Empathy and the Female Gaze

In 1975, film theorist Laura Mulvey coined the phrase “the male gaze” to describe film created through the lens of the heterosexual male, “a gaze so ubiquitous in Western media as to be self-explanatory.”1 For example, Westerns in the ‘50s and ‘60s (Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Rawhide) glorified square-jawed sheriffs and cowboys who rounded up bad guys while women played supporting roles, sometimes providing little more than “eye candy” for the males that the networks and advertisers were courting. In television’s infancy, female audiences went along with this—until the pill and seminal books such as Betty Friedan’s

The Feminine Mystique (1963) awakened American women to the fact that they, too, could shape their own destinies. Although there has been much progress, many of the core problems linger.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77) made significant inroads into the way women would be viewed on television going forward, and not just because it featured a career woman in her 30s with no husband; Moore’s own company,

MTM Enterprises, produced the show. And although Mary Richards did occasionally go out on dates, the show was about her life as a newsroom producer. Millions of single women, young and old, identified and empathized

1 with Mary—including an African-American girl who would one day be First Lady of the United States. In an August 2016 interview with Variety, Michelle Obama weighed in on the importance of Moore’s contributions: “[Mary] was one of the few single working women depicted on television at the time… She wasn’t married. She wasn’t looking to get married… I was probably 10 or 11 when I saw that, and sort of started thinking, ‘You know what? Marriage is an option. Having a family is an option. And going to school and getting your education and building your career is another really viable option that can lead to happiness and fulfillment.’”2

In the last 20 years, the success of wildly diverse series from dramedies such as

Sex and the City and Insecure (co-created by Issa Rae and discussed in Chapter

7) to serious dystopian dramas such as The Handmaid’s Tale and Orphan Black, has relied on the empathy of the female gaze. Although Sex and the City

(Darren Star) and Orphan Black (Graeme Manson and John Fawcett) were created by men, women writers are increasingly being given the chance to create and run their own shows, and to deal with aspects of being a woman that in Mary Tyler Moore’s day would have been unmentionable. Lena Dunham

(Girls), Jill Soloway (Transparent, I Love Dick), Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh-

McKenna (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer (Broad City),

2 Amy Sherman-Palladino (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the original Gilmore Girls and its more recent re-boot), Ava DuVernay (Queen Sugar), Melissa Rosenberg

(Jessica Jones), Pamela Adlon (Better Things), Frankie Shaw (SMILF) and Britain’s

Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley), to name just a selection, are calling the shots on shows written, directed and produced from the female perspective. Yet these female-driven shows, although growing in number, sadly remain in the minority.

The industry still has some way to go.

When we watch from the female gaze, the tables are turned and women are on top—in every sense of the word. The character of Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) on Mad Men is a modern look at a 1960s woman who goes through a dramatic arc over the course of the series. She’s a woman in a male workplace who manages to behave as men do by having sex for pleasure versus children and commitment. Moreover, she uses her intelligence and gumption to better the men at their own agency. Late in the series, Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) uses her sexuality to land a partnership at Sterling Cooper Draper Price, seizing an opportunity to negotiate her financial security and independence. She pays the price, however: the loss of respect from both men and women at the firm.

But she’s a struggling single mom in the ‘60s who saw a chance to create a future for her son and herself. From Joan and Peggy’s era to the present-day

3 Queen Sugar and beyond to the near-future dystopia of The Handmaid's Tale, women are forced to make tough choices in order to survive.

In today’s series, we are seeing more women calling the shots and transcending the double standard. The work and potential of creative women and the industry as a whole will continue to evolve after the revelations around #MeToo, which continue to surface. Both on TV and in life, men still make all kinds of assumptions about women, usually based on underestimating them. Some may claim we’re in a post-feminist world, but it’s a world in which women still get paid 80 cents on the dollar, and ageism and—as we sadly know all too well now

—sexism and worse are rife. There’s still a lot of work to be done to redress the balance. In storytelling, the female gaze is one way to present women who increasingly refuse to be defined by their roles in relation to men.

Notes

1 Meredith Blake, “From The Handmaid’s Tale to I Love Dick, the Female Gaze is Thriving on Television,” The Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2017.

2 As quoted by Ted Johnson, “Michelle Obama Interview: How FLOTUS Used Pop Culture Stardom to Make an Impact,” Variety, August 23, 2016. http://variety.com/2016/biz/features/ michelle-obama-interview-first-lady-pop-culture-1201842132.

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