It\u27s Not A Switch You Can Just Turn Off : Quality Television, Feminism and Violence Against Women in Contemporary U.S Programming

This paper is specifically concerned with the relationship between contemporary feminist quality television programming and representations of violence against women. Exploring how these programmes continually attempt to reinvent themselves against evolving political contexts, this paper argues that recent television series such as HBO\u27s Mare of Easttown (2021) are often publicly lauded as feminist because they feature female characters in leading roles. Despite this, violence against women in these programmes is often depicted in a manner that indicates very little representational progression over time. This paper will explore representations of sexual violence within the so-called “quality” programming of the U.S. from 2009 – 2019, demonstrating how these representations have changed since the 1980s, alongside changes in broadcasting contexts which have subsequently given rise to the contemporary ubiquity of digital streaming services and premium, pay-per-view modes of broadcasting. The current proliferation of sequences of sexual violence featured within televised drama programming broadcast by the U.S. has now reached an epidemic level, as established by Vanstone’s (2017) identification of more than 30 drama programmes broadcast in 2017 alone which heavily feature narrative sequences of rape and sexual violence. This thesis aims to investigate the relationship between these sequences of exploitation and abuse, and the “quality” television format that has become the universal venue by which these sequences are shown to audiences worldwide. “Quality” television itself is a cultural concept with a complex and controversial history that this paper argues is inherently and irrevocably gendered. As cultural representations inform perceptions of reality, it is crucial that these televisual depictions of violence against women are assessed and analysed. In a rapidly changing socio-political climate, with sexism currently occupying an important space within the public agenda worldwide, the role that television plays in perpetuating and subverting rape myths must be ascertained, precisely because of the powerful nature of the medium of television itself. Accessible on a variety of platforms, and regularly consumed by audiences across a wide range of backgrounds, nationalities, and ages, television aims to ‘inform, educate, and entertain.’ It is critical, therefore, to investigate the relationship between “quality” television drama, and the specific ways in which ‘popular’ television might ‘inform, educate, and entertain’ audiences about the issues of consent, sexual violence, and rape