Tag: TV Drama

Profiling Gender: Punishing the Professional for the Personal on ‘Criminal Minds’

This is a guest post by Brandy Grabow.  

Employing embedded feminism and enlightened sexism, Criminal Minds uses familiar tropes to reinforce the idea that women can either be professionals or mothers, but never both. As a prime-time drama based almost entirely in the workplace, how women are treated on the show becomes an important representation, and subtle reinforcement, of the double binds still faced by working women. Criminal Minds, and prime-time shows like it, reinforce double binds because they reach a wide audience, and are typically employed in conjunction with what Susan J. Douglas termed embedded feminism, which is “the way in which women’s achievements, or their desire for achievement, are simply a part of the cultural landscape.” The cultural landscape of the Criminal Minds universe is that women FBI agents are valued, trusted, and competent members of the team. Their abilities and equality within the institution are uncontested; therefore, the workplace goals of the women’s movement have been accomplished, and no longer require representation.

When we look closely at the numbers of women portrayed as professionals in these shows and the number of women actually working in these professions, it is clear that feminism is embedded in dramas like Criminal Minds. In 2009 Kimberly DeTardo-Bora published the results of a study in which she conducted a feminist content analysis of popular prime-time crime dramas from January 2007 through May 2007. The details of her study are fascinating, and I encourage you to read the rest of her article in the journal Women & Criminal Justice. In order to capture the wide variety of professions depicted in crime dramas, researchers looked at the “criminal justice” field, which included police, lawyers, judges, federal agents, etc. What the study found was that among the main characters in their sample of crime dramas, 54.9% were male, and 40.6% were female. In addition to the nearly equal numbers of men and women, women appeared to work in the same types of positions as men; they were just as likely to be prosecutors, or criminal investigators. While in prime-time dramas women appear to have achieved near equality with men in the criminal justice fields, as DeTardo-Bora points out, the reality is slightly different: “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2006), 26% of criminal investigators and detectives [were] female. In [De-Tardo-Bardo’s] study, then, female criminal investigators were in fact overrepresented (39.3%).” Even though Criminal Minds was not in the sample of crime dramas for this study the gender breakdown of its cast reflects the overrepresentation of women. Of the seven main characters (six criminal investigators, and one technical analyst) 4 are male, and 3 female. This overrepresentation of women visually reinforces the idea that the goals of feminism, at least the numerical ones, have been achieved. Women characters, then, do not have to overtly espouse feminist principles, because in their television reality there is no need for them.

As a part of the cultural landscape, embedded feminism, suggests that overt sexism does not have to be confronted, and enlightened sexism can circulate freely. Douglas defines enlightened sexism as, “[the insistence] 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.” The number of women represented on a show like Criminal Minds supports the notion that equality has been achieved. The fact that women are also overwhelmingly the victims of crime on the show can go unremarked, as can the increasingly voyeuristic torture-porn like depictions of female cadavers. The embedded feminism of the Criminal Minds world also masks the enlightened sexism in the form of double binds the women investigators face.

Although there are several problematic patterns in the way the writers of Criminal Minds treat the female agents on the show, I want to focus on the women characters as they are written off the show. On June 14th 2010 CBS announced that it would not renew AJ Cook’s contract for the sixth season, which as Michael Aussielo put it in his “Breaking” report for Entertainment Weekly.com, “is a fancy way of saying girlfriend was fired.” Not renewing AJ Cook’s contract would mean regular character Jennifer Jareau would have to be written out. Eventually, for what was publicized as financial reasons, CBS also drastically reduced the episode count of Paget Brewster’s character Emily Prentiss for the sixth season. While other women have left the show, I’d like to focus on the season six treatment of AJ Cook, and Paget Brewster’s characters. During the course of the season each character is left with a no-choice-choice that traps them in the womb/brain double bind, and in the end each is punished by losing her position on the investigative team.

For Agent Jareau the womb/brain bind takes the form of family vs. work dilemmas that have plagued her character since she announced her pregnancy at the end of Season 3. Although her pregnancy didn’t seem to have a major effect on her ability to do her job, or travel with the team, once she gave birth to her son, Henry, her character routinely faced these family vs. work conflicts. Until finally, her status as a mother became a reason to question her ability to do her job (was the actress herself pregnant?) Yes the pregnancy was quickly written into the show for her. I think that’s part of why things didn’t get overtly sexist until later.

Agent Jareau’s job as a part of the Behavior Analysis Unit’s team is to choose which cases they will pursue. In the “Mosely Lane” episode of season five her ability to do her job is questioned when she begins to see connections between a recent kidnapping and a case that is 8 years old. As she and Agent Prentiss present the links between the cases to the team, Agent Morgan challenges her by saying, “Have you thought about why you suddenly believe [in the connections]? Do you think it might be because you are a mother?” He, and the other male agents in the room, remain unconvinced the cases are related until Agent Prentiss lays out the similarities, and ends by saying, “…and, I am not a mother.” It is as if Agent Jareau’s status as a mother makes her ability to see connections between the cases suspect; whereas, Agent Prentiss’ status as “not a mother” somehow lends credence to her analysis. Although Agent Jareau has faced difficult choices between work and family in the past, this is the first time her ability to do her job is doubted based solely upon the fact that she is a mother.

The “Mosely Lane” incident is significant because it lays the foundation for the no-choice-choice Agent Jareau must make when she is later forced from the team. The second, and her final, episode of season six is simply titled “J.J.”, Agent Jareau’s nickname. The episode begins with a tense meeting between Agent Jareau, team leader Aaron Hotchner, and his boss, Section Chief Erin Strauss. During the meeting we learn that Jareau has rejected recruitment offers from the Pentagon without letting either Hotchner or Strauss know. As Strauss tries to convince Jareau that the Pentagon is offering her a better job, her primary argument is that, “…there’s less travel with this job, you could stay home with Henry.” The implication being that Agent Jareau’s ability to mother is compromised by the travel required in her current position. By the end of the episode we learn that Jareau has been forcibly transferred from the team to the Pentagon. Since Strauss’ only support for her claim that the Pentagon job would be better was “less travel” and “more time at home,” the course of Agent Jareau’s professional life is now being determined by her personal status as a mother. In the previous season, Agent Jareau’s ability to do her job was questioned because of her role as a mother; and her ability to mother is now suspect because of the travel associated with her job. Forced into taking the promotion, her no-choice-choice is to keep a job by accepting a position she does not want. Therefore, Agent Jareau’s removal from her team can be interpreted as a punishment for attempting to be both a mother and an agent.

Although she is, in her own words, “not a mother,” Agent Prentiss finds herself in a form of the womb/brain bind, and punished by removal from her team. When the two episode arc that marks the end of Prentiss’ presence on the show begins, a case from her past as a CIA operative resurfaces. While undercover to take down an ex-IRA arms dealer, Prentiss becomes romantically involved with Ian Doyle. As her involvement in the case is revealed to the team, we are initially led to believe Doyle, seeking revenge on the woman who betrayed him, is hunting her down. At first it appears that Prentiss’ romantic past, specifically her willingness to use her sexuality to get to Doyle, has come back to haunt her. However, in a series of flashbacks we learn that Doyle revealed the existence of his son, Declan, to her by asking her to take on the role of the boy’s mother. Knowing she is undercover and that the relationship will end when the case is over, she refuses.

In the present as Doyle is about to kill Prentiss, she reveals she has actually compromised her career by acting, like a mother, to protect Declan after his father’s arrest. She explains that she did not tell her superiors of Declan’s existence until she had faked his death. She states, she knew what “they [CIA/Interpol] would do to him” in order to get to Doyle. Prentiss was faced with a no-choice-choice between acting as a surrogate mother to a terrorist’s son (putting herself in danger from Doyle), and acting as an international agent giving him up to the authorities, who she knew would harm him psychologically (at the very least). Prentiss chose to act as a surrogate mother to Declan, protecting him by faking his death, effectively hiding him from his father and the authorities. Choosing to act like a mother in the past is punished in the present when, for her own safety, Prentiss must fake her death and walk away from the job, and team she loves.

That both Agents Jareau and Prentiss are made to leave their team based on either their status as a mother, or their willingness to act like one when faced with a no-choice-choice, is a clear example of the embedded sexism within the show. It is a weekly reminder to professional women that the same double binds they have faced throughout history still apply. They can either be mothers at home, or professionals in the workplace, but not both. The embedded feminism in such dramas, only makes the messages of enlightened sexism that much stronger. Embedding feminism, even if it is primarily through the numbers of women, into dramas like Criminal Minds provides the writers with the opportunity to show the world what real feminist change in the work place could look like, instead of trapping women in the same old double binds.

—–
Brandy Grabow completed her MA in English at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, and her BA in Theatre Arts from Minnesota State University, Mankato. At UNCG she served as a writing consultant and the Graduate Assistant Director to the Writing Center. As the Coordinator of Writing and Speaking Tutorial Services enjoys working with the diverse students and faculty of NC State.

Guest Writer Wednesday: A Review in Conversation of Twin Peaks

Welcome to Twin Peaks.



This is a guest post by Cynthia Arrieu-King and Stephanie Cawley.

