Television for Women: New Directions

Description

Television for Women brings together emerging and established scholars to reconsider the question of ‘television for women’. In the context of the 2000s, when the potential meanings of both terms have expanded and changed so significantly, in what ways might the concept of programming, addressed explicitly to a group identified by gender still matter? The essays in this collection take the existing scholarship in this field in significant new directions. They expand its reach in terms of territory (looking beyond, for example, the paradigmatic Anglo-American axis) and also historical span. Additionally, whilst the influential methodological formation of production, text and audience is still visible here, the new research in Television for Women frequently reconfigures that relationship. The topics included here are far-reaching; from television as material culture at the British exhibition in the first half of the twentieth century, women’s roles in television production past and present, to popular 1960s television such as The Liver Birds and, in the twenty-first century, highly successful programmes including Orange is the New Black, Call the Midwife, One Born Every Minute and Wanted Down Under. This book presents ground-breaking research on historical and contemporary relationships between women and television around the world and is an ideal resource for students of television, media and gender studies. Cover Title Copyright Dedication CONTENTS List of illustrations Preface Acknowledgements List of contributors Introduction: Television for women – what new directions? PART I Women and work 1 Women’s history, women’s work: popular television as feminine historiography 2 The feminisation of contemporary British television drama: Sally Wainwright and Red Production 3 ‘Women pushed their way forward and became quite a force within the BBC’: women’s roles in television production and the production of programmes for women PART II Women and identity 4 Catfight! Camp and queer visibility in Orange is the New Black 5 Brown girls who don’t need saving: social media and the role of ‘possessive investment’ in The Mindy Project and The Good Wife 6 Watching One Born Every Minute: negotiating the terms of the ‘good birth’ 7 Sex, class and consumerism: British sitcom’s negotiation of the single girl PART III Formations of women’s television 8 Feminist television or television for women? Revisiting the launch of Canada’s Women’s Television Network 9 Tradition and innovation: Italian women’s channels, factual entertainment and the significance of generation in women’s viewing preferences 10 Producing domestic abuse in Pakistani television: between commerce, ratings and social responsibility PART IV Women and the home 11 Television in the ideal home 12 ‘I’ve been having fantasies about Regan and Carter three times a week’: television, women and desire 13 Dreaming of the ‘good life’: gender, mobility and anxiety in Wanted Down Under Index