Independent Women

From Film to Television

Claire Perkins, Michele Schreiber, Claire Perkins, Michele Schreiber

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781032008998
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000402582
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory

Independent Women: From Film to Television explores the significance for feminism of the increasing representation of women on and behind the screen in television contexts around the world.

"Independent" has functioned throughout film and television history as an important euphemism for "feminist". This volume investigates how this connection plays out in a contemporary environment that popular feminist discourse is constructing as a golden age of television for women. The original essays in the volume offer insights into how post-network television is being valued as a new site of independent production for women. They also examine how these connotations of creative control influence perceptions of both female creators and their content as feminist. Together, they provide a compelling perspective on the feminist consequences of how independence and "indie" have intensified as cultural sensibilities that coincide and engage with the digital transformation of television during the first decades of the 21st century.

The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of Feminist Media Studies.

Women’s indie television: the intimate feminism of women-centric dramedies

Jessica Ford

ABSTRACT

When HBO’s Girls debuted in April 2012, it was unlike anything else on television, but today there are echoes of Girls’ indie tendencies and feminist sensibility across the Anglophone television landscape. In retrospect, it is clear that Girls is the flagship series of a recent cycle of women-centric dramedies on US television, which includes (but is not limited to) Transparent, Broad City, Insecure, One Mississippi, Catastrophe, Divorce, Better Things, SMILF and Shrill. These series are inspired by, in conversation with and/or reacting to the aesthetic, generic and/or feminist template established by Girls. This cycle represents the dialogic flow between and across film and television in the convergent era and is enabled by cultural, industrial and political conditions specific to the “peak” television moment. Owing to the centrality of production-based spectacle to both contemporary definitions of cinematic television and popular media feminisms, this cycle is rendered somewhat invisible to both categories. This article argues that the cycle and its series are perhaps best understood in relation to women’s indie cinema, or as a televisual manifestation of women’s indie cinema that could be called women’s indie television.

Introduction

In April 2012, HBO debuted a small intimate dramedy that quickly became a cultural phenomenon: Lena Dunham’s Girls (2012-2017). Since then, Girls has been widely celebrated, debated and criticised. Some critics, like Emily Nussbaum (2012), praise the series for its women-centric storytelling and nuanced approach to character, while others like Catherine Scott (2012) and Anna Holmes (2012) highlight the characters’ narcissism and the series’ lack of diversity. Girls represents a seminal moment in recent US television history, because it brings together key debates in contemporary discussions of television around authorship, representational politics and cinematic style and aesthetics.

In 2012 Girls seemed like a unique outlier or anomaly, but in retrospect it was an early exemplar in a new cycle of women-centric dramedies in conversation with indie cinema, quality television and popular media feminisms that includes (but is not limited to) Transparent (2013-2019), Broad City (2014-2019), Insecure (2016-present), One Mississippi (2015-2017), Catastrophe (2015-2019), Divorce (2016-present), Better Things (2016-present), SMILF (2017-2019) and Shrill (2013-2019-present). Each of these series is inspired by, in conversation with and/or reacting to the aesthetic, generic and/or feminist template established by Girls in the way that they employ storytelling forms, aesthetics and tropes akin to American indie cinema. Shrill, for instance, uses very similar visual language to Girls, including gentle (almost imperceptible) push-ins, planimetric frame composition and close framing of facial reactions. Far from imitations, though, these series develop and expand the model in new and interesting directions. This article argues that the recent women-centric dramedy cycle and its series are perhaps best understood as a televisual manifestation of women’s indie cinema that could be called women’s indie television. Women’s indie cinema is defined by what Linda Badley, Claire Perkins and Michele Schreiber call its “in-betweeness” (Linda Badley, Claire Perkins and Michele Schreiber 2016, 3), and this cycle of women-centric dramedies is in between genres, in between television and cinema, and on the fringe of popular visible feminisms.

