarted by fictional political figures that often seem as corrupt and inept as our real ones?   Do I like their cooptation of the action genre or, in some cases, the postmodern genre blurring?   Despite their insistence that we’re a nation in perpetual danger, do I like the comfort they provide in promising that we’ll always overcome it?  Do I like their political critiques and attempts to provide exposure to geopolitical concerns?  Do I like that, in some small way, they don’t let us use entertainment as pure escapism as they conjure up recurring thoughts of the September 11^th attacks.

I’m not sure why I watch or why the masses watch, but I’ll keep trying to find the answer that satisfies me… even if it means watching Heigl wear pearls and red lipstick while playing one of the most prestigious intelligence-gathering figures.

Primetime's Flawed Feminist Figures: Some Musings About ABC’s Scandal & CBS’s The Good Wife

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.