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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Communications THE WORK OF PRIME-TIME POST-RECESSIONARY SEXISM: GENDER AND TELEVISION SITCOMS IN THE POST-RECESSION ERA OF THE 2010s A Dissertation in Mass Communications by Lauren J. DeCarvalho 2013 Lauren J. DeCarvalho Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2013 ii The Dissertation of Lauren J. DeCarvalho was reviewed and approved* by the following: Matthew P. McAllister Professor of Communications Dissertation Co-Advisor Co-Chair of Committee Matthew F. Jordan Associate Professor of Communications Dissertation Co-Advisor Co-Chair of Committee Michelle Rodino-Colocino Associate Professor of Communications Lorraine Dowler Associate Professor of Geography Associate Professor of Women’s Studies Marie Hardin Professor of Communications Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT In the post-recessionary era, we see the emergence of new women-centric sitcoms (and dramedies) that feature elements of economic hardship tied to the anxieties felt by most in our society as a whole. Increasingly, many of these programs have moved away from the traditional workplace-based sitcom toward the work-related sitcom/dramedy, in which the characters are more often in need of work than actually employed. Feminist scholars have argued in the past that workplace sitcoms have been a bastion for more feminist-minded portrayals of career- oriented, independent women (Dow, 196). Newer work-related comedies instead often highlight themes of unstable or insecure employment or organizational status. In many cases, women characters are framed as the most economically unstable, which is a change from previous portrayals. With the move away from workplace-based sitcoms, we see fewer and fewer of these organizationally-stable, often strong, women characters on television. This dissertation investigates these post-recessionary televisual trends concerning women in (and out of) the workplace through the examination of nine situation comedies (and dramedies), spanning nearly 600 episodes in total, from four different networks. The nine programs examined are Community, Parks and Recreation, The Office, 30 Rock (all from NBC), 2 Broke Girls (CBS), Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 (ABC), Enlightened, Girls, and Veep (the latter three from HBO). My study examines how post-recessionary anxiety has given rise to an increasing number of women characters being shown outside of the workplace, or at best struggling to stay afloat in their already-existing, unstable jobs. I argue that with the decline of workplace-based sitcoms and the influx of women-centric, work-related sitcoms, strong women characters and situations where these women can flourish are increasingly being replaced by characters and situations that represent the continued cultural shift to the anxieties and ideologies typical of postfeminism and justified by a post-recession economy. Additionally, my project iv aims to answer, what exactly are the (post)feminist messages being put forth in today’s work- related sitcoms about women (and, by proxy, men) as organizational and economic beings in this post-recession era? To answer this question, although feminist textual analysis is a constant tool throughout the dissertation, I apply different methods to analyze the programs: the application of a “viewing strip” (a concept borrowed from Newcomb and Hirsch, 1983/1994), toward a network in which four related programs in a row aired; the employment of character analysis, toward two comedies that applied the broadest use of humor and archetype characters; and the examination of “paratexts” (a term borrowed from Gray, 2010), in the case of controversial and polarizing programs. In the process of employing these different approaches, I uncovered two separate phenomena regarding portrayals of working women and the critical response to these portrayals. The first phenomenon I have dubbed “Post-Recessionary Sexism.” This term extends Douglas’s (2010) concept of Enlightened Sexism to today’s post-recessionary backdrop and its new manifestations of nuanced sexism and patriarchy, including the trivialization of sexual harassment in the workplace. “The Critical Double Standard” is my label for the second phenomenon. The concept stems from the highly-gendered nature of critic reviews surrounding women protagonists. Together, both Post-Recessionary Sexism and The Critical Double Standard paint a telling picture of how working women of post-recessionary sitcoms (and dramedies) are being portrayed and perceived. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................. ix LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................... x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... xi CHAPTER 1: ‘IS EVERYONE HERE AS TRAPPED AS I AM?’: INTRODUCING THE STUDY OF TELEVISUAL PORTRAYALS OF WORKING WOMEN IN POST-RECESSION COMEDY....................................................................................... 1 A New Dawn for Working Women on Television—But Perhaps a Step Back ............... 1 Metaphorical Trends on Television and the Focus of this Exploration ........................... 4 Project Rationale .............................................................................................................. 6 Organizational Flow of this Research Project .................................................................. 10 CHAPTER 2: CONCEPTUALIZING POSTFEMINISM: BUILDING A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK THROUGH THE HISTORIES OF GENDER ON TV, FEMINIST TV STUDIES, AND DEPICTIONS OF TELEVISUAL FEMINISMS .................................................................................................................... 13 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 13 The History of Gender on TV .......................................................................................... 14 The History of Feminist TV Studies ................................................................................ 16 Changing Times, Changing Focus: From Domestic Dramas to Lifestyle Feminism ...... 18 Liberating the Women of Sitcom ................................................................................ 20 The Containment of Politics: Television’s Depiction of Lifestyle Feminism ............ 21 From Lifestyle Feminism to Postfeminism ...................................................................... 23 Enter Neoliberalism .................................................................................................... 23 The Growth of Postfeminist Television Portrayals... .................................................. 25 Post-Millennial Conceptualizations of, and Scholarly Debates about, Television Postfeminism.. ............................................................................................................ 28 Anxiety about Female Accomplishments and Gains.... .............................................. 33 Division instead of Unity... ......................................................................................... 36 Branding and Consumerism... ..................................................................................... 37 Sexualization and/or Sexual Subjectification... .......................................................... 39 An Anomalous Definition ........................................................................................... 41 Wading through the Muddied Waters of Post-Recessionary Sexism ............................... 43 Concluding Thoughts ........................................................................................................ 44 CHAPTER 3: A FEMINIST INTERVENTION: EMPLOYING FEMINIST TEXTUAL ANALYSIS TO EXAMINE TELEVISUAL DEPICTIONS OF WORK, ECONOMIC VIABILITY, AND POSTFEMINISM .................................................................................... 46 Self-Reflexivity, Activism, and Feminist Methodology .......................................................... 46 Reflecting on Past Research to Inform the Present ........................................................... 46 Employing a Feminist Methodology as a Reification of Feminist Activism .................... 49 vi The Shortcomings of Conventional Textual Analysis ...................................................... 51 A Feminist Intervention toward Textual Analysis ............................................................ 53 Analyzing Postfeminist Sitcoms through the Use of a Feminist Methodology ................ 56 A Few Concluding Thoughts on Post-Feminist Media Culture ........................................ 60 Methodological Details ............................................................................................................ 61 A Summary of My Texts .................................................................................................. 61 My Project Rationale ........................................................................................................ 63 Methodological Techniques .............................................................................................. 64 Concluding Thoughts ..............................................................................................................