Screening difficult women: 21^st century reclamations of women’s history

ABSTRACT

Historical fiction has long been one of television’s most prominent genres. It was not until the advent of streaming TV in the 21^st century, however, that the genre reached its radical feminist potential. Written, directed, produced by and starring women, contemporary women’s historical fiction has exploded as both a marketable and an ideological genre. Three series - Good Girls Revolt (Amazon, 2016), Mrs. America (Hulu, 2020), and Halt and Catch Fire (AMC, 2014–17)—exemplify women’s challenge to the orthodoxy of male-driven historical fiction. These three shows not only reclaim women’s 20^th Century American histories, but they also refute accepted conceptualizations of the genre and of History itself. Through circular storytelling, the blending of fact and fiction, and new female archetypes, these three series narrate coherent and consistent women’s histories heretofore missing in popular memory. From this foundation, these series discuss, debate, and fantasize about women’s lived experiences in the past, as well as commenting on the present and dreaming about the future of women’s lives and desires.

KEYWORDS:

• Television studies
• history
• postmodernism
• historical fiction
• public memory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Television studies literature is in agreement on the role of television as the nexus of Americans’ historical understandings [see for example (Tony Barta 1998; Edgerton 2001; Hanke 2001; Derek Kompare 2004; Peter C. Rolling 2007; Wales 2008)]. In fact, one of the ongoing and most-contested questions in television studies is about the defining feature of TV as either liveness (and therefore, creating public memory in the present moment and destroying viewers’ sense of history) or the rerun (and therefore, creating public memory through a complicated and television-specific incorporation of past and present shows in one uniform televisual flow that is foundational to both the medium and history) [for more on this debate, see (Anderson 2001; Amy Holdsworth 2008; Kompare 2004; James Schwoch, Mimi White and Susan Reilly 1992; Spigel 1995). Although none of the research addresses the streaming age in particular, the concept of flow is as relevant, and perhaps more so, when viewers are watching shows based on an algorithmic playlist that recommends shows across the decades as generically similar.

2. Good Girls Revolt was continually compared, less than favorably, to Mad Men in the press. The show “picks up right where Don Draper left off” (Patricia Garcia 2015) and “adopts a Mad Men vibe—if Mad Men were told from Peggy’s perspective” (Eliana Dockterman 2016), but “isn’t nearly as thoughtful or meticulously plotted” (Caroline Framke 2016) and “generates only sparks and smoke” (James Poniewozik 2016) in comparison.

3. The Bechdel Test, so named because it was popularized by Alison Bechdel’s comic Dykes to Watch Out For (Alison Bechdel 1985), examines film and TV’s feminist tendencies. To pass the test, a property must have three criteria: the property must (1) have at least two women in it who (2) talk to each other about (3) something besides a man.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Summit P. Osur

Summit P. Osur, PhD (she/zie) is an assistant professor of Media Studies at Quinnipiac University. Before joining QU, she worked extensively in television programming research at Weigel Broadcasting, Discovery Communications, and Red Bull Media House. She did her post-graduate work at the S.I. Newhouse School at Syracuse University, with a focus on television studies, industry analysis, and issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Zie has published and presented numerous articles analyzing the impacts of new distribution technologies on the economic, institutional, and artistic realities of the TV industry.