Narrative Control (Day 18)

American entertainment made a show of diversifying during the pandemic protests in light of George Floyd's murder. They caught the moment, and good. I'd like to think they realized that, in addition to profits they could generate, they also realized that stories that featured people who weren't exclusively white and straight could be just as interesting as those that did.

That did not last long. People felt their stomachs drop when the Batgirl movie was canceled; sounded like it needed some editing, but it's hard to believe that it was in worse shape than the majority of the movies in the DC franchise. The fact that the lead actor is a woman who isn't white was not lost on people.

There have been many other stories; one that sticks out for me is the cancellation of the series Tom Swift, which was headlined by a Black gay man. I don't think that was a coincidence.

I don't watch soap operas very much, but I do keep up with what's going on. I caught the news this summer about a Day of Our Lives producer being fired after consistent, egregiously inappropriate behavior toward actresses. Still, I was surprised to see yesterday that one of their front-burner actresses is now suing the production company for retaliation; she is apparently the one who escalated the matter, and as a result the show seemed to play games with her contract renewal.

Of note is that the show also lost a slew of actresses in the last year, many of whom were very long-time favorites of the audience. Let me remind you: soap operas tend to be watched by more women than men, and the focus has traditionally been on the women's stories. 

In 2022, when this contraction began, Sarah Kendzior, one of my favorite writers, made a chilling pronouncement on Twitter. This, she said, wasn't about profits; this was about narrative control. Sarah has tended to be correct, even when her predictions are awful (see: the Trump presidency). And yet this prediction I had trouble wrapping my head around, until I remembered something: Backlash by Susan Faludi.

I read this when my young husband and I were expecting our first baby, thirty years ago. There's a lot of good stuff there, and when I identify as a feminist, I think about what Faludi wrote about: the systematic degradation of women in the legal system, health care system, workplace, and culture. (Yes, she talked about women who weren't white in addition to those who were.) Part of her thesis is that women started being inundated with objectifying images and products (see: Victoria's Secret, Designer Rape Sequences) not in spite of legal gains made in the 1970s, but because of it. That, in essence, was the backlash.

Yep, Kendzior was right again. Here we are, thirty years later, rhyming with our recent history.

I want to be able to say that there is something we can do about this, but what? It's not like people don't want to see these movies--but even when they make hundreds of millions of dollars, they still manage to get in a backhand. Ironically, for all of our veneration of money and profit, culture is surprisingly immune to commercial success when it's threatened by change.

It's still, frankly, dangerous to be a woman, but the backlash of the 1980s had no small effect on the women who ran for seats in the House of Representatives, not to mention state offices. That is, ultimately, the lesson of Backlash: they push us, and then we push back. 

It shouldn't have to be this way, but here we are.

Deb in the City