Cynthia’s take: 
Why do I like Twin Peaks?
I remember dialing through Netflix Streaming back in May of this year as a way of breaking up the cooking of several chopping-intensive dishes. The show was totally unappealing to me when it came out and I was in high school. But this year, for the first three episodes or so, I could take it or leave it: adultery and hysterics and murder with the occasional bright spots of Dale Cooper being absurdly smug about the quality of cherry pie. 
Slowly I paid more attention to the idea of intuition present in Cooper’s scenes. I felt more indifference about its postmodern sorta-for-real, sorta-not simulacra qualities: fifties diners, women who all wear bright lipstick and clingy sweaters, a revolving door of high school types, baddies and inscrutable parents. 
Then, I saw the clip in which Agent Cooper dreams he is old, a little person talks to him backwards in a red room (redrum! redrum!) as does Laura Palmer who then whispers the name of her killer in his ear.
What.
And by the light of the next day, Cooper makes everyone go out in the middle of the woods, whispers the name of each murder suspect to a successive series of rocks in his hand and well, I’m not going to say more, but I was like what kind of bizarre Jungian Joseph Campbell version of the Trickster versus the Intuition is going on here? 
I love these parts but the over-the-top violence constantly involving the women characters wore on me. Because even as satire, Twin Peaks always asks you to recognize that if not at that moment, you once felt real emotion for characters like this, you fell for it, and it is nakedly pushing those emotional sexual violence id buttons to their unbearably absurd extremes, then splashing the cold water of flip logic and optimism in your face.
And over and over until about the beginning of the second season, I felt an edge of incredulity in myself: How could this have been on network television? How in the world did this happen? 
What did you like about it Stephanie? 
Stephanie’s take: 
What do I like about Twin Peaks? The Log Lady, the stoplight, the giant and the room service guy who brings Cooper his milk, every second of Angelo Badalamenti’s walking double bass, when Lucy says, “most of his behavior was asinine,” Ben and Jerry Horn stuffing their faces full of brie sandwiches, Audrey Horn’s saddle shoes, Nadine’s glorious silent drape runners, my unflagging belief in Agent Cooper. So many strange, wonderful things to marvel at in this show! You hit some of my favorite scenes, and the scenes that most stuck out to me on my second time through the show: the donut table at the stone-throwing divination and the first dream in the Black Lodge.
What I love about Twin Peaks, and Lynch in general, is his strange intensity and earnestness. What you called “postmodern sorta-for-real, sorta-not simulacra qualities” I actually see as Lynch making some kind of weirdly authentic invocation of the past or a spiritual core of America through the kitschy trappings of Twin Peaks. I don’t think that Lynch sees cherry pie and creamed corn and prom queens as truly “good” or the “true America,” the way that politicians might conjure apple pie and pick-up trucks to signify some idealized version of America. But I think Lynch uses these images and stock characters as potent cultural symbols that he can shuffle and reconfigure, but that carry strong psychological and cultural associations. As you said, I think that Lynch really is trying to wrestle with good and evil with Twin Peaks, using these cultural signifiers, and this is something I kind of love about it, even if it gets messy and maybe fails at making any kind of coherent statement. 
Though it seems strange to say, another thing that I like about Twin Peaks is that the violence is actually visceral and horrible. Lynch takes these symbols, especially the prom queen girl-next-door All-American sweetheart and perverts them to the extreme. As you say, “it is nakedly pushing those emotional sexual violence id buttons to their unbearably absurd extremes,” though I would also argue that the violence is of a very different quality from so much other violence in contemporary movies or TV shows. 
Violence in Twin Peaks is delivered in a way that is emotional and intense, not so much about cheap bait-and-switch jumpiness or the porno gore splatter, but the horror of the moment of the attack. The horror of violence as an action, as a depraved tunnel that swallows up everything we like about the world. We get so much of humanity being bright and good in Twin Peaks—Cooper, Harry, Andy, Lucy, etc.—but we are also forced to witness and even participate in the spectacle of unspeakable violence. 
(Spoiler alert) The scene when Leland/Bob kills Maddy is one of the most intense sequences I’ve ever seen on little or big screen. The clicking of the record player, Sarah Palmer’s bony hands, the glare of the lights as Maddy and Leland/Bob wrestle, their slow-mo distorted voices. My stomach is clenching just thinking about it. This scene is vivid and visceral, very different from the many horror movies or TV crime shows in which bodies, especially women’s bodies, are violated and disposed of with ease, with almost a wink to the viewer. I think that through scenes like this Lynch forces the viewers to confront violence in a serious way and thus to identify more thoroughly with its victims.
Of course, the victims are mostly women. In fact, violence against women is literally at the core of Twin Peaks. I’m not sure what my question to you is, but this is the thing I am trying to figure out—what to say about all the dead and victimized women?
Cynthia’s take:
What to say. What to say. So much victimization. So many women! I agree that Maddy’s murder is the worst violence I’ve ever seen in television or a movie. And I agree that it’s at the core of the story, and different in its tone than almost any other kind of violence against women in television. There’s no wink, as you say. But I think I read the good and evil in a different way than you do and the more I talk to people about Twin Peaks, the more it feels as if the show’s violence gets taken several ways depending on the viewer. 
I like all the good characters, so to speak, they are bright, but they don’t risk pure earnestness. They all have a crazy quirk to balance out the sincerity. Nadine’s insane eye-patch and youth. Andy’s inappropriate weeping. Cooper’s hanging upside down in his gravity boots while he dictates notes. It could be delight in life, it could be Lynch’s wish to burden us with quippy or awful silences. I can’t help but like this, but at the same time, it’s part of a problematic equation: The killer gets to say, “It was Bob who made me do it,” and can say he’s not responsible for any of this violence. Oops, he didn’t mean it, and in the world of demon possession, well, he’s telling the truth. No one is responsible for the murder of women. We dads just can’t help it and we’re inconsolable too.
I read this scene when the killer is in prison as a way for Lynch to be responsible, to critique this hands-off, “the devil made me do it” stance so prevalent in the way America does, well, everything. In a system of good and evil, it’s powerful that this (spoiler alert) is the close relative of the murder victim. But then my friend Kyle Thompson said, “No, no, no, it’s an apology, it’s not a critique.”
And I would say that he, as a man, may have a way of reading all of these shuffled signs (I love that you said that) in a way we do not and could not. 
Since it is pretty much the worst violence, the most operatic violence towards women I’ve ever seen, in the end I suppose all the dead and victimized women are the thing that kept me from not entirely liking the show up until I realized the show was about intuition, good and evil as you said in a way nothing else was. Twin Peaks flies in the face of our culture in so many ways it’s hard not to want to go apologist for Lynch’s apology. Which isn’t where I want to be. You’re right, it doesn’t have the kind of moral note that stems from sentimentalizing those we oppress – the wink – another-body-in-the-bank-attitude. It’s not network television crime show violence, though I feel it has some hem of magazine shows about murdered women in it, the way it wants to invoke gossip and pity with an old trope, familiar people, manufactured sensationalism. What’s important to me is that Lynch is saying, this is what it looks like close up.
I’ve met so many people who feel this is the best thing they ever saw on television. How accessible do you think the satiric aspect is for yourself or for anyone? Like Mad Men, I wondered if Twin Peaks re-inscribed racist/sexist notions until it started simultaneously to treat violence as serious and mocking us and soap opera for how enthralled we are by story. 
It’s the 20th anniversary of Twin Peaks. Why does it still work?
Stephanie’s take: 
I am really not sure about how accessible the satiric aspect of Twin Peaks is to today’s viewers, myself included, because of the current TV/media climate. So much TV today, especially reality TV, has this bizarre tone that is slightly self-mocking but is simultaneously dead serious about its extravagance. This is actually kind of similar to the tone of Twin Peaks, but I don’t think it’s that intentional or meaningful today. And I don’t even know if the general audience reads this kind of tone as satire, or as a particular form of humor, or if they just read it straight. After all, there are apparently conservatives who seriously believe Stephen Colbert is on their side, and there is a website of screencaps of people posting The Onion articles on Facebook and commenting as if they were serious news. And I sometimes find myself having to explain to my high school-aged students that the word “literally” does not mean “figuratively.” What I’m saying is basically that I don’t really know, but that today’s viewers might either be better or worse equipped to navigate the slippery nature of Twin Peaks, I just don’t know which! 
I think you’re definitely right that Twin Peaks is wide open for many interpretations, and I want to be able to read the killer revelation as a critique, but I just don’t think that it is. I similarly want to be able to read all the gender imbalance in the Twin Peaks landscape as a critique because I really do love so much about it, but I just can’t find enough to back me up on that reading at all. I just don’t think Lynch was thinking about gender that seriously. 
We have both admitted to fondness for the more fringe female characters like the Log Lady, Nadine, and Lucy, but they, and all the other women, really only exist according to their relationships with men. We find out the Log Lady, holder of mystical truths and wearer of incredible flannels, is a kind of Miss Havesham, that she only is the way she is because her husband died on their wedding night. Similarly, Nadine is the way she is—batty and amnesiac and eye-patched—because of husband Ed. And all of Lucy’s energy gets sucked up into a boring pregnancy and paternity subplot, though her pluckiness does seem to exist regardless of her poor taste in men-who-are-not-Andy. 
And the list continues. Audrey’s character arc consists of her moving from virgin with daddy issues to non-virgin with slightly different daddy issues. Donna does some intrepid sleuth-work, but spends most of her time dealing with her sappy relationship with James. Maybe only Katherine can be said to have a personality and take actions that are not based around her relationships with men, but her wiliness really depends on her ability to use sex as a form of manipulation. 
Meanwhile, Agent Cooper and Harry and Ed get to go out and fight for all that is righteous (though they also all have love lives), and Windham Earl and Leo and Ben Horn get to be menacing and threatening and powerful. Even Leland gets to be infected by demons at least! I would like it so much if any of the female characters were at least worthy of demon possession. 
At the risk of sounding like feminist criticism is about score-keeping or, as you said, playing apologist for Lynch, I think I could sort of “forgive” the horrific violence against women if the women characters were actually fully drawn and able to participate in the storylines in an equal way to the men. Since you bring it up, I think this is how Mad Men succeeds (though not with regards to its handling of race, ugh) in depicting a brutally sexist world and some seriously misogynistic characters in a way that is not sexist or misogynistic itself.
That said, I still pretty much love Twin Peaks. My boyfriend and I affectionately dubbed our apartment “The Great Lodge” because it has 70s wood-paneled walls, a fireplace, and is surrounded by pine trees. The Log Lady was my Facebook profile picture for a while. But fangirlishness aside, I’ve watched a lot of TV shows and I’m hard pressed to think of any that are as interesting and strange and ambitious as Twin Peaks.
But I think part of its allure is also in its unfinished-ness. Shows that are canceled unjustly in the eyes of their fans gain a kind of cult following and fervor they might not otherwise have if they were allowed to run their course and possibly collapse or devolve into sloppiness or repetition. Many of these shows, Twin Peaks included, are legitimately brilliant, but still benefit from the extra glory that our culture loves to tack on to things (or people!) that come to an untimely end. So, when we think about Twin Peaks, we necessarily think of the disappointing and horrifying and thrilling lack of closure at its end.
Cynthia’s take:
I can’t believe there’s five years of Mad Men and only two of Twin Peaks. Argh.
I like what you’re saying about the degree of gender critique in Lynch. It’s kind of like when my former classmate Kirk Boyle saw Dead Man by Jim Jarmusch and couldn’t read the cultural critique in it – Is it about Clinton? he asked me once. I was struck by how we can look for these systems of meaning out of habit and it makes me wonder right this second if there’s some blind spot in this. It seemed the movie was about a good death, lawlessness in the American vein, and immortality and that can be undetectable to an eye looking for allegory. Maybe allegory is the case here.
I agree with you about the little power of the women in this show, their silly or violent struggle. But I’m not on the same page with you about Audrey Horne. She does some pretty unbelievably audacious moral acts. She looks for Laura’s killer when in fact she had no deep friendship with Laura. She just knows something’s afoot with her father and the murder so she sleuths her way into being hired at the brothel—looking pretty fierce until the moment her father knocks at her door and she’s in a teddy ready for sex work. And doing better work in some ways than Cooper. She takes over her dad’s business by sheer will, but not after clearing out the entire meeting of Scandinavian investors by moping slyly about her sadness at the violence. She liked undermining her dad so that he would pay attention to her power, and in the end saved his business (and notably, threw off Bobby’s advances so matter-of-factly). To me she represents an m.o. something like, “We’re all playing a role in a power-play; at least I’m choosing my role and making it work for me.”
I guess my final word on the series would be that I like how Lynch holds a serious mirror up to our faces about how much we look for the violence and what it really is like. What’s your final read?
Stephanie’s take:
I still haven’t seen Dead Man and I feel like you’ve mentioned it to me before! In my queue. Anyway. 
I do think I was being a bit reductive in my characterization of Audrey. She is one of my favorite characters and that scene in the brothel is one of the most unsettling scenes of the show (and on a show that is deeply unsettling so often, that is saying something). I guess I’m just a little hung up on what happens with her storyline with the rich guy in the late second season. But I think I’d prefer to pretend that much of what happens in the late second season doesn’t really happen. 
To me, one of the testaments to Twin Peaks‘ greatness is that we’ve had this long exchange about it and could probably still keep going. More than once, I have found myself writing in big, aimless circles when trying to articulate what I think. The show can be read so many different ways, and as you’ve noted, it seems that everyone can bring their own particular interests and concerns to bear upon the show. It fails to resolve neatly, but I think this is what makes it so intriguing, so worth watching and then talking about. For all the interesting, quality TV shows we get to watch today, there is still nothing, to me, that is quite like Twin Peaks. 
My last words on Twin Peaks? Everyone should watch it and then invite me to Twin Peaks-themed murder-mystery dinner parties. I’ll bring the cherry pie. 

