Television Representations Research Articles

Work and labor in American popular culture: Representation in film, music and television in the 1970s and 1980s By JasonRussell, New York: Routledge. 2024. pp. 96. £48.99 (hbk)

Work and labor in American popular culture: Representation in film, music and television in the 1970s and 1980s By JasonRussell, New York: Routledge. 2024. pp. 96. £48.99 (hbk)

Portrayal or Betrayal: Heteronormativity and the Realism Burden in the 2022 Disney+ Pride Collection

ABSTRACT The presence and quality of LGBTQ+ representation in film and television has important implications for viewers, especially LGBTQ+ youth. This study conducted a content analysis of the 2022 Disney+ Pride Collection, a list of movies and episodes designated by Disney as including LGBTQ+ characters and stories. This analysis examined the depiction of LGBTQ+ fictional characters, finding that Black LGBTQ+ characters were more likely to be presented as adults and in romantic relationships compared to characters of other races, suggesting that their intersecting identities influence their portrayal toward more heteronormative scripts. In what we argue is a heteronormative evolution of the butch/femme binary, lesbian characters were frequently presented on a light/dark binary. Further, in what we describe as a “realism burden,” portrayals of discrimination and LGBTQ+ identity labeling were limited to realistic fiction and adult media, and were absent from the post-gay worlds of sci-fi and fantasy.

Streaming Queer Content: LGBTQ Media on BVOD and SVOD Services in Australia

This article analyzes the strategies through which Broadcast Video on Demand (BVOD) and Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) services make queer titles available and discoverable to users. While streaming video services operate globally and the issue of LGBTQ inclusion is not solely a national one, Australia’s complex history of LGBTQ representation in film and television offers a unique context to explore these issues. This article asks: How is queer content categorized and promoted on BVOD and SVOD services in Australia? How easily discovered is this content? And how does this impact the visibility and inclusion of LGBTQ identities within the Australian screen media landscape? Drawing on critical librarianship and catalog analysis, this article reveals discrepancies between curated categories and search results, the failure of search tools to recognize language associated with LGBTQ identities, and the obscuring of queer content within streaming video libraries.

'It must be right, I saw it on TV!': An observational study of third stage birth practices in popular television programmes.

To examine modern media depictions of the third stage of birth in a selection of UK television representations. Observational study of a sample of televised fictional and real births, audited against current National Institute of Health and Social Care Excellence (NICE) guidance. UK television channels BBC (Call The Midwife and This Is Going To Hurt) and Channel 4 (One Born Every Minute). 87 births from 48 episodes, sampled from the three shows. The primary outcome was the number of births where the cord was clamped at more than 1 min after birth. Secondary outcomes included place and type of birth, measures of dignity and paternal involvement. Overall, the timing of cord clamping was clearly shown in 25/87 (29%) of births, of which only 4/25 (16%) occurred at more than 1 min in screen time. The place of birth and caesarean section (CS) rate changed according to the series perspective and era; graphic explicit images were shown, but these related to CS detail. UK television shows have accurately depicted changes in place, culture and type of birth over the last century. They provide the public with a view of new rituals but an inaccurate picture of good quality care. Early cord clamping was shown in most births, even those set after 2014. No programme informed viewers about the safety aspects. When showing outdated practices, broadcasters have a public health duty to inform viewers that this is no longer recommended.

The Representation of Females in TV Drama: Taking Nothing But Thirty as Cases

The topic of this thesis is to study the performances of female characters in the TV series Nothing But Thirty. The goal is to see if they deconstruct and reimagine female characters' roles in Chinese film and television works. Today, with advances in mass media technology, feminism has become a public issue. In the wake of the #MeToo movement in 2017, there is an emerging trend in the portrayal of women in film and television. The visible presentation of the female image is inseparable from mainstream ideology. Given that Nothing But Thirty can be considered a female-dominated show, it would be interesting to examine the way women are represented on TV. This will help further promote the study of female representation in film and television.

The Other Replacement Theory

With the success of M3GAN (Gerard Johnstone, 2023) and unfolding conversations about Artificial Intelligence (AI) informing the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, FQ columnist Rebecca Wanzo explores the question of labor in the AI film. Noting the limited repertoire of AI representations in television and film, Wanzo asks why so few AI stories go beyond familiar narratives to instead explore the complexities of constructing a laboring future in a world with AI. Drawing upon examples ranging from Metropolis (1927) to Wall-E (2008), Wanzo finds reason for both optimism and pessimism about AI and workers’ lives.

