Difficult Women on Television Drama

The Gender Politics Of Complex Women In Serial Narratives

Isabel Pinedo, Isabel C. Pinedo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367468675
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000342895
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Television
• Index: Social Sciences

Difficult Women on Television Drama analyses select case studies from international TV dramas to examine the unresolved feminist issues they raise or address: equal labor force participation, the demand for sexual pleasure and freedom, opposition to sexual and domestic violence, and the need for intersectional approaches.

Drawing on examples from The Killing, Orange is the New Black, Big Little Lies, Wentworth, Outlander, Westworld, Being Mary Jane, Queen Sugar, Vida, and other television dramas with a focus on complex female characters, this book illustrates how female creative control in key production roles (direct authorship) together with industrial imperatives and a conducive cultural context (indirect authorship) are necessary to produce feminist texts. Placed within the larger context of a rise in feminist activism and political participation by women; the growing embrace of a feminist identity; and the ascendance of post-feminism, this book reconsiders the unfinished nature of feminist struggle(s) and suggests the need for a broader sweep of economic change.

This book is a must-read for scholars of media and communication studies; television and film studies; cultural studies; American studies; sociology of gender and sexualities; women and gender studies; and international film, media and cinema studies.

1 The rise of difficult women in serial narrative television drama (2005-2020)

Introduction of a programming trend

Over the past decade, feminist politics have surfaced in a growing number of television serials suffused with emancipatory claims for women, ones that revolve around “difficult women,” so much so that they constitute a programming trend. Flawed female protagonists, from problematic, thorny heroes to outright criminal antiheroes now populate the airwaves (Vaage 2016; Tally 2016; Buonanno 2017).¹ Marti Noxon, the writer and executive producer of Sharp Objects (2018, HBO), calls them “angry women” (Gilbert 2018). Serial narrative programs center on female characters that are complex, multi-dimensional, and who possess the female gaze, the narrative center with whom the audience is aligned. We see events unfold from their perspective, their actions drive the narrative, and they take up a substantial amount of screen time. The story deals with candor about women’s experiences and looking is organized around female empowerment. She is not a spectacle. This content deliberately serves and targets a female audience.

There are more complex female-centered serial narratives on television, in all its myriad forms from 48 inch screens to mobile devices, from major networks to over-the-top (OTT) streaming services, thanks to the proliferation of programming in the last decade. FX CEO John Landgraf coined the term “Peak TV” to describe the staggering number of television programs available on and off-line in 2015 (Littleton 2017). According to a Close Up With the Hollywood Reporter (2015–present) episode on Drama Showrunners, “[b]etween 2009 and 2015, the number of scripted TV shows doubled, going from about 200 a year to more than 400” (July 30, 2017: 22:00).² Many of these female-centered programs have received critical acclaim. Some have won Emmys for Best Drama Series–Homeland (2012), The Handmaid’s Tale (2017), or Best Comedy Series–Veep (2015–17). They have won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series–Claire Danes (2012– 2013) for Homeland, Viola Davis (2015) for How to Get Away with Murder (2014–present), Tatiana Maslany (2016) for Orphan Black (2013–17), and Elizabeth Moss (2017) for The Handmaid’s Tale. They have won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series–Edie Falco (2010) for Nurse Jackie and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (2013–17) for Veep. Others have been nominated for Best Drama–Orange is the New Black (2015), The Americans (2016, 2018), and Westworld (2017–18), or Best Comedy–Girls (2012–13) and GLOW (2018). Although overall the percentages of women in key creative roles in Hollywood have changed little in this decade, the rise of Peak TV has vastly increased the demand for programming, opening opportunities for female producers, and top tier actors, resulting in some productions with significant female creative control. The drive to compete for audience share has further fostered the development of innovative content with which to distinguish programs.

Difficult Women examines the significance of gender politics in the programming trend of television serials that revolve around complex female figures by analyzing how dramas construct the female gaze, a structure of looking that centers the narrative from a female perspective and is organized around female empowerment in the story space and the viewing experience.³ This trend has emerged within the larger context of a rise in feminist activism and political participation by women, and the growing embrace of a feminist identity in the US, about which more later.