Cynthia Arrieu-King lives near Atlantic City but her cat Kenny lives in Louisville, Kentucky. She writes poetry and grades a lot of papers. On Sundays at 11AM you can hear her and Stockton students Jenna McCoy and Laura Alexander do a talk show about local and visiting writers,The Last Word, at WLFR FM Lake Fred Radio wlfr.fm.

Stephanie Cawley lives in Philadelphia with her cat, Vincent van Gogh. She writes poetry and reads a lot of comics. 


Some Scattered Thoughts on Detective Shows and Geniuses

I often joke here about my obsession with streaming Netflix television shows from 1992. Sometimes I find myself wondering what I actually did during the nineties that made me miss so much television, and then I remember I was hanging out with truancy officers, drinking Zima underage, angsting over my first boyfriend, and coming one horrible grade shy of flunking out of high school. Memories. But maybe it’s ultimately a good thing that I let myself get a little media literate before escaping into the mind of pop culture circa 1992. It’s fun to consume an unacceptable amount of television under the guise of “no really, I’m critiquing this shit in my mind, which is important, so it’s totally fine that I haven’t spoken out loud in three days or showered.” See, I work a second-shift job, while everyone I know works a first-shift job, so I often find myself awake in the wee hours with my good friends Adrian Monk, Cal Lightman, and most recently, Allison DuBois. (The reality is that all these shows first aired between 2002 and 2010, so the fact that I think the 90s are the 00s suggests an even larger problem, like, who am I and what year is it.)My routine looks something like this: If I had a crappy day, I like to start my TV marathon with something light, like an episode or two of Monk (which first aired in 2002). For those of you who don’t know, Adrian Monk is a former homicide detective who had a severe nervous breakdown when his wife, Trudy, was killed in a car bomb explosion. He was discharged from the police force because he was so distraught he couldn’t leave his house for three years, and his breakdown brought on a slew of intense phobias associated with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. He eventually goes into business on his own as a consultant for his former colleagues on the police force, but not without a woman slash assistant slash nurse slash babysitter who follows him around everywhere handing him antibacterial wipes and driving him to and from crime scenes (among other degrading tasks). The show is usually hilarious, mainly because of Tony Shalhoub’s brilliant portrayal of Monk, but it certainly contributes to pop culture sexism (and in turn, real life sexism).

After an episode of Monk, I spend some time with Cal Lightman from Lie to Me, a current show in its third or fourth season that centers around an agency called, The Lightman Group, which specializes in reading facial expressions. Apparently, we all have these things called “micro-expressions” that betray us when we’re lying, but only highly-trained people can catch and decode these micro-expressions, (e.g. the employees at The Lightman Group). Dr. Lightman is literally a human lie detector, and it’s fun to watch him get up in the faces of liars and act like a cocky British bad-ass. He, too, works with women who, while brilliant and talented in their own right, spend a significant amount of their screen-time playing sidekick to Lightman and cleaning up his messes.

All this boy drama started to become stifling, so I browsed Netlix and found Medium (which first aired in 2005), a show I’d seen a few episodes of—and liked—but that I never really pursued, probably because of my embarrassing fear of the occult. Medium centers around Allison DuBois, a woman who can communicate in various ways with the dead, and who also has some psychic ability, such as knowing when a person might die, or experiencing creepy flashes of the horrible shit people have done in their pasts. DuBois interests me because, in addition to holding a job as a consultant for the district attorney (similar to Monk’s role in some ways) she’s also a mother of three young girls and has a rocket scientist husband who gets fed up on a regular basis with her mind-reading, afterlife communing talents. He admires her crime-solving abilities but deep down wishes she’d continued to pursue her law degree instead, in the name of normalcy. In this show, the man slash husband plays sidekick.

These three detective characters are similar in that their main role on their respective television shows is to catch criminals. All three of them aid the police force. All three of them often endanger themselves in the process of tracking down criminals. All three of them always succeed (which is the formula for crime dramas), and we’re led to believe that the criminals wouldn’t have been caught without the help of these characters. Monk, for instance, even with all his quirks and the accommodations he requires, is hailed as an absolute genius by his colleagues and is constantly referred to as “the greatest detective in the world” by his assistant. And he is, in fact, a scary good detective, and it’s for that reason that his quirks and his often abusive behavior (while played for laughs) is forgiven—the audience is led to believe that Monk wouldn’t be a genius detective without these eccentricities. (An episode where Monk takes an antidepressant for his phobias and subsequently becomes useless as a detective confirms that theory.)

Cal Lightman, too, might be one of the most egotistical characters I’ve seen on television, and he’s immensely likeable. He breaks all the rules and consistently does pretty much the opposite of what anyone tells him to do. His lack of respect for authority often helps him win his cases; his immediate contempt for and suspicion of The People in Charge sends him in unusual directions to solve crimes, so the audience is treated to episodes where he (hilariously) and deliberately does things like checking himself into a mental hospital, or going undercover as a coalminer and threatening to blow up the place if he doesn’t get answers—but we, and his colleagues, respect him more for his unorthodox detective work. Yes, he may step all over the people around him, but that’s just how he does things; who are they to get in the way of a genius in his element? But Cal inevitably leaves some sort of mess behind when he operates outside the box (i.e. pisses off so many authority figures), and it’s no surprise that his colleague, Dr. Gillian Foster, a psychiatrist who partnered with him to start The Lightman Group, gets stuck making amends on his behalf. (I’m very much reminded of the Dr. House/Dr. Cuddy dynamic here from the television show House.)

Interestingly (or not), both Monk and Lightman find motivation and success in their careers because of dead women; Monk is literally obsessed with finding Trudy’s killer (which is the one crime he hasn’t been able to solve), and Lightman wasn’t able to save his mother from killing herself; he watches old video tapes of her, repeatedly pausing them to read and reread her micro-expressions. This “I’m avenging the death of my [insert relationship to woman here]” theme shows up in, like, every movie about a man who achieves anything. In these shows and movies, even the dead women exist as nothing more than plot points to drive the narrative forward. It’s sick and demeaning to women. In fact, I should make a list of the films and television shows in which this trope exists and call it the “I’m Avenging the Death of My [Insert Relationship to Woman Here] Trope.” (I’m doing it.)

Did you think I forgot about Mrs. Allison DuBois? I love her. And oh what a difference gender makes on a detective show. In her world, she’s successful not because she’s eccentric or because she has a god complex but because she has special powers. In her world, even though she solves case after case, and sheds new light on past cases, she must always fight to be taken seriously by her boss, by her family, and often by her husband. The audience watches DuBois struggle both with solving the cases (while trying to raise a family of young daughters and keep her marriage intact) and dealing with the way her job directly impacts her interpersonal interactions. She isn’t, as is the case with Monk and Lightman, surrounded by an endless network of supportive characters no matter what; instead, her kind of “genius” is scary and unnatural and not to be trusted.

I get it. Dead people tell her shit, which is a little different than being aided by obsessive-compulsive disorder and a lucky mixture of intelligence coupled with extreme arrogance and defiance. But DuBois must decode the messages she gets, too. A dead person doesn’t just show up and say, “Hey, that dude killed me, and my body’s buried behind that dude’s house over there. Find me. Thanks.” The occult is obviously way more complex than that (eek!). While Lightman and Monk find themselves surrounded by people who worship them, she deals with the extra struggle of convincing people she isn’t crazy—but like, how many cases does she have to solve before people just admit she’s fucking awesome?

Arguably, DuBois is a much more fleshed-out character than Lightman or Monk. She has a husband, a family, a career, unacceptable sleep patterns, daycare to deal with, a possible alcohol problem, parent-teacher conferences to deal with—a life! The men, though, just kind of do the same shit every episode. Lightman does, however, have a teenage daughter, and season two ends with him flipping out about his daughter losing her virginity. I’m not joking. That’s how the entire season ends—in an episode where Lightman gets upset about his daughter not being a virgin anymore. I’m serious. It’s called “Black and White,” and it’s a horrible episode. (Seriously.)

I’m at a bit of a disadvantage in discussing Medium because I’m only familiar with the first season. Perhaps things get better for Allison in later seasons. Perhaps the men in her life stop expressing so much condescension and distrust toward her and endow her with some Lightman- and/or Monk-esque respect. Perhaps she no longer feels compelled to apologize for her own idiosyncratic crime-solving abilities and develops Lightman’s uber-masculine arrogance about it. (But don’t take that confidence too far, Allison—no one wants to work with a bitch.) At the very least, in the first season of Medium, I sort of love her husband. I mean when is a male rocket scientist ever the sidekick, hmmm?

I guess ultimately what concerns me about these portrayals of male and female detectives is that it mirrors real life. Men are geniuses. It’s a fact. I think I once heard someone refer to Sylvia Plath as a genius in a lit class, but it’s absolutely uncommon to hear a woman referred to as such. Being a (male) genius comes with perks, too. You’re forgiven your bullshit, your weirdness, your unorthodox behavior, your screw-ups, your law breaking. I always think specifically of Roman Polanski—a film director who drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl, never went to prison, and managed to garner support from thousands in Hollywood who signed a petition on his behalf. He’s a genius! He’s paid his dues! Let him come back to the U.S.!!!!! I also recall the outrage surrounding the Julian Assange rape accusations—men across the globe immediately came to his defense (including “liberals” Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann), arguing: It’s a setup! Those women are lying! He’s a genius! Kneel before Zod!

Even though I really want to end this post on the phrase “Kneel before Zod!” I’d also like to say that while I love DuBois and think she is a genius and want to see her treated as such (in the same manner as her male counterparts) I’d also love to see more regular-ass women characters achieving genius-level shit. We need and love our women with superpowers (Buffy, too, of course), but I personally want to see a woman who looks like me, who does weird and unacceptable shit like me, who sometimes goes out in public wearing sweatpants like me, achieving some genius-level shit. I truly believe, as someone who studies pop culture and media, that we’re not going to make much progress toward ending misogyny in our everyday lives if we don’t deal with the misogyny we’re bombarded with in television shows, music videos, advertisements, films, and children’s programming. If we see it reflected all around us constantly, it becomes the norm. So, we need to call this shit out and keep calling it out, even when it seems like a tiny thing—like douchebag male detectives with unorthodox methods getting a free genius pass while brilliant female detectives with unorthodox methods have to endlessly prove their competence to significantly less competent people.

