Sexism and Sexuality in the Streaming World

Home , Stranger Things

Sneha Dayanand1 Prakruthi H.N. 2 Sneha Dayanand is a Research Scholar who is pursuing her Ph.D. under the guidance of Dr. Prakruthi H.N., Jain (Deemed-to-be University)

Abstract The online streaming revolution has broken down several barriers as opposed to the conventional Cable Television industry. Not only are the available shows diverse in nature, but the streaming sites offer the viewer- the freedom to pick and choose the time to watch the shows, or access them on-the-go; and also choose their preferred genre of content. Visual media plays a significant role in people’s lives and helps shape ideas about various social, cultural, political and economic issues. These media texts are interspersed with messages that reach audiences world over, which create varied perceptions about the world. Sexuality and gender are two aspects that are entrenched in visual media. And, with the advent of the television shows after the 1950s, sex was catered right into the living rooms. This is not a mere reference to nudity or intercourse. Instead, it is a careful investigation of the subtle nuances, that depict the human body according to the tastes of the respective genders. This paper is an attempt to explore the ways in which, the creators of the two popular Web Series have addressed issues of sexism and sexuality. The first show being Stranger Things created by Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer; and One Day at a Time created by Gloria Calderon Kellett and Mike Royce.

Key Terms: Male gaze vs Female Gaze, Sexism and harassment in the work place, Sexuality and Peer Pressure.

Male Gaze Vs Female Gaze: According to Laura Mulvey cinematic texts are written along lines that concur with the cultural subconscious. These texts are essentially patriarchal in nature. She argues that the popularity of Hollywood films and tv shows is based on pre-existing social patterns which fascinates and molds the viewer in question. In her essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", Mulvey contends that Hollywood narratives use women in order to provide a pleasurable visual experience for men. She draws on Freud’s Scopophilia, which involves the sexual pleasure of watching and even controlling someone under one’s gaze. This voyeuristic gaze was specifically a reference to a heterosexual male watching a female. Assuming the language of psychoanalysis, Mulvey argued that traditional commercial cinemas respond to a deep-seated drive of scopophilia, and also that most popular movies are created in ways which satisfy masculine scopophilia. In Strangers Things, the characters of Steve Harrington and Billy are the quintessential, attractive, high school “Jocks”. Owing to the show’s portrayal of the US in the 1970s, the characters are similarly styled and dressed. Both of these characters are womanizers. They chase down the opposite sex like it’s a quest. In Season 1, Steve Harrington takes it as a challenge to go after the character of Nancy Wheeler- an equally attractive, introverted and studious girl. While on the other hand the character of Billy considers the girls of the town inadequate and beneath him. In fact, he tries to woo Mrs. Karen Wheeler- a married woman and a mother of three. Both these characters not only objectify women visually, but they see any favourable response from the women as a conquest over the opposite gender. Cinematography too is done in a way that objectifies these characters visually. Both the characters of Nancy and Karen are seen as mere sexual beings that arouse desire in their male counter parts. What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance. -Budd Boetticher Time and again, (and unsurprisingly) Hollywood has proved this statement by constructing stereotypical roles for women. For instance, in the first season of Stranger Things, a male character, portrayed on the sidelines named Jonathan Byers is brought into focus. This introverted-amateur- high school photographer is caught taking photos of Nancy Wheeler in her private moments. The lens of the camera becomes the audience’s eyes; therefore, the viewers of the show too are participants of this voyeurism. Steve Harrington, becomes territorial about Nancy and confronts Byers,

