A Book Review by M. Sellers Johnson.
Júlia Havas scrutinizes selective applications of feminist analysis and responds with the charge of provoking media studies scholars to scrutinize those who engage in reductive feminist discourse.”
Júlia Havas’s new monograph Woman Up: Invoking Feminism in Quality Television (Wayne State University Press, 2022) investigates streaming culture, television industry habits (from promotion to reception), and feminism’s dubious role in television culture through aesthetics-focused approaches and gendered discourse. Impressively, Havas contends various precipitate viewpoints of feminist reception in television studies. Her approach throughout this book often appears more rhetorical than didactic in its argumentation, but it also functions well in broaching facile preconceptions of feminism apparent in television reception. Havas calls for more complex considerations for feminism articulated in quality television.
Havas constructs her discussions here around two main generic categories of comedy and drama. She uses two commercial television series for each genre topic. 30 Rock (NBC, 2006-2013) and Parks and Recreation (NBC, 2009-2015) serve as the case studies for the comedy section, while The Good Wife (CBS, 2009-2016) and Orange Is the New Black (Netflix, 2013-2019; see top image) compose the drama chapters. Havas structures her considerations around six primary chapters. Comedy comprises three chapters, while drama has only two, though these genre sections are nearly equal in terms of page length. The additional chapter on comedy includes further discussions on body politics and how corporeality associated with female comedian performance functions in its expressivity and cultural value through television programming, “crucially [in] the ways in which women’s comedy uses the body as a site of body politics” (16).
Chapter one offers background about the term “quality television,” and how its meaning has evolved in the new millennium with more postfeminist/feminist programming apparent in premium television networks like HBO and streaming outlets like Netflix. While the term quality TV has undergone much scrutiny and debate around the early 2000s, it originally stems from popular discourse during the 1970s. “Quality” is historically cited as a buzzword used to describe the female-centered (feminist) sitcom cycle, which began with The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970-1977). This novel focus on feminine workplace comedy was instrumental in later establishing narrative and cultural paradigms for TV shows like 30 Rock and Parks. Quality television is situated here to describe relationships involved in a program’s gender dynamics and how programming appeals to a masculine or feminine-coded audience. The notion of quality partly derives, then, from a politicized address to different gendered groups. As for Tyler Moore, her self-titled program showcased a new gendered quality of female representation through her character’s status as a single, financially independent, and educated woman. This appealed to white professional female audiences and thus invoked a quality of feminine characterization, aimed at a target gendered demographic. In short, a configuration of quality as a descriptor stems from television’s apparent ability to engage with questions of identity and social issues surrounding gender – and later race.
The second chapter examines the interplay of genre and gender in female-centered, quality sitcoms. While discussing the ideological power of domesticity and narrative familiarity in sitcoms, Havas cites Sex and the City (HBO, 1998-2004) as the epitome of the postfeminist quality dramedy of the 2000s. And while this program was globally successful in promoting female-led comedy, 30 Rock and Parks would later distance themselves from the dramedy paradigm and ally themselves closer with 1970s sitcom heritage programming. Here, dramedy’s typical romance narratives are alternatively downplayed to foreground comedic satire and parody. Havas contends that 30 Rock and Parks offer measures of quality comedy by striving to elevate issues of gender politics and feminism through popular television genres. Therefore, they challenge the cultural consciousness by instigating feminist discourse and gender politics in contest with masculine-coded media.
Havas cites Sex and the City (HBO, 1998-2004) as the epitome of the postfeminist quality dramedy of the 2000s…. 30 Rock and Parks would later distance themselves from the dramedy paradigm and ally themselves closer with 1970s sitcom heritage programming.”