Adolescent Perception of Female Representation in Television and its Impact on Adolescent Views on Female Gender Roles

With recent increases in the number of women represented in television, changes have occurred in the way women are depicted on screen. The changes in representation provoke the question of the accuracy and stereotypes the women contain. Research has found that though women are beginning to be found more frequently in the workplace or school-life, they are mostly found to be depicted in a traditionally stereotypical manner with their storylines revolving around family, romance, home-life, and physical appearance. As adolescents are at an age where their gender identities are being formed, it is pertinent to investigate how humans at the adolescent stage of life are influenced by television, especially due to the increased access to technology with recent generations. Studies in the field have used the theories of Social Cognitive Theory and Cultivation Theory in order to assert that the more individuals consume television, the more their thoughts, behaviors, and actions are impacted by these representations. However, in contrast, researchers have also found that viewers are able to resist messaging in television to prefer their own values, rejecting the influence of television. The following paper will look into how adolescents specifically perceive female gender roles. Through an analysis of three focus groups, a qualitative study was conducted to collect data on how or if adolescents are impacted by the female representation they see on screen and what they believe the current state of representation for women on television is.

Masters of desire: the (re)erotization of the slave’s body in cinematic and television representations of ancient Rome

Abstract The exhibition of the naked and near-naked bodies of enslaved people is a notable feature in cinematic representation of Rome. This article analyses the way in which these bodies are framed erotically and what an examination of this feature can tell us about the cinematic reception of ancient Rome. In this article, particular attention is paid to the erotization of the body of the slave within peplum films. Looking at these bodies allows us to see the gender dynamics at play in these films as well as the way in which cinema figures Rome as place of liberation and sexual licence. It also allows us to interrogate the power dynamics that operate in such systems of representation and explore the way that such films collocate regimes of pleasures with systems of domination and submission.

“Military Ethic Washing” - De-Politicization and Dis-Militarization in Representations of Internal Targeted Killings in Israeli Narrative Films and Television Drama

ABSTRACT The term “Military Ethical Washing” 1 is used to describe ways in which military ethics clears military organizations from moral responsibility for their actions in a post-national liberal militarism era. Film and television, now even more than in the past, serve as agents of ethics in general, and of military ethics in particular. Using the terms of the “Just War Theory,” the study shows how through processes of De-Politicization and Dis-militarization enhanced by fictional audio-visual narrative representations, narrative films and television dramas express the ethical-liberal turning point of our times, while at the same time using it to ratify national militarism. The process of “Military Ethical Washing” is illustrated in the paper in the Israeli context through cinematic and televised representations of internal targeted assassinations that took place during the constitutive national period of the struggle for Israel’s independence – a case study having critical potential for discussing current military practices and ethical issues being dealt with by the Israeli military, but also relevant to other cases.

Liza Black. Picturing Indians: Native Americans in Film, 1941–1960.

The success of FX’s new series Reservation Dogs has drawn much-needed attention to the issue of Native American representation in film and television. Critics have widely praised the show’s Native actors and noted what a difference it makes to have an all-Indigenous writing team as well. When an interviewer asked co-producer Sterlin Harjo (Seminole-Muscogee) if it had been hard to recruit such a talented cast, his reply referenced the film industry’s poor track record in portraying American Indians. “The thing is,” he said, “Hollywood makes a western every few years where Native actors get to come and get killed in front of a camp. It’s just not the most exciting work. So, they’re not in L.A. beating down the door, trying to get these parts” (“‘Reservation Dogs’ Showrunner Shoots Down Notion of Indigenous Actor Shortage: ‘They’re Not on Hollywood Boulevard,’” The Wrap, 2021). As Cherokee historian Liza Black shows in Picturing Indians, however, Native people were present on the streets and sets of Hollywood even during the darkest days of Hollywood’s “Golden Age.” Focusing on the period from 1941 to 1960—arguably “the high point of racism and what would have seemed to be a hopeless moment for Native people in film”—Black goes behind the scenes to examine their roles “both as fictional characters and as workers in the film industry” (xiv). The result is a refreshing take on an old story, one that has too often emphasized settler colonial tropes at the expense of Indigenous experiences.

Television theatre as a mode of production: Adapting The Word for Finnish television in 1962

The focus in this article is on the role of television theatre in the early years of television broadcasting in Finland. The production context in which Kaj Munk’s play Ordet (The Word) (1932) – best known from Carl Th. Dreyer’s internationally renowned film classic of the same title – was adapted for transmission via Finland’s Swedish-language television theatre serves as an example. The teleplay (1962) was directed by Tom Segerberg.