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© 2020 IJRAR February 2020, Volume 7, Issue 1 www.ijrar.org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138) while Nancy does not. The first thing that needs to be considered, is that Steve asserts his ownership over Nancy by bullying Jonathan. Also, it is baffling as to why an emancipated character like Nancy’s, fails to challenge this sort of voyeuristic predatory behaviour, instead ends up falling in love with Jonathan. The show also offers an example of the “female gaze”. We see the characters judging Karen Wheeler living her seemingly perfect cul-de-sac life, while in fact she feels isolated and lonely in a loveless marriage. Similarly, after the disappearance of Will Byers his mother Joyce struggles to convince the police that her son is still alive, so as to not come across like a failed single mother. After her friend Barbara’s disappearance, Nancy gets insulted by the police, while trying to persuade them that Barb hasn’t run away but has been kidnapped. The experiences of the female characters on Stranger Things, serves as a reminder that even for the strongest and the most resourceful of women, the struggle doesn’t lie in destroying the monster; it lies in convincing the men around them to believe what they are saying. Similarly, on the show One Day at a Time, the audience does not get to witness the fact that the character of Penelope is a war veteran; and her deployment is not shown on screen despite the fact that her PTSD is a major part of the narrative. Her mother Lydia, loses her sister during Castro’s regime, this is not in the visual narrative as well. Instead the audience witnesses these complex female characters and their predicaments through their own narration and through their own perspective. So, is there a female gaze? Definitely; handsome men are abundant in cinema. But it can be argued that there is no direct ‘female equivalent’ of the ‘male gaze’. The male gaze creates a power imbalance and weakens the female perspective. The close-up angles of men with chiseled abs aren’t considered to be the objects of interest for the female gaze. According to Jill Solloway, the “female gaze” isn’t about asserting female dominance on-screen. That’s because the male gaze isn’t all about objectifying women’s physical appearance. Male gaze is a way to explain how limited male view is, and how the rest of the characters are created mainly to serve him, his interests, and his presence in the storyline. Therefore, it can be stated, that the female gaze is really about using the presence of a female perspective on screen, in order to emphasize the story’s emotions and characters through her view. If the male gaze is mainly about what men see, then the female gaze is about making the audience feel what women see and experience. Sexism and harassment: Above the Law, an online legal news platform recently published an article titled, "The Next CEO Of Wells Fargo Will Be A Female…Human Shield" subtitled, “Giving the worst job in American banking to a woman is the wrong way to make history.” Firstly, the article is flawed on multiple levels. The author’s male chauvinism seeps through, questioning the ability of women to bring about radical change in a crumbling financial institution. Here is a quotation from the article, What we’re saying is that Wells Fargo’s nakedly performative hunger to put a female in charge of the bank right now is very bad for women because the CEO job at Wells Fargo is an unprecedentedly terrible job destined to crush the reputation and soul of whoever takes it. Having a woman in any high-ranking job is still a paradigm shifting event. So, her failure is looked at as the failure of the entire gender. This needs to stop, because men too attempt to fix irreparable things and fail, doesn’t mean that their incompetence represents that of the entire male population. Unfortunately, many researches have concluded that women are less ambitious than men; their supporting claims are that women don’t ask for salary hikes and promotions. But the fact that men refuse to relinquish control to an equally qualified female is completely ignored, and if she is assertive about her position and authority, she is labelled ‘power hungry’. Gloria Feldt, the Cofounder and President of Take the Lead, a leadership training program, remarks that the males see power as something finite, and seeking it has always been considered a male trait. But she puts forth the idea that power is infinite, and women being collaborative workers, need to look at it that way. Instead of looking at power as something that one asserts over someone, it is healthier for everyone to associate it with the ability to innovate, create and develop. For anyone who thinks women lack ambition, it isn’t so. Since women are culturally trained to prioritise their domestic life and not their professional aspirations, there is a significant gap in power, pay and leadership positions. Young Women's Trust CEO Dr. Carole Easton said in a statement to Newsweek, that young women do not lack ambition. But they are historically held back by employers who – knowingly or unknowingly discriminate against them. Employers making reckless and sexist remarks like “women come to work because they are bored at home” doesn't help the cause. Such discriminatory practices are vividly portrayed on both the shows. The first scenario is portrayed in the third season of Stranger Things, where we see Nancy Wheeler and her boyfriend Jonathan Byers interning at the local newspaper in Hawkins, Indiana. Jonathan is excelling in his profession as a photographer, Nancy is shown struggling in her role as a journalist. She is working in a male dominated office, where

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© 2020 IJRAR February 2020, Volume 7, Issue 1 www.ijrar.org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138) her opinions are undermined, and her ideas are constantly disregarded. Instead she is asked to do menial chores which ends up deflating her spirits. In spite of the fact that the show is set in the 1980s, the same gender issues exist in workplaces like newsrooms, even to this day. The child artists on these shows are expected to perform exceptionally on screen, and media never fails to glorify their acting skills. But the problem arises when these child actors who are no more than 15, are begun to be seen as adults and sexualised accordingly. What’s remarkable is that, these young actors are standing up for themselves and addressing these issues openly. The 14-year old Finn Wolfhard who plays the character of Mike Wheeler, called out these propositions towards minors as being ‘vile’ and ‘vulgar’. On One Day at a Time, the audience is confronted with the issues of casual sexism and gender-based wage gap. In the first season, during a staff meeting, the character of Penelope, a nurse and an aspiring doctor, proposes implementing a strategy to improve workflow in the office, and is completely shut down by her male-nurse colleague Scott, who continuously interrupts and talks over her. His character represents men who assert their power through micro- aggressions and ‘mansplaining’. What she also realises later in the episode is that, Scott is drawing a higher salary than her, in spite of being a new recruit. Although, she does find a solution to her problems by confronting her employer. Another issue addressed on the show is that of sexual harassment. During the second episode of the third season, the character of Elena, who is fiercely feminist and openly gay, reveals that she was sexually harassed while out with her significant other Syd (portrayed as a non-binary character by Sheridan Pierce). And Elena’s mother Penelope finally opens up to her family about the time, her superior in the army tried to grope her and proposed sex. What’s diabolical is that, after reporting the incident, she is asked to keep quiet so as not to get a reputation of being the ‘woman who got molested.’ Penelope laments how women are in a lose-lose situation: She quotes, “If you don’t say something, you carry it around inside. If you do say something, you carry it around outside.” Hearing about these incidents is an eye-opener for her son Alex who had behaved inappropriately with his girlfriend, and had put up a caption on his Instagram page,"I've got hoes in different area codes." He initially dismissed all this as a joke but after hearing his own mother’s foul experience, he realizes that his actions can have far-reaching consequences. Lydia, the matriarch on the show, had encouraged Alex to continue pursuing his girlfriend Chloe after she rejected him, she learns that her old-school notion of "every no is a disguised yes" will not be tolerated anymore. This point is driven home by the character Elena when she calls her grandmother ‘an unintentional enabler of toxic masculinity.’ Sexuality and Peer pressure: The next issue explored in this paper is that of peer pressure among teenagers. Many parents are of the opinion that adolescents are pressured into engaging in sexual activity by their peers. Several researches over that years lean towards the fact that, it was the perception of their peers’ activity that had great influence on teens, followed by their own perceptions of what their peers would think. Whereas, peer pressure itself appeared to have the least influence over them. In a teenagers’ circle of friends, their interests and dress sense links them to a subgroup which has meaning within the setting of their school or their neighbourhood. There are certain demands within this setting to conform to the norms followed by the group, as well as to demonstrate loyalty to the other group members. Hence, peer pressure become the price of a clique’s membership. Peer pressure doesn’t necessarily have to mean that an individual is harassed into doing something. It can also be the indirect influence one is under, trying to fit into an idealised image created by another individual or group. Substance abuse is one such result of peer influence. In a research conducted by Rory Kramer and Elizabeth Vaquera, on drug abuse and peer pressure, it has come to light that teenagers who are a part of large social networks, are significantly more likely to participate in high risk activities like alcohol consumption, cigarette and marijuana smoking, and unsafe sex. This is because popular culture has, for a long time represented cool adolescents to be the ones who smoke and binge on liquor. Whereas, adolescents who are socially isolated are protected from such risky behaviour to some extent. There are a few instances from the two shows which validate these points. In the first season of Stranger Things, the characters of Nancy and Barbara, weren’t the most popular kids in high school, but they weren’t entirely uncool either. Coming from a large family Nancy craved for attention that her parents were unable to provide. Therefore, they pretty much hovered insignificantly in the sidelines of the group, status-wise. That changed when Steve, who had always been the hunk of Hawkins High School, took interest in Nancy; and Nancy in the hope of climbing the social ladder grabbed this opportunity. At Steve’s house party, Nancy, in spite of being under age, willingly comes forward to consume beer, while the popular kids cheered her on. She even urges her friend Barbara to do the same, who does so reluctantly and

