The New Female Antihero: The Disruptive Women of Twenty-First-Century US Television 9780226816364

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The New Female Antihero

The New Female Antihero The Disruptive Women of Twenty-­First-­Century US Television s a r a h h ag e l i n a n d g i l l i a n s i lv e r m a n

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2022 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2022 Printed in the United States of America 31  30  29  28  27  26  25  24  23  22  1  2  3  4  5 isbn-­13: 978-­0-­226-­81635-­7 (cloth) isbn-­13: 978-­0-­226-­81640-­1 (paper) isbn-­13: 978-­0-­226-­81636-­4 (e-­book) doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226816364.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hagelin, Sarah, author. | Silverman, Gillian D., 1967– author. Title: The new female antihero : the disruptive women of twenty-first-century US television / Sarah Hagelin, Gillian Silverman. Description: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2022. | Includes index. Identifiers: lccn 2021017523 | isbn 9780226816357 (cloth) | isbn 9780226816401 (paperback) | isbn 9780226816364 (e-book) Subjects: lcsh: Women antiheroes on television. | Television programs— United States. Classification: lcc pn1992.8.a65 h34 2022 | ddc 791.45 /65220973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021017523 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-­1992 (Permanence of Paper).

To our sisters Ilena, Mara, Suzanne, and Alisa

I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-­destructive but above all else public is the most revolutionary thing in the world. — c h r i s k r a u s , I Love Dick What we see and hear on the screen is part of who we become. — ­f r e d r o g e r s

Contents

Prologue ix

Introduction: The New Female Antihero—­The What, the Why, the How

1

pa r t i :   Ambition TV 1 The Limits of the Female Antihero in Game of Thrones

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2 The Impossibility of the Marriage Plot in The Americans

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3 Scandal and the Failure of Postracial Fantasy

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4 Homeland and the Rejection of the Domestic Plot

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pa r t i i :  Shame TV 5 Feminist Anti-­Aspirationalism in Girls

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6 Liberation and Whiteness in Broad City

140

7 The Difference That Race Makes in Insecure

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8 Working-­Class Identity and Matriarchal Community in SMILF

179

Epilogue  203 Acknowledgments  209 Notes  211 Index  253

Prologue

Elizabeth Jennings, Hannah Horvath, Olivia Pope, Nurse Jackie, Patty Hewes, Annalise Keating, Chris Kraus, Cookie Lyon, Fleabag, Nadia Vulvokov, Gemma Teller Morrow. The last ten years have presented television viewers with a host of female characters the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Selfish, vengeful, often deeply unlikeable, they fly in the face of our expectations for women. They murder without justification; they pursue sex with abandon; they reject marriage, children, and even job security. Yet still they survive—­ from week to week, episode to episode—­often garnering large fan bases even as they shock and disappoint. These women are the outlaws and outcasts of contemporary TV—­the new female antiheroes. For viewers like us—­raised on Mary Tyler Moore, Roseanne Barr, and Ellen DeGeneres—­this kind of female figure is thoroughly unfamiliar. Watching television in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, we thought we had seen a wide range of heroines: funny women, scheming women, women more interested in their careers than in relationships. But what passed for transgression then seems, from the vantage point of today, to be deeply conventional. Linda Carter’s Wonder Woman was strong but also (as her costume revealed) relentlessly feminine; Murphy Brown was brassy but also completely committed to playing by the rules; Carrie Bradshaw refused to settle but also couldn’t get past the dream of marriage and white picket fence (or co-­op apartment, in her case). This earlier generation of female protagonists was defined more than anything by their pluck—­they were willing to ask their bosses for raises, sleep with men out of wedlock, and gun down bad guys. Impressive, but a far cry from the murderous cruelty of Game of Thrones’ Cersei Lannister or the abject delusionalism of Enlightened’s Amy Jellicoe.

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Today’s female antihero is fundamentally different from the television leads that preceded her, characterized not by pluck but by punch and pathos. In the dramas of the new millennium, she’s murderous, ambitious, and conniving; in comedies she’s selfish, self-­sabotaging, and anti-­aspirational. Her signature move (in both genres) is a wholesale rejection of virtue and social responsibility—­those burdens of a “civilized” society that fall disproportionately on women. Her willingness to flout these norms—­to refuse the part of role model and transmitter of values—­makes her a target for those who see in the antiheroic woman (far more than in her male counterpart) a dire threat to the social order. And yet to her fans, the female antihero promises a shift away from discipline, achievement, and decorum at a time when society demands increasingly more from women. The disruptive women of twenty-­ first-­century television thus constitute a challenge to the status quo and a re­­ volt against the burdens of being female in contemporary America. The ubiquity of this new female antihero is a sign of how much television has changed in the last ten years. The hour-­long dramas of the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s generally relegated women to supporting roles as wives, nurses, or paralegals. When women did occupy center stage, as in Charlie’s Angels (ABC, 1976–­1981) and Ally McBeal (Fox, 1997–­2002), they guarded against backlash with an unfailing vision of femininity: Charlie’s Angels created “Jiggle TV”1 while Ally McBeal pioneered the wide-­eyed and winsome-­protagonist “dramedy.” Cagney and Lacey (CBS, 1981–­1988) was one of the most daring series of an earlier era because the show took its protagonists’ work as police officers seriously. But this professional respect was bought with an unbending commitment to respectability. After all, it is hard to imagine Mary Beth Lacey sneaking away from her suburban home to bed a handsome radical activist, as Elizabeth Jennings does in The Americans’ first season. And while the show allowed the single Christine Cagney to flirt with unladylike behavior, it also punished her rebellion—­Cagney ends up with a pregnancy scare and a place in Alcoholics Anonymous. The new female antihero dramas that we examine in this book—­Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011–­2019), The Americans (FX, 2013–­2018), Scandal (ABC, 2012–­2018), and Homeland (Showtime, 2010–­2020)—­reject such puritanical policing. Carrie Mathison and Daenerys Targaryen unabashedly use sex to gain leverage and pleasure, while Cersei Lannister and Olivia Pope down endless amounts of red wine and remain perfectly in control. The comedies of the new millennium also tell a new tale. Historically the genre of comedy has granted more screen time to women; a host of early shows, including I Love Lucy (CBS, 1951–­1957), Bewitched (ABC, 1964–­1972), That Girl (ABC, 1966–­1971), and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970–­1977),

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gave female protagonists center stage. Comedy, moreover, has always featured what Kathleen Rowe calls “unruly women,” female figures whose bodies, sex lives, and speech push the boundaries of acceptable femininity.2 Rowe sees women such as Roseanne Barr engaging in a carnivalesque rebellion against patriarchal norms, and indeed, Barr’s sitcom Roseanne (ABC, 1988–­ 1997) offered viewers an early version of the comic female antihero—­big, brash, and unashamed. Yet even as Barr challenged the respectability mandate for women on television, Roseanne remained squarely within established sitcom traditions, ultimately celebrating the nuclear family as wholeheartedly as The Cosby Show (NBC, 1984–­1992) or Family Ties (NBC, 1982–­1989). Something similar can be said of the single-­girl sitcoms that proliferated in the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s, which did little to challenge the spunky-­ protagonist model made famous by Mary Richards. Independent, upwardly mobile, and marriage-­oriented women like Kate McArdle and Allie Lowell (Kate and Allie, CBS, 1984–­1989), Khadijah James (Living Single, Fox, 1993–­ 1998), Rachel Green and Monica Geller (Friends, NBC, 1994–­2004), and the leads from Sex and the City (HBO, 1998–­2004) reflected liberal feminist ideals and conventional story arcs. The female antiheroes of twenty-­first-­century comedy that we investigate, by contrast, resist these narratives of pluck. Girls (HBO, 2012–­2017), Broad City (Comedy Central, 2014–­2019), Insecure (HBO, 2016–­present), and SMILF (Showtime, 2017–­2019) feature characters familiar from these earlier shows—­female friends in New York City, single African American women, working-­class moms—­but cast them in a fundamentally different light: apathetic instead of ambitious, trapped instead of triumphant. What is the origin of this new female antihero and why has she arrived on our screens at this moment? In this book we argue that this emergent protagonist is an ambivalent response to the achievements and failures of liberal feminism—­the great strides made in the last fifty years and the lingering knowledge that women are still struggling. An inherently skeptical figure, the new female antihero questions not only the truth of the popular story of female empowerment but also its desirability, the extent to which entitlement, choice, and “leaning in” constitute a meaningful feminist agenda. According to recent cultural narratives, our present moment represents “the end of men”—­a time when women have become “the richer sex” and boys are “adrift” and in “crisis.”3 While these accounts have been powerfully critiqued, they remain part of a cultural zeitgeist in which, as Suzanne Leonard puts it, “women routinely serve as symbols of financial vitality” during a post-­ recessionary moment when most are still struggling.4 We contend that the female antihero disrupts this narrative of progress and resiliency.5 Unlike the television protagonists who preceded her, she’s rarely plucky, resourceful, or

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game. She asks, often belligerently, what if I don’t want to have it all—­career, marriage, children, friends? What if I reject the responsibility of shepherding broken men and a beleaguered economy into the twenty-­first century? What if I only want raw naked power? Or, even worse, absolutely nothing? While this stance is new for women, it will strike viewers as familiar, since we’ve seen versions of these leads in the male antiheroes that flooded the small screen beginning in the 1990s—­men like Tony Soprano, Walter White, Omar Little, Vic Mackey, Jax Teller, Dexter Morgan, Al Swearengen, and (in comedy) George Costanza, Larry David, and Louis C.K. Indeed, one could argue that while women were busy advancing their careers and getting professional degrees, men were perfecting their roles as sociopaths and fuck-­ups. Content to let women worry about hard work and legitimacy, male antiheroes chased money, power, and (especially in the case of comedy) indolence. These dark and complicated character studies created “prestige TV” (also known as “quality TV,” “peak TV,” and the “third Golden Age of Television”6), a category from which women, up until recently, have been largely excluded. Of course, one could argue that men are at a distinct advantage in relation to the antihero genre. In dramas like The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–­2007), Deadwood (HBO, 2004–­2006), and Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008–­2013), male protagonists are deeply vested in power and domination, things that are already coded as masculine. In comedies like Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO, 2000–­present) and Louie (FX, 2010–­2015), the male leads are often aligned with ugliness, dirtiness, immaturity, and shame, and these, too, fulfill masculine stereotypes, albeit of a different kind. Antiheroes, moreover, must be able to tolerate and transcend the revulsion that their actions inspire, and this is the hallmark of men far more than of women. To the extent that the antihero is defined by rule-­breaking and alienation, men are bound to be overrepresented, as the history of American literature and film attests. Ever since Huck Finn denounced the civilizing force of his caretaker, the Widow Douglas, and lit out for the territories, American men have forged their own codes of honor, often in deep contradistinction to traditional society. As the Huck Finn example suggests, it is not just that the antihero has historically been coded as male, it’s also that the very things he rebels against—­ domesticity, convention, narrowly defined morality—­tend to be coded as female.7 We see this in a series like Breaking Bad no less than in Twain’s novel. To be sure, there are differences—­Walter White is a homicidal kingpin while Huck is rebelling against parental abuse and legalized white supremacy—­but the gender structure of the two narratives works similarly. In each case, a male figure, estranged, subordinate, and unsuccessful by normative definitions of family and vocation, decides to step outside the law and go it alone.

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(Actually, not entirely alone, since both protagonists find male companions and partners in crime—­Jesse and Jim—­who have less social power but more moral authority than the antihero himself.) Meanwhile, female characters (Skyler White, the Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson) attempt to domesticate the antihero back into the world of social convention, earning his (and the audience’s) scorn in the process. What happens, then, when we flip the script, when women become not the domesticating keepers of the hearth but the chaotic forces of social upheaval? Can they, like Walter and Huck, write their own codes of conduct and still retain audience allegiance? Certainly, the needle is harder to thread. Given the central role of women in social reproduction—­homemaking, the nuclear family, middle-­class respectability—­the female version of the antihero represents a far more profound threat to the status quo. Her smallest infractions are parsed for their challenge to feminine social norms, a phenomenon that’s amplified for women of color. By contrast, the male antihero reinforces masculinity with every murder, sardonic joke, or takedown of his boss. This book investigates the uneven consequences of social transgression on television—­how gender and race impact displays of fractiousness and excess. It proposes that the new female antihero—­antisocial, nonconformist, self-­involved—­represents an alternative for viewers at once beset by the mounting demands placed on young women and tired of watching men have all the fun. These protagonists, we argue, push back against the myth of the modern-­day superwoman—­she who “has it all”—­and in so doing expand the possibilities for being female in contemporary America.

introduction

The New Female Antihero—­The What, the Why, the How

The What What is an antihero? In recent years, television scholars have defined this figure (historically male) in terms of his moral ambiguity. Amanda Lotz, for example, describes the antihero as a “flawed protagonist.” She adds, “In many cases they are obviously ‘bad’ men by dominant social and legal, if not moral norms. Yet . . . the series depict them struggling with their responses to circumstances not entirely of their making.”1 Jason Mittell takes up a similar line of argumentation, identifying the antihero as “a character who is our primary point of ongoing narrative alignment but whose behavior and beliefs provoke ambiguous, conflicted, or negative moral allegiance.”2 Margrethe Bruun Vaage characterizes antiheroes as “morally flawed main characters” and examines audience engagement with them, asking, “How come we seem willingly to sympathize with characters in fiction we would hardly even like in real life?”3 While these scholars are focused specifically on the medium of television, they occasionally nod to the long history of the antihero in film and literature, a history that helps us understand this figure with a good deal more specificity. John Fitch III, for example, defines the antihero by thinking through his contrast with the cinematic hero, conceived as “one delivering salvation, enacting positive change, and bringing relief from suffering or oppression.” The traditional hero possesses those traits usually associated with virtue and valor—­“emotional, physical, and moral strength as well as charity and fortitude.”4 By contrast, the antihero lacks both nobility and purpose. He is fundamentally positioned against the social order he occupies. Lillian Furst, tracing the origins of the antihero to the figure of the Romantic hero in literature, paints an even darker picture: “The ultimate source of his malady resides in a solipsistic self-­absorption.” Unlike the archetypal hero who is “essentially

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outward-­looking . . . a leader of men . . . ready to sacrifice himself to the cause he has espoused,” the Romantic hero/antihero is fundamentally narcissistic, intent on his own triumph rather than on the salvation of the community or the good of the common weal.5 Following Fitch and Furst, in this study we define the antihero as a character who undercuts the common good either through explicitly criminal acts or through pointedly solipsistic behaviors. In other words, if the male hero rescues society through intentional action, the male antihero lacks both noble purposefulness and the ability to create positive transformation.6 While the categories of hero and antihero are notoriously slippery (Batman aka “the dark knight,” for example, is often cited as the quintessential do-­gooder who harbors a monster within7), we wish to maintain the distinction as a way of signaling the fundamental dissipation and misanthropy of the latter. The antihero’s trajectory is downward, and it threatens to drag all of civilized society with it—­think of Frank Underwood manipulating his way into the presidency in season 2 of House of Cards (Netflix, 2013–­2018) or Jimmy McNulty’s corrupting influence on the police force in the last season of The Wire (HBO, 2002–­2008). This is not to deny the ability of the antihero both to capture our sympathy and to uphold an independent code of values. But more often than not, our sympathy is ambivalent and the integrity of the antiheroic code is characterized by pathological extremism—­as with Dexter’s eponymous protagonist whose commitment to “justice” allows him to engage in ever grizzlier behavior (Showtime, 2006–­2013). We may root for antiheroes, we may even like them, but we rarely admire them. The female antihero (to be considered as such) must also position herself against the norms of civilization. And yet, the very fact of her gender transforms this dynamic. For women are not expected to rescue society, as men are; they are expected to showcase it, to demonstrate its values and commitments. Or, as Ann Towns puts it, women function as “a standard of civilization” and “few indicators seem more effective in indicating the civilizational standing of a state than the situation of women.”8 Moreover, women are understood not only as an index of social evolution but also as an instrument. “The gentle and insinuating manners of the female sex,” wrote the Scottish enlightenment philosopher Lord Kames at the end of the eighteenth century, “tend to soften the roughness of the other sex; and where-­ever women are indulged with any degree of freedom, they polish sooner than men.”9 Indeed, women led the moral reform movement in nineteenth-­century America precisely because they were understood as more pious and ethical than their male counterparts, whose commitment to business and entrepreneurialism meant

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they were susceptible to corrupting influences. In Barbara Welter’s words, “The mothers must do the inculcating of virtue since the fathers, alas, were too busy chasing the dollar.”10 While articulated in universal terms, women’s moral standing was race and class specific, available only to the wives and daughters of those with a controlling stake in how civilization and its norms were defined. For this reason, as we’ll see, the female antihero who rebels against these values tends to be largely white and middle class. This understanding of womanhood means that the traditional heroine is supposed to display and promulgate polite society rather than actively redeem it, and any movement toward the latter must necessarily undermine the very civilization women are meant to showcase. There is no space for the female hero in this scenario because the woman who rescues the world necessarily disrupts conventional femininity, thereby eschewing the traditional heroic function of upholding normative societal values. Stated slightly differently, the woman who tends toward the male heroic tends toward the female antiheroic. Her shows of physical prowess and redemptive violence highlight a society inverted or in crisis. Perhaps this is why characters who exhibit masculine strength like Alias’s Sydney Bristow (ABC, 2001–­2006) or Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s eponymous heroine are often thought of as antiheroes (WB, 1997–­2001; UPN, 2002–­2003), despite the fact that they remain on the right side of the law. Because gender constraints make the female heroic an oxymoron, we have no way of understanding these figures except in terms of the transgressive category of the antihero. Indeed, this logic helps explain why a slew of unusual yet essentially law-­ abiding female characters often get slotted into the antiheroic. Betty Draper, Carmela Soprano, and Skyler White have all been branded with the term, even though none function as primary protagonists (another qualification, we would argue, for the label “antihero”), and all are generally more princi­ pled than their corrupt and ego-­driven husbands. (Viewers were apoplectic with rage when Skyler White smoked while pregnant in season 2 of Breaking Bad, but this seems like small potatoes compared to the barbarity of Walt, who literally poisons a young child in a later season.)11 In an article entitled “Against Antiheroes,” Laura Bennett of The New Republic complains of “the sheer volume of antihero references. . . . At this point, ‘antihero’ barely means anything at all.” Quoting Emily Nussbaum, who calls Carrie Bradshaw “the first female antihero,” Bennett rightly points out the illogic of this characterization: “Carrie could be irksome as a character, but Sex and the City was defensive of its protagonist in a way that Breaking Bad and The Sopranos never were, permitting Carrie to be abrasive and vain only to rein her in at the last

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minute with a pat, chastened ending. . . . It is hard to deny that seeing ‘antihero’ applied to Carrie provides a quick, simple thrill of analytical recognition. But in the end, it confuses more than it reveals.”12 Carrie Bradshaw’s mischaracterization as an antihero is instructive; for if Carrie holds anything in common with Betty Draper, Carmela Soprano, and Skyler White, it is that they all occasionally renounce ideal femininity. They can be apathetic mothers (Betty), avaricious schemers (Carmela), belly­aching nags (Skyler), and pursuers of their own sexual gratification (all of the above). All, in addition, can be deeply narcissistic, a particular bugbear in a society that demands selflessness from women and that, thanks to Freud, regards narcissism as an especially damning female pathology. To the extent that these women navel-­gaze and chase tail, they get slotted into the role of antihero. In truth, however, despite their forays into unconventional womanhood, all essentially affirm the values of late-­capitalist society more than they disrupt them. They embrace marriage and family, law and order, heterosexuality, feminine performance, and consumerism. Their vanity, while occasionally tiresome, does not descend into the kind of complete self-­absorption that might threaten the social order around them. (Carrie Bradshaw’s weekly mimosa brunches serve in part to reintegrate her into a female community so she can examine and curb her selfishness.) That is to say, these women and others like them—­Piper Chapman from Orange Is the New Black (Netflix, 2013–­2019), Alicia Florrick from The Good Wife (CBS, 2009–­2016), Rebecca Bunch from Crazy Ex-­Girlfriend (CW, 2015–­2019), and Annie Easton from Shrill (Hulu, 2019–­present), to name just a few—­primarily work to uphold both lawful enterprise and the normative values of their societies rather than to unravel them, as we are positing the antihero does. By contrast, the protagonists of this book repudiate conventional womanhood in much more marked ways, thereby destabilizing the societies in which they live. Some might be tempted to call these characters (typified by Cersei Lannister of Game of Thrones) “villains,” but we prefer “antihero,” to emphasize their alignment not with evil but with resistance to the status quo. If current female TV protagonists can be easily (and erroneously) placed into the antihero category, men have to work much harder for the appellation. This is because audiences expect compliance from women while tolerating violence and rule-­breaking in men. That is to say, if the female protagonist’s badass and indolent ways undermine conceptions of femininity, the same behavior by men reaffirms, rather than challenges, their masculinity. This is why, despite Don Draper’s alcoholism, womanizing, prevarication, and absenteeism from the home, he’s not always recognized as an antihero. “He’s neither a murderer nor a psychopath,” writes the AV ’s Vikram Murthi in

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an article entitled “Don Draper Is No Antihero.”13 True, but neither is his wife, Betty, who’s been branded with the epithet merely for encouraging her kids to watch television. The fact is, Don Draper does fit the model of the antihero whose “egocentric pursuit of self-­satisfaction . . . is the fountainhead of the misfortune he spreads.”14 His is the path from self-­absorption to nihilism—­ the quintessential trajectory of the antihero.15 And yet, Draper’s sociopathic ways merely reinforce our understanding of masculinity, which is why he stokes desire with every lie, evasion, and act of infidelity. What’s more, his attachment to the home, vague and inconsistent though it may be, redeems him in the eyes of viewers, as is also the case for Tony Soprano and Walter White, who, as critics have pointed out, curry audience favor through their roles as devoted fathers.16 When Don Draper takes his daughter Sally to work, he’s Father of the Year, while Betty Draper—­the primary caregiver who should get points for merely showing up—­gets branded again and again as a monster.17 Perhaps this helps explain the paucity of mothers in female antihero television and the vexed status of motherhood where it does occur in these series. Of the ten women we examine, only one is consistently defined in relation to motherhood—­Bridgette Bird of SMILF. Carrie Mathison of Homeland doesn’t live with her daughter until season 6; Cersei Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen of Game of Thrones lose their children during the course of the series; and Elizabeth Jennings of The Americans is so committed to her work as a spy that parenting functions largely as an afterthought. (The other protagonists we examine are all childless.) The relative absence of motherhood in female antihero television can perhaps be explained by the risk of unlikeability incurred by the protagonist, who is already on thin ice for rejecting standards of female virtue and decorum. Breaking laws, pursuing sexual pleasure, and refusing social responsibility are easier in the context of childlessness, because motherhood anchors women in civilization, sequestering their bodies in the home and demanding the transmission of values to the next generation. While fatherhood helps redeem the male antihero, showing him at his most sympathetic (even if only briefly and between murders or adulterous affairs), motherhood demonizes the female antihero whose neglect of her children is the one thing viewers seem unable to forgive. HBO’s hit series Girls ends when Hannah Horvath has a baby, perhaps because its creators recognized that audiences wouldn’t tolerate a selfish, erotically driven, mildly overweight woman who also ignores her kid. When motherhood is depicted in these series, its representation is fraught. Most male antiheroes are lawless and abusive, but their affection for their kids serves as a reminder to audiences of their ties to humanity (think of Tony Soprano cradling son A.J. after a suicide attempt or Don Draper carrying

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sleeping daughter Sally home from the office). For female antiheroes, by con­ trast, no amount of nurturing can redeem their actions, which always fall short of expectations for maternal selflessness. When Cersei Lannister prompts her son Tommen’s suicide by killing his wife, or when Elizabeth Jennings recruits her daughter to a KGB career she knows to be full of violence and sexual exploitation, they prioritize their professional ambitions over their concerns for their children. Carrie Mathison’s frequent abandonment of her daughter and Olivia Pope’s Christmas Eve abortion during the fifth season of Scandal likewise emerge from the refusal of these women to see motherhood as more important than the mark they might otherwise make on the world. We will examine motherhood in greater detail in chapters 1, 2, 4, and 8 to show how it contributes to the female antihero’s perceived destructiveness and particularly the threat she poses to the nuclear family. If motherhood is fraught for the disruptive women of twenty-­first-­century television, the consequences are amplified when those women are Black. Betty Draper garnered criticism for her ambivalent parenting, but this was nothing like the firestorm with which audiences greeted Brianna Barksdale, Darcia Wallace, and De’Londa Brice of The Wire.18 The cost of transgressing feminine social norms is higher for Black characters, who are often expected to be models of middle-­class decorum. As a consequence, the female antihero is largely white, her edginess often defined in relation to more staid and stable African American characters, who play sidekicks and foils if they are present at all. This is especially apparent in comedies like Girls, which amassed widespread criticism for its lack of racial diversity, and in Broad City and SMILF, both of which incorporate complicated racial dynamics while relegating Black characters to the background. The whiteness of the contemporary female antihero has its origin in historical stereotypes of idealized femininity. For to argue, as we have, that female protagonists are expected to showcase civilization while male leads redeem it demands the crucial caveat that it is white women who have traditionally served this civilizing function. Black women in literature and film occupy a fundamentally different position in the social order—­they are often forced to take up positions not as “angels of the house” but as servants and mammies, whose labor allows white women to emerge more fully as promotors of polite society. Having fulfilled this civilizing function for centuries, white women can finally emerge as impure, disorderly, and fractious—­liberties not fully afforded their Black counterparts, who must guard against the physical and emotional abjection that characterizes representational histories of women of color, as Rebecca Wanzo has pointed out.19 This is perhaps why Olivia Pope’s law-­breaking must be accompanied by ironclad competence and

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superhuman poise, and why Insecure must tread more carefully than Girls or Broad City in portraying its protagonist’s romantic failings and thwarted ambitions. Given the tremendous pressures placed on Black women to be (as Olivia Pope’s father puts it) “twice as good,” the Black woman’s refusal of accountability threatens to reinforce racist stereotypes, making the phenomenon of the Black female antihero politically risky. The relative scarcity of Black female antiheroes is accompanied by a bitter irony—­that the white antihero’s frisson of defiance can be traced to classic Black characters in film and television. Scholars such as Kimberly Springer, Patricia Hill Collins, and Imani M. Cheers have investigated early on-­screen representations of Black women, identifying a series of character types rooted in the minstrel tradition.20 In addition to the mammy figure, the “jezebel”—­the sexually voracious Black woman—­and “sapphire”—­the angry Black woman—­ were common stereotypes. These figures were crucial early antecedents to the female antihero. Their rejection of respectability lay the groundwork for the emergence of white female protagonists, who trade on the same behavior while keeping its historical roots invisible. Such a strategy lines up with a related phenomenon outlined by Richard Dyer and Susan Douglas, among others. Here white characters, ordinarily coded by restraint, borrow the liberatory disorder associated with Black characters in upending convention.21 That is to say, proximity to Blackness allows white characters access to audacity and insurgence, even as their whiteness offers a protection not available to Black protagonists who might manifest the same behaviors. Twenty-­first-­century antihero television both borrows this logic and turns it on its head, rewriting white womanhood as abject and nonconformist while imagining Black womanhood largely in terms of restraint. Girls’ and Broad City’s joyful feminist vision of female shamelessness is thus also a celebration of white millennial freedom that sidelines those women of color most burdened by expectations for civility. The Why Why the rise of the female antihero now? To answer this question, it’s helpful to think about the changes in television programming over the last few decades, changes that have largely resulted in television legitimating itself through masculine storylines and charismatic male leads. The story goes something like this: in the late 1970s and 1980s, serialized narrative migrated from daytime soap operas (popular from the 1950s onward) to prime time. This migration took two forms. Domestic dramas such as Dallas (CBS, 1978–­1991), Falcon Crest (CBS, 1981–­1990), and Dynasty (ABC, 1981–­1989) embraced their roots in soap

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opera and actively courted a female audience. At the same time, workplace dramas like Hill Street Blues (NBC, 1981–­1987) and St. Elsewhere (NBC, 1982–­ 1988) introduced elements from serialized programming—­ongoing character development, season-­long plot arcs—­but resisted the “soapier,” more feminized elements of daytime TV. Not surprisingly, Hill Street Blues won scores of Emmy awards, while Dallas and Dynasty remained popular with audiences but were largely shut out of the awards circuit. The primetime serials of the ’90s and early aughts followed the Hill Street Blues playbook; shows like NYPD Blue (ABC, 1993–­2005), ER (NBC, 1994–­2009), and The Practice (ABC, 1997–­ 2004) were set in police stations, hospitals, and law offices, and combined their season-­long arcs with serious artistic ambitions. When HBO premiered The Sopranos in 1999, the masculinization of soap opera appeared complete. The Sopranos is openly sentimental, unapologetically serial, and invested above all else in family ties. Yet its bloody action sequences and law-­breaking protagonist protect it from associations with soap opera’s femininity. As Elana Levine and Michael Newman point out in Legitimating Television, separating “respectable” serialized drama from its roots in soap opera depends upon explicit acts of defeminizing—­emphasizing endings, soft-­pedaling the narrative’s serial elements, and butching up “soapy” content with violence, profanity, and toxic masculinity.22 Once serialized narrative broke free from the female characters, domestic concerns, and daytime television slots that had relegated it to the scholarly sidelines, it gained respectability in both the male-­dominated film industry and the status-­conscious academy. Analyses of The Sopranos, The Wire, and Breaking Bad were published in flagship film studies journals, and popular nonfiction books like Difficult Men and The Revolution Was Televised identified the male antihero as the dominant TV protagonist of the new millennium.23 The age of “prestige” or “quality” television was born, and it was oriented almost completely around men. Of course the masculinity of prestige TV was in no way homogeneous. As Michael Albrecht and Amanda Lotz have pointed out, the men of turn-­of-­the-­twenty-­first-­century TV were complex and multidimensional, as interested in showcasing nuanced depictions of masculinity in crisis as they were in reaffirming heteronormative ideals.24 But within this complicated tapestry of male-­identified programming, women and female-­specific concerns tended to be relegated to the sidelines. This is not to underestimate the importance of groundbreaking shows like Sex and the City, which, as Emily Nussbaum has pointed out, “was sharp, iconoclastic television . . . daring in its conception of characters.”25 But, as important as it was in setting the stage for the female antihero, SATC’s formulaic strategies and insistence on happy endings meant that it stopped short of moving prestige TV to its next phase.

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All this has changed in recent years, as complicated, gritty, norm-­defying female characters have emerged in droves. While scholars have begun to examine this new protagonist, it’s fair to say that she has not been showered with the same love and attention that Tony, Walter, Don, and Vic received when they first debuted.26 Often her emergence is explained as a variant of that of her male counterpart. According to this logic, the female antihero, like the male antihero before her, has appeared on television due to industry-­ driven reasons. Specifically, the movement from a mass audience to a variety of niche viewers—­enabled by cable networks, streaming services, and online platforms (a phenomenon known as “narrowcasting”27)—­has allowed for less traditional women to occupy center stage.28 Margaret Talley narrates the female antihero’s appearance in just such industry-­driven terms, identifying the success of male antihero protagonists, narrowcasting and other technological shifts in television production, and the growing influence of female writers and showrunners as the causes of “the anti-­heroine[’s recent appearance] on the televisual landscape.”29 Critics such as Kevin O’Keefe and Yasmin Omar take a similar line, arguing that the female antihero has emerged because “women control the remote” and (increasingly) the writers’ room.30 More recently, scholars have widened the critical lens, going beyond industry-­driven accounts. Milly Buonanno’s important transnational study of the antiheroine in the crime drama attempts to understand this new female figure partially through Raymond Williams’s concept of the “structure of feeling.”31 Julia M. Mason sees the rise of female antiheroes as a response to the onslaught of good mother messaging or “the new momism.”32 Other scholars have considered the emergence of disruptive women on television, while not necessarily labeling them antiheroes. Diane Negra, Jorie Lagerwey, and Julia Leyda identify a “female-­centered television” that began in 2008 as a response to the Great Recession.33 Lagerwey and Taylor Nygaard see this new programming as shoring up white fragility in the context of a reactionary political climate.34 Kristin Warner attributes it to a complex loop with women audiences eager for fare reflective of their experiences and desires.35 Following these scholars and others,36 we contend that, as significant as industry imperatives remain, they alone cannot account for the rise of the female antihero. Our take on the reasons for her emergence is the subject of the following pages.

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In arguing that the pervasive presence of the female antihero is a function of more than simply changes in the television industry, we mean to tie her popularity to gendered transformations in the socio-­economic landscape. After all, the dawn of the twenty-­first century is a deeply conflicted time for

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women. On the one hand, they enjoy greater opportunity and advantages than ever before: they make up a majority of the American workforce, occupying more than 50 percent of managerial positions in 2019 (up from 26 percent in 1980).37 The number of wives who outearn their husbands has also steadily increased over the past three decades, going from 17.8 percent in 1987 to 29.3 percent in 2013.38 Women graduate from college at a higher rate than their male counterparts—­in 2016 women earned 57.34 percent of all bachelor’s degrees—­and are more likely than men to pursue postcollegiate education.39 In secondary schools, the trends are similar, with girls increasingly outperforming boys across a range of subjects, even in the STEM fields where they traditionally have not thrived.40 (Similar statistics exist in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.)41 In her controversial book The End of Men, Hanna Rosin quotes one man’s response to these developments: “Women live longer than men. They do better in this economy. More of ’em graduate from college. They go into space and do everything men do, and sometimes they do it a whole lot better. I mean, hell, get out of the way—­these females are going to leave us males in the dust.”42 Rosin, along with many academic sociologists, credits women’s advances to the shifting economic landscape of the late twentieth and early twenty-­first centuries. With the decline of traditional manufacturing jobs and the rise of the service and digital economies, women have emerged as the ideal workers, possessing not only the “soft skills” of communication, empathy, and team-­ building but also the capacity to thrive as “flexible workers” under fluctuating and unpredictable labor conditions.43 Add to this the increase in women-­ friendly legislation that has dramatically curtailed discrimination and helped ensure equal access, and one sees how women have emerged as the key to the twenty-­first-­century economy. Hillary Clinton summed up this position in her 2016 APEC address: “When we liberate the economic potential of women, we elevate the economic performance of communities, nations, and the world.”44 Liza Mundy, author of The Richer Sex, echoes this assessment in her notion of “the big flip”—­a trend in which women in the United States, Western Europe, and East Asia are fast becoming the primary breadwinners for their families.45 Mundy is optimistic about these economic transformations, as are other commentators who tie them to women’s improved status more generally. Reihan Salam claims that the global financial crisis has precipitated “the death of macho,” allowing women to claim more equitable positions not only in their jobs but in their homes.46 Rosin reports that in American fertility clinics in the new millennium, up to 75 percent of couples showed a preference for girls, a massive turnaround from the “firstborn son” privileging that has

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characterized most of history.47 Industry analysis reveals that moviegoers now prefer films that star women rather than men, and films that pass the Bechdel Test outperform films that don’t.48 These transformations have impacted girls and young women, who feel encouraged to take seriously their own agency and potential. They increasingly marry and have children later (or not at all), choosing instead to focus on their careers and self-­development.49 And yet, despite these advances, the news is hardly all positive. Women’s wages, especially in the managerial sector, are still far lower than their male counterparts,50 and women are underrepresented in the wealthiest sectors, constituting a tiny fraction of CEOs in Fortune Global 500 companies.51 While college-­educated unmarried women tend to make salaries on par with their educated male counterparts, their earning potential plummets when they have children, and it never recovers.52 The news is even grimmer for women of color, who earn far less than the average woman’s 80 cents on the male dollar—­Black women earn 61 cents; Latina women, 53 cents.53 And while women now make up a majority of the workforce, they are increasingly se­ questered in low-­paying professions, such as teaching and social work.54 Surveying these developments, education scholar Jill Blackmore queries, “So do girls ‘succeed’ when they largely, except for their middle and upper class sisters, enter a highly gender-­segmented and polarised labour market in which they are concentrated in underpaid, casualised, feminised and non-­unionised jobs?”55 On the socio-­cultural front, the news is similarly disheartening. Despite the lip service paid to “girl power,” studies show that women are twice as likely as men to suffer from anxiety and depression.56 There is also evidence that the changing economic picture has had devastating consequences on domestic relations. As the erosion of traditional manufacturing jobs has deprived men of their role as breadwinners, incidents of domestic abuse have gone up.57 Boys in “trouble” and in “crisis” have given way to men who lean on women, often to the point of exploitation.58 Toxic masculinity has become part of the political landscape as well; a third of the men on the current Supreme Court have been accused of sexual misconduct, and the forty-­fifth president has boasted about grabbing women by the genitals. The future of reproductive rights is uncertain, members of the LGBTQ+ community are under attack, and women continue to do most of the housework, a majority of childcare, and exhausting amounts of “emotional labor.”59 It seems that reports of patriarchy’s death have been greatly exaggerated. This ambivalent story about the status of women has been the subject of recent feminist inquiry. In Future Girl: Young Women in the 21st Century, Anita Harris argues that girls have been constructed as the “vanguard of a

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new subjectivity”—­exemplars of possibility and promise during a deeply unstable moment. “At the beginning of the twenty-­first century, the creation of the contemporary social order and citizenship is achieved in part within the space of girlhood,” Harris writes. “[The future girl] is imagined, and sometimes imagines herself, as best able to handle today’s socioeconomic order.”60 Through her persistence, drive, and capacity for self-­invention, the girl will buoy the rest of us, or so the story goes. Angela McRobbie offers a similar assessment: “The meanings which converge around the figure of the girl or young woman, are . . . weighted towards capacity, success, attainment, enjoyment, entitlement, social mobility and participation. The dynamics of regulation and control are less about what young women ought not to do and more about what they can do.”61 At the same time, these scholars clarify, girls and women live and labor under difficult conditions, adversely affected by the same developments that afflict others: “a changed labor market, economic rationalization, and a devolving of responsibility onto individuals.”62 There is, then, a disconnect between the popular story of “future girl” and her lived reality, and this creates tremendous pressure for young women, who imagine that their failure to succeed results from ineptitude rather than from social and institutional forces. To fall short of being “the amazing bounce-­backable woman” (in Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad’s memorable phrasing63) is to fail fundamentally as an individualized female subject. In this context, systemic critique is impossible, as is social transformation. Mainstream feminism has become complicit in the logic of “future girl,” insofar as it often adopts the vacuous rhetoric of female empowerment. Buttressed by a consumerist mentality that encourages spending as a sign of agency, this brand of feminism promises that “The Future Is Female” (as emblazoned on countless T-­shirts) and that “Girls Can Do Anything” (as a new fragrance by Zadig & Voltaire is called).64 Not only does this feminism mask the fact that it is largely affluent white women who are interpellated by empowerment rhetoric, it also leaves many cold. As artist Audrey Wollen notes, “I felt kind of alienated by contemporary feminism, because it demanded so much of me (self-­love, great sex, economic success) that I just couldn’t give.” In place of “girl power,” Wollen chooses “sadness” as a way of acknowledging the difficulty of being female in the current moment. As she puts it, “Feminism doesn’t need to advocate for how awesome and fun being a girl is . . . [O]ur pain doesn’t need to be discarded in the name of empowerment.”65 Wollen’s “Sad Girl Theory” bears resemblance to the anti-­optimism of Lauren Berlant, Jack Halberstam, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Sara Ahmed, all of whom point to the ways that everyday culture asks us to buy into an aspirational fantasy of “the good life,” while keeping that life ever more inaccessible.66 In this

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context, sadness, failure, and shame might constitute a kind of resistance, or, as Halberstam puts it, “not succeeding at womanhood can offer unexpected pleasures.”67 We might think of the new female antihero as responding in a similar register. In comedy, she rejects the can-­do pluck of a Mary Tyler Moore, opting to meet the achievement mandate with a mixture of skepticism, boredom, and contempt. When SMILF ’s Bridgette Bird is encouraged by her spunky friend Nelson to make a vision board—­“Everything amazing in my life I manifested through visualization,” Nelson tells her—­Bridgette replies, “I’m gonna need some magazines, and some tape, probably scissors,” and then adds, “I’m gonna need a dream too.”68 Her response constitutes a recognition that what’s lacking is not simply the material props needed to build a success narrative but also the aspirational fantasy itself. In hour-­long dramas, the female antihero has no shortage of dreams and ambitions, but here, too, she suffers from a sense that she’s battling extraordinary odds and that unrelenting shows of physical and mental prowess are necessary to achieve even a modicum of respect. Perhaps this is why female antiheroes in dramas—­from Damages’ Patty Hewes (FX, 2007–­2012) to Scandal’s Olivia Pope—­are famous for their physical flawlessness and unerring professional record. These are women who recognize that the occasional screwup is not an option. “I missed something once before; I won’t, I can’t let that happen again,” Carrie Mathison tells her mentor Saul in the opening credits to Homeland. “It was ten years ago,” Saul responds, referencing 9/11; “everyone missed something that day.” Carrie’s response captures the pressure that the twenty-­first-­century young woman feels to be infallible: “Yeah, everyone’s not me.”69 Her words are the perfect bookend to Bridgette Bird’s “I’m gonna need a dream too.” That is to say, both the dramatic and the comedic antihero know what they’re up against, but the former compensates through massive displays of strength and invulnerability while the latter often simply sits back and accepts her own powerlessness. Both responses are attempts to “break the wheel” (as Daenerys Targaryen would put it), to disrupt a system that at once demands women’s success and strips them of the tools and the level playing field for attaining it. It’s easy to see how this works in comedy. When Girls’ Hannah Horvath quits her well-­ paying job, dons unflattering clothing, and continually chooses a relationship where she’s denied respect, fidelity, and sexual pleasure, she seems to be staring down the terms of empowerment feminism and saying “no thanks.” In drama the story is a bit more complicated. Protagonists like Elizabeth Jennings, Carrie Mathison, and Olivia Pope are products of contemporary feminist ideology, women whose physical prowess, professional success, and

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resistance to male authority have been made imaginable by the social and political gains of the last fifty years. (This is true of Cersei Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen, too. Their stories may be set in some vague Middle Age, but their ambition and take-­no-­prisoners attitude is clearly a function of the current cultural zeitgeist.) And yet, what might look like feminist success stories are, on closer inspection, evidence of a system out of whack. These women get the job done, but only by going into hyperdrive, vanquishing their enemies through betrayal, manipulation, and homicide. Their goal is rarely justice; more often they’re chasing greed, pleasure, and self-­promotion. (Olivia Pope speaks of wearing a white hat, but this conceit is hard to swallow as she slides into increasingly immoral behavior—­fixing an election in season 2, beating an enemy to death with a metal chair in season 5.) And in the end, as we will show, the female antiheroes of television dramas are rarely successful. Their story arcs read like a parody of feminist victory—­rather than shattering the glass ceiling, Cersei Lannister finishes out Game of Thrones by literally being buried under falling rubble. We argue that these dramatic antiheroes set the stage for their comedic sisters. Having attempted and failed to achieve empowerment in the liberal feminist tradition—­through striving, confidence, ambition, and physical strength—­they make room for the women who reject these values altogether.

*

This depiction of the female antihero—­as a figure of resistance and critique— ­is somewhat at odds with the general consensus concerning representations of women in media. Critics and scholars tend to see television shows of the 1990s and early aughts as largely populated by superficial figures: sex-­positive consumerists like Carrie Bradshaw and her gal pals; adorkably conflicted thirtysomethings like The New Girl’s Jess Day (Fox, 2011–­2018); and gurus of self-­care, motherhood, and domesticity like the women of Desperate Housewives (ABC, 2004–­2012) or Rachael Ray of 30 Minute Meals (Food Network, 2001–­2012). According to these analyses, female protagonists on television appear contented and empowered, even as they largely define their satisfaction in narrow consumerist terms, reinforcing traditional norms. For example, in her New York Times op-­ed on Sex and the City, Catherine Orenstein calls out the series for its facile vision of female empowerment: The heroines spend most of their time on shopping, cocktails and one-­night stands. Charlotte dreams of bridesmaids’ dresses. Miranda frigidly “dates” her TiVo, while nymphomaniac Samantha—­a blond bimbo who combines old-­

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f i g u r e 0.1. Beyoncé performs at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards.

fashioned objectification with postmodern “do me” feminism—­plows through the Kama Sutra. And in one episode Carrie discovers that she has only $957 in savings—­but $40,000 in designer shoes in her closet. . . . [W]hen did haute couture fashion and prêt-­à-­porter men come to eclipse all the other elements of independent womanhood?70

Diane Negra levels a more nuanced critique against shows like Providence (NBC, 1999–­2002), Judging Amy (CBS, 1999–­2005), and Gilmore Girls (WB, 2000–­2007), all of which “proceed from a retreatist impulse” in which the female protagonist questions her professional trajectory in favor of conventional values.71 Significant in these critiques (and many others like them) is the charge of postfeminism—­the idea that turn-­of-­the-­twenty-­first-­century television reflects a landscape at once informed by the pervasive presence of second-­ wave feminist ideals and running at full tilt away from these. In the current moment, the argument goes, feminism has become deeply familiar, a household word and cultural meme, as evidenced by Beyoncé’s use of the word “feminist” as giant neon backdrop during the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards (fig. 0.1).72 At the same time, feminism, as it is depicted in popular culture, is largely a toothless phenomenon, often amounting to little more than the freedom to shop, have great sex, and indulge in self-­making. Andi Zeisler sums it up in her 2016 book We Were Feminists Once: “It’s a feminism that trades on simple themes of sisterhood and support—­you-­go-­girl tweets and Instagram photos, cheery magazine editorials about dressing to please yourself.”73 Often in league with corporate dollars, postfeminism tells young women that they can embrace a feminist identity simply by wearing a “nasty woman” T-­shirt or

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by catching the latest Amy Schumer film. Worse still, it borrows liberal feminist ideals to reinforce traditional values—­mobilizing the rhetoric of “choice,” for example, not in the name of reproductive rights but to justify college-­ educated women opting out of professional careers74 or embracing female desire less as an anti-­repressive measure than in the service of heteronormative male fantasy.75 At the same time, those engaging in real feminist work are written off by postfeminist culture as nags or “killjoys” (in Sara Ahmed’s formulation), overly extremist shrews who want women to renounce baking, romance, fishnet stockings, and pedicures.76 As Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker write, “postfeminism signals more than a simple evolutionary process whereby aspects of feminism have been incorporated into popular culture—­ and thereby naturalized as popular feminism. It also simultaneously involves an ‘othering’ of feminism (even as women are more centralized), its construction as extreme, difficult, and unpleasurable.”77 At issue for the many critics who call out the apolitical nature of postfeminism is the role played by culture and particularly television, which, ever since the Frankfurt School, has been understood as a lobotomizing force.78 While television shows may feel progressive in their women-­centered themes, the medium is unable to deliver anything beyond bland humanist pronouncements. As Lauren Rabinowitz puts it, “Television allows for the ex­ pression of a feminist critique but represses feminism’s potential for radical social change.”79 For Rabinowitz, as for others, the problem originates with TV’s corporate motive—­its desire to deliver to advertisers a growing number of female baby boomers who are independently minded and increasingly wage-­earning but still largely oriented around traditional values. Hence the feeble nods to feminist politics in the context of shows that largely reposition women in relation to the nuclear family (or the “surrogate family of the workplace”).80 While recent streaming platforms may have created smaller niche audiences desirous of eclectic programming, corporate motives still prevail, narrowing the presentation of women on TV and defining them in blandly professional and consumerist terms. This has resulted in financially independent female protagonists (highly skilled, unmarried, wary of commitment) pursuing a neoliberal agenda of entrepreneurship and self-­care. It has also resulted in the monetizing of diversity, even as television characters remain overwhelmingly affluent and white. If critics of postfeminist TV point to corporate appeasement, they also contend that this programming fails to address genuine political issues (pay inequity, discrimination, white supremacy, etc.) because of its investment in “lifestyle.” In depicting the subjectivities of its female protagonists, it anchors them in what Angela McRobbie calls “an aggressive individualism,”81 thereby

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subverting the potential for systemic critique and collective action.82 Audiences who watch this fare are in turn hailed into the discourse of “lifestyle,” since they, too, define their commitment to feminism through individual acts of consumerism and self-­making, including the decision to watch postfeminist television itself. This results in a self-­feeding loop in which a politically disengaged, largely female audience tunes into shows in which putatively self-­ realized protagonists embrace feminism-­lite. As Jessa Crispin sums it up in her book Why I Am Not a Feminist, “For too long feminism has been moving away from being about collective action and imagination, and towards being a lifestyle. Lifestyles do not change the world.”83 While we are sympathetic to complaints about postfeminist culture and share many of our colleagues’ concerns, we also contend that some of these criticisms are ill-­placed. For example, the attack on “lifestyle” seems odd given attempts to recuperate women’s personal politics during feminism’s second wave. Indeed, much of the work of consciousness-­raising groups in this period involved the recognition that women could not easily separate their personal choices from the public domain of the university, the courtroom, and the workplace. Those who criticize postfeminism acknowledge this history but claim that the commitment to the “personal as political” has either gone too far or has been willfully misconstrued. Bonnie J. Dow, for example, argues that “the personal is political . . . was meant to describe patriarchy, not feminism. That is, it encapsulated the idea that what women viewed as personal, individual problems could be traced to the political status of women living in a male-­dominated and male-­defined society.” Television, she claims, “has taken this idea in precisely the opposite direction in representing feminism: The political is personal, it tells us, as a set of political ideas and practices is transformed into a set of attitudes and personal lifestyle choices.”84 Similarly, Katharine Viner argues, “The personal as the political was never meant to be a prescription of how to live your life. It was never meant to be a rallying cry to shave off your hair and take up with the lady next door. But what it was really meant to do was create an awareness of how our personal lives are ruled by political forces.”85 While this may be true, few would disregard the extent to which the tenet “the personal is political” did lead many women to shave off their hair and take up with the lady next door! For this reason, 1960s and ’70s feminism faced the same charges of depoliticization that haunt postfeminism today. Betty Friedan initially dismissed consciousness-­raising sessions as “navel-­gazing,”86 and ’60s yippie Jerry Rubin became infamous for his statement “politics is how you live your life, not who you vote for.”87 Our point is not to defend the superficiality of some forms of feminist engagement, but rather to point out

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that the women’s movement has always been accompanied by a commitment to lifestyle. When early women’s rights advocates agitated for the freedom to wear trousers and later to ride bicycles, it was because they recognized a connection between women’s political liberation and their physical mobility, and thus a lifestyle revolution was born.88 Likewise, feminists of the late ’60s and early ’70s embraced miniskirts, communal living, the artwork of Judy Chicago, and the music of Nina Simone because they recognized that cultural choices could project a powerful message about their feminist identity that was aligned with their politics. In this way they captured what Stanley Aronowitz characterized as “the leading theme of the ideology of the 60s: the attempt to infuse life with a secular spiritual and moral content, to fill the quotidian with personal meaning and purpose through social action.”89 While this could no doubt result in solipsism, it also energized a generation eager to redefine their daily lives in accordance with their burgeoning political passions. We are, of course, not the first to argue for the importance of popular cultural forms for political engagement. To be sure, there is a bevy of important scholarship that recuperates television (and other media) as a site of feminist praxis. Much of this work not only defends recent television programming but also attempts to define postfeminism differently, that is, as a genuine attempt to think about feminist work in the period after the second wave. According to this scholarship, postfeminism (also occasionally referred to as popular, third-­, or fourth-­wave feminism) is valuable insofar as it tackles issues of exclusion (especially along lines of race and class), embraces female sexuality, attempts to reconcile feminism and femininity, acknowledges the extent to which postmodernism has redefined the term “woman,” asserts con­ tinuity—­rather than rupture—­with the work of the second wave, and argues for meaningful forms of popular culture.90 The existence of this scholarship alongside that which engages in critique indicates that no easy assessment of television’s feminist potential is possible. Indeed, most scholars who work in feminist media studies would likely agree with Merri Lisa Johnson’s summation that “all shows on television today contain a mixture of feminist, postfeminist, antifeminist, and pseudofeminist motifs.”91 Nevertheless, the general posture among critics and scholars has been a wariness about the conservatism and market-­oriented logic of contemporary television. This is true even as many acknowledge that television programming has shifted in the last decade, showcasing fewer plucky female consumers and more women who are angry, beleaguered, and down on their luck. In their important edited collection Gendering the Recession, Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker argue for a changed media landscape since the fi­nancial crisis

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of 2008, one in which female protagonists “appear to be significantly less light-­hearted . . . lacking the sense of play and pleasure that many postfeminist texts bid for.”92 Other scholars, like Lauren DeCarvalho, Jodi Brooks, and Amy Shields Dobson and Akane Kanai, have also argued that the post-­ recessionary moment has resulted in more complicated, diverse women on television, including the “unconfident, anxious, and insecure girl” whose affect does not entirely align with the neoliberal mindset.93 But these accounts often return to the instrumentalizing logic of an all-­encompassing market. For example, in writing about the post-­recessionary woman on television who must counter her own precarity through an adaptive resilience, Lagerwey, Leyda, and Negra comment on the ethos of financialization that pervades this programming, an ethos “in which the experience of precarity has crept into the middle classes, in which modes of economic subjectivity that might once have been counterbalanced by other forms of selfhood have attained preeminence and in which market logics have decisively overtaken other, previously distinct, value systems and worldviews.”94 While insightful about the devastating effects of the Great Recession, such a view imagines that a neoliberal sensibility determines female-­centered television, resulting in “the co-­presentation of female empowerment with acquiescence to the structural status quo.”95 Missing from this otherwise astute account is not only the hopelessness and abjection of the new female antihero who resists imperatives for resilience, but also what Janice Radway once described as the “fluid and active” nature of production and reception practices, the “final effects” of which “can neither be foreseen nor guaranteed in advance.”96 It is precisely this unpredictability—­the sometimes surprising ways that writers, actors, and directors craft female characters and the equally surprising ways that viewers respond to them—­that can upend status-­quo imperatives, making for the joy and intrigue of contemporary television.97 Here also lies the political promise of this medium, given how wildly pop­ ular female-­centered series have become. Contemporary television, in other words, is an important site of access for young women curious about feminism—­a venue in which they may first encounter portraits of sexism, work/ family balance and, yes, individual empowerment. While these viewers will likely not be radicalized through watching this programming, it’s quite possible that they may become inquisitive, engaged, and hailed within a community of like-­minded others, eager to process and discuss the shows they see. This is no formula against complacency, but it does suggest that lifestyle feminism has a role to play in the larger struggle for emancipatory politics. Indeed, our own trajectories from culture hounds to gender studies professors indicate that television (along with novels, music, film, and other art

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forms) can create an enthusiasm among audiences that can slide into conversation, critique, political commitment, and even activism. The goal then is not to condemn TV shows for their lack of ideological purity, but to harness the energy they bring to viewers so as to push the cultural conversation about women in more genuinely progressive directions. As Amanda Lotz puts it, “Especially when series and characters resonate with audiences to the degree that many recently have, we must explore what is in these texts with an eye to their complexity instead of quickly dismissing them as part of a hegemonic, patriarchal, capitalist system.”98 The female antiheroes we take up in this book are far from exemplary vis-­à-­vis progressive politics. While they are smart, resourceful, and often unconventional in their professional and romantic pursuits, they are also deeply selfish, occasionally consumerist, largely white, and relentlessly heterosexual. And yet these women are also complex and fascinating in ways not always acknowledged by postfeminist critique. Take their relationship to the culture of girlhood. This is a sticking point for many scholars and critics who claim that girlhood discourse on TV is maddeningly Pollyannaish, filled with empty slogans of self-­reliance and empowerment.99 Moreover, TV’s “girl­ing” of older women—­the imposing of perpetual adolescence on fully grown thirtysomethings—­speaks to a culture unwilling to recognize women who have moved beyond pony love, burgeoning sexuality, and BFF drama.100 However, we would argue that TV depictions of girlhood are more complicated than this, signifying something beyond “you go, girl” enthusiasm.101 In the HBO series Girls, for example, the title suggests youth without the potential for self-­realization, as Hannah Horvath and her friends find themselves entitled but adrift, unable to translate their privilege into happiness and material advantage. In Broad City, girlhood culture takes on yet another valence, as Ilana Wexler and Abbi Abrams indulge in perpetual childhood but with neither the anxiety of a Hannah Horvath nor the consumption habits of a Carrie Bradshaw. Theirs is a refreshing ebullience absent luxury, ambition, and competence. In both shows, then, we might locate a provisional feminist politics in the forging of female community around values other than success and empowerment. The eclectic manifestation of girlhood in Girls and Broad City indicates that postfeminist TV is not monolithic. Indeed, these two shows—­part of a genre that Rebecca Wanzo has aptly labeled “precarious girl comedies”102—­ seem far more caught up in discourses of failure, abjection, and economic insecurity than in the solipsistic project of consumerist self-­making. Of course, we are also arguing that the TV shows we’re analyzing—­all made between 2011 and 2020—­represent a real departure from shows of the late 1990s and

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early 2000s; they therefore may constitute a post-­postfeminism (if you will) that is actively in dialogue with an earlier, more depoliticized moment.103 But if television has changed, the discourse around it has largely stayed the same, focused on TV’s failure to transcend its status as a compromised cultural form, able to be the subject of feminist critique but unable to tell us anything meaningful about feminism itself, as Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley insightfully put it.104 According to this logic, anything smacking of feminist politics on television is only the consequence of an industry bent on delivering content to niche audiences willing to pay for the illusion of progressive fare. What’s lost in this interpretation is the possibility that alongside bottom-­ line imperatives, television might actually turn out anything surprising or disruptive. Against these assumptions, we argue that antihero programming features women, burdened by high expectations and financial uncertainty, negotiating their social and professional relationships in ways both idiosyncratic and unsanctioned. The How In tracing the development of the female antihero in American television from 2011 to the present, we devote equal time to drama and comedy, areas that are often separated in television studies.105 As mentioned above, scholarship on “prestige” television tends to focus on drama, pointing to the rich narrative arcs and complex character development that have made shows like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad urtexts of this genre. Comedy, meanwhile, has largely been taken up by feminist scholars interested in the transgressive appeal of outrageous women in shows like Roseanne, Living Single, and Sex and the City.106 These varying emphases have created a false bifurcation that tends to align drama with masculinity and sophistication while associating comedy with feminized lighter fare.107 Such an approach not only gives drama the critical edge, it also privileges whiteness, since dramas tend toward less diverse casting and have not always appealed to the wide demographics that comedy courts. As Beretta Smith-­Shomade points out in the introduction to her 2012 collection Watching While Black, the focus on a narrow canon of texts “serves to perpetuate the idea of a homogeneity of taste, experience, desire, and outlook that does not exist.”108 In investigating antihero comedies alongside dramas, we target a larger, more representative selection of shows that have appealed to audiences who do not ascribe to the same generic bound­ aries that scholars often do. While our focus on drama and comedy means an enlarged scope of study, this book also contains the inevitable exclusions. The dramas we examine

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pivot around women in government and leadership positions, necessarily leaving out important antihero fare like Weeds (Showtime, 2005–­2012), Damages, Orange Is the New Black, How to Get Away with Murder (ABC, 2014–­2020), Empire (Fox, 2015–­2020), and The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu, 2017–­present). The comedies we examine follow the tradition of the single-­girl sitcom, which means we don’t look at marital or family-­themed shows like Nurse Jackie (Showtime, 2009–­2015), I Love Dick (Amazon, 2016–­2017), Transparent (Amazon, 2014–­2019), and Good Girls (NBC, 2018–­present). To make our task manageable, we’ve also limited our purview to US programming, which excludes wonderful antihero series like I May Destroy You (BBC One, 2020), Killing Eve (BBC America, 2018–­present), Fleabag (BBC Three, 2016–­2019), Chewing Gum (E4, 2015–­2017), Derry Girls (Channel 4, 2018–­present), and This Way Up (Channel 4, 2019–­present). This plethora of programming simply serves to reinforce our point—­that the new millennium has brought with it a bevy of disruptive women deserving of our critical attention. Part 1 of this book—­“Ambition TV”—­examines four antihero dramas in which the striving female protagonist is closely aligned with state power. Cersei Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen (Game of Thrones), Elizabeth Jennings (The Americans), Olivia Pope (Scandal), and Carrie Mathison (Homeland) are all supremely competent women in positions of government leadership or influence. And yet, even as they carry out the work of the state, they stand against its interests, eager to counter its most hallowed assumptions and institutions. Elizabeth Jennings, for example, is a ruthless defender of her country, but our analysis reveals how her nationalism is utterly incompatible with the norms of heterosexual marriage. Homeland’s Carrie Mathison is second to none in her position as CIA operative, but her tactics include sleeping with married men and targeting the nuclear family. These shows position their female leads as superheroes of sorts—­since their physical strength and commitment to their cause is unwavering—­but our analysis reveals this unflagging dedication as inconsistent with the standards and mores of the worlds in which they live, so that to save their societies is also ultimately to bring them down. The popularity of these shows reveals an appetite for fictions of female ascendance and nonconformity, yet each of these series ends in some form of failure for the protagonist, laying bare the current moment’s fierce ambivalence about women’s leadership. On the surface, these dramas seem like celebrations, but our readings highlight the insidious way misogyny works to undermine the antisociality promised by these fictions, to block even our cultural imaginations from envisioning a form of female autonomy with staying power. Part 2 of this book—­“Shame TV”—­pivots from drama to comedy, examining female antiheroes that gravitate toward aimlessness, shame, and self-­

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sabotage. Hannah Horvath (Girls), Abbi Abrams and Ilana Wexler (Broad City), Issa Dee (Insecure), and Bridgette Bird (SMILF) represent a sharp departure from the leads of single-­girl sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970–­1977), Murphy Brown, and Sex and the City. These earlier series starred plucky heroines deeply invested in both their jobs and their romantic relationships. They were aspirational figures meant to embody the goals of mainstream feminism, often summed up as “having it all.” The comedic antihero, by contrast, rejects conventional notions of success and often willingly participates in her own humiliation (although to different extents, depending on race and class). She represents a new kind of female protagonist—­ pleasure seeking and anti-­aspirational, motivated neither by the marriage plot nor by the traditional career trajectory. We argue that these noncompliant TV heroines are a direct response to their plucky predecessors, pushing against traditional notions of normative female behavior in important ways. At a time when women are being encouraged to “lean in”—­to advance themselves both at work and in their private lives—­the aimless protagonists of Shame TV resist the lure of careerism and reproductive futurity, embracing the value of in-­the-­minute experience instead. According to this reading, anti-­aspirationalism is not simply nihilism; rather, it represents a value system whose rewards are tied to adventure, presentism, and female community. If the antiheroes of part 1 of this book respond to the pressures of the twenty-­first century with lawlessness and power grabs, the antiheroes of part 2 respond by refusing to play the game altogether, a departure from the participatory and pro-­social approach of an earlier era. Single-­girl sitcoms have traditionally operated within the broad generic confines of the romantic comedy, fundamentally optimistic in their outlook, tending toward convivial resolutions for their can-­do protagonists. Shame TV offers us something different—­young women who rebel against conformist optimism and instead embrace imperfection and unruliness, often in the context of best friends and female solidarity. These figures offer an even more bracing challenge to the status quo than do the antiheroes of television dramas, because they suggest that indifference (rather than violence, ambition, and spycraft) may be the most effective means of undermining patriarchy. In imagining an alternate kind of freedom for the female protagonist—­freedom from neoliberal expectations of productivity and the guilt and isolation that often follow our failure to meet them—­Shame TV creates an important feminist television for the twenty-­first century.

1

The Limits of the Female Antihero in Game of  Thrones

HBO’s hit show Game of Thrones (2011–­2019) provides some tantalizing possibilities for the role of female antihero. It features a slew of possible contenders—­ lady knights, girl assassins, and ruthless queens who upend conventions with barbarous glee. The series, based on George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels, is a sprawling fantasy epic with scores of interlocking plots and at least a dozen central characters. Since the show lacks a single protagonist, its approach differs from dramas like Breaking Bad and The Sopranos, which operate as elaborate character studies of individual antiheroes. Yet, for our purposes, the show’s epic scale and plethora of strong women allow questions of heroism, villainy, and audience response to emerge in especially stark terms. Moreover, since the show has as its primary focus the future of civilization—­ what society should look like, who should hold power, and by what means—­it is particularly suited for our analysis since, as we have been arguing, the figure of the antihero pivots around sociality and its destruction. This chapter analyzes two central female characters, Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), mirrored figures whom the show (up until the penultimate episode of the final season) codes as villain and hero, respectively.1 Recognizing the parallels between them while keeping in mind the disparate reaction of fans—­who love Daenerys and love to hate Cersei—­ allows us to parse what acceptable female transgression looks like and where audiences draw the line. Cersei and Daenerys differ from fan-­pleasing tomboy characters like Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) and Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie) because they must find ways to assert influence from positions traditionally coded as female. Arya and Brienne observe a world that values masculinity and physical force, and both decide they’ll play by its rules. They turn themselves

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into an assassin and a knight, respectively, casting off any associations with conven­tional femininity to guard against a world that views all things female with disdain.2 They both spend entire seasons out on the road, apart from the societies that establish them as women. Cersei and Daenerys, meanwhile, are always enmeshed in a social and political context. They must find a way to crack the code of culture without abandoning it completely—­to be taken seriously while remaining associated with the feminine. They thus establish the primary objective of the female antihero in television drama: not to opt out of civilization but to fundamentally alter its modes of conduct. Cersei and Daenerys set the terms for understanding the other female antiheroes examined in part 1 of this book—­Elizabeth Jennings of The Americans, Olivia Pope of Scandal, and Carrie Mathison of Homeland—­all women who occupy positions associated with state power but whose gender performance undermines the usual operations of the state. In this way they endanger the status quo more effectively than do outliers like Brienne and Arya, threatening to undo establishment hierarchies from the inside out and occupying leadership positions that might allow them to codify these rebellions. Of course, Game of Thrones has long been appreciated for the way it upends convention. Indeed, the show is often understood in one of two ways: as a political allegory or as a critique of the fantasy genre’s traditional conservatism and nativism. In the former, Daenerys’s dragons are nuclear weapons, and the danger posed by the Night King and his band of ice zombies is the threat of climate change, dismissed by arrogant kings who play the “game of thrones” while ignoring the long winter coming for them all.3 In the latter, the show replaces the genre’s usual swashbuckling male heroes with “cripples, bastards, and broken things” (the title of season 1, episode 4), situating characters like Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), Jon Snow (Kit Harington), and Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) at the center of stories that usually marginalize these figures.4 In this reading, the show’s interest in female characters stands as an important corrective to fantasy’s masculinist worldview. It is part of a larger attempt to give voice to the voiceless and thereby stoke audience identification. As Brent Hartinger has written in his investigation of “freaks and outcasts” in Game of Thrones: “As humans, most of us seem to be instinctively drawn to outsiders, to the excluded. At least on some level, most of us sympathize with those who are denied even the opportunity to prove their full worth.”5 Yet Game of Thrones reveals that we’re drawn to outcast figures not at the moment when they’re denied the opportunity to show their worth but at the precise moment that they’re invited to prove it. That is, downtrodden characters appeal only when they flip the script, turning victimhood into an un-

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abashed show of triumph. Otherwise they merely frustrate or disgust, as the example of Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) under the control of Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) demonstrates. This dynamic partly explains the audience’s contrasting reactions to Cersei and Daenerys, whom we come upon at different moments in their shared story arc. When Daenerys is introduced to us, she’s young and defenseless, and her onscreen trajectory involves the development of self-­respect and agency. We delight in Daenerys’s discovery that she has the blood of the dragon inside her, portending her glorious insurgence. We come upon Cersei, instead, at the moment her authority begins to wane—­as she ages, her children grow out of her control, and her sexual indiscretions threaten her status. Daenerys’s story is the lure, a pleasurable fantasy about a scared girl sold into marriage who has the potential to take over the Seven Kingdoms. But Cersei is the fierce, sinking counterweight: the knowledge that female ascendency is impossible to retain and will cost a woman all that she holds dear. If Daenerys’s arc showcases a woman’s rise to power, Cersei’s highlights her inevitable decline—­into loss, menopause, and isolation. But wait, the savvy reader objects, you’ve got it all wrong! We don’t love Daen­ erys for her upward trajectory; we love her because she’s good! Because as the “breaker of chains,” she plans to free the slaves and better the world. And Cersei, well of course she’s despised; but not because she’s past her prime. Rather, she is, in common parlance, a bitch—­cruel, rapacious, and self-­aggrandizing. She needs to get her just deserts no less than Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance), Walder Frey (David Bradley), and the show’s other savage autocrats. Perhaps. Certainly, the show provides Daenerys the classic hero’s cut, gracing her with fist-­pumping action sequences and showering her with onscreen adoration. Cersei, meanwhile, is stuck in dimly lit castles, swilling wine and delivering barbed insults. The show telegraphs from its beginning that viewers are meant to read her as hopelessly depraved—­in the first episode she beds her brother, and in the second she orders the execution of a little girl’s direwolf puppy. But a closer look reveals that Cersei and Daenerys, who for much of the show are positioned as opposites—­nefarious queen and benevolent Khaleesi, ironfisted matriarch and waifish ingénue—­are startlingly similar. Both are blond, beautiful daughters of royal households; both are sold into marriage to secure political alliances; both are fiercely determined to protect their children—­each has three (and a firstborn that dies in infancy), and each has been told by a witch that she can bear no more.6 Incest, too, haunts the storylines of both, although Daenerys responds ambivalently to her brother Viserys’s (Harry Lloyd) creepy advances and is, at least at first, an unknowing participant in her affair with nephew Jon Snow.7 Perhaps, most importantly,

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the ruthlessness with which both women persecute their enemies and pursue world domination is remarkably alike. Indeed, even before Daenerys brutally murders the citizens of King’s Landing at the series conclusion, she seemed to be adopting the rules of a fascist playbook, making her potentially a greater villain than Cersei. That Daenerys remained (almost to the end) a fan favorite while Cersei—­whose motivations, we argue, can be read in more feminist terms—­was “officially the most hated character on Game of Thrones”8 tells us a thing or two about the limits of the female antihero’s appeal. Specifically, it suggests that viewers may be more comfortable with savage imperial violence than they are with unabashed female pleasure, especially when the first is dressed up in plunging necklines and flowing hair and the second is articulated by an aging, barren, and increasingly unfeminine woman. “Tears Aren’t a Woman’s Only Weapon. The Best One’s between Your Legs” Both Cersei and Daenerys are introduced to us in season 1 as victims, albeit uneven, of their family’s will and their husband’s abuse. Daenerys has been bartered by her brother Viserys to Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa), warlord of the Dothraki, in the region that stands in for the Middle East in the show’s spatial imaginary. The first episode presents her as powerless and humiliated, first violated by her brother and then raped so painfully by Drogo on their wedding night that she has trouble walking the next day. Meanwhile, across the Narrow Sea in King’s Landing, Cersei has been forced by her father to marry “the usurper,” Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy), a man who brazenly proclaims his love for another woman (Ned Stark’s deceased sister, Lyanna) and who takes every opportunity he can to whore it up with the locals in Cersei’s (and her family’s) presence. (“He likes to do this while I’m on duty,” a seething Jaime Lannister [Nikolaj Coster-­Waldau] remarks. “He makes me listen as he insults my sister.”)9 While Cersei, unlike Daenerys, comes off as vicious and scheming, her backstory and framing encourage audiences, at least at first, to view her with some sympathy. Indeed, even when she is shown in what appears to be a consensual sexual liaison with her brother, Cersei’s physical stance—­taken with considerable force from behind—­echoes Daen­ erys’s stance with Drogo, reinforcing their parallels as sexual supplicants. Sex coach Doreah’s (Roxanne McKee) advice to Daenerys in episode 2 might apply to Cersei as well: “Dothraki take slaves like a hound takes a bitch. Are you a slave, Khaleesi? Then don’t make love like a slave.”10 At the same time that they are subordinated, however, both Cersei and Daenerys wield a certain amount of influence, a consequence of their beauty

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and fertility. As Daenerys learns from Doreah how to pleasure Khal Drogo, she improves both her treatment at his hands and her standing in the Dothraki community. And once she becomes pregnant, her new status as “mother” drives every important moment in Daenerys’s growing agency over the course of season 1. She rids herself of her feckless brother Viserys after he threatens her unborn child, and she saves a group of captured women from being raped by Drogo’s army by claiming them as her children. When Drogo’s lieutenant, Mago (Ivailo Dimitrov), complains that Daenerys has thwarted his “right” to “mount” the conquered women, Daenerys insists, “I have claimed many daughters this day, so they cannot be mounted.” Mago challenges her authority, but Drogo responds with admiration: “See how fierce she grows? That is my son inside her, the stallion that will mount the world, filling her with his fire.”11 Motherhood is here figured both as the protection with which Daenerys would cloak the women and as the “fire” that gives Daenerys ascendency. “I am Khaleesi. I do command you,” she declares to Mago. This particular lesson on the power of queenly motherhood is not specific to the Dothraki. Back in King’s Landing, Robert Baratheon suggests killing Daenerys precisely because he recognizes that despite her young age, the Khaleesi’s fertility poses a threat. As he tells Ned Stark (Sean Bean), “Soon enough, that child will spread her legs and start breeding.”12 A similar dynamic can be observed with Cersei, who wields power principally through her status as mother. Indeed, the mystery that structures the first season pivots on the problem of Cersei’s rogue sexuality and the questionable legitimacy of her children. Patriarchy is built on precisely this issue, as the phrase that Hortense Spillers popularized—­“Mama’s baby, Papa’s maybe”—­makes clear.13 Because men can never be assured of their paternity, they must put into place all manner of restrictions to guarantee that their wives remain subjugated and sequestered. That Cersei has managed to skirt these by carrying on a clandestine affair that results in two sons who become heir to the throne is impressive indeed; it indicates that she, no less than Daen­ erys, understands how women, largely dispossessed, may wield power. In a moment, perhaps, of would-­be feminist solidarity, she attempts to impart this lesson to young Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) while the two are holed up awaiting Stannis Baratheon’s (Stephen Dillane) invading army in season 2. Inexperienced and romantic, Sansa is fond of declaring that “courtesy is a lady’s armor,” but Cersei explains that a woman’s virtue provides no shield against the soldiers that would sack the city. Lamenting that Stannis (labeled “Westeros’s Al Gore” on fan websites for his humorless adherence to rules14) would reject her seduction attempts should his army prevail, Cersei then taunts Sansa: “Have I shocked you, little dove? Tears aren’t a woman’s only