The Red River’s Mid-Island: Sketching an Alternative Narrative History of Hanoi’s Identity

ABSTRACT The ‘mid-island’ is the folk name given to a peripheral piece of land in the Red River at the heart of Hanoi, Vietnam. This essay surveys this place’s representations in contemporary cinema, literature, television, and photography. Through these meaning-making practices, the mid-island becomes a narrative construction, revealing an alternative history of Hanoi's identity with many unknown or marginalised aspects. It has become a place where many layers of meaning are piled up, sometimes conflicting: it is both a check-in site where many activities of Hanoian youth culture take place and a refuge for those marginalised, who cannot find anywhere else in the city to survive. It is both a ground for Hanoi men to perform their masculinity and a private space for a Hanoian child to find the remaining mysteries of the city. Currently, the city’s government is promoting a plan of transforming the mid-island into an ecological-cultural park. To do so without paying attention to the narrative meanings of the landscape, however, could lead to the loss of memories of the place and even become an act of violence against the most vulnerable communities, human and not-human, of the city.

Afterlife and Reclamation: Rodney King, Black Trauma, and the Televisual Archive of Self in Celebrity Rehab

ABSTRACT: This article examines Rodney King's 2008 appearance on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew to illuminate the cartographies of Black trauma and state-sanctioned violence outside of its aestheticized spectacle. Focusing on King's account of his 1991 beating, I demonstrate how his testimony aligns with the affective labor of reality television's theater of suffering but also how it ruptures the genre's neoliberal, colorblind ideologies, through the recursive temporalities of Black trauma and reclamation. This article reveals how King reclaimed a publicly commodified identity, constructing a "televisual archive of self" to approximate a legal recognition and subjecthood previously denied to him.

‘We may have bad days . . . that doesn’t make us killers’: How military veterans perceive contemporary British media representations of military and post-military life

Over the last two decades of long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the media’s attention on military veterans in the UK has been characterized by a series of shifts: from a focus on combat operations; to initiatives to support transition to civilian life; and finally to a largely invisible presence of veteran issues in the mediated public sphere. This article presents findings from an online qualitative survey conducted with British veterans in 2020. The authors’ primary focus is on how veterans express their concerns when asked about varied televised representations of military and post-military experience. How did the respondents perceive differences across television genres (drama, news, reality TV), and how did this affect their engagement? How do they see their veteran identity reflected back at them through popular media culture? There is a growing research interest in ‘veteran studies’ from a range of disciplines, but the relationship between veteran identity and perceptions of (post)-military representations remains largely under-researched, at least in the UK context. One concern is that negative or misleading stereotypes of veterans among publics could hinder their successful reintegration into society, but the authors are interested in how veterans make sense of such representations across popular media culture, how they imagine the ‘general public’ audience in their reflections, and the nature of veteran identity they project within the survey responses. This study finds that anxieties about ‘mad, bad or sad’ stereotypical representations of veterans continue, but the diversity within its findings also reaffirms the importance of not treating veterans as a homogeneous group in research.

Binary Inversions and Gender Fluidity in the Malay Sitcom Senario

Abstract This article examines the performance of non-heteronormative modes of gender in Malaysia’s longest-running Malay sitcom, Senario. My close textual reading centres on two episodes to identify the show’s linkages with broader Malay socio-cultural attitudes about gender fluidity. Three facets of Senario’s non-heteronormativity are foregrounded: (1) the religio-cultural belief that gender fluidity, sexual deviancy, and non-heteronormative identities are ‘conditions’ that can be ‘corrected’; (2) that this gender ‘correction’ is a recourse that privileges the masculine, and (3) that heteronormative binary roles are sustained even when imagining inversions of gender. By correlating these performances with wider religious and cultural beliefs/practices, and historical developments, it is observed that Senario’s gender performatives were heavily influenced by, and inflected with, real-world biases towards non-heteronormative communities. This work represents a meaningful step towards addressing the present lacuna of critical scholarship on Malay television representations of non-heteronormative gender identities.

