WOMEN AS TELEVISION TALK HOSTS: GENDER MAKERS OR GENDER BREAKERS? by Paula M. Kramer // A Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree - Master of Communication College of Fine Arts and Communication UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN Stevens Point, Wisconsin May 1995 FORMD Report on Oral Defense of Thesis TITLE: Wanen as Television Talk Shaw Hosts: C',euder Makers or Gender Breakers? AUTHOR: Paula M. Kramer Having heard an oral defense of the above thesis, the Advisory Committee: -X-A) Finds the defense of the thesis to be satisfactory and accepts the thesis as submitted, subject to the following recommendation(s), if any: __B) Find:S the defense of the thesis to be unsatisfactory and recommends that the defense of the thesis be rescheduled contingent upon: Date: April 26. 1995 C~!l}mittee: i \ , /",. ,,. c v/,1 ..:..';,:, ;rJ Pt75>f::: ~~Ill, /99·,:z,F , r..Y /(7.? ABSTRACT Despite the gains women have made in the last several hundred years, patriarchy continues-in this country. It continues because gender ideology - beliefs about men and women - changes enough to adapt to changing times while maintaining male privilege. The gender ideology that supports patriarchy continues because both men and women participate in keeping it going. Television has ·become an ess~ntial element of our culture. Therefore, it is an essential element for transmitting gender ideology and maintaining patriarchy. The women wko are on television as talk show hosts hold positions of social power. When they use their power to support gender ideology, they are helping to maintain patriarchy at the expense of the women they are supposedly helping. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to Rich llkka for encouraging me to write about Oprah Winfrey from the very beginning of grad school. Thank you to Mark Tolstedt for helping me write the thesis I wanted to write, and for being patient with me. Thank you to Bill Deering and Leslie Midkiff Debauche for all of their encouragement along the way. And thanks to my daughter, Chrislyn, for respecting my need to write. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 Ideology and Hegemony 2 Gender as an Element of Patriarchal Ideology 4 Women's Participation in Gender Ideology 5 The Function of Television 6 Television as an Element in Ideology and Hegemony 10 CHAPTER ONE -THEORijTICAL CONTEXT 12 The Use of Gossip in Defining Women as Deviant 13 Historical Perspective 15 Colonial Period - 1607 to 1770 16 The New Republic -1770 to 1815 18 Growth, Reform, and War - 1815 to 1877 18 Progress, Modernity, and War-1877 to 1920 23 Fortune, Depression, and War - 1920 to 1945 26 Cold War and Civil Rights -1945 to 1975 28 Patterns in Gender Ideology 30 Pattern 1 - Women as Mothers 31 Pattern 2 - Women and their Appearance 31 Pattern 3 - Women as Deviants 32 Pattern 4 - Teenage Girls 32 Current Gender Ideology 33 CHAPTER TWO - GOSSIP, STRUCTURE, AND EXPERTS ON TELEVISION TALK SHOWS 40 Gossip and Talk Shows 40 The Positive and Negative Effects of Gossip 41 ··"•:"·.! The Functions of Gossip 43 The Structure of Television Talk Shows 45 The Meaning of Talk Show Structure for Women 47 Experts on Talk Shows 51 CHAPTER THREE - WOMEN AS TELEVISION TALK SHOW HOSTS 54 Methodology 57 CHAPTER FOUR - WOMEN AS MOTHERS 59 Pattern 1 - Women as Mothers 59 Oprah Winfrey 59 Sally Jessy Raphael 67 Jenny Jones 68 CHAPTER FIVE - WOMEN AND THEIR APPEARANCE 70 Pattern 2 - Women and Their Appearance 70 Oprah Winfrey 71 Sally Jessy Raphael 77 Jenny Jones 78 CHAPTER SIX- WOMEN AS DEVIANTS 80 Pattern 3 - Women as Deviants 80 Oprah Winfrey 80 Sally Jessy Raphael 91 Jenny Jones 92 CHAPTER SEVEN - TEENAGE GIRLS 93 Pattern 4 - Teenage Girls 93 Oprah Winfrey 93 Sally Jessy Raphael 99 Jenny Jones 101 CONCLUSIONS 103 APPENDIX A - PROGRAM LISTS FOR OPRAH WINFREY 107 APPENDIX B - PROGRAM LISTS FOR SALLY JESSY RAPHAEL 110 APPENDIX C - PROGRAM LISTS FOR JENNY JONES 115 BIBLIOGRAPHY 119 INTRODUCTION An "ideology" is like a god coming down to earth, where it will inhabit a place pervaded by its presence. An "ideology" is like a spirit taking up its abode in a body: it makes that body hop in certain ways; and that same body would have hopped around in different ways had a different ideology happened to inhabit it. Kenneth Burke Language as Symbolic Action 1 Hegemony refers to the process by which dominant groups win consent to their domination... What this means for women is that not only do they generally share a subordinate economic and social position, but the hegemonic process works to ensure that male domination is seen as legitimate. Eileen Green, Sandra Hebron, and Diana Woodward Women's Leisure, What Leisure?2 In patriarchal societies, the dominant ideology is based on beliefs about gender. Gender becomes the mark of supe1iority (masculinity) or inferiority (femininity). What men in power think about women is what women are taught to think about themselves. Men, for example, believe women are too emotional to be able to make rational decisions, so women are taught that men can make better decisions because men are "rational. ,,3 Institutions and people who participate in passing on the ideology of patriarchy are "gender makers." Institutions and people who question the ideology of / patriarchy and who suggest other possibilities are "gender breakers." For centuries / leaders in philosophy, religion, science, education, medicine, law, politics, the military, as well as family members have told women that they are inferior to and need to be 1 Kenneth Burke. Language As Symbolic Action (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989) 59. 