NARRATIVES / AESTHETICS / CRITICISM SHONDA RHIMES’S TGIT: REPRESENTATION OF WOMANHOOD AND BLACKNESS MARTA ROCCHI, ELISA FARINACCI Name Marta Rocchi ABSTRACT Academic centre Università di Bologna, Italy For the first time in television history, Shonda Rhimes, a E-mail address [email protected] Black female showrunner, obtained an entire prime time programming block on American broadcast television. She Name Elisa Farinacci has been recognized as one of the most successful and Academic centre Università di Bologna, Italy influential TV showrunners and her shows are celebrated E-mail address [email protected] for promoting a strong feminist agenda that tends towards equality regardless of gender, race, class, religious belief or sexual orientation. Concentrating on ABC’s prime time KEYWORDS night “Thank God It’s Thursday”, our analysis focuses on Shonda Rhimes; TV series; blackness; womanhood; Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, 2005-), How to Get Away with Murder post-feminism. (ABC, 2014-) and Scandal (ABC, 2012-2018), respectively a medical, a legal and a political drama. The main goal of the paper is to propose a hybrid methodology to investigate which aesthetics, identities and relationships of race and womanhood are represented in these three case studies. 29 SERIES VOLUME VI, Nº 1, SUMMER 2020: 29-42 DOI https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2421-454X/10454 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TV SERIAL NARRATIVES ISSN 2421-454X NARRATIVES / AESTHETICS / CRITICISM > MARTA ROCCHI, ELISA FARINACCI SHONDA RHIMES’S TGIT: REPRESENTATION OF WOMANHOOD AND BLACKNESS 1. INTRODUCTION 90% of showrunners are White, and almost 80% are male” (Ryan 2016). Conversely, “The Status of Women in the U.S. Concentrating on ABC’s prime time night “Thank God It’s Media 2019” report reveals that during the 2017-18 sea- Thursday”, which features Shonda Rhimes’ Grey’s Anatomy son the number of women and people of color directing (ABC, 2005-), How to Get Away with Murder (ABC, 2014-) and episodes of entertainment TV shows hit a record high for Scandal (ABC, 2012-2018), our paper proposes a novel hybrid a second consecutive year. According to the Directors Guild methodology to investigate which relationships, aesthetics, of America, “Women directed 25 percent of all episodes, a and identities of race and womanhood are represented in rise of 4 percentage points from 2016-17; men directed 75 these three TV series. We chose to focus our analysis on percent. Minorities directed 24 percent of all episodes, a rise Shonda Rhimes’ productions because her shows are celebrat- of 2 percentage points from 2016-17”.1 However, non-White ed for promoting a strong feminist agenda that tends towards female showrunners are still a minority, thus, we decided to equality regardless of gender, race, class, religious belief or explore the production of one of the few successful Black sexual orientation (Kinane 2017). female showrunners: Shonda Rhimes. Within the peak TV era, the offer of audiovisual content Shonda Rhimes is considered one of the most powerful is continuously increasing; in 2019 alone the U.S. scripted women in the world of entertainment and media (Forbes 532 original series (Goldberg 2020). The rapid proliferation 2018). She has won numerous awards and she is the wealthi- of TV series is deeply affecting the contemporary media land- est female showrunner in the U.S. (Berg 2018). In a 2016 TED scape as well as the public consumption of audiovisual con- Talk, Shonda Rhimes in describing her work revealed: tent in mainstream television. This topic has been the focus of scholarly attention since the early 2000s (Desjardins and Three shows in production at a time, sometimes Haralovich 2015), and since then numerous studies have inves- four. The budget for one episode of network televi- tigated how the construction of womanhood and Blackness sion can be anywhere from three to six million dol- has evolved in fictional products (Carson and Llewellyn-Jones lars. Let’s just say five. A new episode made every 2000, Helford 2000, Brooks and Hébert 2006, Akass and nine days, times four shows—so every nine days, McCabe 2006, 2007, McCabe and Akass 2006, 2007, Tasker that’s 20 million dollars’ worth of television. Four and Negra 2007, Holmlund 2010, Holtzman and Sharpe 2014, television programs, 70 hours of TV, three shows Desjardins and Haralovich 2015), in advertising on prime time in production at a time, sometimes four, 16 epi- TV (Mastro and Stern 2003, Collins 2018), as well as in ado- sodes going on at all times. That’s 350 million dol- lescents’ consumption of media content (Brown and Pardun lars a season. My television shows are back to back 2004, Ellithorpe and Bleakley 2016). to back on Thursday night. Around the world, my In this era of TV series abundance, women have had a shows air in 256 territories in 67 languages for an numerically inferior presence in the media industries’ top po- audience of 30 million people (Rhimes 2016). sitions. Considering the latest “Boxed In” report from Lauzen and