Each series is preoccupied by and invested in different feminist debates and concerns. Girls highlights the limits of postfeminist notions of sexual empowerment and body politics, while Transparent explores the intersections between family, queerness and femininity. Better Things examines the terrain of contemporary motherhood and its associated emotional and psychic labours, while Shrill explores how idealised constructions of femininity shape women’s social and cultural value. The diversity of the ideas employed and articulated within this cycle means that it cannot be described as performing a single feminist theme. I contend the cycle is instead best understood as having a “feminist sensibility,” which refers to how the series negotiate and explore feminist politics, ideology and issues in deliberate and distinct ways. This style of feminist sensibility is not a recent phenomenon; it is evident in a wide range of television series from I Love Lucy (1950-1955) to Roseanne (1988-1998, 2018) to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2004) and, in using this phrase, I deliberately move away from binary understandings of cultural objects as pro-feminist or anti-feminist.

In this article I will first situate the women-centric dramedy cycle in relation to existing frameworks and categories, namely cinematic television, and consider the role of spectacle in contemporary television landscape and recent articulations of popular feminism. Second, I will locate the women-centric dramedy cycle in relation to definitions and understandings of women’s indie cinema. Finally, through an analysis of two key series from the cycle (Better Things and Transparent), this article will explore how women-centric dramedies in the tradition of Girls are united by their unspectacular feminist sensibility.

Situating women-centric dramedies

This women-centric dramedy cycle is enabled by cultural, industrial and political conditions specific to the “peak” television moment. The radical expansion of the US television industry, the subsequent growth of narrowcasting, the celebritisation of television creator-showrunners and the rise of popular media feminisms in Anglophone popular culture has enabled this cycle of women-centric, women-authored, feminist-leaning dramedies to come about and quietly thrive. This cycle is the product of a specific historical moment and it represents the increasing convergence of cinema and television in the contemporary era. However, while conditions specific to television propel this cycle, the dominant evaluative frameworks of academic television studies and journalistic television criticism—”quality” television and “cinematic” television—do not recognise the cycle’s cultural, political or formal value.

Since the late 1990s, commentary and criticism on and around US television has been preoccupied with notions of “quality” and “the cinematic.” Cinematic television is largely understood as a kind of quality television, and operates as an often-contradictory framework with a loose set of defining characteristics that include large scale productions, arresting spectacle, notable authorship and movie stars (Brett Mills 2013; Deborah L. Jaramillo 2013). As Brett Mills explains, “It’s clear that the term ‘cinematic’ is one associated with hierarchical ideas of quality, and is perceived to be a compliment” (2013, 63). Like other paradigms that rely on and reiterate established value and taste hierarchies, cinematic television rarely elevates or recognises women’s cultural production or women’s cultural products. Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine argue that the most “ubiquitous legitimating strategy [in US television] is cinematization: certain kinds of television and certain modes of experiencing television content are aligned with movies and the experience of movies” (Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine 2012, 5). “Cinematization” is a gendered strategy that legitimises certain kinds of male-centred narratives by alienating television from its domestic feminine roots.

Definitions of cinematic television are largely formulated around male-centric series that draw on hi-fi film aesthetics and style (Jonathan Bignell 2007, 158; Christine Geraghty 2003, 30). US series most commonly identified in this way include Game of Thrones (2011-2019), The Knick (2014-2015) and True Detective (2014-present). These series are not only male-centric, they also centre men’s stories, perspectives and authorship, and they often have a male sensibility, insofar as they tackle big issues that are coded as masculine, such as mortality, fate, violence, morality and death. These so-called “cinematic” series employ high production values, including large scale sets, elaborate costumes and stunts, as well as well-known stars and authors. This production-centric spectacle cultivates a sense of grandeur. The continent-spanning production of Game of Thrones is often cited as an example of how contemporary television is increasingly cinematic (Lauren Carroll Harris 2018), and large-scale productions featuring historical recreations, such as Mad Men (2007-2015), are also synonymous with this mode (Matt Zoller Seitz and Chris Wade 2015).