This programming trend is related to, but differs from, the one charted by Amanda Lotz (2006) about female-oriented, not necessarily feminist, programs that aired from the mid-1990s through 2000. Lotz argues that an unprecedented wave of content for and about women was generated by the cable (and small network) narrowcasting strategy of developing content to attract niche (small but profitable) markets. Programs such as Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001, syndicated), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003, WB, UPN), Ally McBeal (1997–2002, FOX), Sex and the City (1998–2004, HBO), and Judging Amy (1999–2005, CBS) were designed to attract the spending power of working women. Lotz (79) describes the protagonists as “desiring and empathetic heroines,” not antiheroes, whose stories unfolded in programs with a mix of episodic and serial elements.

The figure of the difficult woman or female antihero is more closely related to the male antihero of serial narratives crafted by HBO in the late 1990s and embraced by cable channels in the 2000s. The pattern of the difficult woman has shifted, in rough chronological order (though categories overlap), from the sidelined wife of the antihero, to the pathologized female antihero, to the female antihero who collaborates with her antihero husband in illicit activities, to the normalized female antihero and the difficult woman hero (see Table 1.1). The antihero is a morally ambiguous figure, with an uneasy mix of likable and unlikable traits, who commits serious moral transgressions. What distinguishes the female antihero from the male antihero is that their level of transgressions typically does not rise to the level of transgressions committed by men. Tony Soprano strangles a man in witness protection with his bare hands (Sopranos, “College” S1 E5, 1999), while Sarah Linden shoots a serial killer of teenage girls (The Killing, “The Road to Hamelin” S3 E12, 2013). While both kill in deliberate fashion,

Table 1.1 The Changing Contours of the Difficult Woman or Female Antihero on Television Serial Dramas 1999-Present

Years of Series Run	Sidelined wife of the male antihero	Pathologized female antihero	Female and male antihero collaborators	Normalized female antihero	Difficult woman hero
1999-2007	Sopranos
2005-2012		Weeds
2007-2012				Forbrydelsen (Denmark)
2007-2015	Mad Men
2007-2012		Damages
2008-2013	Breaking Bad
2008-2014			Sons of Anarchy
2009-2011		United States of Tara
2009-2015		Nurse Jackie
2010-2013		The Big C
2010-pres	The Walking Dead
2011-2014		The Killing
2011-2020		Homeland
2013-2018			The Americans
2013-2018			House of Cards
2013-2019				Orange is the New Black
2013-pres				Wentworth (Australia)
2013-2016					Masters of Sex
2013-2019					Being Mary Jane
2014-pres					Outlander
2015-2018				UnReal
2015-2019				Jessica Jones
2016-pres				Westworld
2016-pres					Queen Sugar
2017-2019				Big Little Lies
2018-2020					Vida

Source: Data drawn from IMDb

Tony does it to reinforce the power of the mob, while Sarah does it to punish and stop a heinous criminal. What distinguishes the female antihero from the difficult woman hero is that the antihero intentionally does serious harm to others through commission or omission. If she deliberately kills, then it is to protect herself or others, though not under conditions that the law would recognize as killing in self-defense. The difficult woman who is not a straight out antihero transgresses the norms of femininity unapologetically and systematically. She is abrasive, aggressive, ambitious, often defined by work more than motherhood, at times unlikable. The figure of the difficult woman took root in the subsoil of a changing industry, one that first developed the male antihero.

The narrative trope of the antihero, male or female, came about as a result of economic, regulatory, and technological changes in the 1980s and 1990s that altered how the television industry operates and fostered the rise of the cumulative or complex narrative as a textual for...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The rise of difficult women in serial narrative television drama (2005-2020)
• 2 Economic inequality and the working mother: The Killing in Denmark and the U.S.
• 3 Female sexual pleasure and freedom: Outlander and Westworld
• 4 Violence against women and women who kill: Big Little Lies, Orange is the New Black, and Wentworth
• 5 Intersectionality: Beyond the white female subject
• 6 Conclusion
• Index