the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film Her serial products are a worldwide success. In 2017 (Lauzen 2019), overall, women accounted for 31% of indi- Shonda Rhimes signed an estimated $100 million four-year viduals working in key behind-the-scenes positions, which contract with Netflix making history as one of the first show- represents a recent historic high, besting the previous high runners to ink an exclusive deal with this streaming service. of 28% set in 2016-17 (Lauzen 2019: 2). This data is relevant This contract with Netflix is not the first historical turning in as much as across platforms, “programs with at least one point for Shonda Rhimes, in fact, she was the first African woman creator employed substantially greater percentages American showrunner ever (female or male) to obtain an of women in other key behind-the-scenes roles and featured entire prime time programming block of three consecutive more female characters in major and speaking roles than pro- hours (8-11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time) for three differ- grams with exclusively male creators” (Lazen 2019: 4). ent shows in one night which ABC branded “Thank God It’s With regard to racial diversity in the television indus- try, an investigation conducted on 50 showrunners work- 1 “Directors Guild: Count of female, minority TV episode directors hit all-time high”, The Status of Women in the U.S. Media 2019, p. 108. https://tools.womens- ing for the five main American networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, mediacenter.com/page/-/WMCStatusofWomeninUSMedia2019.pdf (last accessed Fox, CW) during the 2016-17 television season “reveals that 28-01-20). 30 SERIES VOLUME VI, Nº 1, SUMMER 2020: 29-42 DOI https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2421-454X/10454 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TV SERIAL NARRATIVES ISSN 2421-454X NARRATIVES / AESTHETICS / CRITICISM > MARTA ROCCHI, ELISA FARINACCI SHONDA RHIMES’S TGIT: REPRESENTATION OF WOMANHOOD AND BLACKNESS Thursday” (TGIT). The serial products of ABC’s prime time er two case studies (Everett 2015: 35). Furthermore, this TV Thursday constitute our corpus of investigation. Through our series reflects Rhimes’ trademark in the form of legal drama: hybrid methodology, in the following sections, we show how, twisted plotlines, endless lies, sex scenes, mad characters, in our cases studies, Rhimes delivers numerous post-feminist, fast dialogues and a leading brilliant woman at the center of it strong, independent, and complex female characters that per- all. It is a successful legal drama that takes place in law firms, sist through the various seasons. In regard to race, the cor- courtrooms, penitentiaries, etc. The characters (lawyers, law pus displays a colour-blind representation of the characters. students, clients, etc.) have to deal not only with a specific Although racial issues are mostly neutralized, the corpus is case in each episode (vertical detection) but also with the dotted with episodes that specifically deal with issues of ra- horizontal detection storyline: the main protagonist Annalise cial inequality and are relegated mostly to the past. Keating,4 with five of her students, becomes entwined in sev- eral murders. The parallel relationship between two distinct plotlines (i.e., vertical and horizontal detection) in How to Get 2. CORPUS OF INVESTIGATION Away with Murder is the most distinctive aspect when com- pared with Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal. In this work, we chose to focus primarily on broadcast televi- Scandal, which has been acclaimed as “the most femi- sion as it still reaches the largest number of television viewers nist show on TV,” featuring “the first Black female lead on (Desjardins and Haralovich 2015), and since 2005 it aired 20 network TV in almost 40 years” (Tanzina 2013), is a political legal dramas (45% created by female showrunners, 45% by drama set in Washington DC that follows the predicaments male and 10% by mixed teams), 58 legal dramas (9% creat- of Olivia Pope,5 a brilliant Afro-American woman who be- ed by female showrunners, 76% by male and 15% by mixed comes one of the most influential and skilled crisis managers teams) and 7 political dramas (29% created by female show- in town. After running, and winning, the presidential cam- runners, 57% by male and 14% by mixed teams). paign of Republican candidate Fitzgerald Grant, she is hired Our corpus of investigation consists of the TGIT trip- as White House Communications Director, a position that tych, the three ShondaLand’s2 dramas are Grey’s Anatomy (a she gives up due to her adulterous romantic relationship with medical drama), How to Get Away with Murder (a legal dra- President Grant. She starts her own practice as crisis manag- ma) and Scandal (a political drama).3 All three TV series fre- er: ‘Olivia Pope and Associates’ where, in each episode (verti- quently dominate the top ten list of shows viewed by African cal detection), she handles the indiscretions of dignitaries and Americans (Nielsen 2015).