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weapon. The best one’s between your legs. Learn how to use it.”15 While Sansa appears mortified, her canny manipulation of Lord Baelish (Aidan Gillen) in subsequent seasons indicates that Cersei’s advice does not fall on deaf ears. “I learned a great deal from her,” Sansa tells a surprised Jon Snow years later.16 It bears repeating that the ability of noblewomen to weaponize their sexuality (and their consequent status as mother) is precisely the thing that Arya and Brienne reject. When Ned Stark tells a young Arya that she can’t be a lord of a holdfast, but instead that she “will marry a high lord and rule his castle, and your sons shall be knights, and princes, and lords,” Arya responds, “No, that’s not me.”17 (She repeats this phrase when Gendry [Joe Dempsie] proposes marriage in the final season.) Arya remains true to her word, but for the other noblewomen of Game of Thrones—­Sansa, Cersei, Daenerys—­Ned Stark has their fates pretty much right. They must submit to sexuality, marriage, and motherhood, and the results for each are disastrous. They learn quite quickly that survival depends on gaming the system—­on aping feminine decorum while ruthlessly manipulating those who stand in their way. It is partly this perfidiousness that makes them antiheroes, a title not quite appropriate to Arya and Brienne, who, despite their murderous sprees, always manage to stay on the right side of morality. Having abandoned the expectations of polite society, Arya and Brienne need not stoop to backstabbing and intrigue to come out on top. But female antiheroes—­at least as we’ve defined them—­do not run from civilization; they are embattled within it. Housed in patriarchy but desperate to thwart its most noxious constraints, they redraw the lines of acceptable female behavior and, in the process, undermine the cultures of which they are a part. This is the case for Daenerys, Cersei and, to a lesser extent, Sansa, for whom sexuality and motherhood constitute the royal road to empowerment. Of course, in a paradox of their own making, it’s also the thing that makes these women most vulnerable. Indeed, mother-­love seems to be the noblewoman’s kryptonite. Catelyn Stark’s (Michelle Fairley) biggest misstep—­ freeing Jaime Lannister—­is motivated by her desire to protect her daughters. And while Cersei’s love for her children is portrayed as her single redeeming quality (“that, and your cheekbones,” Tyrion tells her18), it is also the thing that destabilizes her calculations. “The more people you love, the weaker you are,” Cersei tells Sansa. “Love no one but your children. On that front, a mother has no choice.”19 Motherhood complicates the female antihero’s commitment to breaking bad because it anchors her in forms of social reproduction—­ homemaking, the nuclear family, respectability. Perhaps this explains why the full extent of Cersei’s misanthropy emerges only after her children have died, as if the end of parenting finally allows her to cut all ties to virtue and social

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responsibility. Daenerys’s arc hews to a similar trajectory. Following the birth of her stillborn child, she renounces conventional motherhood, choosing instead to nurture three dragons and the scores of slaves who call her “Mhysa” (Valyrian for “mother”).20 For both Cersei and Daenerys, then, release from biological parenting allows an exit from the constraints of the civilized world and its expectations for appropriate female behavior. It encourages them to imagine new roles for themselves—­forms of power steeped less in reproduction (the traditional route to prominence for the noblewoman) than in raw aggression and political influence. The different way each woman executes this vision and the extent to which we might consider it feminist is the subject of the rest of this chapter. “Just Because Your Master Has Silver Hair and Tits Doesn’t Mean She’s Not a Master” As mentioned earlier, Daenerys’s rising influence in season 1 can be traced back to her pregnancy. Having convinced Drogo that the child she carries is a son, she soon extracts his promise to “cross the black salt water” so that her progeny can rule from the “iron chair” of her ancestors. “I will kill the men in iron suits and tear down their stone houses,” Drogo vows. “I will rape their women, take their children as slaves, and bring their broken gods back to Vaes Dothrak.”21 Drogo delivers this speech in a pulse-­pounding sequence as he stalks around the fire. Visibly aroused by his fierce commitment, Daen­ erys gazes at him longingly. The scene signals the intensifying erotic bond between the two, but it is also evidence of Daenerys’s tenuous ethical claim to power. She may be “mother” of slaves, but her authority comes from a man unapologetic about his use of rape and slavery as weapons of war. While Daen­ erys had set herself up as an opponent of these things (slaves are her “daughters” and so “cannot be” raped), her rapturous response to Drogo’s speech signals her willingness to countenance both if it places her (or her biological son) on the throne she sees as her birthright. Daenerys’s honorifics—­Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains—­would have us believe that hers is a new form of leadership (feminist and liberatory), but her storyline in Game of Thrones shows how closely entwined the discourses of female empowerment and patriarchal domination remain.22 These associations intensify in the season 3, episode 4 sequence, when Daenerys acquires the army she will need to invade Westeros, a scene so often celebrated that there are entire Pinterest boards and Subreddits dedicated to it. The scene begins as Daenerys seems to have made a bad deal with a slaver to trade one of her dragons for an army of slaves called “the Unsullied.” She

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appears vulnerable as the unscrupulous trader rattles off condescending advice in Valyrian and his translator, Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel), repeats his words in the “Common Tongue” for Daenerys’s benefit. But once Daen­ erys acquires the slaver’s whip, she flips the script, turning toward the assembled slaves and shouting triumphantly “Unsullied!” in Valyrian and then “Forward, march! Halt!”—­all of which establish her authority as commander. When the slaver sputters in near-­comical shock, “You speak Valyrian?,” the show gives Daenerys one of her signature moments: “I am Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, of the blood of Old Valyria. Valyrian is my mother tongue.” Having affirmed her legacy in maternal terms, Daenerys then establishes herself as the protector of the vulnerable and enslaved. She orders the Unsullied: “Slay the masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who holds a whip, but harm no child. Strike the chains off every slave you see!”23 This sequence is shot and edited to elicit delight in Daenerys’s assumption of power and her commitment to freeing the dispossessed and protecting the innocent. Yet the pleasure of the sequence obscures its somewhat complicated ethics—­ during this massacre of the masters, the Unsullied are still slaves. There is deep irony in Daenerys’s command to “slay every man who holds a whip,” given that she herself still holds this symbol of colonial oppression that gives her the authority to command. Of course, in the following scene Daenerys does liberate the Unsullied, but the show never makes clear how their subsequent obedience to her differs from slavery. True, she throws away the slaver’s whip (in a move that is visually coded as a mic drop). But the unquestioning fealty and continued namelessness of the Unsullied army beg the question of whether they are any better off under the Khaleesi. As a wealthy slaver tells Daenerys’s lieutenant, Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson), “Just because your master has silver hair and tits doesn’t mean she’s not a master.”24 When Daenerys later “liberates” the people of Yunkai (again through massive bloodletting), they respond by surrounding the queen, lifting her up in their arms, and chanting “Mhysa” (or “mother”) adoringly.25 The fact that the Yunkai (along with the Unsullied, the Astapor, and the other people of Essos) are brown-­skinned and Daenerys is towhead white (a consequence of Targaryen inbreeding to keep the line pure) only exacerbates these colonial dynamics. As critics have pointed out, this is at best “a neocon wet dream.”26 At worst, the storyline indulges what another detractor calls the “aesthetics of fascism,” in which “strength, skill, obedience, order, joyful submission, and apocalyptic dissolution” are fetishized.27 And it only goes downhill from there. In subsequent seasons, Daenerys’s dragons will aid in her conquests, offering the medieval version of advanced fighter

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technology to back up her claims to power. Those who resist (or merely get in the way) face death by beheading, crucifixion, or conflagration. For all her avowals that she wishes to “break the wheel,” her strategies seem disquietingly familiar. Daenerys’s problematic authority as “Mhysa” is on particular display in season 5, episode 2, when she orders the execution of a former slave named Mossador (Reece Noi). Mossador has killed a prisoner awaiting trial—­a former master who has attempted to reinstate slavery in Meereen and who taunts Mossador by pointing out the folly of the ex-­slave’s love of  Daenerys: “No matter how many of you traitors call her ‘Mhysa,’ she will never be your mother.”28 Although Mossador has killed the prisoner out of loyalty to Daenerys, he has nonetheless gone against her decree to keep all offenders safe until trial. He must therefore pay the price of his insubordination with his life. When Mossador appeals to Daenerys’s emotions, recalling his commitment to her and reminding her that “now you are the law,” Daenerys insists upon a narrow legalism: “The law is the law.” Here, again, Daenerys borrows patriarchal logic, invoking abstract justice, contractual responsibility, and strict application of legal doctrine.29 She holds her ground even as a crowd of commoners gathered for the execution implore her on behalf of their “brother.” They cry “Mercy, Mhysa” and then hiss angrily after Daenerys, ignoring them, gives the signal to Daario (Michiel Huisman) for Mossador’s beheading. In rejecting their pleas and insisting that “the law is the law,” Daenerys subordinates both herself and her “children” to the force of rational jurisprudence. The significance of this sequence becomes apparent when compared to the only other scene of public execution in Game of Thrones—­that of Ned Stark in season 1. Here, too, the commoners have been called on to witness the royal prerogative to take a life or to extend mercy. Spatially, the scenes are set up as parallels, with King Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) and Daenerys both located on a dais raised above a teeming crowd. Mossador and Stark are similarly presented as innocents (although the assembled crowd is in sympathy with the former and not with the latter), and the possibility of mercy is framed in familial terms in both: while Mossador’s crowd pleads with their “Mhysa” for their “brother’s” life, Joffrey announces, “My mother wishes me to let Lord Eddard join the Night’s Watch.  .  .  . and my lady Sansa has begged mercy for her father.” Finally, just as Daenerys rejected the appeal of emotional bonds in favor of “the law,” Joffrey insists on a violent legalism: “They have the soft hearts of women. So long as I am your king, treason shall never go unpunished. Ser Ilyn, bring me his head!”30 There are, of course, differences in the two scenes: Daenerys appears pained at passing the

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sentence against Mossador—­the camera showing her distress in a series of sympathetic close-­ups—­while Joffrey displays only bloodlust in relation to Ned Stark’s execution. Still, examining these scenes side by side reveals that in her quest for ascendency and abstract justice, Daenerys looks an awful lot like a Lannister—­and Joffrey, no less, the most hated Lannister of all! In season 1, Ned Stark was fond of telling his bannermen, “The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.”31 It was a reminder of the responsibilities that accompany state violence, something especially important in our own era of projectile weaponry and predator drones. That Daenerys signals distantly to executioner Daario, averts her eyes from the spectacle of the beheading, and then is spirited away by her guardsmen once the crowd erupts is proof that she, like King Joffrey, has adopted the ease and irresponsibility of autocratic rule. Daenerys, then, must be understood as a deeply ambiguous figure, a woman who embraces a new form of leadership but whose practices often reinstate the usual violence of the state. Indeed, even her most celebrated feminist spectacles of ascendency—­when she emerges naked and unburnt from fire—­are compromised by the events that surround them. The season 1 finale, for example, initially sets up Daenerys as liberator: before entering Khal Drogo’s funeral pyre, she frees the women and slaves left behind by the Khalasar and promises that “those who would harm you will die screaming.” Her vows seem to be confirmed by the shrieks of her first victim—­an old witch (Mia Soteriou) whose “black magic” has resulted in the death of Daenerys’s son. While the flames kill the witch, Daenerys emerges naked, unburnt, and nursing three newly hatched dragons; her victory seems complete (fig. 1.1). And yet, haunting this scene are the witch’s words concerning Daenerys’s “innocent” unborn child: “Innocent?” the witch sputters incredulously. “He would have been the stallion that mounts the world. Now he will burn no cities. Now his Khalasar will trample no nations into dust.”32 Daenerys responds with a look of contempt, but the viewer who remembers Khal Drogo’s promises of rape and enslavement must acknowledge the truth of these words. And yet critics and fans have responded rapturously to this scene celebrating the Mother of Dragons as a feminist icon.33 It’s hard not to suspect that our love for this genocidal woman emerges at least in part from the implicit bias conveyed by her youth, her Aryan beauty (including the platinum hair that will not burn), and her idealized maternity—­she’s shown nurturing her dragon “children,” but without any signs of the maternal grotesque.34 A similar dynamic is at work in season 6, when Daenerys is abducted by the Dothraki and held as prisoner. As in season 1, the show sets her up as victim only to accentuate her eventual triumph. When the Khals call Daenerys

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f i g u r e 1.1. Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones, season 1, episode 10, “Fire and Blood,” 2011.

before them to decide her fate, she mocks her captors, contrasting their paltry ambitions to Drogo’s promise to conquer Westeros: And here, now, what great matters do the Great Khals discuss? Which little villages you’ll raid, how many girls you’ll get to fuck, how many horses you’ll demand in tribute. You are small men. None of you are fit to lead the Doth­ raki. But I am. So I will.35

This scene portrays the Khals as violent, misogynist brutes, and viewers are encouraged to celebrate Daenerys’s defiance of them. But, in fact, the “matters” they discuss to Daenerys’s disdain—­avenging themselves, attacking those that threaten their ascendency—­sound remarkably similar to Daenerys’s own; they just intend to dominate “little villages” within the Great Grass Sea as opposed to kingdoms in Westeros, as Daenerys would prefer. The Khals’ subsequent torrent of sexist abuse (“We’ll take turns fucking you. And then we’ll let our bloodriders fuck you. If there’s anything left of you, we’ll give our horses a turn”) seems to justify her slaughter of them. But she’s clearly made her decision and laid her plan prior to these threats—­Jorah (Iain Glen) and Daario have already barred the door. It’s hard not to see Daenerys’s real opposition to the Dothraki as a consequence of their unwillingness to attack Westeros for her. Indeed, what makes her “fit” to lead the people of Essos appears to be her willingness to enmesh them in a monarchical struggle in a land they’ve never seen in order to seat a white woman on the Iron Throne.

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When she emerges from the Temple of the Dosh Khaleen—­naked and unburnt—­the Dothraki kneel reverently before her in a reprise of season 1. Fans and critics have celebrated this scene as proof that Daenerys has “burnt down the patriarchy” (figs. 1.2 and 1.3). Liz Shannon Miller and Kate Erbland call it “the most feminist moment on television so far this year.”36 Achala Upen­ dran characterizes it as yet another moment where Daenerys “blasts apart the power structures put before her”;37 Crystal Bell writes that “to see the khaleesi return to her former glory as a badass, Unburnt bitch was thrilling to say the least”38; and Alex Cranz of Gizmodo tweets, “If you don’t think the ultimate purpose of Daenerys on #Gameof Thrones is to physically dismantle the patriarchy you’re watching/reading wrong.”39 Yet, what Daenerys burns down is not, in fact, the patriarchy—­the Temple of the Dosh Khaleen is instead the one site of female power and influence in Dothraki society. In destroying it and killing off the Dothraki warriors who protect that space, she has decimated their culture without providing any kind of viable alternative, save her own dictatorial rule. Her actions work toward her own elevation, but they don’t fundamentally alter the system she set out to break. Indeed, in this scene Daenerys appears a near parody of empowerment or lean-­in feminism—­self-­ actualizing, body positive, confident, resilient, and luminous.40 Also, of course, white and affluent. As we will argue, Cersei, while problematic in her own right, seems to pose a more genuine threat to the patriarchal status quo.

f i g u r e 1.2. A popular meme of Daenerys and Drogon, 2018. https://twitter.com/medusawink/status /971897992239198208.

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f i g u r e 1.3. Daenerys burning the Temple of the Dosh Khaleen meme.

“And What of My Wrath, Lord Stark?” Cersei Lannister’s initial rise to power is an effect less of brute force than of being underestimated by the men around her. When Ned Stark discovers that her illegitimate children are not the true heirs to the Iron Throne, his chivalry dictates that he confront Cersei so as to give her the opportunity to escape. “You must be gone . . . you and your children,” he warns her gallantly. “I will not have their blood on my hands.” He assumes she’ll comply, but Cersei responds by laughing at his naiveté and wondering at his misplaced notions of honor. “You should have taken the realm for yourself,” she taunts him. “Such a sad mistake.” When Stark protests, Cersei delivers the line that prophesies his end: “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.” While Cersei has made her violent intentions transparent, Stark—­a conventional family man whose name suggests a rigidity of thinking—­cannot imagine he has anything to fear from this wife and mother, a miscalculation he would not make with a man. “Go as far away as you can,” he tells Cersei, still positioning her as female victim, “because wherever you go Robert’s wrath will follow you.” Cersei responds, “And what of my wrath, Lord Stark?,” posing the one question it would never occur to him to ask.41 As Rebecca Traister points out in her book Good and Mad, we are far more comfortable with righteous male anger than we are with female fury: We must train ourselves to even be able to see and hear anger from women and understand it not only as rational, but as politically weighty. It is, in fact,

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f i g u r e 1.4. Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones, season 1, episode 7, “You Win or You Die,” 2011.

an anger on behalf of the nation’s suppressed majority and therefore especially frightening and combustible because of the threat it poses. . . . We are primed to hear the anger of men as stirring, downright American, as our national lullaby, and primed to hear the sound of women demanding freedom as the screech of nails on our national chalkboard. That’s because women’s freedom would in fact circumscribe white male dominion.42

Cersei seems to be one of the few characters on the show to register the political consequences of female anger. Her query to Ned Stark—­“And what of my wrath?”—­expresses both her sense of marginalization and her private knowledge about what women’s fury could unleash. The fact that Cersei utters this line in perfect quietude, outfitted in pale pink with long hair flowing, is part of what allows Stark (and perhaps television audiences as well) to underestimate her (fig. 1.4). After all, women who look like Cersei are expected to soothe male anger, not to display it themselves, and most of the women on Game of Thrones operate in this register—­Daenerys calms Drogo’s rages with praise and sex, while Margaery (Natalie Dormer) skillfully manipulates Joffrey’s sadistic tantrums. But Cersei does not appease partner Robert Baratheon; she meets his fury with her own. (“I’ll wear this like a badge of honor,” she tells him about the bruise he leaves on her face after an argument in season 1.)43 When the Faith Militant tries to arrest her in season 6 for violating religious law, they expect threats of physical force to intimidate her. “Order your man to step aside,” her former lover Lancel Lannister (Eugene Simon) commands, “or there will be violence.” Cersei responds with anger simmering just below the surface, “I choose violence.”44

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Cersei’s willingness to embrace bloodshed means that she’s rarely intimidated by the tepid threats posed by men who fail to grasp her ruthlessness. When Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish (Aidan Gillen) tries to bully Cersei in season 1 by suggesting he knows about her children’s illegitimacy, he imagines she’ll be cowed into submission. “Knowledge is power,” he tells her menacingly. But Cersei responds by pointing out that Baelish’s soft form of power is nothing compared to her own. “Seize him,” Cersei orders her guards, as a threatening non-­diegetic score begins pounding, and the camera jumps through a series of disorienting perspective changes. “Slit his throat,” she commands. When the guards lean menacingly over Littlefinger, she laughs flirtatiously, in a sly mockery of women’s reputation for flightiness. “Stop! Wait, I’ve changed my mind,” she tells them. “Let him go.” As the guards release the panicked Littlefinger and Cersei orders them to step back three paces, the camera cuts to an overhead shot, which magnifies her authority. “Close your eyes,” she tells the guards, before laying down her trump card: “Power is power,” she tells Baelish.45 Littlefinger—­a quick-­tongued schemer who manages the brothels of King’s Landing—­prides himself on his knowledge of the female sex. (Among other things, he can tell when a woman is faking an orgasm.) But, like Ned Stark, his insight does not extend beyond the conventional. Cersei nods playfully to this when she performs the part of the typical woman (“Wait, I’ve changed my mind”), all the while demonstrating the brute strength she wields. And yet, despite Cersei’s victory here, the scene plays very differently than when Daenerys turns the tables on men who have underestimated her. Audiences are meant to see the latter as feminist victories, but Cersei’s triumph over Littlefinger has the whiff of malevolence. The camera aligns itself with Littlefinger’s fear and confusion, and the sinister score and abrupt perspective changes put the viewer ill at ease. Recognizing the feminist consequences of Cersei’s triumph over Littlefinger thus requires us to read against the grain, to decode a slightly different meaning from the one that Game of Thrones encodes.46 Taking pleasure in scenes where Daenerys upends male expectations requires no such oppositional viewing strategy, however. Indeed, viewers are encouraged to cheer Daenerys on unquestioningly when she, like Cersei, directs armed men to kill. (Daenerys’s commands to the Unsullied army—­ “Forward, march!” “Halt!” “Slay the masters”47—­are a pointed echo of Cersei’s orders to her guards, but the sweeping score and wide steady shot spur viewers to sympathize with Daenerys in ways that contrast our reactions to Cersei.) As mentioned earlier, even when Daenerys engages in morally questionable behavior, the show remains largely on her side. The scene with Mossador is a case in point. Here Daenerys, like Cersei, makes clear that those

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who question her authority will not go unpunished—­her phrase “the law is the law” is a direct nod to Cersei’s “power is power.” Yet, because the camera lingers over her ambivalent and pained expression, viewers are encouraged to identify with Daenerys even as they know she does wrong. The unequal approach of Game of Thrones to Cersei and Daenerys is particularly evident in the respective treatment of their nakedness. Daenerys’s unclothed form is on display a few times in the show’s run, but never so explicitly as in the two scenes where she emerges, unburnt, from fire.48 At both moments, her exposed body serves as proof of her fitness to rule; the sight of it compels crowds to kneel adoringly before her. These scenes stand in direct opposition to the one spectacle of Cersei’s naked body—­her “Walk of Shame” through the streets of King’s Landing at the command of the High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce) and the Faith Militant.49 In contrast to the revered body of Daenerys, Cersei’s naked form is jeered, assaulted, and spit on by the commoners around her. The nadir of a career marked by multiple low points, Cersei’s Walk of Shame represents the destruction of her influence and authority. Her naked body (made complete by her shorn head) carries not even the one compensatory asset that unclothed women are allowed to possess—­ the power of erotic seduction. Instead, her form signals only abjection and indigence. It haunts the next season even once Cersei recovers some of her status and attempts to consolidate power by working with her rivals. As Olenna Tyrell (Diana Rigg)—­the Queen of Thorns—­tells her dismissively, “My dear, you’ve been stripped of your dignity and authority, publicly shamed, and confined to the Red Keep. What’s left to work with?”50 Olenna, savvy political operator that she is, recognizes that the Walk of Shame has rendered Cersei wholly impotent, unfit even to attend small council meetings. Of course it is precisely this humiliation that inspires Cersei to new heights of ambition. (During her Walk of Shame, she keeps her eyes trained on the castle, lit up like a beacon ahead of her.) This culminates in her blowing up the Sept of Baelor, killing the religious fanatics who have betrayed her along with other assorted enemies (as well as a few innocents). The parallels with Daenerys’s attack on the Temple of the Dosh Khaleen are striking. In both cases, a woman in a position of tenuous circumstance faces men of religious and cultural authority who want to humiliate (and eventually execute) her. In both cases, her method of revenge is fire—­traditionally known as a female element because of its associations with the hearthstone.51 But whereas fans greet Daenerys’s conflagration—­which, as discussed, is deeply compromised by her imperial ambitions—­with proclamations of feminist empowerment, the audience response to Cersei is far more ambivalent. Labeling her “the Mad Queen”—­a reference to Aerys II Targaryen, who razed whole cities with

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his savage dragons—­they characterize her as narcissistic, irrational, and psychotic.52 Their ambivalence is shared by the show’s characters as well. When Cersei finally sits on the Iron Throne—­the first woman to claim the prize around which the series has pivoted—­the noble court appears sullen and distrustful. Even her most loyal confidant, her brother Jaime, greets the sight of Cersei on the throne with a look of deep anxiety. “Are you afraid of me?” his sister asks him shortly afterward. “Should I be?” he inquires with real concern.53 Despite these nods to Cersei’s mental instability, there’s nothing to suggest that she’s descended into madness. On the contrary, the decision to blow up the Sept of Baelor was a calculated move designed to kill off, in one fell blow, all who have humiliated and thwarted her—­the High Sparrow, the Faith Militant, the young Tyrells, and those Lannisters who have proven untrustworthy. Their death by wildfire—­arguably faster and more humane than the slow immolation of the Dothraki Khals—­is no act of mercy, but nor is it entirely unexpected or particularly gruesome in the context of a show where flaying and torture are routine. To be clear, Cersei is no innocent; she’s vicious, scheming, and obsessed with her own legacy. But, as we’ve tried to indicate, Daenerys is little different, and yet audiences and critics largely laud her as a feminist idol. Part of this has to do with the show’s framing of each—­the camera work, the accompanying musical score, the decisions about storyline editing. Cersei’s treatment of Ellaria Sand (Indira Varma) and her daughter, for example, borrows precisely the eye-­for-­an-­eye logic that Daenerys metes out to the Masters of Yunkai. (In fact, Cersei forces only one mother to watch her child die slowly, whereas Daenerys does this to 124 families.) But the show hides the human suffering caused by Daenerys’s actions, placing it largely offscreen or at the edges of the narrative, while Cersei’s cruelty is positioned front and center. But beyond the show’s architecture and subtle cues for audience identification, Cersei’s authority appears problematic. This is partly owing to the fact that her displays of power, unlike those of Daenerys, aren’t steeped in mysticism or the supernatural. When Daenerys encounters danger or threats to her ascendency—­cornered by the misogynous Dothraki Khals or surrounded by the murderous Sons of the Harpy—­she escapes either through her fantastic resistance to fire or through the help of her mythical dragons, who swoop in to carry her away. Could it be that this form of female competency is palatable to audiences precisely because its origins are out of human control? As Megan Kearns of The Opinioness has asked, “[What does it mean] that a woman [cannot] be a powerful ruler on her own merit, [that] she has to have supernatural blood course through her veins with monster minions

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bolstering her . . . ?”54 In any case, magic isn’t distributed evenly in the Game of Thrones universe. Cersei isn’t impervious to fire or the mother of dragons, so she actually has to do the work of grasping and maintaining authority. As Varys (Conleth Hill) remarks, “Any fool with a bit of luck can find himself born into power; but earning it for yourself, that takes work!”55 Absent magic and male privilege, Cersei can only accrue influence by dint of her own laborious efforts. She schemes, manipulates, and executes without the help of dragons or mysticism, behavior that makes audiences far more uncomfortable than Daenerys’s shows of imperial strength. But the bigger problem, where Cersei is concerned, is her unremitting selfishness. Fans perceive Daenerys to be working for something greater than herself, even if that something is compromised by racist colonial designs. Cersei, on the other hand, seems to be invested only in her own dominion, or, at most, in the promotion of her family. “Everyone who isn’t us is an enemy,” she tells her son Joffrey in season 1.56 And Jaime’s comment to her in a subsequent season—­“Fuck everyone who isn’t us; we’re the only ones who matter, the only ones in this world”—­comes directly from the Cersei playbook.57 Summing up what many take to be Cersei’s antifeminist ethos, Marie Southard Ospina writes, “Cersei does not stand for all women. She stands only for herself.”58 The problem of female selfishness has long been a fraught topic for feminists. On the one hand, narcissism and self-­promotion seem like dubious tenets around which to organize a progressive social and political agenda. On the other hand, given the historical injunction for female selflessness—­the insistence that women define themselves only through others: as mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters—­selfishness can also suggest an important counter-­resistance, an attempt of a different sort to “break the wheel.” If civilization depends on women’s caretaking, on their embrace of relationships, there is something powerfully transgressive in the turn to antisociality. As the writer Pam Houston comments, “Mild misanthropy may simply be a thing intelligent women of a certain age grow into because most . . . have spent a huge percentage of their lives taking care of other people.”59 Cersei, nearing middle age, is perfectly poised for misanthropic sentiment. With her father and two children dead (and the third, Tommen, completely alienated from her), she has been freed to pursue her own desires and ascendency without a glancing care for the rest of the world. In a crucial scene in season 6, episode 10, Cersei invokes the themes of selfishness and desire in explaining her actions. Having blown up the Sept of Baelor, she shifts her attentions to Septa Unella (Hannah Waddingham), the cruel clergywoman who tortured her while she was imprisoned by the Faith Militant. “Confess!” she insists of the Septa, turning her own words against her. “It felt good. Beating me, starving me, frightening me, humiliating me. You didn’t do it

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because you cared about my atonement. You did it because it felt good.” Cersei then goes on to voice identification with the Septa, delivering what is perhaps her most emphatic statement of female antiheroism in the series: I understand. I do things because they feel good. I drink because it feels good. I killed my husband because it felt good to be rid of him. I fuck my brother because it feels good to feel him inside me. I lie about fucking my brother . . . because it feels good to keep our son safe from hateful hypocrites. I killed your High Sparrow, and all his little sparrows, all his septons, all his septas, all his filthy soldiers, because it felt good to watch them burn. It felt good to imagine their shock and their pain. No thought has ever given me greater joy. Even confessing feels good under the right circumstances.60

When has a woman so baldly justified her own immoral actions through the logic of female pleasure? She kills, she fucks, she drinks, she lies, Cersei tells us, because “it feels good.” This is no mere defense of wartime necessity—­she doesn’t just murder to gain the upper hand. Rather, she revels in that murdering: “It felt good to imagine their shock and their pain. No thought has ever given me greater joy.” It’s this sadism that most surprises. Is Cersei psychotic? Perhaps. But she’s also an unapologetic voice for female desire and aggression, the very things relentlessly policed in women for centuries. Her “It Feels Good” speech thus explicitly undercuts social expectations for women’s selflessness and respectability. It is significant, moreover, that Cersei delivers this speech not while outfitted in her former style of plunging necklines and streaming hair, but in the austere costuming and page-­boy cut she’s adopted since exiting the Sept (fig. 1.5). That is to say, a speech about female pleasure might be deemed acceptable if it were articulated alongside the normative conventions of femininity. After all, beautiful women who give voice to desire have been relegated a place in patriarchal society—­that of “sluts” and “whores.” And if these women express murderous intentions, their femininity dulls the edge. But a woman expressing unvarnished and sadistic desire who looks increasingly like a man? Well, that’s a different story. To be sure, Cersei’s masculine hairdo caused a good deal of online consternation, especially with audiences who didn’t understand why it hadn’t grown out by season 7. In a Vanity Fair article entitled “Why Is Cersei’s Hair Still So Short?,” Joanna Robinson points out the inconsistency in the show’s timeline. “[Cersei] and (the late) Tyene Sand had similar lengths in season 5, episode 10, when Cersei was brutally shorn for her Walk of Shame. But in season 7, episode 3, Cersei’s hair is still cropped—­yet Tyene’s is brushing her shoulders.”61 Theories abound as to why this is—­“We need to be reminded that she is permanently scarred by what has

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f i g u r e 1.5. Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones, season 6, episode 10, “The Winds of Winter,” 2016.

happened;”62 “Cersei is stuck in some kind of head-­related time warp.”63 To judge from the online response, a woman’s haircut on television hasn’t caused so much speculation since Keri Russell, the star of Felicity, cut her corkscrew locks in 1999, a phenomenon we’ll explore further in the next chapter. But surely the reason Cersei’s hair is still short is because she has chosen to keep it that way, as Robinson and others have pointed out. It allows her to adopt the stance of a warrior and perhaps to model herself in her father’s image. Her insistence on the homely bowl-­cut, along with her new penchant for high-­collared black leather gowns, underscores her explicit rejection of normative femininity. Indeed, when considered alongside her “It Feels Good” speech, Cersei’s refashioning constitutes a celebration of female masculinity the likes of which we’ve never seen before on television.64 Stated slightly differently, if Cersei’s Walk of Shame drew attention to her abject, devalued, and discarded body (the consequences of shirking religious and legal authority by sleeping with her brother and murdering the king), then Cersei’s new form—­ clothed in armor, invulnerable, but still expressing unrepentant desire—­ represents a deliberate undermining of patriarchal standards. The fact that Cersei’s authoritative self-­fashioning seems to correspond with her entry into perimenopause is also significant, given the powerlessness usually associated with aging women.65 In fact, Cersei’s initial decline in influence is depicted as a consequence of her fading fertility—­her father desired her to marry Loras Tyrell (Finn Jones) in season 3 to seal a political alliance,

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but Loras’s grandmother, Olenna, objected because she feared Cersei was too old to bear Loras an heir. Cersei is, of course, pregnant by the end of season 7, but in a deleted scene she miscarries, confirming the witch’s prophecy that she will have no more children and perhaps gesturing to her age-­related infertility.66 In any case, read in conjunction with her new hair and costuming, Cersei’s failure to reproduce is crucial to her rebellion—­to her triumph over a society dedicated to establishing her irrelevance. Barren, masculinized, widowed, and childless, Cersei should be the least-­valued woman in Westeros; instead, she is Queen of the Seven Fucking Kingdoms! Of course the price she pays for this ascendency is a universal hatred, shared by both diegetic characters and the extra-­diegetic audience. To be sure, it’s hard to defend Cersei. We are not suggesting that she represents an unqualified feminist icon or, for that matter, that Daenerys is hopelessly complicit with the status quo. Certainly, as commoners, most of us would sooner take our chances with the “Breaker of Chains” than sign up for a long winter under the “Giant Bitch” (as online detractors call Cersei).67 Our aim, rather, is to expose why these two women evoke such different reactions—­why Daen­ erys is adored given her deeply compromised morality and why Cersei is loathed despite her real challenge to the patriarchy. We may explain the discrepancy through Daenerys’s vague humanitarianism, but we must also acknowledge that Cersei’s age, infertility, masculine appearance, and relentless pursuit of pleasure also play a part. This perspective can help us understand Daenerys’s genocidal violence in the penultimate episode of the series and the virulent reaction from fans who took her behavior as a betrayal of the character they loved.68 When Daenerys razed King’s Landing with dragonfire—­killing soldier and civilian alike—­her actions came across to many as unmotivated, a quick pivot from the generous heroism she symbolized for most of the show. But, given the perspective we’ve outlined, this development is neither quick nor much of a pivot, since Daenerys has been decimating her enemies for many seasons. The difference is that here her brutality is explicitly drawn out, and her victims are white. In short, her aggression looks a lot like Cersei’s; it is vengeful, unrepentant, and injected with sadistic pleasure. Daenerys’s motivations for this behavior might be best understood through examining a scene from the preceding episode. Season 8, episode 4 begins with the allied forces of the Seven Kingdoms celebrating the defeat of the Night King and his army. While Daenerys has every reason to embrace this victory as her own, she watches, incredulously, as the soldiers around her heap praise on Jon Snow for his courage and tenacity. “That’s why we all agreed to follow him,” Tormund Giantsbane (Kristofer Hivju) shouts, toasting

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Jon. “That’s the kind of man he is. . . . He climbed on a fucking dragon and fought. What kind of a person climbs on a fucking dragon? A madman—­or a king!”69 Of course, Daenerys has been climbing on the back of a dragon and fighting since the show’s fifth season, but somehow this escapes the notice of Game of Thrones’ manosphere. It’s an important lesson for Daenerys. No matter how brave her actions or how generous her gestures—­she has just made Gendry Lord of Storm’s End in hopes of capturing his loyalty—­she will never acquire the respect that Jon Snow, as a man, seems to procure so effortlessly. Perhaps this helps explain her decision to rout King’s Landing in the following episode. It represents a last-­ditch effort to establish her supremacy, a tactic (it bears making explicit) that men have been using since Rome established “Carthaginian Peace” by burning its enemy’s city to the ground. The fact that her actions inspire only fan hatred (and ultimately lead to her death) is perhaps an important statement on our tolerance for female rule. Game of Thrones had always trumpeted its desire to tell a different kind of story in the fantasy genre, a story about “cripples, bastards, and broken things” coming into their own. And the series’s ending—­with “Bran the Broken” and Tyrion “the Dwarf of Casterly Rock” ruling together—­seems to bring that story to its logical conclusion. Yet it’s telling that a woman—­any woman—­ ruling successfully is the one thing the show refuses to give us.70 Daenerys’s brand of lean-­in feminism doesn’t ultimately win the day, but nor does Cersei’s more disruptive antisociality. Both women must be sacrificed—­Daenerys’s forms of overreach punished and Cersei’s threats to the socius neutralized. In season 7, Jon tells Daenerys that her ability to create meaningful change is the key to her power: I never thought that dragons would exist again. No one did. The people who follow you know that you made something impossible happen. Maybe that helps them believe that you can make other impossible things happen. Build a different world from the shit one they’ve always known.71

As Jon points out, Daenerys’s subjects are willing to follow her because they believe she can remake society, “build a different world.” But when Daenerys is faced with a world that isn’t remade—­a world in which the old forms of violence are necessary for securing sovereignty and order—­both Jon and the show’s viewers have to decide if they’re willing to follow her in the world we have, “the shit one [we’ve] always known.” In Westeros as surely as in the twenty-­first-­century United States, the answer is no. Evidently coming out of an inferno unburnt and coaxing dragon life from petrified eggs is nothing compared to the work of getting people to accept a flawed female leader. That task remains too fantastical to imagine.

2

The Impossibility of the Marriage Plot in The Americans

The Americans’ (FX, 2013–­2018) Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell)—­a Russian spy posing as an ordinary American wife and mother—­has been described as “television’s baddest bitch.”1 As Willa Paskin puts it, “On paper, there is no one less ‘likable’ than her, a woman who is trying to bring down the American government, who can barely tell her husband she misses him, who doesn’t like ice cream, who holds a grudge forever, who is scary and violent and thinks you, watching TV from the comfort of your American living room, are weak and spoiled and soulless.”2 Even as we dislike her, however, we may admire Elizabeth’s professional dedication—­her mastery of physical violence and emotional self-­control. Her life choices play out questions few women seem brave enough to pose: What if my spouse and children didn’t come first? What if my only commitment was to nation and self-­integrity? As we have been arguing, these questions are in direct contradiction to the usual role of the female protagonist on television, who is expected to embody polite society, not undermine it through rogue action, and who typically upholds, rather than rejects, bourgeois notions of family and sexual propriety. Indeed, if Keri Russell started her career playing America’s sweetheart in Felicity (WB, 1998–­2002), her role in The Americans represents a total reversal, a character who rejects all but the most utilitarian forms of sociality and who actively wants to destroy the civilization in which she lives. Even in her new incarnation as a badass, however, Russell is always referencing traditional femininity, since in her cover identity as Elizabeth Jennings she must perform the part of devoted wife and mother. Elizabeth sports soft cashmere sweaters, shoulder pads, and knee-­high boots; she works as a travel agent but can also be found baking brownies for the new neighbors and folding interminable loads of laundry. The disguises she dons for her

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missions—­blond wigs, push-­up bras, modest turtlenecks, oversized glasses—­ function as even more overt nods to conventional womanhood. Indeed, in her invented personae as Mary Kay makeup saleswoman, flight attendant, DC consultant, and home-­care nurse (among others), Elizabeth fulfills every possible fantasy of stereotypical femininity. The disconnect between her outward display and her deadly actions is a large part of the show’s pleasure. When Elizabeth lures the CIA’s director of planning for the Soviet Union into a restaurant bathroom with the promise of a quickie, only to knock him unconscious before kidnapping him, the thrill is not simply that we’re watching a woman break bad. It’s that we’re watching a woman act against type—­a suburban mom, dressed here as an alluring secretary, wreaking revenge against the American government. (The target has killed her mentor and, although she’s been told to stand down by everyone from her husband to the KGB Center, she’s willing to go it alone to fulfill her desire for retribution.)3 Elizabeth’s displays of conventional womanhood are therefore a performance, in contrast to the dramatic antiheroes we examine in other chapters who are more transparent in their self-­presentation. Daenerys embodies full-­ throated femininity even when she’s murderous, and Cersei changes, over the course of eight seasons, from beautiful ice queen to masculinized warrior. But Elizabeth Jennings is always two-­faced—­acting the role of dutiful wife and mother while secretly pledging herself to nation alone. She appears to embrace ordinary suburban life, but this is a front for the spycraft that takes place on the periphery of her middle-­class home—­the garage where she beats a man senseless, the basement where she retreats to decode encrypted messages and develop surveillance photographs. This espionage reflects a betrayal of America, but also, and more pointedly, a betrayal of its gendered values—­a rejection of bourgeois notions of domesticity and female nurture. Elizabeth may be a Russian spy, but it’s her flouting of conventional femininity that constitutes the real threat—­her disdain for sentimentalism, her proud, pure devotion to political ideology, and her refusal to put the demands of love and family above her work. The Americans is ostensibly about the Cold War, but more than anything it’s about a war on normative gender roles. Perhaps this helps explain why Elizabeth is the only antihero we examine who stays married throughout the series (Cersei and Daenerys are both widowed in Game of Thrones’ first season, and the seven other women in this book are single). As the premier institution of civilized society, marriage is anathema to the female antihero. Elizabeth can thus occupy the role of “wife” only insofar as her marriage is a sham. Except, of course, that it isn’t entirely. That is to say, Elizabeth’s union with Philip (Matthew Rhys) is staged—­they were ordered by their Soviet handlers

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to marry and have kids in order to blend into American society—­but it’s also authentic and deeply felt by both. For this reason, it occupies the show’s emotional center, drawing in audiences even as it puts the female antihero plot at risk. Stated slightly differently, The Americans’ central structuring element is a tension between Elizabeth’s ruthless professionalism and the Jennings’ love story. The former reveals Elizabeth as antihero—­violent, manipulative, antisocial; the latter reveals her as wife—­vulnerable, dependent, committed to the institution of family. Reviewers have argued that The Americans’ central insight is that the questions you ask when you’re a spy are exactly the same questions you ask in a marriage—­Do I know you? Can I trust you? Who are you? To be sure, this equation of spycraft with marriage has become a commonplace way for critics to talk about The Americans in both scholarly and mainstream venues.4 By contrast, we are suggesting that Elizabeth’s two roles—­spy and wife—­are actually at odds with one another, since they depend on fundamentally different ways of being a woman in the world. In her role as a spy, Elizabeth must embrace misanthropy and trust no one. As a wife, however, Elizabeth must remain partially dependent for, as we shall demonstrate, this is the only way in which Philip can take up the role of husband. This chapter analyzes this structuring tension, arguing that in order for The Americans’ crowd-­pleasing marriage plot to succeed, the female antihero must ultimately recede to the background. “Guys Are Gonna Hate It” Long before her incarnation as Elizabeth Jennings on The Americans, Keri Russell starred in Felicity, a coming-­of-­age drama focused on the love lives of college students at a fictionalized version of NYU. The show made Russell a star, but ratings plummeted in the second season, a decline blamed by fans and WB producers alike on the character’s decision to lop off her mane of long, corkscrew hair in favor of a tightly curled pixie cut (figs. 2.1 and 2.2). Although the WB’s reassignment of Felicity from a coveted Tuesday night time slot to a difficult Sunday position was likely equally to blame, the swift and public backlash figured Russell’s hair as the primary problem and her nonchalance about it as a liability. In 2000, WB Entertainment president Susanne Daniels argued that Russell’s value to the network bore a direct relationship to her physical appearance: “Keri Russell as Felicity was becoming an icon in television culture, and part of the icon was her hair. . . . When they cut the hair off . . . you diluted that image. You diluted that icon.”5 Daniels thus made clear that Russell’s hair was an important commodity in the creation of an iconographic female star and that its maintenance was crucial for ratings.

f i g u r e 2.1. Flowing locks: Keri Russell as Felicity Porter on Felicity, season 2, episode 2, “The List,” 1999. 

f i g u r e 2.2. The Haircut: Keri Russell as Felicity Porter on Felicity, season 2, episode 2, “The List,” 1999.

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Felicity co-­creator J.J. Abrams appeared perplexed by the way fans revolted against the short hairstyle. “She’s so gorgeous, we thought, ‘Who cares how long her hair is?’ ”6 Abrams’s comments notwithstanding, the show itself proved remarkably canny about the likely public reaction. “Guys are gonna hate it,” remarks Felicity’s friend Meghan (Amanda Foreman) resignedly. The haircut decision was thus clearly a purposeful rebuff to patriarchal conventions of beauty. Indeed, just prior to entering the hair salon, Felicity’s voiceover asks what it would mean “to loosen your grip, to let yourself fall,” the character imagining a life where women’s appearances might not need to be so tightly regulated. More explicitly, the show framed the infamous haircut as Felicity’s declaration of independence, an assertion of self. “I was doing it for me,” Felicity insists.7 But the aftermath of the cut proved that such declarations by women must occur only at the WB’s discretion. (“Nobody is cutting their hair again on our network,” President Daniels proclaimed.)8 Felicity was originally conceived as a grounded coming-­of-­age drama, where seemingly catastrophic decisions—­decline a spot at Stanford to follow your high school crush to New York—­turn out okay. But a female character’s determination to go rogue—­to cut her hair even with the knowledge that “guys are gonna hate it”—­turned out to be the one fantasy the show couldn’t indulge without paying the butcher’s bill. The public dustup over “The Haircut” (as it subsequently became known) forced fans and producers alike to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth: that viewer identification with a female protagonist depends upon a socially acceptable form of femininity. And a pixie cut appears to be a bridge too far. After Felicity ended in 2002, J.J. Abrams went on to create Alias, which made a star of former Felicity actor Jennifer Garner, and which popularized the theme of female espionage on US television. Hollywood lore insists that Abrams got the idea for Alias from “a writers’ room discussion about what it would be like if Felicity became a spy.”9 This thought experiment—­what if the ingénue wasn’t what she appeared to be?—­helps explain not only the conceit of Alias, but also the resonance of Russell’s casting as Elizabeth Jennings in The Americans fifteen years after Felicity premiered. Elizabeth is Russell’s first major television role since the Felicity days and, although her hair has long since grown back and she wears it iron-­straight in The Americans (fig. 2.3), the image of Russell as Felicity never entirely leaves us. That is to say, the mem­ ory of Felicity haunts our viewing of The Americans, a ghostly reminder of Rus­ sell’s earlier performance as well as the public rebuke over her challenge to acceptable notions of femininity.10 Russell herself seems slyly aware of the way that the Felicity controversy stalks her return to the small screen. In a 2016 segment on Late Night with

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f i g u r e 2.3. Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings on The Americans, 2013. 

Seth Meyers, the forty-­year-­old Russell performed the following bit in which she speaks to her younger acting self: Hey, little Keri. It’s me, older Keri. Your life is going to be so exciting, but whatever you do, don’t cut your hair short during the second season of Felicity. No, I’m serious. People will freak the hell out. You’ll get hate mail. You’ll even get death threats. But, gradually, your hair will grow back and your fans will forgive you, but you will never—­and I repeat never—­forgive your fans. And you will have learned a valuable lesson: Never trust anyone.11

In this sequence, Russell simultaneously satirizes the vehemence of the public reaction to The Haircut and comments seriously on the precariousness she felt as a young female star. Within Russell’s self-­deprecating banter lurks an admission—­that the fallout from Felicity prepared her for the role of a spy whose motto is “Never trust anyone.” Russell’s comments help explain the iciness with which she portrays The Americans’ Elizabeth Jennings. That is to say, we might understand the intense reserve and brittle ruthlessness of Russell’s Elizabeth as partially a consequence of the actor’s betrayal both by fans of Felicity and by the executives of the WB. In living through the aftermath of The Haircut, Russell learned to trust no one, and this paved the way for her role as a virtuoso of spycraft. At the same time, The Americans offers Russell (and viewers) a second chance to interrogate ideas about femininity, this time with the actor as a grown woman and with the hindsight that Felicity provides.

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“You’re My Wife!” The Americans stages the US/Soviet tension of the early 1980s as a war between the sexes, one in which “the national characters of Uncle Sam and Mother Russia are pitted against each other.”12 But the power dynamic of this gendered war is anything but conventional: Russia is represented on the show most prominently by a trio of commanding women—­Elizabeth, KGB handler Claudia (Margo Martindale), and double agent Nina Krilova (Annet Mahendru)—­ while America is embodied by children and symbolically impotent men, like Elizabeth’s husband and fellow agent Philip and FBI counterintelligence officer Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich). The very first scene of the pilot sets the stage for these gender differences, contrasting pathetic, self-­aggrandizing masculinity with a femininity figured as sly and efficient. Elizabeth, wearing a blond wig and affecting a Southern accent, seduces a Department of Justice official in a Washington, DC, bar by encouraging his feeble, preening attempts to impress her: “Seriously, the president?” Elizabeth whispers with mock amazement when the DOJ operative tells her about his ties to the new Reagan administration. “At this level, there aren’t many people he can trust,” her mark responds smugly. When he pulls his DOJ badge out of his pants pocket, she bites her lower lip; “Oh my God,” she breathes, in her best Marilyn Monroe voice, reaching out a finger to stroke the badge as if it’s a literal phallus. “So handsome,” she adds, presumably referring to the utterly pedestrian photograph on the ID. “The things I’m telling you,” the DOJ mark responds, “you don’t joke around about—­it could be dangerous.” He gives the word “dangerous” a slightly flirtatious edge, as if he’s in control of this seduction, when in fact, as audiences will soon find out, he’s shark bait in Elizabeth’s hands.13 This scene indicates the ease with which conventional masculinity, even at its most assured, can be manipulated. “Most people, when they get into their warm beds at night,” DOJ-­man pontificates as Elizabeth undresses him back at the hotel room, “they have no idea what really goes on out there, the sheer number of people working to destroy our way of life.” Of course, it’s Russian spies like Elizabeth who want to destroy the American way of life, and the fact that her mark is clueless on this score makes for the irony of the scene. If the most powerful men in Washington are unwittingly sleeping with the enemy, American masculinity is, indeed, in peril. While undressing him, Elizabeth takes off his tie and wraps it around her own bare neck, a figurative nod to the ways that she’s wearing the pants, whereas he wrongly assumes she’s attracted to the power the tie represents. What the DOJ operative fails to register is that Elizabeth is merely performing traditional femininity, not truly embodying it. Her breathy voice is

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a bit too exaggerated, as if she can’t quite bring herself to play the role straight— ­to believe that male desire is really this predictable, reacting on cue to her competent machinations. She’s a version of womanhood that fellow Russian Nina will identify when watching her first American movie—­“too much of what a man thinks a woman is. What he wants her to be.”14 The act lasts only as long as Elizabeth needs to get her intel. When she enters her car after leaving the hotel, the waifish simper is gone, replaced by a steely-­eyed assurance. She pulls off the blond wig and shakes out her long brown hair. This sequence ends the cold open of the pilot episode, and—­given that this is Russell’s first scene back in the national television spotlight—­it’s a sly nod to The Haircut. Russell here is simultaneously Felicity a­ nd Elizabeth: the girl who once thought she could challenge conventional femininity and the woman who now knows how to weaponize it. Yet the pilot cannot allow this vision of male humiliation to exist unchallenged, since Russell is not the show’s only star. Matthew Rhys’s Philip Jennings is the other half of The Americans (plural), so the show has to find a way to recuperate a form of masculinity that appears (for much of the pilot) hopelessly compromised. The first time we see Philip in this episode, it’s in a nurturing role—­he’s offering advice to a fellow Russian officer, trying to distract him from impending violence, as they wait in the dark to ambush a KGB defector. “Think about something else,” Philip tells the younger man. “Take deep breaths.”15 When violence does ensue, Philip performs admirably, but his displays of masculine prowess are ultimately undercut by his sentimental decision to take his injured fellow agent to the hospital, disrupting the timing of the planned prisoner drop-­off. (Elizabeth, by contrast, insists, “The mission comes first!”) This vision of an emasculated Philip continues later in the episode when he descends to the basement and finds the tape of Elizabeth seducing the DOJ agent. With a look of deep discomfort, he listens first to the agent’s moans of ecstasy and then to his wife’s own. Elizabeth has coerced her mark into revealing the information she needs by playing on the vaguely sadomasochistic dynamics implied by her high-­femme performance. (“If I were going to see you again,” she tells the DOJ agent, “I’d want you to be a little . . . I don’t want to hurt your feelings . . . but just maybe . . . stronger, maybe?”) But there’s a way in which she has played Philip as well as her mark, since her husband shows all the signs of a cuckold in this scene, clearly upset by the evidence of his wife having sex with another man, even as he knows it was merely a means to an end. Emily Nussbaum has called Rhys a “shapeshifter” in the role of Philip, one “who snaps with unsettling ease from sad-­eyed puppy to sneering enforcer.”16 But his negotiation of the twin roles of despondent American husband and powerful KGB agent is ultimately

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weighted toward the former, highlighting the ways that American masculinity proves compromised. Indeed, throughout the pilot, Philip does the domestic labor associated with suburban women, taking his daughter Paige (Holly Taylor) shopping and his son Henry (Keidrich Sellati) to a school assembly. When Philip tries to interest Elizabeth in going to the mall with them—­“this one has fountains and skylights,” he says, attempting to entice her17—­she merely shoots him a disdainful look, annoyed by his tendency to be seduced by American spectacle and consumerism. At a shoe store in the next scene, Paige looks on in embarrassment as Philip tries on cowboy boots and performs a few line-­dancing moves in front of a mirror. The cowboy costume is a charade of American masculinity, much in the same way that Elizabeth’s blond wig and Southern accent was a charade of American femininity. The difference is that Elizabeth casts off the costume with evident disgust once it has served its purpose, while Philip seems to want to retain the outfit, just as he adopts the permissive parenting and jocular neighborliness of American suburban life. But as the scene in the mall progresses, we see that when the situation demands actual masculinity—­not its costume—­Philip is impotent. A muscular thirty-­something man with a shaved head and a flannel shirt enters the store with his arm around an underage teenager and soon begins hitting on Paige as well. “Whoa—­I like that,” he catcalls, when Paige walks up to the register with a pair of shoes. As Philip stands by, seemingly immobilized, the man continues to harass Paige: “You look nice, darlin’; you want to come with Dee and me to shop for makeup after you pay for those?” When Philip finally steps in, the camerawork emphasizes his diminutive stature—­he has to look up at the man whose name, Errol (Kevin McCormick), he’s read off the credit card on the counter. “Errol,” Philip says imploringly, “she’s thirteen.” “Thirteen?” Errol leers, “I don’t know, Daddy; she sure looks ready to me.” Philip stands by silently as Errol and his underage girlfriend walk past them, Errol’s sarcastic taunt of “Daddy” hanging in the air as a marker of Philip’s failure as a patriarch. “It’s no use fighting guys like that,” Philip explains to Paige as they walk away from the shoe store, Philip carrying bags like a consumerist American housewife. “Oh God—­I wouldn’t want you to!” Paige insists, as if violent action is beyond the scope of what she imagines her father capable. But, of course, Philip is capable of fighting, and the show uses these early scenes of his emasculation in order to raise the stakes of his remasculinization through violence later in the episode.18 While it is tempting to read the shifts in Rhys’s performance as markers of differing national identities, this is merely a cover for the show’s actual conflict, which is less about whether Philip is really Russian or American and more about whether he’s really a man. Or,

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to put it slightly differently, The Americans maps issues of national difference onto gender difference, suggesting that Philip’s attraction to American ease and consumerism cannot be separated from his feminized vitiation. When, in a flashback to their initial arrival in the United States, Philip responds with boyish glee to the air-­conditioning and other creature comforts, Elizabeth maintains a prickly skepticism—­“There’s a weakness in the people. I can feel it.”19 A similar thematic is at work during the Jennings’ first argument about the possibility of defection. Philip suggests that they release Timoshev (David Vadim)—­the ex-­KGB officer they’ve kidnapped—­and offer themselves to the Americans; “take the good life, and be happy.” Although Philip presents this plan as a necessary step (he believes that the FBI are on to them), it’s clear that his real motivation is the indulgence and plenty of American life: “America’s not so bad. . . . The electricity works all the time, the food’s pretty great. The closet space is—­” Elizabeth, disgusted with his seduction by commodity culture, cuts him off: “Is that what you care about?” Philip answers that while he is loyal to the Motherland, “our family comes first.” The re-­gendering of values, attitudes, and loyalties could scarcely be more explicit. Philip appears as the advocate of bourgeois domesticity and the needs of the nuclear family, while Elizabeth, as antihero, rejects her maternal role in favor of national loyalty and professional commitment. But The Americans complicates this picture of Elizabeth as invulnerable by revealing to viewers (via flashback) that Timoshev—­the Russian defector trussed up in the Jennings’ car trunk—­raped Elizabeth when she was a KGB recruit in training. For most of the pilot, Philip does not know about Elizabeth’s history as a rape survivor, but the viewer does, and it changes how we read their interactions. In one example, the Jennings family sits at a picnic table outside a soft-­serve ice cream shop, playing what Philip calls the Ice Cream Olympics. As younger sibling Henry offers a radio-­announcer-­style running commentary, Philip holds his cone in front of daughter Paige, trying to get a bit of the ice cream on her face before she’s able to take a bite. “Eyes on the cone,” Philip instructs jokingly. “Know your distance.” Paige laughs and plays along, eventually winning the game. When it’s Henry’s turn, he puts stripes of ice cream on his own face, which he calls “war paint.” Elizabeth allows herself a slight nod of approval at this commitment to competition from her son, but Philip remains in jesting mode: “Whoa, whoa, whoa—­ease up. Remember the training,” he says laughingly, as Henry lunges toward the cone prematurely. Philip then turns to Elizabeth. “Mom, you’re up.” “No, thanks,” she says. “Oh, come on . . . just a little . . . just a little one,” he cajoles, as she repeats, “No, thanks.” He tips his cone toward her nose and gets a bit of ice cream on it. At her frosty expression, he quickly backs off, wiping at her face with a napkin

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and whispering, “Sorry.” Elizabeth shakes off this attempted caretaking with a more assertive “Stop.”20 On one level, this sequence is about Elizabeth and Philip’s differing parenting styles and relationships to their cover identity—­ Philip’s playfulness contrasting Elizabeth’s refusal to go along with the carefree trappings of American suburban family life. But a darker side of the danger and fear of this kind of “play” is the subtext of the scene at nearly every level. This game’s name—­the Ice Cream Olympics—­raises the specter of one important site of US/Soviet competition in the 1980s, and Philip’s instruction to Henry—­“remember the training”—­is an eerie echo of Elizabeth’s rape during a training exercise—­“I will teach her how we do it in the field,” Timoshev says as he prepares to overpower her. Viewer knowledge about this history complicates our sense of Philip’s emasculation and Elizabeth’s dominance over him, since the way he ignores her repeated requests to stop (“No, thank you. No, thank you. Don’t!”) recalls for us the flashback sequence (“Niet, Niet!” Elizabeth screams during the rape, unable to stop Timoshev). This dynamic reemerges in a subsequent scene, when Elizabeth and Philip argue over whether to kill Timoshev. Just beforehand, we see Elizabeth standing at the kitchen counter, her reflection glinting in a large knife that she holds. She’s poised to cut a pan of brownies, but she’s also considering the fate of the KGB defector still locked in the trunk, her identities as homemaker and killer briefly merging. Philip comes up behind her, placing a hand on either side of her body, effectively locking her against the counter. He kisses her neck. “Stop,” she says, shrugging off his embrace. He kisses her again, and her expression, which we can see and he cannot, begins to look haunted. Once more, the image of a genial, emasculated husband whose tentative romantic advances are firmly brushed off by his powerful wife operates in tension with our knowledge of Elizabeth’s vulnerability and history of sexual assault. “Stop,” Elizabeth says again, and then spins around and raises the knife. Philip catches her wrist and says incredulously, “You’re my wife!” “Is that right?” she replies, a glint of power and bemused detachment in her voice.21 Her response is a reference to their special circumstances—­the fact that Elizabeth and Philip are posing as married for the purpose of their espionage work. But it’s also a challenge to Philip’s sense of ownership, the way his use of the word “wife” seems to render her consent irrelevant. In the context of her previous rape, the scene reinforces Elizabeth’s vulnerability, her need to resist men who might overpower her, either through violence or through the force of institutions like marriage. Elizabeth’s demonstrations of efficacy as a Russian spy are thus fundamentally at odds with her romantic union with Philip, in which she is forced to inhabit the role of wife. In the former, Elizabeth appears as an indomitable

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force who wields her sexuality like a weapon. In the latter, by contrast, Elizabeth remains subordinated to Philip because of the sexual dominance associated with the institution of marriage (as captured by Philip’s incredulous “you’re my wife”). These conflicting visions come to a head in the pilot’s climax, where the Jennings resolve both the issue of what to do with Timoshev and the fraught power dynamics of their relationship. The scene begins with Philip entering the garage to untie Timoshev, ready to make a deal with the US government. When Elizabeth interrupts them, their disagreement over whether to turn Timoshev over and defect or to remain loyal to the Soviet Union is framed by the status of their marriage. Philip makes a plea for marital unity—­“Why can’t we do this together?”—­which Elizabeth answers with a reassertion of professional and national identity: “Because I am a KGB officer. Don’t you understand that? After all these years, I would go to jail, I would die, I would lose everything, before I would betray my country.”22 Having reasserted her loyalty toward Russia over her wifely and maternal commitments, she then turns on Timoshev in a violent fury, ordering Philip not to intervene on her behalf. Elizabeth is pure unrestrained id in this scene; despite the fact that she’s been woken up in the middle of the night (she’s wearing purple pajamas), she demolishes Timoshev, eventually smashing his head through drywall and then leaving him slumped against the car as she picks up a tire iron, poised to finish the job. At this point, viewers are encouraged to believe that this is where the show will land—­with Felicity all grown up, a spy and a rape-­avenging heroine. She finally appears willing to rebuff acceptable femininity—­ignoring her husband, killing her assaulter, in short, “doing it for herself.” But instead, the show pivots in an important way. “I’m sorry,” Timoshev tells her. “I never meant to hurt you. They let us have our way with the cadets. It was part of the job. A perk.” While this apology appears to connect his position to Elizabeth’s and Philip’s—­they’re all just doing their jobs—­it is also the turning point in Philip’s regeneration. “What are you talking about?” he asks. “How—­how did you hurt her?” Philip’s voice skips on “how”—­the stutter a sign of his impending rage—­and he addresses the next question to Elizabeth: “How did he hurt you?” The silent revelation of the past assault—­a secret between them all the years they’ve lived as Americans—­seems to force Elizabeth to recalibrate her desire for revenge. She drops the tire iron and says to Philip, “Do what you want with him. Take him to the Americans if that’s what you want.” But instead of taking Elizabeth’s acquiescence as an opportunity to defect, Philip rethinks his loyalties, and with them, his relationship to masculinity. Slamming Timoshev up against the closed garage door, he snaps his neck, Elizabeth visible in the frame behind them (fig. 2.4). On the one hand, Philip

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f i g u r e 2.4. Philip Jennings kills Timoshev on The Americans, season 1, episode 1, “Pilot,” 2013. Elizabeth’s position watching in the background indicates her newly subordinate status.

seems to have ceded authority to his wife by abandoning his desire for “the good life” in favor of her loyalty to the Motherland. But on a more meaningful note, he has stepped into his role as “husband,” defined by taking violent action on behalf of the woman he loves. While viewers may thrill to Philip’s hypermasculine showboating, they are also aware that his physical protectiveness puts Elizabeth into a role of feminine dependence that the show had hitherto exposed as a laughable fiction. (Her physical placement in the background as Timoshev is murdered is one way in which the camera work indicates this.) Thus the end of the pilot signals a subtle but real shift to a more heteronormative narrative, where Elizabeth increasingly takes on wifely duties and Philip, quite literally, takes the driver’s seat. In the scene that follows, he drives her to the Potomac, where they dispose of Timoshev’s body and then re-­consummate their relationship, Philip flipping Elizabeth over so that it’s clear to all who’s in charge. This is the first scene of real intimacy between the two, and as such, it’s a source of genuine pleasure for the viewer, but it’s a pleasure largely steeped in traditional gender dynamics. In the episodes that follow, we see Philip continue to refine his role as patriarch, as when he threatens to kill a mark who has roughed Elizabeth up during sex. “You’re not my daddy,” Elizabeth tells him, insisting that any decision about retaliation should be hers, not his. “I’m your husband,” he replies. “What do you think husbands do?”23 Elizabeth’s steely response—­“I wouldn’t know”—­is a clear insistence on her own autonomy, but it’s one that Philip refuses to hear. By the season 1 finale, he has successfully convinced his wife

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that he should take her place on a particularly dangerous mission. “Paige and Henry need you,” he urges Elizabeth, who eventually acquiesces. “You’re their mother!”24 Likewise, the final minutes of the pilot play out Philip’s return to masculinity in no uncertain terms. Having dealt with Elizabeth’s rapist, Philip is now free to dole out crowd-­pleasing violence to Errol, the pedophile from the mall. Dressed in a 1970s kingpin disguise, Philip surprises Errol in his backyard, stabbing him in the testicles and then pinning his hand to the table with a barbeque fork. “No more little girls,” Philip threatens, “Or I’ll be back, and stick that in your heart.”25 He grabs a hot dog off the grill and takes a bite as he walks away, leaving Errol crying out in pain. Philip has stabbed Errol in the balls and stolen his hot dog, thereby destroying—­with near-­camp excess—­the markers of American male power. Although it’s tempting to read this scene as a reassertion of KGB loyalty, it’s not Philip’s commitment to Russia that has transformed him; we know he was only too happy to give that up. It’s rather his commitment to traditional masculinity, his coming into being as “husband.” But this, of course, is accompanied by Elizabeth coming into being as “wife.” That is to say, the unfortunate consequence of Philip’s renewed swagger is that the Elizabeth who can take care of herself and who apologizes to no one is left out of the action for the remainder of the pilot, back at home with the kids or taking the fall for the failure of the mission with KGB general Vijktor Zhukov (Olek Krupa) so that Philip can shine. Jamie Abrams has written that “hegemonic masculine constructs demand that women occupy perpetual vulnerable, outsider status.”26 Writing in a different register, Maulana Karenga states that “What makes a woman appealing is her femininity and she can’t be feminine without being submissive.”27 Both these thinkers offer similar conclusions about normative gender roles—­that masculinity demands female fragility, that it can only exert itself in the context of women’s powerlessness. It bears repeating that the Jennings’ love plot is undeniably a source of viewer pleasure; there are few things more satisfying than seeing Philip and Elizabeth unite as romantic partners after (the show implies) years of estrangement. But it’s lamentable that this romance can emerge only through Philip’s empowerment and Elizabeth’s vulnerability, that marriage is unimaginable without the presence of wifely compliance. Elizabeth’s former lover, Gregory (Derek Luke), calls her out on just these dynamics, advising her to end her relationship with Philip. “Don’t take him back. He’s going to soften you all up. Find someone who will love you for being so strong,” he tells her.28 But it’s no use. For the structure of the show demands Elizabeth’s return to the

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position of “wife,” a position that, in American ideological terms, always involves subordination. From a feminist perspective, this outcome disappoints because the show had hinted that it would reject precisely these conventions of traditional womanhood. It’s as if The Americans aimed for an uncompromising feminist vision, and then realized—­the ghost of Felicity still hanging in the air—­that “guys are gonna hate it,” that a fully autonomous female antihero would be, like a pixie haircut circa 1999, a bridge too far. The questions the show raises about marriage and its potential incompatibility with women’s autonomy are, of course, the same questions posed by feminism’s second wave. Indeed, activists like Betty Friedan and Shulamith Firestone railed against wifedom precisely because they perceived marriage as a patriarchal institution that constrained and infantilized women. The Americans’ first seasons are set in the early 1980s, a time that marks the second wave’s demise. The Equal Rights Amendment expired three states short of ratification in 1982, two years after Ronald Reagan’s election, tipping off a reactionary turn in US popular culture that Susan Faludi has chronicled in her book Backlash.29 The Americans nods to this history when Claudia mocks the doomed effort to ratify the ERA. “Honestly, it makes me chuckle,” she tells Elizabeth. “These women here need to learn what you and I have known forever. You can’t wait for the laws to give you your rights. You have to take them, claim them every second of every day of every year.”30 Claudia’s critique of liberal feminist goals appears to unite her and Elizabeth as women who “take” what they want by force, but Elizabeth’s experience with Philip indicates that the real problem is not failed laws regarding women’s emancipation. It’s the deeply entrenched relations of husband and wife, relations that the show depicts as just as steeped in inequality in the Soviet Union as they are in the United States, as Philip and Elizabeth’s flashbacks to their own childhoods confirm. The feminist critique of marriage was forged in the second wave, but it has continued into the twenty-­first century, the period in which The Americans was created. In Wife Inc.: The Business of Marriage in the Twenty-­First Century, Suzanne Leonard argues that the recent spate of wives found in popular culture—­from Bridezillas to Desperate Housewives—­may nod ironically to their 1950s counterparts as a sign of their distance from convention, but they, too, largely reinforce conservative values around femininity.31 To the extent that Elizabeth Jennings rejects postfeminism’s facile vision of empowerment—­ Elizabeth doesn’t so much “lean in” to her professional commitments as dispatch them with terrifying efficiency—­she offers viewers something different. As an antihero, she undermines commitments to social reproduction, insisting instead on fealty solely to work and nation. And yet, as we have argued, the show has difficulty sustaining this posture, not because Elizabeth falls into the

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postfeminist trap of self-­making and pampered consumption but because she falls for an even older lure: heterosexual love and the marital roles that have solidified around it. Nevertheless, The Americans remains unusually daring in its portrait of Elizabeth, determined, in future seasons, to push the limits of her strength and autonomy. And, while this proves difficult in the context of her marriage, it is easier, we will argue, in the context of motherhood, where Elizabeth’s devotion to nation and uncompromising self-­integrity prove to be strengths rather than liabilities. “She’s My Daughter!” The season 3 premiere of The Americans opens with Elizabeth in the bathtub remembering an experience she had as a young mother.32 Her daughter Paige, perhaps five years old at the time, is terrified about entering the pool. Elizabeth calms her at the water’s edge and then looks around surreptitiously, surveying the other parents interacting with their children. Having determined that the coast is clear, she throws Paige into the water with force, her face a mixture of resolve and irritation. Her motives appear to be twofold. She wants the young Paige to learn strength and independence, but she’s also clearly annoyed by her recalcitrance. It’s a fascinating moment vis-­à-­vis viewer identification—­ who among us would not want to hurl a stubborn and irrational child into the pool? Then again, who among us would actually do it? Elizabeth channels maternal ambivalence in this scene. As an antihero who positions herself against the sentimental conventions of American mothering, she earns our admonition but also perhaps our envy. Nonetheless, Elizabeth’s parenting style raises eyebrows even within the diegetic setting of the show. While she’s free to express skepticism about American child-­raising practices—­“She’s in a play group!” she tells her KGB handler incredulously about Paige33—­she’s also expected to desire motherhood both as an inevitable consequence of her biology and as a way to deepen her cover. For this reason, she’s had to keep her ambivalence about having children on the down low. “It’s not something I’ve always wanted,” a young Elizabeth tells her KGB colleague Leanne (Natalie Gold) privately, to which latter responds, “I wouldn’t tell the Center that.”34 Once she becomes pregnant, her conflict only intensifies. We learn from Gregory that she shows up on his doorstep distraught and sobbing a month before giving birth to Paige. “I can’t go back and live this lie,” she tells him, referencing both her marriage and the expectations around motherhood.35 Elizabeth’s fierce independence has always been her greatest asset as a KGB officer, but it’s also the thing that threatens to undermine her humanity.

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“Do you love anyone? Does anyone love you?” the CIA officer she’s poised to kill asks her.36 Recognizing her emotional deficits, General Zhukov, a father figure to Elizabeth, attempts to shore up her nurturing capacities by using the example of his dog—­“If you take care of something, Elizabeth, one day you will discover that you love this creature and your life would be empty without him”—­but Elizabeth seems all but deaf to his pleas.37 Even her daughter calls her out on her parental detachment, accusing Elizabeth of caring for her husband more than for her children: “You guys look out for each other, you and Dad. More than us.”38 When, in 2005, the writer Ayelet Waldman wrote of feeling more passionate love for her husband than for her children, the backlash was swift and brutal, ultimately prompting Waldman to write a book entitled Bad Mother.39 Elizabeth seems poised to write the sequel.40 And yet, Elizabeth doesn’t seem to despise mothering so much as she loathes the weakness that comes with it—­the way American children are coddled and American mothers are made complicit with their vulnerability. “There are no demands on children in America, no chores. All we do all day long is watch them play,” she tells Zhukov contemptuously, referencing the indolence visited on American kids and caretakers alike.41 Her own Russian childhood, by contrast, was marked by poverty, deprivation, and labor. It created an unremitting work ethic in Elizabeth and, even more importantly, taught her to revere emotional restraint. When she absconds to the basement to listen to her mother’s recorded tapes, it is partly because they are in Russian, but more pointedly, the show implies, because they evoke sentimental feelings in Elizabeth that she has been trained to repress—­to keep “underground,” as it were. Determined to raise her daughter in the same tradition of inviolability, Elizabeth is disturbed by what she sees as Paige’s emotional weakness. “She’s delicate somehow,” she tells Philip42—­an echo of her assessment of Americans in general: “There’s a weakness in the people. I can feel it.” Mothering for her thus involves a commitment to guard her daughter against a fragility that she associates with both traditional femininity and the West. That is to say, even before Elizabeth commits to turning Paige into a Russian spy, her goal is stop her from becoming an American woman. We see this play out when Elizabeth wakes Paige in the middle of the night with the suggestion that she pierce her ears. She has been trying to connect with her daughter the whole episode but has been stymied by Paige’s adolescent posturing. As a last-­ditch effort, Elizabeth makes Paige an offer she can’t refuse: “You know how we said you could pierce your ears when you were fifteen? Do you want to do it now?”43 When Paige happily agrees, Elizabeth numbs her ear with ice before sticking a sewing needle through her lobe. The moment functions to create authentic connection between mother

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and daughter—­Elizabeth tells Paige that her own mother pierced her ears in a similar manner, establishing a legacy of maternal influence. But the scene also suggests a deflowering of sorts—­the piercing is accompanied by blood that drips onto the bedsheets, staining them. Elizabeth had earlier promised Philip that their children would never know about their secret lives as spies, but this scene works as a kind of initiation, hinting that Paige’s innocence has been compromised and that more bloodshed will follow. For Elizabeth, this is simply the price of ensuring that her daughter remain both strong and uncorrupted by American influences. In fact, she had initially offered Paige a choice about the piercing: “You can go to the mall and do it with your friends or I could do it for you right now.” Paige is levelheaded and hardworking, but she’s also given to reading Girl World, a magazine that features articles like “Bath to Babe in Under a Minute.” Thus, her decision to forgo the mall in favor of the bloody ritual proffered by her mother suggests a turning away from American consumerism and a symbolic embrace of her homespun Russian roots. But the path for Paige is not straightforward. She is easily seduced, not only by Western goods (“you do not need [sixteen pairs of] leg warmers!” her mother tells her44) but also and more dangerously by religion. For Elizabeth, the latter force represents the bigger existential threat because of the way it diffuses itself through American culture disguised as social justice and community. (Paige’s church sponsors an endless stream of “potluck, poster-­making singalongs” that Elizabeth despises.)45 American capitalism and military strength have a face—­that of Ronald Reagan, whose image blankets television screens and photographs within the FBI office—­but religion proves to be a far more nebulous foe, harder to pinpoint and eradicate. “You protect [your kids] from the big things out there,” Elizabeth tells Philip, “and then something finds its way into your own house. They get them when they’re children; they indoctrinate them with friendship and songs and cute boys cooing about Jesus.”46 Elizabeth had always assumed her kids would ultimately reflect her own values, regardless of their upbringing in the United States. “I’m not finished with them yet,” she tells Philip in the pilot. “They don’t have to be regular Americans. They can be socialists. They can be trade-­union activists.”47 Religion, however, threatens to be the one force more powerful than Elizabeth in forging her children’s subjectivity. Pervasive and omnipresent, it “finds its way into [her] house” and steals her daughter from under her nose. Of course this is precisely how Communism was talked about in the Cold War period—­as a force that was capable of invading the domestic sphere and catching innocent victims unaware. As Michael Rogin writes, “The invisibility of Communist influence distinguished the Communist Party from legitimate opposition groups. . . . [T]he assault on Communists and Communist

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sympathizers focused not on actual crimes but on memberships, beliefs, and associations.”48 Here, too, the home played a pivotal role. That is to say, Communism was most feared as a set of free-­floating ideas and sympathies that “invaded the family’s sanctity.”49 In his famous 1983 speech to the National Association of Evangelicals (reproduced in part on The Americans), Ronald Reagan quotes C.S. Lewis in warning that “ ‘the greatest evil is not done . . . in concentration camps and labor camps. . . . But it is conceived and ordered . . . in clear, carpeted, warmed, and well-­lighted offices by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-­shaven cheeks who . . . speak in soothing tones of brotherhood and peace.”50 Here he references the invidiousness of Communism, its ability to adopt the façade of amity in seducing its victims, precisely Elizabeth’s concerns about Christianity. Of course she fails to recognize these parallels. For her, religion is indoctrination, while Communism is simply the way to “make the world a better place.”51 She excoriates the church’s influence on children—­“They get them when they’re young, it’s what they do”—­while imagining that her own entry into the KGB at age sixteen represented something more virtuous. (This despite the fact that the language she uses to describe her recruitment matches the church’s own rhetoric of religious vocation—­she speaks of the moment “when I was called.”)52 Elizabeth is fond of telling Philip (and herself) that Paige can make up her own mind about whether to join the KGB, but her neoliberal rhetoric of “choice” obscures the acculturation Paige receives in her home, the maternal influence that ensures she will ultimately follow in her mother’s footsteps. Stated differently, if, as we have been arguing, Elizabeth’s role as KGB officer is incompatible with her role as “wife,” it is far easier for her to reconcile spycraft with motherhood. All mothers are spies, suggests Anna Maxted in an article for The Telegraph. “Surveillance is a natural part of our daily lives.”53 In a more serious vein, Linda Kerber has argued that motherhood in eighteenth-­ century America functioned to recruit the next generation into Republican ideology. In her words, “the Republican mother integrated political values into her domestic life.”54 By raising civic-­minded sons and daughters, she imbued her domestic work with national significance while ensuring the reproduction of American values. This kind of motherhood, albeit pitched toward Soviet rather than American ends, is characteristic of Elizabeth, who thinks of herself as the person responsible for her children’s subject formation, as in her claim to Philip that “I haven’t finished with them yet.” The home for her is the space of safety and protection where politics is not allowed to enter. But it’s simultaneously the space where she raises her children in her own image and eventually trains Paige to become a KGB agent—­lessons that take place in the liminal space of the garage, just on the margins of the house proper.