That right there is fucking patriarchy in action. Now:

In ‘Women, War & Peace’s ‘I Came to Testify’ Brave Bosnian Women Speak Out About Surviving Rape as a Weapon of War

 

This is a guest post from Megan Kearns. It originally appeared at The Opinioness of the World.

 

When we discuss war and security, we don’t often explore its ramifications on women. Rape and sexual assault are common threats women face globally. But of all the artillery and tactics soldiers use, we rarely think of rape as a weapon of war. And yet too often, it is.

 

On Tuesday night, I watched I Came to Testify, the first in the 5-part documentary series, Women, War and Peace, on PBS showcasing women’s role in war and its impact on women. Produced and written by Pamela Hogan, one of the series’ executive producers, I Came to Testify highlights the courageous women who testified about the rape camps during the Bosnian genocide.

 

The powerful film examines women’s horrific experiences in the town of Foca in Bosnia (formerly Yugoslavia), a site of one of the rape camps. Before the Bosnian War, journalist Refic Hodzic said that brotherhood and unity was the “ideology” in Yugoslavia; “no one cared who was Croat, who was Serb, who was Muslim.” But overnight, things changed. Many Serbs pulled their children out of school and fled town. The Bosnian Muslims were eventually dehumanized by Serbian soldiers, pitting neighbor against neighbor.

 

In Foca, soldiers rounded up the Bosnian men, women and children. Men “were beaten, starved and executed in concentration camps” while the women “were locked in hotels, schools, private homes & makeshift prisons around the city.” After they were gathered, the rapes began. Soldiers threatened women; to cut off their breasts, slit their throats and kill their daughters. Hundreds of women and girls were held captive in rape camps.

 

Established by the United Nations Security Council in 1993, the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands was the first tribunal established in Europe since Nuremberg and the first ever convened during a war. 16 women agreed to travel to The Hague to share their nightmarish ordeal. As narrator Matt Damon (who wanted to be a part of the documentary because of his 4 daughters) said:

“Their testimonies would embody the experience of hundreds of women held captive in Foca.”

One of the witnesses, called Witness 99 to protect her anonymity, recounted how on the day they were rounded up, she was raped in front of her in-laws and then they were murdered in front of her. Witness 99 escaped to a refugee camp where the horror of rape continued. Another witness said she “cried and pleaded” for the soldiers to let her go “but they just laughed.” Another witness testified that one of the soldiers told another, “You have to learn how to rape Muslim women like we are doing.” The women said fear “paralyzed” them.

 

In Foca, half the residents, 20,000 Muslims were just gone. All 14 mosques were destroyed. Evidence in Foca showed that a campaign could be built to prove that a systematic, organized campaign of rape had been “used as an instrument of terror.” While the UN estimated 20,000 women raped in Bosnia, others say it was more like 50,000.

 

Peggy Kuo served as a trial attorney with the tribunal. She declared that “rape has always been an undercurrent of war.” When talking about war, the term “rape and pillage” frequently arises. But we don’t really think about what the words mean. Kuo said the soldiers raped the women, objectifying them and attempting “to strip them of their identity.” Journalist Hodzic explained:

“Rape was used not only for the immediate impact on women but for the long-term destruction on the soul of the community.”

Witness 99 asserted:

“Rape is the worst form of humiliation for any woman. But that was the goal: to kill a woman’s dignity.”

The women heroically faced their fears to share their stories. They were astutely deemed heroes by those interviewed in the film. As Kuo articulated:

“…The people who came and testified were able to maintain their dignity and they didn’t let the perpetrators take their humanity away from them. So yes in one sense they were victims. But in another sense, they were the strong ones. They survived.”

While rape had been charged as a crime before, it usually falls under the umbrella of hate crimes. With this groundbreaking tribunal, for the first time rape was charged as “a crime against humanity.” The case wouldn’t prevent all rapes. But Kuo said that even though they couldn’t prosecute every rape, it was a significant statement to acknowledge what happens to women during war. The case “transformed the definition of wartime slavery,” laying the “foundation of trials involving violence against women in international courts.”

 

War leaves devastation in its wake. Yet historically, when we talk about war, we talk about it in terms of soldiers and casualties; too often from a male perspective, forgetting that it equally destroys women’s lives. Kuo explained:

“Looking at pictures of Nuremberg, it’s mostly men…women aren’t given a place at the table, even as a witness…”

And that still holds true today. We need to reframe security issues from a gendered lens.

 

Genocide frighteningly still occurs; people systematically killed because of their ethnicity, religion or the color of their skin. As tragically seen in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, soldiers utilize rape as a weapon of war again and again. Rape and sexual assault occur beyond conflicts and don’t only threaten women as men face rape in wartime too. It’s an epidemic we must combat.

 

Bravery bolstered the 16 Bosnian women to come forward, speaking out against the unspeakable atrocities they survived. As Witness 99 so eloquently said:

“War criminals wouldn’t be known & there would be no justice if witnesses didn’t testify…I was glad to be able to say what happened to me and to say who had done this to me & my people. I felt like I had fulfilled my duty. I came to look him in the face. I came to testify.”

We live in a rape culture that continually silences women’s narratives. The survivors’ horrific experiences shock and haunt. If we ever hope to change things and obtain justice and peace, I Came to Testify reminds us that women’s voices must be heard.

 

Watch the full episode of I Came to Testify online or on PBS.

 

Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. She blogs at The Opinioness of the World, a feminist vegan site. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Fem2pt0, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, and A Safe World for Women. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. Megan lives in Boston with more books than she will probably ever read in her lifetime.

Megan contributed reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed, !Women Art Revolution, The Kids Are All Right (for our 2011 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), The Reader (for our 2009 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), Game of Thrones and The Killing (for our Emmy Week 2011), as well as a piece for Mad Men Week called, “Is Mad Men the Most Feminist Show on TV?” She was the first writer featured as a Monthly Guest Contributor.

Fall Television Preview: The Answer Is No

No.
People have made a big deal out of the new Fall television shows because many of these new shows star women, either as leads or in ensemble casts. Some shows have yet to premiere, while others, like Whitney, 2 Broke Girls, and New Girl already debuted in early September. But, get this: I don’t have cable. I used to have cable, but then I realized I often watched 47 hours of television in one sitting, rather than the 25 I watch now (via Netflix streaming—even though Netflix refuses to offer hardly anything current, which makes their price-hike all the more infuriating). So I get my news from Twitter, my feminism from Blogs, and my TV from 1995.

Aside from thinking about how Monk could’ve been a really good show if it weren’t so sexist and racist, and how Roseanne got seriously crappy in its last two seasons, and how Ally McBeal might be the most horrendous televised display of faux-feminism slash enlightened sexism I’ve ever seen, I’ve spent some time going over these new Fall television shows by checking out their Web sites, reading their plot summaries, and—my favorite part—looking at how The People In Charge chose to market them. I noticed an overall trend: in addition to the increase in shows starring women, we’re about to be treated to a whole litany of Man-Shows.

When I say “Man-Shows,” I don’t mean television programming that merely stars men. I’m talking about some serious “Lest Anyone Forget—What With All These New Shows Starring Women—WE ARE STILL VERY POWERFUL MASCULINE MEN ON TV WE OWN EVERYTHING NO SERIOUSLY ROAR” Neanderthal action. I find it simultaneously hilarious and unacceptable. As always, both men and women get to see themselves as caricatures and stereotypes—courtesy of society’s regressive gender constraints—portrayed in television, particularly on network TV. Some of the more offensive “Man-Shows” this season include, Man Up!, How to Be a Gentleman, and Last Man Standing. In fact, NPR just published an excellent piece by Linda Holmes titled, “Congratulations, Television! You Are Even Worse at Masculinity Than Femininity!” in which she asks the following:

… Where, on television, are the men who both like football and remember birthdays? Where are the men who can have a highly insightful drink-and-talk with friends? Where are the men who are great dads, great husbands, great boyfriends? Where are the men who are dedicated to important jobs? Where are the men who aren’t seeking reassurance about what it means to be men? Where are, in short, all the men I rely on in my day-to-day life?

All good questions indeed.

I’m sure the male characters in these shows are total clichés portrayed in absolutes—or, as Holmes notes, “Men who are emotionally reactive … are weak; men who are emotionally inert … are clueless.” I also believe that the major force driving these narratives about manhood and masculinity is a direct result of our society’s fear and hatred of the feminine. In the very narrow worlds of film and television, isn’t it more often other men who label emotionally reactive men “weak,” … while women label emotionally inert men “clueless”? Men can’t win in these worlds; that’s certainly true. It starts at the beginning, with our collective call for boys to “stop acting like whiny little girls”—because, as boys and girls both learn, being a girl is The Worst.

My point? This very limited view of gender and gender expectations isn’t a new trend. And, while I agree with Holmes’ take in general, I don’t see these portrayals as having worsened in TV, either. I see them as possibly more overt this season, and I see the Man-Shows as an obvious reaction (i.e. backlash) against the increase in shows about women and the displays of femininity that accompany them. And if what Holmes says is in fact true, that “In both cases, women don’t want to have sex with them [weak and clueless men], even if they’re married to them,” I actually find it much easier to swallow than I do the Apatowian version of that story, where emotionally stunted man-children all across the globe end up living happily ever after (and sexually fulfilled) with Katherine Heigl and Elizabeth Banks.

Holmes also expresses concern over the “silly women” in Fall television but ultimately argues, “At least they are not presented as women who are being women incorrectly,” (you know, the way men are presented as being men incorrectly). I find that statement interesting. I mean, if you take a close look at the roles women play on these brand spankin’ new TV shows, the “at least women aren’t presented as being women incorrectly” argument doesn’t hold up. It’s funny, actually. Because the definitions of what these women are even allowed to be on television certainly trumps any notion of whether they’re being it correctly. (Besides, I’m about 175% sure that women judging women or men judging women for dressing too slutty or being bad moms/teachers/wives/sisters or gaining weight or not gaining weight or smiling or not smiling happens about three thousand times per episode. On each show.)


Here’s a list of woman-centered shows premiering September through November, along with the roles and/or occupations of the women (when I could find the information on the Web site): a murder witness (Ringer), a wife, career woman, and mom (Up All Night), a witch (The Secret Circle), waitresses (2 Broke Girls), Playboy bunnies (The Playboy Club), a teacher (New Girl), a homicide detective (Unforgettable), a vengeful woman (Revenge), beautiful detectives (Charlie’s Angels), an unmarried woman (Whitney), a homicide detective (Prime Suspect), flight attendants (Pan Am), a doctor (Hart of Dixie), a CIA agent (Homeland), clueless moms (I Hate My Teenage Daughter), a “crazy” health and beauty executive (Enlightened).

I look at this list, and my first instinct is to go, “Yay! Women get to be detectives, too!” And that’s certainly progress—if we’re comparing this Fall TV season to, like, the days of Leave It to Beaver. The rest of the roles on the list, with the exception of “doctor,” embody careers/roles traditionally held and/or performed by women. That isn’t to suggest anything inherently negative about those roles; I’m merely stating a fact. I wouldn’t doubt that most of the women characters in the male-dominated fields (homicide detective, doctor, CIA agent) also get the wonderful bonus of being The Lone Woman, spending 90% of her time surrounded by men (Smurfette Principal, anyone?) …

… shit, maybe I’m defining “woman-centered” too loosely, out of desperation.

