Women Watching Television: Gender, Class, and Generation in the American
Television Experience
by Andrea L. Press; University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991
Television's moment of feminism was brief (and equivocal) indeed. If we mean
by "feminism" the fairly explicit representation of women's interests as collective
interests (rooted in gender), rather than the articulation of the rights or abilities of
particular women as individuals, then feminism is practically nonexistent in
television programming of the seventies and eighties. Even some of the most
acknowledged feminist shows -- Mary Tyler Moore, for example, or Cagney and
Lacey -emphasize, in the tradition of our dominant liberal/utilitarian ideology (
Blum 1982 and Press 1986), women's success as isolated individuals
Network controversy over Cagney and Lacey is a good illustration of the
networks' commitment to commercial femininity even when producing a show with
explicitly feminist themes and values. Cagney and Lacey is a cop show centering
around the adventures of two women police officers, Christine Cagney ( Sharon
Gless) and Mary Beth Lacey ( Tyne Daly). It is a rather conventional cop show
except for the fact that the two are women; their sex leads them to combat
problems not normally raised in male police shows such as sexism, their
relationships to their fellow officers, reactions of others to their unorthodox work,
problems with unemployed husbands, the problems of working mothers, and a
series of other issues related to women's lives, even though these crises are often
posed as the problems of individuals rather than of women as a collective group (
Taylor 1989:159).
From the series' beginning in the spring of 1982, CBS found its leading
characters lacking in requisite feminine attributes. When ratings were poor, the
networks blamed the show's feminism: "'Th[e Cagney and Lacey characters] were
too harshly women's lib,' said an unnamed CBS executive in TV Guide , 'too tough,
too hard, and not feminine. The American public doesn't respond to the bra
burners, the fighters, the women who insist on calling manhole covers peopleholes
covers,' he continued. 'I perceived them as dykes'" (quoted in Brooks and Marsh
1985:136). The network forced recasting of Cagney, then played by Meg Foster,
by an actress they termed more feminine and glamorous, Sharon Gless. When the
ratings remained poor in the 1982-83 season and the series was canceled, there
was a great deal of outcry and attention paid to the innovative character of the
show. Viewers began to tune in to its reruns that summer, to see what the fuss was
about. The show won an Emmy the next fall and, surprisingly, CBS renewed
Cagney and Lacey in the spring of 1984.
The Cagney and Lacey incident, as well as Murphy Brown's plots and main
character, illustrate the complicated interplay between public views about feminism
and feminist representation, public expression of those views, and network
perceptions of public opinion and responses to those perceptions. The creators of
network television images straddle a wobbly fence as they assess how best to
appeal to the largest segment of the public while offending as few as possible,
when treating issues that have become as controversial as feminism in our society (
Tuchman et al. 1978; Gitlin 1983).
The growing pervasiveness of postfeminist ideology in our culture, as
indicated by its increasing presence in the mass media, is a phenomenon that
demands attention from all those interested in women's troubled status in our
society's workplaces as well as in our families. Postfeminist thought sanctions
current treatment of women in the workplace and holds forth the traditional nuclear
family as a societal ideal. Both professional and nonprofessional women, working-
class and a middle-class, still experience a variety of forms of discrimination in
their respective workplaces which television's current representations not only fail
to confront but, indeed, effectively help to mask. Television's female professionals
are not shown facing the kinds of discrimination that women in the upper echelons
of our professions continue to face.
Nor are they shown experiencing the harsh demands of housework in addition to
their working lives, as current sociologists document ( Hochschild 1989). If they
are -- as in the shows Cagney and Lacey or the newer thirty-something , for
example -- this dilemma is turned into a criticism of women's decision (or need) to
work, rather than the critique of a system that demands women choose work or
family exclusively or pay a heavy price for having both. Nonprofessional working
women, while also experiencing these dual pressures, face even more crippling
discrimination in a workplace which, even in the wake of feminist political efforts,
continues to deny them not only equal pay and opportunities for promotion but
even equivalent pay for jobs of comparable worth to those typically occupied by
men ( Kessler- Harris 1989; Blum 1990). By ignoring almost entirely the issues
that are centrally important in structuring the real lives of working women,
television can only be seen to help glorify and support a status quo that is in many
ways oppressive for women. Television's unwillingness to confront, admit, and
address so many troublesome aspects of women's situation in our society is
unfortunately one of the strongest forces ensuring that it is perpetuated.
