Female subjectivity in selected women-centric television drama serials

Abstract

Since 2010, there has been a proliferation of women-centric television series and serials in the international television landscape due to substantial socio-political and -economic changes as well a changing television landscape, often referred to as “Peak TV”. Women-centric television series or serials are described as women’s stories told from a female point of view (POV) (and employing a female gaze), dealing primarily with the female experience. This critical shift facilitated the construction of (compelling) female or difficult women characters (Pinedo 2021) who demonstrate female subjectivity. Female subjectivity refers to the experience of a woman/women as individual(s), her/their selfhood/womanhood, identity, race, gender, class, age, sexual preference, inner character, thoughts, feelings, desires and consciousness (Braidotti 1994:98-99). This paper investigates the construction of female subjectivity and consequently the construction of (compelling) female characters in two long form television drama serials, HBO’s Big Little Lies (Kelly 2017a) and the South-African produced Waterfront (Kruger & Swanepoel 2017a) using an interpretive framework based on Murray Smith’s (1995) lexicon of recognition, alignment and allegiance combined with socio-political and -economic frameworks such as post-feminism, neoliberalism and fourth-wave feminism.