Here’s a list of man-centered shows premiering September through November, along with the roles and/or occupations of the men (when I could find the information on the Web site): a former CIA agent (Person of Interest), a mysterious billionaire (Person of Interest), a surgeon (A Gifted Man), a writer (How to Be a Gentleman), a personal trainer (How to Be a Gentleman), a marketing director (Last Man Standing), an insurance salesman (Man Up!), a homicide detective (Grimm), a mayor (Boss), a soldier (Hell on Wheels).

Can I be a mysterious billionaire? I want that role. Or Mayor. Can I be Mayor? Ha. I think I need to step back. First, it stinks that TV wants to get in on that whole man-child bankability thing that the movie industry has relied on since, what, Animal House? But the man-child isn’t really a new thing for TV, is it? (See Friends, Arrested Development, The Big Bang Theory, Parks and Recreation, My Name Is Earl, Monk, et al.) Instead, the novel thing for Fall TV appears to be the man-child’s sudden mission to Reclaim His Masculinity—a popular yet very regressive and harmful version of masculinity that, let’s face it, kept George W. Bush in the White House for eight years.

Second, make no mistake, TV stinks big-time for women this season, too. I refuse to fall into the trap I used to always fall into. I’d say something like, “Look! More woman-centered shows! Progress for women!” But now I know better—it ain’t just about visibility. (See Palin, Bachmann, et al.) Women as Playboy bunnies? It’s 2011. You can take your nostalgia and shove it. A woman having a nervous breakdown to the laughter of audiences everywhere? I already do that every day in real life. (I just laughed out loud.) In conclusion, I’d like to get to a point in television where women can be more than crazy, vengeful, murder-witnessing waitresses babysitting a man-child.
 
Yes. This entire post was merely a lead-in to the phrase “murder-witnessing waitresses babysitting a man-child.” You’re welcome.


Emmy Week 2011: Why Steely Homicide Detective Sarah Linden Is So Refreshing

Mireille Enos as Sarah Linden in The Killing
Guest post by Megan Kearns.
Who killed Rosie Larsen? This is the pivotal question that motivates The Killing. While a murder mystery, the true catalyst of the show resides in the nuanced characters, particularly steely homicide detective Sarah Linden.
Often I lament the gender inequity in films and TV shows, bemoaning their flagrant displays of sexism. Many gendered problems could be solved if movies and series employed more female writers, directors or producers.  Too often, when you have a staff of all white males, that’s what you see on-screen: all white male characters.  That’s what’s so exhilarating about The Killing. Not only does the show boast a predominantly female crew, numerous female characters exist individual and distinct from one another. We see the plot told from a female perspective.
Based on the Danish TV series Forbrydelsen (The Crime), the gritty series premieres with Linden, played superbly by Emmy-nominated Mireille Enos, jogging in the woods. It’s her last day in the Seattle police department as she’s moving with her son, Jack, to marry her fiancé in California. But she gets pulled back in to her work in homicide by the murder of teenager Rosie Larsen.
Unlike many other crime shows, the plot continually shifts from the murder investigation to Detective Linden’s home life to how Rosie’s family handles their grief to a local mayoral campaign. Through the unfolding case, we see how grief affects each of the characters differently. Raising themes of misogyny, racism and xenophobia, the show uniquely focuses on how a tragedy affects a family and ultimately how those ripples affect a community.
Linden’s stoic and quiet reserve yields a driven detective. She pensively surveys crime scenes, taking it all in, absorbing every detail. When questioning witnesses, she isn’t typically brash or bold, preferring a subtle approach. When her partner Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman) brags about finding the potential crime scene “the cage,” Linden warns him, “Assumptions are your enemy.” Holder acts impulsively, while Linden remains cool and clear-headed. Yet we learn she possesses a tendency to compulsively obsess over cases, letting them consume and unhinge her life, even to the point of jeopardizing custody of her son. 
While I revere clever dialogue in a film or TV show, an adept actor reveals a character’s inner thoughts and emotions through their body language and facial expressions; never having to utter a word. Enos does this superbly, a testament to her acting abilities. She revealed in an AMC interview that her character’s silence is what she enjoys most:

It’s kind of my favorite part of this role — how much of this story is told just through Sarah thinking and letting the audience sit with her in her thoughts.

Seeing the case unfold from Linden’s perspective is a welcome change. When asked if there’s a difference stylistically in the shows that are run by women, Emmy-nominated Veena Sud, executive producer, writer and showrunner of The Killing, said: 

The female leads are very human and very real and very flawed, yet are good cops. Maybe that’s the difference: women are interested in creating real female leads.

I’m thrilled to see a fully formed, realistic female role. The role isn’t groundbreaking, following in the footsteps of the stellar Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect, The Closer, Saving Grace, Cold Case, Rizzoli & Isles, Cagney & Lacey. All of these shows’ characters face difficulties: sexism, hostile work environments, alcoholism, strained personal relationships due to their demanding careers. But Linden is unique in that she’s a single mother. 

Throughout the series, we witness Linden struggling to juggle her consuming career with her role as a mom. In one scene, Linden has to leave a crime scene to fetch Jack from school after he’s kicked out for smoking. In another scene, Linden looks crushed when Jack complains that she cares more about the murdered victims than him. In another episode, she talks about how she yearns for him to be happy again, hoping the remedy lies in a “better life” in California. We alternately see her disciplining and guiding him, all with a rough tenderness. 
In the fantastic episode, “The Missing,” we see Linden’s insecurities about how her troubled childhood might affect her parenting abilities when her son goes missing. Actor Enos drew on her own experiences as a mother to enhance her character’s role, particularly her character’s empathy for Mitch Larsen, Rosie’s grief-stricken mother, played by the perpetually badass Michelle Forbes, in a devastating performance.
Single mothers are common in TV shows: Gilmore Girls, Murphy Brown, Sex and the City, New Adventures of Old Christine. While many laud the sacrifices single mothers make, they simultaneously face criticism in our society. Asshats Bill O’Reilly and Mike Huckabee condemned celebs Jennifer Anniston, for saying women don’t need a man to be a parent (damn right they don’t), and Natalie Portman, for getting pregnant out of wedlock (oh gasp, the horror!). Several months ago, two single African-American moms were arrested for sending their children to school districts they didn’t live in to have a better education. 
Many single mothers are blamed at best, vilified at worst. So it’s refreshing to watch a TV show, particularly a crime drama, where the lead character is an accomplished single mom striving to keep her son out of trouble all while maintaining her demanding career.   
Linden’s unyielding dedication to her job strains her romantic relationship as well. Initially, her fiancé Rick doesn’t make her choose between her job and their relationship. Exasperated, he waits for her to wrap up the case as she’s supposed to have already joined him in California. SPOILER!! -> As their relationship begins to crumble, Rick eventually returns to California without her after Linden chooses to stay in Seattle. <-END SPOILER!! It kind of pissed me off because men never seem forced to make this choice. It’s always the woman expected to follow a man, uprooting her life. 
For those of us who lament the lack of female actors, writers and directors and stories told from women’s perspectives, here’s a show containing all those traits. Many reviewers spewed vitriol after the season 1 finale, outraged that we didn’t find out who killed Rosie Larsen. But they’re missing the whole point. Yes, it’s a whodunit. But that’s not the crux of the show; it’s merely the vehicle in which to reveal the characters’ compelling stories. The Killing depicts subtle portrayals of real, flawed women (and men), haunted by their past pain. While interesting male characters exist, the show doesn’t merely revolve around them. Rather it orbits a determined and resolute woman, unrelenting in her pursuit of justice. 
Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World, where she writes about gender in pop culture, sexism in the media, reproductive justice and living vegan. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, and A Safe World for Women. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. Megan lives in Boston with her diva cat and more books than she will probably ever read in her lifetime. 

Megan contributed reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed, !Women Art Revolution, The Kids Are All Right (for our 2011 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), The Reader (for our 2009 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), and Game of Thrones (for our Emmy Week 2011). She was the first writer featured as a Monthly Guest Contributor. 

Emmy Week 2011: Tami Taylor, My Hero

Connie Britton as “Tami Taylor” in Friday Night Lights
If there is one woman in Dillon who stands head and shoulders above them all, it’s Tami Taylor. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem too hard to do. Mothers in Dillon have not been the most successful characters; they were either drunk/druggies (Mama Collette, Vince’s mother, Becky’s mother), absent (Jess’ mother, Mama Riggins, Matt Saracen’s mother), or one-dimensional (abuse victim, religious nut, etc). Is it any wonder, then, that Tami Taylor becomes the go-to woman for many of the “lost children” of Dillon?
But let’s take a step back. Even if she is a three-dimensional beacon in a sea of sub-par parenting, she is not without her faults…I just can’t think of any right now. She yelled at Julie a few times, right? And there was that one time she humiliated her daughter by showing up at the pool, pregnant to the point of bursting…Did she pressure Julie to consider a university far, far away from their home in Texas, just because Tami had gone there?
What we get to see in Tami that we don’t get to see in other “mother” characters (except maybe Mindy Riggins) is the conflict that she feels when deciding on the best course of parenting action. And this conflict is rarely ever expressed in words; instead, it is played out on Tami’s face, which can go from anger, to disappointment, to sympathy and love in the course of one short scene. Tami, from the outside, might seem like the perfect mother, making the job look easy, but Connie Britton conveys to us the difficulty her character faces in her decisions as a parent.
This final season, Tami was put through the ringer. She found out her daughter had been sleeping with her TA (the wordless confrontation between the two of them alone should win her the Emmy). She was confronted with the reality of working at an under-funded, under-privileged high school (sometimes that Southern Charm can only go so far), almost moved to Florida because of a college coaching gig for her husband, and, most importantly, she was confronted with a true and possibly devastating conflict in her marriage. At the same time Eric Taylor was contemplating coaching the united Dillon football team, Tami was offered a job as Dean of Admissions at a fictional college in Philadelphia.
The tension between husband and wife is oftentimes unbearable during the last few episodes of the season. When Tami spits at Eric, “I’m going to say to you what you haven’t had the grace to say to me:
congratulations, Eric” and takes her boots and storms off, my heart was breaking. Here is a woman who for 18 years gave up pieces of herself in the name of their marriage, their family, and her husband’s coaching career. The sacrifices that seemed so effortless throughout our time watching the show finally burst through.
Tami seemed to have limited herself. But, when a new opportunity, an unimagined opportunity presents itself, she allows herself to dream. Eric’s unwillingness to even entertain the dream is all the more insulting because of Tami’s willingness to up and move to Florida if Eric decided to take the college coaching job. When the tables are turned, Eric cannot extend to his wife the same level of respect.
At least not at first. By the end of Eric’s own trials, he sees that, on one hand, he owes it to his wife, and on the other, he loves his wife so much that he ultimately wants to do what will make her happy. It takes their daughter getting engaged–and telling her parents that they are her model–for him to realize that he would never want his daughter to give up her dreams, nor sacrifice as much for her future husband as Tami sacrificed for him (or, at least, that’s how I’d like to read it; maybe it was just all about telling Dillon to F-off). Either way, Tami is seen confidently walking across her new campus, cheerily throwing out her trademark “y’all” to those in the City of Brotherly Love.