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As Rogin claims, “Denying the truly private character of the home, [domestic ideology] made the family less a haven for protecting eccentricity than an arena for forming and standardizing personality. By wiping out the truly private, domestic ideology threatened the family it was supposed to support.”55 This paradox is captured in Elizabeth’s response to Philip’s charge that she’s grooming Paige for the KGB rather than simply spending intimate time with her. “She’s my daughter,” Elizabeth says with a cadence that signals both injury and possessiveness.56 Paige’s status as her daughter means that Elizabeth would never think of her as a political tool and that she has every right to do so, since motherhood at once ensures ideological ownership over the child and denies this practice through the rhetoric of intimacy. The phrase “she’s my daughter” works in a similar register as Philip’s “you’re my wife,” obscuring proprietary relations through an appeal to familial love. That is to say, if Elizabeth’s sentimental status as “wife” naturalizes Philip’s sense of ownership over her, then Paige’s sentimental status as “daughter” similarly masks the way her mother views her as property. In each case, the discourse of kinship conceals the hierarchical nature of the nuclear family, its investment in relationships of domination and control. Elizabeth’s position here is hypocritical, establishing one set of expectations for herself and another for her children. She wants to rebuff all the “rights” of a husband while fully claiming those of a mother. While we may applaud her resistance to Philip as a form of self-­sovereignty, her reaction to Paige is more problematic, showcasing an authoritarianism that her daughter seems powerless to combat. “I’m allowed to have my own life,” Paige pleads. “And we are allowed to know about it,” Elizabeth counters.57 Elizabeth’s vocation as KGB officer thus meshes differently with her roles as wife and mother. Her position as trained assassin is incompatible with her status as wife because the autonomy and fearlessness of the former challenge the female vulnerability upon which heterosexual marriage depends. Motherhood, by contrast, sits more easily with Elizabeth. Although she loathes American parenting rituals that breed weakness in children, she is deeply drawn to the mission of mothering as articulated in Republican motherhood and other forms of domestic ideology that entail the training and recruitment of children—­activities that are fully compatible with Elizabeth’s mission as a Communist spy who develops and runs sources by building relationships of trust. While wifehood threatens to unravel Elizabeth’s identity as a KGB officer, motherhood deepens her cover. It is consistent with her role as antihero because, as Elizabeth plays it out, maternity is less about caretaking than about recognizing the ways children may be owned and used in the service of the state.

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Perhaps this helps explain where the show lands after six seasons: with Elizabeth back in the Soviet Union, no longer a mother able to direct her children’s futures toward nationalist ends. The threat she poses to the United States as a spy has been eliminated and, with it, the larger danger of recruiting her intimates to the cause. It’s a devastating loss for her, but also not entirely unexpected. Elizabeth had always claimed she was committed to something bigger than herself. Sacrificing her children—­allowing them to remain in America without her—­would seem to be the ultimate proof of her dedication. Beyond this, however, the logic of the show dictates that Elizabeth must return childless, since motherhood and spycraft are completely intertwined for her. “What are you going to do there?” Paige had once asked her mother about returning to the Soviet Union. “You can’t be Russian spies in Russia.”58 Paige is right: Elizabeth can only be a KGB operative in America; and she can only be an American mother in the context of being a KGB operative. The two roles are utterly imbricated, so that to abandon one is necessarily to lose the other. While being a spy might appear to be Elizabeth’s “real” identity and an American mother merely an invention, the show reveals how the distinction is false, each persona relying upon the other. Indeed, one of the many deft accomplishments of The Americans is the way it blurs the distinction between acting and reality, demonstrating how identity is bound up in performance.59 The two people born in Russia as Mikhail and Nadezhda both are and are not Philip and Elizabeth. That is to say, their American identities are both a front that they adopt as part of their jobs and a deeply felt part of themselves. (“Do you feel like those names are your real names now?” Paige asks her parents about their American noms de guerre. “Yes,” each answers simply.)60 Similarly, when Philip goes undercover as Clark and falls in love with Martha (Alison Wright), his passion for her is both an act that he must maintain to continue running his source and an authentic response in his role as Clark (who both is and isn’t entirely identical with Philip who, in turn, both is and isn’t entirely identical with Mikhail). This obscuring of the lines of identity is also apparent in the stories Philip and Elizabeth spin to their sources: Elizabeth talking to her mark about a fictional rape she experienced borrows details from her actual rape in Russia; Philip talking to Martha about his “first marriage” mooches bits from his relationship with Elizabeth. In each case, the fiction allows characters to articulate their reality so that performance becomes part of their truth. “We had to make it real to ourselves,” Philip tells Elizabeth about the sexual encounters he had in his training. When Elizabeth asks, “Do you have to make it real with me?” Philip responds, “Sometimes.”61 He, more than Elizabeth, recognizes that

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intimacy between husband and wife is, like the relationships forged with sources, something manufactured into authenticity. By the series end, however, Elizabeth has gone in the other direction, dropping all pretense of performance and with it all claims to identity. No longer a spy, one might expect her to come into being as a fully realized self. Instead, she’s a shadow of that self, with few ties grounding her to a meaningful life. If, as Judith Butler and others have argued, social reality is constituted through performance, once Elizabeth stops performing, her reality becomes threadbare, even to herself.62 This is evident in The Americans’ penultimate episode—­“Jennings, Elizabeth,” the title a nod to questions of identity—­when Elizabeth has a flashback to a training drill back in Russia. Passing by a terrible accident, she opts to continue with her operational run rather than to aid the dying man pleading for her help. “Even in training you said we have to act like we’re [in America],” she tells her supervisor, defending herself. For Elizabeth, a black-­and-­white thinker, the lines between performance and reality are strict. Told to “act” as if she’s in America, she follows directions to a tee, unable, like Philip, to improvise—­to integrate her directives with new and unexpected circumstances. After her supervisor chastises her (“You don’t leave a comrade on the street to die in Moscow”), she gives her some advice: “You must make the right choices over there. But the most important thing—­we do not want you to lose who you are.”63 As Elizabeth herself realizes during this flashback, however, it’s not at all clear who she is. She imagines that some authentic self lurks beneath the performances, that she can separate Nadezhda from the intimacies she’s forged in her various impersonations. (“It doesn’t mean anything to me,” she tells Paige of the sex she has with her sources.)64 In so insisting, she fails to realize that these performances are constitutive of the person she’s become. This is perhaps why the Jennings’ return home—­alive, free, and together—­ does not have the triumphal tone one might expect. The cost of leaving “Elizabeth” and “Philip” behind is not just the loss of their children but also, in a fundamental way, the loss of themselves. And yet, there is one compensation for these shortfalls, and that is the relationship that they’ve forged with each other. For, while Elizabeth returns to Russia no longer a spy or a mother, she importantly retains her position as wife. In the final scene of the series, she and Philip stand on a bridge in Moscow musing on the lives they could have lived had they stayed in the Soviet Union. “I probably would have worked in a factory; managed a factory. Maybe we would have met on a bus,” Elizabeth suggests.65 It’s an absurdly sentimental supposition, given that it took half their marriage for Elizabeth to feel anything resembling fondness for Philip. But it’s significant in that it speaks to the distance that she’s come: from

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female antihero clamoring for professional autonomy and eager to destroy the foundations of Western capitalism to ordinary Russian citizen dreaming of an aspirational career trajectory and the man she might marry. By the end of The Americans, the CIA officer’s question to Elizabeth—­“Do you love anyone? Does anyone love you?”—­has been answered in the affirmative. But it remains a bittersweet commentary on contemporary gender relations that Elizabeth’s emotional bonds can only be upheld through the destruction of her role as antihero, as “television’s baddest bitch.”

3

Scandal and the Failure of Postracial Fantasy

ABC’s hit show Scandal (2012–­2018)—­the first American network television drama since 1974 to star a Black woman1—­is beloved by fans who revel in the portrait of Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) as the Washington “fixer” whose brilliance, sartorial sense, and sheer competence can overcome any obstacle. Scheming politicians, corrupt lawyers, and her criminal-­mastermind father crumble one by one in the face of her verbal skills and pristine winter-­white suits. Olivia strides across the capital cleaning up other people’s messes and snapping “It’s handled” into her cell phone. Her outsize influence over both the president of the United States and a small army of dedicated “gladiators” willing to take a bullet for her creates a vision of Black female power and desirability that has deeply resonated with audiences. Indeed, their avid social media posts along with Kerry Washington’s own propensity to live-­tweet during episodes contributed to making Scandal what the LA Times called “the show that Twitter built.”2 Fan enthusiasm is often shared by feminist scholars who revel in Scandal’s depiction of a Black female protagonist who is the object of not only universal admiration but also desire. As Kristin J. Warner proclaims, “Olivia Pope receives more oral sex than anyone on network televi­ sion, Black or white. And she never asks!”3 One would think that for a Black female lead to garner this much love and attention, she would need to be a paragon of virtue.4 But part of Scandal’s accomplishment is that it presents audiences with a deeply esteemed Black woman who is also an antihero. To be sure, audiences are encouraged to view Olivia as operating on the right side of morality, but this proposition becomes harder to swallow over the course of the show’s seven seasons. Olivia may claim to wear “a white hat” and “stand in the sun,” but her ethically ambiguous actions include tampering with multiple crime scenes, sleeping

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with a married man (even when his wife is pregnant), rigging a presidential election, bludgeoning a man to death with a metal chair, aiding in the suicide of an enemy, and assassinating a foreign president. Indeed, of all the antiheroes populating contemporary television, Olivia is arguably one of the most extreme, sanctioning (if not committing) one abhorrent act after another and showing little remorse. The fact that she’s Black and able to get away with this is testament to progress of sorts. As creator and showrunner Shonda Rhimes has stated, “Equality is getting to be as screwed up and as messed up as all of the other leads on television.”5 And yet, it’s difficult to think of Olivia as an antihero in the way we’ve defined this figure in other TV dramas—­as someone fundamentally committed to undermining the status quo and watching civilized society go to rot. For, more often than not, Olivia mobilizes her smarts, savvy, and considerable influence to shore up the powers that be. She is particularly committed to a business-­as-­usual government headed by a caricature of WASP entitlement—­US President Fitzgerald “Fitz” Grant III (Tony Goldwyn), a Republican whose moderate position on some social issues does little to undermine his elitism and deep ties to corporate interests. Olivia’s dedication to Grant and his presidency means that she’s willing to get her hands dirty—­to lie, to manipulate, to kill—­in the name of institutional authority. Unlike Daen­ erys, Olivia doesn’t want to break the wheel, she wants it to turn more efficiently; unlike Cersei, Olivia doesn’t want to lead the realm, she wants to ensure the forces of white conservatism do; unlike Elizabeth, Olivia doesn’t embrace misanthropic autonomy, she is rather enthralled by the attractions of a powerful married man. In short, rather than finding herself at odds with her society, she seems firmly ensconced in its grip, ever willing to shore up its most conservative impulses. Olivia, then, presents viewers with a paradox: a Black antihero working relentlessly in the service of the state. This has troubled many a critic who sees in the show a capitulation to racist logic. As Brandon Maxwell writes, “The only way Pope is empowered and seemingly in control is through service to the system that demands her powerlessness and capitulation.”6 This dynamic, however, is challenged during a five-­episode arc in the middle of Scandal’s fourth season when Olivia’s Blackness is explicitly pitted against the machinations of both casual racists and the white supremacist state. In this sequence, Olivia is kidnapped by a posse of white men, emotionally abused, and sold to the highest bidder in an online auction. While these events—­pivoting around a Black woman’s sale, with the threat of rape always looming in the background—­clearly reference antebellum slavery, the show’s more trenchant commentary on American race relations comes later, in the

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episode directly following Olivia’s safe return home. Titled “The Lawn Chair,” this episode takes up police brutality toward an unarmed Black man, directly alluding to Michael Brown’s 2014 murder by a white police officer and the ensuing uprising in Ferguson, Missouri. Together, these episodes make clear that white nationalism and the structural inequalities it breeds may be the one problem that Olivia can’t fix. For if Olivia usually appears to be aligned with upper-­crust gentility—­her competence and beauty locating her in a protected postracial universe—­this plotline exposes the way that respectability, and even influence among the elite, cannot truly insulate the Black subject from the realities of racism and violence. It is Olivia’s initial abduction that alerts her to this fact and the death of an innocent Black man that confirms this knowledge, prompting her, for the first time in the series, to question her allegiance to the state. In this season 4 sequence, then, we see glimpses of the transgressive antihero that Scandal otherwise does not allow Olivia to be. “What Do You Want, Olivia?” For all her popularity, Olivia Pope’s character is a source of discomfort to those who are unsettled by Scandal’s portrait of a Black woman able to do and have anything she wants. Such a depiction troubles, because it seems to ignore the realities of being Black and female in contemporary America and to substitute a postracial, postfeminist, neoliberal fantasy in its place.7 While elements of the show (like its diverse cast and soul soundtrack) may cue viewers into the importance of Blackness, the fact that race is so infrequently mentioned within the show’s diegesis seems to suggest its general irrelevance.8 In this analysis, Scandal—­along with Rhimes’s two previous hit series, Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, 2005–­present) and Private Practice (ABC, 2007–­2013)—­operates as a “crossover” text that obscures the specificity of race in order to appeal to white audiences.9 Moreover, critics see in the show’s portrait of an adulterous interracial affair between Olivia Pope and US President Grant a troubling reassertion of antiquated race relations. The problem is not simply that their romance invokes the Thomas Jefferson–­Sally Hemings history, but also that despite Olivia’s professional competence and self-­determination, she often appears passive when with Grant, so smitten by her white suitor that she capitulates to his every order. (In the first scene of explicit sex between them, Olivia is silent as the president instructs her, “Take off your clothes.”)10 As Mia Mask argues, “Even in communities of color, folks are not certain whether Rhimes’ Scandal is a progressive step in an anti-­essentialist direction or a regressive move backward toward a reconstituted Jezebel-­in-­bed-­with-­Massa stereotype.”11

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In a related critique, detractors fault the show for its lack of nuance, its outsize operatic characters and plot twists. Writing in Vulture, Matt Zoller Seitz praises Scandal while also describing it as a “turbocharged melodrama,” serving up “tawdry spectacles.”12 In Uproxx, Alan Sepinwall characterizes the show as a “gonzo hybrid of conspiracy thriller and high-­stakes soap opera.”13 Reviewers for more mainstream publications are even less generous. Michael Starr’s acerbic takedown of Scandal—­“ABC’s self-­absorbed, overblown, overacted, pretentious, soliloquy-­laden car-­wreck-­of-­a-­series”—­in the New York Post labels it “without a doubt, the most insipid, infuriating hour of TV in quite some time.”14 Brian Lowry of Variety adds, “Scandal . . . with its Washington, D.C. setting, exaggerated situations and overblown politics, feels like ‘The West Wing for Dummies.’ . . . The plot twists are predictable, when not ridiculous; the moralizing is heavy-­handed; and star Kerry Washington—­while beautiful—­suffers from a serious gravitas deficit.”15 These critiques of Scandal are not unrelated to the charges of postracial pandering the show also faces. Olivia’s outsize victories and the over-­the-­top triumphs of her “gladiators” seem just as fantastic as the idea that Blackness is not a political liability in contemporary America. But these criticisms ignore the extent to which the show’s excessive elements create viewer pleasure, especially among those who revel in Scandal’s depiction of “Black Girl Magic.”16 Olivia Pope is always prepared, always triumphant; she strides around her pristine penthouse apartment with an ever-­ present glass of expensive red wine in her hand, never spilling a drop. She is absolutely and urgently needed, not just by the president of the United States (who’s so desperately in love with her that he routinely ignores the duties of his office), but also by all manner of Washington elites, who call on her the moment they get into hot water. In this way, her depiction is a crucial corrective to everyday assumptions about the status of African American women, a group that Zora Neale Hurston once called the mules of the world.17 It is easy to fault Scandal for lacking Breaking Bad’s nuanced critique of institutions or missing The Wire’s sensitivity to urban politics, but these critiques fail to grasp the way in which Scandal succeeds as a form of racial fantasy. Olivia’s hyper-­competence—­her ability to manipulate any situation, finesse any outcome, bed any costar—­is an important part of the show’s challenge to Black women’s marginalization. Utz McKnight labels this a “carnivalesque reversal of roles” in which the Black woman moves from “obscurity, silence, and supposed social unimportance” to a position of absolute “centrality.”18 Olivia Pope’s outsize triumphs are not simply a salve to viewer pleasure, however; they’re also what the show positions as absolutely necessary to her maintaining a baseline of influence in the white DC world she inhabits. As

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her father, Rowan Pope (Joe Morton), reminds her in one of the few explicit references to race on the show, “You have to be twice as good as them to get half of what they have.”19 This mantra on the extra burdens placed on Black Americans will no doubt be familiar to many viewers. As Neil Drumming writes in Salon, “In Scandal’s choppy ocean of absurdity, it felt like rock-­hard reality.”20 Rowan has trained his daughter in this logic all her life, and he’s appalled that in being exposed as the president’s mistress, Olivia seems to have momentarily forgotten. “Do you have to be so mediocre?” he asks, delivering the crushing blow. The scene helps explain the hyperbole of Scandal’s vision, not only Olivia’s larger-­than-­life victories but also her unfailing physical presentation—­the pristine suits, the Prada handbags, the exquisitely coiffed hair. Only through superhuman acts of triumph and self-­staging can this Black woman hope to attain even a modicum of respect. In this reading, Scandal doesn’t ignore race or pretend that it doesn’t exist; on the contrary, the show is all too aware that depicting a Black woman with absolute authority means partially entering the realm of fantasy. This logic might also explain Olivia’s commitment to political conservatism; for how else but by backing es­­ tablishment interests might a Black woman hope to retain power? While Olivia’s complicity here gives pause, for the most part Scandal gets away with this dynamic without appearing too politically retrograde. Since the forces of white conservatism are generally presented as benevolent and morally upright (typified by President Grant’s equal-­pay, pro-­Dreamers, anti-­ gun agenda), Olivia can shore up institutional influence while seeming to remain on the right side of history. We see this dynamic play out in a scene from season 4, episode 9, when Olivia’s terrorist mother, Maya (Khandi Alexander), faces off in an interrogation room with Olivia’s two lovers—­the president and Jake Ballard (Scott Foley), a rogue intelligence operative. When Fitz tries to intimidate Maya, she mistakenly thinks that Olivia will come to her rescue. “My daughter is here now—­Olivia Pope is here. . . . Tell them, Livvie—­ handle them.” The scene pits two Black women against two influential white men, but it ends with Olivia choosing the white representatives of the state over her mother. In answer to Maya’s smug instruction that she “handle them,” Olivia orders the president otherwise: “Charge her and lock her up. As for my father, hunt him, find him, and kill him.”21 It’s a shocking moment in which Olivia chooses to side with her white establishment lovers against her Black parents and the challenge to state power they represent; but because the latter are so mired in corruption and immorality, audiences forgive the decision and its racially charged political implications. At other times, however, Olivia’s commitment to establishment politics seems less defensible, as in the season 2 arc when audiences learn that she

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was one of five players to steal the national election in favor of Grant. Each of the five gets something concrete for their trouble: avaricious Mellie (Bellamy Young) becomes first lady; Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry) is promoted to chief of staff; Verna Thornton (Debra Mooney) is assured a seat on the Supreme Court; and lobbyist Hollis Doyle (Gregg Henry) gets a two-­billion-­dollar contract along with unfettered access to the White House. “What do you want, [Olivia]?” Doyle and the others keep asking.22 While Olivia doesn’t answer the question, the show offers some clues about her thinking, which might go something like this: I want the man I love and admire to become leader of the free world. I want it despite the fact that he will spend millions increasing the US military presence in Asia rather than on Medicare. I want it even though his platform includes tax cuts for the rich. I want it notwithstanding the fact that, after Thornton’s death, he will appoint a pro-­life justice to the Supreme Court. (“I’m apolitical,” Olivia tells Cyrus in relation to the new justice; “Is your vagina apolitical?” Cyrus responds.)23 Thus, in the end, Olivia agrees to election rigging—­an act of domestic terrorism—­out of love of a man and apathy to his conservative values, a move that appears more corrupt (because less comprehensible) than the power-­grabbing of her co-­conspirators. Has she really just agreed to sabotage the democratic process for nothing more than the hope embodied by this great white Republican? When has a female antihero sacrificed so much for the destruction of so little? While this moment perhaps represents the nadir of Scandal’s political vision—­a Black woman committing treason simply because she believes in the nobility of the married white man she’s sleeping with—­at other points in the show’s run, Olivia holds out the promise of something more transformational. For example, while she continually works to promote conservative values, she herself skirts these imperatives, rejecting the myriad men who attempt to domesticate her. “I could marry you, I could be a senator’s wife,” she tells Edison Davis (Norm Lewis), the principled Black Democratic majority leader who has proposed to her twice. “I’d probably be happy. I could probably give all this up and live in a country house and have babies and be normal. I could. But I don’t want to. I’m not built for it.”24 Instead of traditional family, Olivia chooses her “family” of gladiators—­Harrison (Columbus Short), Huck (Guillermo Diaz), Abby (Darby Stanchfield), and Quinn (Katie Lowes)—­the broken men and women she has rescued and made into warriors. Her commitment to them often feels like an embrace of radical alternative intimacy. “I’m all alone except for you,” she tells Huck after he’s been traumatized by an abduction in season 2. “So I need you to snap out of this. . . . Whatever happened to you, you have to come back to me. I need you. You are all I have. You are everything.”25 At another moment, when Cyrus Beene is convinced

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his husband is having an affair, Olivia stares into his eyes and offers comfort. “You are not going to grow old alone. You’re never alone. I’m here.”26 These scenes are deeply unusual, perhaps even unprecedented, for network television. When have we seen a Black woman speaking to white men on the subject of mutual vulnerability and love in the context of an absolutely platonic relationship? Viewed in this context, her affair with Fitz (and her willingness to keep it going while his wife is pregnant) merely serves as proof of her unwavering commitment to non-­normative bonds of intimacy. Olivia’s creation of kinship outside the institutions of marriage and family represents a real challenge to status quo values.27 But because these moves are partially pitched in terms of interracial accommodation, they are also somewhat suspect. Is this one more instance of a Black woman caring for and taking on the pain of white men? Critics—­including Brandon Maxwell, Rachel Alicia Griffin, and Kendall King—­have argued that for all her brilliance and indomitability, Olivia ultimately functions in the role of a mammy. Well dressed and presentable, she understands the workings of the white house/ White House and “tirelessly works behind the scenes to ensure the house continues to function as expected.”28 Such a view is articulated in the show itself when Olivia’s terrorist mother caustically comments, “I’d rather be a traitor than what you are, Livvie. Cleaning up those people’s messes, fixing up their lives; you think you’re family but you’re nothing but the help.”29 While her defenders point out that this analysis is too reductive,30 many remain discomfited by Olivia’s service to a white elite. What happens, then, when Olivia drops the assimilationist pretense altogether and begins to question her commitment to the state and its values? “Bidding on the Black Lady” Season 4, episode 10 (“Run”) opens with a discordant image—­Olivia Pope, dirty, disheveled, and desperate, running in a prisonlike setting, a gun in her hand (fig. 3.1). After this brief, unexplained sequence, the episode cuts back to the moments before Olivia’s abduction, as she dances with Jake Ballard in her apartment, spouting empowerment phrases like “I’m choosing Olivia” and “I’m fine dancing alone”31 (fig. 3.2). These two vignettes allow us to see the show’s conventional depiction of Olivia—­glamorous, sexy, in control—­ while previewing the image of a different Olivia, one not only stripped of the markers of wealth and influence that usually define her but also verging on Black stereotype. “Run” is thus an unusual episode in that it highlights Oliv­ ia’s vulnerability and racial identity in stark terms. Moreover, in a seeming clapback to scholars who suggest that Scandal’s large cast makes it possible to

f i g u r e 3.1. Escape: Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope on Scandal, season 4, episode 10, “Run,” 2015.

f i g u r e 3.2. Before capture: Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope on Scandal, season 4, episode 10, “Run,” 2015.

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avoid identification with Olivia,32 “Run” rarely leaves the protagonist’s point of view, encouraging audiences to identify with Olivia as she is hurt and afraid. Even more surprising than the sight of Olivia’s vulnerability, however, is the vision of her physical degeneration—­the loss of all markers of bourgeois respectability.33 As masked intruders storm her apartment, her glass of red wine spills, leaving a stain on the pristine white sofa. This stain—­which first cues Jake to her disappearance—­comes to represent both the violence of her abduction and the tainting of her immaculate image, a theme that continues as she’s locked in a prison cell, apparently in the Middle East. Olivia’s physical degeneration is depicted in her successive trips to the bathroom, where an armed guard tells her she has five minutes of privacy. During the first of these trips, the camera lingers on the sink and the toilet, drawing attention to the squalor of the space, a marked contrast from Olivia’s own luxe bathroom, often featured in Pinterest posts about the show (fig. 3.3).34 Olivia looks around in disgust and then meticulously lays pieces of tissue paper on the seat of the toilet, careful not to contaminate any part of her body. After a brief montage showing the passage of time, however, all efforts at self-­maintenance are gone. Olivia’s perfectly pressed hair is blowsy, her manicured fingernails are broken, and she relieves herself by sitting directly on the decrepit toilet seat. This slip into physical shabbiness marks an unprecedented view of Olivia, who has only ever existed for audiences in bourgeois affluence. Indeed, while the show positions the threat of rape as ever-­present during her abduction—­“There are things . . . much worse than death,” one of the captors tells Olivia, his hand on her shoulder35—­it also implies that Olivia’s slip from middle-­class respectability is the thing that most shocks. This point is underscored in the scene in which Olivia, desperate to escape her captors, masterminds a plan by which she uses the underwire of her bra as a tool to pick the bathroom’s window lock. By season 4, audiences have grown accustomed to seeing Olivia’s undergarments, which are as delicate and expensive as the rest of her belongings and which usually make an appearance in the context of steamy romantic scenes. For this reason, the sight of a disheveled Olivia scraping her expensive Heidi Klum bra against the concrete floor to expose the underwire is deeply unnerving. The armed guard’s constant threat of intrusion (“five minutes and I’m coming in,” “five minutes, girlie”) also creates unease, depriving Olivia of privacy and reminding viewers of the precarious position that African American women have historically occupied vis-­à-­vis public restrooms. Jack Halberstam has written that “the bathroom is a domestic space beyond the home that comes to represent domestic order, or a parody of it, out in the world. The women’s bathroom accordingly becomes a sanctuary of enhanced femininity, a ‘little girl’s room’

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f i g u r e 3.3. “Loving the subway tile!” On Pinterest, Courtney posts an image of Olivia Pope’s bathroom. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/176695985354466725/.

to which one retreats to powder one’s nose or fix one’s hair.”36 For vulnerable populations, however, the public restroom signifies differently. This is true not only for the transgender individuals that Halberstam examines but also for African American women, for whom public bathrooms have represented not domestic order and enhanced femininity but the threat of trespass and (under Jim Crow segregation) biopolitical domination. Denying African American women access to public restrooms was a means of excluding them from respectable womanhood and undermining their humanity, as the recent films The Help (2011) and Hidden Figures (2016) make clear.37 In this context, Olivia’s abduction represents a symbolic entry into the lives of ordinary African American women, for whom bathrooms function as a form of social control. Her lack of voluntary entry, the threat of intrusion, and the atrocious sanitary conditions are all reminders of Black women’s historical relationship to this highly contested space. Fan reaction to this scene reinforces this reading, indicating the ways in which Olivia’s abduction resonates as a loss of Black respectability. Tiffany and TeNaea, the cohosts of the weekly Scandal YouTube recap titled “Tha Show,” react to the initial bathroom montage with a mixture of horror and identification. “Did y’all see Olivia Pope’s hair?” Tiffany asks, and TeNaea

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quickly answers, “Hey—­when you’re natural and you ain’t got no flat iron or blow dryer, that can come quick!” This banter about how swiftly the physical markers of propriety fall away in the absence of the resources to maintain them transitions to a mixture of advice for Olivia on efficiently exposing the underwire (“No, Liv—­bite that shit next time”) and keen observations on Oliv­ ia’s wealth and Hollywood-­approved body. TeNaea comments, “You know what I was thinking? Her little bra was probably not as raggedy as our bras. . . . She probably wears hers once and then throws it in the trash. . . . Plus, she ain’t got no damn titties, so [the wire is] not much.”38 This moment of disidentification (both with Olivia’s privilege and with her physique) works as a sly commentary on the limits of Black respectability. Olivia may possess money, straight teeth, a slim body, and pristine undergarments, but all this does her little good in the context of a racially charged abduction and imprisonment. Indeed, here the markers of bourgeois privilege actually work against Olivia, thwarting her chances at successful escape. For all her advantages, Olivia is unable to escape the forces of violence and humiliation visited upon her as a Black woman, what Tiffany sums up as “Liv getting her ass whupped . . . in a cave eating Chipotle.” It bears emphasizing that these scenes create a marked contrast from the show’s usual depiction of Olivia. Kristina Brüning argues that Scandal typically operates in a postracial register where Olivia’s Blackness is obscured so she can appear as a facile feminist figure committed to a generalist anti-­ intersectional vision of women’s progress. In Brüning’s words, As a result of the dual activity of post-­feminist and colorblind discourses in the series, Olivia’s gender is . . . constantly highlighted while her race is de-­ emphasized and reduced to a visual feature. In the colorblind, post-­feminist characterization of Olivia, the cultural specificity and the socio-­political context of her identity as a Black woman, and thus the intersectional reality of Black womanhood, is erased. Instead, emphasis is put on Olivia’s experiences as a powerful but flawed, sexually liberated, affluent post-­feminist woman.39

In this reading, Scandal obscures the political reality of Blackness through an emphasis on female empowerment. Strategies such as these are the “media work of postrace,” according to Sarah Banet-­Weiser, Roopali Mukherjee, and Herman Gray—­tactics designed to “maintain that the raced body (Blackness and otherness) is no longer aligned with abjection, subordination, and suspicion.”40 In episode 10, however, Olivia’s status as rich and sexually liberated is peeled away, allowing the vulnerable Black body to emerge—­incarcerated, ter­­ rified, under constant threat of sexual assault—­and revealing the fictiveness of narratives of postfeminist empowerment and postracial safety alike. Olivia,

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in this moment, constitutes a highly realist figure (contra those critics who emphasize Scandal’s operatic plots), one who captures the lived experience of African Americans. As Herman Gray has pointed out, “In everything from creditworthiness to investments and assets, vulnerability to disease, and life expectancy, the population organized by race experiences the world through the differential exposure to risk, disease, life, and death.”41 In earlier episodes, Olivia seemed to have eluded this “differential exposure to risk” by presenting as a powerful woman separated from “the population organized by race.” In “Run,” however, the show’s veneer of postracial fantasy breaks down, exposing Olivia as both symbol and specimen of Black vulnerability. This highlighting of Olivia’s Blackness intensifies when her kidnappers change course, and she is auctioned off and sold to the highest bidder. As if this storyline isn’t explicit enough, Huck’s comments about his boss’s likely fate bolster the theme of slavery: “They will send her finger . . . a few of her ribs. They will take her apart, bit by bit, piece by piece.” Invoking Olivia as a collection of body parts, Huck (his own name a reminder of the literary legacy of slavery) captures the logic of trading in human capital. “She is not a person to them; she is a tool, a very expensive, a very useful tool.”42 Fans quickly took to their Twitter accounts, reacting to these references with a mixture of shock and disbelief, heightened by the fact that, as Emily Orley points out, the episode aired in February, Black History Month.43 According to Orley, Tweets from Black viewers included the following: Slavery all over again.  .  .  . bidding on the black woman!!!! Help Lawd!!! #SCANDAL We’re [auctioning] off Olivia? That’s slavery fam #Scandal Wait a minute, idk how I feel about this bidding on the black lady. Isn’t this slavery? #Scandal Shonda we suppose to uplift black folks during black history month, not put us through slavery again #Scandal44

Shonda Rhimes responded to her fans’ outrage with a reality check: Can’t believe I need to say this: yes, I wrote “black woman auctions herself off ” storyline on PURPOSE. I have heard of slavery. #Scandal We’ve been writing about the dynamics of race, gender & power over here at #Scandal for 4 seasons. All Gladiators know that.45

Rhimes’s response is an important rejoinder to those who read Scandal in postracial terms. By her accounting, the show has always been conscious of the racial (and gender) dynamics at play in Olivia’s representation. Still, there

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is no contesting that the kidnapping/incarceration/auction storyline presents this reality writ large, showing us that despite Olivia’s beauty, competence, and professional chops, she is still subject to racist violence operating beyond her control. It is a reminder of the reality of being Black in America, where wealth and status remain an imperfect bulwark against the forces of white supremacy. Of course, insofar as Olivia engineers her own sale, this is not a simple case of a Black woman’s exploitation. Indeed, part of the satisfaction of these episodes comes from seeing Olivia outsmart her white kidnappers as her white colleagues look on impotently. The latter set includes her lover Jake, a black-­ops officer normally characterized by superhuman surveillance and survival skills. (Later in the same season, he will resurrect himself after effectively being murdered through multiple stab wounds to the chest and stomach.) Nevertheless, Jake is depicted as wholly ineffectual following Olivia’s abduction. Failing to realize that the bad guys are occupying the neighboring apartment, he runs outside wearing only his skivvies and proceeds to chase the wrong car. “Run, Forrest, run!” the kidnappers cackle, riffing on Forrest Gump, the Oscar-­winning 1994 film about a white man played by Tom Hanks with a below-­average IQ.46 In addition to this incident, sly references to white male mediocrity pepper the episode. Before her abduction, Olivia tells Jake that she’s ordered pizza from an establishment that names the pies after first ladies. Tellingly, she chose the Dolly Madison—­a cheeky reference to a famously impressive woman married to the least charismatic of the founding fathers. Once she’s kidnapped, Olivia is held in prison by a feckless cast of white men—­the hapless journalist whose spirits she must buoy, the resentful captor chafing against his boss’s power, and the swaggering ringleader who’s actually a pawn. Thus, even while reminding us of Olivia’s precarity as a Black woman among dangerous white men, the show also never lets us forget that she is capable of outwitting them all. There are, of course, also two men of color among Olivia’s captors, but they turn out to be every bit as amoral and ineffectual as their white bosses. Computer geeks who know how to navigate the “dark web,” Mike (Phillip Garcia) and Pete (Anthony Ma) are in charge of running Olivia’s online auction. Finding herself alone with these two young men, Olivia tries to appeal to their better instincts and perhaps to their feelings of racial solidarity. “You don’t belong here,” she tells them. “You dreamed of being successful, of running companies, of building something great.” Pete cuts her off. “That’s not what I dreamed of . . . Lady, I dreamed of money,” he says, before turning his attention back to her sale.47 Despite their minority status, Mike and Pete prove to be no allies; indeed, their wholly Anglicized names are an indication

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of their assimilation into normative white greed.48 Thus, with all the white men evil and all the men of color hopelessly compromised, it is Olivia alone who must be brave. We see this most explicitly during the titular “run” of episode 10. Olivia bounds toward the door grasping the keys and gun that she’s just beaten a man senseless to procure. As she runs, the episode’s soundtrack plays a litany of the past season’s mantras: “Gladiators don’t run.” “Are we gladiators or are we bitches?” “Show me who you are.” But the one that recurs and that structures the scene is the phrase her father bullied her into repeating in the season 3 premiere: “You have to be twice as good as them to get half of what they have. Twice as good.” The phrase is repeated over and over until Olivia is face-­to-­face with one of her captors, who doubts she’ll have the guts to kill him. “You’ve hesitated, love,” he tells Olivia condescendingly. “Which means you’re not sure you got the heart to pull the trigger. It’s nothing to be ashamed of; that’s a man’s tool you got there.”49 He’s repaid for the ways he’s underestimated her with a bullet between the eyes. It’s an important moment for Olivia, who has committed acts of lawlessness in the past but always for the benefit of Fitz or some other member of the privileged elite. In gunning down one of her captors (and beating another one senseless with a metal pipe), however, she seems to finally emerge as the antihero we’ve been waiting for her to become—­willing to confront the perpetrators of racism and misogyny with unapologetic violence. This would seem to mark the moment of Olivia’s victory. Having realized (through the help of Abby in a dream sequence) that “there is no man to rescue you . . . you have to rescue yourself,”50 she has done just that, proving herself twice better than both the white men who abduct her and the white men who try and fail to get her back. But, of course, the story doesn’t end here. In a plot twist, the captor she kills turns out not to be the mastermind of her abduction, and the previous weeks are revealed as an elaborate form of gaslighting designed to extract information—­specifically, the revelation that the president of the United States is in love with Olivia and will do anything to secure her return. Even more importantly, we learn that she’s not being held in the Middle East but rather on a soundstage somewhere in Philadelphia. The decision to stage Olivia’s kidnapping in Philadelphia is significant, especially given that most of Scandal’s action takes place in the nation’s capital. Philadelphia is famously the site of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the location of the Constitutional Convention of 1787; but it also has a long history of violent state suppression of Black activists fighting against unjust systems, including the Philadelphia race riot of 1964 and the police bombing of a Black neighborhood in 1985 that killed six adults and five children, destroyed sixty-­one homes, and left 250 people homeless.51 Philadelphia

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thus signifies in two different ways in the national imaginary, capturing Oliv­ ia’s dual alignment as a powerful agent of the state and as a Black woman newly reminded of her physical vulnerability. During the course of this episode, she learns that the space of containment, of captivity, is not over there in the Middle East. Rather, for the African American subject, it’s always right here at home. “You’ll never see the United States of America again,” the kidnappers keep telling her.52 But it turns out that the danger is the United States and even Olivia’s status as “twice as good” can’t save her. The show resolves the storyline of Olivia’s abduction in episode 13 (“No More Blood”) with what might be viewed as a deus ex machina: one of Olivia’s old gladiators, Stephen Finch (Henry Ian Cusick), calls in a favor from a Russian oligarch who frees her. But viewing this resolution as an easy out misses the critique of American race relations that it signals—­that Russia proves a better ally to the enslaved Black woman than the United States, able to secure her freedom even when the most powerful players in her home country (including the president and an elite CIA operative) fail. What’s more, the placement of this resolution is also important—­directly before an episode entitled “The Lawn Chair,” about the murder of a Black teenage boy by police. This ordering suggests a thematic parallel, allowing audiences to see Olivia’s racially charged abduction in the context of everyday violence against Black people. These storylines seem to represent abrupt tonal shifts—­“Run” and the subsequent auction episodes are operatic, excessive, grounded in action-­ cinema tropes, while “The Lawn Chair” is middlebrow realist, based in current events. But, in fact, the two storylines are mirrored investigations of the same idea: the mistaken belief that the markers of respectability (education, money, deference to authority) can cushion the Black subject from the lived realities of racism.53 “Your Black Card’s Not Getting Validated Today” Although Olivia Pope returns from her abduction physically unharmed, the effects of her trauma linger. Against Jake’s advice she returns to work in episode 14 (“The Lawn Chair”), but her unsteady voice, shaking hands, and recurrent flashbacks suggest that she’s unable to view her DC environs outside the memory of her own brutalization. In light of this, it’s significant that “The Lawn Chair” tackles issues of race in ways the show usually avoids. The episode’s plot has a ripped-­from-­the-­headlines quality, and it aired the same week the Justice Department released its blistering report on the racist practices of the Ferguson police department. In the episode, a white cop has killed a Black teenager, Brandon Parker, whose body lies in the street “four

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short blocks from the Capitol, within the shadow of the White House.”54 In response to this public relations nightmare, Olivia has been brought in by the DC police department to “handle the optics.” As a crowd of protesters gathers, the boy’s father, Clarence Parker (Courtney B. Vance), arrives carrying a shotgun; he stands over his son’s body and demands to see the cop who killed him. The episode follows Olivia as she attempts to advise the police chief and as she clashes with a neighborhood activist, Marcus Walker (Cornelius Smith Jr.), who has brought Clarence Parker a lawn chair to sit in as he guards his son’s lifeless body. The episode thematizes the politics of public space, turning the abduction arc’s geopolitical lens toward the contested space of the homeland. Clarence Parker’s lawn chair transforms the urban street—­now a crime scene—­into a kind of domestic realm. When he places it over his son’s body, he at once claims the street as his own, while structuring it as a space of partial privacy and safekeeping, where fathers can watch over their dead sons with some semblance of dignity. “I want him to be protected from the elements,” Clarence says, in an ironic commentary on his own inability to shield his son from more nefarious forces than rain. The protesters around Clarence react to his movements in ways that bolster their own connection to the street as a space of shared domesticity. “Good for you, baby,” an older Black woman calls out, establishing the crowd as Parker’s extended kin. The police chief can only see the protesters as an anonymous and dangerous throng, but as Olivia tries to explain to him later, “There is a dead child lying in the street in front of their homes. . . . The fact that they stand in groups and say things you do not like does not make them a mob.” Olivia recognizes that the physical proximity of a “dead child” to the homes of the protesters legitimates their interference, as neighbors who share the street upon which Brandon lies. This in contrast to the White House, a domestic residence that disavows its connection to the Black teenager, remaining silent despite the fact that the events take place in what one reporter calls “the president’s own backyard.” To the extent that Olivia is aligned with that president, she occupies an antagonistic position in relation to the Black protesters. When she, Clarence, and Marcus first confront one another, their shared racial affiliation is undercut by Olivia’s connection with the largely white DC Metro police force. “Who hired you?” Marcus asks. When Clarence defends her—­“She’s helping me out”—­Marcus counters, “Helping you and cashing a check from the Washington Metro Police.  .  .  . What’s the going rate for playing both sides?” Olivia—­in the aftermath of a series of episodes about her literally being bought and sold—­is here framed rhetorically as someone who has been bought by white establishment interests. “I’m not the enemy,” she tells Marcus

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defensively. “Are you sure?” he responds, and, for the first time, viewers doubt whether Olivia is in the right. She claims she wants to “defuse” the situation, but as Marcus reminds her later, what she actually wants is “to put it to bed quietly.” When Clarence finally sides with Marcus by claiming a seat in the lawn chair, the camera tracks from the white police chief to the white district attorney to Olivia, drawing the three of them into the same optic field, and separating them from the mass of Black protesters who applaud Clarence’s actions. Olivia appears as a genuine outsider, and the irony, of course, is that she’s finally among African Americans. “We live in the same city, but this is probably the first time you ever stepped foot on this block,” Marcus insists later in the episode, after calling her out for her Prada handbag. Olivia responds, “You have no idea what I’m about,” but Marcus remains clear-­eyed. “You’re about getting a white Republican president elected. Twice.” The show is rarely this explicit in its critique of Olivia’s complicity with white state power; when Marcus says, “No thanks, Olivia. Your Black card’s not getting validated today,” he frames her glamorous persona—­so central to her appeal—­as a form of alienation from Blackness. Over the course of the episode, however, Olivia begins to move into alignment with the Black protesters, ultimately choosing to leave the police payroll and to join the members of the neighborhood positioned behind the security tape. This move is facilitated by a heart-­to-­heart she has with Clarence as he sits in the lawn chair protectively guarding his son’s body. “I used to buy Brandon old portable radios, TVs, calculators,” Clarence tells Olivia, “’cause he loved taking stuff apart, seeing how it worked. He always had a mind for that kind of thing.” Brandon, then, was a fixer too, with a brain perhaps not unlike Olivia’s. The parallels continue as Clarence explains his efforts to protect his son with the markers of respectability. “He was going to do the apprentice thing after graduation, become an electrical contractor. And even though he wasn’t going to college, I put a University of Maryland sticker on my truck anyway, so if he ever got pulled over, the cops wouldn’t think he was just a thug without a future.” Clarence here acts as an analogue to Oliv­ ia’s own father, a man similarly invested in his child’s future but without Clarence’s warmth and nurturing streak. Both men recognize that as African Americans, their children are engaged in an uphill battle that can only be won through untiring discipline and directives to be “twice as good.” (“I never let Brandon leave the house without saying where he was going. . . . No being around girls. We fought about that one a lot,” Clarence confesses to Olivia.) Olivia might therefore recognize a kindred spirit in the figure of Brandon, now dead despite his father’s best efforts. After all, Olivia, too, was recently reduced to a racial stereotype, an unkempt incarcerated Black woman “without

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a future.” (“I thought I was going to die,” she later says about her abduction.) Clarence Parker’s failed attempt to insulate his son from police violence with the markers of respectability thus mirrors Olivia’s failure to insulate herself from the trauma of her racially charged abduction and sale. These parallels come to a head when Olivia confronts the attorney general, David Rosen (Joshua Malina). The meeting is motivated by Olivia’s desire for a subpoena that will allow her to watch the surveillance footage of Brandon’s murder, but it quickly turns into a commentary about the unequal access to state protection faced by the Black community: “You talk about fairness and justice like it’s available to everybody—­it’s not!” Olivia rebukes David, adding that the laws he’s eager to uphold only protect “people who look like you.” Olivia then issues a surprising proclamation, given her reputation for unwa­ vering persistence and success. “I can’t fix this, David!” she shouts, referring to Clarence Parker’s standoff with the police. “I have nothing left—­no more tricks in my bag—­and it’s too much.” Here the forces of institutional racism appear too powerful for even Olivia to manage. “That man standing over his son’s body . . . knows he’s going to end up in one of two places: a jail cell or a drawer in the morgue, and to hell if I can’t look him in the eye and tell him he’s wrong!” At the end of this speech, Olivia begins to break down, in what the episode suggests is a return to the trauma suffered during her abduction. Her words are a biting commentary on the affinities between her own brutal kidnapping and the experience of the Parkers. “I thought I was a goner,” Olivia tells David. “I lived in complete and total fear. Imagine feeling like that every single day of your life.” It’s a stunning moment of screenwriting, one that frames the trauma of Olivia’s abduction as a lesson in the lived experience of being Black in America. The show depicts this revelation on Olivia’s part as a matter of seeing differently, of changing perspectives. When she first arrives on the scene in “The Lawn Chair,” Olivia responds to the spectacle of a dead Black teenager surrounded by gun-­toting white cops by ordering a cleanup: “The coroner needs to get here fast,” she tells the chief of police. “You need to move that body out of the street as soon as possible.” This is Olivia’s signature approach to scandal: clean it up, hide the evidence, make it appear as if nothing ever happened. Frequently, she and her gladiators tamper with crime scenes, erase signs of blood, and disappear bodies in an effort to save a client’s reputation. Insofar as Olivia has been hired by the Metro Police, she knows she must approach this situation similarly: “You need me to handle the optics,” she tells the police chief, eying the media that surround them. Scandal is always a matter of optics for Olivia. Indeed, the connection is made explicit in the show’s trademark editing style. At the beginning of most episodes and then again

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between different scenes, the show signals the presence of “scandal” through the markers of photography—­there are a series of quick cuts accompanied by the whirring and clicking sound of a camera shutter. Still images show the key players from that episode and the city’s institutions of power—­the Capitol building, the Washington Monument, the Pentagon. Olivia is needed, these sequences imply, to counter the salacious spectacle that the humming cameras evidence, to “handle the optics,” as she puts it, and ensure that the president and other influential DC operatives remain safely hidden from the public eye. In “The Lawn Chair,” however, Olivia moves from controlling the visual field to seeing things anew, as she begins to learn the perspective of the Black protesters and especially the neighborhood activist Marcus Walker. This change in viewpoint begins the moment Marcus first crosses the security tape to join Clarence Parker. The DC cops have their guns pointed at him, but Marcus, too, has a weapon of sorts in the form of his cell phone. “My name is Marcus Walker—­I’m using my cell phone to record everything that’s happening right now,” he shouts to the cops, wielding his phone like a weapon in a pose that mirrors the cops’ own. As he bellows these words, the camera cuts to a grainy, handheld sequence from Marcus’s phone, showing white cops aiming their guns at him, with Olivia and the protesters in the background and the dome of the Capitol looming over the scene (fig. 3.4). “You will not shoot me! You cannot shoot me. You’re being recorded,” Marcus insists, explicitly framing his ability to record the cops’ movements as a check on the state’s violent power. The POV shots from Marcus’s phone depict the police and the physical space of the Capitol differently from the glossy way they usually appear on the show—­the garish lighting and unsteady camerawork suggest the presence of fear that these markers of authority inspire in more vulnerable populations. Thanks to Marcus’s cell phone, the optics have shifted. Indeed, throughout the episode, the cell phone is framed as an object that allows citizens to reverse the gaze and challenge state power. The police chief believes that by withholding the surveillance video and redirecting the media, he can control the visual field, but the omnipresence of cell phones means that his influence is limited. After all, it’s not just Marcus who wields his phone as a weapon—it’s also the mass of protesters who record the scene unfolding in real time and whose cell phones operate as symbols of their capacity for countersurveillance. bell hooks has written about this ability to “look back” as one of the few strengths possessed by Black subjects. “I remember being punished as a child for staring, for those hard intense direct looks children would give grown-­ups, looks that were seen as confrontational, as gestures of resistance, challenges to authority.”55 hooks’s description of the Black child

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f i g u r e 3.4. Cell phone footage: Scandal, season 4, episode 14, “The Lawn Chair,” 2015.

“afraid to look” establishes the Black community’s “traumatic relationship to the gaze,”56 which hooks believes can only be exorcised through the power of looking back. “Even in the worse circumstances of domination, the ability to manipulate one’s gaze in the face of structures of domination that would contain it, opens up the possibility of agency,” hooks writes.57 Given its connection to optics, it’s no wonder that the cell phone is featured in “The Lawn Chair.” In fact, Brandon is lying dead in the street because of a cell phone—­he had purchased one the night he was killed and the receipt was in his pocket, but the cops gunned him down claiming he was reaching for a knife. “You were right,” Olivia tells Clarence in the episode’s climax, “he didn’t have a knife. He had a piece of paper.” This image—­a Black man reaching for the papers that will prove his legitimacy to white authorities—­is of course another callback to the history of slavery (and the contemporary police force’s roots in antebellum slave patrols). But it’s also a subtle commentary on the way the cell phone with its capacity for countersurveillance is figured as a weapon in contemporary culture, one so powerful that the white supremacist state can’t allow a young Black man to possess it. “The Lawn Chair” concludes on a sentimental note that partially dulls the incisive critique it otherwise makes. Clarence Parker expects to be arrested at the end of his ordeal, but instead Olivia takes him to the White House to meet the president, who has also recently lost a son. The embrace of the white father and the Black father, along with the unifying presence of tears, appears to counter the episode’s more biting takeaway—­that justice is not equally available to everyone and that the problem of structural racism isn’t

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something Olivia can just “fix.” With the racist white cop who shot Brandon now arrested and with the president feeling Clarence Parker’s pain, it would seem that the situation has been “defused” in precisely the way Olivia first promised. Instead of a dead Black boy and protesters on a public street, we are shown two grieving fathers in the domestic space of the White House. “Jack, please, give us a moment,” the president tells the White House photographer who’s poised to snap images of the two men’s embrace. The dismissal of the photographer highlights the intimacy of the scene, while reestablishing old optic patterns. Gone is the cell phone with its symbolic connection to resistance, and in its place is a return to the old-­fashioned camera, controlled by the president. Once again the optics are being “handled.” But this is not where the episode ends. As Nina Simone’s cover of “I Shall Be Released” plays on the soundtrack, the camera tracks Olivia lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, then cuts to an overhead image of Brandon Parker’s body lying in the street (figs. 3.5 and 3.6). The transition between these images creates a graphic match: the embroidery on Olivia’s duvet cover mirrors the crack in the sidewalk next to Brandon’s body. (The blood spreading across the sidewalk is also a visual callback to the red wine that still stains Olivia’s sofa in the next room.) Olivia’s resting posture recalls Marcus’s accusation (“you want to put it to bed quietly”), but her sleeplessness invokes the question she posed to Marcus at another point in the episode: “If this erupts, if a father is gunned down right next to his son, will you be able to sleep at night?” The fact that it is Olivia who can’t sleep suggests an important reversal in her thinking. During her initial confrontation with Marcus, she believed that a peaceable solution to the standoff was best, but her wakefulness alongside Brandon’s dead body at the end of the episode indicates that the failure of the scene to erupt has come with its own price—­the reinforcement of the status quo, in which Black lives don’t matter. Marcus had stressed the differences between Olivia and those on his block, but as the body bag zips closed over Brandon’s face in the final shot of the episode, its Olivia’s fundamental similarity to him that we’re left with, the sense that she can’t buy safety, despite her Prada bag and powerful backers.58 In the remainder of season 4, Olivia will recover and return to her old ways—­among other things protecting DC politicians from the publication of a tell-­all book about their sex lives. Still the racially charged episodes linger, reminding audiences of the short span of time when Olivia positioned herself firmly against establishment interests, answering the chief of police’s query “Whose side are you on?” with a defiant “Not yours!” Olivia had spent much of the first four seasons of Scandal in lockstep with influential DC interests, if not the DC Metro police force itself. Thus this response represents a real

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f i g u r e 3.5. Olivia unable to sleep: Scandal, season 4, episode 14, “The Lawn Chair,” 2015.

f i g u r e 3.6. Brandon’s body: Scandal, season 4, episode 14, “The Lawn Chair,” 2015.

departure, a moment when her ire and lawlessness work in the service of dismantling the status quo rather than shoring it up. Early in “The Lawn Chair,” Olivia accuses Marcus of being nothing more than an agitator in the wake of Brandon Parker’s death: “You don’t want justice, you want anger, you want outrage, you want retribution,” she scolds. His response—­“You’re right. I do. So should you!”—­is initially met with her contempt. But it ultimately reveals to Olivia (and to viewers) another path she might take, one in which her skill set is leveraged as a force of transgressive fury against a state that devalues the lives of ordinary people that look like her. This is the mantle that Scandal throws down in the middle of season 4 but never fully allows Olivia to take

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up. In arguing this, we do not mean to underestimate the importance of Oliv­ ia’s visibility on television as a powerful Black woman needed and desired by all. That she can lie, manipulate, and kill without consequence feels like an important step toward antihero equality. And, to be sure, her ability to collude with the president and other DC operatives is every bit as script-­flipping as seeing Walter White break bad. And yet, one cannot help but feel that in playing out this dynamic, Olivia has taken the king’s shilling instead of blowing up his palace.

4

Homeland and the Rejection of the Domestic Plot

Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), the rogue CIA agent at the center of Showtime’s Homeland (2011–­2020), is in many ways different from the female antiheroes we have discussed in previous chapters. Cersei Lannister, Olivia Pope, and Elizabeth Jennings are each ruthlessly disciplined and contained. They project an icy perfection that lends their iron-­clad competence and deft manipulations an air of pleasing inevitability. In this, they echo the male protagonists of the noir and spy genres, figures like James Bond and Sam Spade whose ethical flaws are obscured by their unerring expertise and panache. Carrie Mathison is different—­wide-­eyed and reckless, dismissed as “crazy” and distrusted by her handlers. Cersei, Olivia, and Elizabeth all weaponize their sexuality with ferocious efficiency, but when Carrie tries to seduce her CIA mentor Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) in the show’s pilot, he responds with a mixture of confusion and contempt—­“What the fuck are you doing?”1 Indeed, Carrie is all knees and elbows from the moment that audiences lay eyes on her. Thwarted in traffic and too late to save the life of the informant with the needed intel, she’s dragged away from an Iraqi prison kicking and screaming. This image of Carrie as undisciplined—­a “loose cannon,” as her boss David Estes (David Harewood) calls her2—­continues throughout the series. From her professional miscalculations and sexual indiscretions to the casting of Claire Danes, famous for her theatrical “cry face,”3 this is a woman characterized by excess instead of control (fig. 4.1). And yet, Carrie is exceedingly good at her job. As actor Danes has said about her, “She’s always fucking right.”4 The problem is that, like the classical figure of Cassandra, nobody believes her, and this has everything to do with her presentation of feminine excess. A quintessential antihero, she’s positioned by the show as both a savior of civilization—­because she alone knows

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f i g u r e 4.1. Cry face: Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison on Homeland, season 2, episode 12, “The Choice,” 2012.

the truth about turned POW Sergeant Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis)—­ and a harbinger of its downfall—­because she can’t keep her hands off a married man or recognize the threat she poses to his domestic life. Indeed, her CIA colleagues’ admiration of Carrie’s brilliance as an agent are inextricable from their fears that she’s a home-­wrecker. “[I used to have] a big blind spot where she’s concerned,” Estes confesses to Saul, “and now my wife lives in Palm Beach, and I only see my kids twice a year.”5 This slippage between Carrie’s professional competence and the threat she poses to domestic stability plays out over season 1 of the show, as national security issues get obscured by questions about the sanctity of marriage and of the home. This is especially apparent toward the end of the season, when Carrie successfully thwarts a suicide bombing by running onto the Brodys’ lawn like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction—­an unhinged hysteric who can’t respect another woman’s domestic space. Carrie may be the only person capable of protecting the Homeland, but only at the cost of destroying the home. If this sounds familiar, it’s because we find a similar dynamic at the heart of other genres, particularly the Western, where the male protagonist is forced to acknowledge that he can’t both save civilization and join it. The Searchers’ Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), for example, avenges his brother’s death by viciously slaying the Comanche and returning his kidnapped niece to her family, but in the end, despite the seductive comforts of the hearth, he himself must remain in the wilderness. The film posits his exile as the melancholy cost of domestic security; his proper place is outside, on the perimeter of the home looking in. Male heroes of the cop and spy narratives that

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have followed in his wake take up similar positions of marginality, consigned to dingy detective offices and bachelor pads apart from the cozy domestic spaces their labor protects. Homeland inherits these spatial metaphors, but Carrie’s gender necessarily scrambles the architecture. As a woman, her position on the outside is problematic, for if she, like Ethan Edwards, is securing the border, who inhabits the domestic space within?6 Carrie tells her own niece, Josie, that it’s her job to do the protecting, but unlike Edwards in The Searchers she faces a bevy of intermeddlers—­Saul, Estes, her sister Maggie (Amy Hargreaves)—­who question her right to safeguard (rather than occupy) the home. They shame her for her messy kitchen, entreat her to eat, beg her to lie down and rest. Her enforced domesticity is a clear takedown of the ambitious woman, proof that even in the twenty-­first century, her right to choose professional over familial commitments is in no way secure. The retreatist impulses of Homeland’s first season thus signal a pessimism similar to that which we’ve identified in other female antihero dramas—­the idea that the woman who spurns norms around social reproduction must be put in her place.7 Carrie spends much of season 1 believing that she must save America from foreign enemies; but the show’s arc betrays that it’s the patriarchy in our midst that poses the real threat. “Clean Your Apartment!” Carrie, as mentioned, can be undisciplined and reckless, behavior that the show suggests results largely from her diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Homeland’s creators have said that Carrie’s “craziness gives her edge” and that her bipolar disorder functions “as a superpower,”8 but critics have pointed out the extent to which this portrayal is problematic.9 While it reconfigures the gendered trope of the male detective whose investigative prowess is tied to mental illness (usually autism-­spectrum disorder, as in CBS’s Elementary and CSI or Fox’s House), it also participates in a logic that Rosemarie Garland Thompson calls “peculiarity as eminence,” in which disability is coded as a “marker of exceptionality to be claimed and honored,” a move that may be just as problematic as its stigmatization.10 As Natasha Tracy writes about Homeland in her blog about living with bipolar disorder, “The show perpetrates the myth that with bipolar disorder you get some sort of talent as a ‘parting gift’ when really we’re just like everyone else.”11 But if the show has been critiqued for its valorization of mental illness, less remarked upon is its equation of bipolar disorder with femininity. In her manic states, Carrie appears as nothing if not explicitly feminized: her body vibrates with emotion, her eyes overfill, and her chin quivers uncontrollably.

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In this state she is also likely to dress provocatively and pursue sex, as she does in the pilot after being admonished by Saul. Perhaps most tellingly, Carrie’s manic phases are accompanied by what Lindsay Steenberg and Yvonne Tasker call “feminine forms of knowledge”—­intuition, hunches, mystical insight.12 All of which is to say that it’s not always clear if mental illness is Carrie’s “superpower” or if hyperfemininity is. This gendered depiction of Carrie is offered up as parody in Saturday Night Live’s 2012 take on Homeland.13 Guest host Anne Hathaway satirizes Danes’s performance as Carrie, appearing in heavy makeup and blond wig (fig. 4.2). During the course of the skit, she cries, she shakes, and she gesticulates wildly, causing David Estes (played by Kenan Thompson) to express skepticism about her mental stability. When Saul (played by Bill Hader) asks if his doubts about Carrie represent sexism—­“Is this because she’s a woman?”—­ Estes replies, “No, it’s because she’s washing down pills with white wine,” and the scene cuts to Carrie double-­fisting meds and alcohol. The joke lands because it acknowledges the extent to which femininity is always already coded in terms of excess. Indeed, Hathaway’s portrayal of Danes-­as-­Carrie is a sly dig at the criticism of Hathaway herself, an actor who’s often castigated for being too much—­too ambitious, too scheming, too vain—­having made little attempt to cloak her desires in the cool-­girl nonchalance of other ingénues. Hathaway’s deeply gendered performance in the SNL skit is offset by Taran Killam, who mocks the restraint Damian Lewis brings to his role as Nicholas Brody on Homeland. Adopting a low, raspy voice and stiff posture, Killam’s face is expressionless; “Can you really not open your mouth any wider?” asks the Estes character. This in contrast to his comment about Carrie in her manic state: “Just look at her—­it’s like she makes her mouth turn fully upside down.” These jokes—­associating men with emotional repression and women with an excess reminiscent of blackface minstrelsy—­write onto the bodies of each the stereotypes patriarchy imposes: strong, silent men and women incapable of shutting up. Indeed, by the end of the skit Carrie is shown wantonly kissing the prisoner she should be interrogating, further proof of a mouth out of control. The skit highlights Homeland’s rewriting of bipolar disorder as hyperfemininity, implying the threat of both to national security. The correlations between mental illness and exaggerated femininity are neither new nor specific to Homeland. As feminist historians have shown, nineteenth-­century depictions of hysteria often centered on gendered performance. At the Salpêtrière’s Bal des Folles in Paris, neurologist Jean-­Martin Charcot’s female patients would regularly undergo hypnosis and assume poses typical of the hysteric—­crying, swooning, falling into grand mal seizures—­ for an audience of male doctors and scientists.14 Carroll Smith-­Rosenberg

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f i g u r e 4.2. Anne Hathaway as Claire Danes on Saturday Night Live, season 38, episode 7, “Anne Hathaway/Rihanna,” 2012.

writes that “the parallel between the hysteric’s behavior and stereotypic femininity is too close to be explained as mere coincidence.”15 Of course, the female hysteric embodied not so much conventional womanhood, but rather a perversion of that state. She represented, in Smith-­Rosenberg’s words, “a stark caricature of femininity,”16 and thus a rejection of traditional womanhood, insofar as her labile and erratic behavior meant that she couldn’t carry out her expected duties as selfless provider. Something similar can be seen in Homeland, where Carrie’s obsessive mind becomes linked to her domestic failures. “My God, look at this place,” Saul sighs in the show’s second episode as he surveys her squalid home. “Clean your apartment and eat some real food,” he tells her as he leaves, glancing at her half-­painted toes—­another sign of femininity in disarray.17 While Carrie’s messy apartment and imperfect physical appearance are a logical consequence of long hours on a job important to national security, Saul consistently treats them as signs of disordered gender.18 Indeed, Carrie appears as a version of the “child-­woman” that Smith-­ Rosenberg posits as typical of the nineteenth century and linked to that period’s outbreak of  hysteria.19 Saul and Estes consistently speak of her as someone they need to “manage,” or, even worse, “babysit.” “Will you behave yourself?” Saul demands when Carrie asks him to include her in Brody’s debriefing in the show’s pilot. At the end of this episode, when he discovers Carrie’s illegal surveillance of Brody, he responds with the language of a disapproving parent: “Did you think for one minute you’d get away with this?” he asks, sitting on Carrie’s living room couch like a father waiting up for his errant daughter, while she stands at the door, guilty and defiant.20 That this scene treats Carrie

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like a teenaged girl who’s been caught smoking weed (as Brody’s sixteen-­ year-­old daughter Dana [Morgan Saylor] was earlier in the same episode) is evidence that despite Carrie’s investigative chops, her seniors in the agency rarely see beyond her gender. National security is reframed in familial terms as Carrie’s unorthodox methods are treated as the rebellious behavior of a child. When male antiheroes like Jimmy McNulty and Jack Bauer break protocol or adopt rogue practices, they usually earn their boss’s grudging admiration, but Carrie’s behavior is met with fear that she’s destabilizing the social order. “There is no bridge you won’t burn, no earth you won’t scorch,” Estes primly admonishes her after she secretly records an FBI agent who stands in the way of her mission. Carrie responds angrily, “When it comes to catching . . . [a] terrorist suspect . . . damn straight!” but Estes remains unmoved.21 He’s fine with a vice president who orders a drone strike that kills eighty-­two innocent children in a madrasa in Syria, but a woman who deploys trickery to frame a corrupt colleague—­well, that’s unacceptable. Carrie’s response to Estes is indicative of her noncompliance. Ordered to stay in line, she consistently refuses, prioritizing her own hunches about national security above the demands of her paper-­pushing male bosses. While her instincts are usually right, her dazzling expertise never quite compensates for her perceived recalcitrance. “It’s not her resume I have a problem with—­ it’s her temperament,” Estes quips in justifying his attempt to shut her out of an important debriefing.22 For her CIA colleagues, Carrie’s behavior is always figured as a problem, signaling both aberrant professionalism and wayward womanhood. The fact that she’s vigilant and hardworking is not the issue; indeed, in the context of twenty-­first-­century imperatives for high performance and perfectionism in women, these things are to be expected.23 But her tendency toward gendered overdrive—­toward mania and emotionalism—­along with her refusal to prioritize marriage and family alongside work are consistently depicted as troubling within the show’s ethos. She’s the wrong kind of ambitious, the wrong kind of successful, not because she appears too masculine but because her femininity doesn’t conform to patriarchal expectations of balanced and appropriate womanhood. While her colleagues see her behavior as pathological, Carrie’s “hysteria” might be read as a kind of resistance to the social order, as it was for her nineteenth-­century predecessors. As Elaine Showalter puts it, “Instead of asking if rebellion was mental pathology, we must ask whether mental pathology was suppressed rebellion.  .  .  . Was hysteria . . . a mode of protest for women deprived of other social or intellectual outlets or expressive options?”24 Carrie, of course, is living in the twenty-­ first century, where opportunities for women far exceed those of an earlier era. And yet Saul and Estes’s treatment of her suggests that women’s ambition

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still poses a threat that must be managed. That she spends much of season 1 engaged in conflict with male colleagues bent on sidelining her indicates that she is battling normative gender ideology no less than terrorists. This reading of the show—­which privileges the importance of Carrie’s gender rebellion—­helps round out criticism that sees Homeland alternatively as a neoliberal embrace of careerism or as an attempt to legitimate aggressive Obama-­era surveillance policy.25 In these readings, the show’s focus on private domestic concerns works in the service of shoring up capitalism and state power. For example, according to one strain of this logic, domesticity (or the “home” of Homeland) is invoked as a way of sentimentalizing issues of national security and rationalizing incursions into the private. As Amy Kap­ lan explains, “The notion of the homeland draws on comforting images of a deeply rooted past to legitimate modern forms of imperial power.”26 Writing in a similar vein, Diane Negra and Jorie Lagerwey comment about Carrie and female protagonists of similar series: [The] inability to extricate their personal, emotional, and sexual lives from national security seems to reflect a post-­9/11 security state that insists that extensive domestic surveillance is necessary to protect the homeland. . . . The overarching thematic across these series is the notion that the financialized and securitized mind-­sets that now govern public life color all private relationships as well.27

Such analyses suggest that the show’s use of domestic drama is the means through which the long arm of the state is justified. But if this is so, we suggest that the reverse is also true: that the show’s deployment of national security issues is the means through which private domestic dramas, particularly those hinging on gender, are interrogated. That is to say, the brilliance of the title Homeland is its nods to both the public and private stage and its suggestion of their mutual imbrication. In the post-­9/11 world, Carrie is indeed unable to extricate her personal relationships from the security state; but it is equally true that the national security apparatus cannot escape the gendered chaos that Carrie, as both agent and foil of the state, unleashes. “I’m Going to Be Alone My Whole Life, Aren’t I?” For all her unconventional behavior in season 1 of Homeland, there is one way in which Carrie resembles a typical housewife: she watches a lot of daytime television. Curled up on her couch, often with a blanket and chips, she stares at the TV screen, captivated by the domestic drama that unfolds there. Of course, the drama she watches is illegally obtained surveillance video of the

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Brody family, but Homeland consistently figures it as female fare, as a “reality show”28 (in Carrie’s words) or soap opera, complete with marital secrets, domestic abuse, adulterous sex, and mother/daughter conflict.29 Carrie’s reaction to the Brody family footage reinforces its status as melodrama. Identifying alternatively with Brody, whose loneliness and domestic alienation is a mirror of her own, and with Jessica (Morena Baccarin), who occupies the role of wife that Carrie at once yearns for and rejects, she’s unable to fully differentiate between fantasy and reality. We see this during moments in episode 2 when Carrie assumes Brody’s postures—­each lying on a couch watching television—­and even more poignantly in episode 4 when Carrie banters with Brody through the screen, telling him where to find his misplaced tie, right before Jessica does.30 From television’s earliest inception, critics worried about the female viewer’s tendency toward over-­identification, as they fretted similarly about female novel-­readers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, as early as 1792, cultural custodians warned of reading fiction, “Many young girls, from morning to night, hang over this pestiferous reading, to the neglect of industry, health, proper exercise, and to the ruin both of body and of soul. . . . The increase of novels will help to account for the increase of prostitution and for the numerous adulteries and elopements that we hear of.”31 Carrie, who begins an adulterous relationship with Brody soon after she starts watching him on TV, seems born of these presentiments—­a woman so captivated by narrative that she lives out its most transgressive fantasies in real time. Carrie’s obsession with the Brody surveillance footage results from her commitment to protecting the nation (“I’m just trying to make sure we don’t get hit again!”32), but it’s equally a consequence of her own painful isolation. Living independently and marginalized at work, Carrie often appears entirely secluded, especially in the early episodes when she can’t even count Saul as a friend (“When you cut me out I’m all alone out here and I can’t stand it,” she tells him plaintively33). Watching the Brody family, however, creates a bond, one that we, as viewers, share. Indeed, Carrie often becomes an audience surrogate, laughing when Brody cracks a joke or turning her eyes away from the screen when evidence of his PTSD becomes too much to bear.34 Given her growing bond with the Brody family, Carrie is devastated by the order to take down the surveillance equipment. When she dismantles the last remaining camera in the Brody home (located in the master bedroom—­the heart of domestic intimacy), a cutaway to Carrie’s apartment shows her own television screen turn to static, a sign of Carrie’s (and the viewer’s) exclusion from this space. Carrie’s home feels that much emptier in the absence of the Brody footage. “I can’t help but feel I’m missing something,” she tells Saul, unable to

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place her feelings of uneasiness. “You’re missing him,” Saul replies, capturing the loss of intimacy that Carrie’s blank TV screen symbolizes.35 The image of Carrie in her empty apartment in the days that follow speaks to her status as “homeless.” Symbolically, she exists outside the domestic sphere, protecting it and making it whole, but unable to be a part of it in any meaningful way. The show establishes this through her sleek, comfortless apartment, where she works ceaselessly, drinks alone, and attempts suicide, but it also references her homelessness in more subtle ways, as when Carrie shares a memory from childhood with Brody in the episode “The Weekend.”36 She and her sister Maggie had pretended to be Lewis and Clark as little girls, she tells him, exploring the trails around their lake house as though they were discovering uncharted ground. When Brody asks her which of the famous explorers she identified with more, she immediately responds, “Lewis.” Carrie jokes that she liked the name “Meriwether,” but something more important is at work in this comparison. Lewis was the brilliant but unstable architect of the expedition, and when he returned from the journey, he found that he could never really come home. Unlike his exploring partner William Clark, who married and had children soon after the expedition returned, Lewis floundered, drinking heavily and racking up debts, ultimately killing himself in 1809 at the age of thirty-­five. Beyond the suggestion of shared mental illness, Carrie, like Lewis, is ambivalently positioned vis-­à-­vis the Homeland—­establishing its perimeters but unable to accept its embrace. Her sister Maggie, who played Clark in their childhood fantasies, lives out an alternative trajectory, having a husband and two daughters that Carrie loves and visits but from whom she must ultimately keep her distance. She consistently refuses their offers to stay with them, because the logic of the show dictates Carrie’s exclusion from the creature comforts of the home.37 “I had a kind of epiphany today,” she tells Saul toward the end of season 1. “I’m going to be alone my whole life, aren’t I?”38 But Carrie is not only alienated from the home, she also poses a direct threat to it, and it is here that she emerges most explicitly as an antihero. Her fierce professional dedication may be the one thing preventing the next 9/11, but it is also the thing that threatens normative civilization, especially the supposed sanctity of marriage and family. When Carrie first spies on the Brody home through binoculars, the initial image she brings into focus is Jessica, who is seen through crosshairs—­as if Carrie is taking aim at the woman of the house. Other incursions on the domestic soon follow, including the seduction of Brody and unwanted communication with his daughter. “There’s an insane woman [in my house],” Dana tells the police, when Carrie talks her way into the Brody home during the season 1 finale.39 Even before this,

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Carrie’s penchant for domestic intrusion is made evident: “You’re out of line,” Saul tells her when she shows up at his place and needles him for being too passive at work; “this is my home.”40 The crime here is not so much that Carrie is belittling a superior, but that she has invaded his home to do so, and on the day that his wife Mira (Sarita Choudhury) has returned back from a trip, no less. Before leaving, Carrie eviscerates Saul’s masculinity for good measure: “What happened to the Saul Berenson that trekked the Karakoram? Who did three months in a Malaysian prison? Who stared down Uday Hussein at the height of his power? When did you become such a pussy, Saul?” This gendered insult casts Saul as a woman who has traded a spy’s effectiveness for domestic comforts, something that Carrie would not be caught dead doing. Saul throws her out, but the damage she has wrought is evident—­ entering unannounced, chasing Mira up to bed, and emasculating the man of the house. For someone sworn to protect the country, Carrie leaves an awful lot of carnage in her wake. At issue here is Carrie’s inability or unwillingness to separate work and home. Barging into Saul’s house, illegally surveilling the Brody family, stealing Clozapine from her sister’s medicine cabinet—­none of these appear particularly problematic to Carrie because she doesn’t recognize the home as a sanctified space independent of the work world. This is in contrast to characters in other television spy thrillers. In The Americans, as we’ve seen, the house is, to a certain extent, a protected domain. Elizabeth and Philip perform their spycraft in the liminal spaces of the garage and basement, but they treat the house proper as a refuge, only entering it once they doff their costumes and wigs. Homeland presents Brody’s suburban Washington home in much the same way: the garage functions as exceptional space—­attached to the house but not part of it—­where he prays and hides his gun, but his Islamic loyalties and terrorist activities rarely intrude on the house proper. This, of course, is not the case for Carrie, who bemoans the “blind spot” that Brody’s garage represents and whose own home constitutes a space that caters more to work than to domestic comforts (as the bulletin board in her dining room covered with “classified material, improperly removed from [the CIA] office,” attests).41 It is significant that Brody exits the domestic realm to make his infamous confession video but that the show takes pains to return Carrie to her apartment (after an extended stay with her sister) before she watches it. Far from a protected haven, her domicile is co-­extensive with the realm of the state; it is the space where revelations concerning national security are most likely to occur. Thus, the show positions Brody as respecting the sanctity of the home and Carrie as problematically undermining it.

