For my final project I plan to look
chronologically (and critically) through Female-Lead Television Series across
the last 5-6 Decades. Though we have made serious strides since the emergence
of network television shows, female voices and characters are still not sharing
equal screen-time with male voices and characters.
I plan to introduce this project in
the form of a blog, with each post spotlighting a particular female lead-character.
To clarify—when I say female lead character, I do in fact mean a show entirely
driven by the female lead and from a female point of view (not a female
character that shares the leading title with a male character).
For each blog post I will spotlight a
specific female television character—I will provide a character overview, the
ways in which the character was progressive, the ways in which the character
was problematic, and the ways in which the character mirrored the cultural tone
of the day. I will watch content from each of the shows, highlighting and
analyzing a particularly pivotal scene from each show and doing a full
deconstruction of it from a feminist lens.
Some of the shows I plan to highlight:
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| I Love Lucy |
 |
| Julia |
 |
| The Mary Tyler Moore Show |
Murphy Brown
The Golden Girls
Ellen
Sex & the City
The Good Wife
Scandal
Ugly Betty
Insecure
Younger
I’d like to leave the blog public, for other’s to post
female television characters that particularly affected them. I find Television
characters have a much deeper emotional impact on the audience than movie
characters, because we get to spend time with them in our homes each week, and
see the development of these characters over the course of several years and
not just over the span of two hours. Television, more so than any other media platform,
has always had the greatest emotional resonance for me, so it felt like the
most natural avenue to pursue this project.
I will mainly be pulling research directly from viewing the shows themselves and critic reviews.
Hi Julia! Great idea. I'm not sure if you are also doing streaming series, but Dear White People and She's Gotta Have It on Netflix have great female leads of color.
ReplyDeleteI would also definitely look into The Handmaid's Tale, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and perhaps GLOW on Netflix, not only do they focus on strong female characters/lead roles but, the writers and directors are mainly women. Just some food for thought.
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