Straight and cisgender actors playing queer and trans characters: the views of Australian screen stakeholders

A concept of visibility frames much scholarship and public writing on LGBTQ+ representation in film and television, and underpins diversity reporting and inclusivity measurement. Although visibility is often depicted as a social good, there is a growing critical interest in asking if there are different kinds of visibility, and how these might be differentially valued. This paper reports insights gained from interviews with Australian stakeholders involved in the production of screen entertainment with LGBTQ+ content. The study found that stakeholders are motivated by to create texts that make LGBTQ+ stories and characters visible. The range of approaches to visibility was, however, nuanced and diverse: some understood any LGBTQ+ representation as valuable, while others discussed visibility in contexts of character depth, anti-stereotyping, and visibility tempered by concepts of human dignity. Although visibility is perceived diversely, it remains a significant lens by which creative artists involved in LGBTQ+ texts understand their work.

Television representations and professional femininities: The case of the UK police

This article explores female occupational identity construction by looking at the issue of media representations of women’s police work in the United Kingdom. The example, television representation, discussed here, is the character of Sergeant Catherine Cawood in Happy Valley, a UK police drama written by a UK-based playwright, Sally Wainwright. As the lead character in Happy Valley, Sergeant Catherine Cawood’s on-screen portrayal will be the focus of the discussion in this article. Building on findings from previous research undertaken by the author, which explored how gendered identities of women police professionals are represented in the media, this article argues that television representations of UK female police work portray a particular form of professional femininity, one which I argue is still highly ‘gendered’, mainly because such representation of women’s police work relies on narratives centred on the effective and competent use of ‘emotional labour’.

How Reel Middle Easterners’ Portrayals Cultivate Stereotypical Beliefs and Policy Support

ABSTRACT There is limited empirical research examining cultivation theory’s proposition that first-order estimates influence second-order attitudes. In two studies, we examine how Middle Easterners are portrayed on entertainment television and how these portrayals cultivate stereotypical beliefs and policy support. A content analysis in Study 1 finds that nearly half of Middle Eastern characters on entertainment television are portrayed as supporting terrorism. A survey in Study 2 finds that watching television programs averaging two or more Middle Eastern terrorist characters per episode is associated with individuals’ estimations that a higher percentage of Middle Easterners are associated with terrorism in the real world. This first-order cultivation effect was found to be a mediating mechanism between entertainment media exposure and support for restrictive immigration and naturalization policies. We discuss the importance of examining entertainment television representations of racial/ethnic minorities and their implications for attitudes and policy support relevant to the depicted groups.

Rejection or Celebration? Autistic Representation in Sitcom Television

In recent years, autistic-coded characters have become a common staple in sitcoms. This paper will examine depictions of autistic-coded characters in two such sitcoms: CBS’s The Big Bang Theory (Big Bang), and NBC’s Community. Sheldon on Big Bang is stereotyped and mistreated by his friends, while Abed on Community challenges stereotypes and is beloved. The different treatment of autistic characters stems from the responses of the shows’ writers to the fear of accidentally misrepresenting autism, with the crew of Big Bang choosing to avoid the label of autism, while Community embraced it and did research to better represent autistic people. This difference has a huge impact on audiences watching the shows. Seeing Sheldon’s friends belittling him because of his autistic-coded traits triggers shame in autistic viewers, while also validating ableist thought patterns in neurotypical viewers. In Community, however, seeing Abed’s confidence in his autistic embodiment serves to boost the confidence of autistic viewers, while his friends’ and classmates’ love and support of him serves as a model for neurotypical viewers of how to best interact with autistic people in the real world. The case of these two shows illustrates two important facts about autistic representation in media: failing to diagnose a character does not exempt a writer from ableist representations, and to avoid this ableism it is important to listen to audience feedback and do research to properly understand the characters from the perspective of the communities they stand for.

Making Queer content visible: approaches and assumptions of Australian film and television stakeholders working with LGBTQ+ content

A concept of visibility frames much scholarship and public writing on LGBTQ+ representation in film and television, and underpins diversity reporting and inclusivity measurement. Although visibility is often depicted as a social good, there is a growing critical interest in asking if there are different kinds of visibility, and how these might be differentially valued. This paper reports insights gained from interviews with Australian stakeholders involved in the production of screen entertainment with LGBTQ+ content. The study found that stakeholders are motivated by to create texts that make LGBTQ+ stories and characters visible. The range of approaches to visibility was, however, nuanced and diverse: some understood any LGBTQ+ representation as valuable, while others discussed visibility in contexts of character depth, anti-stereotyping, and visibility tempered by concepts of human dignity. Although visibility is perceived diversely, it remains a significant lens by which creative artists involved in LGBTQ+ texts understand their work.