Chapter three negotiates how postfeminism/feminism is received in these comedies through their narrative aesthetics and in their appeal to politicized feminist ideals. Havas acknowledges that Tina Fey’s character Liz Lemon is a somewhat suspicious feminist role model, as she has been scrutinized by critics for being a mere caricature of (post)feminist womanhood. Moreover, Fey appears too self-consciously involved in her own industry ties to authentically posture herself as a feminist exemplar. Instead, her version of the postfeminist women and emphasis on feminist satire is mitigated by the American consumer culture associated with her authorship. In terms of genre and aesthetics, Havas writes that “ 30 Rock creates a ‘reality’ of feminism in a nonrealistic aesthetics, whereas Parks presents a ‘fantasy’ of feminism in a realistic aesthetic” (101). Chapter four addresses the crucial role of body politics in quality comedies. Both programs rely on degrees of physical comedy to emphasize displays of comic performance, and part of this quality of performance contends with women struggling to sublimate their physicality beyond masculinist preconceptions of the body as a sexualized object. Moreover, women’s physical comedy is often “entangled in political meanings and because these meanings link it to low comedy, few quality TV comedies are premised on a central female character’s physical comedy” (107). Both 30 Rock and Parks seem to resist this presumption, as Fey consciously manifests the unruly feminine grotesque figure in her brand of comedy, whereas Amy Poehler eschews the awkward cringe aesthetic of Parks’ first (less critically received) season, and recalibrates her performance comedy by emphasizing her talent of impressions. Unlike 30 Rock’s heavy emphasis on stereotypically grotesque female figurations and comedic satire of feminism, Parks is more tonally optimistic and generates a narrative aesthetic of niceness. The show slowly eschews physical comedy in favor of generating an overtly positive feminist utopian narrative. Havas reflects that Parks’ deviation from physical comedy suggests a cultural unease with feminine body politics that instead favors more earnest or intellectual feminist politics.
Chapter five shifts toward generic discussions of drama and how the cultural status of feminine characterizations informs prestige dramas. While discussing The Good Wife and Orange’s relationship with the more culturally popular male prestige dramas, Havas points to how both shows mobilize marginalized female subjectivities as a subversive point of cultural positioning. In her final chapter, Havas discusses more gendered connotations associated with the prestige drama and notes how strong female characterization is the key signifier of the quality of prestige, over both generic and aesthetic positioning (184-185).
Some of the case studies in this text receive more attention than others. The larger comedy and drama genres are balanced in page length, but there is some noticeable variance in her textual analyses. 30 Rock receives a bit more attention than Parks, whereas there is a more apparent disparity in the drama chapters, as Orange has much less textual analysis than The Good Wife. This is all the more curious, considering that Orange is the only television series here that overtly addresses socio-political issues of a feminism discourse lacking in intersectional considerations of non-heteronormative and non-white characters. In other terms, feminism has previously been criticized for its posturing of a conventionally attractive white, financially successive woman as an emblem for general reception and scholarship. Given that 30 Rock, Parks, and The Good Wife each revolve around positive images of more industry-favored depictions of white feminist representation, this lack of attention toward marginal female demographics evident in Orange is all the more conspicuous. And while she discusses the show’s promotion and reception context at greater length, Havas would benefit from more textual considerations of Orange to balance with the other case studies. And more importantly, this seems like a missed opportunity, as Orange serves as the most fruitful case study in terms of examining race, class, and marginal feminist perspectives.
Ultimately, this text is postured as a more profitable read for television and media studies academics than it is for larger audiences. Havas evidences a strong academic perspective that challenges how approaches to TV aesthetics often neglect synthesizing other crucial positions of cultural gender politics, issues of genderedness, television industry trends, and awards and media reception. On one hand, Woman Up is perhaps too dense and nebulous in its syntax to be easily digestible for the general reader, despite its popular case studies. And while its intentions are inferred, sometimes the rhetoric gets in the way of clear argumentation. However, the book does offer important considerations in testing values in “feminist quality TV” shows and gauging the cultural significance of feminist-focused programming by carefully applying combined methodologies of celebrity studies, feminist media studies, industry analysis, and critical reception studies. Havas scrutinizes selective applications of feminist analysis and responds with the charge of provoking media studies scholars to scrutinize those who engage in reductive feminist discourse. While she is, at times, discursive in her language, Júlia Havas crafts a well-researched and simulating criticism on avoiding approaches to feminist media from complacent, selective angles. Instead, she argues for a more comprehensive considerations of evaluative and critical analysis in feminist television media.
M. Sellers Johnson holds an MA in film studies from Te Herenga Waka (Victoria University of Wellington). His work has appeared in New Review of Film and Television Studies, Film Matters, and the International Journal of Communication.