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Television
Susan Faludi's BackLash leads
us through a history of how we've seen women on television
(Faludi, Susan (1991) The Undeclared War
Against American Women. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.)
1950's
The Honeymooners
Ralph and Alice
"Pow! Right in the
kisser!" |
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Leave it to Beaver
A proper mother stayed at home |
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I Love Lucy
A 1950's working woman? Lucy in a
licorice factory, stuffing the leftovers into her
mouth so the big male boss won't know she's
hopeless at the job |
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1960's
Private Secretary |
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Our Miss Brooks |
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Exercise
Certain Jobs |
Why was it
considered alright for a woman to work in certain
jobs, such as Secretary or Elementary School Teacher,
but not in others (such as upper management)? |
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Medical shows
A woman on these shows
was mostly one who was dying because she
did something terrible like working outside the
home, having an affair, or refusing to follow her
doctor's orders
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1970's
All in the Family
Edith Bunker argued with
Archie for women's liberation
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| Maude
openly a feminist and
the first to raise the issue of abortion
on a television show
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Mary Tyler Moore Show
Mary Richards was a respectable professional woman but she
still called her boss Mr. Grant when everyone else
in the office called him Lou
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1980's
Murphy Brown
In an era of Superwoman, the television brought us only
one really tough capable woman, one who
had it all, including a baby out of
wedlock because she wanted motherhood but not the
restrictions of marriage
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The few shows that dealt with
working women showed them as
interior
designers on
Designing
Women
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elderly
widows on
Golden
Girls
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Unless you count
the prostitute on
The
Young and the Restless
who abandoned her child to pursue her
"career" and ended up dying of AIDS
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1990's
- Backlash
Saw shows like Obsessive Love (Fatal
Attraction's homicidal single career woman brought
to the small screen),
Baby Boom, Working Girl, Parenthood, Look Who's
Talking -- all about
child-hating mothers or obsessed career women or both |
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TV In The New Millennium
What is TV like today? I
may be one of the few professors you'll know who says, "Go
watch more TV!" This is true for marketing with its ads and
it's true here where we examine how popular culture shapes the
attitudes that affect our work lives. In place of
an additional reading for this unit, you are to watch some
television. Watch some popular current situation comedies on
television and answer the question below |
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Exercise
TV Role Models |
Who
are the role models for girls today on television in
shows about
women who work outside the
home? How do a girl's role models growing up affect
her in a quest for a management level job?
Post your
answer in the
Moodle
Discussion Group. |
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Advertising
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In
on-campus courses, we watch
Jean Kilbourne's film "Killing
Us Softly 3." The film is
available through the York
Sound and Moving Images Library
and at other libraries or through most
inter-library loan programmes, and I urge
Internet students who have not seen it to
try to do so. Or you
can
Watch a 7-minute Preview by typing "Still
Killing Us Softly III' and "Jill Kilbourne"
into Google
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There's
nothing wrong with looking good, but there's
something dreadfully wrong when you measure
yourself against an impossible ideal. Kilbourne
is a Harvard professor who has written and spoken
for years on the issue of how advertising
perpetuates violence against women.
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Exercise
Killing Us Softly |
What
did you learn that you didn't know or realize before?
What shocked, surprised, upset you?
What cheered you up or encouraged you?
How does this kind of treatment of women affect women
seeking promotion to management jobs?
Post your
answer in the
Moodle
Discussion Group.
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Advertising can still be terrible in its use of images of
women. Take for example this ad for washroom tiles that I used
in a paper I gave at a conference in Amsterdam a few years ago,
which was recently accepted for publication in a Philosophy
journal, Argumentation:
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The print in white in the middle of the page says, "Check
out our overflowing selection of alluring styles." |
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Exercise
Artistic Tiles |
What
is wrong with ads like this from the point of view of
women working in management or aspiring to managerial
positions in companies? (Hint: Think about what images
of women in the media do to attitudes toward women).
Post your answer in the
Moodle
Discussion Group.
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Sheryl Sandberg's Book Lean In
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Exercise
Sandberg Feminism |
How does
Sheryl Sandbert's book Lean In help you further
understand the topic of this unit?
Post your answer in the
Moodle Discussion
Group. |
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