2 Eileen Green, Sandra Hebron and Diana Woodward. Women's Leisure, What Leisure? (London: MacMillan Education Ltd., 1990) 29. 3 Sheila Ruth, Issues in Feminism; A First Course jn Women's Studies (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980) 34-55. protected by men. 4 Gender making oppression has been presented as protection to keep women oppressed and justify their oppression. This study looks at women's participation in the continuation of gender ideology, of their participation in hegemony. IDEOLOGY AND HEGEMONY To exist and survive, an ideology requires continuous support throughout a culture. Louis Althusser's theory of cultural overdetermination postulates that the \ institutions of culture - family, education, law, religions, language, mass media, politics, \ etc. - participate in an informal and unspoken network to establish and reinforce social n01ms. 5 The social norms they enforce are the norms that benefit the people in power. Institutions work together to enforce particular social norms while insisting that they are socially neutral. These institutions tell the people they are shaping that they have no interest in elevating one group of people over another, and that they treat all individuals fairly and equally. The subordin~tion of large groups of people is most effective when people participate in their own subordination. 6 This is accomplished by making people believe their subordination is natural rather than cultural, based on fact rather than on manipulation. Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony suggests the importance of ~ I I participation in domination: cultural domination or, more accurately, cultural leadership is not achieved by force or coercion, but is secured through the consent of those it will ultimately subordinate.? 4 Gerda Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past; Placing Women in History (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1979); Linda K. Kerber and Jane De Hart-Mathews, Women's Amiclca· Refocusing the Past. 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford UP, 1987); Sara M. Evans. Born for Liberty (New York: The Free Press, 1989). 5 Louis Althusser, "On Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971 ), cited in Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studjes; An Introduction (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990) 25-27. 6 Marilyn Frye. The PoHtjcs of ReaHty (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1983) 33. 7 Turner 66-67. 2 Thus cultural leaders succeed because masses of people accept the leaders' definitions of culture. When people see themselves according to a definition that is limiting, they then fit themselves into those limitations. While Gramsci suggests participation in domination, Todd Gitlin talces the notion of participation one step further, seeing domination in daily life. Gitlin suggests that hegemony wins the consent of the oppressed "through the elaboration and penetration of ideology into their common sense and everyday practice".8 Ideology is repeatedly expressed through the use of common symbols which direct people to believe and accept certain resolutions to their problems that continue their oppression. The common symbols of everyday life connect and support particular meanings in ways that can become oppressive. Marilyn Frye describes oppression as a system of interrelated barriers and forces which reduce, \ immobilize and mold people who belong to a certain group, and effect their subordination to another group (individually to individuals of the other group, and as a group, to that group.)9 Thus, the oppression of any particular group works through a network of beliefs about that group. For example, many scholars suggest that the dominant ideology in the United States provides gender barriers and forces that effect the subordination of women to men.10 The barriers for women exist in the form of gender roles, the roles that allow men to maintain the patriarchy. These roles include: mother, nurse, maid, prostitute, wife.11 Mothers use the~dme and energy for raising children rather than running businesses and negotiating in politics. Nurses care for men's physical needs, maids care for men's environments, prostitutes satisfy a men's· sexual needs. The traditional role of 8 Todd Gitlin, "Television's Screens: Hegemony in Transition," American Medja and Mass Culture; Left Perspectjves. ed. Donald Lazere (Berkeley: U of California P, 1987) 240. 9 Frye 33.