Consider, for example, women's comments on the following images. One
woman mentions that she finds the combination of work and careers depicted on
the female cop series Cagney and Lacey surprising, although she takes television's
word for it that the images are realistic:
Cagney and Lacey, I like that...I like those two gals. Maybe because
they're so different from anything I could possibly think that I could have
been in those days , maybe because it's such a great difference, I mean, to see
these two gals in such activity. That I find interesting. I also find it
interesting that she [ Lacey ] can still be a mother of two children and do this
type of work. In fact, in my mind sometimes I'm even a little surprised that it
can happen. Or again, could this really be the truth, but I won't argue the
point since I imagine there must be women who are in the field who can do
anything and everything. ( Estelle) [Emphasis added]
Another older woman also found Cagney and Lacey fascinating, for similar
reasons:
I watch Cagney and Lacey. I like it because they are two women
cops, working, you know -- what they go through. They have to work with
mostly men, and they really are getting somewhere. It's an interesting...uh, to
me a soap opera is one day this one is in bed with the other one, then the
next day she's with somebody else. It's just plain sex. Where these shows, it's
very interesting. ( Marilyn)
Marilyn expresses a clear preference for shows that portray women in
adventurous situations, where "they work with mostly men" and "really are
getting somewhere." She distinguishes this from the much more
conventional domestic placing of women that soap operas offer and of which
she apparently disapproves because of the amount of sexuality shown. In
both cases, it is interesting that the particular combination of work and
family depicted in these newer television shows is remarkable to these
women, serving in slightly different ways as an example to each of roles that
they now believe are real and possible for women.
Some younger women enjoy Cagney and Lacey also, but they comment on
their lack of identification with the characters, calling them too "tough," not
actually realistic, in line perhaps with most women's disinclination to pursue a
career in police work. One woman describes her reaction to the show as
follows:
It was exciting, they were really tough. I liked the action. I never
really thought of that [police] work as something I'd like to do. ( Nancy)
Another young woman, Lori, comments similarly, "I like watching it, I think
the characters are really interesting, but I can't see it for myself." Both Nancy and
Lori focus their comments more on their admiration of the show, and their personal
distance from its main characters, than do the older women quoted above, who feel
much freer to fantasize about Cagney's and Lacey's actual lives, for example the
contradictions they might experience (it's "interesting that she [ Lacey ] can still be
a mother of two children") and their accomplishments ("they really are getting
somewhere"). Younger women speak very differently of the show in a general
sense, commenting more than older women do on whether they can actually
imagine themselves in many of the positions the characters occupy. Older women
fantasize more in relation to these images, make remarks in the form of "what if,"
while younger women are more concrete in their remarks, more specific in their
fantasies, actually attempting to put themselves in the place of the characters they
perceive. Of course, in this instance life cycle rather than generational differences
may explain the bulk of this variation in response. Younger women are
understandably preoccupied with the career choices they are imminently facing,
while older women are more apt to look back over their lives and fantasize in a
what-if manner.
These passages illustrate, in the case of some older women, a fascination with
television women in unconventional, traditionally male dominated fields (law and
police work). They are surprised at the form that the combination of work and
family roles takes in these characterizations, and they find it explicitly noteworthy
that on Cagney and Lacey it is possible for a woman (the character of Mary Beth
Lacey, played by Tyne Daly), in postfeminist style, both to successfully hold a
traditionally male job and to bring up two children. Older women also find it
exciting that three women can perform dangerous work together with the enviable
grace of Charlie's three Angels. Television, in depicting situations that are in these
instances far from their own experience, here introduces new images and ideas
regarding women's roles to the consciousness of women who might otherwise be
unaware of such possibilities or, alternately, might be convinced of their
impossibility.
The younger women I have quoted notice and choose to comment upon their
own lack of identification with the Cagney and Lacey policewomen. While not
entirely negative in commenting on the show, young women are uneasy about
these images, mentioning that they find it difficult to relate to them and implying
that this personal relating, or at least some sense of recognizing themselves or
their own possibilities or desires in these television images, should come more
easily. Young women seem to expect role models or figures of identification from
feminist and postfeminist television and may be uneasy when newer television
images thwart their expectations. Thus, their hostility to the Charlie's Angels
images, feminist-era women supposedly liberated yet quite governed by
commercial notions of glamour. The young women feel that they see through the
facade of liberation and are offended by the sexual stereotyping that underlies the
image.
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