PRIME TIME TELEVISION

Prime time television and the role of gender politics

Introduction

The complaints over the high amount of gender based sexual violence, trauma, and victimization allegedly featured as a matter of routine in the most popular TV programs and are as old as commercial broadcasting itself (see Head, 1954, for one of the earliest critiques). For decades, the networks have been loudly accused of gender discrimination in their primetime shows and more specifically to their detective shows.

In the majority of these shows (such as Law and Order, Castells), the TV network portray women in a stereotypical way and present men as someone who is superior to women. For example, females in these shows are always projected as beautiful commodities ready to be sold to the viewers in order to attain maximum rating for a particular detective drama. They are exposed as sex objects, victims, sensitive and someone who always need support from the male dominated society (Roy, 2004).

In this study, one would examine how does a prime time fictional chronically of sexual violence, trauma, and victimization operates within the confines of a traditionally masculine genre of detective fiction, and what forms of feminism, if any, does such prime time television focus on sexual violence enable?

Prime time television and the role of gender politics

According to Nielsen Media Research prime time section of the TV (8pm to 11pm) draw attention of the largest viewers of any time of day. Seventeen of the 20 detective programs most habitually seen by young adults were televised during prime time hours in 2010 (Farrar et al., 2003: 9). Academics and scholars have performed a number of research studies on gender discrimination, sexual violence, victimization and trauma during prime time and suggested that women are being oppressed on TV.

If one examines these detective episodes carefully one would identify that the producers and directors of such shows select a certain kind of women for their shows. For instance, majority of the women selected for the lead roles possess typical characteristics of conventional beauty. They would be tall, clear complexion, straight and small nose, medium or big eyes, high cheekbones, slender (typical hourglass figure, relatively small buttocks and large chest, long eyelashes, luscious lips and straight white teeth (Roy, 2004).

Women in this detective show always projected as someone who has a secondary role and men are always portrays as someone who knows what he is doing and ...