Lee Skallerup Bessette has a PhD in Comparative Literature and currently teaches writing in Kentucky. She also blogs at College Ready Writing and the University of Venus. She has two kids, and TV and movies are just about the only thing she has time for outside of her work and family. She also contributed a piece for Mad Men Week at Bitch Flicks called, “Things They Haven’t Seen: Women and Class in Mad Men”  and a review of Friday Night Lights for Emmy Week 2011.

Emmy Week 2011: Friday Night Lights: Deep in the Heart of Texas

Cast of Friday Night Lights
Each woman in Friday Night Lights, like each man in the show, is defined by their relationship to football. Or rather, the town tries to define them by their relationship to the featured football team (either the Dillon Panthers during the first seasons or the East Dillon Lions during the last two). What is and remains fascinating to me is how in the face of this identity pressure, the women are often more successful in redefining themselves than the men.

(I’d have included pictures, but I defy you to find a picture of any of these women on the Internet that doesn’t put them in some sort of come-hither pose that exposes a whole lot of skin. Sigh. These ladies deserve better.)

One of my favorite characters over the final two seasons of Friday Night Lights is Jess Merriweather. She is the eldest daughter of a former football player-turned-restaurant owner, older sister and surrogate mother to two younger brothers, and football lover. When we first meet her, she is a cheerleader for the new East Dillon Lions (and that image of her remains during the final season’s opening credits); one could wonder why we never saw her as a Dillon Panther cheerleader, but it becomes clear that she probably would never have fit in with the Lyla Garrity-types at the old high school.

No, it becomes clear that Jess is only a cheerleader because it is the only legitimate way for her, a girl, to be close to the game she adores. We see her coaching her younger brother, watching the games not in order to find a potential mate but to dissect plays and increase her football IQ. She is a smart, driven young Black woman, trapped between her love of football and the very gendered expectations of the town. When she is given the opportunity to “coach” star quarterback/boyfriend Vince over the summer, she finds her outlet. Unfortunately, once school and the season start up again, she is relegated to the demeaning role of “rally girl.”

The rally girl is a problematic, but all too realistic, role for Jess. She views herself as Vince’s equal, not his servant. The typical role of the rally girl is to do whatever she can to “motivate” the football players to play at their best on Fridays. In fact, the rally girls wear their respective player’s jersey, essentially owned by the player. It also should be noted that the girls get no say in who their player is; the girls randomly pull jerseys out of a box, and the player can barter and trade girls if the price is right (in one case, it’s a prized pig – do with that what you will). For most of the girls, it is an honor to be a rally girl, to be associated with the “star” football players. But that is not what Jess wants anymore from football; residual fame and greatness is no longer enough.

Jess, instead, becomes the equipment manager for the team. She gets a respectable uniform (versus the scantily-clad cheerleaders), access to the locker room, the coach, the sidelines, and the game. Her job is far from glamorous; she cleans jock straps, washes towels, works to prevent staph infections. Of course, this role strains her relationship with Vince; Vince tries to protect her from the ribbing the team subjects her to, while Jess wants to prove she can hold her own, on her own. In fact, it is Coach Taylor, and not the players, who has the most difficulty accepting Jess in her new role.

Jess fights for the respect of the players and Coach Taylor, working hard to be the best equipment manager/future coach she can be. She presents Coach Taylor with a profile of a female high school football coach to prove to him that it can be done. He tries to scare her by laying out her odds for success. Jess’ confidence never wavers, and Coach Taylor, champion of lost causes (see Vince, as well as Tim Riggins and Matt Saracen), is won over. We last see Jess as an equipment manager at her new school in Dallas.

Jess is just one example of the type of strong, well-developed female characters Friday Night Lights has created. The final two seasons also allowed us to get to know Mindy Riggins: older sister to former cast member Tyra Collette, stripper, mother, and wife to Billy Riggins (who was a former Panther star). In the early seasons, Mindy was simply an excuse for Tyra (and the rest of the cast) to visit The Landing Strip, Dillon’s local strip club. Mindy and their pill-popping, boozy mother Angela, were representative of everything Tyra wished to escape. Tyra did, in fact, successfully make it out, attending UT Austin. But what about those who are left behind in the small town of limited possibilities?

Mindy follows what might be seen as a stereotypical small-town girl path: she gets pregnant and gets married. Both she and Billy struggle with paying their bills and finding meaningful employment. But in what could easily have become a caricature of “white trash” existence (drinking, fighting, divorce, abuse) becomes a very real picture of two people trying to make it work in tough economic times. Mindy also steps up and takes Becky under her wing, a girl in whom she sees much of herself. Mindy also has a boozy mother, an absent father, and is left on her own to navigate through life (but more on her in a moment). When Mindy witnesses Becky being abused by her father and step-mother, she steps in (forcing Billy to do the same) and defends Becky. This is an incredible act from someone who, up until this point, saw Becky as competition rather than a sister. Mindy was perhaps the first person who ever stood up for Becky, acting as the advocate she herself probably never had.

This relationship, of course, is not without its problems; Mindy takes Becky and her son to The Landing Strip and even allows Becky to waitress at the club. Stripping (and as an extension, the strippers themselves) are neither glorified nor vilified by the show. In a town where economic opportunities are limited regardless of gender, these women make money the best way they can, using their bodies to pay the rent. There is nothing glamorous or liberating about their jobs, besides the “easy money” that can be made. But that money isn’t as easy as Becky thinks it is. We see Mindy furiously working out in order to get her body back into shape for the job, and even then, she is relegated to the humiliating “lunch shift.” But the women are also treated with dignity, at least within their group. They are far from being victims or victimized; initially, the show seemed to be saying that Mindy was a stripper because she didn’t have a father and her mother was lacking. But during the last two seasons, the strippers move from being symbols of failure to symbols of survival.

Mindy finds a community with the women of The Landing Strip, and a support system that she never had before, finding a place where she can be honest about her past abortion and how it is still impacting her relationships. The ladies from the strip club also take Becky to participate in one of her pageants; when one of the judges criticizes Becky’s choice of “supporters,” Becky clearly chooses her new family over her dreams of winning pageants. I’ll admit that I bawled like a baby during the final episode when Mindy and Becky say goodbye to each other when Becky moves out to live with her mom again. Family, in this show, is who sticks with us through the hard times.

Which brings us to the issue of the abortion. Becky gets pregnant during the fourth season (by a football player, no less), and she does, indeed, go through with having an abortion (some would argue at her mother’s insistence). Initially, the abortion more immediately impacts another character, Tami Taylor, who was at that time vice-principal at Dillon High School (Becky goes to East Dillon). Tami was brought in to counsel Becky when she had no one else to turn to. But while Becky seems to have come through the abortion okay, we learn in the fifth season that she still carries some unresolved feelings about the boy who got her pregnant.

This portrayal of a young girl feeling trapped by a bad situation is handled, to my mind, sensitively and realistically. Becky is not left unaffected by the procedure, nor does she seem permanently and disastrously scarred. Those around her (her mother, the mother of the baby’s father, the community) seem more upset and emotionally reactionary than Becky herself. It also seems that the extreme reactions of those around her affect her more than the abortion itself; it is again only when she confides in the strippers that she gets the level-headed and unconditional support she needs to move past the event. Abortion, it would seem, is not the issue; the hysteria surrounding it is.

These are just three of the complex women of Friday Night Lights. I’ve focused on the final two seasons, as this is the season that is up for an Emmy. One could look at the evolution of Lyla, Julie, Tyra, and other early-season characters, as well as the myriad of “minor” characters who have populated the edges of the show (Maura the rally girl, Epyk the problem child, Vince’s mother, and Devin the lesbian spring to mind). Each one deserves her own essay, devoted to all the ways the show did (and didn’t) do the characters justice.

Lee Skallerup Bessette has a PhD in Comparative Literature and currently teaches writing in Kentucky. She also blogs at College Ready Writing and the University of Venus. She has two kids, and TV and movies are just about the only thing she has time for outside of her work and family. She also contributed a piece for Mad Men Week at Bitch Flicks called, “Things They Haven’t Seen: Women and Class in Mad Men.”



Emmy Week 2011: Mags Bennett: As Wholesome As Apple Pie

Mags Bennett, played by Margo Martindale

After watching the first couple episodes of Justified with me, my good friend asked the question that I ask myself, “Why do you like this show?” See, she knows me and my general dislike of the Western aesthetic: all wide shots and swagger. Add in that it is “inspired” by an Elmore Leonard story, inhabited by his brand of players—full of quirky and amusing dialogue, sure, but too often stuck in caricature—and I should hate this show. But I don’t. This show allows what so few shows do: a full sense of place and the people who inhabit that place. Justified gives us Harlan County, Kentucky in the way that The Wire gave us Baltimore: unflinching, unsentimental, and unapologetic.

That said, it is a male-centric show, depicting a male-centric world. In the first season, our main character, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant, also nominated for an Emmy), spends his time fighting, shooting, justifying his fighting and shooting to his boss, and protecting and bedding pretty blonds. He also spends an entire episode getting back his cowboy hat. The criminal family he battles is Bo Crowder and his boys, and much is made of the complicated power dynamics between men, particularly fathers and sons. One might get weary from all the testosterone (as the one female marshal acknowledges in an early episode).

But in season two, the show gives us Mags Bennett, head of the Bennett clan, a matriarch wielding absolute power (and a ball-peen hammer) over her territory. She sets herself apart from both the women and the men in the show and their prescribed gender roles, inhabiting both enforcer and nurturer, often at the same time. Margo Martindale, a well-lauded stage actor, too often is relegated to the screen margin, playing the supporting roles of gruff nurse (Mercy), sassy neighbor (The Riches) or kindly old friend (Dexter). Martindale admits in a recent interview that a role like “Mags Bennett comes along maybe just once in a lifetime.” But roles like this—multi-faceted, problematic, and compelling—are what we need to see more of on television.

I don’t know what episode was submitted for the Emmy voters (there are plenty to choose from), but let me make my pitch for the first episode. It doesn’t have the flash of her stirring, but duplicitous, speech to the coal mining company trying to buy the town away from the people, or the shock value of her smashing one son’s hand to bits while blaming the other for her actions, or even the tragedy of the final episode. But it does provide the roundest view of the character, an incredible feat for an initial introduction.

In “The Moonshine War,” the audience is first introduced to Mags Bennett and her family’s marijuana empire. We learn of the family feud between the Bennetts and the Givenses, and we see her deal with the widower McCready, who has been stealing small amounts of their stash. We also see Mags’ gentle approach to McCready’s daughter Loretta, who is accosted and abducted by a man working for the Bennetts.

Apple Pie: the symbol of American domesticity, of homegrown goodness, warm and comforting. Mags makes “apple pie” that the entire county admires, but this apple pie is more than it appears to be. It is a symbol of Mags herself. It appears in three distinct scenes, each giving us a glimpse into the complexity of Mags.