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Carrie’s aversion to thinking about the home as a protected sphere is apparent in the metaphor of the “Achilles heel.” This is the title of episode 8, in which Tom Walker’s (Chris Chalk) love for his family nearly gets him caught. Familial love is figured as Tom’s one weakness, as it is for every other significant male character in season 1—­Brody, Saul, Estes, and even Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban), who goes quiet after the death of his son. But Carrie, unmarried and childless, is importantly without this vulnerability. This makes her powerful, but it also suggests her emotional impoverishment. We see this most explicitly in her relationship with Brody, where her romantic investment in him is inseparable from her efforts to police his actions and whereabouts. While male spies since James Bond have historically reconciled intimate relationships with their jobs collecting intel, the show positions Carrie as two-­ faced (and perhaps even pathological) for attempting this combination—­ “Fucking me to get info? Was that part of the job description? Or do you get a promotion for showing initiative?” Brody asks incredulously.42 Carrie responds by asserting the primacy of her professional identity—­“I’m working, I’m always working”—­but Brody (and perhaps some viewers) are left unsatisfied. Emanuelle Wessels reads Carrie’s romantic relationship with Brody as indicative of the affective labor that the CIA at once extracts from their best female agent and passes judgment on her for.43 We suggest that, in addition, their affair also serves to position Carrie as antihero, insofar as it suggests the absence of an intimate relationship that would trump her commitment to her job. The term “Achilles heel” references the site of weakness, but it also marks one’s humanity. The fact that Carrie has none—­that she lacks allegiance to any one individual (“There is no bridge you won’t burn, no earth you won’t scorch”44)—­is both her greatest asset in carrying out her professional duties and her greatest liability in asserting her moral worth. For women, the perception of invulnerability is particularly problematic, and, as we will argue, Homeland concludes season 1 by punishing Carrie for it. “There’s Not Even a Diagnosis for What’s Wrong with You” Carrie’s romantic autonomy and dogged devotion to her job are presented by the show as admirable but also puzzling to those around her. When Brody asks why she isn’t married, she replies: “It just hasn’t felt right quite yet. Or as important as what I do for a living.”45 While this seems like a reasonable response, the show demonstrates the extent to which Carrie must justify her decision to stay unattached. Unlike most men who take off their wedding rings when they’re looking for sex, Carrie puts one on—­“weeds out the guys looking for

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a relationship,” she tells her mark in the pilot episode.46 His slight shock—­he’s never heard it put that “bluntly”—­mirrors the reactions of others. Of course, Carrie is not unambivalent about her single state, as her voyeuristic relationship to the Brodys attests. On the whole, however, she’s comfortable with the unattached life she’s built for herself and tends to bypass birthday parties, dinners at her sister’s house, and other familial obligations.47 Her father, Frank Mathison (James Rebhorn), functions as a cautionary tale about the dangers of domestic entrapment. Like Carrie, he suffers from bipolar disorder and takes Clozapine under the superintendence of Maggie so as to remain stable. But unlike Carrie, who manages a successful career, Frank has no job and has been relegated to household duties. When we first see him, he’s ironing clothing while watching baseball, yelling at the screen in a parody of Carrie’s own television habits. He offers to make Carrie a sandwich, oblivious to the fact that she’s only there to steal his meds and to make sure he’s not burning the place down. “You must think I’m ready for the glue factory,” he says in response to her unplugging the iron for him.48 The show hints that Frank, like his two highly successful daughters, was once an ambitious and effectual man, but he’s since been neutered, rendered impotent by his mental disorder and by the domesticating influence of family. Carrie leaves as soon as she can; she’s made uneasy by the reminder of what her own life might look like if the progress of her bipolar disorder follows that of her father, forcing her to succumb to the domestic plot. Carrie’s knowledge about the threat of domestic incarceration is showcased in a fascinating sequence toward the end of season 1, when she and Saul interrogate Mansour Al-­Zahrani (Ramsey Faragallah), the Saudi diplomat with knowledge of Tom Walker’s plans (in collaboration with Abu Nazir) to attack America. Unable to convince him to confess what he knows, Carrie plays what she thinks is her trump card, revealing photographs of Al-­Zahrani’s trips to a Dupont Circle bathhouse and threatening to expose him as gay to his wives and children. Carrie’s ploy proves ineffective, however, when Al-­Zahrani responds by openly embracing the provocation. “I suck cock! And I love it! Yummy yummy yummy yummy!” Al-­Zahrani shouts defiantly, adding, “My wives already know. They don’t care. They love me.”49 Having assumed that outing Al-­Zahrani would turn him, Carrie is at a loss as to how to proceed. But, drawing on her own knowledge, she undertakes a final gambit, threatening that if Al-­Zahrani doesn’t cooperate, she’ll deport his favorite daughter, the one who attends Yale, majors in political philosophy, and likes to spend afternoons in Phillips Gallery with her father looking at impressionist art. “We would deport her,” Carrie threatens, “and we would make sure that she was not welcome [anywhere in the West]. We would make sure that she had no choice but to go back to Saudi Arabia and get fat and wear a

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burka for the rest of her miserable life.” It’s telling that Carrie’s final threat, the terrible fate that Al-­Zahrani risks his life to help his daughter avoid, is being trapped at home. Apparently, it’s possible to live as an outed gay man in Saudi Arabia, but as Carrie and Al-­Zahrani both know, the domestic realm is where smart, accomplished women go to die.50 This imagined hell for women in Saudi Arabia is, of course, the narrative fate Carrie herself fights. While Al-­Zahrani betrays his country to spare his daughter, Carrie’s own father relegates her to the home by insisting she keep the child, Franny, she becomes pregnant with in season 4—­“You are not leaving this kid,” he tells her. “Not like your mother did to you.” Carrie’s sister Maggie is equally insistent, responding to Carrie’s reasonable pleas that she would not make a good mother by countering, “I think [the baby’s] going to ground you, make you focus, be healthy.” Given Carrie’s mental illness and professional ambitions, bypassing motherhood seems like a logical choice on her part, but the show frames her decision as pathological. “It’s sick, I know, but I can’t [keep the baby],” she tells her sister.51 In the end, Carrie capitulates to her family’s will, although she is so ambivalent about motherhood that she appears to consider drowning Franny in the bathtub in season 4’s second episode. Recognizing that her daughter cannot thrive under her care, she rigs things so that she is transferred to Islamabad, where dependents are not allowed. “There’s not even a diagnosis for what’s wrong with you,” Maggie says of Carrie’s reluctance to care for Franny.52 Linda Hirshman has written about the conservatism of gender ideology on the home front and its failure to keep pace with public accommodations for working women. Her conclusion could easily apply to Carrie, who is pressured by her family to opt out of her professional life and into motherhood: “The real glass ceiling is at home.”53 TV critics have been equally hard on Carrie for her rejection of maternity. Indeed, while her resistance to conventional partnering earned her a certain amount of suspicion, it pales in comparison to the vitriol she faces in wanting to flee the domestic once her child is born. In his Vanity Fair review of the season 4 opener, Mike Hogan writes: So what, exactly, is wrong with Carrie? Well, she’s not much of a mother, is she? Even when she isn’t toying with the idea of drowning baby Franny in the bathtub, she’s struggling with the basics of feeding, changing, and sheltering the child. She’s far more interested in getting [information about a] . . . dark source than she is in making sure her daughter doesn’t get kidnapped in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly.54

In this analysis of Carrie, Hogan accepts the show’s own judgment of her: that Carrie’s response to motherhood borders on grotesque. But critics such as

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Hogan seem never to consider whether Carrie’s work might actually be more important than taking care of an infant. A critique of caregiving responsibilities remains one of feminism’s sticking points; activists who have fought for women’s inclusion in the public sphere have also been careful to value the domestic labor women have long done uncompensated. This has meant validating middle-­class women’s decisions to stay at home with family. But as Hirshman reminds us, when droves of educated women opt out of careers, it strengthens conservative assumptions about their moral responsibility to become mothers. Hirshman encourages a clear-­eyed assessment of domestic labor instead: “The family—­with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks—­is a necessary part of life, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government.”55 While Hirshman’s unapologetic tone ruffled many feathers, the analysis she offers gives us a more sympathetic way to understand Carrie’s plight in Homeland. Indeed, Hirshman’s words of advice for contemporary women—­prepare yourself for and commit to a life of serious work—­are a bitter irony for Carrie. She has certainly done the preparation for a life of serious work, but she is continually discouraged from committing herself to it. Nowhere is this more evident than in the concluding episodes of season 1, when Carrie, desperate to protect the Homeland, is continually thrust back into the home. This enforced domesticity, which began, as mentioned, with disparaging remarks about Carrie’s housekeeping—­“Clean your apartment”—­ culminates in her being locked in her home with a series of babysitters. Their caretaking manifests itself in a near-­parodic concern with what Carrie is eating, even while she remains laser-­focused on her work. “How do you have no food in your house? Have you never heard of the four food groups?” her sister Maggie asks, as Carrie crouches on her living room floor, putting together the pieces of the terrorist plot that has eluded the men at the CIA. “Let’s get you a square meal,” Maggie says after looking at Carrie’s scattered timeline that turns out to be the key that unlocks Abu Nazir’s plan for attack.56 Her obsession with what Carrie does and doesn’t eat is matched only by her male colleagues’ faith that food will fix Carrie’s mental-­health crisis. When she’s nearly catatonic in the season 1 finale, they come bearing victuals. “The elixir of the gods,” Saul brags of the chicken soup he delivers, while Virgil tries to tempt her with pasta: “Your night nurse is here. I made spaghetti amatriciana . . . you’re going to have to eat sooner or later.”57 Not since The Biggest Loser (NBC, 2004–­2016) has there been this much onscreen consternation about whether and what a woman was eating. Claire Danes’s hyper-­ thin frame—­which can look equal parts gaunt and alluring—­exacerbates our sense that what’s at stake is not national security but private consumption

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and body image. When Virgil says to her, “Damn it, Carrie, you are starting to scare me!,”58 he captures a general fear about the danger posed by the irrational starving woman. But, of course, Carrie doesn’t need food; she needs people to believe her when she tells them her accurate theories about the terrorist threat to national security. “I have a lot of work to do. Something big is happening,” she tells her sister Maggie to no avail.59 “The world is about to end and we’re standing around talking,” she screams with frustration on the Brody lawn.60 Her pleas are met alternatively with physical lockdown or with condescension. “You need rest, healthy meals, patience,” her sister tells her soothingly when Carrie insists that she must share her insights on the case with the CIA colleagues who have frozen her out.61 Maggie’s prescription sounds a great deal like a nineteenth-­century rest cure, and she’s not the only one to prescribe it. When Saul manages to arrange Carrie’s notes into the timeline she intended, she eagerly asks how she can contribute. “You relax,” he says in a kindly voice, eerily reminiscent of the physician-­husband in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper.62 Gilman’s novella, published in 1892, may well be the urtext to Homeland’s first season. Not only is Carrie, like Gilman’s narrator, patronized by relatives and plied with the twenty-­first-­century equivalent of “phosphates,” “phosphites,” and “tonics,”63 but she is also gaslighted by Brody, made to feel that her suspicions are the result of an unstable mind rather than the consequence of his manipulations. (This will eventually induce her to undergo electroconvulsive shock treatment.) Perhaps the most telling parallel is Carrie’s obsession with her own wall hanging—­the timeline posted in her dining room that Estes calls “a crazy collage . . . assembled by a crazy woman.”64 Coded by Carrie in different colors to represent the different phases of Abu Nazir’s germinating plans to attack America, the wallpaper contains a “fallow yellow” section, representing the period when Abu Nazir goes dormant. “Nazir’s movements in green, after a fallow yellow always creeping towards purple, are methodical, meaningful, momentous, and monstrous,” Carrie tells Saul ominously, conjuring up the alliterative paranoia (and even the preoccupation with the motion of “creeping”) reminiscent of Gilman’s narrator.65 “Fallow,” of course, means unsown or, in the case of animals, not pregnant; it’s a farming term that references the technique of letting cultivated land lie idle so as to restore its fertility.66 Carrie’s brilliant insight is that Nazir’s dormant or inactive phase represented a period of bereavement (“He was mourning during the yellow,” she tells Saul67); but her articulation of this as “fallow yellow” also captures the show’s preoccupation with issues of sterility and motherhood that make for Carrie’s fraught representation. She, no less than

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f i g u r e 4.3. Fallow yellow: Homeland, season 1, episode 11, “The Vest,” 2011. Unlike in Gilman’s novella, Carrie must actively construct, not tear down, her yellow wallpaper.

Abu Nazir, is characterized by a fallowness indicative of her own threat to civilization. As the CIA’s top agent, she is a symbol for conventional notions of justice, but as antihero, she is also deeply identified with the destructive impulses of the terrorist she pursues. Gilman’s narrator spends the majority of the novella attempting to interpret and then tear down the yellow wallpaper that surrounds her. Carrie’s trajectory is the reverse of this. The “fallow yellow” section constitutes precisely the period that’s missing from her timeline and that which she needs to reconstruct. It is represented by scarcity on her wall, not surplus (fig. 4.3). In her attempt to fill in this missing section, she calls Brody, whose time with Nazir exactly corresponds to the latter’s dormant period. (“You can identify the . . . injury,” she urges him. “You told me that you loved him, so you must know.”)68 While Brody promises to come over and help, what follows is a stunning consolidation of paternalistic power in which Brody, eager to stop Carrie’s progress, calls Estes, who enters Carrie’s apartment with two bear-­ sized associates and orders them to tear down the timeline. “Strip it,” Estes says in a phrase suggestive of the sexual assault occasionally experienced by women institutionalized for hysteria in the nineteenth century.69 The painful image of Carrie alternatively being ignored or forcibly calmed by the handlers around her (Estes but also her father and sister) is also evocative of an earlier era, as is the final image of Carrie convulsing under the influence of electroshock therapy (figs. 4.4 and 4.5). Carrie’s “crazy collage” is the thing that allows her to follow the creeping movements of Abu Nazir and protect

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US national security. But, in its complex intertextual relation to Gilman’s tale, Carrie’s yellow wallpaper also charts the familiar story of a woman’s demise under consolidated patriarchal forces. She, no less than Gilman’s narrator, is a woman who cannot control even the domestic space around her—­Saul puts up the timeline in her home, Estes takes it down—­and whose willful claims to knowledge and autonomy are ignored.

f i g u r e 4.4. Forcibly calmed: Homeland, season 1, episode 11, “The Vest,” 2011.

f i g u r e 4.5. Electroconvulsive shock: Homeland, season 1, episode 12, “Marine One,” 2011.

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Of course, no one would deny that Carrie is deeply unstable during these scenes. When Saul remarks gently, “You’re talking very fast.  .  .  . All these ideas—­I can’t understand,” the viewer (especially the first-­time viewer who does not yet know that Carrie is “always fucking right”) no doubt concurs.70 Still, what’s significant here is the historical alignment of discourses of female mental illness with patriarchal attempts to control women’s agency. While Carrie’s bipolar disorder is real, it’s also depicted as deeply caught up with ideas of disordered femininity, and Carrie’s treatment is thus partially a consequence of her resistance to the domestic plot. Saul, like the physicians and psychologists that surround Carrie in the hospital, wants to find the source of her disquiet. He tells Carrie that her feelings for Brody are toxic: “Listen to me. This man has poisoned your thoughts. He has cost you almost everything. Forget him.”71 Carrie’s inability to do so causes Saul to label love the disease, not realizing that her reluctance to forget Brody is imbricated with her (correct) intuition that he poses a threat to the country. It’s her job, not her heart, that keeps her vigilant, and the real source of disquiet is not being believed. Saul’s insistence on positioning Carrie as lovesick is typical of how Homeland privatizes issues of national security. The intractable forces Carrie battles are not unnamed terrorists or even Abu Nazir, the “big bad” of the show’s first season; instead, they are the people and the narrative structures that will not let a woman escape the domestic plot. While Carrie wants to protect and police the Homeland, she’s always seen by others as caught up in its lowercase formulation; every time she tries to exit the domestic to engage the world, she is repositioned back within the realm of female concerns. In this way, Carrie perhaps resembles another historical forbearer, not the nineteenth-­century hysteric but the early twentieth-­century suffragette, whose own efforts to exert herself in the public realm were met by skepticism, incarceration, and violence. Alice Paul was famously sentenced to jail for seven months, where she protested by organizing a hunger strike and was force-­fed. The psychiatrist called upon to evaluate her sanity concluded that she was quite well, just “very determined.”72 Carrie, who in later seasons will be institutionalized again and even threatened with force-­feeding,73 is equally determined. “It’s my job, it will always be my job,” she tells Virgil about her responsibility to protect the country even after she’s been fired by the CIA.74 Elaine Showalter has written of the correlations between hysterics and suffragettes, arguing that the tactics of the latter represented a more empowering and effectual response to the patriarchal conditions that the hysteric was also protesting: In a sense, the elements of hunger, rebellion, and rage latent in the phenomenon of female nervous disorder became explicit and externalized in the tactics

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of the suffrage campaigns. The hunger strikes of militant women prisoners brilliantly put the symptomatology of anorexia nervosa to work in the service of the feminist cause.  .  .  . The representation of the forcible feeding of suffragettes in the press . . . echoes the sexual iconography of Charcot’s hysterics, and anticipates the clinical photographs of electric-­shock treatment in the twentieth century.75

Within this confluence of hunger, hysteria, sexuality, and electric-­shock treatment, we can also find Carrie Mathison. Pressured to become a mother, imprisoned in her own home, criticized for her disheveled appearance, her rancid food, her sexual indiscretions, Carrie persists as a relentlessly public figure, committed to her professional identity. Confronted by those who insist that, as a woman, she’s tied to the home, her eye remains firmly fixed on the Homeland.

*

We began this chapter by arguing that Homeland’s Carrie Mathison is different from the other female antiheroes we have examined in part 1 of this book. Cersei Lannister, Elizabeth Jennings, and Olivia Pope may stray from norms, but none of these characters appears unhinged or unkempt. Similarly, while Cersei, Elizabeth, and Olivia have a complex relationship to domesticity and motherhood, each also fundamentally accepts the sanctity of the sphere of the home, recognizing it as separate from spycraft, war, and professional ambition. Carrie is different, and in this respect, she represents the most transgressive of the female antiheroes we’ve examined. Her quivering chin, half-­painted toenails, empty refrigerator, and paper-­strewn home all evidence femininity in crisis. (As a normative bone thrown to viewers, her consistent heterosexuality is perhaps the one thing the show won’t touch.)76 Perhaps this helps explain why Carrie is so often the subject of parody, not just by SNL but also by Sesame Street and a host of YouTube channels. Her hyperfemininity and excess are ultimately more threatening—­and therefore subject to rebuke—­than is Cersei’s relentless ambition or Elizabeth’s physical prowess, since masculine behavior typically assumes the posture of neutrality or universalism in Western culture. Parody may be the last indignity Carrie is forced to suffer: after being infantilized, sidelined, disbelieved, and relegated to the home, she’s thrust into comedy, her domestic rebellion made the subject of humor. In her penchant for hyperbole and potential for mockery, Carrie anticipates the women in the second half of this book, comedic antiheroes like Hannah Horvath, Abbi Abrams, Ilana Wexler, Issa Dee, and Bridgette Bird. Indeed, Homeland’s dark vision of what happens to a woman who tries to

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choose career over family might give us a way to understand why the protagonists we turn to next refuse ambition altogether. Aware of the treatment that high-­performing women receive, they turn their back on the achievement mandate, repudiating aspirational imperatives in work and romance alike. Mistake-­prone and pessimistic about their futures, they strive not so much for success as for life experience in the company of female friends. These women are at once heirs and transformers of Carrie’s legacy—­for they embrace the narrative of failure that she spends so much of Homeland trying to elude.

5

Feminist Anti-­Aspirationalism in Girls

It is, in many ways, easy to see the HBO hit Girls (2012–­2017) as emerging out of a “single girl” sitcom trajectory that began with The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970–­1977). When the latter aired in 1970, it was the first prime-­time television show to feature a perpetually unmarried career woman as its central character. In the pilot, Mary Richards, age thirty, moves to Minneapolis after being jilted by her longtime boyfriend. She applies for a secretarial position at TV station WJM, but is offered the job of associate producer of the Six O’Clock News instead. “You’ve got spunk,” her curmudgeonly boss Lou Grant (Ed Asner) tells her during her job interview. “I hate spunk.” When Mary’s prodigal ex-­boyfriend subsequently appears at her door, she shows him the exit, tearing up but proclaiming her independence nonetheless. “Take care of yourself,” he says when parting. “I think I just did,” Mary replies.1 In the pilot, the series theme song ends with the phrase “You might just make it after all,” but by season 2, the show had adopted a more definitive optimism: “You’re gonna make it after all,” Sonny Curtis sings as Mary twirls around, throwing up her iconic hat in a sign of plucky can-­do affirmation. In the decades that followed, other series would adopt The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s formula for success: unmarried career woman goes it alone in the big city. Shows like Murphy Brown (CBS, 1988–­1998), Ally McBeal (Fox, 1997–­2002), and Sex and the City (HBO, 1998–­2004) featured attractive female protagonists, interested in dating but not so much so that they would junk their careers for a chance at the altar. They were likeable, but also willing to risk unlikeability in the name of a just cause—­Murphy Brown’s (Candice Bergen) decision to have a child out of wedlock famously prompted Dan Quayle’s contempt. And, while female friendships were deeply important to these characters, the shows were largely oriented around personal growth and self-­realization.

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Out of this tradition emerges Girls. It, too, features a single woman recently transplanted to the big city in search of romance and opportunity. But here the parallels end, creating a profound shift in the single-­girl sitcom.2 For Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) isn’t just occasionally unlikeable; she has thousands who “hate-­watch” her.3 She can be selfish, entitled, and manipulative, willing to ditch everything—­job, friends, family—­to satisfy an impulse. She is not just flirtatious but openly and fearlessly sexual, baring her not-­ Hollywood body repeatedly for the camera. Perhaps most importantly, Hannah isn’t particularly plucky or self-­respecting. “No one could ever hate me as much as I hate myself,” she tells her roommate Marnie (Allison Williams) toward the end of season 1.4 In contrast to the can-­do optimism of a Mary Richards, Hannah can often be found in deeply compromised predicaments, a willing participant in her own humiliation. Whereas Mary talks her way into a job in the show’s pilot, Hannah manages to get fired from her unpaid internship. Whereas Mary dismisses her no-­good boyfriend to pursue better options, Hannah endures humiliation at the hands of the mildly sadistic Adam Sackler (Adam Driver) and then goes back for more. This is Shame TV at its finest, and it’s not limited to Girls. Indeed, the last ten years has seen a host of this new kind of female antihero—­narcissistic, failure-­prone, economically unstable, and uninterested in pursuing likeability. Characters like Amy Jellicoe of Enlightened (HBO, 2011–­2013), Ilana Wexler and Abbi Abrams of Broad City, Maria Bamford of Lady Dynamite (Netflix, 2016–­2017), Bridgette Bird of SMILF, Issa Dee of Insecure, and Sam Fox of Better Things (Hulu, 2016–­present) (and in UK television, protagonists from Fleabag, I May Destroy You, and This Way Up, among others) present a new kind of female protagonist, frequently frustrated in both romance and work, motivated by neither the marriage plot nor the traditional career trajectory. Their character arcs read a bit like reverse bildungsromans—­instead of being educated toward growth and personal development, their life experiences tend toward disappointment and failure. Theirs are narratives of unbecoming, both because they trace the protagonists’ undoing and because they usually involve portraits that are deeply unflattering.5 These kinds of stories are familiar enough when it comes to male leads. Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, and Louis C.K. are each, to an extent, defined by their narcissism and inadequacy. But the creation of a television series devoted to female humiliation and failure is a relatively new development, partly the consequence of a socioeconomic turn toward middle-­class precarity, as Rebecca Wanzo has pointed out.6 What’s more, the unlikeability of these female protagonists outstrips that of their male counterparts. Larry David may be jokingly disdained, but he doesn’t regularly receive death threats as Dunham does, in part

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because unlikeability is already coded as masculine. In Girls and other Shame TV fare, by contrast, the heroine’s flaws detract from rather than reinforce her femininity, foiling audience expectations about young women. Whence comes this comedic female antihero, and what zeitgeist is she tapping into? In this chapter, we propose a feminist understanding of this new female figure. While recognizing the pitfalls of celebrating young women as selfish, vain, insecure, and aimless, we argue that this characterization pushes against traditional notions of normative female behavior in important ways. At a time when women are being encouraged to lean in, persist, rule the world, or, at the very least, demonstrate resilience in a post-­recessionary moment, voices like Dunham’s are important reminders that economic advancement and “self-­responsibilization” are not the only ways to advance a woman-­centered agenda.7 Hannah and her female cohort represent an important alternative to what Debora Spar has called the “Wonder Woman myth”—­the belief that because women “can do anything, [they] feel as if [they] have to do everything.”8 When Hannah tells her parents, “I think that I may be the voice of my generation, or at least a voice of a generation,”9 she is not only lampooning millennial privilege and self-­importance; she is also acknowledging the extent to which the story of the twenty-­first-­century woman’s upward trajectory has constrained some young women and driven them toward a counternarrative (“a voice of a generation”). This recuperative reading of Girls pushes back against those critics—­aca­ demic and popular alike—­who see the show as either showcasing millennial privilege or (in a more generous take) satirizing it.10 While these readings address important aspects of the show’s ethos, they don’t always capture Dunham’s preoccupation with the political consequences of squandering one’s entitlement. The antiheroic promise of Girls exists in its privileged protagonist’s utter disregard of social expectations and responsibility. When Hannah sabotages her relationship with Adam at the close of season 1, when she quits her first well-­paying job in season 3, and when she refuses to put on flattering clothes and makeup in almost every episode of the show, she demonstrates the extent to which the goals of mainstream feminism (often summed up as “having it all”) serve a narrative of heteronormative careerism and neoliberal self-­making that sits uneasily with many young women.11 Hannah is essentially a slacker, as defined by Richard Linklater, director of the classic 1990 film of the same name—­someone positioned on the “youth rebellion continuum,” deeply suspicious of career success, marriage, and discourses of self-­ improvement.12 The fact that she gets lambasted for her resistance in these areas indicates how unwilling we are—­especially in the wake of feminism’s many advances—­to let women opt out of the achievement mandate.

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In this context, inadequacy and humiliation can become political, even utopian, categories. In The Queer Art of Failure, Jack Halberstam asks, What kinds of reward can failure offer us? Perhaps most obviously, failure allows us to escape the punishing norms that discipline behavior and manage development with the goal of delivering us from unruly childhoods to orderly and predictable adulthoods. Failure preserves some of the wondrous anarchy of childhood.13

This explanation may help explain Dunham’s vision in Girls, a show whose very title gestures toward perpetual immaturity. Hannah Horvath and her friends largely reject heteronormative goals (relationships tending toward marriage and kids, jobs tending toward promotion and economic security, selves tending toward growth and improvement) in favor of experience and adventure. In resisting the siren call of personal success, Girls thwarts the lo­gic of self-­making, progress, and “reproductive futurism” that stands at the heart of our neoliberal moment.14 More specifically, anti-­aspirationalism brings with it two benefits: First, it sidesteps the mandate of futurity (the female subject oriented toward maturation and development), in favor of pres­entism and in-­the-­moment sensation. Second, such an approach downplays individual self-­realization, potentially allowing for enhanced experiences of collectivity. Anti-­aspirationalism, in other words, is not simply nihilism; rather, it represents a value system whose rewards are tied to immediacy rather than end, to adventure rather than bildung, to sharing rather than privacy and individualism. Understanding Girls in this way perhaps helps contextualize the other major criticism of the show—­that its largely white cast represents a myopic and inexact vision of Brooklyn, where the show is set.15 This critique has been exacerbated by Dunham’s tone-­deaf handling of the criticism, as when she created a thinly drawn Black character (played by Donald Glover) for Hannah to date at the beginning of season 2, or when she declared, “No one would be calling me a racist if they knew how badly I wanted to fuck Drake.”16 Dunham’s eagerness to laugh off legitimate appraisals of the show evidences a failure of empathy, but it’s also a signal that the comedic antihero’s rebellion against convention depends upon whiteness, as we will explore more fully in the next chapter. Indeed, it is hard to imagine anyone but the most pampered of white women squandering their privilege as easily as do Hannah and her friends. Among the first generation to inherit a postfeminist landscape in which the assumption of their worth and potential has been baked into their upbringing, the girls of Girls are in the safest position to reject this bounty. They choose antisocial lives of ennui and narcissism but experience none of

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the burdens associated with these choices. It’s a glorious picture of feminist resistance that’s also quite maddening, given its utter disregard for those individuals not in a position to flout mandates of propriety and social upkeep. In the analysis that follows, we trace Girls’ vision of the comedic antihero through the first season, as the show finds its footing and announces its aims. While all four of the show’s central protagonists tend toward failure and unlikeability, we focus primarily on Hannah, whose explicit courting of shame, unabashed approach to sex, and naked exhibitionism represent the most radical departure from earlier depictions of single women on television.17 Moreover, while the show’s anti-­aspirationalism encompasses both Hannah’s personal fecklessness and professional deficits, we concentrate largely on the former. After all, anti-­aspirationalism on the career front is a more familiar phenomenon (as when Sex and the City’s Charlotte York [Kristin Davis] gives up her job to pursue family). Rejecting relationship security, libidinal satisfaction, and personal dignity, on the other hand, represents a more marked departure from the plucky small-­screen ideal. In the sections that follow, we analyze Girls’ depiction of sexual activity, erotic fantasy, and female embodiment, arguing that the show’s innovative approach to the possibility of shame rewrites cultural mandates around women’s productivity and self-­improvement. “All Adventurous Women Do” Hester Prynne of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is perhaps the first major American female protagonist subject to the spectacle of shame. Having given birth to a child through an adulterous affair, she is forced to don the infamous “A” and ascend a raised scaffold in a public square, where she spends hours under the gaze of the prying masses. Hawthorne describes the intensity of emotion that attends Hester in the marketplace: The unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated at her bosom. It was almost intolerable to be borne. . . . Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude . . . Hester Prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. But, under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out . . . and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once.18

Shame here is bodily (centered on the A located on Hester’s breast) and interpersonal (dependent on the response of a knowing other). Indeed, Hester’s

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shame deepens as those around her process her suffering. Had the multitude exhibited signs of mocking contempt, Hawthorne’s narrator tells us, Hester would have countered with “a bitter and disdainful smile.” But it is precisely the solemnity of their response that renders Hester’s shame excruciating. Her only recourse is to turn her attention inward, effectively leaving the scene of her bodily debasement behind: “Her mind, and especially her memory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town, on the edge of the Western wilderness. . . . Possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit, to relieve itself, by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms, from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality.”19 Female creativity (“a mind . . . preternaturally active”) is here a boon to Hester, for it is only by imaginatively escaping the brutality of the present moment that she can survive it. As an iconic moment of female shaming, Hester’s marketplace scene sheds light on the logic of debasement in Girls. Hannah Horvath is no stranger to shame, and its manifestation, as with Hester, is linked to her body and to her romantic liaisons. Of course, given Girls’ contemporary context, it is not her chastity that Hannah must protect but the more elusive category of self-­respect. In the show’s pilot, Hannah, walking with roommate Marnie, confesses, “So I texted Adam about tonight, and I have not heard anything back.” Marnie replies wearily, “Hannah, look at me. He never ever texts you back.”20 This exchange establishes the broad outlines of Hannah’s romantic plot in season 1: overeager for Adam’s attention, she continually compromises herself before an audience of disapproving onlookers. While humiliation often ensues, it is not wholly debilitating. This is because for Hannah, the very conditions that cause shame also produce novelty and adventure, a sense of a life lived spontaneously and shared with others. Thus, while Hester Prynne deploys her “mind . . . preternaturally active” so as to assuage the pain of abasement and to isolate herself further, Hannah’s own creative imagination is more often put to the service of pursuing humiliating episodes and chronicling them for others. Stated slightly differently, shame is welcomed in Girls because of its narrative possibilities. “You should hump him,” Jessa (Jemima Kirke) advises Hannah in relation to her sixty-­something predatory boss in episode 5.21 When an incredulous Hannah asks “Why?” Jessa responds, “For the story!” In this episode and in the ones that follow, Hannah will take up this advice, making bad choices in the name of good storytelling. Indeed, storytelling is crucial for Hannah, who fancies herself a memoirist. Although she speaks of writing a book, most of season 1 focuses on her contributions to Twitter and Facebook, where she cultivates a “quirky web presence” and logs the sordid details of her life.22 Social media thus functions on the show as a space akin to

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Hawthorne’s marketplace—­a public arena where the drama of female debasement is played out for a crowd. The results, however, are markedly different from those in The Scarlet Letter, in part because Hannah, unlike Hester, is not isolated in her humiliation. The very social medium that exposes her shame can also act as a forum for inclusion and empathy. These themes are taken up most explicitly in episode 3 (“All Adventurous Women Do”), in which Hannah confesses her failures first to a female friend and then to a virtual community of followers. Early in this episode, Hannah is told that she has human papillomavirus (HPV), a diagnosis that sends her into a spiral of panic and self-­recrimination. In the preceding episode, she had feared she might have AIDS, but HPV represents a more dire threat to conventional womanhood. “What if you can’t have children?” Marnie asks an already-­anxious Hannah. Seeking solace and perspective, Hannah visits her friend Shoshanna’s (Zosia Mamet) apartment. What she finds, however, is yet another spectacle of female humiliation. Shoshanna is watching her favorite game show, Baggage, which asks women to rate their most shameful secrets as “three suitcases”—­a little one, a medium one, and a big one. Attempting to play along with the contestants, the girls order their secrets in a game of their own. Being a virgin is Shoshanna’s biggest baggage, followed by not loving her grandmother and having irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Hannah, in turn, declares that being “unfit for any and all paying jobs” is her little baggage; her medium baggage is that she “just bought four cupcakes and ate one in your bathroom”; her biggest baggage is the HPV diagnosis.23 Shoshanna and Hannah’s confessions are a sly commentary on twenty-­first-­century expectations for young women. Shoshanna is most shamed by her virgin status, Hannah by her HPV; taken together, these shameful secrets point to the impossible space young women must occupy in a society that demands that they be sexual but then frowns upon the consequences of this activity. (Their runner-­up suitcases—­IBS and cupcake-­eating—­do similar work, indicating the fine line women must negotiate in having bodies that consume food but without adverse consequences.) But Girls does not simply point out these contradictions, it also rewrites female shame into something more redemptive. After Hannah confesses her diagnosis, Shoshanna greets the news not with horror but with a shrug, revealing that free-­spirited Jessa also has HPV. Shoshanna reports that Jessa “says that all adventurous women do.” Here, Hannah finds a new narrative, a way of thinking about her STD not as humiliation but as the residue associated with having a fabulously risky life. Unlike most pop-­cultural depictions of sexually transmitted diseases, Hannah’s HPV diagnosis is not a punishment for being too “easy” or too carefree in her sexuality. (Hannah, at this point, has only had two

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partners, and her penchant for safe sex is portrayed as verging on the pathological.)24 It is rather the near-­inevitable result of being a sexually active woman in the twenty-­first century. Indeed, the fact that HPV is so deeply stigmatized—­ and that there’s no way to diagnose it in men, as we learn toward the end of the episode—­is more a commentary on sexual hypocrisy than it is on Hannah’s promiscuity. In this scene, however, Shoshanna’s revelation about Jessa disrupts the logic of STDs, turning a form of social control (one that plays on fears of decreased fertility) into a feminist value. To borrow Susan Bordo’s formulation, Girls takes a condition that is “objectively (and, on one level, experientially) constraining . . . [and allows it to] be experienced as liberating, transforming, and life-­giving.”25 In the process, Girls rewrites the cultural script that earlier single-­girl sitcoms wouldn’t touch—­the fear that sexual misadventure will render the female protagonist unacceptable. In rejecting this conclusion, Girls also rejects the logic of reproductive futurity that attends revelations of STDs. Hannah may not be able to have children but, as she tells Marnie, “I’m fine and I’m not gonna die, so I’m fine.”26 It is significant that this transformation is carried out not only through the medium of a television game show but also through the equally debased form of social media. Toward the end of episode 3, we see Hannah in her apartment on her computer, reveling in her twin miseries—­not only does she have HPV, but her ex-­boyfriend, Elijah (Andrew Rannells), has come out as gay. Both these facts figure Hannah as failed—­her body has neither managed to stay healthy nor to completely enthrall a male partner. The image of a miserable Hannah in front of her computer works as an explicit visual and narrative reference to Sex and the City, which often ended with writer-­protagonist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) on her bed with her laptop, pensively composing a column. Updated for the twenty-­teens, Hannah is shown on her Twitter feed, and as we see her type, her two most recent tweets are also visible on the screen, subtly commenting on her story’s arc. These earlier tweets speak to the debilitating forms that shame, in its rawest incarnations, may take. The first reads “just poured water on some perfectly good bread to stop myself from eating it. ate it anyway. BECAUSE I AM AN ANIMAL.” The second reads “how often do you think a guy is looking at you with love eyes then realize he’s special ed/traveling with a caretaker. i’ve done that thrice.” In both these communications, the female self is allied with the monstrous, either in the form of animal-­like consumption or in the form of inappropriate erotic coupling.27 Clearly on a downward spiral, Hannah writes (but, importantly, does not post) two more tweets that continue these themes. The first is “You lose some, you lose some”; the second (after she erases the first) is “My life has been a lie, my ex-­boyfriend dates a guy.”

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Here self-­recrimination slides into narcissism, but rather than send these ill-­conceived missives into the Twittersphere, Hannah changes course. She switches off the mournful indie ballad “Get Well Soon” in favor of the defiant tune “Dancing on My Own,” deletes the text about her life being a lie, and tweets instead “All adventurous women do.” It’s an ambiguous statement—­ uncontextualized in her Twitter feed, it begs the question “Do what?”—­in which the central takeaway is merely affirmation. Less prescriptive than enigmatic, it rewrites older feminist mantras—­“you can have it all!”—­by replacing decree with anti-­aspirational acceptance and redressing all potential criticism—­why an STD? why no steady boyfriend? why unemployed?—­ through the value of experience: all adventurous women do. This mantra doesn’t counter failure; it merely recontextualizes it as a necessary part of a richly varied and experimental life. Twitter seems like an especially apt platform for this rethinking of the self. With its continual capacity to refresh and update, the Twitter feed is the obverse of the memoir, emphasizing change rather than continuity and coherence. Its focus is presentist, allowing Hannah to craft an in-­the-­moment statement that also operates as a public manifesto. Perhaps most importantly, the line “all adventurous women do” invokes female community, a crucial gesture given the popular portrayal of social media as a tool of bullying and coercion. In a widely viewed TED talk, Monica Lewinsky argues that the online world often operates as a frightening space of degradation for women. Lewinsky claims that “Public humiliation is a commodity and shame is an industry. And what is the currency? Clicks.”28 This language of commodity and currency frames the internet as the new public square or marketplace, upon which scarlet women like Lewinsky or Hannah must bear their humiliations. Girls, however, disrupts this story, imagining social media as a space where shameful episodes might find a sympathetic reception. Rather than wallowing in self-­pity or outing Elijah as gay, Hannah tweets a phrase passed on to her by Shoshanna, who has herself heard it from Jessa, and in this way turns “Vagina Panic” (the title of episode 2) into a kind of sisterhood. The creation of feminist community through social media technology extends to the show’s extra-­diegetic setting. Following this episode, one fan tweeted a request to Dunham to write out the phrase “All Adventurous Women Do,” so that the fan (who presumably also has HPV) might tattoo it on her foot in Dunham’s handwriting. Dunham happily complied, creating a fascinating continuity from the fictional Hannah’s Twitter feed, to the Twitter feed of an actual user, to auteur Dunham’s handwriting inscribed, as art, on the body of another (figs. 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3). In an age in which, as Lewinsky reminds us, cyberbullying has led to a significant increase in suicidal ideation

f i g u r e 5.1. Twitter exchange between Girls fan Tina Wargo and Lena Dunham, 2013. https://www .instagram.com/p/aU_Q08K3_t/.

f i g u r e 5.2. Lena Dunham tweets an image of the phrase “all adventurous women do,” written in her own handwriting, 2013. https://www.instagram.com/p/aW7u7uK36J/.

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f i g u r e 5.3. Tina Wargo tweets an image of her newly tattooed ankle, 2013. https://twitter.com/lena dunham/status/345294429583716355.

among young people, using one’s Twitter account as a platform for female bonding rewrites the kinds of relationships that this technology makes possible. To be sure, the consequences of microblogging sites like Twitter aren’t always redemptive; that social media can function as a platform for shaming and isolationism is evidenced by Hannah’s initial posts and by the volume of “hate tweets” Dunham’s fan received after confessing her STD. But in the Twittersphere, humiliation can also be reexperienced differently in the company of others and instantly rewritten as a valued social event. With its twin impulses toward continual updating and reciprocal sharing, social media is thus fundamentally different from Hester’s scaffold, where the individual is condemned for eternity and stands alone. “Open to the World” Psychologist Silvan Tomkins has described shame as pleasure interrupted. Shame, he writes, “operates ordinarily only after interest or enjoyment has been activated, and inhibits one or the other or both.”29 Elspeth Probyn glosses

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it this way: “Only something or someone that has interested you can produce a flush of shame. Someone looks at you with interest and you begin to be interested, only to realize she’s looking at someone else.”30 This is the logic of much of Hannah’s shame in Girls. For example, episode 4 begins with Adam sexting Hannah an image of his “semi-­hard dick.” Hannah is both shocked and delighted, until he follows up with the message “SRY that wasn’t for you.”31 Pleasure momentarily curdles; in Probyn’s words, “The rupture is painful  .  .  . the sheer disappointment of loss translates into shame that attacks your sense of self.”32 However, rather than hang her head in humiliation, Hannah responds by taking off her shirt and sexting Adam in return. That is to say, shame becomes not the thing that inhibits interest or enjoyment but that which inspires it further. This tendency to turn shame into excitement contributes to the audience’s confused sense that Hannah is both ashamed at such moments and completely shameless—that is, incapable of feeling a diminution of pleasure despite another’s lack of interest. At its most productive, then, shame is a labile sensation for Hannah, present at one moment, converted into something else the next. The link between shame and excitement informs Hannah’s virtual encounters with Adam, but it also plays a role in their face-­to-­face dynamics, since their sex life hinges around fantasies of debasement and vulnerability. In contrast to earlier single-­girl sitcoms where the aim of the female protagonist is erotic pleasure (if not relationship security), Girls resists this aspirational trajectory, depicting Hannah as primarily intrigued by awkward, even abject, sexual coupling. Episode 2, for example, begins with Adam engaging Hannah in an elaborate role-­play involving her as an eleven-­year-­old heroin-­ addled runaway girl. “You’re a dirty little whore, and I’m gonna send you home to your parents covered in cum,” he grunts, while partially choking her during the sex act.33 In another sex scene—­this one overheard by Marnie in the next room—­Adam gets off by howling a series of exclamatory remarks to Hannah, each designed to expose her as debased and pathetic: “Would you have fucked a four-­year-­old me? . . . How fat were you [as a kid]? . . . You were probably a really late walker. And you were probably toilet-­trained really late.”34 Writing in the New Yorker, Margaret Talbot has described these kinds of scenes as reflecting “solipsistic, niche sex that takes its expectations from porn.”35 Yet this reading does not address the nuances of Adam’s fantasy. After all, this is hardly a garden-­variety porn narrative of domination on Adam’s part and submission on Hannah’s, since he imagines his own debasement as well as hers (himself as a four-­year-­old getting “fucked”). This makes his relationship to dominance tenuous at best.

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Still, to the extent that he seems to be driving these scenes, Adam maintains authority; Hannah’s confusion, discomfort, and lack of pleasure are genuine, and this is problematic from a feminist perspective. The issue is not simply that Adam writes the script, but that he decides when that script is in effect. While he’s happy to indulge in fantasies of domination and submission during the sex act, he seems to all but forget about them moments later. When Hannah, about to depart, jokingly invokes his story of her as an eleven-­year-­old runaway, Adam appears completely bewildered. “Don’t you remember? . . . That was a joke about the thing you said last night when we were having sex, about how you were gonna send me home to my parents covered in cum . . . ,” Hannah tries to explain, her voice trailing off in response to Adam’s glazed incomprehension.36 Their interaction reflects an unequal power dynamic, but it also indicates Adam and Hannah’s different relationships to shame. For Hannah, it is very much a part of her quotidian existence but not easily incorporated into her sex life. For Adam, on the other hand, shame is limited to sexual fantasy alone. Whereas Hannah admits with great embarrassment that her parents pay her bills (“Does that make you feel sick? Make you not want to talk to me?”), Adam has no qualms about his grandmother’s monthly gift of $800. “It gives me the freedom that I don’t have to be anyone’s slave,” he tells Hannah, indicating that, for him, debasement ought to be avoided and denied except in worlds of sexual make-­believe.37 As season 1 progresses, however, this line between erotic and nonerotic experiences of shame blurs, and with it the role of Adam as the controlling force in the couple’s relationship. This is most clearly seen in episode 5, which is characterized by a series of reversals in ascendency between Adam and Hannah. In the preceding episode, Hannah had intended to break up with Adam but was deterred by his kindness and gestures of intimacy. Newly assured about their relationship in episode 5, she arrives at his apartment ready for sex, only to be told that he is now ending things. Confused and humiliated, Hannah escapes to the bathroom, but as she exits, she realizes that Adam has again rewritten the script, having stripped down and begun to masturbate during her absence. Hannah is deeply uncomfortable with the scene (“Oh my God,” she mouths silently), but Adam is utterly at home and invites Hannah to stay. What happens next indicates the ease with which he can adopt humiliation as a fetish. “Do you think I’m pathetic and disgusting?” he asks her longingly, gesturing to his masturbating hand. Hannah takes the bait: “It’s really bad,” she tells him. “It’s pathetic and bad and disgusting and weird and lazy.” When Adam gets increasingly aroused by her talk, Hannah, misreading his cues, begins to raise her skirt. “Pull your shit down,” he barks to a stricken

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Hannah. “That’s not what this is!”38 While Adam may be fantasizing about his own subordination, he’s clearly in control of the script. Hannah, on the other hand, may be playing the role of dominatrix, but within the real dynamic of their relationship she is passive and vulnerable. The next scene, however, confuses Adam and Hannah’s power dynamic, as well as the boundaries between their play and “the real.” “I want cab money,” Hannah tells Adam imperiously; “$30 because I also want pizza and gum.” Hannah is continuing her role as the controlling “top,” but she also genuinely needs cash, which is to say that, in this instance, Adam’s fantasy and her reality match up quite nicely. After taking a $100 bill (he doesn’t have change), Hannah gripes that she ought to take all of his money for making her “watch this all afternoon” (gesturing to his wanking hand). Adam apologizes, and as Hannah elicits further apology (“How sorry [are you]? . . . Why don’t you say that to me again, like you mean it”), he grows increasingly excited. When she leaves his apartment, moments after he climaxes, his $100 bill in her hand, it’s not entirely clear to either of them who is in charge. The seven apologies Adam delivers to Hannah are certainly part of the submission narrative he has crafted, but they are also a genuine response to her ill treatment, and therefore a consequence of Hannah’s own narrative authority. Hannah’s intervention here is twofold. Not only has she seized control of the erotic script, she’s also rewritten her larger dynamic with Adam so that he’s forced to feel shame in their real-­world relationship rather than simply as part of a salacious performance. One of Girls’ signature accomplishments is the way it constantly recalibrates Adam and Hannah’s interactions, upturning audience expectations. Just when Hannah seems at her most humiliated, she transforms the dynamic to her material and emotional advantage. Adam, too, despite his cruelty, can seem genuinely self-­critical at moments and even occasionally contrite. “Shake my hand,” he says to Hannah at the end of this scene, raising a cum-­covered arm. It’s a gesture of perversity, but also, perhaps, of real reconciliation. What’s crucial in these scenes, then, is not simply Hannah’s debasement—­ the focus of so much negative critical attention39—­but rather her changing relationship to this affective condition. Hannah overcomes passivity in episode 5 by wresting narrative authority from Adam, taking over the script so that her role as dominatrix is no longer only an effect of the power he gives her. This doesn’t erase her earlier feelings of humiliation initiated by Adam’s breakup speech, but it does allow her to see that she can have a hand in defining the boundaries of her own abasement, and occasionally in turning the tables. In her sex life with Adam, as in her online writing practices, Hannah

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transforms her relationship to shame, claiming it as part of an adventurous emotional life of which she is the author. Thus, Adam and Hannah’s sex life works to create a rapport in which both characters get to decide when and where vulnerability stops and self-­assertion begins.40 The result is not so much alternate grabs at power, but rather a sense of collaborative intimacy and fun-­making. That is to say, shame is revealed to Hannah as a contingent and evolving affective condition, capable of being owned by different partners at different moments. This “education” is fundamentally different from that found in earlier single-­girl sitcoms, where the heroine renounces her own compromised integrity and proceeds to rely on a sense of budding empowerment. Indeed, shame is far too interesting and productive an emotional state for Hannah to renounce it entirely. What she embraces, therefore, is the flux of shame and the excitement of trying on various personae—­the authoritative as well as the vulnerable. Through alternating fantasies of her own and Adam’s humiliation, Hannah increasingly comes to understand shame as play rather than as a permanent debilitating condition. While this knowledge originates in her relationship with Adam, it quickly goes on to inform other areas of Hannah’s life. The episode directly following “Hard Being Easy” is called “The Return,” and it features Hannah visiting her parents in her hometown of Lansing, Michigan. Arriving home from a somewhat botched romantic interlude, Hannah comes face-­to-­face with her parents’ own failed sexual encounter—­while taking Loreen (Becky Ann Baker) from behind in the shower, Tad (Peter Scolari) has fallen, concussed himself, and torqued his back. As Hannah helps her naked, injured father to his bed, everyone admits the awkwardness of the situation. “I’m embarrassed,” Tad moans. “Of course you’re embarrassed,” Hannah concedes, “because this is horribly embarrassing for everyone involved.”41 Despite the comic tone, the scene has a genuine sweetness to it, as does the exchange that follows. When Hannah’s father attempts to reassure her—­“I’m fine; just realizing I’m growing older”—­Hannah demurs gently and throws him a parting kiss. Hannah, no stranger to awkward and embarrassing sex, seems deeply empathic here, willing to help her father physically and, even more importantly, to shore up his shattered ego. The scene is an interesting bookend to the pilot episode in which we first meet Hannah’s parents. There, it is Hannah who ends up prostrate and partially disrobed before her parents (following a bad bout with opium tea), and they who must help her to bed. In reversing the dynamic in “The Return” (the title itself is a sly nod to this), Hannah reinforces her knowledge of the changeability and impermanence of humiliation, its ability to be owned by children and by parents at different moments.

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This post-­shower scene also helps explain the dialogue between Hannah and her mother that follows. Softened, perhaps, by Hannah’s recent show of compassion toward her father, Loreen asks her daughter if she’s doing okay, betraying for the first time real concern for Hannah’s precarious financial state. Hannah, of course, desperately needs money (the episode begins with Marnie reminding her that rent is due next week), but rather than fess up to her mother, she tells her that she’s “making it work.” Hannah is saving face here, but she’s also genuinely reacting to her parents’ circumscribed condition, which she perhaps sees more clearly on this trip home. They appear to her not as they did on their visit to New York in the pilot—­as intrusive guests whose only function is to support their daughter financially—­but as ordinary encumbered adults with old station wagons and menopausal hot flashes. To be clear, Hannah’s gentle rebuff of her mother’s offer of money is not a show of adult independence and pluck à la Mary Tyler Moore. (Hannah does not have a job and won’t for the rest of the season, so she’ll have to rely on handouts from Marnie and others.) It is, rather, an act of recognition. Her disinclination to take her parents’ money arises not out of a burgeoning independence but out of a burgeoning empathy—­an ability to see her parents as people, replete with their own struggles, disappointments, and embarrassments, getting older and less competent but surviving, even laughing, nonetheless. It is Hannah’s evolving relationship with Adam that helps with this recognition, allowing her to experience shame as a changing and interchangeable dynamic between people rather than a static crippling condition. In an interview in The Daily Beast, Adam Driver describes his character on Girls as “living in the moment” and encouraging Hannah to do the same. Driver continues, “One of the most fun things to play about Adam is, as much as he makes pretty bold proclamations about things he’s going to do or not do, in the back of his mind, he’s open to a better idea; open to the world.”42 This sense of being “open to the world,” of living spontaneously rather than hewing to a plan or striving for consistency, contributes to the show’s unconventional ethos. On a more traditional series, Hannah and Adam would work through their shame toward a romantic union characterized by intimacy, libidinal satisfaction, and mutual respect. But on Girls, the sex they share is, like Hannah’s own life trajectory, deeply anti-­aspirational, focused less on future success than in-­the-­moment adventure. Rather than leading to narcissism (as legions of critics bemoaning selfie culture would have it), this focus on the present is a conduit to empathy and the embrace of others. In this way, Hannah and Adam’s relationship rejects the narrow insularity of appropriate heterosexual union, turning outward to community, to the world.

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“She Was a Little Fat Chick, and She Got It Going” If, for Hannah, failure and shame are productive—­the stuff of adventure, empathy, and community—­they have proven more problematic with audiences, who are often deeply critical of Hannah’s broken sex life, her lackluster ambitions, and her non-­normative body. Of these three principal complaints, it is Hannah’s body (or, more accurately, her willingness to show it disrobed) that has garnered the most controversy. Indeed, Girls’ anti-­aspirational approach to embodiment seems for many the highest hurdle to clear, as viewers have been conditioned by shows like Ally McBeal (Fox, 1997–­2002) and The New Girl (Fox, 2011–­2018) to read the protagonists’ waifish figures as testament to their worthiness. By contrast, many critics see Hannah’s bodily display as a purposeful affront to male visual pleasure and therefore as an act of aggression. Radio shock jock Howard Stern, for example, describes Hannah’s nudity on the show as a figurative rape of the male viewer: “It’s a little fat girl who kinda looks like Jonah Hill, and she keeps taking her clothes off and it kind of feels like rape. . . . It’s like, I don’t want to see that.”43 Stern ends his rant about Dunham’s nudity with a backhanded compliment: “Good for her. It’s hard for little fat chicks to get anything going.” Dunham, taking his comments in stride, responded by declaring on Letterman, “I just want to be like, my gravestone says, ‘She was a little fat chick, and she got it going.’ ”44 Although Stern’s misogyny makes him an easy target, his commentary is not that different from more serious engagements with the show. Linda Stasi’s review of Girls’ second season is full of references to Dunham’s “blobby” body. While Stasi draws attention to Hollywood’s impossible standards of beauty, she also makes clear her distaste for Dunham’s irregular physique: “It’s not every day in the TV world of anorexic actresses with fake boobs that a woman with giant thighs, a sloppy backside and small breasts is compelled to show it all.”45 Followers online have been even less generous, often moving from criticism of Dunham’s body to shaming the auteur for her willingness to show it. In 2015, after Dunham posted a photograph of herself on Instagram wearing her boyfriend’s Calvin Klein underwear (fig. 5.4), the Daily Mail reported that one user commented, “@lenadunham why would you post this pic on social media? nobody wants to see all that fat nasty blubber. have some respect for your body and show some self control at the dinner table for christ’s sake. go on a diet ya fat pig!”46 As psychologists have noted, shaming is often deployed in the name of conformity and in the context of bourgeois relations. Its essential function is to police the borders of civilized behavior and to regulate social interactions.47 Unlike guilt, which can be experienced in private, shame is fundamentally

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f i g u r e 5.4. On Instagram, Lena Dunham posts a photograph of herself in her boyfriend’s Calvin Klein underwear, 2015. https://www.instagram.com/p/7t-­j39C1Ib/.

interpersonal, threatening one’s attachments with others.48 As Francis Broucek writes, “Social conformity achieved through shame will be essentially a conformity based on identification and shared ideals, with rejection, expulsion, or abandonment as the threat.”49 Of course, since women tend to be more tethered to social protocol (traditional masculinity being caught up in bad-­boy rebellion), they experience the rejection and expulsion associated with shame more frequently. Myra Mendible reminds us that “ ‘shame revivalism’ has been accompanied by various policies and initiatives meant to control women’s bodies and curtail their rights. . . . [A]n economy of shame is central in efforts to inscribe, manage, and enforce certain versions of gendered identity; it is crucial in sustaining disciplinary processes aimed at ‘correcting’ bodies deemed fundamentally flawed, problematic, or lacking.”50 Comments on social media like those cited above are a case in point, but more interesting, perhaps, has been Dunham’s response, which is to rethink shame as a site of exploration and to refuse traditional scripts concerning female display. While her critics demand “dieting,” “respect for your body,” and “self control,” Dunham insists on the comedic antihero’s prerogative of opting out of social norms altogether. To recognize the radical import of this position, it is helpful to consider the three ways non-­normative female bodies have historically been treated on television—­as humor, as facile celebration of difference, or as project of transformation. Paul Schrodt, for example, borrows the first of these logics in arguing that the exhibition of Hannah’s body is played for laughs: “Lena

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Dunham’s nakedness fits in a long tradition of comedians using their body for gags, from Buster Keaton performing in drag with ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle on down to Chris Farley’s fat-­guy-­in-­a-­little-­coat routine.”51 But Schrodt’s references to Keaton and Farley call out the limits of his analysis, since Dunham is not a physical comedian, and the show’s humor never uses her nakedness as a punch line. Linda Mizejewski rightly points out that “large-­bodied [women] like [Melissa] McCarthy or Rebel Wilson” are the true inheritors of the Buster Keaton style of body comedy, along with male actors such as Steve Carell and Jonah Hill.52 Girls is often funny, but Hannah’s body is not the engine of this comedy. Indeed, in episode 3, Dunham makes this explicit. “I think your stomach is funny,” Adam tells Hannah in a scene where he attempts to turn her belly into a monstrous talking entity, reminiscent of a freak show. “Well, maybe I don’t want my body to be funny,” Hannah replies, pulling away. “Has that ever occurred to you?”53 If Hannah’s body is not used as a vehicle of comedy, it is also not deployed as a source of big-­bodied affirmation, at least as this dynamic has typically played out. According to this logic, the non-­thin body is recognized for its sexy zaftigheit, embraced as an object of beauty to be reclaimed and celebrated. Mad Men’s Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) did much to popularize this phenomenon, as did Dove Soap’s advertising pitch “Campaign for Real Beauty,” which centered around images of semi-­clad women of varying sizes, ages, and ethnicities. Although the women in these ads conform in most ways to conventional standards of attractiveness, the campaign explicitly aimed to rewrite the cultural script that would define “beauty” as thin and white. Girls’ Hannah, however, has neither the voluptuous seductiveness of a Joan Holloway nor the playful flirtiness of the Dove women. This is partly because Hannah rejects sexiness, at least as it is conventionally assumed. Such is especially apparent in her choice of clothing, a subject of consternation and ridicule on the show itself, no less than with critics. “You’re essentially begging the world to fuck with you,” Ray (Alex Karpovsky) barks in episode 9, when Hannah shows up to a shift at the coffee shop in a prim white dress. He orders her to go home and change, mocking her assumption that coffee shop employees wear aprons and therefore the clothes under them don’t really matter. “This isn’t a consumptive women’s hospital; we don’t wear aprons, no. Forget all the BBC you watch at home with your cats, and pick out an appropriate outfit.” In this scene, Ray accuses Hannah of being both a premodern nurse and a spinster, making visible her failure to professionalize her body (even for the relaxed space of the coffee shop). “And don’t do some shit where you come back wearing gray flannel sweatpants and a Taylor Swift T-­shirt to

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f i g u r e 5.5. Fashion forward: Lena Dunham as Hannah Horvath on Girls, season 3, episode 5, “Only Child,” 2014.

be a dick,” he adds, commanding her to wear a “cute top” and skinny jeans—­ “Get . . . jeans with a slim leg. Slim leg!”54 On one level, this scene is about the indignity of a boss controlling Hannah’s sartorial choices, but for the show’s viewers it is also a meta-­commentary on the ways that Hannah’s clothing emphasizes rather than hides the unconventional shape of her body. When Hannah appears in tight shorts and cropped tops that violate the flattering-­wardrobe ideal common to other single-­girl sitcoms (fig. 5.5), viewers are forced to confront their Ray-­like assumption that Hannah should make more of an effort to achieve acceptable femininity.55 In episode 8, Jessa and Marnie bond over their shared incredulity at Hannah’s refusal to take “better care of herself.” “She’ll, like, put on a good dress and nice shoes, and then, like, do her lipstick, and then will, like, leave her forehead shiny. . . . It’s like, you’ve come this far!” Jessa declares. “Wash your forehead!” they shout in unison.56 Their criticisms, like Ray’s, stand in for audience frustration with Hannah’s refusal to pass for pretty, a move that forces even the most progressive of viewers to confront their expectations about female self-­presentation.

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The issue is not just that Hannah appears uninterested in making her body desirable, it’s also that her clothing choices are an act of resistance to both capitalist productivity and forms of femininity associated with motherhood and reproduction. After all, Dunham is most often criticized for being small-­breasted and big-­waisted, for violating the hourglass-­figure ideal that has its roots in evolutionary theories of female fertility. Dunham presents us with a female body that is neither conventionally alluring, maternally oriented, nor work-­ready but that still insists on being seen; in this way she exposes “body diversity” and big-­woman affirmation for the sham that they are. As the Dove Soap campaign reminds us, simply expanding the limits of what counts as a desirable body is not the same as questioning the nature of desire in masculinist culture altogether. In asking audiences to observe Hannah’s body not as it passes for pretty but as it fails, Dunham rewrites the scopophilic terms along which women’s bodies are allowed to be seen on TV. As Ta-­Nehisi Coates puts it, “What Girls says is ‘Fuck the gaze.’ Lena Dunham ain’t really performing for you.”57 Hannah’s body, then, thwarts attempts both to read it as comic and to read it as a familiar affirmation of difference. How, then, ought it to be read? According to the dictates of modern television and postfeminist logic, such a body can only be positioned as a problem, a burden, and an object of transformation, as it is in torrid reality fare like The Biggest Loser, Thintervention with Jackie Warner (Bravo, 2010), or Shedding for the Wedding (The CW, 2011), where responsibilized fitness is the goal.58 But this is precisely not how Dunham positions Hannah’s body in Girls. “No, I have not tried a lot to lose weight because I decided I was gonna have other concerns in my life,” Hannah tells Adam in episode 3, when he blithely suggests that it would be easy for her to shed a few pounds.59 Her comments expose Adam’s ignorance, but they also allude to the overwhelming commitment of weight loss regimes, in which all other projects must take a backseat to the main task of body reformation. In sidestepping this as a goal for Hannah, Dunham has done something truly unusual—­created a show featuring an imperfect female body where that body isn’t thematized as the reason for the show’s existence. This is confirmed by the series’ increasing silence on the subject of body size; while in the first season, Adam and others make occasional reference to Hannah’s weight, later seasons are noteworthy for their near reticence on the subject. Gone are all diet jokes and juxtaposing allusions to supermodels; what we’re left with is simply a realistic female form, frequently naked, and characterized by nothing so much as intractable presence. In emphasizing Hannah’s presence, we mean to highlight her status on Girls as a living body. Hers is not a body-­in-­production—­an aspirational

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physique oriented around future “success” in the form of weight loss or athletic sculpting—­but rather a body that persists from moment to moment, often engaged in mundane tasks and deeply invested in creative expression and sensual gratification. Such a body surprises because it works in the register of the literal rather than the symbolic. It is not a metaphor or a means toward something else (comedy, diversity, transformation). It is, rather, its own end, affirming nothing more than presence and vitalism. Disrobing is a key factor here because, as Dunham herself has commented, “[Nudity is] a realistic expression of what it’s like to be alive.”60 The flawed naked body is thus valued as an avenue to raw unmediated experience. Where shame has historically incited the body to hide or disappear—­the word itself derives from the Indo-­ European root s(kem), meaning “to cover”61—­Dunham insists on full exposure. In this way she privileges being over meaning, the female body as source of lived reality rather than of signification. The importance of this approach to the body on television is evidenced by viewer response. While Hannah’s intractable presence is sometimes the subject of online vitriol, it is just as often a source of profound fellow feeling for her fans. “Hannah Horvath, she’s ugly she’s fat and she has sheer confidence. I can use some of that,” writes one follower on Twitter.62 “Hannah Horvath makes being fat look so cool and sexy,” writes another.63 Says a third: “What defines as cool? Id like to think I am cool, in a Hannah Horvath, fat and broke kind of way.”64 These Twitter posts are noteworthy because they’re not characterized by plucky affirmation—­the non-­normative body as the body-­ beautiful. Rather, they concede the body’s defects even as they make these defects the site of value and identification. Robert Karen points out that this understanding of human imperfection as a source of collective bonding has a long history: In medieval Christendom, the belief that all people were sinners, that all were unworthy, used this sense of universal defect to bind the community, to maintain a spiritual focus, and, perhaps incidentally, to drain off some shame that might otherwise have become individual and narcissistic. From our distant perspective in a diametrically different world, we can easily imagine how comforting it might have been to know that one was not alone in one’s flaws and vulnerabilities.65

Girls provides some of this knowledge; it reminds viewers that the experience of a flawed body is one to own and to share. Perhaps this is the central thing that antiheroes like Hannah Horvath accomplish—­they dare us to identify with them at their most mundane and most compromised, not at their most triumphant. They force us to reckon

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with our own mediocrity and provide few salves for the pain of recognition. And, yet, the show itself is a salve of sorts, for in watching Girls, we join something larger. We identify with a subset of women for whom failure is routine and pluck is largely a fiction. We counter aspirationalism with the knowledge that work, friendship, and sex can be deeply disappointing. We resist a persistent Western narrative—­from Disney’s Frozen to Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men66—­that women are ascendant and that the responsibility for our future lies largely in their hands. Against these presumptions, Girls posits failure and abasement but also adventure, empathy, and solidarity as the inheritance of the twenty-­first-­century woman. Girls tells us that we needn’t fear shame, or slay it, for by embracing it, we acknowledge the value of experience and find comfort in community. These stories call us to identify with the flawed, the human, and the real. All adventurous women do.