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© 2020 IJRAR February 2020, Volume 7, Issue 1 www.ijrar.org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138) in the process injures herself. Barbara later, tries to dissuade Nancy from being sexually intimate with Steve in her inebriated condition, but gets turned away. In episode six of the second season, Nancy and Jonathan are shown drinking with a reporter, who urges them to continue drinking. This seems to be done in order to signify that their roles have changed to that of adults, as they are trying to unearth the reason for the havoc that’s been unleashed on their town. Nevertheless, it is one thing to portray the peer pressure these teenagers are under. But it is highly ill-advised to show them drinking under the supervision and persuasion of an adult. Talking about peer pressure in terms of sex and consent, there is a noteworthy example on One Day at a Time. In the second episode of the third season, the character Alex puts up a photo on a social media website, where he is grabbing his girlfriend’s breast. When confronted by his family regarding his sleezy behaviour, Alex shrugs it off saying, he did it to make his friends laugh, and it was not such a big deal. The moment of learning for him was when his sister Elena shares being harassed by some perverted men, while out with her girlfriend. Their mother Penelope also talks about how tricky consent can be for men, and feels sorry for them. But Elena makes it clear, that first and foremost, men shouldn’t hound women, no means no, and a reluctant yes doesn’t mean an enthusiastic yes. She also tells her family how women shouldn’t feel guilty and blame themselves if they are harassed or abused; because men will never take responsibility for their actions as long as women are doing it for them. This was an eye opener episode in premise of the ‘Me Too’ movement. Lydia, the matriarch of the family is unknowingly objectifying her own family. She tries to coerce not only her daughter to apply make-up, but also her granddaughter Elena. For her, making up oneself is to be desirable to the opposite sex. She thinks it would make Elena seem friendly and approachable. During a later season, she thinks ‘turning gay’ and standing up for a cause has made Elena angry. So unfortunately, peer pressure is not only present outside among peers, this sort of pressure to look and act like the rest is present inside homes too. With this paper I conclude by saying that contemporary social issues related to sex and gender need to be taken into consideration, and talked about. If consumption of informative shows on streaming sites increases, content creators will be compelled to produce gender neutral and politically correct content.

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Lehman, Shereen. “Perceived Norms Influence Teen Sex Activity More than Peer Pressure.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 24 Sept. 2014, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-psychology-teen-sex/perceived-norms-influence- teen-sex-activity-more-than-peer-pressure-idUSKCN0HJ22G20140924. Reed, Mark D., and Pamela Wilcox Rountree. “Peer Pressure and Adolescent Substance Use.” Journal of Quantitative Criminology, vol. 13, no. 2, 1997, pp. 143–180. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23366028. Kramer, Rory A., and Elizabeth Vaquera. “Who Is Really Doing It? Peer Embeddedness and Substance Use During Adolescence.” Sociological Perspectives, vol. 54, no. 1, 2011, pp. 37–58. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/sop.2011.54.1.37.

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