Sharing a Slice of History

When she offers it to Raylan, the audience sees it as a peace offering, a moment of communion between two feuding families. As the two recount their shared history, Raylan’s deference to her in the scene is a stark contrast to his interactions with the Crowders. With the Crowders, when Raylan acted with restraint, it was clear that it was out of fear, out of the knowledge that he didn’t hold the power in a given situation. But that didn’t stop him from spouting snarky one-liners. With Mags, Raylan acts not just of out pragmatism, but out of respect. Even as he takes her measure, he addresses her, not as Mags, but as Mrs. Bennett, and is, frankly, polite; it smacks of the Southern gentility that surfaces whenever he interacts with a woman. His gracious acceptance of her apple pie signals to the audience that Mags is a crime-lord of a different sort. When she pulls out the jar, we see her apple pie for what it is: a home-brewed moonshine, and a tasty one at that. But like Mags’ weed, a moonshine named “apple pie” seems innocuous, not the meth or oxycotin that the Crowders dealt.

Pie as Retribution

The apple pie moonshine makes its second appearance in her sit down with McCready (Chris Mulkey), after he has been shot by her boys for stealing and Loretta has made it home safely from her abduction. Again, the moonshine appears to be a communion of sorts, a way for Mags and McCready to admit their sins, ask for each other’s forgiveness, and return to the status quo. And Mags’ speech follows that path, asking after Loretta. She forgives McCready for his stealing, and insists that her son apologize for shooting him and forcing his foot into a trap. Sure, she continues to draw information out of McCready about what he has told the police and what risk he might still pose, but she does so as a benevolent leader. As McCready says all the right things, we watch as both McCready and Mags try to assess the situation and determine what will happen next. Unlike the scene with Raylan, there is no subtle jockeying for power; it is clear that Mags is in control. And it is through her apple pie that she exerts her control. Having poisoned McCready’s glass, she calmly explains to him that his real crime was going outside the family by calling the cops about Loretta’s abductor. She is both terrifying and comforting as she grips his hand as he dies, talking him through the pain and pledging to raise Loretta as her own. She is not a benevolent leader, and her apple pie can longer be seen as innocuous. From this scene on, every time she reaches for a mason jar to pour someone a drink, we question her motives.

Too Young for Pie

Mags and Loretta McCready (the fabulous Kaitlyn Dever) also share a drink in opening scenes of the next episode, and coming on the heels of the apple pie murder, perhaps the audience is supposed to assume that Loretta is a goner too. But, ultimately we know Mags will not kill the girl. Not because she is too kindly or motherly to do so (the season gives us plenty of evidence that Mags can be just as ruthless to her kin as she is to outsiders), but because she longs for something she gave up when she took over the family business. Mags lives in the world of men, and to survive in that world she does what so many strong female characters do—she becomes masculine. Such figures maintain control through fear and violence, they wield weapons and talk of war, and they protect their own at the expense of others. Mags sees Loretta as a possibility for a different way. Having lost her feminine side so long ago, she mistakenly equates femininity with innocence, and struggles to keep Loretta away from the ugly truths.

The audience gets the first glimpse of Mags in this light in “The Moonshine War,” after Loretta comes to see her to atone for her father’s theft. Mags shows real concern for the girl and promises to protect her from the pervert who has accosted her. But she seems even more worried with how Loretta is managing at home, asking her about her father’s ability to take care of her. Mags is upset that Loretta felt that she needed to take control of the household, to grow up before she should have to. As she hands Loretta a handful of candy, she makes it clear that Loretta should relinquish that kind of responsibility to Mags.

In the next episode, the two share a similar, though more emotionally loaded, moment. She pours Loretta a glass of apple cider, explaining that she is a few years away from being able to have Mags’ apple pie. In part this reads as a warning; Loretta might one day need killing. But mostly, this sentiment is Mags shielding the girl from the poison of her world. As Mags fiddles with Loretta’s jewelry and strokes her hair, she lies to Loretta about her father and confesses her desire to have a daughter instead of being stuck with “just those damn boys.” This scene is replayed later in the season as Mags helps Loretta get dressed up for a picnic, explaining to her that there is nothing wrong in looking pretty and that her [Mags’] time for that is long past. It is in her scenes with Loretta that we most clearly see the regret Mags has for what she has had to become, and what she has had to give up to do so.

Molly Brayman studied poetry at the University of Alabama, and teaches composition at the University of Cincinnati. She watches more television than is good for most people, but rationalizes it by presenting regularly at the National Popular Culture Association Conference.

Emmy Week 2011: Here There Be Sexism?: ‘Game of Thrones’ and Gender

I recognize that there’s a difference between displaying sexism because it’s the time period and condoning said sexism. But this IS a fantasy, not history, meaning the writers can imagine any world they wish to create. So why imagine a misogynistic one?

Written by Megan Kearns, cross-posted from The Opinioness of the World

 

When I watched the premiere of Game of Thrones, I almost choked on all the rampant misogyny. I kept watching, lured by the premise and intrigued by the complex plots, curious if things for women would improve. Throughout the first season, which just aired its finale last night, women are raped, beaten, burned and trafficked. I suppose you could chalk it up to the barbarism of medieval times. And I’m sure many will claim that as the show’s defense…or that the men face just as brutal and severe a life. I also recognize that there’s a difference between displaying sexism because it’s the time period and condoning said sexism. But this IS a fantasy, not history, meaning the writers can imagine any world they wish to create. So why imagine a misogynistic one?

 

Based on the best-selling A Song of Fire and Ice series penned by fantasy author George R.R. Martin (who interjected a hefty amount of research into the books, including warfare, swordsmanship and medieval life), Game of Thrones takes place in a medieval land, where kings, queens, lords, ladies, warriors, knights, servants, priests, priestesses and prostitutes all play a role in a political battle of wills. Becoming an overnight sensation, the show dubbed “The Sopranos in Middle Earth,” (or fantasy for people who aren’t really into fantasy) packs every episode with political intrigue, compelling characters, subtle acting, rich dialogue and suspenseful plot twists. These are the reasons I love this complex show. But it’s hard for me to ignore all the sexism. Luckily, a multitude of strong, ferocious women DO inhabit this bleak fantasy world.

One of the most complicated characters, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), the meek, docile sister of her creepy pervo pimping brother, accused of having a “gentle heart,” becomes queen, the Khaleesi of the Dothraki. Watching her transformation into a caring yet steely, powerful queen (from standing up for herself against her douchebag brother Viserys Targaryen to defending women healers in a battle and rallying her people), has been one of the most enjoyable parts of the show for me. While she’s one of my fave characters, massive misogynistic problems still exist with her role. Viserys asks his sister:

Viserys: So tell me, sweet sister, how do we go home?

Daenerys: I don’t know.

Viserys: We go home with an army. With Khal Drogo’s army. I would let his whole tribe fuck you–all 40,000 men and their horses too if that’s what it took.

Oh, rape and sexual exploitation all in one. How fucking lovely. Daenerys falls in love with her husband, who her brother sold her off to, the warrior king Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa). Newsflash, no woman would fall in love with the man her bought and raped her. Doreah, one of Daenerys’ handmaidens, teaches her how to seduce Khal Drogo and gain his respect with her sensuality. Oh, that’s how women earn respect?? Silly me, I forgot about good old stiletto feminism.

 

 

Played spectacularly (if a bit underutilized) by Lena Headey (whom I loved, loved, LOVED in The Sarah Connor Chronicles and was the only redeeming thing about 300), Queen Cersei Lannister is the shrewd, manipulative Queen of the 7 Kingdoms, obsessed with power. A cunning and scheming survivor, she orchestrates political machinations. In the book (which I haven’t read), she’s annoyed by the constraints of her gender which don’t allow her greater political power. She also utters the line to Lord Eddard Stark (Sean Bean) that becomes the title of the show (and first book in the series):

“In the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”

Lady Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley), is the wise and graceful wife to Lord Eddard Stark, mother of the Stark brood. Yet she’s not afraid to speak her mind and help her son strategize and negotiate in battle. Wherever she goes, particularly in the region of the North, she’s revered and respected. She is the one, almost single-handedly, who’s brokered and negotiated every deal which brings all of the clans of the North together, unifying them in war.

Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), daughter of Catelyn and Eddard, differs from many of the depicted women for she only cares about dancing and getting married (at 13?!) as she simpers and worships douchebag Prince Joffrey (Jack Gleeson). But we eventually begin to see a different side of Sansa after she witnesses a horrific tragedy, brought upon by her poor judgment.

My fave gender-bending character, Arya Stark (Maisie Williams), Sansa’s little sister, is a sword-wielding badass…at the age of 11. A feisty tomboy, Arya is spunky, resourceful and outspoken. One of my fave scenes consists of Arya and her father Eddard Stark when she asks him about becoming a leader. He tells her about the man she’ll marry some day and how she’ll give birth to sons who’ll become lords. Refusing to be defined by gender roles or by her relationship to a man, she retorts, “That’s not me.” My only problem is that Arya is still a child, not yet a woman. Too often, films and TV shows are uncomfortable with authoritative women, depicting female empowerment through teens and young girls instead.

One of the rare times the show passes the Bechdel test (and of course it’s debatable if it actually does pass it in this scene as it’s spurred by the illness of Daenerys’ husband Khal Drogo) is in the season finale when Mirri Maz Duur (Mia Soteriou), the enslaved sorceress/healer and Daenerys speak. Daenerys, furious at Mirri Maz, proclaims that she saved her. But Mirri Maz replies that by the time she was “saved,” she’d already been raped by three Dothraki men, her temple burned down, and townspeople she befriended slain. So she questions what exactly Daenerys saved her from? I thought this was an interesting scene depicting the power of perspective. It disappoints me though that when two women talk with one another on-screen, which doesn’t happen very often, the plot usually pits them against one another, a common trope in films and TV shows.

In addition to Mirri Maz, there are other secondary female characters who we don’t know much about (yet): Ros, Armeca and Shae (sex workers); Jhiqui, Irri and Doreah (Daenerys’ handmaidens); Osha (a wilding – person living north of the Wall – and slave of Winterfell); and Septa Mordane (a priestess who sacrifices her life to protect Sansa).

Many of the women navigate the sexist landscape by playing their parts yet asserting themselves when they can by speaking their minds. Although they are quickly put in their place, with a fist or harsh words, if they speak too boldly, reminding them of where they exist on the social ladder. SPOILERS!! –> When Cersei’s son Joffrey becomes king, it seems that she’s finally going to be able to rule, with her son a mere figurehead. But after he flagrantly disobeys her command, calling her (and Sansa) “soft-hearted,” it’s clear who’s in charge here. Despite all of Catelyn’s strategies and bartering, when it comes down to who will lead the army against King’s Landing, all of the clan leaders proclaim her son Robb Stark the “King of the North,” rather than Catelyn the “Queen of the North.” Arya has to go into hiding, as a boy, to evade the wrath of the king. UBER SPOILER!! -> In the penultimate scene in the finale, we see Daenerys burning a funeral pyre. She frees the Dothraki slaves, proclaiming to them and the Dothraki who’ve remained by her side that they will be her new khalasar (band of people) if they swear allegiance to her. A pivotal scene as she becomes the first female ruler of the Dothraki, marking the first time a woman asserts her power and leadership in such an overt manner. In the final scene, after entering the fiery flames, we see Daenerys survive, only to emerge with the three dragon eggs hatched, the three dragons skittering over her body, resting on her hip, ankle and shoulder. While I was thrilled she survived, my elation quickly soured as I realized the actual implication here: that a woman could not be a powerful ruler on her own merit, she had to have supernatural blood course through her veins with monster minions bolstering her power.