6

Liberation and Whiteness in Broad City

In the final minutes of the season 2 finale of Broad City (Comedy Central, 2014–­2019), Abbi and Ilana—­the show’s dual protagonists, played by Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer—­ask each other, “What have you done this past year that you’re proud of ? And what are you gonna do this upcoming year?” Ilana’s partial list of accomplishments includes “[feeling] a prostate” and using “a lemon successfully as antiperspirant.” Abbi adds that she “finished Damages” and that she “finally masturbated above the covers.” Looking to the year ahead, Ilana declares that she hopes to “join ancestry.com” while Abbi swears that she’s “going to do one legit pull-­up for real this time.”1 Clearly we are once again in the realm of the anti-­aspirational, where young women value affect and life experience over and above more traditional concerns of career and marriage. But there’s also something fundamentally different about Broad City, and it has to do with the absolute absence of ennui that accompanies female indolence. HBO’s Girls is, more than anything else, about the bleakness of non-­ direction, the way that middle-­class white women’s plethora of choices can leave them crying, while fumbling in the dark. Broad City, by contrast, has an antic, euphoric energy that invokes aimlessness without the angst. Indeed, nothing surprises on the show more than the realization that Abbi and Ilana’s slacker sensibility, vulgar gamesomeness, and reckless good cheer are allowed to go entirely unpunished. The two live in a world without consequences and therefore largely without failure and shame, and this is not a world where we are used to seeing women reside. Abbi and Ilana’s ultra-­liberated state is partially achieved through their attempted alignment with hip-­hop culture. That is to say, the freedom these two white women enjoy is tightly bound up in a Black sensibility that allows

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them what Susan Douglas calls “a jailbreak from demure femininity.”2 Abbi and especially Ilana appropriate Blackness (and other non-­white identities) to act out an assertive feminist posture while simultaneously reaping the benefits of whiteness, not the least of which includes a relative freedom from masculine surveillance. In short, their blackface (to put it crudely) enables consequence-­free transgression, a dynamic that the show alternately perceives and obscures. The racial workings of Broad City are brought into relief when the show is considered alongside HBO’s Insecure (2016–­present), the subject of our next chapter. In this comedy featuring African American women, the consequences of female transgression are grave, and failure is an integral part of the show’s landscape. Issa and her Black female friends cavort in ways not dissimilar from Abbi and Ilana, but with far more serious ramifications. Always aware of respectability politics, Insecure’s young women experience Black racial identity as a source of liberation from mainstream white culture but also and importantly as a reminder of the necessity for restraint. In this chapter, we examine Broad City’s gleeful, utopic vision, arguing that its portrait of female shamelessness is a feminist triumph complicated by the appropriation of Black cultural forms. The boundary crossings upon which unruly comedy depends—­between public and private, order and chaos, sacred and profane—­are troubled by the white comedian’s tendency to see her own privilege as merely one more border to be transgressed. Broad City thus delineates, in starker terms than Girls, the whiteness of the female antihero in television comedy, revealing the importance of race to the way liberation from convention registers onscreen. It forces a question at the center of this chapter: Is the female antihero’s indolence and antisociality merely a squandering of white entitlement? In answering this question, we argue that while whiteness is an important component of Abbi and Ilana’s outrageous displays, it is not the only factor. The other ingredient in this antiheroic stew is Abbi and Ilana’s absolute devotion to one another. As Cate Young notes about Broad City, “The show will stand as a monument to the intensity and devotion that women can have for one another when they stop squirming under men’s gaze and reject its existence altogether.”3 This is the show’s signature accomplishment: not to demonstrate women standing up to the male gaze but to imagine a world outside of it and to reveal the promise of such a world in women’s bonds to one another. In this way, Broad City creates not only a world free of consequence but also a world outside of compulsory heterosexuality.4 In this world, the intensity of female friendship trumps relationships with men along with professional ambitions and even a larger engagement with community. In rejecting both the marriage plot and the politics of futurity (up until the

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series’ devastating conclusion), Ilana and Abbi offer up a radical proposition: that the key to joy amidst stifling social expectations, economic precarity, and a noxious political climate lies in simply resting in the gaze of the other. “What a Wonderful World” The title of Broad City’s television pilot—­“What a Wonderful World”—­is a canny nod to the show’s utopian impulse (even as it’s also an acknowledgment of the show’s racial dimensions, as we’ll get to later). A world in which women smoke weed for much of the day, have sex or masturbate while FaceTiming with one another, commit petty larceny by stealing office supplies, and hire themselves out on Craigslist for sex work, all without any ill consequences, is in fact “wonderful,” in the sense that it inspires both delight and astonishment. Unlike Nurse Jackie, where drug use is accompanied by addiction, and unlike Orange Is the New Black, where casual crime lands women in prison, Abbi and Ilana’s debauched adventures never leave them apologetic, regretful, or too worse for wear. Suffering a fierce hangover following their Craigs­ list encounter at the end of the pilot, Ilana FaceTimes Abbi, throwing up in her view seconds later. “You wanna come over and hang out?” she asks undeterred, mouth still shiny with vomit. “We just got pizza.” “What kind?” asks a spirited Abbi.5 We’ve seen this always-­game-­for-­another-­abject-­adventure vibe before, of course. Shows like Workaholics (Comedy Central, 2011–­2017), The League (FX, 2009–­2015), and Louie (FX, 2010–­2015) have given us male portraits of jackass deportment and stunted adolescence for years. But Broad City’s focus on female fecklessness in all its sloppy insouciance and narcissistic charm represents a significant innovation. As Amy Poehler, an executive producer for Broad City, has said, “[The show] reminds us that men aren’t the only ones who are adolescent and adrift.”6 And yet, Broad City doesn’t feel derivative; Abbi and Ilana are not just try­ ing to “out-­dude the dudes,” as Nick Paumgarten puts it.7 This is partly be­ cause the show has a genuine sweetness to it and partly because the costars’ physical presence feels so different from that of their comedic male counter­ parts. Unlike Jonah Hill or Louis C.K., the girls of Broad City don’t feed on bland fat jokes; indeed, they’re more apt to admire nonconventional physiques than to mock them. Ilana has the traditional “hot bod,” but the show, to its credit, is more invested in celebrating Abbi’s beauty (“chocolate-­brown eyes, ass of an angel”8) and in playing up Ilana’s purposeful disfigurement for laughs—­as when her face and body swell in response to a shellfish allergy that she wittingly feeds in the season 1 finale.9 Here and in similar scenes, Ilana’s lack of concern for her physical well-­being—­she’ll be damned if she lets a

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fish allergy stand in the way of an intimate dinner with her best friend—­is a funny and refreshing rejoinder to the usual take on female self-­care. It suggests that a woman’s body need not define her quality of life, that it might be, as it is with many men, simply an appendage, even a recalcitrant witness, to a good time. Still, bodies are front and center in Broad City. Jacobson and Glazer are talented physical comedians, and for much of the show, the two careen across New York City uncontrollably, their antic forms serving as metaphors for their general opposition to convention. Anne Helen Petersen identifies Broad City’s investment in “the unruly body” as key to the show’s success: [B]eing unruly is more than just being funny. Sandra Bullock is funny, but she’s not an unruly woman. Unruly women have unruly bodies—­they’re too big for their clothes, their hair refuses to stay down. They talk too much, laugh too loudly, say things ladies shouldn’t. They fart and burp and poop; they make themselves known, refuse taming. . . . [T]hat’s the beauty of the unruly women: they’re “bad examples” of womanhood because they compromise our understanding of what a woman can or should act like.10

Much of the pleasure of Broad City comes from watching scenes of female bod­ ies in motion, performing both quotidian activities—­shitting, peeing, throw­ ing up, having sex—­and more ostentatious moves—­dancing, rolling on floors, scaling walls, leaping (awkwardly) on cars and fire hydrants. But because these moves are rendered amusing within the diegetic context, audiences feel like they’re laughing with the broads rather than at them. This is part of why critics repeatedly speak of the show’s “sneak-­attack feminism”;11 viewers are so taken by the hilarity of Abbi and Ilana that they forget how unusual it is to see young, pretty women continually assume positions of unflattering awkwardness before a camera. Like I Love Lucy and Roseanne before it, Broad City is genuinely committed to physical, even slapstick, humor on the part of women, but the show’s disinterest in compensating for these antics through more traditional feminine practice (Lucy and Roseanne had husbands and kids to fall back on, after all) feels genuinely new. At the same time that the show assumes this feminist posture, however, it is also acutely aware of the superficiality of much contemporary feminism; indeed, it takes every opportunity to satirize the postfeminist sensibility—­both its nominal emphasis on intersectionality and its self-­serving embrace of female empowerment through consumerism and sexual expression. When Abbi and Ilana speak of themselves as “feminist heroes”12 because they’ve spent hours on social media aggressively trying to pick up men, it’s an acid commentary on the ways that millennials sometimes celebrate female agency. Broad City

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thus mocks contemporary feel-­good feminism while meaningfully rewriting roles for women on television. Part of this rewriting involves erasing the public/private divide, a construction that has served to isolate and seclude women since the Industrial Revolution. For Abbi and Ilana are, above all, public creatures, largely oblivious to injunctions on keeping certain behaviors hidden. They urinate in the street, smoke weed in subways, lie down and chat on busy sidewalks. Their voices are loud, persistent, and unmodulated, regardless of whether they’re in their homes, at work, or attending a funeral service. But, aside from some occasional glowering, few of these behaviors are met with derision. This is partially an effect of the show being set in an unglorified New York City, where mental illness and homelessness are common enough that the girls’ misbehavior can blend into the landscape. But it’s also a function of the show’s specific sensibility, its commitment to consequence-­free female outrageousness. Abbi and Ilana’s prurient desires and preoccupation with the grotesque body (bulges, pubic hair, anality, even corpses) suggest an ethos of carnival, but without the looming shadow of “official culture.”13 Surveillance of Abbi and Ilana by figures of authority is largely absent, and this has a curious effect: the TV viewer recognizes their behavior as transgressive, but the girls themselves rarely do. As we shall see, this dynamic plays out very differently in a show like Insecure, where excessive talk and bodily display on the part of African American women never escapes the gaze of those in power. An important corollary to Broad City’s commitment to transgression with­ out consequence is failure without shame. This is especially apparent in relation to Abbi and Ilana’s professional lives in season 1. Ilana works at a Groupon-­ like start-­up called Deals, Deals, Deals. Its high-­octane corporate sensibility stands in direct contrast to Ilana’s slacker impulses, which makes for much of the humor in these scenes. She cares too little about the job (which she often dismisses as “working for the man”) to feel disappointment, much less self-­ loathing, in relation to it. Her first words to her boss in the pilot—­“I’ve been kind of obsessed with getting paid, and I was wondering if that’s happening today”14—­establish the extent of her vocational commitment. Her job is a means to any number of ends (raising the funds to go to a Lil Wayne concert, for example), but it is soulless and unimportant in and of itself. Abbi’s dynamic at work is slightly more complicated. A cleaner at the trendy Soulstice Gym, she longs to be a trainer, but any sort of aspirationalism she betrays here is un­ dercut by the ludicrousness of her ambition. With her slothful demeanor and frequent weed habit, Abbi doesn’t strike one as the typical gym rat, but even more importantly, she appears far too unassuming to take on the training and transformation of another. If Friday Night Lights’ Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler)

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and Coach’s Hayden Fox (Craig T. Nelson) set the standard for the television “Coach”—­dedicated, inspiring, selfless—­then Abbi is the antithesis of this ideal, someone committed to the status of “Trainer” without an investment in the values of sacrifice, determination, and leadership that the “Coach” in popular culture traditionally represents.15 Still, Abbi experiences disappointment and even a certain amount of shame in relation to her job at Soulstice. She is forced to wear a T-­shirt emblazoned with the word “cleaner,” and her responsibilities include plunging toilets and tidying up “unprecedented” pube situations in the shower.16 And yet, more often than not, Abbi’s shame in these scenes is dissipated by Ilana’s playful, loving presence. When, in the pilot, Ilana visits Abbi at Soulstice to try to convince her to skip out of work, the latter initially rebukes her friend, first for her irresponsibility and then for her intrusive bodily presence in a space meant for paying customers. “Sorry, I forgot about the line!” Ilana quips; “I’ll stay in the second-­class-­citizen area.” Abbi responds: “It’s called the non-­member pen, and you know that.”17 Here we see Abbi attempting to live by the rules of mature, respectable bourgeois existence, including a policy that would segregate into a “pen” those without the resources to join a trendy gym. But when Abbi’s boss, Trey (Paul W. Downs), interrupts them to tell Abbi to go clean the women’s toilets, her smugness dissipates. “Try and not make eye contact with any members when you’re holding the plunger,” Trey remarks to a deflated Abbi. “Really bums them out.” Working at an expensive gym doesn’t exalt her status, Abbi realizes; it merely highlights the extent to which her labor serves others with more money and influence. Abbi responds to this realization with characteristic self-­loathing: her voice lowers; her body contracts in on itself; she cowers. Meanwhile, Ilana, standing off to the side, begins to mock Trey, miming a grotesque scene of fellatio that only Abbi sees. Ilana’s effect on Abbi is instantaneous and transformational; brimming with newfound confidence, Abbi tells Trey that she needs to go get her test results, hinting (falsely) that she may be HIV-­positive. Within minutes, the two broads are out on the street again, planning their next adventure. Leon Wurmser has defined shame as an “ever-­deepening conviction of one’s unlovability . . . because of an inherent sense that the entire self is ‘dirty,’ ‘untouchable,’ ‘rotten’—­that at one’s core, one can never be loved.”18 For Abbi, this sense of dirtiness is reinforced by her job as “cleaner,” she who must take on vile matter (sweat, urine, shit, vomit, pubes) so that others can remain pristine. But Ilana counters this dynamic, reminding Abbi that she is brilliant, lovable, and deeply valued. Moreover, she does this not through taking Abbi out of abjection but by joining her in it. The mimed fellatio, the suggestion of HIV—­these things reinforce Abbi’s connection to the unruly body, but

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the shame associated with this body is transmuted by Ilana’s joyful presence. Their friendship, in other words, turns shame into both a source of laughter and a means of exiting bourgeois conventions (the workplace itself among them). As Olivia Laing reminds us, at the root of shame is loneliness.19 Shame cannot operate in the context of friendship or love, because intimacy works to disable the sense of isolation that forms the cornerstone of the shameful self. While the absence of an understanding Other can deepen one’s sense of detachment, the presence of that Other can turn the experience of shame into an inside joke; this is consistently Ilana’s effect on Abbi. Glazer has described Broad City’s dictum as “vulnerability is strength”;20 but this, of course, is only half the equation, for vulnerability is only strength in the context of a sympathizing companion, able to transform moments of weakness into joy and hilarity. We see this dynamic again at work in “Hurricane Wanda,” when Abbi, having defecated into a toilet that won’t flush, realizes that her embarrassment is made that much worse by the arrival of Jeremy (Stephen Schneider), her crush from next door. Once again, Ilana saves the day through a gesture equal parts abjection and intimacy. “Abbi, I’m gonna take care of this for you,” she swears. “I am a doo-­doo ninja.”21 While events conspire to expose Abbi’s untimely dump to Jeremy, the episode works to highlight Ilana’s commitment to her friend and the extraordinary empowerment that this commitment inspires—­the final scene shows Ilana stealthily cartwheeling across the building ninja-­style to dispose of Abbi’s excrement. In Broad City, female superpowers are mobilized in the name of love, and they work to fight something more nefarious than crime—­the shame associated with the unruly woman’s body. In canceling this shame, Broad City bursts open the distinction between feminine propriety and female comedy that Linda Mizejewski interrogates in Pretty/Funny: Women Comedians and Body Politics. Mizejewski argues that Sarah Silverman’s transgressive appeal lies in the way her self-­presentation melds conventional prettiness with the audacity and sexual promiscuity of the outrageous woman. “The Sarah Silverman Program episodes often exploit Sarah’s prettiness by placing her in narratives that grossly pollute bourgeois rituals and customs concerning femininity.” The effect is a “startling fusion of the beautiful and the repulsive” that forces audiences to consider the abject messiness of the body that they’re normally asked to repress.22 Broad City takes this dynamic one step further, presenting not just a fusion of the beautiful and repulsive, but an insistence that the repulsive is itself a source of beauty. Because Abbi’s excrement originates within her, it is a valued and sensuous object, at least as seen by her closest friend. “This is the best,” Ilana

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tells Abbi about her poop predicament. “This is a sexy situation.”23 In Sarah Silverman’s comedy, audiences are asked to imagine female beauty made foul, but Broad City reverses this dynamic, inviting us to imagine female foulness made beautiful. When the superpowered gaze of the best friend prevails, bourgeois rules are suspended and women’s bodies are valued even in their filth and vulgarity. In this way, Broad City imagines a wholesale neglect of the structures of misogyny that Silverman’s comedy mocks. “You Know That You’re So Anti-­Racist Sometimes That You’re Actually Really Racist” How is it that Abbi and Ilana can take so many risks without ill consequence? How do they maintain what Alan Jacobs would call the “inviolability of the self,” in which “our selves remain pure and free regardless of our actions to­ wards others or theirs towards us”?24 This is at least partially achieved through the dynamics of racial identification. Many critics have noted the hip-­hop sensibility of Broad City: the show’s theme song is lifted from DJ Raff ’s “Latino & Proud”; the episode names (“Pu$$y Weed,” “Fattest Asses,” “Two Chainz”) re­­f­ erence aspects of Black street culture; and Abbi and Ilana frequently pay homage to Black superstars—­Lil Wayne, Oprah, Nicki Minaj, Bey & Jay, Drake, Missy Elliott. Both leads openly articulate their disidentification with whiteness (Abbi: “I can’t really imagine what it’s like for people with blue eyes”; Ilana: “No idea, other than feeling like a fucking freak”25). But of the two, it is Ilana who most consistently aligns herself with non-­white identities; witness her hair extensions, her fly-­girl dance moves and speech patterns, her Black lover Lincoln (Hannibal Buress), her “Latina”-­inscribed earrings, her gripes about working for “the man,” her naked-­Black-­man blanket, her fantasies of Rihanna going down on her, and her bucket-­list wish “to be an Asian girl.”26 Characters within the show often point out that Ilana’s fetishization of race is problematic. “You know that you’re so anti-­racist sometimes that you’re actually really racist,” Abbi tells her.27 At another moment, Ilana’s Latino housemate Jaime (Arturo Castro) offers the fullest critique of Ilana’s racial politics: There is something that you do that I’ve seen a lot of white people do, and it’s kind of like cultural appropriation. . . . Like for example, you know those earrings you have that say Latina? . . . They look beautiful on you . . . but you’re not Latina. It’s almost like you’re stealing the identity from people who fought hard against colonial structures. So in a way it’s almost like you are the colonist. You see?28

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Although Ilana is undeterred by these comments, scenes like this indicate that the show is holding her up to irony and critique, rather than simply embracing her sensibility. And yet, at other times, the show seems less self-­aware of its racial atti­ tudes and particularly the way Blackness is used as a vehicle of liberation. As Kyla Wazana Tompkins and Rebecca Wanzo have written, what’s troubling is “the sense of excessive affect, of indulgence, of potential for animated over-­ the-­topness that attaches itself to nonwhite people in Broad City.”29 Tompkins and Wanzo point out that this equation of Blackness with both extremity and liberation has a long history that has been explored by Susan Douglas, among others. Douglas writes, “For decades white people have projected onto Black culture, through our embrace of jazz to rock ’n’ roll to hip-­hop, romanticized notions about freedom from middle-­class constraints, that many whites crave, however vicariously.”30 Tompkins and Wanzo, while appreciating aspects of the show, fault Broad City for its depiction of non-­white characters and especially the way they are mobilized to make possible the broads’ adventures. “I want to understand,” they write, “why does abjection signify freedom for white people?”31 This critique lays bare the danger of exulting in the female antihero’s reckless and anti-­aspirational sensibility. It can often feel like a celebration of white privilege. Cross-­racial identifications are at play not merely in relation to the show’s protagonists but also in relation to its minor characters like Todd (Chris Gethard), Ilana’s white boss at Deals, Deals, Deals. Todd’s attempts at coolness are channeled through hip-­hop culture, albeit awkwardly. He wears a hoodie (over a shirt and tie) and uses expressions like “killing it” and “dope sweatshirt.” His failed attempts at coolness serve to naturalize Ilana’s own hip persona, which appears far less labored. This is partly owing to Ilana’s ethnic ambiguity—­in certain contexts she might pass as biracial or Latina, whereas Todd clearly cannot—­but it’s also an effect of her tendency to slip effortlessly into different styles and voices. Indeed, the ease with which Ilana channels Black culture at work allows her to amp up her outrageousness (she dresses inappropriately, talks back to her boss, skips out on the job) without ill effect. Blackness, in other words, abets Ilana’s forays into debauchery and excess without providing any of the permanency that might make her body the object of suspicion or punishment. In Tompkins and Wanzo’s words, “[A]t the end of most episodes . . . Abbi and Ilana return from extremity back to ‘normal,’ having had a kind of holiday from self.”32 The problem is not simply that Blackness is utilized for the purpose of white wayfaring, but also that in the process African American characters are sidelined or, more accurately, forced into increasingly conventional postures.

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f i g u r e 6.1. Abbi Jacobson as Abbi Abrams on Broad City, season 1, episode 2, “Pu$$y Weed,” 2014.

Ilana’s Black lover, Lincoln, for example, is (in marked contrast to both broads) easily the most competent and responsible character on the show—­a professional dentist with a six-­figure income and a wide nurturing streak. “Phone, keys, wallet. PKW, ” he patiently schools Ilana after she locks herself out of her house yet another time.33 The casting of stand-­up comedian Hannibal Buress as Lincoln adds a meta-­textual layer of irony to this dynamic, since prior to his role on Broad City, Buress was perhaps best known for his takedown of TV’s most infamous figure of Black respectability: Bill Cosby.34 At other moments, it is Black women who are the “straight” witnesses to the broads’ antics, as when Ilana tries to sell stolen office equipment to a Black female employee at an office supply store or when Abbi gets high in Lincoln’s dentistry office, rolling around the floor, much to the confusion of a Black child and his mother (figs. 6.1 and 6.2).35 In these scenes, Black employees and families play the “heavy” in relation to white women’s illicit and irresponsible behavior. The more that Ilana and Abbi borrow “Black Speak” to make themselves “hip, cool, and funny,”36 the more actual African American characters are forced to take up the politics of respectability as a foil. Michael Rogin has written about the way white America historically ex­ ploited “the surplus symbolic value of Blacks, the power to make African Amer­ icans represent something beside themselves.”37 For Rogin, blackface min­ strelsy gave Jewish performers, in particular, vicarious access to Otherness (and with it, a psychic exit from normative values) while simultaneously occluding the presence of actual African Americans. Jeffrey Melnick discusses a parallel dynamic in the early twentieth-­century music industry, when Jewish performers like Irving Berlin and George Gershwin reinvented themselves as

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f i g u r e 6.2. Looking on: Broad City, season 1, episode 2, “Pu$$y Weed,” 2014.

Black, “unfairly exploiting African Americans and their music” in the process.38 Something similar may be happening in Broad City, where the most explicit manifestations of Blackness are again channeled through Jewish iden­ tity. (In a perhaps unconscious nod to this history, the title of the pilot—­ “What a Wonderful World”—­references a song written by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss, Jewish songwriters, and originally recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1967.) Indeed, Melnick’s description of the “verbal agility” and “language fluency” used by Jews to “ratify their authenticity” as Black subjects (or “white Negroes”) seems a particularly apt description of Ilana, who regularly showcases her linguistic acrobatics.39 Ilana self-­identifies as an authentic Jew, contrasting her own Long Island ethnic identity with Abbi’s status as a Philadelphia “Main Line” Jew.40 In a 2016 radio podcast, Glazer limns the difference in more detail, saying of Main Line Jews, “You’re WASPier, you’re higher class, your names are shorter and sound whiter. You’re whiter. You’re whiter.”41 A curious transformation is at work here, one in which the cachet of Blackness is most readily accessed by Ilana as the less assimilated Jew. Thus, while Rogin describes Jews in the early twentieth century exploiting Blackness so as to ultimately whiten and Americanize themselves, here Jews exploit their distance from white American culture, capturing some of the bounty of alterity in the process.42 Broad City is thus marked by a double tendency—­on the one hand, it in­ dicts Ilana’s fetishization of Blackness as a form of cultural appropriation. On the other hand, the show appears less knowing of the way it continues a ro-

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bust American tradition in which Jewish performers exploit blackface for their own social advantage while sidelining actual Black people in the process. This double tendency can be seen in “Co-­Op”—­perhaps the episode that most thoroughly interrogates the broads’ racial posturing and its complicated relationship to liberatory impulses. The episode begins with a cold open that skewers mainstream feminist discourses about street harassment. Abbi and Ilana walk by a school playground, arguing about whether each would be able to recognize their own buttholes in a lineup. (Ilana: “One hundred percent . . . Each one has a soul, an ass-­soul.”) They are interrupted by a group of young boys playing pickup basketball. Two of the boys, one Black and one Asian, address them, their catcalls an awkward imitation of adult male speech: “Hey mamis, where you goin’? A bra store?” one boy asks, while the other adds, “I bet you got those big boobies to feed all your babies.”43 These taunts reveal the way the boys cannot decide whether Abbi and Ilana are sexual objects or maternal figures, but the broads react as if they are the victims of masculinist street culture. After all, the feminist critique of catcalling depends on the idea that women are vulnerable in public, and that verbal harassment is a check on women’s right to exist in that space. What Broad City so skillfully satirizes here is the racial tone-­deafness of this critique, particularly when the “perpetrators” are minority kids and the “victims” white adult women. In addition to lampooning mainstream feminism, the scene also parodies aspects of racial appropriation. Abbi responds to the boys’ taunts with a challenge. “The only way that you’re gonna get to touch these boobs is if they graze the top of your head as I’m slam-­dunking your skinny ass.” In the montage that follows, Abbi and Ilana channel Black male affect as they dunk, butt-­slap one another, and trash-­talk. Abbi, carried away as she often is by Ilana’s presence, escalates the smackdown after the boys are defeated. While Ilana initially joins in on the fun (“Tell your mom you got schooled by two women”), she grows reticent and increasingly appalled when Abbi shouts at a Black boy of about nine years of age, “Yeah, bitches, and remind her I’ll be by later to fuck the shit out of her.” Abbi then punctures the basketball, maliciously squeezing out its remaining air, much to the horror of the boys, who devolve into tears. A line has been crossed, and while Abbi is oblivious to this, viewers recognize both the cruelty and the political import of her behavior. At some point the broads become conscious of their indecency toward a group of children and try to comfort them, but it is too late. The scene exposes the speciousness and indecency of cultural appropriation. It begins with a verbal commitment to the unique self (aka the “ass-­soul”) and proceeds to depict the ill effects of mindless co-­optation, including the devastation of the very population one imitates.

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The rest of the episode is less consistent in its messaging, however. In the next scene Ilana learns that if she wishes to retain her membership in her beloved food co-­op, she must complete six hours of work before the end of the day. Having other plans—­she needs to get her third HPV vaccination—­ Ilana asks Abbi to take her place. But because co-­op members are not allowed to share shifts, Abbi must impersonate Ilana for the day, a task she happily takes on. (“I would love to live a day in your shoes,” she tells Ilana: “That sounds really fun and very easy.”) What follows is a hilarious sequence where Abbi channels Ilana’s appropriation of third-­wave-­feminist-­inflected minority identity—­after getting higher than usual, she changes into fly-­girl clothes, dons the infamous Latina earrings, and practices saying “Yas, Queen.” By the time she enters the co-­op, the transformation is complete: “Aww, what up my babies?! Mami Lani in da hizzy! Rape culture sucks! Recognize!” Abbi hollers to a stunned community of organic-­food shoppers. This scene skewers Ilana’s minority identification and knee-­jerk feminism, but the politics of her performance grow fuzzier as the episode continues. When asked to clean the co-­ op bathroom, for example, Abbi, for whom such work is routine at Soulstice, finds that in Ilana’s persona, she can slough off the task: “We kweens cannot be in the back of the bus cleaning up white dudes’ dreadlocks; ja feel?” she tells the co-­op supervisor. Here Abbi at once calls out the practice of cultural appropriation (“white dudes’ dreadlocks”) even as she engages in increasingly extreme and discomfiting forms of these practices herself. Audiences recognize that channeling Ilana gives Abbi more of a voice, but they also see how it enables her to blow off the communal responsibility of cleaning. Our discomfort with the scene is exacerbated by Abbi’s whiteness. She wears Ilana’s clothes and styles her hair in an imitation of Ilana’s bushy pigtails, but the effect is different; she reads more white-­girl adorkable than hip-­hop cool. The scene thus makes her rejection of the labor of cleaning bathrooms seem like a more explicit form of white privilege. Indeed, the co-­op where Abbi impersonates Ilana is perhaps the most the­ atrically white space on Broad City—­full of hipsters in flannel shirts discuss­ ing how much they love Phish. While the show is clearly satirizing this space, it also makes clear Abbi and Ilana’s commitment to it. Once the broads’ de­ ception is exposed, co-­op manager Lori (Melissa Leo) berates them in a makeshift interrogation room in the supply closet: “I know your type. You act and you think like you’re all eco-­conscious. But I see you with your iced coffees and your food to go,” she fulminates, calling the girls out on their hypocrisy. They want the literal fruits of organic co-­op life without the commitment to collective work it demands. Lori snaps Polaroid pictures of Abbi and Ilana and slaps them up on the wall like mug shots; there they join other co-­op trai-

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tors (all of them also white) who are banned from access to organic produce. “You two are going to be eating vending machine food and bodega veggies for the rest of your very short lives,” Lori crows. Ilana visibly shudders at this mention of “bodega veggies,” putting the lie to the “Latina” earrings she so often sports. While Ilana craves the cultural cachet and presumed liberation of nonwhite identity, this scene has exposed her actual tastes as decidedly genteel, leaving her recoiling in horror at a future full of the vending machines and bodegas of an ungentrified Brooklyn. The tensions of Brooklyn’s multi-­ethnic makeup are also the subtext of this episode’s Ilana-­and-­Lincoln subplot, which features Lincoln driving Ilana to the pediatrician’s office for her third HPV shot. In typical nurturing style, Lincoln has brought Ilana a basket of comforting snacks, weed, and a photo­ graph of himself as a child, but he is noticeably anxious during their ride. After the doctor’s visit, he and Ilana sit in his Prius, parked in front of the Bethel Seventh-­ Day Adventist Church in Brooklyn’s Bedford-­ Stuyvesant neighborhood, where he confesses that he has hooked up with someone else. Ilana erupts at this news, pacing outside the car and shouting obscenities. She knocks over a bicycle chained to the fence and rips flowers out of the landscaped lawn in front of the church. When Ilana escalates to stomping on the hood of his Prius, Lincoln dials 911 on his phone, but before he places the call, Ilana shouts, “That is so fucking hot!” in triumph. “Couldn’t read that reaction for a while,” Lincoln says with evident relief when it becomes clear to him (and us) that Ilana is displaying excitement, not anger. The scene has a pleasing feminist edge to it; one cannot but admire a woman so divorced from bourgeois convention that she is turned on, rather than rageful, at her partner’s romantic transgressions. But this moment is tinged with the troubling racial dynamic that autho­ rizes Ilana’s outburst. She can flail, scream, get in Lincoln’s face, destroy property outside a Black church, and jump up and down on the hood of his car, while he must sit, immobilized behind the steering wheel, a disturbing reminder of the way that the bodily freedom the show imagines for Ilana and Abbi cannot exist for a Black man in America. (Viewers are only too aware that were Lincoln to actually place the call to 911, he, rather than Ilana, would likely be the subject of police inquiry.) At the crescendo of Ilana’s rant, the camera cuts to a long shot of the car with Ilana atop it, the church and a large sign reading “Bethel SDA School: Open for Learning” visible behind her (fig. 6.3). This image of Ilana standing on the hood of the car, one arm raised in victory, the other clamped firmly on her crotch, is Broad City’s visual representation of what freedom from convention looks like for women. But the image also foregrounds the ways her rejection of these norms depends on her

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f i g u r e 6.3. Ilana Glazer as Ilana Wexler on Broad City, season 3, episode 2, “Co-­Op,” 2016.

whiteness and the subordinating of Black people and Black institutions to a background position. As the only regularly recurring African American character on the show, Lincoln simultaneously enables Ilana’s madcap adventures and serves as an anchor to a world a bit less “wonderful” than the one the broads inhabit, where transgression has consequences and freedom has costs. Their relationship, which the show depicts as genuine and affectionate, nevertheless puts Lincoln in the position of facilitator for Ilana’s fantasies instead of fully realized partner. Ilana declares, “We are open sex-­friends; we are poly; we are bi,” labeling herself and Lincoln “a modern-­day Will and Jada.” But Lincoln points out that he is “not bi” (indeed, he clearly wants a monogamous relationship with Ilana, his support of her multiple HPV vaccinations notwithstanding), and Jada Pinkett Smith has often spoken publicly of the importance of the intact Black family. So, in fact, the bohemian freedom from social and sexual norms that Ilana thinks her open relationship with Lincoln represents is firmly at odds with what Lincoln himself desires, and with the public persona Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith have spent years carefully cultivating. “Will and Jada” are a costume for Ilana, the actors’ actual lives and politics secondary to their utility as a pleasurable proxy for Ilana’s desired identity. And, while the show remains slyly knowing about this dynamic, no amount of woke scriptwriting or winking performances can shake the sense that the show’s cele­ bration of white female freedom depends on a sidelining of others for whom racial identity (and the surveillance that accompanies it) is less easily shorn.

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“I Don’t Even Feel Like I Was Alive before I Met You” While imaginative access to Blackness inflects the broads’ public displays of unruliness, it is not the only thing that authorizes their radical break from the norms of aspirational femininity. That work is also done by the replacement of the wider culture’s disciplinary gaze with an audience of one—­the sense that for Abbi and Ilana, their friendship is the only thing that matters. Of course, other shows, like Sex and the City and Girls, pay tribute to the bonds between women; but time and again, their leads prioritize love interests over and above female friendship. This is not the case with Broad City—­perhaps the only show on television in which young heterosexual women are utterly indifferent to the marriage plot.44 Indeed, when marriage does come up on the show, it is usually in humorous relation to Abbi and Ilana’s projected union, where both of them reject the role of wife. (Ilana to Abbi: “You’re the other husband.”)45 While viewers understand that Ilana’s insatiable and polymorphous sexuality means that she would absolutely like to sleep with Abbi, the show is not really about unrequited lesbian desire. In fact, the libidinal is only one of many registers in which Ilana worships her friend. For her part, Abbi, although generally the more reserved of the two, relies on Ilana wholly, not only for kicks but also, as we’ve seen, for confidence and a fully realized sense of self. In short, theirs is a love story in which Abbi and Ilana are everything to one another, and men occupy only a passing role. (When Abbi finally hooks up with her crush Jeremy in the second season, the two have sex, argue, and then break up, all in the course of a single episode, and despite Abbi’s initial infatuation she is utterly unfazed by the loss.)46 Kathleen Rowe has written that the “unruly woman” creates “disorder by dominating or trying to dominate men,”47 but in Broad City, men aren’t dominated so much as they’re simply ignored. This genuine disinterest in power on the part of Abbi and Ilana constitutes an important aspect of the show’s unique sensibility. The broads of Broad City do not play relationship games, do not tease their objects of interest, do not compete with other women in the romantic realm (or in the professional realm, for that matter). Indeed, Abbi and Ilana do not even have a clear power dynamic with one another. As Nick Paumgarten has written, “At first glance, Ilana is the alpha . . . and Abbi the sidekick . . . , but, in defiance of double-­act convention, Jacobson and Glazer frequently subvert these roles, big-­sis status shifting between them, or vanishing entirely, in part because, in the context of Broad City, neither aspires to it.”48 Interested only in adventure, sensual gratification, and female intimacy, Abbi and Ilana are having too much fun

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to consider their status in the world or how it compares to others their age. Channeling heteronormative culture, Lincoln often registers incredulity at Ilana’s indifference to traditional female concerns: “You ever thought about what it would be like to be in a real relationship, boyfriend and girlfriend . . . hang out with a guy who has a six-­figure income and a good job?” he asks a sleeping Ilana, knowing full well that she would spurn these conventions if awake.49 Indeed, Ilana and Abbi represent such unique specimens of womanhood that the show sometimes resorts to moments of surrealism to accommodate their sensibilities—­Abbi in a Prohibition-­era speakeasy in “Hashtag FOMO”; both girls in the postapocalyptic space of the Department of Motor Vehicles in “2016.”50 Then there’s the presence of Tree Man on the streets of the East Village in “St. Mark’s” or the “gutter monster” (as Sarah Mesle calls him51) who imbibes Ilana’s bike key in “Two Chainz” or the coven of witches who gather to celebrate the winter solstice in “Witches.”52 These are at once eccentricities of New York City and a comment on the fantastical world of Broad City, where young women without an interest in men, careers, or shopping still get to occupy center stage. Broad City tackles the question of whether this fantastical world has an expiration date in its final season, when Abbi gets accepted to an artist’s residency in Boulder, CO, and decides to leave New York. Abbi has delayed telling Ilana about the impending move, and the revelation of this secret structures the series’ final three episodes. Themes of “adulting” appear for the first time, as the girls contemplate what their lives will look like without one another. When Abbi expresses surprise at her acceptance to the residency, Ilana asserts her complete confidence in her friend: “You are the best artist in the world. Of all time!” At any point earlier in the show’s run, these words would have buoyed and comforted Abbi, but now Abbi claims the need for a recognition beyond Ilana’s: “No. I’m not. I need to go out and do this thing and have an audience that’s more than just you.”53 This raw exchange reveals what is truly noteworthy in the show’s depiction of Abbi and Ilana’s friendship—­not that they talk to one another while sitting on the toilet, but that up until this point each broad has agreed to place the other at the center of her universe. Giving this up constitutes the price they pay to enter adulthood. This kind of transition drives popular culture focused on young people, from Freaks and Geeks (NBC, 1999–­2000) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (WB and UPN, 1997–­2003) to Superbad (2007) and Booksmart (2019). But Broad City is unusually honest about what this replacement costs. “I don’t know if I know who I am without you,” Ilana tells Abbi.54 The melancholy evident in Ilana’s words (and in the concluding episodes of season 5 more generally) emerges partly out of the broads’ separation but

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also out of our knowledge that a dynamic like theirs is necessarily short-­lived. “Is it possible to have a best friendship like [Abbi and Ilana’s] in your 30s or 40s?” asks Eve Wiseman in her review of Broad City’s season finale. “One that exists still in that romantic strawberry light, intense in its intimacy, where it’s only her approval you seek and only her gaze that matters? Or is this ability to friend so hard it becomes a verb, something we lose, like puppy fat? I fear it is.”55 Wiseman’s words suggest that while female relationships may last beyond girlhood, the ferocity and exclusiveness of the bond—­signaled in the labor of the verb “to friend”—­must necessarily attenuate with time. Indeed, while the pilot episode signaled our entrance into a “wonderful world” outside female propriety and compulsory heterosexuality, the final episode of the series is obsessed with apocalypse (Abbi and Ilana agree to meet in St. Louis when it comes)—­an acknowledgment that utopias are fantasies and all good things must come to an end. It would take a cataclysmic shift, the show suggests, for Abbi and Ilana to retain the primacy of their bond, because we don’t live in a society that lets two women be each other’s person forever. They could if they were sleeping together—­our world has changed enough for that; but it hasn’t changed enough for them to be each other’s everything in the absence of a romantic bond. Broad City, unlike other female-­centered sitcoms that send their protagonists out into the world toward marriage or professional success, asks viewers to confront the pain that this acknowledgment entails.56 In addition to the loss of friendship, the show also hints that for Abbi and Ilana, adulting means embracing the aspirationalism expected of young white women. These expectations are parodied in the scene where Ilana attempts to offer Abbi support for her move to Boulder. “I’m gonna be right there with you,” Ilana assures Abbi. “I’m gonna watch you, and let you fly, or whatever.” When Ilana tries to declare that the residency is going to be a “good experience” for Abbi, she coughs and chokes down vomit on the word “experience,” and then again, more comically, on the word “growth” when she says, “I know that this experience is necessary for your growth.”57 Ilana can’t utter words like “experience” or “growth” without gagging because her unruly body rebels at speaking the lines society gives young women about adulthood, ambition, and progress. Ilana’s treatment of Boulder reinforces these themes. At the news that Abbi intends to leave New York for a small college town halfway across the country, Ilana fears for her friend’s sanity: “What the fuck are you talking about? We need to get you into therapy—­today!” When Abbi assures her that visits will be easy, with cheap connecting flights through O’Hare, Ilana screams, “O’Hare?! I don’t know what that is! Is that Gaelic?!” Ilana’s visceral disgust at a flyover-­country destination (“I have never looked up how

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to fly to Boulder. Eeewww!”) satirizes New Yorkers’ provincialism.58 But it’s also a commentary on the way hipster cities outside New York have come to represent ideal destinations to pursue jobs and family among ambitious millennials.59 In the show’s imaginary, Boulder is framed as a space beyond the hustle and dirtiness of New York City, where Abbi has battled rats and cleaned up an exorbitant amount of other people’s vomit and pubic hair. “I am thirty years old. I’m done with New York,” she tells Ilana.60 She imagines Boulder as a place where she’ll be able to focus on creative work. Yet in 2019, when this episode aired, Boulder—­with its restrictive zoning laws, legalized weed, and proximity to first-­rate skiing—­regularly appeared on lists of the most expensive places to live in the country.61 This disjuncture points to the way Boulder exists as a fantasy space where Abbi must go to free herself from abjection and aimlessness. When Ilana makes a pact with Abbi “to be our better, bolder selves,” Abbi triumphantly responds: “Boulder!” as if a mountain city in Colorado holds the key to her self-­realization.62 Horace Greeley once penned the phrase “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.” His words subsequently became a catchphrase for both manifest destiny and self-­made Amer­ ican ingenuity. (Greeley himself moved to Colorado in the 1859 Pike’s Peak Gold Rush; he lived in the city that was eventually named after him.) In following Greeley’s advice, Abbi would seem to grow up and out of the slacker abjection that has defined her life in New York. In the final scene of the series, she is shown speaking to Ilana on the phone—­Starbucks coffee in hand, her favorite “Challah Back” T-­shirt replaced by a Colorado-­chic white oxford shirt under a denim jacket. While her phone call with Ilana reassures viewers that the broads’ bond remains strong, the unruly body is nowhere to be seen. In twenty-­first-­century US popular culture, most narratives about friendship, from shows like Sex and the City and Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, 2005–­present) to films like Knocked Up (2007) and Bridesmaids (2011), posit heterosexual love and romantic commitment as the central threat to the bonds between women. Even shows that acknowledge the superiority of female friendship frame its replacement as inevitable. Sex and the City famously ends its run with Mr. Big’s pronouncement to Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte, “You’re the loves of [Carrie’s] life. And a guy would be lucky to come in fourth.”63 The bitter pill buried in this apparent celebration of female friendship is that even with his fourth-­place finish, Big still gets the prize. This gentle cynicism about the compromises of the heterosexual contract stands as an unspoken subtext of both the Judd Apatow universe and the contemporary female-­led sitcom. Broad City continues this tradition while reimagining the threat to women’s friendships. It’s not the love plot but the progress narrative that ultimately

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displaces female intimacy. Abbi leaves Ilana for an art residency, not a man, but she leaves her nonetheless. In this way, she embraces what Lee Edelman has described as the politics of futurity, in which meaning is secured through the anticipation of a stable and predictable life trajectory.64 Importantly, the emotional breach between the broads is healed with a final act of unruliness. Shortly after telling her about the art residency, Abbi grants Ilana’s longtime wish to see Abbi’s feces, FaceTiming her from the bathroom and turning her phone toward the toilet.65 The show frames Ilana’s elation over the size of Abbi’s dump in terms of both Jewish identity and the politics of abjection. “Fuck! Kween!” Ilana crows. “You must be an Ashkenazi Jew because you are lactose intolerant! No way could that have been all in your stomach at one time! It was definitely exiting your esophagus as it was entering your small intestine. Wooohoooo!”66 This boundary-­crossing description of Abbi’s excrement—­the dump that exists simultaneously in her throat and her nether regions—­speaks to the unruly body’s potential to up­ end hierarchies. And here, as throughout the series, this transgression is cause for celebration and bonding, not shame and isolation. “This means so much to me,” Ilana tells Abbi about her decision to share a visual of her feces. One would think that the moment would be played for laughs, but Ilana states her gratitude in dead earnest. After all, as Abbi reminds her, Ilana has requested to see her friend’s poop “hundreds of times . . . since the moment I met you.” In finally conceding, Abbi, despite her impending departure, affirms the terms of their friendship—­publicity, vulgarity, sharing. In her last words to Ilana before leaving New York City, Abbi says, “I don’t even feel like I was . . . alive before I met you. You . . . taught me how to do it, dude.”67 Although Broad City does not address the question of whether Abbi can take Ilana’s life-­giving gaze with her when she goes, it has given us another gift. In insisting on abjection without shame, the broads of Broad City have taught us new rules for being women and being alive.

7

The Difference That Race Makes in Insecure

The title of Insecure’s (HBO, 2016–­present) pilot—­“Insecure as F**k”—­reflects the sitcom’s governing themes. Creator and writer Issa Rae plays Issa Dee, an appealing but adrift twenty-­nine-­year-­old Black woman attempting to navigate the uncertainties of her professional life, her female friendships, and her romantic relationships. Her insecurity arises not simply from the predictable anxieties of young adulthood but also from her racial self-­presentation. “Why you talk like a white girl?” a middle-­schooler asks Issa in the first scene of the pilot, drawing shrieks of laughter from her classmates.1 Rae has described Issa as “between two worlds and . . . in a constant state of discomfort . . . not black enough for the black people and not . . . white enough for the white people.”2 Rae identifies this dislocation as formative of her own experience, having attended school first in a largely white enclave of Maryland before moving to South LA. Years later, she realized “I’m awkward. And black,”3 and this reve­ lation both grounded her sense of identity and became a catalyst for her cre­ ative endeavors. “I’d never seen . . . a lead black girl just be awkward,” Rae comments of contemporary television.4 She adds elsewhere, “So much of the media now presents blackness as being cool, or able to dance, or fierce and flawless, or just out of control; I’m not any of those things.”5 In creating Issa Dee, Rae thus gives audiences a deeply unconventional television protagonist, a Black woman who radiates unease. But if the title “Insecure as F**k” speaks to the show’s investment in insecurity, it also speaks to its engagement in excess, as do the other titles in sea­ son 1—­“Messy as F**k,” “Guilty as F**k,” “Shady as F**k,” “Thirsty as F**k,” and so on. These episode titles, like those of season 2 (“Hella Perspective,” “Hella Disrespectful,” “Hella Shook,” “Hella Great”), speak to Rae’s vision of hyperbolic lived experience, her devotion to depicting her protagonist’s emotional

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developments in their rawest, most extreme form. Over-­the-­top affect is, as we’ve seen, also characteristic of Broad City, but whereas that show celebrates transgression and the excessive feeling that accompanies it, Insecure’s episode titles speak to the problem of excess, the necessity for messiness, guilt, shadiness, and thirst to be effectively managed. Indeed, the titles of each show’s pilot—­“What a Wonderful World” and “Insecure as F**k”—­speak to their di­ vergent visions, Insecure’s distance from Broad City’s utopian sensibility. The distinction is in part a consequence of Insecure’s race-­and class-­ inflected landscape. Whereas Broad City (and Girls, for that matter) depicts young women whose primary goal is “experience” and where all other concerns (professional responsibilities, romantic commitments, etc.) are subordinated to this end, Insecure operates at a remove from this terrain, owing in no small part to the fact that the characters are Black and (at least as far as viewers can tell) have few familial resources to fall back on. Issa Dee and best friend Molly Carter (Yvonne Orji) must negotiate their desires while they hold down jobs—­in one particularly telling moment, Issa, visiting Molly in her office, asks, “Oh, you gotta work?” to which Molly responds, “Yes, bitch, I’m a real-­ass lawyer.”6 Unlike in Broad City, there is no leaving work in the middle of the day to smoke a bowl for these women. Similarly, although the show positions their friendship as primary, long-­term romantic relationships (tending toward marriage and family) are always a subtext—­in one dream sequence in season 2, Issa imagines herself married, pregnant, and with a small child, a wistful fantasy that Broad City would have only played for laughs. In other words, Insecure’s female antiheroes—­confused and prone to bad decision-­ making though they may be—­are not nearly as anti-­aspirational as their white counterparts. They crave fulfilling remunerative work and mutually respectful romantic unions. They do not bask in shame or court failure for its experiential or narrative value, as Hannah Horvath or Abbi and Ilana might. The differences here are rooted in the specificity of African American history, as Rebecca Wanzo has pointed out in her thoughtful comparison of Lena Dunham’s Girls and Rae’s 2011–­2013 web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. “Western black subjects . . . have a different relation to abjection,” Wanzo writes. “Since black subjects arguably have emerged from abjection, reframing the affective response to that history and taking away some of that history’s power to wound has been the work of many black cultural producers, including Rae.”7 Wanzo argues that Rae creatively plays with the concept of Black abjection in her web series, redefining it as awkwardness and thereby divorcing it from a history of white supremacy. While Wanzo captures an im­ portant strain of Rae’s vision, our analysis is concerned with the lingering ef­ fects of white supremacy in Rae’s fictional worlds, the way that knowledge of

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structural racism continually curtails Issa Dee’s forays into excess. In contrast to Broad City, where Abbi and Ilana consistently transgress the boundaries separating private and public with no ill consequence, Insecure reinforces the necessity of the public/private divide in the lives of African American women. In this way it suggests that even amidst the joy of Black community and cultural expression, the politics of respectability can never be completely elided.8 “It Us!” When Insecure first aired, the internet hailed Rae as “the black Lena Dunham,” a comparison she was quick to disavow. “That’s the dumbest and laziest thing to do. It’s insulting to me and to her, especially to her. We’re not telling the same stories. Yeah, we’re both young women on HBO, but . . . I wish I could think of men on HBO—­they don’t do that shit with them.”9 Other comparisons soon followed: Insecure was “the black, millennial Sex and the City” or a racially updated Curb Your Enthusiasm.10 The trend showcases a paucity of imagination when it comes to thinking about emergent programming on tele­ vision, a reliance on familiar narratives for understanding and categorizing the new. (“I’m not offended by it,” Rae has said of the comparison of her show to other millennial fare. “That’s just how people need to describe it for themselves. They’ll learn soon.”)11 But it also highlights prestige television’s racial bias, the extent to which programming by white auteurs has been imagined as the point of origin for any material worthy of recognition.12 In reality, Rae’s work emerges from a complex nexus of influence. In her 2016 memoir titled The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, she describes being drawn to the cringe comedy of the 2000s (Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office, 30 Rock), but also to what’s sometimes called the golden age of Black television—­that period in the 1990s when networks were producing a rich array of programming about African American life in shows like Living Single (Fox, 1993–­1998), Moesha (UPN, 1996–­2001), The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (NBC, 1990–­1996), Martin (Fox, 1992–­1997), Family Matters (ABC, 1989–­1997), Sister, Sister (ABC, 1994–­1995; WB, 1995–­1999), and In Living Color (Fox, 1990–­ 1994). Rae grew up with these shows and found them deeply impactful. “Nineties television produced a plethora of images of people of color,” she writes. “It was encouraging. Back in the nineties, we were relatable.” But this period didn’t last long. “Somewhere along the line, we became unrelatable and invisible to the Hollywood system. Our images and diverse portrayals just weren’t worth the dollars and effort anymore. The images I had grown up with and grown so accustomed to seeing slowly disappeared.”13 Television scholars have attributed these transformations to networks like Fox and the WB moving

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away from niche programming in an effort to capture a larger swath of the market.14 The result was the disappearance of complex Black characters and their replacement by stereotypes, what Rae calls “the trashy, raunchy depictions of women of color we see in shows today, like Basketball Wives and Love & Hip Hop.”15 Rae describes the sense of betrayal that this new programming brought: “I grew angry, resentful, and impatient. How hard is it to portray a three-­dimensional woman of color on television or in film? I’m surrounded by them. They’re my friends. I talk to them every day. How come Hollywood won’t acknowledge us? Are we a joke to them?”16 Rae’s first major creative undertaking—­also titled The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl—­was a pointed rebuke to this mentality.17 A web series devoted to the professional and personal adventures of a young woman named J, Awkward Black Girl gave viewers a Black protagonist who was keenly observant, self-­critical, funny, and, yes, occasionally awkward. J’s failure to project Black coolness—­the fact that she’s shy, bookish, and cannot dance—­made her different, even exceptional, in media representations of Blackness. She exceeds attempts to pin her down; she’s more capacious than any one stereotype about Black womanhood. As Rae has stated in response to an interviewer’s question about whether she’s drawn to depicting “blerds” (Black nerds) on television: “[I’m more interested in] the quirk that African Americans were not allowed to have on-­screen. You were either the extreme pretty girl or the nerd; there was no in-­between. I was interested in the in-­between.”18 The web series garnered a cult following and ultimately led to an invitation from HBO for Rae to expand her vision. Insecure continues Rae’s project of presenting slice-­of-­life Black reality, sans extremes and stereotypes. In one reviewer’s words, “There’s no fantastical, melodramatic peg. Instead, it feels like an honest, contemporary reflection, warts and all. . . . . Rae [has] integrated the elements of young, modern black life seamlessly into television in a way that speaks to the audience that’s stuck with her since the Awkward Black Girl days, allowing it to proclaim, ‘It us!’ ”19 This sense of recognition—­“It us!”—­is a key part of what drives Rae’s creative vision. In interviews she has stated that Insecure is “not for dudes. It’s not for white people. It’s the show that I imagined for my family and friends. That’s what I think of when I’m writing the scenes.”20 Rae’s desire to create programming for her community accounts for the insider sensibility of Insecure, the way it keeps its non-­intended (white) audience at bay through coded jokes, Black Twitter references, and a freestyle rap soundtrack. (“We have a Drake lyric in every episode as an Easter egg,” says Rae about season 1.)21 This builds intimacy with Black viewers, who often don’t recognize themselves in mainstream programming, as well as a sense of raucous joy. Notes Alexis Okeowo

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of the New Yorker, “Much like the best shows and films of [2017] that featured mostly black casts, such as Atlanta, Insecure doesn’t go out of its way to translate the specificity of the world it portrays, and this defiance can be gloriously funny.”22 It’s worth pointing out that the space of liberation and laughter shared by Issa and her friends on the show is a good distance from the “Black Girl Magic” that is sometimes linked with independent Black women. Coined by CaShawn Thompson in 2013, the term “Black Girl Magic” celebrates Black women’s achievements in a racist and sexist world.23 It is often used in reference to celebrities like Beyoncé, Ava DuVernay, and Michelle Obama to convey a sense of fortitude and excellence, meant to inspire young Black women and to counter the negativity often associated with Black female stereotypes. But part of what makes Issa Dee an antihero is her resistance to being framed as a paragon. Often adrift in her professional and romantic endeavors, Issa does not revel in humiliation, but nor does she transcend it through being “carefree,” “fun and sparkly.”24 What Rae gives audiences, then, is not so much Black Girl Magic as unremitting Black girl humanity, something that she’s identified as sorely lacking in mainstream television programming.25 At the same time Rae is producing authentic new content for Black viewers, however, she’s also aware that the audience for Insecure is not something she can control, and that in working for HBO she must accommodate a network largely run by white executives.26 (The name Home Box Office begs the question, whose home?) Thus, even as Rae writes with her friends and family in mind, she’s careful to make her storylines accessible to all. Kristin Warner refers to Rae’s strategy as “bifurcated” messaging—­“generating audience comfort through the split lens of universality and cultural specificity.”27 Rae herself invokes the Du Boisian notion of “double consciousness” in accounting not only for Issa Dee’s sensibility on the show but also for her own experience as a Black artist producing content for a powerful white network. (“You’re always wondering: ‘How do they see what I am writing?’ ‘Are they laughing at this specific joke for this particular reason?’ ”)28 Because of this complex interplay of forces, the show often feels like it’s engaged in meta-­ commentary. Issa Dee’s discomfort with her work colleagues’ expectations that she speak for the Black community (“they think I’m the token with all the answers”29) comes across as a statement on Rae’s own discomfort with being one of the few Black writers creating content about Black American life. (“I want people to recognize who they see on screen, but I didn’t set out to be like, ‘I want to tell the black female millennial story, and I want to be the voice of that’—­because that’s impossible to do.”)30 Similarly, as we will discuss in the next section, Issa Dee’s experiences as a would-­be rapper in season 1 work as a

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metaphor for Rae’s own struggles as a Black artist. In short, the diegetic world of Insecure is deeply interwoven with the world of its writing and production. One of the most interesting places in which this meta-­commentary occurs is in the many references to watching television that the series provides. Insecure hosts a large array of supporting characters who engage in TV view­ ership, from Tasha (DomiNque Perry), who shrieks, “Ooh, ooh, ooh, TGIT! Get it Viola!”31 (a reference to ABC’s Thursday night lineup, which includes How to Get Away with Murder starring Viola Davis), to Issa’s stoner hookup Eddie (Leon Thomas III), who likes to watch Gossip Girl (“It’s good to see [white people] doing their thing”32). Beyond these general references to diegetic spectatorship, Insecure contains multiple scenes of a show within a show, creating a mise en abyme effect that comments subtly on Black television programming. In season 1, the show depicted is Conjugal Visits, a reality series about Black women in prison. Given that the US system of mass incarceration disproportionately targets people of color, scenes of Conjugal Visits at once nod to this reality while also remaking it as comedy for the en­ tertainment of Black audiences. Season 2 of Insecure takes this conceit even further, creating a show within a show called Due North, a television drama set in the antebellum South about a love affair between a Black female slave and her white master. Insecure’s showrunner, Prentice Penny, has described Due North as “if Underground met Scandal,” and, in a nod to this, the series stars Regina Hall (whose credits include Girls Trip) and Scott Foley (who plays Olivia Pope’s white lover in the ABC drama Scandal). The show is an over-­the-­top depiction of illicit interracial romance with lines like “You may only be three-­fifths of a person, but you are all woman.”33 Like Conjugal Visits, Due North at once gestures to the exploitation of Black people in America and rewrites this treatment to comic effect, transforming pain into art (in the blues tradition) and giving African Americans a sense of ownership over their history. But perhaps most significant is the way interior shows like Due North comment on Black identity and audience community. Justin Simien, the creator of Dear White People (Netflix, 2017–­present), which also contains a show within a show, has said of the conceit: I couldn’t think of anything Blacker than a bunch of Black millennials sitting around watching something like Scandal or How to Get Away with Murder. Watching shows like that with Black folks is a whole different experience—­we sometimes even define our Blackness based on the shows we watch and don’t watch. I wanted to jab at my people a little bit and make fun of how extra we can be when we’re watching TV. So we thought it would be fun to invent an

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over-­the-­top version of those kind of network dramas that keep everyone on the edge of their seat.34

These comments speak to what Beretta Smith-­Shomade calls “the centrality of television as a cultural barometer in the lives of Black folks.”35 Television, according to this logic, is deeply meaningful as an experience that both reflects and constitutes Blackness. In watching shows like Scandal or How to Get Away with Murder, Black audiences see powerful Black characters on the screen and feel themselves validated and recognized. They join in an “imagined community” of other Black spectators—­even if they do not know these viewers personally—­and this creates a sense of racial and national belonging.36 Much the same can be said of the characters on Insecure as they watch Conjugal Visits, Due North and, in season 3, the Living Single/Martin parody Kev’yn. While Issa and her friends acknowledge the absurdity of these shows, they are also deeply drawn in. Following them is a significant part of how they establish community both with their immediate network and with an imagined association of others. In this way, Insecure’s characters create a sense of affirmation, bonding, and ownership in relation to a medium that has historically underrepresented their experience. “We Are in Mixed Company” Even as Insecure opens up a space for Black expression and fellowship, however, it is always aware of the wider politics of surveillance in which it operates. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the “broken pussy” storyline, which occupies much of the first season and which comments in important ways on the perils of Black artistry. The plot begins in the pilot, when Molly, sharing a birthday dinner with Issa, complains that she can’t do anything right when it comes to men. “If I’m into them, then I’m too smothering. If I take my time or try to give them space: ‘Oh, I didn’t think you were into me.’ Sex right away: lose interest. Wait to have sex: lose interest. If I don’t have sex at all—­motherfucker, no! I’m a grown-­ass woman. I did not sign up for that bullshit.” Issa, half serious, half in jest, concludes, “I think your pussy’s broken.”37 This conversation, taking place at an Ethiopian restaurant, highlights the freedom the two women feel when sequestered in a comfortable setting. Even when talking about Molly’s romantic problems, there’s a joie de vivre to their interaction, a playful exuberance and genuine appreciation of one an­ other’s company. This sense of liberation is not absolute, of course. The public setting means that Issa and Molly are aware of the patrons sitting around

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them, some of whom shoot the two curious looks when Issa screams, “That’s it, that’s your pussy,” in response to Molly performing a “sad Marge Simpson groan.” But, to the extent that the Ethiopian restaurant offers them a racially diverse and relatively secluded realm in which to talk to one another, it abets their experience of joy, comfort, and freedom. This dynamic shifts, however, as the plot progresses, and the “broken pussy” joke begins to circulate into ever-­wider spheres. The first move outward occurs later in the pilot when Issa, at a nightclub with Molly, runs into Daniel King (Y’lan Noel), a former flame who reminds Issa that she used to rap in high school and who dares her to deliver at the open mic. She hesitantly consents, performing a rap that expands and publicizes the content of her private conversation with Molly: Maybe it’s dry as hell; maybe it really smells; broken pussy. Maybe it’s really rough; maybe it’s had enough; broken pussy. Nobody wants you ’cause you got a broken pussy. Nobody wants you ’cause you got a broken pussy.

Issa’s rap importantly highlights female insecurity. Unlike the bravado rhymes she performs in front of her bathroom mirror (about which more soon), this rap centers on failure and, in particular, the failure to live up to the standards of conventional womanhood. The “broken pussy” is the pussy that has breached the bounds of respectability (it smells, it’s rough) or that refuses compliance (it’s had enough). The imagined consequence of this failure of womanhood is utter rejection (“Nobody wants you ’cause you got a broken pussy”). Appearing in the first episode of the series, Issa’s rap is crucial for establishing the contours of the female antihero as envisioned by Rae—­the Black woman crooning about deficiency and abjection, willing to transmute female insecurity into a source of amusement and art.38 Of course, the pussy that Issa raps about is not her own but Molly’s, and this complicates the buoyancy and good humor of the scene. Indeed, the “broken pussy” rap is crucial in establishing the lengths Issa will go both to feed her creative ambitions (she works at a nonprofit but yearns for more stim­ ulating employment) and to impress a man (in this case, her longtime crush, Daniel). She fails to consider the collateral damage her actions can cause, which bewilders her best friend. “Is my life a joke to you?” an enraged Molly asks her. “It’s bad enough that I got to deal with real trifling niggas . . . on a daily basis. Now I got to worry about dealing with a trifling best friend?” Molly and Issa’s relationship is supposed to be a world apart, safe from the scrutiny they face from both men and a larger racist culture. But, in violating

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Molly’s trust to pursue her own artistic and romantic interests, Issa moves their relationship outside the intimate world of the Ethiopian restaurant and exposes it to the laughter and hostility of a larger public sphere. Although the two eventually make up, the damage wrought by the “broken pussy” rap continues in episode 4, when Issa learns that someone has made a video of her performance and posted it to YouTube.39 Worse still, it’s been seen by the middle-­schoolers with whom she works, and they no longer seem to take her seriously. The revelation is demonstrative of the double standard faced by women in the music industry, as Sam Wolfson has observed.40 When Daniel King comes to speak to Issa’s middle-­schoolers about his work as a rap producer, his credibility and cool quotient skyrocket. But when Issa is uncovered as someone who used to “spit” back in the day, her status both as worker and as woman is immediately compromised. The kids are less impressed than mocking (admittedly, she’s rapping about broken pussies rather than powerful dicks), and they laugh uproariously at her attempts to get them to refocus. She’s deeply embarrassed, but worse than that, she fears losing her job. “If it gets back to my boss, who the fuck knows what she’s gonna do,” a des­ perate Issa tells Molly.41 The sequence indicates the danger to the Black woman when her private interactions find their way to larger audiences, finally threatening to enter the white-­controlled workplace. The shame and instability that result from this transgression are figured in terms of sexual violation—­the show treats the posting of Issa’s song as a cross between a sexting scandal and a sexual assault. “This video was recorded without my knowledge or my consent,” Issa tells Molly. “It’s basically rap rape.” Molly, rejecting the analogy, counters, “Well, technically it was my pussy [you were singing about]. So if anybody’s gonna blow the rap rape whistle, it would be me.”42 The fact that a rogue rap video can create this level of anxiety indicates the costs to these women of crossing the public/private divide, as well as the extent to which Black forms of culture like rap are figured as damaging when they enter spaces either reserved for children (i.e., the middle school) or controlled by whites (Issa’s job). As a pri­ vate conversation between Molly and Issa, “broken pussy” brings recognition, bonding, and laughter, but as a rap available for wider consumption, it is a cautionary tale about what happens when Black women fail to check their speech and ambitions. Issa is fully aware of this dynamic. “Why’d I have to go up on that stage?” she asks herself when she finds out about the YouTube video. “This is why I don’t do shit; this isn’t me.”43 As someone who has spent much of her postcollegiate life honing a professional persona, she can only view her lapse in judgment with irritation. It’s not so much that Issa usually practices repression.

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Indeed, we often see her exhibiting an ebullient and irreverent garrulousness. It’s that she has learned to modulate her speech and behavior based on her surroundings. In one of the first scenes of the pilot, we see Issa at work—­the only Black person at a nonprofit or, as she puts it, “the token with all the answers.” When a coworker asks her to define “on fleek,” she answers politely, “I don’t know what that means,” before her voiceover boasts, “I know what that shit means; but being aggressively passive is what I do best.”44 In this way, she establishes herself as the quintessential code-­switcher—­able to model middle-­class professional decorum in front of her mostly white coworkers and to inhabit a space of liberated Black speech when she’s with friends or alone in front of the camera. While she describes the former stance as “aggressively passive,” viewers recognize that it constitutes the only way she can retain both her self-­respect and her job. In deciding to rap about Molly’s broken pussy in front of an anonymous crowd, however, Issa has momentarily thrown her calibrated code-­switching to the wind. Or, more accurately, she has failed to realize that even Black spaces like the open-­mic nightclub are never fully protected from a larger disciplinary apparatus. Issa’s mortification around the incident is intensified by the fact that it is usually she who schools others on the importance of modulating one’s voice based on audience. On a bus with Black middle-­schoolers headed to the beach in episode 3, for example, she observes their rowdiness anxiously before speaking up to remind them of their surroundings. “I know it’s hot . . . and we’re stuck in traffic,” she tells the kids, “but I need you to remember that we are not home right now, OK?” “We are in mixed company,” she adds, stressing this phrase and glancing over at her white coworkers.45 The kids largely ignore her advice, and although there are no immediate ramifications for them, a parallel plot in the same episode indicates the wisdom of Issa’s counsel. This second plot features Molly in her law office, a setting far more financially con­ sequential than the nonprofit school bus. Observing that the new Black intern, Rasheeda (Gail Bean), can be a bit “extra” while on the job, Molly reminds her that she, too, is not at home right now (“Girl, you know how these white people are”) and encourages her to “switch it up a little bit.” Much like the kids on the bus, Rasheeda rejects Molly’s counsel—­“I didn’t switch it up in my interview with the senior partners, and I didn’t switch it up when I was named editor of the law review, so I don’t think I need to switch it up now”—­ but with far more dire consequences.46 By the end of episode 4, we see Rasheeda in a glass room surrounded by the senior partners (three white men and one white woman), whose sober looks of disapproval suggest that failure to code-­switch may well cost Rasheeda her job. The message is clear: the middle-­schoolers on Issa’s bus are still too young, insignificant, and removed

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f i g u r e 7.1. Law office: Insecure, season 1, episode 3, “Racist as F**k,” 2016.

from the centers of power for their failure to code-­switch to matter. But if, like Rasheeda, they eventually hope to make it in the white-­controlled corporate world, they can’t afford to indulge in being “extra”—­behavior that a sitcom like Broad City highlights as the birthright of millennial white woman. The glass walls that encase Rasheeda and Molly’s law offices in these episodes are a reminder of the oversight experienced by African Americans in the workplace (fig. 7.1). They form a striking contrast to the privacy afforded whites at work, even at a struggling nonprofit like the one that employs Issa. As Molly worries about Rasheeda’s public reception in episode 3, Issa learns that her colleagues have been talking about her behind her back or, in her words, “They’re having secret white meetings, and they’re sending secret white emails.”47 Issa is not blameless in this storyline—­she tanked a presentation by not properly preparing for it, and her coworkers’ lack of respect is partly a consequence of this—­but the episode nonetheless captures the contrast between the surreptitious dealings of the white majority and the exposure of Black women like Rasheeda in the workplace: they can have “secret white meetings”; she will always be seen and heard. This commentary is reinforced by a curious addition in this episode—­ the momentary inclusion of black-­and-­white security footage. Right after Issa is shown on the bus with the middle-­schoolers, the setting switches and we see Issa’s boyfriend Lawrence (Jay Ellis) outside the Broadway Federal Credit Union. The bank’s glass façade hearkens back to Molly’s law office, reminding us of the panoptic transparency associated with powerful financial institutions. As Lawrence enters to cash an unemployment check, the perspective

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changes to that of the security camera, which offers a panoramic black-­and-­ white overview of the bank (fig. 7.2). The viewer can see the words “Cam 3” inscribed in the upper left (implying the presence of cameras 1 and 2) as well as the exact time on the lower left and a tracking number on the lower right showing continuous video recording. The security footage is only inserted for a few seconds, but in the context of episode 3—­with its emphasis on expo­ sure—­it suggests the omnipresence of surveillance in the lives of Black Angelinos, including those, like Lawrence, who are temporarily unemployed or otherwise down on their luck. The show’s title, “Insecure,” is primarily a gesture toward Issa Dee’s awkwardness; but occasionally, as in this video footage, it takes on an ominous secondary meaning, offering a subtle commentary on the experience of African Americans in the US security state. It’s difficult not to read these themes of exposure, circulation, and surveillance in Insecure as oblique commentaries on the writing and circulation of the show itself. Issa’s forays into rap and her anxiety as her creation is exposed to ever wider publics can be seen as a meta-­commentary on Rae’s status as an artist, creating content for a Black community but aware of its wider distribution. Similarly, Issa’s reminder to the Black middle-­schoolers on the bus that they’re “not home right now” comments offhandedly on Rae’s position as a writer producing material for Home Box Office, where she, too, may feel not completely at “home.” Even the glass buildings encasing wealthy corporations and the shots of surveillance footage in Lawrence’s bank function as reminders of the powerful white players at HBO (themselves encased in glass towers) who are watching Insecure. These meta moments (whether unconscious

f i g u r e 7.2. Bank surveillance: Insecure, season 1, episode 3, “Racist as F**k,” 2016.

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inclusions or sly knowing nods) seem especially significant given Insecure’s subject matter—­its focus on Black women who are not paragons of respectability, who screw up in both their personal and professional lives. Creating a Black female antihero is risky, and in bringing flawed womanhood to the small screen, Rae knows she may alienate audiences. (The meta version of Issa’s rap might be: “Nobody wants you when you write about broken pussy.”) Thus, even as shots of Issa and her friends watching Due North model the delight with which some audiences will respond to Insecure, other moments of meta-­commentary, like those discussed above, showcase the anxiety of an artist unable to fully control the reception of her work. “Bow the Fuck Down” We have been arguing that Insecure stages a deep awareness of race-­based surveillance and its ability to curtail women’s freedom in the public sphere. But this dynamic is somewhat complicated by the fact that the show also depicts its protagonists as middle class and upwardly mobile. Molly may have grown up as a “hood rat,”48 never having visited the beach until college, but now she’s a “bougie bitch”49 (as Issa calls her) with a six-­figure salary. Lawrence scorns low-­end tech jobs, aspiring instead to develop an app, and his rebound lover, Tasha, works at a bank and tries to improve her diet by eating kale (albeit spiced up with hot sauce, Beyoncé-­style). Perhaps most telling of the show’s bourgeois sensibility is the reaction of Insecure’s central characters to Jared (Langston Kerman), Molly’s season 1 love interest who works at Enterprise and whom Issa condescendingly calls “Rent-­a-­boo.” When Jared reveals that he never went to college, Molly’s friends find it difficult to maintain their composure (“That’s what’s up,” they remark under their breath to one another).50 As much as Issa may feel herself to be a pariah at work, her outsider status as the token Black employee is perhaps no more consequential than Jared’s noncollegiate standing among Molly’s friends. Issa herself, while more financially insecure than others on the show, is likewise depicted as having a solidly bourgeois sensibility: she already loves kale (as Lawrence tells Tasha), and she’s as much at home in a swanky Malibu rental as she is in the ungentrified Inglewood apartment she shares with Lawrence. All this is to say that Issa’s comfort in middle-­class respectability is not simply a pose she puts on at work to thwart white censure; it’s also the position she and her friends feel most comfortable occupying. For this reason, Issa’s forays outside bourgeois decorum are significant as moments of both resistance and redefinition. The “broken pussy” rap delivered at the open mic is one such moment, and in its wake, Issa feels that she

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has created herself anew. “I became someone else up there. It was like brave me; it was no-­fucks me, and I wanna be that person,” she tells Molly following her performance. “I just want to not be scared to do shit anymore.”51 While the broken pussy episode constitutes the one time Issa takes her self-­creation public, she can often be found acting out this “no-­fucks” style alone, in front of the bathroom mirror. For example, at one point in the pilot Issa experiments with different shades of lipstick (fire-­truck red, deep fuchsia, cognac brown) while trying on various expressions with which to seduce Daniel: “Hi, I’m sexy; Let’s get out of here . . . I don’t make love, I fuck; you want some of this pussy pot pie? . . . Hey, tiger.”52 While here the emphasis is on wanton lust and sexual availability, more often her mirror episodes manifest as raps showcasing an explicit desire for domination. In episode 3, for example, Issa directs one such rap against her work nemesis, Sarah (Sujata Day), a light-­skinned brown woman who criticizes Issa’s idea of a beach trip for the middle-­schoolers and later texts behind her back on the drive there. When Sarah tries to reconcile with her later, Issa will have none of it. Returning to her identity as “mirror bitch,” she raps in the bathroom: Beach, you ain’ my friend just ’cause you brown; Oh, shit went well, so now you wanna be down? I overheard your ass on the bus trying to clown; Get the fuck outta here or bow the fuck down!53

This injunction to “bow the fuck down”—­to worship at the feet of Issa Dee—­ constitutes a powerful narcissistic fantasy that Issa only enacts when no one else is present and that endows her with a sense of ascendency. When Lawrence looks into the bathroom mirror—­as he sometimes does when practicing for job interviews—­he confronts a realistic version of himself. But when Issa looks into the same domestic space, she sees herself in all her would-­be glory—­audacious, sexually desirable, and unforgiving. “Is you Khaleesi or that other bitch whose name I don’t remember?” she asks her mirror image in episode 2, daring herself to identify with one of the two queens that dominate Game of Thrones.54 This badass version of herself, however, is rarely allowed to go public. “It’s too aggressive,” she concludes in the pilot episode, wiping off the last lipstick variation and putting on some clear gloss in its place before leaving her apartment.55 This dynamic is highlighted repeatedly throughout the first season. In public, Issa will maintain the front of sedate respectability; but alone in front of the bathroom mirror (often in rhyme), she will be the self she yearns to be in everyday life. This self is not only explicitly sexual but also unapologetically Black, adopting the verbal dexterity and “animatedness” that Sianne

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Ngai identifies as characteristic of media representations of African Americans.56 She curses, she yells, she celebrates, she dances. In these private moments, Issa resembles Ilana Wexler of Broad City, a character who doesn’t need to act out different personae in different spheres, since her tendency to be “extra” is on display regardless of the space she occupies. The fact that Issa can only adopt Ilana’s style of bravado when alone in her own bathroom is a sign of Insecure’s commitment to presenting the very real constraints that attend African American female experience. Broad City pretends Ilana is Black; Insecure never lets Issa forget that she is. Indeed, in the few instances that Issa publicly embraces the self that she cultivates in front of the mirror, things end badly. Her broken pussy rap is the most obvious example of this, but also telling is her decision to blow off her work presentation. “I am about to just wing this shit, no-­fucks style, and these white people—­they’re not even gonna know the difference,” she tells Molly about the work presentation she’s slated to give in episode 2.57 Molly, who’s had more consistent exposure to powerful whites in the workplace, replies tellingly, “You’re so stupid,” and indeed, Issa ends up paying for this decision. As she tells Lawrence later, “I made one mistake during my presentation, and they lost all faith in me. Now I’m the black girl who fucked up. And white people at my job fuck up all the time. . . . So fucking unfair.”58 Lawrence, like Molly, a realist, familiar with on-­the-­job racism, responds, “I know, but hey, you just gotta work extra hard to prove them wrong.” His statement echoes Rowan Pope’s advice to his daughter Olivia on Scandal—­“You’ve got to be twice as good.” It also invokes the words of Prentice Penny, Insecure’s showrunner who has offered advice to Rae and other African Americans trying to make it in Hollywood: “Make sure you’re professional, and your stuff is tight. Have it together. You can’t ever look like you are not on your game.”59 Within the context of Insecure’s storyline, then, the message is this: Issa can take up her “no-­fucks” style in her fantasy life, but transferring this to the everyday world has disastrous consequences. In fact, by the end of the season she has learned the error of her ways on this front: “I realize I had it all wrong. . . . I don’t need to be Miss No-­Fucks. I’m now Miss Give-­All-­the-­Fucks,” a contrite Issa tells Molly in episode 7.60 Still, Issa’s raps constitute a crucial aspect of her fantasy world, given that so much of her everyday life demands compromise. It’s not simply that her coworkers are petty and entitled; the entire organization for which she works is deeply racist. Named “We Got Y’all,” the nonprofit was created to provide emotional and academic support to low-­income kids, but it mostly trades in condescension and cultural appropriation. Its logo consists of a large white hand cupping three diminutive Black children (fig. 7.3), and its promotional

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f i g u r e 7.3. We Got Y’all logo.

material—­including a faux website created by the Insecure writers—­uses the cliched metaphor of urban kids as seedlings, envisioning that “like the rose that grew from the concrete, these underserved youths will flourish in their communities and beyond.”61 Issa recognizes the racism of her workplace but is powerless to do anything about it. Her home life is similarly bleak (at least as it’s presented at the start of season 1); she lives with her boyfriend, but the spark seems to have gone out of their relationship, and she feels she is settling for less. “How different would my life be if I actually went after what I wanted?” Issa asks herself, while contemplating Daniel King’s Facebook page in the pilot, her lackluster boyfriend asleep in the background.62 Even when she recommits to Lawrence halfway through the season, Issa can’t escape the sense that her life with him is compromised—­the awkward scene of shower sex in episode 4 is a brutal reminder of this. When rapping, however, Issa exits the constraints of her everyday existence, both its banality and its demands for compliance. Rapping offers her a sense of empowerment as well as a creative outlet, a way of reinventing herself outside the expectations of domes­ ticity and bourgeois professionalism. We see this especially the night she hooks up with Daniel. The seduction is only partly about Daniel’s captivating good looks. It’s also about the opportunity he offers her to flex her creative muscle in a space far removed from middle-­class respectability. (When the two arrive at his studio, Daniel’s associates are smoking weed, drinking, and recording hip-­hop.) Alone in his studio later, Daniel again reminds Issa of her rapping days in high school. “Get in the booth,” he encourages her, “show me what you got.” When Issa

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acquiesces, she sings this time not about Molly’s broken pussy but of her own complex identity: LA girl, but not the way you know it Model make a minimum, body from New Orleans Chucks on my feet, though I ain’t throwing my Crip up I got LAPD tendencies, I might just take your nigga Inglewood attitude with View Park vibes I rep my city like it’s my 9:00 to 5:00 I love where I’m from, I’ll never let it go I’m winning for my hood like that purple and that yellow.63

The first line—­“LA girl, but not the way you know it”—­establishes Issa as a breed apart, someone not easily defined by the usual clichés of southern California. She lives in model-­rich LA, but her own zaftig body is straight out of Louisiana; she wears Chuck Taylor shoes but she doesn’t back the Crips; she’s got Inglewood attitude but she also boasts of her connection to sophistication and affluence (View Park is known as the Black Beverly Hills). The rap thus captures Issa’s duality, the very thing that usually leaves her feeling insecure. The fact that Daniel encourages her articulation of this complexity is half the reason she ends up sleeping with him. Indeed, when he reminds her of her old rap moniker—­Miss Terious—­it’s a nod to his appreciation of Issa’s unique eclecticism, her inability to be fully known or named. It is thus curious that the show positions this scene and the ensuing sex between them as a colossal mistake for Issa. That is to say, given Issa’s under­ standable frustration with her job and her (perhaps less understandable) frustration with Lawrence, we might expect the show to celebrate her affair with Daniel as a chance not only to revive her love life, but also to pursue more creative professional options. But, as with those other moments in which Issa throws caution to the wind, she pays dearly for her indulgence, losing Lawrence and (even more significantly) feeling devastated by this loss. It’s hard not to read this outcome against the prism of race and class, especially when contrasted to the way adulterous sex is usually treated in female antihero television comedies, that is, as an adventure for which the protagonist is blissfully unrepentant. Issa and her friends are not characterized by this kind of insouciance, perhaps because they recognize that job security and stable relationships tend to be seen as deadeningly conformist only by those who are privileged and white. Stated slightly differently, for Issa, embracing Daniel would mean becoming a creative and moving closer to the badass self she cultivates in private. But it would also mean shifting away from the markers of middle-­class re-

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spectability (including both her job and her stable partnership with Lawrence), and the show isn’t entirely sure that this would be a good thing. (A similar logic helps explain why Issa doesn’t encourage Lawrence in the development of his app. She would far prefer he take a salaried job than pursue an autonomous creative enterprise, having experienced the economic precarity that comes with the latter.) Insecure is perhaps most ambivalent and most interesting when it comes to this Issa-­Lawrence-­Daniel triangle. It recognizes the pitfalls of Issa’s relationship with Lawrence but wants her to tough it out with him anyway; it understands the creative reinvention that Daniel offers Issa but stops short of suggesting she should embrace this. In this way, the show hedges its bets, allowing audiences to see the attraction Daniel offers Issa (including an exit from bourgeois constraint) but also the price that leaving Lawrence (and his symbolic connection to middle-­class domesticity) would exact. We glimpse the calamitous consequences of Issa’s rejection of the latter at the end of the season 1 finale. Issa, hoping to win Lawrence back, leaves a girls’ weekend in Malibu early and drives to their shared home in Inglewood. She arrives, however, too late to repair the relationship; Lawrence has already packed up his belongings, leaving nothing behind save his “Best Buy” T-­shirt—­at once an indication that he has moved on to better things and a symbolic reminder to Issa that she has not always supported him during his professional struggles. Issa, devastated by his departure, calls Molly on the phone, and the episode ends with the two of them on a couch on the curb, Issa sobbing into Molly’s lap.64 The couch had once belonged to Issa and Law­ rence—­in a montage in episode 3, we see the role it plays at various moments of their union—­but now it sits outside their apartment complex, where it’s oc­ casionally occupied by Thug Yoda (Tristen J. Winger) and other Blood gang members, a once cherished domestic object now part of the public landscape. Seeing Issa sprawled sobbing on this couch on the street is a powerful reminder of her movement away from bourgeois respectability. Indeed, the pain of this last scene is partly the effect of witnessing the Black middle-­class female subject undone—­her stuff no longer wired tight, all lines between public and private essentially effaced. This is what happens, the show suggests, when Black women rap in public, exercise creativity, sleep around, spurn stability, and generally give no fucks. In making this argument, we don’t mean to suggest that Insecure is only or even primarily preoccupied with racist society. On the contrary, much of the show takes up a space of engagement, surprise, and joy completely removed from white supremacy (and from white people more generally, for that matter). Rae herself has said that she never wanted Insecure to be a story about “the struggle” or “the dramatic burden of being black.” She adds, “I just wanted

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to see my friends and I reflected on television, in the same way that white people are allowed, and which nobody questions.”65 Writing with her friends and herself in mind means that Rae is committed to creating a protagonist of depth and complexity, a character that is, in Ralph Ellison’s words, “no mere product of his socio-­political predicament.”66 Nonetheless, in the tradition of Black popular-­culture productions before it, Insecure, while not consumed with racism, is also not oblivious to it. Issa’s actions are her own, the consequence of richly imagined desires and polyvalent subjectivity. But the show also acknowledges that Issa’s status as a Black woman has constrained these actions, committing her to Lawrence and to her job, even as she recognizes these as potentially incompatible with a fully realized self. Of course, in later seasons Issa will move on from Lawrence (although he never fully disappears as a romantic interest), just as she will ultimately leave her job at We Got Y’all to pursue more creative and fulfilling professional work. She is careful but not static, and her desire for stability is balanced by a restless quest for adventure. This restlessness should not be equated with the aspirational drive of an earlier generation of female protagonists. For Issa is no Khadijah James (Living Single) or Joan Clayton (Girlfriends)—­Black women determined to overcome the obstacles of young adulthood through ambition, perseverance, and good humor. Striving but not plucky, ebullient but discontent, Issa captures the complexity of the twenty-­first-­century antihero whose awareness of institutional constraints (including race and gender prejudice) means she must opt out of the fantasy of having it all.67 As with other female antiheroes, however, her disappointments are countered by a deep sense of female community, with best friend Molly most of all. The two feel recognized and valued by each other, and this bond acts as a salve when the world fails them or, even more devastatingly, when they fail the world. “I’m a fucking mess,” Molly tells Issa in the season 1 finale, acknowledging for the first time her romantic and professional mistakes. Issa admits that she doesn’t know how to help Molly change and then adds, “But I’ma be here while you figure it out.”68 Her words might well be the rallying cry for the twenty-­first-­century woman, who knows that the only thing worse than taking on the challenges of the contemporary workplace and dating scene is doing so alone.