Within a critical landscape preoccupied with notions of quality, scholars have attempted to make sense of women-centric dramedies using existing evaluative frameworks and categories. Catherine Driscoll and Sean Fuller, as well as Taylor Nygaard, have examined Girls’ unique and complicated place in HBO’s stable of so-called quality programming, with the former authors arguing that “Girls’ claim to be self-reflexive art, and its high production values, combine to align it with the label ‘quality television’” (Sean Fuller and Catherine Driscoll 2015, 258). However, Taylor Nygaard notes that Girls has always sat uncomfortably within the category of quality television, because of “HBO’s repeated attempt to distance itself from TV’s feminized pleasures” (Taylor Nygaard 2013, 372). This has shifted in recent years, as HBO has invested in big budget literary adaptions of novels aimed at and featuring women. Big Little Lies (2017-present) and Sharp Objects (2018) feature high-profile movie stars and women-centric stories. Unlike women-centric dramedies, however, these series, like their big budget HBO stablemates Game of Thrones, True Detective and Westworld (2016-present), are invested in spectacle and large scale production. While Girls is described as “insular” (Sonia Saraiya and Maureen Ryan 2017), “claustrophobic” (Anna Leskiewicz 2017) and “nebulous” (Emily Yoshida 2015), Vulture television critics Matt Zoller Seitz and Chris Wade’s video essay, “What does ‘Cinematic TV’ really mean?” (2015) suggests that cinematic television often “feels big” and “looks expensive.” Similarly, Deborah L. Jaramillo writes that, “‘Cinematic’ [in relation to television] connotes artistry mixed with a sense of grandeur” (2013, 69). Grandeur, sometimes called scope, scale or bombast, is often identified as a marker of “cinematic-ness” on US television (Jonathan Bignell 2007; Mills 2013).

In this way, spectacle is at the centre of definitions and understandings of cinematic television. Martin Rubin (1993, 41) argues that film spectacle is arresting, startling and excessive, which resonates with Jaramillo’s (2013, 67) definition of cinematic television as using a “complex visual and aural style” that “reveals the exploitation of filmmaking technologies” and “requires theatrical viewing.” Spectacle on television can take many forms, including the use of movie stars, large extensive sets and complicated camera work. True Detective—one of the loudest and buzziest television series in recent years— features movie stars, expansive sets and settings and employs a filmic style that calls attention to itself. The Cary Fukunaga directed season one uses complicated set ups and ostentatious camera work, including a six-minute long take. While True Detective also delivers emotional scenes, they are not what mark the series as cinematic.

Much of the academic work on spectacle explores how in film it halts the narrative and arrests the viewer’s look (Norman King 1984, 201; Justin Wyatt 1994, 25). It is often associated with expensive, large-scale Hollywood blockbusters, including musicals, science-fiction films, action movies and disasters movies. In his discussion of Busby Berkley musical numbers as spectacle, Rubin writes that “spectacle is a sense of gratuitousness, of uselessness, or extravagance, of rampant excess, of over-indulgence, of flaunting, of conspicuousness consumption, of display for the sake of display, of element calling attention to themselves rather than serving a higher, all-encompassing concept of narrative” (1993, 41). Helen Wheatley, however, complicates the idea that spectacle is inherently cinematic, noting that “the aesthetics of spectacle more usually associated with film might be equally associated with certain forms of television: that film and television are both, at times, spectacular, rather than that television is cinematic because of its presentation of spectacle and its various associated visual pleasures” (Helen Wheatley 2016, 7). The use of spectacle on contemporary US television is tied to the dramatic expansion of the television landscape and the increased competition for viewers (Wheatley 2016, 9)....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: independent women: from film to television
• 1 Women’s indie television: the intimate feminism of women-centric dramedies
• 2 Olive Kitteridge (Lisa Cholodenko, 2014), quality television and difficult women: female discontent in the age of binge-viewing
• 3 Teresa Fernández-Valdés and female-produced TV series in Spain. Cable Girls/Las chicas del cable as case study
• 4 Mar Coll’s Matar al padre / Killing the Father (Movistar+ 2018): a female Auteur between filmand television in Spain
• 5 Breaking upwards: the creative uncoupling of Desiree Akhavan and Ingrid Jungermann
• 6 Drawn (to) independence: female showrunners in contemporary American TV animation
• 7 Sorority flow: the rhetoric of sisterhood in post-network television
• Index