I know I’m being hard on the show. Despite its gender problem (and race problem – very few people of color are characters, except for the Dothraki who are depicted as “primitive” and “savage,” a common racist trope) it is absolutely fantastic and amazing. By the 4th episode I was hooked, eager to see what would happen next. But a show so meticulously made of such stellar caliber shouldn’t suffer from so much sexism. I shouldn’t have to overlook excessive misogyny in order to watch TV. The show seems to remain incredibly faithful to its source material. Interestingly, George R.R. Martin wrote the first book, entitled Game of Thrones, from the perspective of 9 different characters (Will of the Night’s Watch, Lord Eddard Stark, Lady Catelyn Stark, Jon Snow, Arya Stark, Sansa Stark, Bran Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen), half from the vantage of the female characters. As delighted as I am with myriad strong heroines, a show devoid of female writers (save for Jane Espenson who co-wrote one episode), directors or producers, can’t help but feel like a testosterone extravaganza.

It would be one thing if the show made a commentary on the sexism that pervades society, a la Mad Men. But that doesn’t appear to be what’s happening here. The women are subjected to misogyny and patriarchy (hmmm…sounds like modern times!). But none of them challenges it, even subversively. When the one female character acts authoritatively, asserting her will and seizing power, she’s diminished by her supernatural powers. Even the women who are bold and strong on the show, except perhaps Daenerys, are tethered to a short leash, ultimately deferential to the more powerful men surrounding them. For a TV show borne of fantasy, it’s time we imagined better. 

Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World, where she writes about gender in pop culture, sexism in the media, reproductive justice and living vegan. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, and A Safe World for Women. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. Megan lives in Boston with her diva cat and more books than she will probably ever read in her lifetime. She contributed reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed, !Women Art Revolution, The Kids Are All Right (for our 2011 Best Picture Nominee Review Series) and The Reader (for our 2009 Best Picture Nominee Review Series). She was the first writer featured as a Monthly Guest Contributor. 

 

Mad Men and the Role of Nostalgia

The cast of Mad Men — aren’t they lovely?
There are two significant moments in Mad Men when nostalgia is overtly discussed. The first comes in season one, episode thirteen (“The Wheel”). Don/Dick has just learned that his brother committed suicide, and he brings his feelings about his own past—particularly his strong desire to construct a past that erases the Whitmans—to sell a product. In a pitch to Kodak, for a campaign to sell a storage device that holds slides and allows you to click through them, he says, 

Technology is a glittering lure, but there’s the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product. My first job, I was in house at a fur company with this old pro copywriter–a Greek, named Teddy. Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is “new.” It creates an itch. You simply put your product in there   as a kind of calamine lotion. But he also talked about a deeper bond with the product: nostalgia.  It’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved. 

It’s a lovely pitch (which sends Harry, who was recently kicked out of his home for cheating, out of the room in tears) and an effective one: Don seals the deal. (Watch the clip here.)
In season four, episode six (“Waldorf Stories”), Don–drunk on booze and ego after his CLIO award win–recycles his “nostalgia pitch” for Life Cereal and the proposed “Eat Life by the bowlful” campaign. 

But I keep thinking about, you know, nostalgia. How you remember something in the past and it feels good, but it’s a little bit painful. Like when you were a kid. 

One can surmise, if at all familiar with Don’s state of mind and lifestyle at this point, that this pitch doesn’t go as well. The meeting is a mess, and Don inadvertently pitches someone else’s idea as his own. (I couldn’t find this clip available online.)
These are two brilliant, meta moments in a show that is, in some ways, all about nostalgia. If we think of the show itself as a product, it works on both levels described in Don’s eloquent pitch. For viewers who didn’t live through the sixties, the show provides a uniquely detailed window on an era we never experienced and may only vaguely know, and the culture has produced plenty of “calamine lotion” for this group. For those who lived through the sixties, the show itself can be the Kodak carousel–taking viewers to that place they may ache to go again: their own past. 
Surfaces are everything in Mad Men. In response to Mad Men’s critical and popular success, Brooks Brothers and Banana Republic have launched “Mad Men” clothing collections, so you can dress like Don or Betty. If you’re a woman with curves, you can buy the “Mad Men-inspired” bra to “banish those unsightly bulges” (not that the model pictured has bulges anywhere). You can style your hair like the characters of Mad Men and go retro. You can serve Mad Men-inspired cocktails or have an entire Mad Men-themed party (if you’re a guest, you can buy the host a Mad Men-inspired gift). If it’s the interiors that excite you, Woman’s Day magazine–which finds “the show’s visuals even more spectacular than its storylines”–will help you out with its “Mad Men-Inspired Home Decor,” and if you have money to burn, you can buy CB2’s Draper Sofa. If you’re the bookish type, here’s a Mad Men-Inspired Summer Reading List. If you really can’t get enough of the era, tune in this fall to The Playboy Club or Pan-Am.
The above barely scratches the surface of the cultural and commercial impact of Mad Men. You could virtually live your life as a Mad Men character. But why?
A major theme in Mad Men is gender, and it is one of the few shows on television that overtly critiques institutionalized sexism—and we can even, justly, call the show feminist. Here’s what I fear may also be happening: in a culture that claims to be post-feminist, post-ironic, and even post-racial, in which social justice movements lack unity, and even many educated people believe women have achieved “enough” equality (enough, at least, to no longer fight for our basic rights like access to health care and equal pay), aren’t people also maybe a little bit, even unconsciously, nostalgic for a time of clearer definitions? While I would never argue that anyone would want to return to gender and/or racial dynamics of the early 1960s, shouldn’t we attribute at least some of the show’s success to the conservative desire to ‘return to a simpler time?’ Is it not possible that we have an unconscious (or even subconscious) desire to return to a place where we can clearly point to a behavior and call it like it is: Sexist. Racist. Homophobic. Wrong.
In a culture where third-wave conflicts with second wave, where there is a conservative-led war on women’s access to health care and bodily autonomy that the liberal party largely ignores, in which the celebrity status of a couple of female politicians (who happen to hold extremely regressive positions on issues affecting women) passes as achievement of gender equality, in which women have suffered greatly in a recession dubbed the “Mancession” by media, wouldn’t it be nice if things were a bit clearer? Doesn’t our society wish we could call it in real life like we call it on that show? And don’t we also enjoy that feeling of superiority–that we’re oh-so enlightened compared to the barbarous behavior of those characters–when in reality things haven’t changed as much as we’d like to think? 
In a show that quietly argues that sexism and misogyny severely harm women and men, what do we make of all the damn cultural imitation? Where and how do we draw the line between admiring and desiring the surfaces (the clothes, the decor, the general air of coolness), and wanting what’s underneath?

Mad Women: The Secretaries in Mad Men

This cross-post originally appeared at Fem Threads.
Allison didn’t last long, but managed to
throw something at Don on the way out.
Ed. Note: This post is part of FemThread’s “Mad Women” series. We also write about Joan, Peggy and Betty. Enjoy! –TC
It was a code of Don’s from the very first episode of Season One: Don’t get involved with your secretary. Your daughter’s schoolteacher, clients’ wives, clients themselves (hello, Rachel Mencken!)—these are all fine flings to have, but not the woman posted outside your office. Peggy Olson learned this right away. Jane Siegel was on every other Sterling Cooper male’s radar, yet Don baldly told Ken Cosgrove that he’d never so much as look at a new secretary until they’d managed to last a month on the job.
And then we got to Season Four.
It almost felt as though Matthew Weiner has been building to this story arc since S1E1. We had Peggy, the off-limits secretary who rose to copywriter and Draper protégé, fighting for respect at every turn. At the complete opposite end of the spectrum we had Jane, the seemingly off-limits secretary who flirted her way into the hearts of the boys, out of the good graces of Joan, and finally into the heart (well, sort of) and home of Roger Sterling.
In the characters of Allison and Megan, we see flashes of both Peggy and Jane—Secretary 2.0. Allison was shut out of the Jane path by Don—although Allison’s affection for Don was genuine and idealistic until after the Christmas party fiasco; she was never as calculatingly feminine as Jane. Following the humiliation of being treated essentially as an office prostitute by Don, Allison does her best to cope, remaining in touch with her own complicated feelings and emotions only to have them shot down by Peggy, who’s channeling her inner Draper. Realizing the damage she’s doing to herself staying in Don’s SCDP, Allison seizes control of her life and makes the move to the “women’s magazine.”
Jane seemed like she always wanted to end up here.
I’m not sure this decision got the attention it deserved. Peggy and Faye have thus far been the poster children for the women’s movement, while Allison was written as a bit of a weepy yes-sir type. For her, of all people, to break out of the mold and stand up to Don and his asshattery (hurling the most succinct condemnation ever at him in the process: “I don’t say this easily, but you’re not a good person!”) is quite something. Plus, she got to throw an ashtray and break things on her way out. Nice!
The departure of budding feminist Allison eventually (rest in peace, Miss Blankenship) brings us to Megan, the Montreal beauty with the unfortunate teeth (although truth be told, I never noticed anything awry with her teeth until a male friend of mine pointed it out). Megan, who is taking the Jane route while apparently wanting more to do with the Peggy route. Megan, who hasn’t yet seen Don at his worst (as Peggy and Allison have), and loves the man she thinks he is and could be—and yes, I do think she’s in love with him (at least, the version of him that she’s familiar with). She seemed to genuinely enjoy being part of his life on the California trip, but from that slight look of panic in her eyes when Don proposed, she also knew (unlike Don) that vacation is vacation and that once the trip ended things should have gone back to normal. After all, Megan had already flatly stated before their first tryst that she separates work and personal life.
What does the future have in store for Megan?
Only Season Five will tell.
How could she say no, though? She’ll have financial security and, doubtless, job security as well–I don’t think Megan will be a stay-at-home wife. She’ll be with a man she thinks she loves, and that she’s been interested in for an eternity. If it weren’t so utterly warped (poor Faye!), this story could be a fairy tale.
And for his part, Don Draper will be with a woman who’s great with kids (she likes being around children! How strange for a Mad Men character…), fluent in French, attentive to everything (the Clio thanks her), humble (self-deprecating to a fault, actually), young, attractive…frankly, Megan might be too good for Don. The power dynamic between the two is a bit uncomfortable to watch, and I’m not sure what will happen should Megan discover Don cheating on her (as you know he will).
But then, there’s always the chance that Megan is in fact the most calculating of all the aforementioned women, playing a part to the hilt to get exactly what she wants—in which case she’d be the female Don Draper. Season Five just got a lot more interesting.







Ivy Ashe is thrilled to have moved on to the world of blogging after spending the past several months finishing a master’s thesis. When not working as a photojournalist for the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette, she spends an inordinate amount of time mapping out road trips she will probably never take and keeping track of Boston sports teams. Ivy is currently on a quest to own a pair of pants in every color in the Crayola No. 24 box.