8

Working-­Class Identity and Matriarchal Community in SMILF

Showtime’s single-­girl sitcom SMILF (2017–­2019) stars writer and showrunner Frankie Shaw as Bridgette Bird, a working-­class Irish American mom from Boston’s Southie neighborhood who cycles in and out of jobs, binges on junk food, engages in sexual perversions, and dreams of playing for the WNBA. The show resembles the narratives of female aimlessness that we have called Shame TV—­series that wallow in their protagonists’ humiliation, poor decision-­making, and lack of professional success. Indeed, SMILF ’s pilot episode explicitly riffs on HBO’s Girls, perhaps the urtext of this genre.1 Girls ends once Hannah has a baby, because of the difficulty in reconciling selfishness with maternity. It’s one thing for Hannah to court shame and complacency on her own time; it’s quite another for her to do so in the company of a dependent. SMILF, however, picks up the mantle Girls drops, refusing to separate Bridgette’s motherhood from her vanity, deficiencies, and unruly desires. Thus, while Girls begins with Hannah in the bathtub eating a cupcake and ends six seasons later with her breastfeeding her baby, SMILF’s pilot condenses this arc, locating Bridgette in the bathtub but already with a child (biracial like Hannah’s) (fig. 8.1).2 This establishing shot—­which shows Bridgette with breasts exposed and body opened toward her son—­is mildly shocking because, for all the lip service we pay to liberated motherhood, the sight of a naked woman taking a bath with a child still registers as taboo.3 The title of the show—­an acronym for Single Mom I’d Like to Fuck—­is similarly disorienting, asking viewers to reconcile a term largely used to objectify an older woman who is also a mother (MILF) with the assertion of her availability and desire (i.e., her singleness).4 In its insistence that maternity doesn’t erase sex­ uality, that women are complex beings whose appetites, ambitions, and traumatic histories do not magically disappear once they give birth, SMILF asserts,

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f i g u r e 8.1. Bath time: SMILF, season 1, episode 1, “A Box of Dunkies & Two Squirts of Maple Syrup,” 2017.

in a way that no other single-­girl sitcom has, that motherhood is the beginning of the story, not the end. If SMILF leans hard on Bridgette’s status as a mother, it also emphasizes her class and ethnic positioning, beginning with the protagonist’s name. “Brid­ get” was a common shorthand with which to refer to poor Irish women who immigrated to the United States in droves in the wake of the famine (1845–­ 1849); it was also the name of a minstrel-­comic character type popular in films of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Volatile, excessive, and un­ kempt, the “Bridget” of early US cinema reflected anxieties about Irish immigration, domestic labor, and the respectability of the middle-­class housewife. Peter Flynn argues that the “Bridget films” position the unruly Irish maid as a “grotesque inversion of nineteenth-­century domestic and feminine norms. . . . An ungovernable force, she flouted Victorian codes of proper conduct with a rapacious powder-­keg appetite for violence, alcohol, and lovemaking.”5 Brid­ gette Bird, with her eating disorder, promiscuity, and general distaste for boundaries, serves a similar function, creating a foil for her more demure and aspirational sisters. She is an irrepressible id, rejecting both patriarchal imperatives and neoliberal expectations alike. While the Leslie Knopes and Alicia Florricks of the small screen appear assured, resilient, and undefeated by economic realities, Bridgette emerges as their uncanny double—­a single mother prone to indulgence and uninterested in self-­responsibilization, hard work, or middle-­class respectability.

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It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that SMILF garnered much controversy during its short two-­season run. The objections to the show arose partly around its name—­“Not since Cougar Town has there been such a repellant title doing a disservice to the show contained within,” writes The AV Club’s Alex McLevy 6—­but also from its frank depiction of sexuality, childhood sexual abuse, addiction, and bulimia. When posters for SMILF’s second season went up around Boston, city councilman Ed Flynn called for their removal, commenting: The proud mothers I know from Southie, who work so hard for their families and our community, have told me they find it unwatchable as it is a degrading, crude, and inaccurate portrayal of their life.7

Incensed, Frankie Shaw responded by inviting Flynn to watch the show before passing judgment on it, adding: I’m not sure why our main character, Bridgette, elicits such a strong reaction. Is it her messiness? In most popular movies and television, South Boston is generally portrayed as extremely violent, corrupt and notoriously racist. We at SMILF are none of these things. SMILF’s Southie is about a woman striving for a better life for her kid. I have a feeling that the judgement comes from underlying gender-­bias more than anything else. And I get it, these deep-­seated unconscious judgements are centuries old and very hard to recognize. But just like Ben Affleck and Seth MacFarlane, who came into town to make their very male art of chasing women, robbing banks, and getting high with teddy bears, I’d like the same consideration to tell the stories that are important to me.8

In invoking Irish American actors Affleck and MacFarlane, Shaw references films like The Town (2010) and Ted (2012), which are both set in Boston and traffic in conventionally masculine concerns (violent bank robberies, hedonism, perpetual childhood) to the delight of audiences. That her own take on Southie should be labeled “degrading, crude, and inaccurate” is evidence, Shaw charges, of an underlying misogyny. SMILF’s reception highlights the classic dilemma of the female antihero whose “messiness” can only be read as dangerous and socially destabilizing, in contrast to the male antihero whose imperfections merely reinforce normative masculinity. This is perhaps especially true in the context of Irish American representation in popular culture, where violence, alcoholism, and melancholy is romanticized in male-­centered films such as The Boondock Saints (1999), Mystic River (2003), and The Irishman (2019), but similar behavior on the part of women is seen as pathological. Shaw has since become embroiled in further controversy amid accusations of misconduct on the set and a canceled third season in 2019. The

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allegations against her—­which include separating Black and white writers by race and pressuring one of her actors to perform without clothes despite a no-­ nudity clause in her contract9—­are deeply disturbing, especially given Shaw’s stated commitment to feminism, intersectional politics, and social justice.10 Still, her unflinching portrait of Bridgette Bird delivers a powerful challenge to patriarchal convention that should be of interest even to those who rightly fault Shaw for her behavior. The message of the series amounts to something like this: that one can fail at all the benchmarks of conventional womanhood—­that one can be perpetually unemployed, slovenly, accident-­ prone, bulimic, sexually traumatized, erotically perverse, and emotionally volatile—­and still be worthy of recognition and love. “I just want to be a fucking person,” Bridgette tells her mother tearfully in the series finale, “just a person in the world.”11 The goal of SMILF, then, is to insist on Bridgette’s humanity. And also to redeem her as a mother. For this is perhaps SMILF’s greatest achievement—­ its suggestion that good mothering (or, in Donald Winnicott’s famous formulation, “good-­enough mothering”)12 is dependent only on the will to love. In this chapter, we trace SMILF’s vision of messy, imperfect motherhood, arguing that it pushes the limits of Shame TV further than any other sitcom we’ve examined. Its vision is darker than Girls, Broad City, and Insecure, both because of Bridgette’s extreme economic precarity and because the presence of a child complicates the depiction of failure and poor decision-­making that these other series play for laughs. And yet SMILF is also deeply redemptive, depicting maternal love and female community as the rich compensations for an otherwise compromised life. The female antihero, SMILF suggests, holds the key to fending off twenty-­first-­century sexism and misogyny, but only when she bands with likeminded others in an effort to raise the next generation differently. “Imagine If I Went to Harvard” The “proud mothers” Councilman Flynn references who find SMILF “unwatchable” are no doubt reacting to the show’s depiction of perversity and abjection—­the fact that Bridgette eats dried cereal off the floor, pees on the lawn outside a church, and sleeps with the young man she used to babysit. And yet the show makes clear that much of this behavior emerges out of poverty and sexual trauma. In the pilot episode, for example, Bridgette meets up with a high school friend, Jesse (Alex Brightman), in a convenience store. After he pays for her junk food (her own credit card is declined), Bridgette de­

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cides to invite him over. Her motives are strictly utilitarian: she hasn’t had sex since her son Larry (Anna and Alexandra Reimer) was born two years earlier, and she fears her nether regions are no longer up to snuff. “I need to know if my pussy’s been blown out,” she tells Jesse when he shows up at her place. “So we need to focus. I’m gonna lay down, you’re gonna put your dick in me, and you’re gonna let me know.”13 The two are lying on the bed in Bridgette’s small studio apartment, and Jesse is more than willing to oblige, but when he catches sight of Larry’s foot partially hidden under the covers next to him, he careens to the floor in surprise. “He’s been in the bed the whole time?” Jesse sputters incredulously. “I tried to hide him,” Bridgette says laughingly in her defense. For Jesse, otherwise affable and up for adventure, this constitutes a breach of middle-­class decorum that he cannot ignore. “Bridge, are you okay?” he asks, his voice registering equal parts concern and righteous judgment. When she asks him what he means, he responds, “You’re living in a small room with a two-­year-­old.” Jesse’s comment reveals the ways in which economic precarity—­here, the inability to afford a home with a separate master bedroom—­is interpreted as perversity. Ever since Freud wrote about the primal scene and its connection to childhood neurosis, the assumption of parental sexual privacy has been sacrosanct. But this, of course, depends upon the re­ sources needed to maintain this privacy, resources especially unavailable to the single mother. “Maybe we should . . . just do this another time when he’s not around,” a clueless Jesse suggests. “He’s always around,” Bridgette responds. A similar dynamic is at work in a scene from episode 8 when Bridgette has sex in her bathroom with Casey (Austin Abrams), the first-­year student at Harvard whom she used to babysit. Uncomfortable with Bridgette’s foul-­ mouthed sex talk (she has just called him a “weak little bitch”), Casey interrupts the encounter, commenting, “I don’t think your kid should hear his mom talking like that.”14 The problem for Casey is not Bridgette’s sexual demeaning of him; nor is it their age discrepancy. Rather, it’s the close proximity of a mother’s dirty language to her innocent toddler (although Larry is presumably sleeping and not cognizant of their exchange). Here again it is men who express moral indignation at childhood corrupted, despite the fact that they know nothing about the daily challenges of caring for a child (Casey only comes home when he needs to drop off his dirty laundry with his mother’s maid). While his advice is not altogether unfounded, it also indicates his utter remove from Bridgette’s circumscribed position as a single mother and working-­class woman. Casey’s condescension in this scene is particularly galling given his privilege. The son of Boston elites, he got into Harvard, the show implies, partly

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through legacy admission and partly because Bridgette wrote “half [his] papers” for him, including his college admissions essay. “I spent a whole weekend writing that,” she reminds him as the two smoke weed together on his mother Ally’s (Connie Britton) bed. “You wrote everything,” Casey agrees. “So, I mean, you’re the one that should be [at Harvard].”15 It’s a moment of poignant understanding between the two in which each acknowledges both the justice of Bridgette going to Harvard in Casey’s stead and its utter implausibility given their disparate economic stations. Bridgette has just bathed in Ally’s dirty bathwater and is now dressed in her robe and jewelry. The two will soon have sex in Ally’s bed, and Casey, for all the concern he’ll have about middle-­class propriety when it comes to Bridgette’s son, doesn’t seem particularly miffed at the perversity of having intercourse in the parental boudoir with a woman dressed in his mother’s clothes. “Imagine if I went to Harvard, though,” Bridgette says, wistfully looking around the room at Ally’s luxu­ rious possessions. “I’d definitely own that bed . . . I’d own the robe.” The scene is striking for its frank recognition of how structural inequality contributes to both the perpetuation of poverty and its pathologizing effects. If only Brid­ gette had possessed the guidance and wealth to channel her considerable talents into a Harvard education, she might, in fact, be the lady of the house rather than performing a perverse parody of this role. By contrast, Ally’s family, while equally imperfect, possesses the resources to cover this up. Casey’s younger brother, Rivers (Adrian Ciscato), masturbates to porn, but their maid changes out his dirty towels before anyone can see them. Ally herself binges on McDonalds rather than attending yoga class, but does so in the privacy of her two-­car garage and then takes the wrappers to another neighborhood to throw them away. It is only Bridgette who lacks the assets necessary to ward off humiliation. Economic precarity and the shame that it engenders is a mainstay of SMILF not just in relation to Bridgette but for the other young women on the show. Episode 3 begins with a montage of Bridgette, her best friend Eliza (Raven Goodwin), and her frenemy Nelson (Samara Weaving), who is Larry’s father’s new girlfriend—­undergoing various indignities in the context of their work.16 Bridgette, who’s gotten a low-­paying gig as an actor for a PSA, is asked to cry, stuff her bra with padding, and take a shower in her clothes. Eliza, who is attempting to support herself through online sex work, has created a channel called “EATERFEEDER” where men watch her overeat in erotically suggestive ways. (She moans while pouring ice cream in her mouth and over her half-­clothed body while users respond by DM-­ing things like “give me a taste of that wet cream,” “deep throat a subway sandwich,” and “stick a Dove bar up your twat and then eat it.”) Even Nelson, who has the most stable job of the

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three—­she works as a sportscaster—­is depicted as enthralled to an inhospitable workplace. Known online as “Nipples Nelson,” she is shown receiving an uncomfortable spray-­on tan followed by a painful teeth whitening before being sexually insulted on the air by one of the athletes she interviews. This kind of degrading treatment, the show implies, is pro forma for women trying to make it in an unstable twenty-­first-­century economy.17 When Brid­ gette arrives at a temp agency seeking work to pay her rent, the recruitment official suggests she consider prostitution. “It’s actually perfect for you,” he tells her. “You make your own hours; pay is great. It’s recession-­proof.”18 While Bridgette rejects this offer (“Do you have something prostitution-­adjacent?” she asks, only half-­kidding), she ultimately takes on a form of sex work when she answers an ad posted by an older man offering $300 to see her face and another $300 to get a soda with him. While the two appear to bond over education and women’s basketball, the optimism of the scene is interrupted when the john sexually molests her. (In a nod to our forty-­fifth president, he literally grabs her by the pussy.) Horrified, Bridgette jumps to her feet and delivers a punch so powerful it knocks him out, much to the shock of the customers around them. The scene is important for its ambivalence around Bridgette’s behavior. It is undeniable that she has played a hand in getting herself into a terrible situation, and yet the way in which SMILF contextualizes her guilt and humiliation allows us to see the extent to which she’s driven by economic necessity. To paraphrase Marx, Bridgette makes bad decisions in conditions not of her making. Bridgette’s behavior is only partly tied to her economic precarity; the other factor is her history of childhood sexual abuse (as a young girl, she was molested by her father). The show suggests that both Bridgette’s disordered eating and her penchant for degrading sex arise out of this trauma—­they are attempts to defend against it through pointed exertions of agency. She tends to choose younger men as sex partners—­Casey, her former babysitting charge, or a teenage supermarket stock boy—­and her most frequent form of dirty talk involves a kind of male impersonation in which she plays the role of a leering older gentleman. In the episode that follows her Craigslist debacle, for example, Bridgette attempts to pick up a supermarket stock boy by shoving a cannister of Glad garbage bags down her pants to create a visual bulge and then adopting the posture and speech of a stereotypical pickup artist. “You got the most goddamned beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,” she tells the embarrassed stock boy, and when he stammers in response, she silences him with a wave of her hand: “Shhh, shhh, shhh. You are prettier than you know.” (This last line is a repetition of the one that the Craigslist john used on her in episode 3.) As the two proceed to have sex in the back of the store, Bridgette

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assumes the dominant position, riding the stock boy like a horse, neighing, and exclaiming that she’s “strong like a stallion, like a Clydesdale.” The scene has all the markers of stock male pornography, including the fantasy of child seduction, but with the male and female roles reversed. “Are you my underage little bitch whore? With a tight little dick?” Bridgette demands. The moment is written as Bridgette’s attempt to seize agency, to reverse the narrative of her childhood abuse as well as the re-­traumatization she experienced in the preceding episode at the hands of the Craigslist john. But while Bridgette seems in control of this sexual encounter (“Come for me, bitch,” she orders the stock boy), the scene ends with her realization that she’s just had unprotected sex and is in danger of becoming pregnant again. “Get it out, get it out,” she exclaims in distress, dropping the façade of male power for the first time and jumping around in an effort to dislodge her hookup’s penis and semen.19 It’s a startling reminder that, for all her blustery performance of masculinity, Bridgette is still vulnerable as a woman. The stock-­boy episode begins with an epigram by Carrie Fisher: “I think I’d like to wake up with an erection, even if it was just to not like it.” Much of the episode is similarly devoted to envying the privilege and bravado of men. “I would love to spend the day with the confidence of a mediocre white guy,” Eliza, who’s African American, quips. Eliza and Bridgette’s male envy emanates from their own sense of powerlessness—­following her sexual molestation, Bridgette is robbed of her son’s iPad and her own sneakers; Eliza, for her part, is hemmed in by a controlling father. The episode is thus organized around their attempts at self-­realization, including their decision (along with Nelson) to participate in a Muscle Man Mud Run. “I’m done with shit getting done to us,” Bridgette insists. The mud run represents the opportunity to replace female abjection with physical exertion and male swagger. “It’s better than what I normally do,” she tells Eliza, “just eat and porn and eat more and more and more and then porn.”20 Throughout the episode, Bridgette is shown “packing,” adopting different kinds of penis substitutes—­first a cannister of kitchen garbage bags when seducing the stock boy, then a container of Pringles (which she occasionally eats from), and finally a rolled-­up diaper. Her choice of objects used to simulate a penis—­domestic commodities, junk food, baby products—­indicates the impossibility of escaping womanhood, despite her best efforts. Bridgette’s molestation at the hands of her father clearly drives her compulsive relationship toward both food and sexuality. But the show portrays her attempts to find empowerment through normative masculinity—­aggressive sex, hyperphysicality, packing—­as failed bids to turn the tables on a power dynamic that still holds her in its thrall.

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Indeed, the real answer for Bridgette is not masculinization or the denial of her womanhood (as when she tells Eliza, “I just wish I didn’t have a pussy to grab”21), but rather female community. The promise of the latter is curiously embodied in Nelson, whom the show at first positions as a rival to Bridgette only to recuperate her as a figure of love and support. When Bridgette tells Eliza, who’s nervous about the mud run, to “man the fuck up and grow a pair,” Nelson responds brightly, “Or we can encourage each other.”22 When Bridgette gets her “dick  .  .  . stuck” on a climbing wall, Nelson encourages her to cast the faux symbol of empowerment from her body. When Bridgette passes out from electrical shock in a particularly grueling leg of the run, it is Nelson who saves her, appearing as a goddess-­like apparition to carry her across the finish line. While this vision of idealized female community doesn’t last (Nelson is also the cause of a rift between Bridgette and Larry’s father Rafi [Miguel Gomez] by the end of the episode), it’s an important alternative to the swaggering masculinity practiced by Bridgette, a reminder that heal­ing can only take place through love. SMILF is thus committed to both contextualizing female perversity—­showing its origins in poverty and sexual trauma—­and suggesting a feminist remedy in women’s alliances, a subject we’ll return to at the end of this chapter. “They Don’t Count” As mentioned earlier, SMILF paints a darker picture of economic precarity than the other comedies we’ve examined in this book. Hannah Horvath extorts money from her parents by threatening to “die like Flaubert in a garret,”23 but Bridgette Bird knows better—­her mother is a depressive and as econom­ ically unstable as she is. The Broad City girls steal office supplies in order to buy concert tickets and weed, while Bridgette steals leftover fries from restaurant patrons in order to feed herself and her two-­year-­old. Unlike Insecure’s Issa, who supplements her nonprofit-­job income with gig-­economy work as a Lyft driver, Bridgette doesn’t own a car. She identifies “basketball” and “do[ing] homework for rich kids” as her “special skills” during her temp agency interview but, of course, neither of these can be effectively monetized.24 Playing professional basketball is as out of reach for Bridgette as it is for the scores of young Black men who harbor the dream of a sports career as an exit from poverty, and homework for rich kids is work paid under the table, unreliable in its consistency and unreasonable in its demands. (Ally often reminds Bridgette that she needs to drop everything in response to her texts, for that was their arrangement.) When Bridgette finally gets a “legitimate” job—­at a

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collection agency—­her failure to keep it seems less a joyful rebellion against late capitalism (à la Broad City’s Ilana Wexler) than a tragic identification with those who share her economic plight. “Just get out there and live your life; don’t worry about paying us,” she tells one borrower whose debt she’s assigned to collect.25 She ends up sitting on the toilet in the company bathroom, eating cupcakes she’s stolen from a coworker, a move that ultimately gets her sent home. The scene recalls Girls’ Hannah—­who also eats cupcakes in the bathroom—­but the consequences of Bridgette’s behavior are far more dire than for Hannah, whose overeating never threatens her livelihood. Even as SMILF depicts Bridgette’s desperate precarity, however, it also points to her privilege, the way her own sense of integrity (some might call it entitlement) plays a hand in her perpetual unemployment. “I can’t work full-­ time, you know, because of Larry,” she claims, when, of course, plenty of sin­ gle moms do work full-­time, including the African American bus driver from whom Bridgette hopes to sponge a free ride. (“Come on, I’m a single mom,” she tells the driver, hoping to gain her sympathy. “I am too,” the driver responds, before closing the door in Bridgette’s face.)26 Bridgette prefers the occasional acting gig over a more consistent job not only because of Larry but also because she sees herself as a creative, part of what Richard Florida has identified as a knowledge-­based class of workers driving the twenty-­first-­ century postindustrial economy.27 Her pride in writing college essays attests to these ambitions, as does her love for socialist historian Howard Zinn and the classic books that litter the edges of the frame in her cramped studio apartment (including Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Gloria Steinem’s Moving Beyond Words). But, as with the other comedic antiheroes we’ve examined, these forays into creativity and intellectualism don’t translate into a coherent aspirational agenda for Bridgette. Stated slightly differently, the signifiers of Bridgette’s class position are scrambled. She’s a vegetarian but constantly binges on junk food, squeezing bottles of maple syrup into her mouth and scrounging for chips in her mother’s kitchen. She reads books to Larry and longs to buy him educational toys, but she also forgets to feed him breakfast and lunch, admitting that “all he’s eaten today is Reese’s Pieces.”28 Her disagreements with Larry’s dad Rafi over baptism and vaccination reveal attitudes—­anti-­religion and pro-­science—­associated with the elite, and yet these do not translate into a middle-­class life for Bridgette. While there are clearly structural problems propelling Bridgette’s failures (a history of abuse, the absence of child care, etc.), the show suggests that her own sense of privilege motivates this dynamic as well. This is particularly evident in her relationship with Rafi, the well-­meaning if occasionally irresponsible father of her son. Bridgette lashes out at Rafi for

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teaching Larry to pray and scorns his skepticism toward vaccination, even though Rafi articulates his distrust in convincing ways. (In response to Brid­ gette telling him, “Your mother has filled your head with some crazy shit,” he counters, “No, my mom informed me how America doesn’t care about poor people.”)29 Rafi is one of the few people on the show to point out how Brid­ gette’s elitism alienates her from others and contributes to her unhappiness. “You sit there on your high horse all the time and you’re always fucking looking down on me. . . . Well how’s the view? By yourself? Alone?”30 Bridgette may be exploited, poor, and vulnerable, but as Rafi makes clear, she’s also capable of making others feel insignificant and isolating herself in the process. Her sense of entitlement emanates from her partial alignment with the standards of normative femininity. “Can’t believe I’m here,” she tells the clerk who’s processing her food assistance application. “This is really for real poor people. . . . I’m college educated, for the most part. Some people would say I’m pretty.”31 Statements like these reveal Bridgette’s ignorance about the kinds of people who apply for social assistance, along with a lack of knowledge about herself. For it is precisely because she is college educated and pretty (not to mention white) that Bridgette escapes the most damning consequences of poverty, that she’s able to urinate in public and steal money from her employer without winding up in jail. Indeed, even her navigation of public space is inflected by her sense of entitlement. In the show’s opening-­credits montage, she blithely spends all day cuddling with Larry on the bus seats meant to be reserved for disabled passengers, and when her car gets towed, she hooks up a free ride for herself, Eliza, and Larry with a nefarious-­looking stranger. (Eliza’s response to the good old boy offering the ride is telling: “I’m black. I don’t fucking hitchhike.”)32 Bridgette’s comfort climbing into a stranger’s truck is a function of her general cluelessness, but also of the privilege her whiteness affords. When Bridgette loses Larry at the impound lot where she and Eliza search for the towed car, she moans, “I’m such a fuckup. . . . How many moms can say, ‘Oh yeah, I lost my kid in a junkyard’?”33 The show seems aware that it is largely white moms who can say that and not have their kids taken by Child Protective Services. The relative privileges of Bridgette’s position are on particular display in scenes with Ally, the rich, white stay-­at-­home mother for whom she works. Although there are two other women in Ally’s employ, Bridgette—­the only worker who’s white—­does the relatively light jobs of tutoring and occasional household supervision. While Bridgette’s identity as a working-­class woman clearly places her in a subordinate position to Ally, her whiteness also buys her certain benefits. When she confesses to Ally that she took a bath in her tub and lounged around in her robe, Ally reacts with a nonchalance she almost

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certainly would not extend to Elsie (Numa Perrier), who’s Black, or Ida (Sisa Grey), who’s Samoan.34 “It’s okay,” Ally tells her. “You want some soda? It’s diet.”35 Ally’s tendency to see Bridgette as a near-­peer clearly emerges from her identification with Bridgette’s whiteness, thinness, and status as educated.36 “Ida’s not a friend, like you are,” Ally says when trying to pressure Bridgette to stay in her home and keep her company.37 To be sure, Bridgette’s proximity to the kind of white femininity Ally embodies has costs as well. When Ally wants to spice up her sex life with her husband—­a man whom she has given the cringe-­inducing name “Mr. Daddy”—­it is Bridgette she turns to, asking for the “favor” of a threesome.38 And when Ally suspects that her husband is having affairs, she fires Bridgette in an attempt to remove a perceived temptation. (“With all that’s going on with Mr. Daddy, I can’t have another woman in the house,” she explains.)39 But while Ally’s treatment of Bridgette is unjust, it pales in comparison to that of her other domestic workers, whom Ally doesn’t recognize as fully human. “What about Elsie and Ida?” Bridgette asks in relation to Mr. Daddy, to which Ally responds gently, “They don’t count, Bridge.”40 Ally’s inability to see these non-­white women as romantic rivals or as friends speaks to their general invisibility on mainstream television. This phe­ nomenon is recognized and critiqued in a remarkable season 2 sequence (episodes 2 and 3) where SMILF abandons Bridgette’s storyline to focus briefly on the lives of Ida, the Samoan nanny who lives with Ally, and Elsie, the Haitian American maid who commutes daily to Ally’s home. Episode 3 includes a shot of dozens of domestic workers ascending a hill in Brookline, MA, the tony neighborhood in which Ally lives.41 Toting cleaning supplies and occasionally in uniform, these women do the work of keeping white suburban homes orderly, yet they are rarely the focal point of the visual frame. One of these workers is Elsie, who lives with her husband, Henri (Jimmy Jean-­Louis), their two children, and her sister Mindy (Nhadya Salomon). Mindy and Ally share a birthday, and this becomes the point of tension that propels the two-­ episode arc. The sisters are supposed to celebrate by going to a Lakou Mizik concert, but Ally, who is in the throes of depression because of Mr. Daddy’s affairs, wants to go out to dinner with Bridgette. When Bridgette explains that she can’t find a sitter, Ally signs Elsie up for the job. “She won’t care. She doesn’t have anything else to do.”42 Elsie attempts to protest, but when Ally offers her $400 and tells her it won’t be longer than an hour, she gives in. Meanwhile, Ida, like Elsie, has also been conscripted into caring for other people’s children. She’s left her own daughter in Samoa to take a job looking after Ally’s kids, particularly her daughter Chloe (Mia Kaplan), with whom

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she has a special bond. Episode 3’s title—­“Surrogate Mothers Inspire Loving Families,” a rewriting of the acronym SMILF43—­speaks to the care extended by these women of color to the children of others but also to their outsider status, the way they are able to “inspire” loving families without being fully a part of them. While Ally is indicted as deeply selfish in these scenes—­a woman with no sense that the people who work for her have lives of their own—­the show casts Bridgette as equally guilty. She has told Elsie and Mindy that she will be back in two hours, “three hours tops” (already a violation of Ally’s initial promise), but she ends up going on a bender that brings her home drunk in the wee hours of the morning.44 To be sure, Bridgette has not had a great night: Ally has just fired her, and with the realization that she’s lost her one source of reliable income, Bridgette careens headfirst into alcohol and binge-­ eating. She ends up in a church where she indulges in a series of vaguely feminist behaviors—­she ascends the altar, screams “Abortion!,” and converses with a statue of the Virgin Mary about motherhood: “You really got the short end of the stick . . . You had to be a mom and you didn’t even get to have sex.” Having identified Mary as a fellow female victim—­“Someone else wrote your diary. . . . That is so fucked up”—­Bridgette decides to steal the statue from the church and bring her home to safety.45 The sequence is framed as a delightful if absurd moment of religio-­feminist kinship, and audiences are apt to forget that while Bridgette is off “saving” the Virgin, Elsie and Mindy are stuck in her apartment, babysitting Larry and waiting impatiently for her to come home. It’s a stark and effective reminder that white women’s revelations (and the work of mainstream feminism more generally) have historically taken place at the expense of women of color. As a female antihero, Bridgette can exercise her anti­social liberationist impulses, but the show seems knowing about the ways in which non-­white women’s domestic labor enables this revolt. And yet these women are hardly defined by that labor. For while Ally and Bridgette sink into their narcissism-­fueled depressive states, the women of color are last seen dancing—­Ida with Chloe, whom she’s taught a Samoan siva, and Elsie with Mindy as they recreate Lakou Mizik in Bridgette’s squalid apartment. In this way, these women find movement (and joy) within the phys­ ical constraints established by entitled white feminism. Perhaps in an effort to recuperate Bridgette’s abysmal behavior, the epi­ sode that follows this sequence importantly establishes the limits of Brid­gette’s white privilege. Season 2, episode 4 is largely a fantasy in which Bridgette imagines herself moving from the depths of abjection (massively hungover and eating Lucky Charms off her living room floor) to the heights of white

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female felicity. The locomotive for this transformation is the salon, what Legally Blonde’s Elle Woods—­the quintessential embodiment of WASP entitlement—­ identifies as the place to go to fix your problems. While there, Bridgette dyes her hair blond (her new hairstyle is called “the Monroe”) and befriends a woman named Emma (Ari Graynor), who presents as the epitome of lobotomized female superficiality: her favorite movie is Love Actually, she speaks of herself as “blessed” to be marrying her “dream man,” and she says of Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle conglomerate Goop: “Everything I’ve ever learned that’s valuable to me in my day-­to-­day life is on that site.” In the scenes that follow, a newly WASPified Bridgette matches Emma in her vapidity, engaging in hyperbolic renditions of “white chick” behavior: she attends a bachelorette party at a polo match, has sex with Kevin Bacon, and exults over Instagram photos of small animals (“Oh my God, it’s so cute, you guys, I want to frame it,” she croons in response to a picture of a seahorse holding a Q-­tip46). It’s a particularly damning portrait of affluent white womanhood, characterized not just by superficiality but by racism, homophobia, and misogyny. (Bridgette’s new friend, Emma, says while taking her picture, “I wanna throw up you look so fucking hot. I mean, honestly I would go down on you except vaginas are so gross.”) Indeed, when Bridgette emerges from this fantasy sequence, its vileness (and not simply her bulimia) is enough to force her to stick her fingers down her throat. The show explicitly positions this kind of bourgeois femininity as an alternative to the abjection that Bridgette daily experiences—­Emma says of the chic salon she and Bridgette are in, “The whole self-­care thing really gets a bad rap. But it’s like what’s the alternative? Laying in bed eating cookies all day?” Given the choice between consumerist self-­care and abject depression, it’s no wonder that Bridgette chooses the latter, which at least offers a form of indulgence unsanctioned by patriarchy and capitalism. Bridgette may be narcissistic, selfish, and entitled, but in the end she also rejects the capitulations to normative femininity that Emma, Ally, and other paragons of white respectability embrace. This leaves Bridgette with few places to go to find genuine self-­expression and community. Indeed, her happy place is with best friend Eliza, but here, too, she experiences identity confusion. Season 2, episode 7 is directed by Scandal’s Kerry Washington and features Bridgette returning to the space of the hair salon, again in search of personal transformation. Rather than WASPing it up, however, this time Bridgette moves in the opposite direction, getting cornrows for both herself and her son Larry. While she worries at first that this move might be “culturally insensitive,” she’s assured by her Latina stylist that she’s “not, like, white white,” an acknowledgment that Bridgette’s economic precarity aligns her with people of color—­a status Bridgette later calls

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“minority-­adjacent.” Yet the show is also quick to pull her up short. When Bridgette lights up and exclaims, “Right, yeah, you get it! And I’ve never told anyone this, but I think in a past life, I was a slave,” the stylist responds acerbically, “You probably should just keep on never telling that to anybody.” Brid­ gette longs for Blackness both as a racial signifier that would confirm her sense of personal oppression and for the community she imagines would ensue—­ Eliza is shown in this episode surrounded by both her extensive family and her sorority sisters. But, as Eliza tells her point-­blank before insisting on taking out her cornrows, “I know you wanna be, but you’re not black.”47 Bridgette’s imagined connection to Blackness is an effect of her economic instability, but also, importantly, of her Irishness. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, SMILF constantly signals the Irish American identity of both its characters and its South Boston setting—­Bridgette’s mother Tutu (played by the famously Irish American Rosie O’Donnell) hangs a Irish tricolor flag outside her brownstone and Bridgette’s son is named “Larry Bird” in homage to the Boston Celtics player who was for many years the NBA’s most celebrated white player and beloved representative of Boston’s Irish American sports fans.48 The hairdresser’s description of Bridgette as “not white white,” alongside the show’s awareness of her white privilege, reads as a sly acknowledgment of, in Diane Negra’s words, “the way that Irishness seems to move between a quasi blackness and a politically insulated ethnic whiteness.”49 It functions as a form of privilege even as it hides that privilege through a rhetoric of ethnicity. Catherine M. Eagan makes a similar point when she observes the “Irish and Irish American tendency to link ‘Irishness’ to a heritage of oppression that is in many ways very distant from their present-­day lives,” including “some Irish Americans’ failure to admit their shift from a past history of oppression to a present history of assimilation and power.”50 SMILF at once acknowledges this tendency and tries to rewrite it into something more redemptive. After criticizing her for cultural appropriation while taking out her cornrows, Eliza remarks to Bridgette, “I got you, cuz. . . . We family.” Her words indicate that even in the midst of difference, intense and sustained intimacy is possible. This is true especially in the context of motherhood and child-­raising, as our last section will demonstrate. “I’m Team Mary” The first image to appear onscreen in SMILF’s pilot is the following epigraph: “God cannot be everywhere, and therefore s/he created mothers.”51 This understanding of an ideal mother—­always there, standing in God’s stead to love and protect—­drives much of the representation of maternity on television.52

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f i g u r e 8.2. Park bench: SMILF, season 1, episode 1, “A Box of Dunkies & Two Squirts of Maple Syrup,” 2017.

SMILF, however, uses it to set up a crucial tension between what society expects of mothers and the economic conditions that allow only the most privileged of parents to be always on hand. The show structures this tension by contrasting scenes of maternal care with images of poverty, neglect, and abandonment. When Larry first appears in the bathtub with his mother, for example, the camera zeroes in on the rusty faucet, the scattered bath toys, and the grimy tub, before coming to rest on a framed photo of Larry clutching a large, sugary drink from a convenience store. Later in the episode, Larry is shown on a park bench surrounded by images of urban decay (fig. 8.2) or alone on a worn couch in front of a television. In each case, however, the shot eventually widens to show us context—­Larry’s mother Bridgette eagerly engaging him in the bathtub; his grandmother Tutu across the street chatting with some firefighters; Tutu’s disabled partner Joe (Blake Clark) seated in a chair nearby. While there’s not a helicopter parent in sight, Larry is undeniably safe. Nevertheless, these images arouse uneasy feelings in viewers because they are used in countless crime dramas as a shorthand for child neglect, especially in the context of poor and working-­class people. When Bridgette’s hookup, Jesse, discovers Larry’s foot sticking out from under a crumpled blanket, the moment is coded as a spin on the visual image that cop shows use to signal the discovery of a dead child (fig. 8.3). While here it’s played for laughs, this scene is the culmination of a long sequence driven by tension over possible dangers to Larry: Bridgette leaves him alone in the apartment, sleeping, as

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she runs on foot to the convenience store, and every obstacle in her path—­ another customer counting out small coins to pay for his purchase, her declined credit card—­ratchets up the sense that something terrible may happen to him. Yet when she finally bursts back into the apartment, he’s fine, still asleep. She puts her hands on him tenderly and murmurs, “Okay, you’re okay.”53 SMILF deviates from the depiction of parenthood in most sitcoms where families are always present and fanatically devoted to their child’s advancement. Instead, it highlights one of the less frequently depicted realities of maternity—­ that mothers are supposed to be on call at all times, even when their children are sleeping and don’t explicitly need them. Bridgette’s decision to roll the dice—­and not because it’s an emergency, but because she craves sugar and salt—­marks her as selfish and unfit, and, conventionally, this kind of behavior would be punished on television. But SMILF refuses to demonize Bridgette’s parenting, insisting again and again that she’s a loving mother and that Larry is happy and healthy. In this way, Bridgette is not simply one of the “aberrant mothers” that Suzanne Danuta Walters and Laura Harrison identify on television in the twenty-­first century. According to their argument, figures like Nancy Botwin (Weeds [Showtime, 2005–­2012]), Betty Draper (Mad Men [AMC, 2007–­ 2015]), and Jackie Peyton (Nurse Jackie [Showtime, 2009–­2015]) represent a new and groundbreaking development—­women who are “seriously deleterious in [their] caretaking skills.”54 In contrast to these apathetic and disengaged figures, Bridgette appears relentlessly devoted to Larry. Motherhood is not secondary to her identity (as Walters and Harrison claim is the case with most aberrant mothers on television), but rather a deep and pleasurable part

f i g u r e 8.3. Larry’s foot escapes from the covers: SMILF, season 1, episode 1, “A Box of Dunkies & Two Squirts of Maple Syrup,” 2017.

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of her sense of self. Still, Bridgette’s brand of maternity is clearly unconventional, a far cry both from the “angel of the house” and from the post-­ recessionary “mamapreneurial” mother that Julie Ann Wilson and Emily Chiv­ ers Yochim identify as a response to economic precarity.55 While this resilient, enterprising mother shores up a neoliberal self, SMILF’s Bridgette is more of­ ten broke, anxious, and out of ideas. She’s also more likely to greet the job of mothering with ambivalence rather than optimism. “Do you think I’m a terrible mother for finding my kid kind of boring?” Bridgette asks Eliza with concern in an episode largely devoted to the trials of single parenting. “Not my kid specifically, but just motherhood in general.”56 Bridgette spends much of this episode bemoaning her maternal skills, and by the standards of conventional accounting, she is what might be called a “bad mother”: she’s brought her son to a horror film, forgotten to feed him breakfast and lunch, run out of diapers, hitchhiked with him in tow, and then lost him in a junkyard. And yet, she’s also refused to leave him with her depressed mother, and she’s given him consistent and non-­begrudging attention. She may be bored, tired, forgetful, and distracted, but she’s not indifferent. Surely she fulfills Winnicott’s ideal of the “good-­enough mother”—­ she who fails her child in manageable ways, thereby both relieving herself of the burdens of perfection and helping her child overcome frustration.57 In its tendency to mobilize the iconography of child abandonment, only to then reveal Bridgette as a loving and reliable presence, SMILF forces audiences to question their assumptions about what neglect looks like, especially in the context of economic hardship. If Bridgette is recuperated through the show’s generous vision of parent­ ing, so too is her own mother Colleen (Rosie O’Donnell), or Tutu, as her grandson calls her. Tutu is problematic on many fronts: she failed to protect Brid­ gette from her father’s sexual assault; she suffers from catatonic depression partly, the show hints, as a result of her own traumatic childhood; and she can be physically and emotionally abusive, hurling insults and objects at Bridgette in her fury. Nevertheless she is genuinely devoted to both her daughter and her grandson. “Isn’t every childhood miserable?” Tutu and Bridgette agree when discussing their less-­than-­ideal upbringings. “Except for Larry’s,” Brid­ gette insists, to which Tutu responds firmly: “Except for Larry’s.”58 This moment plays as a statement of fact but also as an oath—­mother and grandmother vowing to create a loving family life for Larry out of the tangle of anxieties and PTSD produced by their collective history of sexual abuse. If this seems like a celebration of working-­class dysfunction—­the “poverty porn” that makes Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (TLC, 2012–­2014) and Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) popular—­we argue that it is instead an affirmation of

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matriarchal community, an insistence that fierce maternal bonds can thwart the reproduction of masculinist harm. The power of this mother-­daughter tie is highlighted in season 2, episode 5, when SMILF flashes back to Bridgette’s pregnancy and the period just before she goes into labor. The first half of the episode wrings comedy from Bridgette’s attempts to set boundaries with her mother about the baby’s home birth. First, she insists that Tutu stay at home, to be called only once the baby is born. Then, she allows Tutu to be present in the apartment, but banishes her to the kitchen. Throughout, Tutu remains defiant of the very idea of boundaries—­both the upper-­middle-­class family relations they suggest and Bridgette’s tendency to administer them selectively: “You want to talk about boundaries?” an incredulous Tutu asks, pointing at Rafi. “You had unprotected sex with that loser!” But once Bridgette goes into prolonged and painful labor, her relationship to her mother changes. At the episode’s climax, Bridgette collapses on a mattress, and her body’s boundaries seem to dissolve—­she vomits, pisses, and shits herself all at once. “Rafi,” she moans, “I peed, I pooped, I threw up.” As the less-­than-­competent Rafi covers his mouth with his hand and mutters, “Oh, fuck,” Bridgette says the words the episode has been building toward: “Can you get my mom?”59 Theories of psychological development usually posit the rejection of the mother as the cornerstone of individuation. Indeed, even feminists who have attempted to rewrite Freudian and Lacanian theories of subjectivity see the boundarylessness of the mother as the very thing the child must reject in order to come into being. According to Julia Kristeva, for example, the abject is linked to those moments of temporal and spatial dislocation, when the sub­ ject experiences confusion as to where their body begins and ends. Blood, feces, vomit—­the very stuff of childbirth—­horrify because they remind us of the radical vulnerability of our bodies, the confusion between the me and the not-­me. For Kristeva, individuation is only achieved through abjecting or casting off these foreign substances, and with them, the maternal body. Thus, as Imogen Tyler has argued, even as it centralizes maternity, Kristeva’s theory of the abject has a matricidal premise: Within the model of subjectivity she proposes, the infant’s bodily and psychic attachment to his/her maternal origins must be successfully and violently abjected in order for an independent and cogent speaking human subject to “be born.”60

Self-­formation here demands the rejection of the mother, as if leaving behind her association with blood and permeability is the price of our freedom. In

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Bridgette’s early attempts to keep her mother at bay from the scene of Larry’s birth, SMILF cannily stages this story of rejection.61 But Bridgette’s decision to summon her mother, after working for most of the episode to enforce their separation, rewrites the story of abjection as a return to the mother. Contra Kristeva’s theory that demands repudiation of the maternal as the price of subjectivity, here the embrace of the mother is the only way through abjection and toward selfhood. When Bridgette again reports, “I peed, I pooped, I threw up,” Tutu declares, “Good girl. Triple play!” As Tutu gently washes her daughter’s face, she shores up her delicate ego: “Now, Bridgette, look at me. You’re gonna get in the shower, and you’re gonna remember that you’re Bridgette Bird, and you can do anything.” The scene rewrites the abject body as powerful, authorized by the mother usually written out of the story of individuation. In reminding her daughter that she’s “Bridgette Bird,” Tutu reinforces both her daughter’s autonomy (“Bridgette” means “strength” or “exalted one”) and her connection to the maternal line (“Bird” is Tutu’s maiden name). Bird is also, of course, the name that Larry inherits, much to the dismay of his father, who had hoped to marry Bridgette and establish a patrilineal namesake through his son. In refusing to marry and in embracing her mother (albeit ambivalently) as a partner in raising Larry, Bridgette establishes an alternative legacy, one vested in matriarchal ties. Thus, in an episode putatively dedicated to her becoming a mother, Brid­ gette importantly also becomes a daughter, establishing the significance of extended maternal lines. In contrast to every other show we’ve examined in this book, where the mothers of female protagonists are alternatively dead (Game of Thrones, The Americans), largely absent (Homeland, Girls, Broad City, Insecure), or avowed enemies (Scandal), in SMILF, mothers matter; they form the backbone of the show’s feminist vision. Larry’s birth not only becomes the catalyst for Bridgette’s revived connection with Tutu, it’s also the thing that allows the Bird women to rewrite their family history. In season 1, episode 5, Bridgette struggles with how to forgive her mother for baptizing Larry against her wishes. Following a series of fantasy scenarios fashioned (a bit ham-­fistedly) after Tom Tykwer’s cult film Run Lola Run (1999), Bridgette is summoned to the graveyard where her maternal grandparents are buried. There she finds her mother and her aunt, both drunk and standing over the graves of their parents. “You wanna know what I think of Mary?” Tutu says in reference to her own mother, and then squats over the tombstone and pees on top of it. It’s a breach of respectability that provides the show with a moment of physical comedy even as it reinforces the association of the dead mother with the abject. “Don’t you dare pee on Mommy!” Tutu’s sister, Mo (Paula Pell), shouts, but then urinates her-

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self on their father’s grave. Tutu explains this spectacle in terms of filial rejection: “You know what, Bridgy . . . when you’re my age, you’ll be doing the same thing to me. And Larry, he’ll be doing it to you. . . . That’s how it goes for mothers.” Yet, unexpectedly, Bridgette breaks the cycle: “That’s not how it goes,” she promises Tutu. “I’m not going to piss on your grave, Ma.” She then exclaims, “I forgive you” and repeats it over and over like a mantra, finally concluding “I’m gonna forgive you if it kills me.”62 The moment represents an imaginative reshaping of the sacrament of reconciliation. Here, by a graveyard in the shadow of a church, Bridgette utters an incantation (“I forgive you”) that offers absolution and cuts the male priest out of the equation; it’s a vision of familial reconciliation along matriarchal lines. This impulse to remake religious rituals in the mother tongue inflects each of the show’s depictions of Catholic cultural life, beginning with the second episode when Bridgette insists on referencing God as female and muttering “awomen” (instead of “amen”) at the end of a prayer.63 At another point in the series, when Tutu suggests to Bridgette that she should pray to the “Virgin Mother,” Bridgette responds, “Mothers cannot be virgins.” After a back-­and-­ forth about the plausibility of the miraculous conception, Bridgette declares, much to Tutu’s shock, “Mary was forced to have that baby. . . . Matthew and Luke and whoever did some stuff to her.” When Tutu accuses her of blasphemy (“That is the mother of God you’re talking about!”), Bridgette defends herself through an unconventional appeal to feminist Mariology: “I am on Mary’s side. I’m Team Mary,” she insists. Tutu replies dismissively, “There are no teams,” but Bridgette remains steadfast: “Yeah, there are teams. You are helping them get away with it.”64 In this way, Bridgette turns the story of the Virgin Mary into a #MeToo narrative, a move affirmed in the following sea­son when Bridgette, empathizing with Mary’s voicelessness, declares, “Some­one else wrote your diary,” before stealing a statue of the Virgin from a church.65 Conventional Catholic devotion asks for Mary’s protection and guidance, but Bridgette’s revelation comes when she finds that she can offer protection instead of seeking it. The “someone else” who wrote Mary’s diary—­the long-­dead authors of the Gospel accounts announcing a virgin birth and the Pauline epistles that weave a fear of female sexuality into the cloth of Christianity—­does not, in SMILF’s accounting, get the final word. The “home” to which Bridgette takes the statue of Mary is both literal—­Bridgette’s cramped apartment—­and spiritual, created the moment she hails Mary as a person in need of care instead of a vessel fashioned for the masculinist purposes of organized religion. Here, as in other moments in the series, Bridgette commits acts that seem sacrilegious but are actually beatific in feminist terms. Indeed, the show’s second season seems committed to rewriting a series

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of narratives—­religious, cultural, national—­that have traditionally centered male stories. The penultimate episode of the series, “Single Mom Is Losing Faith,” is a sustained spoof of the conventional Western. Like the season 1 finale sending up Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979), this episode is a matriarchal re-­envisioning of a male-­dominated genre. It imagines a gender-­flipped Old West, with the women occupying positions of power—­as bounty hunters (Bridgette and Eliza), sheriffs (Nelson), and bartenders (Tutu and her sister Jackie)—­while men appear in saloons half-­clothed like whores or praying and crying waiting for their women to come home. “Why do you women always have to resort to violence?” Rafi asks as Bridgette and Nelson fight one another over him in a mockery of the triangulation of desire that usually drives Westerns and action films. The episode’s patently ridiculous plot involves the women mobilizing to stand up to a payday loan operation run by Ally’s philandering husband, Mr. Daddy. At the story’s climax, Bridgette rewrites the myth of Westward expansion, replacing patriarchal legacy with a fantasy of maternal inheritance. “I am a Bird,” she tells her mother, echoing Tutu’s own words to her during childbirth: You are a Bird. And no cage ensnares us. Ain’t that why our granny settled out here in the first place? So we could live our lives how we wanted to live them? . . . I put on this Stetson and I feel my ma. . . . And I feel my ma’s ma. . . . I feel my grandma’s ma and my grandma’s ma’s ma and my grandma’s ma’s ma’s ma’s ma. All those women taught me what true grit really was.66

The self-­conscious awkwardness of this speech plays as a joke, but it’s also a damning indictment of the lack of language (and cinematic precedent) that American popular culture provides in imagining a social order built on women’s connections. The episode concludes with a gendered spin on the classic Western standoff—­men and women line up against one another, the matriarchal structure literally confronting its masculinist opposition. SMILF’s supporting female characters—­Bridgette’s mother and aunt, her best friend, her former employer, and her ex’s girlfriend—­stand shoulder to shoulder with her. The image, hyperbolic though it may be, of women relying on and supporting one another—­overcoming personal differences in the name of female solidarity—­encapsulates SMILF’s feminist vision. The fact that the scene feels moving and faintly ridiculous at the same time marks our knowledge that these kinds of images are commonplace for men, who are expected to defend their values with massive displays of force, while women’s violent alliances are almost never granted visual representation. But perhaps the best example of the solidarity of women in their quest to battle patriarchal oppression appears in more nuanced form—­in the meta-­

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references to antiheroine television in SMILF. In one such scene, Bridgette goes over to her mother’s house for dinner but finds the kitchen a wreck and Tutu upstairs in her bed spiraling into depression. Joining her under the covers with two bowls of cereal, Bridgette offers to watch TV with her mother, and the two proceed to discuss actor Mariska Hargitay, whom Bridgette calls “the most trustworthy woman on television.”67 Hargitay, of course, plays Lieutenant Olivia Benson, a police detective who specializes in sex crimes, on the popular NBC drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC, 1999–­present). For Bridgette and her mother, both of whom suffer from a history of sexual trauma, she’s a powerful figure of female advocacy. (Hargitay herself trained as a rape crisis advocate in preparation for the role and eventually founded the Joyful Heart Foundation, an organization that provides support to survivors of sexual assault and child abuse.) Indeed, when Bridgette, in the season 1 finale, decides to confront her father about his sexual abuse, Eliza references Hargitay again, promising Bridgette, “Mariska . . . will put his ass right in jail.”68 The strange conceit of this conversation—­two fictional characters invoking an actor’s portrayal of another fictional protagonist as if she were real—­speaks to the importance of the fantasy of justice that Hargitay represents. If only Bridgette, Tutu, and Eliza had powerful women like Mariska working on their behalf, they might be less exploited in their day-­to-­day lives. This fantasy is again invoked in a parallel scene, when Bridgette, Tutu, and Ally watch Scandal together in Ally’s bed. It’s been a tough day for all three of them: Ally has undergone massive amounts of painful plastic surgery; Tutu has attempted to win back her old lover, Edmond (Donald Li), only to realize that he’s moved on; and Bridgette, who had harbored hopes of playing basketball for the WNBA, has realized that she’s not good enough to make the cut. Beyond these immediate disappointments, each woman is battling more trenchant demons: trauma and depression brought on by a culture of toxic masculinity that includes abusive fathers and cheating husbands. What better remedy for these ills than to watch television together! And not just any tele­ vision, but Scandal, a show famous for its fantasy of feminist redemption—­ justice delivered at the hands of a powerful Black woman. “Shut it down,” each one intones in an imitation of Olivia Pope’s celebrated proclamation of female competence.69 It’s a touching moment—­three vulnerable women propping one another up through a community of television spectatorship centered on a strong female protagonist. It’s also a nod to SMILF’s extra-­diegetic audience about the importance of television as a medium—­its therapeutic role in community-­ building, especially among women. Watching Bridgette Bird watch Olivia Pope, we join in a sisterhood of spectators for whom female antiheroes represent the

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promise of change, the undoing of business as usual. Of course, as a comic antihero, Bridgette is nothing like Olivia Pope. Her domain is not ambition and hyper-­competence but failure and humiliation. And yet, Bridgette’s presence on television affects viewers in ways not dissimilar to her own reception of Scandal and Law & Order: SVU, providing a model of alternative womanhood, since she, like Mariska and Olivia, has bucked normative convention and lived to tell the tale. Bridgette does not have the competence to shut anything down, and she’s certainly not the most trustworthy woman on television. Nevertheless, she succeeds in doing something equally important, sending a message to audiences who may, like Bridgette, be traumatized, depressed, or simply worn out by the demands of neoliberal capitalism: You are a fucking person in the world. And you are not alone.

Epilogue

Our study charts the rise of selfish and misanthropic female protagonists in television dramas and comedies of the last ten years, a phenomenon that we argue marks a departure from previous representations. Women on TV have historically fulfilled a pro-­social function: they bring people together; they smooth interactions; they domesticate the foreign or unfamiliar. In this way, they encourage the relationships that stand at the center of our social order. When women attempt to rescue civilization rather than simply grease its wheels (as is the case in dramas like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alias, and Veronica Mars), they push the bounds of acceptable female behavior. But when these protagonists cross over into lawlessness and megalomania, they become full-­throated antiheroes, actively undermining expectations about women’s pro-­social burden. It’s true that they often have good intentions. Carrie Mathi­ son is convinced that only she can save the United States from another 9/11, and Elizabeth Jennings tells herself (and her victims) that her “work” makes a better world for everyone. Nevertheless, their methods are so unorthodox and their ethical barometers so compromised that they end up inverting the very world they claim they want to redeem. In television comedies, a related dynamic can be glimpsed as young women renounce career ambition and long-­term relationships in favor of adventure and sensual gratification. Told that they are the future, that their achievements propel the world, they respond by turning their backs on civic responsibility, rejecting the part of role model. One might describe these protagonists as resembling stereotypical men. In dramas, they adopt male-­coded forms of power (physical prowess, hyperrationality, ruthlessness); in comedies, they adopt male-­coded forms of renunciation (indolence, sloppiness). In each case they refuse the collective-­ focused and virtue-­transmitting obligations of women in civilized society.

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In the domain of drama, our analysis has largely charted a narrative of decline, one that includes dead queens, sidelined officers, and retired assassins. To be sure, there were some great successes—­victory speeches, retribution, whole cities razed—­but the trajectory of the woman-­in-­power is largely downward, the mood more melancholic than triumphant. The dramatic antihero could get everything right (Carrie Mathison), be twice as good (Olivia Pope), bend the knee to no one (Cersei Lannister), and still find herself grasping the short end of the stick, unable to hold on to the political ascendency she once possessed. Must the woman who rejects social obligation in favor of self-­aggrandizement necessarily meet with failure? Actor and screenwriter Brit Marling writes of searching for narratives of female triumph in Western literature and culture only to find story after story of declension and loss: Even the spirited Antigone, the brave Joan of Arc and the unfettered Thelma and Louise meet tragic ends in large part because they are spirited, brave and unfettered. They can defy kings, refuse beauty and defend themselves against violence. But it’s challenging for a writer to imagine a world in which such free women can exist without brutal consequences. . . . Even when I found myself writing stories about women rebelling against the patriarchy, it still felt like what I largely ended up describing was the confines of patriarchy.1

Marling traces a world in which imaginative work cannot think outside the limits of masculinist culture. According to this logic, every attempt to posit women’s liberation ends up being a meditation on the forces that she’s rebelling against and that she can never fully defy. You can put a Khaleesi on a dragon, but apparently you can’t stop her from freefalling. The female antihero’s failed power bids in television dramas would seem to reflect the current American political reality, where the promise of a woman leader remains elusive. The year 2016 saw the nomination of the first female presidential candidate; the year 2018, a record-­breaking number of women (including many of color) elected to the House and the Senate; the year 2019, no fewer than six female candidates (two of them non-­white) vying to unseat Donald Trump for the presidency. And yet, by early 2020 much of the excitement around these developments had given way to feelings of deflation: the “pink wave” had been accompanied by an uptick of misogyny (perhaps best encapsulated in the ire directed against the four progressive women of color newly elected to Congress, known as “the Squad”), and the Democratic presidential field had narrowed to two white men in their seventies. Hil­ lary Clinton’s trajectory in the preceding presidential cycle provided a similar cautionary lesson. Hailed by both polling and media organizations as the presumptive victor of the 2016 contest, her path to the Oval Office seemed

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all but assured. (When the Access Hollywood tape aired shortly before voting began, much of the country assumed that Trump’s “grab-­them-­by-­the-­pussy” comments would be the final nail in the coffin.) But pundits underestimated the deep dislike of Clinton as well as the anti-­establishment fervor that turned her institutional support into a liability. While Clinton’s loss to a man clearly her inferior in both policy and political experience was no doubt due to myriad factors, a good deal of it felt like plain old-­fashioned misogyny. (The fact that Clinton lost among white women was merely proof of how far this misogyny extended.) The satire site McSweeney’s captured the can’t-­win nature of women’s presidential candidacy with its 2 January 2019 headline: “I Don’t Hate Women Candidates—­I Just Hated Hillary and Coincidentally I’m Starting to Hate Elizabeth Warren.”2 It may seem strange to think about Hillary Rodham Clinton as a model for unruly women, given her ties to establishment politics. But she, too, failed to play out a pro-­social role, often excoriated for not smiling enough, not being likeable, not dropping that pesky maiden name. If women are expected to lubricate the social axis so that the wheels of the status quo turn more smoothly, then surely it is she and not Donald Trump who has earned the title “the great disruptor.” Her loss rattled scores of supporters who saw in her defeat the impossibility of a female president in their lifetime (Kamala Harris’s win of the vice presidency notwithstanding). Indeed, faced with the seeming inevitability of failure, many women could be forgiven for shrugging their shoulders and throwing in the towel. This is, in fact, the response of the female antiheroes that populate television comedy. They observe a world that punishes women for their unstinting efforts and choose to leave it behind. Why bust your chops seeking world domination when the chances for success are slim and you could be smoking weed with your bestie instead? Comedic antiheroes share with their dramatic counterparts a disinvestment in virtue and social responsibility, but rather than channeling these refusals into power grabs, they drop the reins altogether, rejecting the achievement mandate in favor of friendship and adventure. Interestingly, this anti-­aspirational approach originates with female creators and showrunners, for while the dramatic antiheroes we examine in this book are largely created by men (David Benioff and D. B. Weiss of Game of Thrones, Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields of The Americans, Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon of Homeland), the comedic antiheroes are the brainchildren of women (Lena Dunham, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacob­ son, Issa Rae, Frankie Shaw). Male writers imagine the female antihero as seizing power and failing. Female writers imagine her as simply walking away.3 While the hard-­hitting dramatic antihero is worlds away from her slacker comedic counterpart, occasionally these two worlds collide, as when Issa

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and her friends watch Scandal-­like fare in Insecure or when Bridgette and her mother invoke Mariska Hargitay or Olivia Pope during dark moments in SMILF. These scenes are significant, we have argued, because they create meta-­textual moments that model the importance of antihero television for audiences. They teach us that, even in the midst of personal failure and shame, there is a certain joy to be had in watching powerful women striving for success. A version of this dynamic plays out in an episode of Broad City titled “2016,” when Hillary Clinton makes a guest appearance as herself. The broads, as usual, have been having a rough day. Abbi has battled the horrors of the DMV office in New York City, and Ilana has been cold-­calling for the Clinton campaign, trying (unsuccessfully) to assure voters that Hillary is “not a witch.”4 But the two are rejuvenated through the charismatic entrance of Clinton—­the politician is depicted as so magnetic that she literally has sparks of light emanating from her eyes. At the end of the episode, Clinton is shown cradling each of the broads’ heads on her shoulders, an image that combines authoritative leadership with maternity. Abbi and Ilana are just as broke and down on their luck as ever; but, like Bridgette and her mother on SMILF, they are buoyed by the imagined presence of a powerful woman who is fighting on their behalf. Of course, Clinton ends up losing the 2016 election, a development addressed on Broad City the following year. In season 4, episode 6, we learn that Ilana has been so devasted by Trump’s victory that she’s lost the capacity to orgasm. “I increased my dosage of antidepressants, and I’ve also just been more anxious and depressed this whole disgusting gross year, and now I have dead pussy,” she tells her sex therapist Betty (Marcella Lowery).5 When Betty suggests she reclaim her sexuality despite the new president, what follows is a hilarious sequence in which Ilana attempts to bring herself to orgasm only to be continually distracted by Trump-­associated buzzkills (“Electoral College!” “Mike Pence!” “Tiny tiny hands!”). When she finally comes, it is in response to a fantasy sequence involving myriad images of powerful women, including Hillary Clinton, Angela Davis, Susan B. Anthony, Oprah Winfrey, Elizabeth Warren, Serena Williams, Beyoncé, Michelle Obama, Indira Gandhi, Bette Midler, Malala Yousafzai, and Gloria Steinem. The suggestion is that only by remembering norm-­defying women can Ilana (and others, similarly traumatized) cure herself of her Trump-­induced malaise. While Ilana attempts to get back in touch with her inner “cum kween” in this episode, Abbi is thrown into crisis by the discovery of a gray hair. She sees it as a sign of her declining beauty, but Ilana counters that this represents “the most powerful moment in a woman’s life.” “You’re becoming a witch,” she adds proudly. “A dope and powerful fucking witch.”6 Witches, of course,

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were very much part of the cultural landscape when this episode aired on 25 October 2017—­the week before, Woody Allen had warned that attacks on Harvey Weinstein were creating a “witch-­hunt atmosphere,” and Lindy West responded with an op-­ed in the New York Times entitled “Yes, this is a witch hunt. I’m a witch, and I’m hunting you.”7 Back in the episode titled “2016,” the joke was that Clinton volunteers needed to assure the public that Hillary was “not a witch.” In reclaiming this title the following year (“Witches” ends with a female bacchanalia involving howling and menstrual blood), the broads suggest that the time for apologizing for women’s antisociality has passed. The only way forward is for women to embrace their witchiness, and with it, their potential for disrupting the status quo. The power and promise of this disruptiveness can be glimpsed in the Saturday Night Live cold open of 12 November 2016, the first episode after Trump’s election.8 Honoring both Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid and the death of singer-­songwriter Leonard Cohen earlier that week, SNL cast member Kate McKinnon (who played Clinton in sketches throughout the 2016 campaign) appears in her signature Clinton wig and pantsuit, seated at a piano. She sings an emotional cover of Cohen’s haunting ballad “Hallelujah,” itself a song of failure and redemption. McKinnon belts out Cohen’s first two verses, then a final verse articulated in the imagined voice of Clinton: “I did my best, it wasn’t much / I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch / I told the truth, I didn’t come to fool ya. / And even though it all went wrong / I’ll stand before the Lord of Song / With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah.” At the end of the sketch, McKinnon locks eyes with the camera and, in a moment where it’s not clear if she’s playing Clinton or herself, declares, “I’m not giving up. And neither should you.” The scene includes rich layers of meta-­ commentary—­McKinnon’s caricature of Clinton played straight, the funereal tone of Cohen’s song brought to bear as an elegy for both Cohen himself and our vision of an America that might elect a woman. Taken as a whole, the sketch speaks to the two impulses we have traced in this book: the impulse on the part of women to chase power and influence and, when that doesn’t succeed, the impulse to create art (and laughter) out of failure. The antiheroes we have analyzed sometimes founder, sometimes opt out entirely. Yet even in the course of these renunciations, they remain committed to living on their own terms. Their portraits—­of found family in Scandal and Girls, of resistant motherhood in Homeland and SMILF, of anti-­patriarchal authority in Game of Thrones and The Americans, and of fierce, loving female community in Insecure and Broad City—­have created television that shows us we’re not alone. They’re not giving up. And neither should we.

Acknowledgments

This book began as a talk on the female antihero given by Sarah Hagelin for the program “Feminism & Co.: Art, Sex, Politics,” curated by Elissa Auther and Gillian Silverman for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver. We thank Adam Lerner, Nora Burnett Abrams, and Sarah Baie for supporting this program and allowing us the space to first talk through the figure of the female antihero. We also thank the wonderful women of our multiple writing groups—­Sarah Tyson, Michelle Comstock, Sarah Fields, Amy Hasinoff, Boram Jeong, Margaret Woodhull, Nicky Spigner, Carole Woodall, Meng Li, Carey McAndrews, Edelina Burciaga, Claudia Stokes, and Faye Halperin—­ who have read different chapters of this book and offered invaluable feedback. For her support for this project from the very beginning, we thank Priya Nelson, now at Princeton University Press. Many thanks also to Tristan Bates and Alan Thomas at the University of Chicago Press for their keen editorial insights, as well as the two readers of the manuscript for their astute suggestions about how to make this book stronger. Much gratitude is extended to the amazing Amanda Grell for her help in compiling and fact-­checking the manuscript. Portions of chapter 5 appeared under the title “Shame TV: Feminist Antiaspirationalism in HBO’s Girls,” in Signs 43, no. 4 (Summer 2018); the material is reprinted by permission of the publisher. For their enthusiasm, editorial advice, and supportive friendship, Gillian thanks Chaela Pastore, Hallie Stosur, Jana Portnow, Jonathan Grossman, Liza Yukins, Julie Crawford, Elissa Auther, Julia Rothwax, Helen Thorpe, Pompa Banerjee, Nicky Beer, Jo Luloff, John-­Michael Rivera, Eric Fretz, Sujata Fretz, Karl Kister, Mary Caukins, and Orah Fireman. Sarah Hagelin is the best partner (in writing, in conversing, in crime) that anyone could ask for. I am so grateful to have her in my life. Thanks also to my family in all its myriad

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forms—­Doris Silverman (whose enthusiasm for Game of Thrones made us work all the harder to get it right), Ilena Silverman, Mara Silverman, Stefan Silverman, Herb Dembitzer, Alexis Mead Silverman, Sam Stoloff (who gave us keen advice on the project from its inception), Brian Lloyd, Gary Joseph (who couldn’t talk enough about The Americans), Micki Joseph, Dan Joseph, and Tracy Smith Joseph. Plus my nieces and nephews (12 in all!) who helped me better understand television and feminism in the millennial moment. Thanks, finally, to Philip Joseph, my best reader and biggest supporter. This manuscript is that much better for your editorial input and advice. And to Desi, Jules, and Gideon—­my favorite TV-­watching buddies, out­ side of Sarah! For their support of this project from the beginning, and their friendship, Sarah thanks Jo Luloff, Nicky Beer, and Amy Vidali. I remain grateful for the ongoing friendship and encouragement of Andrea Stevens, Jill Rappoport, Ellen Malenas Ledoux, Michael Lewis, Jolie Sheffer, Susan Fraiman, Liz Schirmer, Ryan Cull, Peter Fine, and Joyce Garay. For her influence on these ideas—­especially on found family and female community—­Jen Almjeld deserves the greatest thanks of which I am capable. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Gillian Silverman, whose friendship, generosity, and companionship have made writing this book a pleasure. Writing is often a pursuit too solitary for my restless soul; working with such a kindred spirit has been a gift and a privilege. Finally, to my family, Rich and Terry Hagelin, Suzanne, Ben, Grace, Joe, and Caleb Temple, and Brian Hagelin and Alisa Burpee, whose love makes it all worth it. And to the memory of  Viola Love, who taught me how to learn, to grow, and to live on my own terms.

Notes

Prologue 1. Courtney Hutton, Jiggle TV: Charlie’s Angels and Aaron Spelling’s Television Legacy (Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2010). 2. Kathleen Rowe, The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995). 3. See Hanna Rosin, The End of Men: And the Rise of Women (New York: Penguin, 2012); Liza Mundy, The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Breadwinners Is Transforming Our Culture (Simon & Schuster: Free Press, 2013); Leonard Sax, Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (New York: Basic Books, 2016); and William Farrell and John Gray, The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do about It (Dallas: BenBella Books, 2018). 4. Suzanne Leonard, “Escaping the Recession? The New Vitality of the Woman Worker,” in Gendering the Recession: Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity, ed. Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 51. 5. Jorie Lagerwey, Julia Leyda, and Diane Negra claim that the category of “resilience” is a key aspect of the powerful, post-­recessionary woman on television; see “Female-­Centered TV in an Age of Precarity,” Genders 1, no. 1 (2016), https://www.colorado.edu/genders/2016/05/19 /female-centered-tv-age-precarity#_edn1; see also Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad, “The Amazing Bounce-­Backable Woman: Resilience and the Psychological Turn in Neoliberalism,” Sociological Research Online 23, no. 2 (2018): 477–­495. 6. See Elana Levine and Michael Z. Newman, Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (New York: Routledge, 2011), 14–­37; Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television (New York: NYU Press, 2015), 206–­232; and Elliot Logan, “ ‘Quality Television’ as a Critical Obstacle: Explanation and Aesthetics in Television Studies,” Screen 57, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 144–­162. 7. See Susan Fraiman, Cool Men and the Second Sex (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), xi–­xxiii.

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1. Amanda D. Lotz, Cable Guys: Television and Masculinities in the 21st Century (New York: NYU Press, 2014), 63. 2. Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television (New York: NYU Press, 2015), 142–­143. 3. Margrethe Bruun Vaage, The Antihero in American Television (New York: Routledge, 2016), xi, xiii. 4. John Fitch III, “Archetypes on Screen: Odysseus, St. Paul, Christ and the American Cinematic Hero and Anti-­Hero,” Journal of Religion and Film 9, no. 1 (April 2005): 2. For more on the classic hero in film, see Susan Mackey-­Callis, The Hero and the Perennial Journey Home in American Film (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). 5. Lillian Furst, “The Romantic Hero, Or Is He an Anti-­Hero?,” Studies in the Literary Imagination 9, no. 1 (Spring 1976): 57. 6. For more on the characteristics of the antihero in contemporary popular culture, see Robert Warshow, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero,” in The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theater, and Other Aspects of Popular Culture (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 127–­133; Peter K. Jonason et al., “The Antihero in Popular Culture: Life History Theory and the Dark Triad of Personality Traits,” Review of General Psychology 16, no. 2 (2012): 192–­199; Constantine Santas, The Epic in Film: From Myth to Blockbuster (Lanham, MD: Bowman & Littlefield, 2007): 157–­178; Jeff Lenburg, Dustin Hoffman: Hollywood’s Antihero (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983); and Chris Rojek, Celebrity (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), 159–­171. 7. See Smart Pop Books, “Introduction,” Antiheroes: Heroes, Villains, and the Fine Line Between (Dallas: BenBella Books, 2013). 8. Ann Towns, “The Status of Women as a Standard of ‘Civilization,’ ” European Journal of International Relations 15, no. 4 (2009): 682. 9. Quoted in Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 18. This understanding of women has remained largely unchanged, as evidenced by actor and entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow’s more recent comments: “[As women], part of your role is just to sort of maintain culture. . . . We’re female. So we are kind of channeling the energy for the sex and correcting imbalances. If there was ever any discord, especially between men, I felt it was my job to sort of balance the energy a little bit” (David Gelles, “Gwyneth Paltrow Is All Business,” New York Times, 6 March 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/business/gwyneth-paltrow-goop-corner -office.html). 10. Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–­1860,” American Quarterly 18, no. 2, part 1 (Summer 1966): 171–­172. 11. On the backlash to Skyler White’s behavior in season 2 of Breaking Bad, see Dustin Rowles, “Where’s the Female Walter White?,” Salon, 8 September 2013, https://www.salon.com /2013/09/08/stop_imposing_a_double_standard_on_skyler_white_partner/. 12. Laura Bennett, “Against Antiheroes: It’s Time To Retire America’s Most Overused Buzzword,” The New Republic, 17 August 2013, https://newrepublic.com/article/114346/anti-antihero -against-cultural-buzzwords. 13. Vikram Murthi, “Don Draper Is No Antihero,” TV Club, AV Club, 30 March 2015. 14. Furst, “The Romantic Hero, Or Is He an Anti-­Hero?,” 57. 15. Furst, “The Romantic Hero, Or Is He an Anti-­Hero?,” 61.

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16. See, for example, Lotz, Cable Guys, 52–­81. 17. See, for example, Andrew Ryan, “Betty Draper and More: The 7 Worst Moms in TV History,” The Globe and Mail, 30 April 2013, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parent ing/mothers-day/betty-draper-and-more-the-7-worst-moms-in-tv-history/article11637384/; Sasha Emmons, “Betty Draper’s 6 Biggest Parenting Fails,” Today, 12 April 2013, https://www .today.com/parents/mad-men-betty-draper-wins-bad-parent-award-I532228; and Drew Mackie, “Betty Draper Francis’ 10 Most ‘Mad Mom’ Moments,” People, 11 May 2015, https://people.com /tv/mad-men-betty-drapers-worst-mom-moments/. 18. See Elizabeth Ault, “ ‘You Can Help Yourself/but Don’t Take too Much’: African American Motherhood on The Wire,” Television and New Media 14, no. 5 (2013): 386–­401. 19. See Rebecca Wanzo, “Precarious-­Girl Comedy: Issa Rae, Lena Dunham, and Abjection Aesthetics,” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, 31, no. 2(92) (2016): 29–­30. 20. See Imani M. Cheers, The Evolution of Black Women in Television: Mammies, Matriarchs, and Mistresses (New York: Routledge, 2018); Patricia Hill Collins, “Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images,” in Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, ed. Collins (New York: Routledge, 2000), 76–­106; and Kimberly Springer, “Waiting to Set It Off: African American Women and the Sapphire Fixation,” in Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies, ed. Martha McCaughey and Neal King (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 172–­199. 21. See Richard Dyer, “White,” Screen 29, no. 4 (1988): 44–­65; and Susan Douglas, The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild (New York: Macmillan, 2010), 126–­153. 22. Elana Levine and Michael Z. Newman, Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (New York: Routledge, 2011), 80–­99. For more on the feminization of television and its roots in soap opera, see Tania Modleski, “The Search for Tomorrow in Today’s Soap Operas: Notes on a Feminine Narrative Form,” Film Quarterly 33, no. 1 (Autumn 1979): 12–­21; and Noah Berlatsky, “The Dark Side of Television’s ‘Golden Age,’ ” Pacific Standard (14 August 2015), https://psmag.com/social-justice/dark-side-of-televisions-golden-age. 23. Brett Martin, Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad (New York: Penguin Books, 2013); and Alan Sepinwall, The Revolution Was Televised: How The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Lost and Other Groundbreaking Dramas Changed TV Forever (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012). Scholarly studies such as Jason Mittell’s Complex TV and Amanda Lotz’s We Now Disrupt This Broadcast (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018) tell versions of this story. 24. See Michael Mario Albrecht, Masculinity in Contemporary Quality Television (New York: Routledge, 2015); and Lotz, Cable Guys. 25. Emily Nussbaum, “Difficult Women: How Sex and the City Lost Its Good Name,” New Yorker, 22 July 2013, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/difficult-women. 26. Lotz’s Cable Guys and Vaage’s The Antihero in American Television both give only glancing reference to the female antihero. 27. See Amanda Lotz, Redesigning Women: Television After the Network Era (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 1–­36. 28. The transformations in television delivery have been well documented; see Aymar Jean Christian, Open TV: Innovation Beyond Hollywood, and the Rise of Web Television (New York: NYU Press, 2018); Amanda Lotz, Portals: A Treatise on Internet-­Distributed Television (Ann

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Arbor, MI: Maize Books, 2017); and Kim Akass and Janet McCabe, eds., Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007), especially part 2. 29. Margaret Talley, The Rise of the Anti-­Heroine in TV’s Third Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 110. 30. Kevin O’Keefe, “TV’s Renaissance for Strong Women Is Happening in a Surprising Place,” The Atlantic, 9 October 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/how -to-get-away-with-murder-and-the-rise-of-the-new-network-tv-heroine/381021/; and Yasmin Omar, “The Rise of the Antiheroine: Why Women Are Finally Allowed To Be ‘Unlikeable’ On-­ Screen,” Harper’s Bazaar, 16 October 2018, https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/culture/enter tainment/a23817045/the-rise-of-the-antiheroine-why-women-are-finally-allowed-to-be-unlike able-on-screen/. O’Keefe argues that women’s impact is so significant that the changes in programming are not limited to cable or streaming services but have impacted network television as well. 31. “The antiheroine characters we encounter on television nowadays . . . are informed by the interconnected strands of an ongoing longing for moral ambiguity and feminist-­inspired ideas of female self-­determination and achievement that make up the historically specific structure of feeling strictly associated with antiheroine television” (Milly Buonanno, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Television Antiheroines: Women Behaving Badly in Crime and Prison Drama [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017], 15). 32. Julia M. Mason, “Mothers and Antiheroes: Analyzing Motherhood and Representation in Weeds, Sons of Anarchy, and Breaking Bad,” Journal of Popular Culture 52, no. 3 (June 2019): 645–­662. Also see Suzanna Danuta Walters and Laura Harrison, “Not Ready to Make Nice: Aberrant Mothers in Contemporary Culture,” Feminist Media Studies 14, no. 1 (2014): 38–­55. 33. Jorie Lagerwey, Julia Leyda, and Diane Negra, “Female-­Centered TV in an Age of Precarity,” Genders 1, no. 1 (2016), https://www.colorado.edu/genders/2016/05/19/female-centered -tv-age-precarity#_edn1. 34. Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey, Horrible White People: Gender, Genre, and Television’s Precarious Whiteness (New York: NYU Press, 2020). 35. Kristen J. Warner, “Value Added: Reconsidering Women-­Centered Media and Viewership,” Culture & Critique 12, no. 2 (special issue, June 2019): 167–­172. 36. For further scholarly accounts of female-­centered TV in the twenty-­first century, see Melanie Kennedy and Safiya Umoja Noble, “Independent Women from Film to Television,” Feminist Media Studies 19, no. 7, ed. Claire Perkins and Michelle Schreiber (special issue, 2019): 1043–­1060; Jana Cattien, “When Feminism Becomes a Genre: Alias Grace and ‘Feminist’ Television,” Feminist Theory 20, no. 3 (2019): 321–­339; Kathleen Battles, “Knowledge, Agency, and the ‘Strong Female Lead’ in Serialized Television,” Flow Journal 21, no. 5 (2015), https://www.flow journal.org/2015/03/strong-female-lead/; Rachel Moseley, Helen Wheatley, and Helen Wood, eds., Television for Women: New Directions (Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2017); and Julia Havas and Maria Sulimma, “ ‘Through the Gaps of My Fingers’: Genre, Femininity, and Cringe Aesthetics in Dramedy Television,” Television and New Media 2, no. 1 (2020): 75–­94. 37. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey: Employed Persons by detailed Occupation, Sex, Race, and Hispanic or Latino Ethnicity,” 22 January 2020, available at http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11.htm. 38. Niall McCarthy, “What Percentage of U.S. Wives Earn More Than Their Husbands?,” Forbes, 19 November 2015, https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/11/19/what-percent age-of-us-wives-earn-more-than-their-husbands-infographic/#41d22d435736. Of course, women

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rarely concede publicly that they earn more than their husbands; see Claire Cain Miller, “When Wives Earn More Than Their Husbands, Neither Partner Likes to Admit It,” New York Times, 17 July 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/upshot/when-wives-earn-more-than-husbands -neither-like-to-admit-it.html. 39. National Center for Education Statistics, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/2017menu _tables.asp. Also see Alana Semuels, “Poor Girls Are Leaving Their Brothers Behind,” The Atlantic, 27 November 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/gender-edu cation-gap/546677/; Kate Whiting, “Women Were Awarded More PhDs in the US Than Men Last Year,” World Economic Forum, 15 October 2018, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10 /chart-of-the-day-more-women-than-men-earned-phds-in-the-us-last-year/; and Anne Stych, “Women Earn the Majority of Advanced Degrees,” BizWomen, 9 October 2018, https://www .bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2018/10/women-earn-the-majority-of-advanced -degrees.html. 40. R. E. O’Dea, M. Lagisz, M. D. Jennisons, and S. Nakagawa, “Gender Differences in Individual Variation in Academic Grades Fail to Fit Expected Patterns for STEM,” Nature Communications 9, no. 1 (2018): 1–­8. Also see Daniel Voyer and Susan D. Voyer, “Gender Differences in Scholastic Achievement: A Meta-­Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 140, no. 4 (July 2014): 1174–­1204. 41. See Madeleine Arnot, Miriam David, and Gaby Weiner, Closing the Gender Gap: Postwar Education and Social Change (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999). 42. Hanna Rosin, The End of Men: And the Rise of Women (New York: Penguin, 2012), 16. 43. See Sarah Young, “Soft Skills Are a Boon to a Leadership Team. Women Have Them in Spades,” Financial Post, 2 February 2018, https://business.financialpost.com/executive/leadership /soft-skills-are-a-boon-to-a-leadership-team-women-have-them-in-spades; and “New Research Shows Women Are Better at Using Soft Skills Crucial for Effective Leadership and Superior Business Performance, Finds Korn Ferry Hay Group,” Korn Ferry, 4 March 2016, https://www.kornferry.com /press/new-research-shows-women-are-better-at-using-soft-skills-crucial-for-effective-leadership. 44. Hillary Clinton, “Women and the Economy Summit Keynote Address: ‘Some Leaders Are Born Women,’ ” 16 September 2016, National Center for Asia-­Pacific Cooperation Summary Report, APEC Women and the Economy Summit, San Francisco, CA, 5, http://www.ncapec.org /docs/Publications/APEC%20Women%20and%20the%20Economy%20Summit.pdf. 45. Liza Mundy, The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Breadwinners Is Transforming Our Culture (Simon & Schuster: Free Press, 2013). 46. Reihan Salam, “The Death of Macho,” Foreign Policy, 21 June 2009, https://foreignpolicy .com/2009/06/21/the-death-of-macho/. 47. Rosin, The End of Men, 15. 48. Emma Newburger, “Movies Starring Women Earn More Money than Movies Starring Men, According to New Research,” CNBC, 12 December 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/12 /movies-starring-women-make-more-money-than-movies-starring-men.html. 49. See Pepper Schwartz, “Why More Women Choose Not To Marry,” CNN, 15 October 2014, http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/15/opinion/schwartz-single-women/index.html; and Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016). 50. In a 2012 New York Times article, Stephanie Coontz reports that the median wages of female managers are 73 percent of what male managers earn; Stephanie Coontz, “The Myth of Male Decline,” New York Times, 29 September 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/opinion

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/sunday/the-myth-of-male-decline.html?pagewanted=all. Also see Jena McGregor, “Women Make Up Just 11 Percent of the Highest Paid Jobs in Corporate America,” Washington Post, 3 May 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2018/05/03/women-make-up-just -11-percent-of-the-highest-paid-jobs-in-corporate-america/?noredirect=on&utm_term =.7078bf1ac9fb. 51. Hillary Clinton puts the number in 2016 at less than 3 percent (“Some Leaders Are Born Women,” 4). Stephanie Coontz reports that in 2012 women make up 4 percent of Fortune’s top 1000 companies (“The Myth of Male Decline”). 52. Jill Filipovic, “Why Sexism at the Office Makes Women Love Hillary Clinton,” New York Times, 20 February 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/opinion/campaign-stops/why -sexism-at-the-office-makes-women-love-hillary-clinton.html. 53. Anna North, “You’ve Heard That Women Make 80 Cents to Men’s Dollar. It’s Much Worse Than That,” Vox, 2 April 2019, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/28/18116388 /gender-pay-gap-real-equal. 54. Coontz, “The Myth of Male Decline.” Susan Faludi also confirms that the “fastest-­ growing future occupations for women—­home health aide, child-­care worker, customer-­service representative, office clerk, food-­service worker—­are among the lowest paid, most with few to no benefits and little possibility for advancement.” See “Facebook Feminism, Like It Or Not,” The Baffler 23 (August 2013), https://thebaffler.com/salvos/facebook-feminism-like-it-or-not. 55. Jill Blackmore, “Achieving More in Education But Earning Less in Work: Girls, Boys, and Gender Equality in Schooling,” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 22, no. 1 (2001): 123–­129. For a helpful overview of the myth of female superiority in the post-­recession years, see Suzanne Leonard, “Escaping the Recession? The New Vitality of the Woman Worker,” in Gendering the Recession: Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity, ed. Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 31–­58. 56. Mayo Clinic Staff, “Depression in Girls: Understanding the Gender Gap,” Mayo Clinic, 29 January 2019, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/in-depth/depres sion/art-20047725. 57. Daniel Schneider, Kristen Harknett, and Sara McLanahan, “Intimate Partner Violence in the Great Recession,” Demography 53, no. 2 (2016): 471–­505. Also see Salam, “The Death of Macho.” 58. For accounts that emphasize the current moment as a time of increased insecurity for boys, see Rosin, The End of Men; Peg Tyre, The Trouble with Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents and Educators Must Do (New York: Harmony, 2009); William Farrell and John Gray, The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys are Struggling and What We Can Do About It (Dallas: BenBella Books, 2018); Richard Whitmire, Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That’s Leaving Them Behind (New York: AMACOM, 2011); and Leonard Sax, Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men (New York: Basic Books, 2016). 59. Oliver Burkeman, “Dirty Secret: Why Is There Still a Housework Gender Gap?,” The Guardian, 17 February 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/feb/17/dirty-secret -why-housework-gender-gap; Suzanne M. Bianchi, Liane C. Sayer, Melissa A. Milke, and John P. Robinson, “Housework: Who Did, Does, or Will Do It, and How Much Does It Matter?,” Social Forces 91, no. 1 (September 2012): 55–­63; Akiko Yoshida, “Dads Who Do Diapers: Factors Affecting Care of Young Children By Fathers,” Journal of Family Issues 33, no. 4 (August 2011): 451–­477; Claire M. Kamp Dush, Jill E. Yavorsky, and Sarah J. Schoppe-­Sullivan, “What Are Men Doing

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While Women Perform Extra Unpaid Labor? Leisure and Specialization at the Transitions to Parenthood,” Sex Roles 78, no. 11/12 (June 2018): 715–­730; and Gemma Hartley, “Women Aren’t Nags. We’re Just Fed Up,” Harper’s Bazaar, 27 September 2017, http://www.harpersbazaar.com /culture/features/a12063822/emotional-labor-ge. 60. Anita Harris, Future Girl: Young Women in the 21st Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 1–­2. 61. Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture, and Social Change (London: Sage Publications, 2009), 57. 62. Harris, Future Girl, 9. 63. Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad, “The Amazing Bounce-­Backable Woman: Resilience and the Psychological Turn in Neoliberalism,” Sociological Research Online 23, no. 2 (2018): 477–­ 495. For more on how contemporary mainstream feminism insists on positive affect for girls and women, see Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad, “Confidence Culture and the Remaking of Feminism,” New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics 91 (2017): 16–­34; Akane Kanai, “On Not Taking the Self Seriously: Resilience, Relatability and Humour in Young Women’s Tumblr Blogs,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 22, no. 1 (2017): 60–­77; Sarah Banet-­Weiser, “ ‘Con­ fidence You Can Carry!’: Girls in Crisis and the Market for Girls’ Empowerment Organizations,” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 29, no. 2 (2015): 182–­193; and Robin James, Resilience and Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism, Neoliberalism (Alresford, UK: Zero Books, 2015). 64. On the use of popular feminism in both advertising and nonprofit campaigns, see Sarah Banet-­Weiser, Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018). 65. Quoted in Lucy Watson, “How Girls Are Finding Empowerment By Being Sad Online,” Dazed, 23 November 2015, http://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/article/28463/1/girls-are -finding-empowerment-through-internet-sadness. Also see Amy Shields Dobson, “Girls’ ‘Pain Memes’ on YouTube: The Production of Pain and Femininity in a Digital Network,” in Youth Cultures and Subcultures: Australian Perspectives, ed. Sarah Baker, Brady Robards, and Bob Buttigieg (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 173–­182. 66. Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-­Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (New York: Henry Holt, 2009); and Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). 67. Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure, 4. For more on the possibilities (or lack thereof) of resistance to neoliberal imperatives, see Gill and Orgad, “Confidence Culture and the Remaking of Feminism”; Kanai, “On Not Taking the Self Seriously”; Banet-­Weiser, “ ‘Confidence You Can Carry!’ ”; and James, Resilience and Melancholy. 68. SMILF, “Half a Sheet Cake & a Blue-­Raspberry Slushie,” season 1, episode 3, written by Jess Dweck and Frankie Shaw, directed by Leslye Headland, original airdate 19 November 2017. 69. Homeland, “Pilot,” season 1, episode 1, written by Howard Gordon, Alex Gansa, and Gideon Raff, directed by Michael Cuesta, original airdate 2 October 2011. 70. Catherine Orenstein, “What Carrie Could Learn from Mary,” New York Times, 5 September 2003. 71. Diane Negra, What a Girl Wants: Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism (New York: Routledge, 2008), 27, 33.

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72. On celebrity feminism, see Jennifer Wicke, “Celebrity Feminism: Materialist Feminism and the Culture of Celebrity,” South Atlantic Quarterly 93, no. 4 (1994): 751–­778; and “Introduction: Feminism and Contemporary Celebrity Culture,” Celebrity Studies, ed. Hannah Hamad and Anthea Taylor (special issue, 2015): 124–­127. 73. Andi Zeisler, We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement (New York: Public Affairs, 2016), xv. 74. See Linda Hirshman, Get to Work: . . . And Get a Life Before It’s Too Late (New York: Penguin, 2007). 75. See Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005); and Imelda Whelehan, Overloaded: Popular Culture and the Future of Feminism (London: Women’s Press, 2000). 76. Sara Ahmed, “Killing Joy: Feminism and the History of Happiness,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 35, no. 3 (Spring 2010): 571–­594. 77. Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra, eds., Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 4. For other important early accounts of postfeminism, see Deborah Rosenfelt and Judith Stacey, “Second Thoughts on the Second Wave,” in Women, Class and the Feminist Imagination: A Socialist-­Feminist Reader, ed. Karen V. Hansen and Ilene J. Philipson (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 549–­567; Andrea Press, Women Watching Television: Gender, Class, and Generation in the American Television Experience (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991); Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 1991); Sarah Projansky, Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture (New York: NYU Press, 2001); and Angela McRobbie, “Post-­Feminism and Popular Culture,” Feminist Media Studies 4, no. 3 (2004): 255–­264. 78. For an insightful account of this history, see Andrea Long Chu, “Bad TV,” N+1 31 (2018), https://nplusonemag.com/issue-31/politics/bad-tv/. 79. Lauren Rabinowitz, “Ms.-­Representation: The Politics of Feminist Sitcoms,” in Television, History, and American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays, ed. Mary Beth Haralovich and Lauren Rabinowitz (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 145. 80. Rabinowitz, “Ms.-­Representation,” 146. 81. McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism, 5. 82. On the logic of individualism in the postfeminist ethos, see Catherine Rottenberg, “The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism,” Cultural Studies 28, no. 3 (2013): 418–­437; and Imelda Whelehan, “Remaking Feminism: or Why Is Postfeminism So Boring?,” Nordic Journal of English Studies 9, no. 3 (2010): 155–­172. 83. Jessa Crispin, Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2017), 147. 84. Bonnie J. Dow, Prime-­Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement since 1970 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 209. 85. Katharine Viner, “The Personal Is Still Political,” in On the Move: Feminism for a New Generation, ed. Natasha Walter (London: Virago, 1999), 17–­18. 86. Barbara Ryan, Feminism and the Women’s Movement: Dynamics of Change in Social Movement Ideology and Activism (New York: Routledge, 2013), 47. 87. Quoted in Alice Echols, Shaky Ground: The ’60s and Its Aftershocks (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 91.

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88. See Kat Jungnickel, Bikes and Bloomers: Victorian Women Inventors and Their Extraordinary Cycle Wear (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018). Some of these ideas were explicated in an earlier article cowritten by one of us; see Gillian Silverman and Elissa Auther, “ ‘Lifestyle Feminism’ Gets a Bad Rap, But It’s a Great Gateway to Activism,” Slate, 16 May 2017, https://slate.com /human-interest/2017/05/lifestyle-feminism-is-a-great-gateway-to-activism.html. 89. Stanley Aronowitz, The Death and Rebirth of American Radicalism (New York: Routledge, 1996), 29. Also quoted in Echols, Shaky Ground, 91. 90. See, for example, Ann Brooks, Postfeminism: Feminism, Cultural Theory, and Cultural Forms (New York: Routledge, 1997); Ann Braithwaite, “The Personal, the Political, Third-­Wave and Postfeminisms,” Feminist Theory 3, no. 3 (2002): 335–­344; Stacy Gillis and Rebecca Munford, “Genealogies and Generations: The Politics and Praxis of Third Wave Feminism,” Women’s History Review 13, no. 2 (2004): 165–­182; Rachel Moseley and Jacinda Read, “Having It Ally: Popular Television (Post-­)Feminism,” Feminist Media Studies 2, no. 2 (2002): 231–­249; Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley, “Popularity Contests: The Meaning of Popular Feminism,” in Feminism in Popular Culture, ed. Hollows and Moseley (Oxford: Berg, 2006): 1–­21; Fien Adriaens, “Post Feminism in Popular Culture: A Potential for Critical Resistance,” Politics and Culture 4 (2009), https://politicsandculture.org/2009/11/09/post-feminism-in-popular-culture-a-potential-for -critical-resistance/; and Elana Levine, ed., Cupcakes, Pinterest, and Ladyporn: Feminized Popular Culture in the Early 21st Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015). For an overview of the debates around the meaning of postfeminism, see Amanda D. Lotz, “Postfeminist Television Criticism: Rehabilitating Critical Terms and Identifying Postfeminist Attributes,” Feminist Media Studies 1, no. 1 (2001): 105–­121; Stéphanie Genz, “Third Way/ve: The Politics of Postfeminism,” Feminist Theory 7, no. 3 (2006): 333–­353; and Fien Adriaens and Sofie Van Bauwel, “Sex and the City: A Postfeminist Point of View? Or How Popular Culture Functions as a Channel for Feminist Discourse,” Journal of Popular Culture 47, no. 1 (2011): 174–­195. 91. Merri Lisa Johnson, Third Wave Television and Feminism: Jane Puts It in a Box (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), 19. For similar approaches, see Jessica Ford, “Women’s Indie Television: The Intimate Feminism of Women-­Centric Dramedies,” Feminist Media Studies 19, no. 7 (2019): 929; Jana Cattien, “When ‘Feminism’ Becomes a Genre: Alias Grace and ‘Feminist’ Television,” Feminist Theory 20, no. 3 (2019): 321–­339; Meredith Nash and Ruby Grant, “Twenty-­Something Girls v. Thirty-­Something Sex and the City Women: Paving the Way for ‘Post? Feminism,’ ” Feminist Media Studies 15, no. 6 (2015): 976–­991; and Debra Ferreday and Geraldine Harris, “Investigating ‘Fame-­inism’: The Politics of Popular Culture,” Feminist Theory 18, no. 3 (2017): 239–­243. 92. Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker, “Introduction: Gender and Recessionary Culture,” in Gendering the Recession, 18. 93. Amy Shields Dobson and Akane Kanai, “From ‘Can-­Do’ Girls to Insecure and Angry: Affective Dissonances in Young Women’s Post-­Recessional Media,” Feminist Media Studies 19, no. 6 (2019), 776. Also see Lauren J. DeCarvalho, “Hannah and Her Entitled Sisters: (Post) feminism, (Post)recession, and Girls,” Feminist Media Studies 13, no. 2 (2013): 367–­370; and Jodi Brooks, “Olive Kitteridge (Lisa Cholodenko, 2014), Quality Television, and Difficult Women: Female Discontent in the Age of Binge-­Viewing,” Feminist Media Studies 19, no. 7 (2019): 944–­961. 94. Lagerwey, Leyda, and Negra, “Female-­Centered TV in an Age of Precarity.” 95. Lagerwey, Leyda, and Negra, “Female-­Centered TV in an Age of Precarity.” On the relationship between “sensibility,” postfeminism, and neoliberalism, see Rosalind Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 10, no. 2 (2007):

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147–­166; and Gill, “The Affective, Cultural, and Psychic Life of Postfeminism: A Postfeminist Sensibility 10 Years On,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 20, no. 6 (2017): 606–­626. Also see Hilary Radner, Neo-­Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks, and Consumer Culture (New York: Routledge, 2011); and Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism. 96. Janice A. Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 17. 97. For an account that tries to balance notions of agentic subjectivity with the determining conditions of social structure, see Anita Harris and Amy Shields Dobson, “Theorizing Agency in Post-­Girlpower Times,” Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 29, no. 2 (2015): 145–­156. On the complex ways that girls negotiate their media practices in relation to feminism, see Jessalynn Keller and Jessica Ringrose, “ ‘But Then Feminism Goes Out the Window’: Exploring Teenage Girls’ Critical Response to Celebrity Feminism,” Celebrity Studies 6, no. 1 (2015): 132–­135. 98. Lotz, “Postfeminist Television Criticism,” 114. For a related approach, see Anthea Taylor, Celebrity and the Feminist Blockbuster (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). For a thoughtful analysis of how television can both reinforce and resist neoliberal expectations for women and girls, see Dobson and Kanai, “From ‘Can-­Do’ Girls to Insecure and Angry.” 99. See, for example, Banet-­Weiser, Empowered. 100. Sadie Wearing, “Subjects of Rejuvenation: Aging in Postfeminist Culture,” in Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, ed. Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 277–­310. Also see Anita Harris, ed., All About the Girl: Culture, Power, and Identity (New York: Routledge, 2004), especially part 2, “Feminism for Girls.” 101. Arguing something similar, Stacy Gillis and Rebecca Munford remind us that, as popular as these portraits are, postfeminism cannot lay claim to all of girl culture, since the latter is also represented by the Riot Grrrls of the punk movement. “[G]irl culture,” they argue, “has been too easily positioned as a depoliticised and dehistoricised product of the ‘backlash’ against feminism. Mainstreamed under the media-­friendly ‘girl power’ slogan, largely associated with the Spice Girls, and couched in the rhetoric of a popularised post-­feminism, girl culture has been deprived of its radical and activist history” (“Genealogies and Generations,” 170). 102. Wanzo, “Precarious-­Girl Comedy.” 103. On the question of whether we are post-­ postfeminist, see Rosalind Gill, “Post-­ Postfeminism? New Feminist Visibilities in Postfeminist Times,” Feminist Media Studies 16, no. 4 (2016): 610–­630; and Catherine Lumby, “Past the Post in Feminist Media Studies,” Feminist Media Studies 11, no. 1 (2011): 95–­100. On the new age of politicized television, see Molly Fischer, “The Great Awokening,” The Cut, New York Magazine, 8 January 2018, https://www .thecut.com/2018/01/pop-cultures-great-awokening.html. 104. Hollows and Moseley, “Popularity Contests: The Meaning of Popular Feminism,” 1–­2. 105. This is true notwithstanding the existence of the “dramedy,” a term we find somewhat problematic given the gendered nature of its use. After all, critics speak of female-­centered shows like Ally McBeal and Shameless as dramedies but never use the term to characterize shows like The Sopranos, Justified, Deadwood, or Succession, all of which mix comic dialogue with high-­ stakes drama. 106. See Kathleen Rowe, The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995); Joy Press, Stealing the Show: How Women Are Revolutionizing Television (New York: Atria Books, 2018); and Yael Kohen, We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2012).

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107. For an account of this dynamic beginning with shows of the 1970s, see Ashley Sayeau, “As Seen on TV: Women’s Rights and Quality Television,” in Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond, ed. Kim Akass and Janet McCabe (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 52–­61. 108. Beretta E. Smith-­Shomade, Watching While Black: Centering the Television of Black Audiences (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 3. See also Kristal Brent Zook, Color by Fox: The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Chapter One 1. This changes in season 8, episode 5 when Daenerys sacks King’s Landing and kills all its citizens, a plot development we will discuss later in this chapter. 2. See Diana Marques, “Power and Denial of Femininity in Game of Thrones,” Canadian Review of American Studies 49, no. 1 (2019): 46–­65; and Yvonne Tasker and Lindsay Steenberg, “Women Warriors from Chivalry to Vengeance,” in Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones, and Multiple Media Engagements, ed. Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 171–­192. 3. On Game of Thrones as a climate change allegory, see Sonia Saraiya, “Game of Thrones Is Still the Big, Sometimes Clunky Climate Change Allegory We Need,” Vanity Fair, 12 April 2019, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/04/game-of-thrones-climate-change-doom -of-valyria; and Christophe Haubursin and Zach Beauchamp, “Game of Thrones Is Secretly All about Climate Change,” Vox, 14 July 2017, https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/7/14/15969034/game -of-thrones-theory-climate-change. 4. See Charlotte Ahlin, “How the ‘Game of Thrones’ Books Actually Subvert the ‘Rules’ of Fantasy,” Bustle, 19 September 2017, https://www.bustle.com/p/10-ways-the-game-of-thrones -books-break-the-rules-of-fantasy-2366360; Charles Lambert, “A Tender Spot in My Heart: Disability in A Song of Ice and Fire,” Critical Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2015): 20–­33; and Brooke Askey, “ ‘I’d Rather Have No Brains and Two Balls’: Eunuchs, Masculinity and Power in Game of Thrones,” Journal of Popular Culture 51, no. 1 (2018): 50–­67. 5. Brent Hartinger, “A Different Kind of Other: The Role of Freaks and Outcasts in A Song of Ice and Fire,” in Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, ed. James Lowder (Dallas: BenBella Books, 2012), 153. 6. Cersei tells Catelyn Stark about the death of her “black-­haired beauty” (presumably the only child who was fathered by Robert Baratheon) in season 1, episode 2. Daenerys loses her first child (fathered by Khal Drogo) upon his birth; her other three are, of course, her dragons. Moreover, the end of the seventh season creates a parallel between the two women in suggesting that despite the witch’s prophecy, both might have children in the future. Cersei tells both her brothers that she is pregnant, and Jon Snow infuses new life in Daenerys when he suggests that perhaps the witch was wrong. Both women die, however, without giving birth again. 7. Cersei reinforces the parallel when she defends her incestuous relationship with Jaime by comparing it to Daenerys’s family: “The Targaryens wed brothers and sisters for 300 years to keep bloodlines pure” (Game of Thrones, “You Win or You Die,” season 1, episode 7, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Daniel Minahan, original airdate 29 May 2011). 8. Erin Whitney, “Cersei Is Officially the Most Hated Character on Game of Thrones,” 6 December 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/07/game-of-thrones-cersei_n_5280773 .html.

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9. Game of Thrones, “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things,” season 1, episode 4, written by Bryan Cogman, directed by Brian Kirk, original airdate 8 May 2011. 10. Game of Thrones, “The Kingsroad,” season 1, episode 2, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Tim Van Patten, original airdate 24 April 2011. 11. Game of Thrones, “The Pointy End,” season 1, episode 8, written by George R. R. Martin, directed by Daniel Minahan, original airdate 5 June 2011. 12. Game of Thrones, “The Kingsroad.” 13. See Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” Diacritics 17, no. 2 (Summer 1987): 64–­81. 14. PridedKnight, “Stannis Is the Al Gore of Westeros,” Reddit, 19 July 2016, https://www.red dit.com/r/asoiafcirclejerk/comments/4to0x1/everything_stannis_is_the_al_gore_of_westeros/. 15. Game of Thrones, “Blackwater,” season 2, episode 9, written by George R. R. Martin, directed by Neil Marshall, original airdate 27 May 2012. 16. Game of Thrones, “Dragonstone,” season 7, episode 1, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Jeremy Podeswa, original airdate 16 July 2017. 17. Game of Thrones, “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things.” 18. Game of Thrones, “The North Remembers,” season 2, episode 1, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Alan Taylor, original airdate 1 April 2012. 19. Game of Thrones, “A Man Without Honor,” season 2, episode 7, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by David Nutter, original airdate 13 May 2012. 20. For a reading that highlights Daenerys’s non-­normative anti-­reproductive mothering, see Jamie Hovie, “Tyrion’s Gallantry,” Critical Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2015): 86–­98. 21. Game of Thrones, “You Win or You Die.” 22. William Clapton and Laura J. Shepherd make a similar point: “What is most interesting about Daenerys’s ‘rise to power’ is that it simultaneously challenges traditional conventions in the show that people in positions of authority exclusively ought to be men and reinforces the fundamentally gendered nature of political authority and its exercise.  .  .  . Daenerys’ ‘rise to power’ can be read as a reinforcement of prevailing gender hierarchies and the gendered foundations of political authority in Westeros and Essos” (“Lessons from Westeros: Gender and Power in Game of Thrones,” Politics 37, no. 1 [2017]: 12, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi /pdf/10.1177/0263395715612101). 23. Game of Thrones, “And Now His Watch Is Ended,” season 3, episode 4, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Alex Graves, original airdate 21 April 2013. 24. Game of Thrones, “Book of the Stranger,” season 6, episode 4, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Daniel Sackheim, original airdate 15 May 2016. 25. Game of Thrones, “Mhysa,” season 3, episode 10, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by David Nutter, original airdate 9 June 2013. 26. “[Daenerys] is Laura Bush, advocating for the invasion of Iraq under the pretext of saving its women who are desperate to live a life like hers.” Aamer Rahman, “Daenerys’ Whole Storyline on Game of Thrones Is Messed Up,” Gizmodo, 13 June 2013, https://io9.gizmodo.com/daenerys -whole-storyline-on-game-of-thrones-is-messed-513189766. For other critiques in this vein, see Mikayla Hunter, “ ‘All Men Must Die, But We Are Not Men’: Eastern Faith and Feminine Power in A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones,” in Queenship and the Women of Westeros: Female Agency and Advice in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire, ed. Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 145–­168; Elizabeth Beaton, “Female Machiavellians in Westeros,” in Gjelsvik and Schubart, Women of Ice and Fire, 193–­218; Joanna C. Valente,

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“Daenerys Targaryen May Be a Feminist, But That Doesn’t Excuse the White Savior Complex,” Luna Luna, 19 July 2017, http://www.lunalunamagazine.com/blog/daenerys-targaryen-may-be-a -feminist-but-that-doesnt-excuse-the-white-savior-complex; Sadiyya Dockrat, “Daenerys Storm­ born: Annoying White Savior of House Targaryen,” Medium, 25 August 2017, https://medium .com/@nerdypoc/daenerys-stormborn-annoying-white-saviour-of-house-targaryen-525f3b 25be42; Helen Young, “Game of  Thrones’ Racism Problem,” Public Medievalist, July 21, 2017, https:// www.publicmedievalist.com/game-thrones-racism-problem/; and Matthew Yglesias, “Game of Thrones Needs a Theory of Leadership Beyond Setting People on Fire,” Vox, 19 May 2016, https://www.vox.com/2016/5/19/11703012/game-of-thrones-dany-leadership. 27. Stokes, “Game of Thrones and the Aesthetics of Fascism,” Overthinking It, 30 June 2011, https://www.overthinkingit.com/2011/06/30/game-of-thrones-fascism/. Stokes borrows the concept of the fascist aesthetic from Susan Sontag. 28. Game of  Thrones, “The House of Black and White,” season 5, episode 2, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Michael Slovis, original airdate 19 April 2015. 29. On theories of abstract justice and their distinction from a feminist ethics of care, see Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); and Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethic and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 30. Game of Thrones, “Baelor,” season 1, episode 9, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Alan Taylor, original airdate 12 June 2011. 31. Game of Thrones, “Winter Is Coming,” season 1, episode 1, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Tim Van Patten, original airdate 17 April 2011. 32. Game of Thrones, “Fire and Blood,” season 1, episode 10, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Alan Taylor, original airdate 19 June 2011. 33. For example, Joe Gross calls Daenerys “the single most formidable woman in Westeros” (“The Women of ‘Mad Men’ and ‘Game of Thrones,’ ” Spin, 11 June 2012, https://www.spin.com/2012 /06/women-mad-men-and-game-thrones/); also see Megan Kearns, “In Game of Thrones the Mother of Dragons Is Taking Down the Patriarchy,” The Opinioness, 29 April 2013, https://opinionessofthe world.com/2013/04/29/in-game-of-thrones-the-mother-of-dragons-is-taking-down-the-patriarchy/. 34. In Martin’s novel A Game of Thrones (New York: Bantam, 1996, 673–674), Daenerys’s hair has been burned off by the flames and the dragons are feeding at her engorged breasts, but these details are importantly missing from the television version. 35. Game of Thrones, “Book of the Stranger.” 36. Liz Shannon Miller and Kate Erbland, “ ‘Game of Thrones’ Has Given Us More Than Just the Most Feminist Moment on TV This Year,” IndieWire, 20 May 2016, https://www.indiewire .com/2016/05/game-of-thrones-has-given-us-more-than-just-the-most-feminist-moment-on -tv-this-year-289073/. 37. Achala Upendran, “#Dragonprivilege, or Daenerys as Female Role Model,” Where the Dog Star Rages, 25 June 2016, https://wherethedogstarrages.wordpress.com/2016/06/25/dragon privilege-or-daenerys-as-female-icon/. 38. Crystal Bell, “Emilia Clarke Thinks Daenerys is Finally ‘Indestructible’ on Game of Thrones—­But Is She?,” MTV News, 16 May 2016, http://www.mtv.com/news/2881154/emilia-clarke -game-of-thrones-daenerys-dothraki-army/. 39. @alexhcranz, “If you don’t think the ultimate purpose of Dany on #GameofThrones is to physically dismantle the patriarchy you’re watching/reading wrong,” Twitter, 21 April 2013, 6:58 p.m., https://twitter.com/alexhcranz/status/326153001490329602.

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40. See Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad, “Confidence Culture and the Remaking of Feminism,” New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics 91 (2017): 16–­34. Stéphanie Genz also reads Daenerys as an icon of empowerment feminism; see “I’m Not Going to Fight Them, I’m Going to Fuck Them: Sexist Liberalism and Gender (A)politics in Game of Thrones,” in Women of Ice and Fire, 243–­266. 41. Game of Thrones, “You Win or You Die.” 42. Rebecca Traister, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 43. On women’s anger, also see Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger (New York: Atria Books, 2018). 43. Game of Thrones, “A Golden Crown,” season 1, episode 6, written by Jane Espenson, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Daniel Minahan, original airdate 22 May 2011. 44. Game of Thrones, “No One,” season 6, episode 8, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Mark Mylod, original airdate 12 June 2016. 45. Game of Thrones, “The North Remembers.” 46. See Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding,” in Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972–­79, ed. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (London: Hutchinson, 1980), 128–­138. 47. Game of Thrones, “And Now His Watch Is Ended.” 48. Game of Thrones, “Fire and Blood”; and Game of Thrones, “Battle of the Bastards,” season 6, episode 9, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Miguel Sapochnik, original airdate 19 June 2016. 49. Game of Thrones, “Mother’s Mercy,” season 5, episode 10, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by David Nutter, original airdate 14 June 2015. 50. Game of Thrones, “Book of the Stranger.” 51. Hestia, meaning hearth or fireside, is the goddess of the home and of sacrificial flame. 52. See, for example, Lyanna Stark (u/redough), “Cersei the Mad Queen,” Reddit, 23 August 2015, https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/3i4zi7/all_spoilers_theory_cersei_the _mad_queen/; and “Is Cersei Lannister a Psychopath?,” Quora, 24 September 2017, https://www .quora.com/Is-Cersei-Lannister-a-psychopath. 53. Game of Thrones, “Dragonstone.” 54. Megan Kearns, “Here There Be Sexism? Game of Thrones Season 1 and Sexism,” The Opinioness, 20 June 2011, https://opinionessoftheworld.com/2011/06/20/game-of-thrones-and-gender/. 55. Game of Thrones, “The Wars to Come,” season 5, episode 1, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Michael Slovis, original airdate 12 April 2015. 56. Game of Thrones, “Lord Snow,” season 1, episode 3, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Brian Kirk, original airdate 1 May 2011. 57. Game of Thrones, “The Red Woman,” season 6, episode 1, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Jeremy Podeswa, original airdate 24 April 2016. 58. Marie Southard Ospina, “Why Cersei from Game of Thrones Will Never Be My Feminist Icon,” Bustle, 21 July 2017, https://www.bustle.com/p/why-cersei-from-game-of-thrones-will-never-be -my-feminist-icon-70622. 59. Pam Houston, “Five Crucial Things the Fifty-­Three-­Year-­Old Bitch Knows That the Thirty-­Nine-­Year-­Old Bitch Didn’t (Yet),” in The Bitch Is Back: Older, Wiser, and (Getting) Happier, ed. Cathi Hanauer (New York: William Morrow, 2016), 5–­6. 60. Game of Thrones, “The Winds of Winter,” season 6, episode 10, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Miguel Sapochnik, original airdate 26 June 2016.

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61. Joanna Robinson, “Game of Thrones: Why Is Cersei’s Hair Still So Short?,” Vanity Fair HWD, 2 August 2017, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/08/game-of-thrones-why-is -cerseis-hair-still-short. 62. Aaron Bady, “Rooks and Rookies,” LA Review of Books, 31 July 2017, https://lareviewof books.org/article/game-thrones-queens-justice/#!. 63. Kathryn VanArendonk, “Why Doesn’t Cersei’s Hair Ever Grow?,” Vulture, 2 August 2017, http://www.vulture.com/2017/08/cersei-hair-why-wont-you-grow.html. 64. On the radical import of female masculinity, see Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998). 65. Sarah Manguso writes, “In menopause even the blondest and most protected of women will join the rest of us in ignominy; they too will become, as [Darcey] Steinke writes, ‘not only invisible but also despised’ ” (“Where Are All the Books about Menopause?,” New Yorker, 17 June 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/where-are-all-the-books-about -menopause). 66. Erica Gonzales, “Lena Headey Says Cersei Was Supposed to Have a Miscarriage on Game of Thrones,” Harper’s Bazaar, 19 June 2019, https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv /a28090700/game-of-thrones-cersei-miscarriage/. 67. Thefakedonaldtrump77, “Why Is Cersei Such a Giant Bitch?,” Reddit, 30 March 2018, https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/88ee7k/no_spoilers_why_is_cersei_such_a _giant_bitch/. 68. The negative reactions of fans and critics were swift and nearly univocal. For example, see Paul Tassi, “Game of Thrones Just Utterly Betrayed Daenerys Targaryen,” Forbes, 13 May 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2019/05/13/game-of-thrones-just-utterly-betrayed -daenerys-targaryen-and-jaime-lannister-last-night/#79f0fb9f739b; Joanna Robinson, “Game of Thrones: Why Daenerys’ Turn Feels Like Such a Betrayal,” Vanity Fair, 13 May 2019, https:// www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/05/game-of-thrones-mad-queen-daenerys-hints-clues -book-shock-betrayal; and Christopher Keelty, “How Game of Thrones Sabotaged Emilia Clarke and Betrayed Daenerys Targaryen,” Medium, 13 May 2019, https://medium.com/@keeltyc/how -game-of-thrones-sabotaged-emilia-clarke-and-betrayed-daenerys-targaryen-977887b88da4. 69. Game of Thrones, “The Last of the Starks,” season 8, episode 4, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by David Nutter, original airdate 5 May 2019. 70. In the climax of the series finale, Sansa, the only powerful female leader left alive, is passed over in favor of her younger brother as leader of the Seven Kingdoms; her right to rule the North operates explicitly as a consolation prize and an afterthought. 71. Game of Thrones, “The Spoils of War,” season 7, episode 4, written by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, directed by Mark Shakman, original airdate 6 August 2017. Chapter Two 1. Isabel Jones, “7 Reason You Should Be Watching The Americans, aka the Best Show on TV,” In Style, 28 March 2018, https://www.instyle.com/celebrity/reasons-you-should-be-watching-best -show-television-the-americans-fx. 2. Willa Paskin, “Why Can’t I Hate the Americans’ Elizabeth Jennings?,” Salon, 16 March 2013, https://www.salon.com/2013/03/15/why_cant_i_hate_the_americans_elizabeth_jennings/. 3. The Americans, “Covert War,” season 1, episode 11, written by Joshua Brand and Melissa James Gibson, directed by Nicole Kassell, original airdate 17 April 2013.

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4. Emily Nussbaum has called The Americans “a show about human personality as a cruel performance, even (and sometimes especially) with the people we claim to love. It’s about marriage as much as it’s about politics” (“Change Agents,” New Yorker, 31 March 2014, https://www .newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/31/change-agents); Matt Zoller Seitz identifies The Americans’ “not-­so-­secret agenda” as “examining marriage and partnership while seeming to be about spies” (“The Americans Recap: Marry Me Upside Down,” Vulture, 25 April 2013, https://www .vulture.com/2013/04/americans-recap-season-1-the-oath.html); Meredith Slifkin has written that “the Jennings are a manifestation of the public/private reversal—­the personal perpetually dictating the political” (“Melodrama, The Americans, and the Global Television Imaginary,” Cineaction! 94 [2014]: 4). Actor Keri Russell has herself commented on the analogy between marriage and spycraft: “There are universal fears [about marriage] whether you are a spy or not. What if we get divorced? Is that going to be so damaging? What if you fuck my best friend? . . .  Even though it’s spy stuff, it’s transferrable to ‘Are we doing the right thing for our family? Are we raising them with the values we want to impress on them?’ It doesn’t have to be spy, Cold War, Russia, America” (quoted in Jace Lacob, “Keri Russell on The Americans, Sleeper Agents, Motherhood, and More,” The Daily Beast, 29 January 2013, https://www.thedailybeast .com/keri-russell-on-the-americans-sleeper-agents-motherhood-and-more). 5. Quoted in Rob Owen, “On the Tube: The Ratings Dropped with Her Golden Locks—­WB Says Grow It Back,” Post-­Gazette.com, 21 January 2000, http://old.post-gazette.com/tv/200 00121owen3.asp. 6. Quoted in Bernard Weinraub, “Ratings Grow for a Series Like the Hair of Its Star,” New York Times, 4 December 2000, https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/04/arts/ratings-grow-for-a -series-like-the-hair-of-its-star.html. 7. Felicity, “The List,” season 2, episode 2, written by Jennifer Levin, directed by Barnet Kellman, original airdate 3 October 1999. 8. Quoted in Maria Ward, “Five Things You Didn’t Know About Keri Russell,” Vogue, 17 September 2016, http://www.vogue.com/article/keri-russell-5-things-you-didnt-know. 9. Lacob, “Keri Russell on The Americans.” 10. On Russell’s intertextuality of performance owing to previous roles, see Philip Drake, “Reframing Television Performance,” Journal of Film and Video 68, no. 3–­4 (Fall/Winter 2016): 11. For more on the layered effect achieved by repeat actors, see Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theater as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). 11. Late Night with Seth Myers, NBC, Episode #345, 23 March 2016. Also quoted in Aurelie Corinthios, “John Stamos Urges His Younger Self to Make a Deal with the Devil—­Plus Henry Cavill, Keri Russell, and More Dish Out Advice,” People, 24 March 2016, https://people.com/tv /john-stamos-henry-cavill-keri-russell-give-advice-to-their-young-selves/. 12. Dan Jordan, “The Real Mother Russia: Modernizing Murder and Betrayal in The Americans,” Bitch Flicks, 27 October 2015, http://www.btchflcks.com/2015/10/the-real-mother-russia -modernising-murder-and-betrayal-in-the-americans.html#.XbDYQy2ZPR0. 13. The Americans, “Pilot,” season 1, episode 1, written by Joe Weisberg, directed by Gavin O’Connor, original airdate 20 January 2013. 14. The Americans, “Comrades,” season 2, episode 1, written by Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, directed by Thomas Schlamme, original airdate 26 February 2014. 15. The Americans, “Pilot.” 16. Nussbaum, “Change Agents.” 17. The Americans, “Pilot.”

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18. On this theme, see Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–­1860 (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973); and Susan Jeffords, The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). 19. The Americans, “Pilot.” 20. The Americans, “Pilot.” 21. The Americans, “Pilot.” 22. The Americans, “Pilot.” 23. The Americans, “COMINT,” season 1, episode 5, written by Melissa James Gibson, directed by Holly Dale, original airdate 27 February 2013. 24. The Americans, “The Colonel,” season 1, episode 13, written by Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, directed by Adam Arkin, original air date 1 May 2013. 25. The Americans, “Pilot.” 26. Jamie R. Abrams, “Migrating and Mutating Masculinities in Institutional Law Reforms,” in Exploring Masculinities: Feminist Legal Theory Reflections, ed. Martha Albertson Fineman and Michael Thomson (London/New York: Routledge, 2013), 146. 27. Quoted in Scott Brown, Fighting for Us: Maulana Karenga, the US Organization, and Black Cultural Nationalism (New York: NYU Press, 2003), 56. 28. The Americans, “Only You,” season 1, episode 10, written by Bradford Winters, directed by Adam Arkin, original airdate 10 April 2013. 29. Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 1991). 30. The Americans, “COMINT.” 31. Suzanne Leonard, Wife Inc.: The Business of Marriage in the Twenty-­First Century (New York: NYU Press, 2020), 101–­131. 32. The Americans, “EST Men,” season 3, episode 1, written by Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, directed by Daniel Sackheim, original airdate 28 January 2015. 33. The Americans, “Covert War.” 34. The Americans, “The Walk In,” season 2, episode 3, written by Stuart Zicherman, directed by Constantine Makris, original airdate 12 March 2014. 35. The Americans, “Gregory,” season 1, episode 3, written by Joel Fields, directed by Thomas Schlamme, original airdate 13 February 2013. 36. The Americans, “Covert War.” 37. The Americans, “Covert War.” 38. The Americans, “Baggage,” season 3, episode 2, written by Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, directed by Daniel Sackheim, original airdate 4 February 2015. 39. See Ayelet Waldman, “Truly Madly, Guiltily,” Modern, Love, New York Times, 27 March 2005, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/fashion/truly-madly-guiltily.html; and Waldman, Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace (New York: Anchor Books, 2010). 40. On Elizabeth as a “bad mother,” see Melissa Maerz, “The Americans: Is Keri Russell’s Elizabeth a Bad Mother?,” Entertainment Weekly, 21 May 2014, http://ew.com/article/2014/05/21 /the-americans-elizabeth-bad-mom/. 41. The Americans, “Covert War.” 42. The Americans, “The Clock,” season 1, episode 2, written by Joe Weisberg, directed by Adam Arkin, original airdate 6 February 2013.

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43. The Americans, “The Clock,” season 1, episode 2. 44. The Americans, “Duty and Honor,” season 1, episode 7, written by Joshua Brand, directed by Alex Chapple, original airdate 13 March 2013. 45. The Americans, “I Am Abassin Zadran,” season 3, episode 12, written by Peter Ackerman and Stuart Zicherman, directed by Christopher Misiano, original airdate 15 April 2015. 46. The Americans, “A Little Night Music,” season 2, episode 4, written by Stephen Schiff, directed by Lodge Kerrigan, original airdate 19 March 2014. 47. The Americans, “Pilot.” 48. Michael Rogin, “Kiss Me Deadly: Communism, Motherhood, and Cold War Movies,” Representations 6, no. 1 (1984): 3–­4. 49. Rogin, “Kiss Me Deadly,” 5. 50. Ronald Reagan, Speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, 8 March 1983, Teaching American History, https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/speech-to-the -national-association-of-evangelicals/. 51. The Americans, “Do Mail Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?,” season 3, episode 9, written by Joshua Brand, directed by Stephen Williams, original airdate 25 March 2015. 52. The Americans, “Baggage.” 53. Anna Maxted, “Why Mums Would Make Perfect Spies,” Telegraph, 5 March 2015, https:// www.telegraph.co.uk/women/11452499/Why-mums-would-make-fantastic-spies.html. 54. Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 11. 55. Rogin, “Kiss Me Deadly,” 5. For an insightful analysis of The Americans that also invokes Rogin’s concept of Cold War motherhood, see Smita A. Rahman, “Honor among Spies: The Cold War ‘Mom,’ Family, and Identity in The Americans,” Theory and Event 21, no. 3 (July 2018): 590–­606. 56. The Americans, “EST Men.” 57. The Americans, “The Deal,” season 2, episode 5, written by Angelina Burnett, directed by Dan Attias, original airdate 26 March 2014. 58. The Americans, “Munchkins,” season 4, episode 10, written by Peter Ackerman, directed by Steph Green, original airdate 18 May 2016. 59. On the way that performance in The Americans “poses a constant epistemological challenge to the audience,” see Alberto N. García and Pablo Castrillo, “ ‘Just Being Us’—­Secrecy, Authenticity and Identity in The Americans,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 37, no. 8 (2020): 783. 60. The Americans, “Stingers,” season 3, episode 10, written by Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, directed by Larysa Kondracki, original airdate 1 April 2015. 61. The Americans, “Salang Pass,” season 3, episode 5, written by Stephen Schiff, directed by Kevin Dowling, original airdate 25 February 2015. 62. See Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” in Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theater, ed. Sue-­Ellen Case (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 270–­282; and Johannes Fabian, “Theater and Anthropology, Theatricality and Culture,” Research in African Literatures 30, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 24–­31. 63. The Americans, “Jennings, Elizabeth,” season 6, episode 9, written by Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, directed by Chris Long, original airdate 23 May 2018. 64. The Americans, “Jennings, Elizabeth.”

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65. The Americans, “START,” season 6, episode 10, written by Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, directed by Chris Long, original airdate 30 May 2018. Chapter Three 1. Black actor Teresa Graves starred as an undercover police officer in Get Christie Love! (ABC, 1974–­1975). Prior to that, the groundbreaking comedy Julia, starring Diahann Carroll, ran on NBC between 1968 and 1971. 2. Mary McNamara, “Scandal Has Become Must-­Tweet TV,” Los Angeles Times, 11 May 2013, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-xpm-2013-may-11-la-et-st-scandal-abc-social -media-20130511-story.html. Also see Dayna Chatman, “Black Twitter and the Politics of Viewing Scandal,” in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, 2nd ed., ed. Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York: NYU Press, 2017), 299–­314. 3. Kristin J. Warner, “If Loving Olitz Is Wrong, Then I Don’t Wanna Be Right: ABC’s Scandal and the Affect of Black Female Desire,” The Black Scholar 45, no. 1 (2015): 18. 4. See Tara-­Lynne Pixley, “Trope and Associates: Olivia Pope’s Scandalous Blackness,” The Black Scholar 45, no. 1 (2015): 28–­33. 5. Salamishah Tillet, “The Gladiators of ‘Scandal’ Leave the Arena,” New York Times, 12 April 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/arts/television/scandal-finale-shonda-rhimes -kerry-washington.html. 6. Brandon Maxwell, “Olivia Pope and the Scandal of Representation,” The Feminist Wire, 7 February 2013, https://thefeministwire.com/2013/02/olivia-pope-and-the-scandal-of-representation/. 7. See Kristina Brüning, “Olivia Pope: A Black Post-­Feminist Subject? Analyzing Scandal’s Intersecting Post-­Feminist and Colorblind Discourses,” Feminist Media Studies 19, no. 4 (2018): 463–­478; Stephanie L. Gomez and Megan D. McFarlane, “ ‘It’s (Not) Handled: Race, Gender, and Refraction in Scandal,” Feminist Media Studies 17, no. 3 (2017): 362–­376; and Karen Gaffney, “ ‘Standing in the Sun’: ‘Scandal’ in the Age of ‘The New Jim Crow,’’ ” Pop Matters, 23 May 2016, https://www.popmatters.com/standing-in-the-sun-scandal-in-the-age-of-the-new-jim-crow -2495436178.html. 8. On the role of music in Scandal, see Brandeise Monk-­Payton, “The Sound of Scandal: Crisis Management and the Musical Mediation of Racial Desire,” The Black Scholar 45, no. 1 (2015): 21–­27. 9. See Maryann Erigha, “Shonda Rhimes, Scandal, and the Politics of Crossing Over,” The Black Scholar 45, no. 1 (2015): 10–­15. 10. Scandal, “The Trail,” season 1, episode 6, written by Jenna Bans, directed by Tom Verica, original airdate 10 May 2012. At another moment in season 2, Olivia says to Fitz, “I take off my clothes for you. I wait for you. I watch for you. My whole life is you. I can’t breathe because I’m waiting for you. You own me, you control me, I belong to you” (Scandal, “Happy Birthday, Mr. President,” season 2, episode 8, written by Shonda Rhimes, directed by Oliver Bokelberg, original airdate 6 December 2012). 11. Mia Mask, “A Roundtable Conversation on Scandal,” The Black Scholar 45, no. 1 (2015): 4. Also see Cassandra Chaney and Ray V. Robertson, “Chains of Psychological Enslavement: Olivia Pope and the Celebration of the Black Mistress in ABC’s Scandal,” Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies 9, no. 3 (2016): 126–­153. 12. Matt Zoller Seitz, “The Year in Shonda Rhimes,” Vulture, 14 December 2014, http://www .vulture.com/2014/12/year-in-shonda-rhimes.html.

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13. Alan Sepinwall, “Review: ‘Scandal’—­‘Nobody Likes Babies,’ ” Uproxx, 7 February 2013, http://uproxx.com/sepinwall/review-scandal-nobody-likes-babies-presidential-assassination/. 14. Michael Starr, “Scandal Is the Dumbest Show on TV,” New York Post, 19 October 2015, https://nypost.com/2015/10/19/scandal-is-the-dumbest-show-on-tv/. 15. Brian Lowry, “TV Reviews: Scandal,” Variety, 30 March 2012, http://variety.com/2012/tv /reviews/scandal-1117947325/. 16. The term was originally coined by CaShawn Thompson; see Feminista Jones, “For CaShawn Thompson Black Girl Magic Was Always the Truth,” Beacon Broadside, 8 February 2019, https:// www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2019/02/for-cashawn-thompson-black-girl-magic-was-al ways-the-truth.html. On the term’s relevance to Scandal, see Arielle Bernstein, “The End of Scandal: In Praise of Olivia Pope, TV’s Most Glorious Antihero,” The Guardian, 19 April 2018, https://www .theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/apr/19/scandal-olivia-pope-kerry-washington-antihero. 17. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: HarperCollins, 1937), 21. 18. Utz McKnight, “The Fantastic Olivia Pope: The Construction of a Black Feminist Subject,” Souls 16, no. 3–­4 (2014): 186. Tulani Elisa makes a similar point: “We’re not accustomed to being wanted. Lusted after, yes. Fantasized about, no doubt. Objectified, no question. But wanted, loved, dreamed for? Not so much” (“Why Black Women Love Scandal,” Huffington Post, 30 October 2013, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-black-women-love-scan_b_4179258). 19. Scandal, “It’s Handled,” season 3, episode 1, written by Shonda Rhimes, directed by Tom Verica, original airdate 4 October 2013. 20. Neil Drumming, “ ‘Scandal’s’ Racially Charged Motto: ‘You Have to Be Twice as Good as Them,’ ” Salon, 4 October 2013, https://www.salon.com/2013/10/04/scandals_racially_charged _motto_you_have_to_be_twice_as_good_as_them/. 21. Scandal, “Where the Sun Don’t Shine,” season 4, episode 9, written by Mark Wilding, directed by Tony Goldwyn, original airdate 20 November 2014. 22. Scandal, “A Criminal, a Whore, an Idiot and a Liar,” season 2, episode 11, written by Mark Fish, directed by Stephen Cragg, original airdate 17 January 2013. 23. Scandal, “Top of the Hour,” season 2, episode 16, written by Heather Mitchell, directed by Steve Robin, original airdate 21 March 2013. 24. Scandal, “Nobody Likes Babies,” season 2, episode 13, written by Mark Wilding, directed by Tom Verica, original airdate 7 February 2013. 25. Scandal, “Seven Fifty-­Two,” season 2, episode 19, written by Mark Fish, directed by Allison Liddi-­Brown, original airdate 25 April 2013. 26. Scandal, “Blown Away,” season 2, episode 9, written by Mark Wilding, directed by Jessica Yu, original airdate 13 December 2012. 27. On the disruptive potential of nonconformist Black intimacy, see Cathy Cohen, “Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics,” Du Bois Review 1, no. 1 (2004): 27–­45; and Roderick Ferguson, Aberrations in Black (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). 28. Maxwell, “Olivia Pope and the Scandal of Representation.” Also see Rachel Alicia Griffin, “Olivia Pope as Problematic and Paradoxical: A Black Feminist Critique of Scandal’s Mammification,” in Feminist Theory and Pop Culture, ed. Adrienne Trier-­Bieniek (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2015), 35–­48; and Kendall King, “Do African American Female Stereotypes Still Exist in Television? A Descriptive Character Analysis of Olivia Pope,” Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications 6, no. 2 (Fall 2015): 45–­49. These scholars suggest that in addition to fitting the role of the Mammy, Olivia plays into the Jezebel and Sapphire stereotypes as well.

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29. Scandal, “Mama Said Knock You Out,” season 3, episode 15, written by Zahir McGhee, directed by Tony Goldwyn, original airdate 27 March 2014. 30. See Griffin, “Olivia Pope as Problematic and Paradoxical.” Joshua K. Wright points out that “Olivia is a cosmopolitan woman who graduated from Princeton and Georgetown. She is not rearing anyone’s ‘chillum’ or frying chicken in a White person’s kitchen” (“Scandalous: Olivia Pope and Black Women in Prime Time History,” in Black Women and Popular Culture: The Conversation Continues, ed. Adria Y. Goldman, VaNatta S. Ford, Alexa A. Harris, and Natasha R. Howard [London: Lexington Books, 2014], 28). 31. Scandal, “Run,” season 4, episode 10, written by Shonda Rhimes, directed by Tom Verica, original airdate 29 January 2015. 32. See Erigha, “Shonda Rhimes, Scandal, and the Politics of Crossing Over,” 12. 33. On Black respectability, see Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–­1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 185–­229. 34. Pinterest boards include tags like “Olivia Pope’s bathroom. Loving the subway tile!” (Linda Stager, Pinterest Board “Obsession with Olivia Pope’s Style,” https://www.pinterest.com /pin/176695985354466725/). A blog post entitled “Olivia gets a new bathroom” characterizes her remodel as follows: “Vintage feeling tile. Serene art and a little nook for dressing and moisturizing. The toilet has its own little space off to the side” (S. Marie Bailey, “Olivia Gets a New Bathroom,” The Sets Revealed [blog], 17 April 2013, http://scandalabcsets.blogspot.com/2013/04 /olivia-gets-new-bathroom.html). 35. Scandal, “Run.” 36. Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 24. 37. On the history of Black women and public restrooms, see Elizabeth Abel, “Bathroom Doors and Drinking Fountains: Jim Crow’s Racial Symbolic,” Critical Inquiry 25, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 435–­481; Gillian Frank, “The Anti-­Trans Bathroom Nightmare Has Its Roots in Racial Segregation,” Outward, Slate, 10 November 2015, http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/11/10 /anti_trans_bathroom_propaganda_has_roots_in_racial_segregation.html; and Susan Fraiman, “Bathroom Realism and the Women of Contemporary Cable TV,” Signs forthcoming. 38. “Tha Show,” “Scandal Season 4 Episode 410 ‘RUN,’ ” filmed January 2015, You­ Tube  video, 28:06, posted January 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn8KXvuk4fk&t =33s. 39. Kristina Brüning, “Olivia Pope: A Black Post-­Feminist Subject,” 478. 40. Sarah Banet-­Weiser, Roopali Mukherjee, and Herman Gray, “Introduction: Postrace Racial Projects,” in Racism Postrace, ed. Banet-­Weiser, Mukherjee, and Gray (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019), 11. 41. Herman Gray, “Race After Race,” in Racism Postrace, 26–­27. 42. Scandal, “Gladiators Don’t Run,” season 4, episode 12, written by Paul William Davies, directed by Randy Zisk, original airdate 12 February 2015. 43. Emily Orley, “Some Fans Thought the Latest Storyline on ‘Scandal’ Went Too Far,” BuzzFeed, 13 February 2015, https://www.buzzfeed.com/emilyorley/scandal-olivia-pope-kidnap ping-slavery?utm_term=.wywrNw2y8#.vcLNOA. 44. Orley, “Some Fans.” 45. Orley, “Some Fans.” 46. Scandal, “Run.” 47. Scandal, “Gladiators Don’t Run.”

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48. See Safiya Umoja Noble and Sarah T. Roberts, “Technological Elites, the Meritocracy, and Postracial Myths in Silicon Valley,” in Racism Postrace, 113–­134, on the ways that South Asian and East Asian tech-­sector employees are tokenized in the postracial ideologies of Silicon Valley. 49. Scandal, “Run.” 50. Scandal, “Run.” 51. On 13 May 1985, the Philadelphia police department bombed a house in the Powelton Village neighborhood that was home to members of MOVE, a Black liberation organization. The residents of the house, who were resisting a city eviction notice, were all killed, save one child and one adult (who was charged and served an eight-­year sentence for rioting and conspiracy). The city made no effort to extinguish the fire caused by their satchel bomb, which went on to destroy rowhomes in a three-­block radius. See Lindsay Norward, “The Day Philadelphia Bombed Its Own People: An Oral History of a 1985 Police Bombing That Changed the City Forever,” Vox, 15 August 2019, https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/8/8/20747198 /philadelphia-bombing-1985-move. 52. Scandal, “Run.” 53. McKnight calls this the “fantasy of insulation”; see “The Fantastic Olivia Pope,” 191. 54. Scandal, “The Lawn Chair,” season 4, episode 14, written by Zahir McGhee, directed by Tom Verica, original airdate 5 March 2015. 55. bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 115. 56. hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze.” 57. hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze,” 116. 58. Ralina L. Joseph reads showrunner Shonda Rhimes as undertaking a journey similar to the one that we ascribe to Olivia in these episodes, moving from a position of guarded respectability during the early days of Grey’s Anatomy to one where she’s more outspoken on matters concerning Black lives. See “Strategically Ambiguous Shonda Rhimes: Respectability Politics of a Black Woman Showrunner,” Souls 18, no. 2–­4 (2016): 302–­320. Chapter Four 1. Homeland, “Pilot,” season 1, episode 1, written by Howard Gordon, Alex Gansa, and Gideon Raff, directed by Michael Cuesta, original airdate 2 October 2011. 2. Homeland, “Semper I,” season 1, episode 4, written by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff, original airdate 23 October 2011. 3. See the Slacktory tribute, “The Claire Danes Cry Face Supercut,” https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=BLOOWFNbuaU. 4. “Homeland Uncovered,” British GQ, September 2012. 5. Homeland, “Pilot.” 6. On the ways that Carrie both shores up and disrupts the logic of masculine protection in Homeland, see Shirin S. Deylami, “Playing the Hero Card: Masculinism, State Power, and Security Feminism in Homeland and Zero Dark Thirty,” Women’s Studies 48, no. 7 (2019): 755–­776. 7. On the phenomenon of “retreatism” in woman-­centered television of the twenty-­first century, see Diane Negra, What a Girl Wants: Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism (New York: Routledge, 2008). 8. Quoted in Vanessa Thorpe, “Homeland: Destructive, Dynamic, Distinctive—­Carrie and Brody are Back on Screen,” The Guardian, 5 October 2013, https://www.theguardian.com

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/tv-and-radio/2013/oct/06/carrie-brody-back-homeland. Alex Gansa, creator and executive producer of the show, has since walked back this statement, calling the idea that Carrie’s talents stem from her illness “dangerous” (quoted in Maureen Ryan, “Homeland Season 3: Producer Talks Brody, Carrie, Mental Illness, and the Reasons for Reinvention,” Huffington Post, 29 August 2013, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/29/homeland-season-3_n_3837976.html). 9. See, for example, Diane Negra and Jorie Lagerwey, “Analyzing Homeland: Introduction,” Cinema Journal 54, no. 4 (Summer 2015): 130; and Nolan Feeley, “Homeland: The Case Against Calling Carrie a Bipolar ‘Superhero,’ ” The Atlantic, 7 October 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com /entertainment/archive/2013/10/-em-homeland-em-the-case-against-calling-carrie-a-bipolar -superhero/280321/. 10. Rosemarie Garland Thompson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 17–­18. 11. Natasha Tracy, “Homeland: Is It Good for Bipolar Disorder Awareness?,” Healthy Place, 22 October 2012, https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/breakingbipolar/2012/10/homeland-good -bipolar-disorder-awareness/. Also see Rebecca C. Beirne, “Extraordinary Minds, Impossible Choices: Mental Health, Special Skills, and Television,” Medical Humanities 45 (2019): 235–­239. 12. Lindsay Steenberg and Yvonne Tasker; “ ‘Pledge Allegiance’: Gendered Surveillance, Crime Television, and Homeland,” Cinema Journal 54, no. 4 (Summer 2015): 132–­138. Emanuelle Wessels links this part of Carrie’s job to “affect work” or “emotional labor”; see “Homeland and Neoliberalism: Texts, Paratexts, and Treatment of Affective Labor,” Feminist Media Studies 16, no. 3 (2016): 511–­526. 13. Saturday Night Live, “Anne Hathaway/Rihanna,” season 38, episode 7, written by Seth Meyers and Colin Jost, directed by Don Roy King and David Signorelli, original airdate 10 November 2012. 14. Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830–­1890 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), 148. 15. Carroll Smith-­Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 198. For another classic feminist account, see Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness (New York: Doubleday, 1972). 16. Smith-­Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct, 207. 17. Homeland, “Grace,” season 1, episode 2, written by Alexander Cary, directed by Michael Cuesta, original airdate 9 October 2011. 18. Wessels makes a related argument when she points out, “Although Homeland sometimes ‘counts’ Carrie’s affective labor as work, the alienation and suffering she experiences as a result are coded as personal problems in the form of aberrant femininity and/or mental illness” (“Homeland and Neoliberalism,” 514). 19. Smith-­Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct, 212. 20. Homeland, “Pilot.” 21. Homeland, “Crossfire,” season 1, episode 9, written by Alexander Cary, directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff, original airdate 27 November 2011. 22. Homeland, “Pilot.”. 23. See Angela McRobbie, “Notes on the Perfect: Competitive Femininity in Neoliberal Times,” Australian Feminist Studies 30, no. 83 (2015): 3–­20; and Debora L. Spar, Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013). 24. Showalter, The Female Malady, 147.

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25. For example, see Wessels, “Homeland and Neoliberalism”; and James Castonguay, “Fictions of Terror: Complexity, Complicity, and Insecurity in Homeland,” Cinema Journal 54, no. 4 (Summer 2015): 139–­145. 26. Amy Kaplan, “Homeland Insecurities: Some Reflections on Language and Space,” Radical History Review 85, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 90. 27. Negra and Lagerwey, “Analyzing Homeland: Introduction,” 129. 28. Homeland, “Clean Skin,” season 1, episode 3, written by Chip Johannessen, directed by Dan Attias, original airdate 16 October 2011. 29. For a related analysis, see Steenberg and Tasker, “ ‘Pledge Allegiance,’ ” 134–­135. For a discussion of television as a feminine form, see Lynne Joyrich, “All that Television Allows: TV Melodrama, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture,” Camera Obscura 16, no. 16 (1988): 128–­153. 30. Homeland, “Semper I.” 31. Anon., The Evils of Adultery and Prostitution, with an Inquiry into the Causes of Their Present Alarming Increase, and Some Means Recommended for Checking Their Progress (London: T. Vernor, 1792), 53–­54. 32. Homeland, “Pilot.” 33. Homeland, “Clean Skin.” 34. For a related analysis, see Stephen Shapiro, “Homeland’s Crisis of Middle-­Class Transformation,” Cinema Journal 54, no. 4 (Summer 2015): 152–­158. 35. Homeland, “Semper I.” 36. Homeland, “The Weekend,” season 1, episode 7, written by Meredith Stiehm, directed by Michael Cuesta, original airdate 13 November 2011. 37. For example, when Carrie wakes up in the middle of the night while staying with her sister, her niece Josie asks if she’s afraid of the “men who blow things up.” Sensing Carrie’s anxiety, Josie then proposes a solution: “I have an idea—­come live with us. We’ll protect you.” This idea—­ensconcing Carrie in cozy domesticity, where she is cared for and surrounded by family—­is alluring, but also a trap that Carrie must resist. “You know what? That’s my job,” she tells her niece before exiting her sister’s house (Homeland, “Blind Spot,” season 1, episode 5, written by Alexander Cary, directed by Clark Johnson, original airdate 30 October 2011). 38. Homeland, “Achilles Heel,” season 1, episode 8, written by Chip Johannessen, directed by Tucker Gates, original airdate 20 November 2011. 39. Homeland, “Marine One,” season 1, episode 12, written by Alex Gansa and Chip Johannessen, directed by Michael Cuesta, original airdate 18 December 2011. 40. Homeland, “Blind Spot.” 41. Homeland, “Marine One.” 42. Homeland, “Achilles Heel.” 43. See Wessels, “Homeland and Neoliberalism.” 44. Homeland, “Crossfire.” 45. Homeland, “The Good Soldier,” season 1, episode 6, written by Henry Bromell, directed by Brad Turner, original airdate 6 November 2011. 46. Homeland, “Pilot.” 47. On the doggedly single status of Carrie and other recent female protagonists on television, see Cornelia Klecker, “Female ‘Lone Wolves’: The Anti-­Social Heroine in Recent Television Series,” Journal of Popular Culture 53, no. 2 (2020): 431–­453. 48. Homeland, “Blind Spot.”

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49. Homeland, “Representative Brody,” season 1, episode 10, written by Henry Bromell, directed by Guy Ferland, original airdate 4 December 2011. This scene stands in contrast to the more ham-­fisted ways Islam is usually treated on the show; indeed, Homeland has been called “TV’s most Islamophobic show” (Laila Al-­Arian, “TV’s Most Islamophobic Show,” Salon, 16 December 2012, https://www.salon.com/2012/12/15/tvs_most_islamophobic_show/). For other critiques in this vein, see Peter Beaumont, “Homeland Is Brilliant Drama. But Does It Present a Crude Image of Muslims?,” The Guardian, 13 October 2012, https://www.theguardian.com /tv-and-radio/2012/oct/13/homeland-drama-offensive-portrayal-islam-arabs. 50. On Homeland’s tendency to contrast Carrie’s Western feminism with Islam’s abuse of women’s rights in an effort to shore up the security state, see Alex Bevan, “The National Body, Women, and Mental Health in Homeland,” Cinema Journal 54, no. 4 (2015): 145–­151. 51. Homeland, “The Star,” season 3, episode 12, written by Alex Gansa and Meredith Stiehm, directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, original airdate 15 December 2013. 52. Homeland, “Trylon and Perisphere,” season 4, episode 2, written by Chip Johannessen, directed by Keith Goron, original airdate 5 October 2014. 53. Linda Hirshman, “Homeward Bound,” American Prospect, 21 November 2005, https:// prospect.org/article/homeward-bound-0. This essay provided the blueprint for Hirshman’s controversial book Get to Work: . . . And Get a Life Before It’s Too Late (New York: Penguin, 2007). 54. Mike Hogan, “Homeland Recap, Season 4 Premiere: It’s Carrie’s Show Now,” Vanity Fair, 5 October 2014, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/10/homeland-season-4-premiere -recap. 55. Hirshman, “Homeward Bound.” 56. Homeland, “The Vest,” season 1, episode 11, written by Meredith Stiehm and Chip Johannessen, directed by Clark Johnson, original airdate 11 December 2011. 57. Homeland, “Marine One.” 58. Homeland, “Marine One.” 59. Homeland, “The Vest.” 60. Homeland, “Marine One.” 61. Homeland, “The Vest.” 62. Homeland, “The Vest.” Of course, it’s not fair to characterize Saul’s role as only paternalistic, since he believes in Carrie enough to put together her timeline in the first place. When asked by Maggie what it is, Saul is the only one to call it right: “It’s her work,” he says, looking at Carrie. Still, Saul represents one of the forces that actively subdues Carrie, especially in the season finale when, in response to her telling him that her suspicions have once again turned on Brody, he has her followed and contained by fellow CIA officers. 63. Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and the History of Its Publication and Reception: A Critical Edition and Documentary Casebook, ed. Julia Bates Dock (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 29. 64. Homeland, “Marine One.” 65. Homeland, “The Vest.” 66. Fallow can also mean “of a light yellowish-­brown color,” a word that captures Gilman’s vivid description: “The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-­turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulpher tint in others” (“The Yellow Wallpaper,” 31). 67. Homeland, “The Vest.”

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68. Homeland, “The Vest.” 69. Homeland, “The Vest.” 70. Homeland, “The Vest.” 71. Homeland, “Marine One.” 72. Jill Diane Zahniser and Amelia R. Fry, Alice Paul: Claiming Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 287. 73. “They’ll force-­feed you lithium till your heart stops,” one lawyer threatens of the CIA’s power both to sedate and to coerce women they perceive as dangerous (Homeland, “Game On,” season 3, episode 4, written by James Yoshimura and Alex Gansa, directed by David Nutter, original airdate 20 October 2013). 74. Homeland, “Marine One.” 75. Showalter, The Female Malady, 162–­64. 76. On the tendency to heterosexualize the dangerous woman so as to check her subversiveness, see Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 1–­43. Chapter Five 1. The Mary Tyler Moore Show, “Love Is All Around,” season 1, episode 1, written by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, directed by Jay Sandrich, original airdate 19 September 1970. 2. For more on the relationship between Girls and previous women-­centered television shows, see Sean Fuller and Catherine Driscoll, “HBO’s Girls: Gender, Generation, and Quality Television,” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 29, no. 2 (2015): 253–­262. For a reading that sees Girls as emerging not out of the sitcom tradition but out of films of the 1960s and 1970s, see Katherine J. Lehman, “ ‘All Adventurous Women Do’: HBO, Girls, and the 1960s–­ 70s Single Woman,” in HBO’s Girls: Questions of Gender, Politics, and Millennial Angst, ed. Betty Kaklamanidou and Margaret Tally (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2014), 10–­27. 3. Writing for the Huffington Post, Erin Whitney comments, “[I]t’s safe to say that Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) is one of the most disliked characters on television, and that’s including all the villains, anti-­heroes, and sociopaths” (“Why We Hate Hannah Horvath but Love Larry David,” Huffington Post, 25 March 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/25 /hannah-girls-larry-david_n_5023921.html). 4. Girls, “Leave Me Alone,” season 1, episode 9, written by Lena Dunham and Bruce Eric Kaplan, original airdate 10 June 2012. 5. We borrow this formulation from Susan Fraiman, Unbecoming Women: British Women Writers and the Novel of Development (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). 6. Rebecca Wanzo calls these programs “precarious-­girl comedies”; see “Precarious-­Girl Comedy: Issa Rae, Lena Dunham, and Abjection Aesthetics,” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 31, no. 2/92 (2016): 27–­59. While Wanzo argues that female abjection results in alienation from others, we contend that humiliation can be a conduit for feminist community. 7. On discourses of self-­reliance, resilience, and self-­responsibilization in postfeminist culture, see Maria Adamson and Elisabeth K. Kelan, “ ‘Female Heroes’: Celebrity Executives as Postfeminist Role Models,” British Journal of Management 30, no. 4 (2018): 981–­996; Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad, “The Amazing Bounce-­Backable Woman: Resilience and the Psychological Turn in Neoliberalism,” Sociological Research Online 23, no. 2 (2018): 477–­495; Rosalind Gill, “The Affective, Cultural, and Psychic Life of Postfeminism: A Postfeminist Sensibility 10 Years

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On,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 20, no. 6 (2017): 606–­626; and Jorie Lagerwey, Julia Leyda, and Diane Negra, “Female-­Centered TV in an Age of Precarity,” Genders 1, no. 1 (2016), https://www.colorado.edu/genders/2016/05/19/female-centered-tv-age-precarity#_edn1. 8. Debora L. Spar, “Why the Woman Who ‘Has It All’ Doesn’t Really Exist,” Glamour, 14 August 2014, http://www.glamour.com/story/why-women-cant-have-it-all-according-to-barnard -college-president-debora-l-spar; also see Angela McRobbie, “Notes on the Perfect: Competitive Femininity in Neoliberal Times,” Australian Feminist Studies 30, no. 83 (2015): 3–­20. 9. Girls, “Pilot,” season 1, episode 1, written by Lena Dunham, directed by Lena Dunham, original airdate 15 April 2012. 10. On millennial privilege in Girls, see Lauren DeCarvalho, “Hannah and Her Entitled Sisters: (Post)feminism, (Post)recession, and Girls,” Feminist Media Studies 13, no. 2 (2013): 367–­ 370; Serena Daalmans, “ ‘I’m Busy Trying to Become Who I Am: Self-­Entitlement and the City in HBO’s Girls,” Feminist Media Studies 13, no. 2 (2013): 359–­362; Dustin Rowles, “HBO’s Girls and Our Resentment of Privileged White America,” Pajiba (24 April 2012), http://www.pajiba.com/think _pieces/hbos-girls-and-our-resentment-toward-privileged-white-america.php. On girls as satire, see Marcie Bianco, “Hannah’s Self-­Writing: Satirical Aesthetics, Unfashionable Ethics, and a Poetics of Cruel Optimism,” in HBO’s Girls: Questions of Gender, Politics, and Millennial Angst, 73–­90. 11. On neoliberal feminism and its focus on depoliticized self-­expression in young women, see Catherine Rottenberg, “The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism,” Cultural Studies 28, no. 3 (2013): 418–­437; and Nancy Frazer, Fortunes of Feminism: From State-­Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (New York: Verso, 2013). For further readings of Girls as a critique of postfeminism (rather than simply a manifestation of it), see Katherine Bell, “ ‘Obvie, We’re the Ladies’: Postfeminism, Privilege, and HBO’s Newest Girls,” Feminist Media Studies 13, no. 2 (2013): 363–­366; Bianco, “Hannah’s Self-­Writing; Meredith Nash and Ruby Grant, “Twenty-­Something Girls v. Thirty-­ Something Sex and the City Women,” Feminist Media Studies 15, no. 6 (2015): 976–­991; Imelda Whelehan, “Hating Hannah: Or Learning to Love (Post)Feminist Entitlement,” in Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls: Feminism, Postfeminism, Authenticity, and Gendered Performance in Contemporary Television, ed. Meredith Nash and Imelda Whelehan (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017): 31–­44; and Amy Shields Dobson and Akane Kanai, “From ‘Can-­Do’ Girls to Insecure and Angry: Affective Dissonances in Young Women’s Post-­Recessional Media,” Feminist Media Studies 19, no. 6 (2019): 771–­786. 12. Andrew J. Rausch, Fifty Filmmakers: Conversations with Directors from Roger Avary to Steven Zaillian, ed. Michael Dequina (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), 139. 13. Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 3. 14. On reproductive futurism, see Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 14. 15. See Roxanne Gay, “Girls, Girls, Girls,” The Rumpus, 3 May 2012, http://therumpus .net/2012/05/girls-girls-girls/; Dodai Stewart, “Why We Need to Keep Talking about the White Girls on Girls,” Jezebel, 19 April 2012, http://jezebel.com/5903382/why-we-need-to-keep-talk ing-about-the-white-girls-on-girls; and Elwood Watson, “The Awkward/Ambiguous Politics of White Millennial Feminism,” in HBO’s Girls and the Awkward Politics of Gender, Race, and Privilege, 145–­166. On the politics of representation in Girls, see Hannah McCann, “ ‘A Voice of a Generation’: Girls and the Problem of Representation,” in Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls, 91–­104. 16. Quoted in James Wolcott, “Can Lena Dunham Recover from Her High-­Profile Mistakes?,” Vanity Fair, 22 December 2017, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/12/can -lena-dunham-recover-from-her-mistakes.

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17. Lucille Ball and Roseanne Barr are both important forerunners to Girls’ engagement with female failure (see Kathleen Rowe, The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter [Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995]). But I Love Lucy and Rosanne are family comedies, where the depiction of female characters has been less rigidly aspirational than in single-­girl sitcoms. 18. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, [1850] 1994), 40. 19. Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, 40. 20. Girls, “Pilot.” 21. Girls, “Hard Being Easy,” season 1, episode 5, written by Lena Dunham, directed by Jesse Peretz, original airdate 13 May 2012. 22. Girls, “All Adventurous Women Do,” season 1, episode 3, written by Lena Dunham, directed by Lena Dunham, original airdate 29 April 2012. 23. Girls, “All Adventurous Women Do.” 24. In episode 2 of season 1, for example, Hannah is shown anxiously googling “Diseases that come from no condom for one second” and “Stuff that gets up around the sides of condoms” (Girls, “Vagina Panic,” season 1, episode 2, written by Lena Dunham, directed by Lena Dunham, original airdate 22 April 2012). 25. Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 168. 26. Girls, “All Adventurous Women Do.” 27. See Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 28. Monica Lewinsky, “The Price of Shame,” TED, 15 March 2015, Lecture, https://www.ted .com/talks/monica_lewinsky_the_price_of_shame. 29. Silvan Tomkins, Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader, ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 134. 30. Elspeth Probyn, Blush: Faces of Shame (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), ix–­x. 31. Girls, “Hannah’s Diary,” season 1, episode 4, written by Lena Dunham, directed by Richard Shepard, original airdate 6 May 2012. 32. Probyn, Blush, xii. 33. Girls, “Vagina Panic.” 34. Girls, “Weirdos Need Girlfriends Too,” season 1, episode 8, written by Lena Dunham and Dan Sterling, directed by Jody Lee Lipes, original airdate 3 June 2012. 35. Margaret Talbot, “Girls Will Be Girls,” New Yorker, 16 April 2012, http://www.newyorker .com/magazine/2012/04/16/girls-will-be-girls. 36. Girls, “Vagina Panic.” 37. Girls, “Pilot.” While this scene satirizes Adam’s willingness to take his grandmother’s money, his blithe use of the language of “freedom” and “slavery” is yet another reminder of the problematic whiteness of Girls. 38. Girls, “Hard Being Easy.” 39. See Alan Jacobs, “Lena Dunham’s Inviolable Self,” First Things, May 2013, http://www .firstthings.com/article/2013/05/lena-dunhamrs-inviolable-self; and Daalmans, “ ‘I’m Busy Trying to Become Who I Am,’ ” 359–­362. 40. This dynamic is reaffirmed in episode 8 (“Weirdos Need Girlfriends Too”) when Hannah excoriates Adam for urinating on her in the shower rather than simply accepting his treatment of her.

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41. Girls, “The Return,” season 1, episode 6, written by Lena Dunham and Judd Apatow, directed by Lena Dunham, original airdate 20 May 2012. 42. Marlow Stern, “Adam Driver on Role-­Play Sex with Lena Dunham on Girls and Adam’s Stormy Relationship with Hannah,” Daily Beast, 9 March 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com /articles/2014/03/09/adam-driver-on-role-play-sex-with-lena-dunham-on-girls-and-adam-s -stormy-relationship-with-hannah.html. 43. The Howard Stern Show, Sirius XM Radio, 7 January 2013. 44. The Late Show with David Letterman, CBS, Episode #20.68, January 2013. 45. Linda Stasi, “New ‘Girl’ on Top,” New York Post, 4 January 2013, http://nypost.com/2013 /01/04/new-girl-on-top/. 46. Shyam Dodge, “It’s Verbal Violence,” Daily Mail, 29 September 2015, http://www.daily mail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3253042/Lena-Dunham-says-stopped-managing-Twitter-ac count-body-shaming-comments-posted-underwear-selfie.html. 47. Helen Merrell Lynd, On Shame and the Search for Identity (London: Routledge, 1958); and Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, rev. ed., trans. Edmund Jephcott, ed. Eric Dunning, Johan Gouldsbom, and Stephen Marshall (Oxford University Press, 2000). 48. Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1967). Later psychologists characterize the difference between shame and guilt in other ways. See, for example, Helen Block Lewis, Shame and Guilt in Neurosis (New York: International Universities Press, 1971). 49. Francis J. Broucek, Shame and the Self (New York: Guilford Press, 1991), 18. 50. Myra Mendible, “Introduction: American Shame and the Boundaries of Belonging,” in American Shame: Stigma and the Body Politic, ed. Mendible (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), 16. 51. Paul Schrodt, “Lena Dunham’s Body Is Funny,” Esquire, 15 January 2014, http://www .esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a26926/lena-dunham-body-funny/. 52. Linda Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny: Women Comedians and Body Politics (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), 22. 53. Girls, “All Adventurous Women Do.” 54. Girls, “Leave Me Alone.” 55. The character of Ray often works as a stand-­in for viewer irritation with Hannah. See Anna Holmes, “The Age of Girlfriends,” New Yorker, 6 July 2012, http://www.newyorker.com /books/page-turner/the-age-of-girlfriends; and Maša Grdešić, “ ‘I’m Not the Ladies!’ Metatextual Commentary in Girls,” Feminist Media Studies 13, no. 2 (2013): 355–­358. 56. Girls, “Weirdos Need Girlfriends Too.” 57. Ta-­Nehisi Coates, “Lena Dunham and Democratic Nudity,” Atlantic, 16 January 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/01/lena-dunham-and-democratic -nudity/267254/. Maria San Filippo makes a related point when she argues that Dunham “accentuates women’s embodied subjectivity, rather than the sexual objectivity to which women are traditionally confined in cultural representation, both artistic and commercial” (“Owning Her Abjection: Lena Dunham’s Feminist Politics of Embodiment,” in HBO’s Girls and the Awkward Politics of Gender, Race, and Privilege, 44). For other feminist readings of Dunham’s self-­fashioning on camera, see Elaine Blair, “The Loves of Lena Dunham,” New York Review of Books, 7 June 2012, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/06/07/loves-lena-dunham/; Emily Nussbaum, “It’s Different for Girls,” New York Magazine, 25 March 2012, https://nymag.com/arts /tv/features/girls-lena-dunham-2012-4/; Jocelyn L. Bailey, “ ‘The Body Police’: Lena Dunham,

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Susan Bordo, and HBO’s Girls,” in HBO’s Girls and the Awkward Politics of Gender, Race, and Privilege, 27–­42; Nash and Grant, “Twenty-­Something Girls v. Thirty-­Something Sex and the City Women”; and Deborah J. Thomas, “ ‘You Shouldn’t Be Doing That Because You Haven’t Got the Body for It’: Comment on Nudity in Girls,” in Reading Lena Dunham’s Girls, 181–­195. 58. On bodily management in postfeminist culture, see Rosalind Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 10, no. 2 (2007): 147–­166; and Shari L. Dworkin and Faye Linda Wachs, Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness (New York: NYU Press, 2009). 59. Girls, “All Adventurous Women Do.” 60. Quoted in Tim Malloy, “Judd Apatow and Lena Dunham Get Mad at Me for Asking Why She’s Naked So Much on ‘Girls,’ ” The Wrap, 9 January 2014, http://www.thewrap.com /judd-apatow-lena-dunham-get-mad-asking-shes-naked-much-girls/. 61. Robert Karen, “Shame,” Atlantic Monthly 269, no. 2 (February 1992), http://www.empow eringpeople.net/shame/shame.pdf. 62. @RanaMuhammad, “Hannah Horvath, she’s ugly she’s fat and she has sheer confidence. I can use some of that. #Girls,” Twitter, 18 May 2014, 12:56 p.m., https://twitter.com/search?q=.%20 %20“Hannah%20Horvath%2C%20she’s%20ugly%20she’s%20fat%20and%20she%20has%20 sheer%20confidence.%20%20I%20can%20use%20some%20of%20that%2C”&src=typd. 63. @janalburp, “Hannah Horvath makes being fat look so cool and sexy. #Girls,” Twitter, 15 February 2013, 1:14 p.m., https://twitter.com/search?q=.%20%20“Hannah%20Horvath%20 makes%20being%20fat%20look%20so%20cool%20and%20sexy%2C”&src=typd. 64. @thediandras, “What defines as cool? Id like to think I am cool, in a Hannah Horvath, fat and broke kind of way,” Twitter, 1 July 2012, 3:51 p.m., https://twitter.com/search?q=“What%20 defines%20as%20cool%3F%20Id%20like%20to%20think%20I%20am%20cool%2C%20in%20 a%20Hannah%20Horvath%2C%20fat%20and%20broke%20kind%20of%20way.”&src=typd. 65. Karen, “Shame.” 66. Hanna Rosin, The End of Men: And the Rise of Women (New York: Penguin, 2012). Chapter Six 1. Broad City, “St. Mark’s,” season 2, episode 10, written by Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, directed by Nicholas Jasenovec, original airdate 18 March 2015. 2. Susan Douglas, The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild (New York: Macmillan, 2010), 129. 3. Cate Young, “Broad City Is Over But Its Friendship Is Forever,” Jezebel, 29 March 2019, https://themuse.jezebel.com/broad-city-is-over-but-its-friendship-is-forever-1833674307. 4. The term is Adrienne Rich’s; see “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Signs 5, no. 4 (1980): 631–­660. 5. Broad City, “What a Wonderful World,” season 1, episode 1, written by Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, directed by Lucia Aniello, original airdate 22 January 2014. 6. Melissa Maerz, “The New Girls,” Entertainment Weekly, 13 December 2013, https://ew .com/article/2013/12/13/new-girls/. 7. Nick Paumgarten, “Id Girls,” New Yorker, 23 June 2014, https://www.newyorker.com /magazine/2014/06/23/id-girls. 8. Broad City, “Fattest Asses,” season 1, episode 5, written by Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, directed by John Lee, original airdate 19 February 2014.

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9. Broad City, “The Last Supper,” season 1, episode 10, written by Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, directed by Amy Poehler, original airdate 26 March 2014. 10. Anne Helen Petersen, “The Unruly Stoner Girl: What Makes Broad City So Radical,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 31 March 2014, https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/unruly-stoner -girl-makes-broad-city-radical/#unrulystonergirl. For more on the unruly woman in popular culture, see Petersen’s book Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman (New York: Plume, 2017). 11. Megan Angelo, “The Sneak-­Attack Feminism of Broad City,” Wall Street Journal, 14 Febru­ ary 2011, https://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/02/14/the-sneak-attack-feminism-of-broad-city/. 12. Broad City, “Stolen Phone,” season 1, episode 6, written by Chris Kelly, directed by Lucia Aniello, original airdate 26 February 2014. 13. See Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). 14. Broad City, “What a Wonderful World.” 15. It is tempting to see Abbi and Ilana’s tendency toward defeat as tied to the “regimes of failure” that Arjun Appadurai and Neta Alexander interrogate in their recent book Failure (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2019). Yet the logics of failure Appadurai and Alexander find on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley—­deeply connected to the economic and cultural logic of late capitalism—­bear little resemblance to the broads’ cheerful indifference to the success mandate. Abbi and Ilana do not fail so much as they opt out, largely by refusing to internalize the shame so often associated with low-­status work. 16. Broad City, “Fattest Asses.” 17. Broad City, “What a Wonderful World.” 18. Leon Wurmser, The Mask of Shame (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 92. 19. Olivia Laing, Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (New York: Picador: 2016), 11–­12, 25–­26. 20. Quoted in Emily Nussbaum, “Laverne and Curly,” New Yorker, 29 February 2016, https:// www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/07/broad-citys-slapstick-anarchists. 21. Broad City, “Hurricane Wanda,” season 1, episode 7, written by Tami Sagher, directed by John Lee, original airdate 5 March 2014. 22. Linda Mizejewski, Pretty/Funny: Women Comedians and Body Politics (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), 104–­105. 23. Broad City, “Hurricane Wanda.” 24. Alan Jacobs, “Lena Dunham’s Inviolable Self,” First Things, May 2013, http://www.first things.com/article/2013/05/lena-dunhamrs-inviolable-self. 25. Broad City, “Pu$$y Weed,” season 1, episode 2, written by Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, directed by John Lee, original airdate 29 January 2014. 26. Broad City, “The Last Supper.” 27. Broad City, “Stolen Phone.” 28. Broad City, “Rat Pack,” season 3, episode 4, written by Jen Statsky, directed by Ryan McFaul, original airdate 9 March 2016. 29. Kyla Wazana Tompkins and Rebecca Wanzo, “Brown Broads, White TV,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 16 March 2015, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/brown-broads-white-tv/. 30. Douglas, The Rise of Enlightened Sexism, 128–­129. 31. Tompkins and Wanzo, “Brown Broads, White TV.”

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32. Tompkins and Wanzo, “Brown Broads, White TV.” 33. Broad City, “Two Chainz,” season 3, episode 1, written by Paul W. Downs and Lucia Aniello, directed by Lucia Aniello, original airdate 17 February 2016. 34. In one stand-­up routine, Buress incorporates this bit: “Bill Cosby has the fuckin’ smuggest old black man public persona that I hate. He gets on TV, ‘Pull your pants up black people, I was on TV in the ’80s! I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom!’ Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches” (Dylan Matthews, “Why Hannibal Buress Won’t Let People Forget That 13 Women Have Accused Bill Cosby of Rape,” Vox, 20 October 2014, https://www.vox.com/2014/10/21/7028755/hannibal-buress-bill-cosby-rapist). 35. Broad City, “What a Wonderful World”; and Broad City, “Pu$$y Weed.” 36. Douglas, The Rise of Enlightened Sexism, 128. 37. Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 14. 38. Jeffrey Melnick, A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and Popular Songs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 118. 39. Melnick, A Right to Sing the Blues, 121. 40. Broad City, “Knockoffs,” season 2, episode 4, written by Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs, directed by Lucia Aniello, original airdate 4 February 2015. 41. Andy Greenwald, “The Andy Greenwald Podcast with Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer,” The Watch with Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald (podcast), 17 February 2016, https://podbay .fm/p/the-watch/e/1455765780. 42. Hannah Schwadron has compared Ilana and Abbi to other Jewish comedians like Sarah Bernhardt and Sarah Silverman, “whose spotlighting of white privilege also reinforces it” (The Case of the Sexy Jewess: Dance, Gender, and Jewish Joke-­Work in US Pop Culture [New York: Oxford University Press, 2017], 103). Jonathan Branfman, by contrast, reads Abbi and Ilana’s Jewishness as complicating charges of white entitlement since “even in mainstream American culture, Ashkenazi Jewish whiteness remains ambivalent” (“ ‘Plow Him Like a Queen!’ Jewish Female Masculinity, Queer Glamor, and Racial Commentary in Broad City,” Television and New Media 21, no. 8 [2019], 846, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1527476419855688). 43. Broad City, “Co-­Op,” season 3, episode 2, written by Paul W. Downs and Lucia Aniello, directed by Ryan McFaul, original airdate 24 February 2016. 44. According to Nick Paumgarten, when Glazer and Jacobson’s talent manager, Samantha Saifer, first shopped the series, she couldn’t drum up any interest: “I had one agent, a woman, tell me, ‘I don’t get why we’d watch this. Are they going to get married?’ ” (“Id Girls”). 45. Broad City, “St. Mark’s.” 46. Broad City, “Knockoffs.” 47. Kathleen Rowe, The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 31. 48. Paumgarten, “Id Girls.” 49. Broad City, “Pu$$y Weed.” 50. Broad City, “Hashtag FOMO,” season 2, episode 5, written by Chris Kelly, directed by Jeff Tomsic, original airdate 11 February 2015; and Broad City, “2016,” season 3, episode 5, written by Chris Kelly, directed by Todd Biermann, original airdate 16 March 2016. 51. Sarah Mesle and Philip Maciak, “Broad City, Season 3,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 18 February 2016, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/broad-city-season-3/.

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52. Broad City, “St. Mark’s”; Broad City, “Two Chainz”; and Broad City, “Witches,” season 4, episode 6, written by Gabe Liedman, directed by Abbi Jacobson, original airdate 25 October 2017. 53. Broad City, “Sleep No More,” season 5, episode 8, written by Ilana Glazer, directed by Lucia Aniello, original airdate 14 March 2019. 54. Broad City, “Along Came Molly,” season 5, episode 9, written by Eliot Glazer, directed by Abbi Jacobson, original airdate 21 March 2019. 55. Eva Wiseman, “The Heady Intensity of Platonic Love Between Women in Their Twenties,” The Guardian, 14 April 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/apr/14/the -heady-intensity-of-platonic-love-between-women--in-their-20s. 56. Mourning the sacrifice of early same-­sex bonds demanded by marriage and adulthood is far more common in films and television shows with male protagonists; see Tania Modleski, “An Affair to Forget: Melancholia in Bromantic Comedy,” Camera Obscura 29, no. 2 (2014): 119–­147. 57. Broad City, “Sleep No More.” 58. Broad City, “Sleep No More.” 59. See, for example, Katie Corrado, “Why Millennials Are Moving out of NYC and Other Big Cities,” PIX 11, 4 November 2019, https://pix11.com/2019/11/04/why-millennials-are-moving -out-of-nyc-and-other-big-cities/. 60. Broad City, “Sleep No More.” 61. Rebecca Knauss, “10 Most Expensive Places to Live in the States,” The Travel, 5 July 2019, https://www.thetravel.com/expensive-places-living-united-states/; and Aldo Salvi, “Boulder Real Estate Hits Top One Percent of Country’s Most Expensive Markets,” The Denver Post, 11 Novem­ber  2015, https://www.denverpost.com/2015/11/11/boulder-real-estate-hits-top -1-percent-of-countrys-most-expensive-markets/. 62. Broad City, “Along Came Molly.” 63. Sex and the City, “An American Girl in Paris, Part Deux,” season 6, episode 20, written by Michael Patrick King, directed by Tim Van Patten, original airdate 22 February 2004. 64. See Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004). 65. On the politics of the bathroom in Broad City, see Susan Fraiman, “Bathroom Realism and the Women of Contemporary Cable TV,” Signs forthcoming. 66. Broad City, “Sleep No More.” 67. Broad City, “Broad City,” season 5, episode 10, written by Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, directed by Lucia Aniello, original airdate 28 March 2019. Chapter Seven 1. Insecure, “Insecure as F**k,” season 1, episode 1, written by Issa Rae and Larry Wilmore, directed by Melina Matsoukas, original airdate 9 October 2016. 2. Issa Rae, interview by Terry Gross, “ ‘Awkward’ and ‘Insecure’ get to the Root of Writer Issa Rae’s Humor,” Fresh Air from WHYY, National Public Radio, 8 November 2016, https://www .npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=501159971. 3. Issa Rae, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 191. 4. Issa Rae, interview by Terry Gross.

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5. Quoted in Jane Mulkerrins, “Issa Rae: ‘So Much of the Media Presents Blackness as Fierce and Flawless. I’m Not,’ ” The Guardian, 5 August 2017, https://www.theguardian.com /tv-and-radio/2017/aug/05/issa-rae-media-presents-blackness-fierce-flawless-insecure. 6. Insecure, “Shady as F**k,” season 1, episode 5, written by Ben Dougan, directed by Melina Matsoukas, original airdate 6 November 2016. 7. Rebecca Wanzo, “Precarious-­Girl Comedy: Issa Rae, Lena Dunham, and Abjection Aesthetics,” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 31, no. 2 (2016): 29–­30. On Black history and abjection, also see Darieck Scott, Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination (New York: NYU Press, 2010). 8. On Black respectability politics, see Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–­1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 185–­229. 9. Jada Yuan, “ ‘Awkward Black Girl’ Goes to Hollywood,” Vulture, October 2016, https:// www.vulture.com/2016/10/awkward-black-girl-issa-rae-hollywood-c-v-r.html. 10. Mulkerrins, “Issa Rae”; and Troy Patterson, “Issa Rae’s Breakthrough in Insecure, Sea­ son  3,  Episode 3,” New Yorker, 2 September 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on -television/issa-raes-breakthrough-in-insecure-season-3-episode-4. 11. Alanna Bennett, “Issa Rae’s Best Quotes Prove She’s Inspirational,” Bustle, 4 February 2015, https://www.bustle.com/articles/62518–6-words-of-wisdom-from-issa-rae-that-prove-shes -inspirational-definitely-one-to-watch. 12. See Racquel Gates, “Gazing While Black: Quality, Resonance, and Black Cinephilia,” keynote talk at the Reception Studies Society, Provo, UT, September 2019. 13. Rae, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, 39–­40. 14. Kristal Brent Zook, Color by Fox: The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); on this history, also see Jennifer Fuller, “Branding Blackness on US Cable Television,” Media Culture & Society 32, no. 2 (2010): 285–­305. 15. Rae, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, 43. For more on the representation of these women, see Kristen J. Warner, “They Gon’ Think You Loud Regardless: Ratchetness, Reality Television, and Black Womanhood,” Camera Obscura 30, no. 1(88) (2015): 129–­153. 16. Rae, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, 45. 17. Rae’s earlier creative endeavors include Dorm Diaries, a web series she made while a student at Stanford, which soon became popular at other colleges. For a full (and hilarious) account of Rae’s various creative undertakings, see her memoir Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. 18. Issa Rae, interview by Julia Ioffe, “Issa Rae: ‘I Never Identified as a Nerd’: Talking to Insecure’s Creator about Her TV Ambitions, L.A. Gentrification, and Her Awkward Public Persona,” The Atlantic, May 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/05/issa -rae-insecure/556880/. 19. Soraya Nadia McDonald, “Insecure Is Actually Very Secure in Itself—­and Secure at HBO,” The Undefeated, 2 December 2016, https://theundefeated.com/features/insecure-is-ac tually-very-secure-in-itself-and-secure-at-hbo/. For more on Rae’s commitment to depicting multidimensional Black womanhood, see Timeka N. Tounsel, “Productive Vulnerability,” Souls 20, no. 3 (2018): 304–­327. 20. Brittany Spanos, “Issa Rae: Why Insecure Is Not Made ‘for Dudes’ or ‘White People,’ ” Rolling Stone, 1 September 2017, https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/issa-rae-why-insecure-is-not -made-for-dudes-or-white-people-196932/.

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21. Brittany Spanos, “Insecure Creator Issa Rae on Drake’s Influence, Maintaining ‘Awkward’-­ ness,” Rolling Stone, 6 October 2016, https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/insecure-creator -issa-rae-on-drakes-influence-maintaining-awkward-ness-105380/. 22. Alexis Okeowo, “What Issa Rae’s Insecure Gets Right,” New Yorker, 23 July 2017, http:// www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/what-issa-raes-insecure-gets-right. 23. Dexter Thomas, “Why Everyone’s Saying ‘Black Girls Are Magic,’ ” Los Angeles Times, 9 September 2015, https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-everyones-saying-black -girls-are-magic-20150909-htmlstory.html. 24. Taylor Lewis, “How British Singer Corinne Bailey Describes ‘Black Girl Magic,’ ” Essence, 16 March 2016, https://www.essence.com/lifestyle/corinne-bailey-rae-black-girl-magic-defined -representation/. 25. To be clear, identifying the extent to which Insecure fits with concepts of Black Girl Magic depends on one’s definition of the latter and especially the extent to which one sees this term as idealizing Black female experience. On criticism of the term, see Linda Chavers, “Here’s My Problem with #BlackGirlMagic,” Elle, 13 January 2016, https://www.elle.com/life-love/a33180 /why-i-dont-love-blackgirlmagic/. Insecure itself invokes the concept of Black Girl Magic briefly in the season 2 finale. 26. On Rae’s fraught relationship with HBO, see Jenna Worthem, “The Misadventures of Issa Rae,” New York Times Magazine, 4 August 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/magazine /the-misadventures-of-issa-rae.html; on the white audience for Insecure, see Aisha Harris, “People Who Aren’t Black Really Love Atlanta, Insecure, and Blackish,” Slate, 16 February 2017, https://slate.com/culture/2017/02/a-recent-nielsen-report-reveals-nonblack-audiences-are -really-loving-shows-like-atlanta-and-insecure-right-now.html; and Michael Schneider, “Blackish, Insecure, and Others Aren’t Just Black Shows as Nielson Study Proves,” IndieWire, 17 March 2017, https://www.indiewire.com/2017/03/blackish-insecure-this-is-us-empire-scandal-african -american-nielsen-1201794477/. 27. Kristen Warner, “[Home] Girls: Insecure and HBO’s Risky Racial Politics,” LA Review of Books, 21 October 2016, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/home-girls-insecure-and-hbos -risky-racial-politics/. 28. Quoted in Mulkerrins, “Issa Rae.” 29. Insecure, “Insecure as F**k.” 30. Spanos, “Insecure Creator Issa Rae on Drake’s Influence.” 31. Insecure, “Hella Open,” season 2, episode 3, written by Dayna Lynne North, directed by Marta Cunningham, original airdate 6 August 2017. 32. Insecure, “Hella Open.” 33. Insecure, “A Special Presentation of Due North,” “Hella Perspective,” season 2, episode 8, written by Issa Rae, directed by Melina Matsoukas, original airdate 10 September 2017. 34. Quoted in Arianna Davis, “How the Fake TV Shows Inside Series Like This Is Us and Insecure Get Made,” Refinery 29, 11 October 2017, https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2017/10 /175353/tv-shows-fake-series-insecure-due-north. 35. Beretta E. Smith-­Shomade, “Introduction: I See Black People,” in Watching While Black: Centering the Television of Black Audiences, ed. Smith-­Shomade (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 6. 36. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London, New York: Verso, 1983). Anderson gives the example of reading a newspaper: “Each communicant is well aware that the ceremony he performs is being replicated simultaneously by thousands (or millions) of

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others of whose existence he is confident, yet of whose identity he has not the slightest notion” (35). We are suggesting that television may function similarly in creating “community in anonymity” (36). 37. Insecure, “Insecure as F**k.” 38. For a reading of Issa’s rap as a feminist reclamation of Black women’s genitalia and sexuality, see Carmel Ohman, “Undisciplining the Black Pussy: Pleasure, Black Feminism, and Sexuality in Issa Rae’s Insecure,” The Black Scholar 50, no. 2 (2020): 5–­15. 39. Insecure, “Thirsty as F**k,” season 1, episode 4, written by Laura Kittrell, directed by Kevin Bray, original airdate 30 October 2016. 40. Sam Wolfson, “Rap and the Gender Gap: Why Are Female MCs Still Not Being Heard?,” The Guardian, 9 September 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/sep/09 /rap-gender-gap-why-are-female-mcs-still-not-being-heard. 41. Insecure, “Shady as F**k.” 42. Insecure, “Shady as F**k.” 43. Insecure, “Shady as F**k.” 44. Insecure, “Insecure as F**k.” 45. Insecure, “Racist as F**k,” season 1, episode 3, written by Dayna Lynne North, directed by Melina Matsoukas, original airdate 23 October 2016. 46. Insecure, “Racist as F**k.” 47. Insecure, “Racist as F**k.” 48. Insecure, “Messy as F**k,” season 1, episode 2, written by Issa Rae, directed by Cecile Emeke, original airdate 16 October 2016. 49. Insecure, “Insecure as F**k.” 50. Insecure, “Racist as F**k.” 51. Insecure, “Messy as F**k.” 52. Insecure, “Insecure as F**k.” 53. Insecure, “Racist as F**k.” 54. Insecure, “Messy as F**k.” 55. Insecure, “Insecure as F**k.” 56. Sianne Ngai, Ugly Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 89–­125. 57. Insecure, “Messy as F**k.” 58. Insecure, “Racist as F**k.” 59. Quoted in Jenna Worthem, “The Misadventures of Issa Rae.” 60. Insecure, “Real as F**k,” season 1, episode 7, written by Prentice Penny, directed by Kevin Bray, original airdate 20 November 2016. 61. We Got Y’all website, Home Box Office, Inc., 2018, https://wegotyall.com. 62. Insecure, “Insecure as F**k.” 63. Insecure, “Shady as F**k.” 64. Insecure, “Broken as F**k,” season 1, episode 8, written by Issa Rae, directed by Melina Matsoukas, original airdate 27 November 2016. 65. Quoted in Mulkerrins, “Issa Rae.” 66. Ralph Ellison, “Shadow and Act,” in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison: Revised and Updated (New York: Random House, 2011), 160. 67. See Maryann Erigha, “Black Women Having It All: The Rise of Professional Women in African American Romance Films,” The Black Scholar 48, no. 1 (2018): 20–­30. 68. Insecure, “Broken as F**k.”

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 7 9 – 1 8 2

247 Chapter Eight

1. Frankie Shaw herself cites a broad range of influences for her show, including working-­ class sitcom Roseanne (ABC, 1988–­1997), cringe-­comedy Louie (FX, 2010–­2015), and British kitchen-­sink-­realist masterpiece Fish Tank (2009). See Garin Pirnia, “There’s More to SMILF Than an Attention-­Grabbing Name,” Vanity Fair, 3 November 2017, https://www.vanityfair.com /hollywood/2017/11/frankie-shaw-smilf-showtime. 2. SMILF, “A Box of Dunkies & Two Squirts of Maple Syrup,” season 1, episode 1, written by Frankie Shaw, directed by Frankie Shaw, original airdate 5 November 2017. 3. This is the case despite the fact that the camera work does everything possible to destigmatize the moment. As Shaw herself has stated, “When women are naked in the show it’s honest nudity, and we’re not objectifying their bodies” (quoted in Ariana Romero, “SMILF’s Bridgette Is TV’s Most Important New Character,” Refinery29, 6 November 2017, https://www.refinery29 .com/en-us/2017/11/179822/smilf-frankie-shaw-horny-single-mom-sexual-abuse). 4. Shaw has explained her rationale for the controversial title this way: “My intention was always deliberate. The word MILF exists in the zeitgeist as a derogatory term from the male point-­of-­view dating back to American Pie. . . . [B]y being in the POV of the mother, we are redefining the word, taking the word back.  .  .  . We are subjects of the story and no longer objects” (quoted in Dana Feldman, “Showtime Is Betting on New Frankie-­Shaw-­Helmed Comedy Series SMILF,” Forbes, 3 November 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/danafeldman /2017/11/03/showtime-is-betting-its-chips-on-new-frankie-shaw-helmed-comedy-series -smilf/#722c066c63a8). Elsewhere, Shaw has said, “There’s no real room for a woman’s existence in the word MILF. By getting inside her life experience, we are in a sense changing the meaning, reclaiming it” (quoted in Troy Patterson, “SMILF, A Rude, Nimble Comedy of Sex and the Single Mother,” New Yorker, 5 November 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television /smilf-a-rude-nimble-comedy-of-sex-and-the-single-mother). 5. Peter Flynn, “How Bridget Was Framed: The Irish Domestic in Early American Cinema, 1895–­1917,” Cinema Journal 50, no. 2 (Winter 2011): 1. 6. Alex McLevy, “SMILF Is a Good Show with a Horrible Title,” AV Club, 3 November 2017, https://www.avclub.com/smilf-is-a-good-show-with-a-horrible-title-1820023105. 7. Quoted in Steve Annear, “City Councilor says SMILF Degrades South Boston Women, Wants Ad Removed,” Boston Globe, 7 February 2018, https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/02/07 /city-councilor-calls-for-removal-smilf-posters-says-they-degrade-south-boston-women /bQQZnBk7aBvM6jvafnNCFI/story.html. 8. Frankie Shaw, “Dear City Councilor @edforBoston,” Facebook, February 10, 2018, https:// www.facebook.com/frankieshawisag/posts/dear-city-councilor-edforboston-im-writing-to -address-your-recent-complaints-abo/1749950708357424/. 9. See Laura Bradley, “SMILF Creator Accused of Misconduct, Separating Writers by Race,” Vanity Fair, 17 December 2018, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/12/smilf-frankie -shaw-allegations-showtime?verso=true. 10. Shaw has characterized SMILF as “a very feminist show” (quoted in Feldman, “Showtime Is Betting”). She has also stated that she is committed to “an intersectional workplace in which more than a third of the writers were women of color” (quoted in Bradley, “SMILF Creator Accused of Misconduct”). 11. SMILF, “Single Mom Is Looking (for) Family,” season 2, episode 10, written by Zach Strauss and Halley Feiffer, directed by Cate Shortland, original airdate 31 March 2019.

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12. Donald Woods Winnicott, Playing and Reality (New York: Routledge, 1971), 13. 13. SMILF, “A Box of Dunkies & Two Squirts of Maple Syrup.” 14. SMILF, “Mark’s Lunch & Two Cups of Coffee,” season 1, episode 8, written by Frankie Shaw, directed by Frankie Shaw, original airdate 31 December 2017. 15. SMILF, “1,800 Filet-­O-­Fishes & One Small Diet Coke,” season 1, episode 2, written by Frankie Shaw and Emily Goldwyn, directed by Leslye Headland, original airdate 12 November 2017. 16. SMILF, “Half a Sheet Cake & a Blue-­Raspberry Slushie,” season 1, episode 3, written by Jess Dweck and Frankie Shaw, directed by Leslye Headland, original airdate 19 November 2017. 17. On women’s economic insecurity in the twenty-­first century, see Nancy Worth, “Feeling Precarious: Millennial Women and Work,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 34, no. 4 (2015): 601–­616; Ana Villalobos, Motherload: Making It All Better in Insecure Times (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014); and Leah F. Vosko, Martha MacDonald, and Iain Campbell, eds., Gender and the Contours of Precarious Employment (London and New York: Routledge, 2009). 18. SMILF, “Half a Sheet Cake & a Blue-­Raspberry Slushie.” 19. SMILF, “Deep Dish Pizza & a Shot of Holy Water,” season 1, episode 4, written by Karey Dornetto, directed by Leslye Headland, original airdate 26 November 2017. 20. SMILF, “Deep Dish Pizza & a Shot of Holy Water.” 21. SMILF, “Deep Dish Pizza & a Shot of Holy Water.” 22. SMILF, “Deep Dish Pizza & a Shot of Holy Water.” 23. Girls, “Pilot,” season 1, episode 1, written by Lena Dunham, directed by Lena Dunham, original airdate 15 April 2012. 24. SMILF, “Half a Sheet Cake & a Blue-­Raspberry Slushie.” 25. SMILF, “Mark’s Lunch & Two Cups of Coffee.” 26. SMILF, “Half a Sheet Cake & a Blue-­Raspberry Slushie.” 27. See Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2002). 28. SMILF, “Family-­Sized Popcorn & a Can of Wine,” season 1, episode 7, written by Scott King, directed by Frankie Shaw, original airdate 17 December 2017. 29. SMILF, “1,800 Filet-­O-­Fishes & One Small Diet Coke.” 30. SMILF, “Deep Dish Pizza & a Shot of Holy Water.” 31. SMILF, “Should Mothers Incur Loss Financially?,” season 2, episode 6, written by Frankie Shaw and Jessica Moore, directed by Cate Shortland, original airdate 3 March 2019. 32. SMILF, “Family-­Size Popcorn & a Can of Wine.” 33. SMILF, “Family-­Size Popcorn & a Can of Wine.” 34. In season 1, Ally’s maid is Elsa (Ivette González). In season 2, she’s replaced by Elsie (Numa Perrier), with no one on the show addressing this change. It’s difficult to know whether the logic of fungibility in relation to working-­class domestics (evidenced in the near-­identical name Elsa/Elsie) is being perpetrated or critiqued here. 35. SMILF, “1,800 Filet-­O-­Fishes & One Small Diet Coke.” 36. In season 1, episode 3 (“Half a Sheet Cake & a Blue-­Raspberry Slushie”), we learn that Bridgette went to high school at Milton Hall, a reference, most likely, to the prestigious prep school Milton Academy, which Frankie Shaw herself attended on scholarship. 37. SMILF, “Chocolate Pudding & a Cooler of Gatorade,” season 1, episode 6, written by Sarah L. Jones and Mel Shimkovitz, directed by Amy York Rubin, original airdate 10 December 2017.

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38. SMILF, “Run, Bridgette, Run or Forty-­Eight Burnt Cupcakes & Graveyard Rum,” season 1, episode 5, written by Zach Strauss, directed by Amy York Rubin, original airdate 3 December 2017. 39. SMILF, “Sorry Mary, I’m Losing Faith,” season 2, episode 2, written by Frankie Shaw and Rachel Leavitt, directed by Frankie Shaw, original airdate 27 January 2019. 40. SMILF, “Sorry Mary, I’m Losing Faith.” 41. SMILF, “Surrogate Mothers Inspire Loving Families,” season 2, episode 3, written by Emily Goldwyn and Jess Lamour, directed by Frankie Shaw, original airdate 10 February 2019. 42. SMILF, “Sorry Mary, I’m Losing Faith.” 43. Each of season 2’s titles attempts to rewrite the acronym SMILF. 44. SMILF, “Sorry Mary, I’m Losing Faith.” 45. SMILF, “Sorry Mary, I’m Losing Faith.” 46. SMILF, “So Maybe I Look Feminine,” season 2, episode 4, written by Heather V. Regnier, directed by Frankie Shaw, original airdate 17 February 2019. 47. SMILF, “Smile More if Lying Fails,” season 2, episode 7, written by Frankie Shaw, Thembi L. Banks, and Rochee Jeffrey, directed by Kerry Washington, original airdate 10 March 2019. 48. Patrick Ferrucci and Earnest Perry, “Double Dribble: The Stereotypical Narrative of Magic and Bird,” Journalism History 41, no. 2 (2015): 93–­102. 49. Diane Negra, “The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity, and Popular Culture,” in The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity, and Popular Culture, ed. Negra (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 3. 50. Catherine M. Eagan, “Still ‘Black’ and ‘Proud’: Irish America and the Racial Politics of Hibernophilia,” in The Irish in Us, 21, 23. 51. SMILF, “A Box of Dunkies & Two Squirts of Maple Syrup.” 52. On good-­mother representations and their saturation of popular media, see Rebecca Feasey, From Happy Homemaker to Desperate Housewives: Motherhood and Popular Television (London: Anthem Press, 2012), 1–­12; and Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels, The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 1–­27. 53. SMILF, “A Box of Dunkies & Two Squirts of Maple Syrup.” 54. Suzanna Danuta Walters and Laura Harrison, “Not Ready to Make Nice: Aberrant Mothers in Contemporary Culture,” Feminist Media Studies 14, no. 1 (2014): 40. Interestingly, many of these protagonists find their home on Showtime, the also-­ran network among prestige cable channels. While HBO racks up Emmys, Golden Globes, and prestige-­television gravitas with male antihero dramas like The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, True Detective (HBO, 2014–­present), and Westworld (HBO, 2006–­present), Showtime has quietly been the home of shows dealing with queerness, social class, and female antiheroes: Queer as Folk (Showtime, 2000–­2005), The L Word (Showtime, 2004–­2009), Shameless (Showtime, 2000–­present), Weeds, Nurse Jackie, and SMILF. Lara Bradshaw argues that since Weeds debuted in 2005, “Showtime has developed a reputation for programming content based on the anti-­heroine mother protagonist” ( “Showtime’s ‘Female Problem’: Cancer, Quality and Motherhood,” Journal of Consumer Culture 13, no. 2 [2013]: 160). 55. Julie Ann Wilson and Emily Chivers Yochim, “Mothering Through Precarity,” Cultural Studies 29, no. 5–­6 (2015): 669–­686.

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56. SMILF, “Family-­Sized Popcorn & a Can of Wine.” 57. According to Winnicott, the mother’s failure to respond to her child’s immediate needs teaches the child to manage frustration and adapt to the realities of the external world; see Winnicott, Playing and Reality. 58. SMILF, “1,800 Filet-­O-­Fishes & One Small Diet Coke.” 59. SMILF, “Single Mom in Love Forever,” season 2, episode 5, written by Frankie Shaw, directed by Cate Shortland, original airdate 24 February 2019. 60. Imogen Tyler, “Against Abjection,” Feminist Theory 10, no. 1 (2009): 80. 61. SMILF also engages the idea of the maternal body as abject in its pilot episode, which has Bridgette panicked that having a child has screwed up her genitalia irredeemably. The image of the “blown-­out” vagina is an anxiety about the border, the fear that what should be on the inside is on the outside, the vagina turned into a gaping maw. 62. SMILF, “Run, Bridgette, Run, or Forty-­Eight Burnt Cupcakes & Graveyard Rum.” 63. SMILF, “1,800 Filet-­O-­Fishes & One Small Diet Coke.” 64. SMILF, “Deep Dish Pizza & a Shot of Holy Water.” 65. SMILF, “Surrogate Mothers Inspire Loving Families.” 66. SMILF, “Single Mom Is Losing Faith,” season 2, episode 9, written by Frankie Shaw and Zach Strauss, directed by Zach Strauss, original airdate 24 March 2019. 67. SMILF, “1,800 Filet-­O-­Fishes & One Small Diet Coke.” 68. SMILF, “Mark’s Lunch & Two Cups of Coffee.” 69. SMILF, “Chocolate Pudding & a Cooler of Gatorade.” Epilogue 1. Brit Marling, “I Don’t Want to Be the Strong Female Lead,” New York Times, 7 February 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/opinion/sunday/brit-marling-women-movies .html. 2. Devorah Blacher, “I Don’t Hate Women Candidates—­I Just Hated Hillary and Coincidentally I’m Starting to Hate Elizabeth Warren,” McSweeney’s, 30 December 2019, https://www.mc sweeneys.net/articles/i-dont-hate-women-candidates-i-just-hated-hillary-and-coincidentally -im-starting-to-hate-elizabeth-warren. 3. The exception, of course, is Shonda Rhimes of Scandal. 4. Broad City, “2016,” season 3, episode 5, written by Chris Kelly, directed by Todd Biermann, original airdate 16 March 2016. 5. Broad City, “Witches,” season 4, episode 6, written by Gabe Liedman, directed by Abbi Jacobson, original airdate 25 October 2017. 6. Broad City, “Witches.” 7. Andrew R. Chow, “Woody Allen Warns of ‘Witch Hunt’ over Weinstein, Then Tries to Clarify,” New York Times, 15 October 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/movies/woody-al len-harvey-weinstein-witch-hunt.html; and Lindy West, “Yes, This Is a Witch Hunt. I’m a Witch, and I’m Hunting You,” New York Times, 17 October 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17 /opinion/columnists/weinstein-harassment-witchunt.html. A few months before this exchange, Trump had labeled the appointment of a special counsel into Russian interference in the 2016 election “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!”; see Stacy Schiff, “the Single Greatest Witch Hunt in American History, for Real,” New Yorker, 18 May 2017, https://

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www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-single-greatest-witch-hunt-in-american-history -for-real. 8. Saturday Night Live, “Dave Chappelle/A Tribe Called Quest,” season 42, episode 6, written by Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, directed by Don Roy King, original airdate 12 November 2016.

Index

Page numbers followed by f indicate figures. ABC (television network), 72, 165 abjection. See shame and shamelessness Abrams, Abbi (character in Broad City), 140–­59, 149f; compared to characters of Insecure, 161–­62, 174; as female antihero, 20, 22–­23; as female antihero in comedy, 22–­23, 113, 118; female friendship and, 155–­59; and race and Jewishness, 147–­54; on 2016 election, 206; utopian and transgressive tendencies of, 142–­47; as witch, 206 Abrams, Jamie, 62 Abrams, J.J., 53 abuse, sexual, 181, 185–­86, 196, 201 achievement mandate. See aspirationalism adventure, 122–­32, 178 affair, extramarital: of Carrie Mathison, 96, 105; of Hester Prynne, 121–22; of Issa Dee, 175–­76; of Olivia Pope, 72–­73, 74, 76, 78, 85 Ahmed, Sara, 12, 16 Albrecht, Michael, 8 Alexander, Neta, 241n15 Alias, 3, 53, 203 Allen, Woody, 200, 207 Ally (character in SMILF), 184, 187, 188, 189–­91, 201 Ally McBeal, x, 117, 133 ambition of female antiheroes in comedy, 115–­202; in Broad City, 141–­42, 144, 157; defined by, 7, 13–­ 14, 20; in Insecure, 167–­68; in SMILF, 188, 202. See also anti-­aspirationalism; antihero, female (in comedy); neoliberalism ambition of female antiheroes in drama, 113–­14; defined by, 6, 14, 22, 25–­114; in Game of Thrones, 36–­37, 42–­43; in Homeland, 100–­101, 107, 113. See also antihero, female (in drama); aspirationalism; competence

ambivalence: to antiheroes as men, 2; to bad behavior of women, 185; to motherhood, 64, 196; to women’s leadership, 22, 43 Americans, The, 49–­71; and conventional femininity, 49–­50, 51–­54, 55–­57; and espionage, 49–­51, 69–­71; and Felicity, 51–­54; and gender roles, 49–­51, 57–­64; and ideological devotion to Communism, 50, 55, 59–­60, 64–­69; and Keri Russell, 51–­54; and marriage, 50–­51, 55–­64; and motherhood, 5, 64–­ 70, 198; and performative identities, 55–­56, 69–­70; and religion, 66–­67; and second-­wave feminism, 63–­64. See also Jennings, Elizabeth; Jennings, Philip; Rhys, Matthew; Russell, Keri Anderson, Benedict, 245n36 anger, 39–­40 anti-­aspirationalism: in Broad City, 140, 148, 155, 157; and female antiheroes in comedy, x, 22–­23, 114, 205–­6; in Girls, 13, 117–­39, 205–­6; in Insecure, 161; and mainstream feminism, 12–­13; in SMILF, 180. See also aspirationalism; neoliberalism antihero, female: and anti-­aspirationalism, 22–­23, 118–­21, 205; definition of, ix–­xi, 45; and female community, 121–­27, 155–­59, 187, 193–­202, 205–­7; and male antiheroes, xiii; and marriage or intimate relationships, 51, 58–­64, 77–­78, 103–­5; and motherhood, 5, 64–­69; 193–­201; origin of, x–­xiii, 6–­7, 8–­9; as outlaw, ix, 96; and race, 6–­7, 72–­73, 94, 147–­54, 161–­66; as resistance and critique, xiii, 14, 85, 207. See also ambition; anti-­aspirationalism; feminism, “lean-­in”; feminism, mainstream; status quo; transgression antihero, female (in comedy), 117–­202; and aspirationalism, 13, 118–­19, 134, 203, 205–­6; and bodies, 133–­35, 143–­44, 197, 198; and creativity,

254 antihero, female (in comedy) (cont.) 123–­25, 175–­76, 188; as evolution of female antihero in drama, 14, 113–­14, 205; and race, 120, 141. See also comedy (genre) antihero, female (in drama), 25–­114; and aspirationalism, 9, 13–­14, 204–­5; and failure, 14; failure of, 22, 97, 204–­5; and mainstream feminism, 13–­14; as origin of female comedic antihero, 14; and performance of gender, 50; and status quo, x, 22, 28, 73. See also drama (genre) antihero, male: defined, xii–­xiii, 1–­2; and family, 5–­6; in Irish-­American culture, 181; as outcast and outsider, 96–­97; in prestige television, 8–­9. See also Draper, Don; White, Walter antisociality: in The Americans, 49, 51, 63, 70; of Black female antiheroes, 6–­7; in Broad City, 141, 154; of female antiheroes, 6, 22, 27, 203–­5; in Game of Thrones, 28, 32–­33, 44–­45, 48; in Girls, 119, 120–­21, 124, 133–­34; in Homeland, 97, 100; of male antiheroes, 1, 96–­97; in SMILF, 181, 200, 207. See also femininity, conventional and idealized; sociality Appadurai, Arjun, 241n15 appropriation, cultural: in Broad City, 141, 147–­54; in SMILF, 192–­93 Aronowitz, Stanley, 18 artistry, female: in Broad City, 158; in Girls, 122–­27, 138; in Insecure, 160, 161, 163, 167–­69, 172–­78; in SMILF, 188 aspirationalism: in The Americans, 70–­7 1; in Broad City, 144–­45, 157–­59; in Insecure, 178; of mainstream feminism, 12, 23, 119–­21; in SMILF, 188. See also anti-­aspirationalism; neoliberalism assault, sexual, 11, 168. See also abuse, sexual; rape audience, awareness of, 137, 168–­69, 201. See also “gaze, the” audience reaction: in The Americans, 62; in Felicity, 51–­54; to female antihero television, 19–­20, 30; in Game of Thrones, 29, 38f, 39f, 41, 42–­43, 45; in Girls, 133–­34, 134f, 136, 138; in Homeland, 102–­3; to motherhood, 3, 5; in Scandal, 83–­84. See also meta-­commentary; pleasure, viewer; “show within a show” of Insecure; social media awkwardness: in Insecure, 160–­61, 163, 171 Backlash (Faludi), 63 Bad Mother (Waldman), 65 Bal des folles of Salpetriere, 98 Ball, Lucille, 238n17 Ballard, Jake (character in Scandal), 76, 78, 79f, 80, 84 Bamford, Maria, 118 Banet-­Weiser, Sarah, 82 Barr, Roseanne, ix, xi, 238n17

index bathroom and bathtub: in Broad City, 152, 159, 243n65; in Girls, 123, 129, 179, 187; in Insecure, 167, 173–­74; in Scandal, 80–­82, 231n34; in SMILF, 179, 188, 194 Bennett, Laura, 3 Berenson, Saul (character in Homeland): and conflict with Carrie Mathison, 102, 104, 109, 111–­12; management of Carrie Mathison, 97, 98, 99, 100, 105, 108–­9; as mentor to Carrie Mathison, 13, 95, 103, 111–­12 Berlant, Lauren, 12 Berlin, Irving, 149–­50. See also Jewishness Better Things, 118 Beyoncé, 15, 15f, 164, 172, 206 Biggest Loser, The, 108, 137 bildungsroman, 118–­20 bipolar disorder, 97–­98, 103, 106, 112, 232n8 Bird, Bridgette (character in SMILF), 179–­202, 180f; abuse of, 185–­86, 188, 196–­97, 201; eco­ nomic precarity of, 183–­86; elitism and aspirationalism of, 13, 183–­84, 188–­89; as evolution of Carrie Mathison’s excess, 113; as female antihero, 22–­23, 118; Irish identity of, 180–­81, 192–­93; as member of a female community, 186–­87, 197–­201; privilege of, 188–­93; as single mother, 5, 179, 182, 188–­89, 193–­200. See also Shaw, Frankie; SMILF Bird, Colleen (also known as Tutu, character in SMILF), 193, 196–­201 Bird, Larry (character in SMILF): complicated care of, 183, 188–­89, devoted care of, 194–­95, 196; naming and birth of, 193, 198–­99 blackface minstrelsy, 98, 149–­51 “Black Girl Magic”: in Insecure, 164, 245n25; in Scandal, 75, 230n16 Blackmore, Jill, 11 Blackness: and bathrooms, 80–­81; and “blerds,” 163; in Broad City, 140, 147–­54; in Insecure, 171–­72, 177–­78; and Irishness, 193; and Judaism, 149–­50; in Scandal, 72–­73, 75–­76, 82–­84, 88–­91, 94; in SMILF, 192–­93; and television, 162–­66. See also “Black Girl Magic”; privilege, white; race; whiteness body, Black and vulnerable: in Insecure, 176; in Scandal, 78–­81, 80–­83, 86 body, female: centrality of in Broad City, 142–­47, 159; in Game of Thrones, 42, 46; in Girls, 120, 133–­39; in Homeland, 97–­98, 108–­9; in Scandal, 80–­83; in SMILF, 179, 197–­98 body, maternal: in Game of Thrones, 36; in SMILF, 183, 197–­98, 250n61. See also motherhood and mothers; vagina Bond, James, 95, 105 Bordo, Susan, 124 Boston, MA, 179, 181, 193 Boulder, CO, 156–­58

index boundaries, maternal, 197–­98. See also motherhood and mothers Bradshaw, Carrie (character in Sex and The City), ix, 3–­4, 14, 124 Branfman, Jonathan, 242n42 Breaking Bad, xii, 3, 8, 27, 75 “break the wheel,” 13, 35, 44, 73. See also disruption; status quo; transgression “Bridget films,” 180. See also Irishness Brienne of Tarth (character in Game of Thrones), 27–­28, 32 Broad City, 140–­59; compared to characters of Insecure, 161–­62, 174; compared to SMILF, 187–­ 88; female antiheroes of, 20, 22–­23; as female antiheroes in comedy, 22–­23, 113, 118; female friendship of, 155–­59; feminism of, 143–­44; and futurity, 20; and Jewishness, 151–­52; and race, 6–­7, 147–­54; on 2016 election, 206; utopian and transgressive tendencies of, 142–­47; writers of, 205. See also Abrams, Abbi; antihero, female (in comedy); Glazer, Ilana; Jacobson, Abbi; Jewishness; Shame TV; Wexler, Ilana Brody, Nicholas (character in Homeland): Carrie Mathison’s affair with 96, 98, 105–­6, 112; domestic terrorism of, 109–­10, 112; surveillance of, 99–­100, 101–­5 Brooklyn, NY, 120, 152–­54 Brooks, Jodi, 19 Broucek, Francis, 134 Brown, Michael, 74, 86 Brown, Murphy (character in Murphy Brown), ix, 22, 117 Brüning, Kristina, 82 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 3, 156, 203 bulimia, 180–­81, 192 Buonanno, Milly, 9 Buress, Hannibal, 147–­49, 242n34 Butler, Judith, 70 Cagney and Lacey, x career and professionalism: in The Americans, 49, 51, 58, 63, 70–­7 1; in Broad City, 140; and female antihero in comedy, 23; and female antihero in drama, 5, 6, 13–­14; and feminism, x, xii, 11, 15–­16; in Game of Thrones, 42; in Girls, 117, 118, 119, 121; in Homeland, 95, 96, 97, 101–­5, 107–­8, 113–­14; in Insecure, 161, 166–­72; in Scandal, 74, 84; in SMILF, 184–­85, 187–­88, 189–­91. See also ambition; aspirationalism; class; competence; domestic labor caregiving: and female labor, 11; in Homeland, 107–­8; in SMILF, 190–­91 Carter, Molly (character in Insecure): friendship with Issa Dee, 166–­69, 177–­78; pragmatism about race and career, 161, 169–­70, 172, 174. See also career and professionalism; surveillance; vagina

255 Catholicism, 191, 198–­99 Cersei. See Lannister, Cersei Charcot, Jean–­Martin, 98 Cheers, Imani M., 7 Chewing Gum, 22 childhood, 120, 181, 183 children: in The Americans, 55, 58–­59, 64–­70; in Broad City, 151–­52; and female antihero, 5–­6; and feminism, 11; in Game of Thrones, 29, 30–­ 33, 35, 36, 39, 41, 44, 47; in Girls, 123–­24, 131; in Homeland, 99–­100, 105–­7; in Insecure, 161, 168; in Scandal, 86–­93, 93f; in SMILF, 179, 180f, 182, 183, 189, 190–­91, 193–­99, 195f. See also daughter; motherhood and mothers; son CIA, 65, 71, 86, 95–­101 civilization: in The Americans, 49; and female antihero, 2, 32; in Game of Thrones, 27–­28, 44; in Homeland, 95–­96, 103, 110; women as heroes of, 203; women as producers and promotors of, 2–­3, 6, 11–­12, 32–­33, 44, 212n9. See also motherhood and mothers; sociality C.K., Louis, xii, 118, 142, 247n1 Clarke, Emilia, 27, 37f, 38f, 39f. See also Targaryen, Daenerys class: in Broad City, 141, 148–­49, 150, 152–­53; in Girls, 118; in Homeland, 108; in Insecure, 160–­ 62, 167, 169–­72, 172–­78; and race, 6; in Scandal, 74, 78–­84, 88–­89; in SMILF, 180, 183–­84, 188–­89, 190–­91, 197. See also respectability, middle-­class or bourgeois cleaning and cleanliness: in Broad City, 144–­45, 152, 158; in Homeland, 97, 99, 108; in Scandal, 72, 78, 89; in SMILF, 190–­91. See also domestic labor; domestic space, domesticity, and domestication Clinton, Hillary, 10, 204–­7 clothing choices: of Abbi Jacobson imitating Ilana Wexler, 152; of Cersei Lannister, 46, 46f; of Elizabeth Jennings, 49–­50, 55; of Hannah Horvath, 119, 135–­37, 136f; of mainstream feminism, 15; of Olivia Pope, 80–­82. See also femininity, conventional and idealized Coates, Ta-­Nehisi, 137 code-­switching, 160, 169–­70 college: and contemporary life, 11; in Insecure, 172; in SMILF, 183–­84. See also class; respectability, middle-­class or bourgeois Collins, Patricia Hill, 7 colonialism: in Broad City, 144–­45; in Game of Thrones, 33–­37, 44 comedies, precarious girl, 20. See also “single-­girl” sitcom comedy (genre): and bodies, 134–­35, 143–­44; conventional female characters of, x–­xi, 13; conventional male antiheroes of, xii; female antiheroes of, 22–­23; feminine coding of, 21, 146–­47

256 comedy, female antiheroes of. See antihero, female (in comedy) Communism, 66–­67 community, female: in Broad City, 141, 145–­46, 155–­59, 207; as an element of girlhood, 20; in Girls, 124–­27, 138–­39; in Insecure, 207; in SMILF, 182, 187, 191, 196–­202, 207; via visibility of powerful women, 206–­7. See also friendship, female community, imagined: in Girls, 122–­27; in Insecure, 165, 166, 245n36; in SMILF, 201–­2. See also “show within a show” of Insecure; social media competence: of Carrie Mathison, 96; of Cersei Lannister, 95; of Elizabeth Jennings, 49–­50, 55–­ 56, 95; of Olivia Pope, 72–­76, 78–­83, 94, 95; of Hagelin and Silverman, entire manuscript Conjugal Visits (in Insecure), 165–­66. See also meta-­commentary; “show within a show” of Insecure consumerism: as American culture, 57, 58, 66; in mainstream feminism, 4, 12, 14–­17, 18, 20, 143, 192. See also aspirationalism; neoliberalism convention. See status quo corruption, 76–­77, 100 Cosby, Bill, 149, 242n34 creativity, female: in Broad City, 158; in Girls, 122–­ 27, 138; in Insecure, 160, 161, 163, 167–­69, 172–­78; in SMILF, 188 Crispin, Jessa, 17 Curb Your Enthusiasm, xii, 162 Daenerys. See Targaryen, Daenerys Dallas, 7–­8 Damages, 4, 13 Danes, Claire, 95–­96, 96f, 98–­99, 99f, 108, 111f. See also Mathison, Carrie Daniels, Susanne, 51, 53. See also WB daughter: in The Americans, 6, 57, 58, 64–­69; in contemporary life, 10–­11; in Game of Thrones, 29, 31, 33; in Girls, 132; in Homeland, 5, 6, 99–­ 100, 106–­8; in Scandal, 76; in SMILF, 190–­91, 196–­202. See also children; community, female; motherhood and mothers David, Larry, xii, 118 Dear White People, 165 DeCarvalho, Lauren, 19 Dee, Issa (character in Insecure), 160–­78; and Black creativity, 164–­65, 167, 172–­77; and class, 161, 169, 172–­73, 175–­77; compared to Carrie Mathison, 113; compared to Ilana Wexler, 174; as female antihero, 22–­23, 118; and female friendship, 166–­68, 177–­78; and public/private divide, 162, 168–­69, 172–­74; and racism, 169–­7 1, 174–­75; and rap, 167–­68, 172–­77; and respectability, 172, 176–­77. See also Insecure; Rae, Issa Derry Girls, 22

index desire, female, 16, 30, 45, 72. See also pleasure, female; sexuality, female Desperate Housewives, 14, 63 Dexter, xii, 2 Difficult Men (Martin), 8 disability. See bipolar disorder; mental illness disruption: and aspirationalism, 13, 125; Donald Trump as, 205; of female antihero, x, xi, 3, 6, 9; and female-­centered television, 20–­21; feminism as, 207. See also “break the wheel”; status quo; transgression Dobson, Amy Shields, 19 domestic labor: in The Americans, 49–­50, 57; in Broad City, 144–­45; in Homeland, 108; and race, 11; in SMILF, 189–­93. See also class; whiteness domestic space, domesticity, and domestication: in The Americans, 49–­50, 57–­58, 59, 67–­68; in feminism, 14; in Homeland, 96–­99, 101–­14; in Insecure, 172–­73, 175, 177; rebellion against, xii–­xiii; in Scandal, 77, 80–­81, 87, 92; in television, 8. See also bathroom and bathtub; home, domestic space of; public/private divide Douglas, Susan, 7, 140–­41, 148 Dow, Bonnie J., 17 Drake, 120, 163 drama (genre): and narrative television, x, 7–­8, 165–­66, 194, 203; and prestige television, xii–­xiii, 21–­22, 27; and race, 21 drama, female antihero of. See antihero, female (in drama) dramedy, 21, 220n105 Draper, Betty (character in Mad Men), 3, 4, 5, 6, 195 Draper, Don (character in Mad Men), 4–­6, 9 Driver, Adam, 118, 132. See also Sackler, Adam Drogo, Khal (character in Game of Thrones), 30, 33, 36 Drumming, Neil, 76 Due North (in Insecure), 165–­66, 172. See also meta-­commentary, “show within a show” of Insecure Dunham, Lena (actor and writer of Girls), 117–­39, 126f, 127f, 134f, 136f; as actor and writer, 118, 119, 162, 205; on bodies, 133–­35, 134f, 137–­38; and social media, 125–­27. See also Girls; Horvath, Hannah Dyer, Richard, 7 Eagan, Catherine M., 193 eating disorder, 180–­81, 192 Edelman, Lee, 159 education. See college Edwards, Ethan (character in film The Searchers), 96–­97 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 12

index election: rigging of in Scandal, 76–­77; of 2016, 204–­5 electroconvulsive shock treatment (ECT) of Carrie Mathison, 109–­11, 111f elitism, 188–­89 Eliza (character in SMILF): economic precarity of, 184; as female community, 186–­87, 200–­201; race of, 189, 192–­93 Elsa/Elsie (character in SMILF), 190–­93, 248n34 emasculation: of Frank Mathison, 106; of Jake Ballard, 84; of Philip Jennings, 56–­59; of Saul Berenson, 104 empathy: in Girls, 122–­23, 131–­32; in Scandal, 88–­93, 93f End of Men, The (Rosin), xi, 10, 139 Enlightened, ix, 118 entitlement. See privilege equality, racial: according to Issa Rae, 160, 162–­66, 177–­78; according to Shonda Rhimes, 72 ERA (Equal Rights Amendment), 63 espionage: in The Americans, 49–­51, 55–­57, 59–­62, 65–­7 1, 226n4; in Homeland, 95, 104, 113. See also spycraft establishment politics, 74–­78, 87–­88, 205 Estes, David (character in Homeland), 95–­96 excess, feminine: in Broad City, 144, 148; of Carrie Mathison, 95–­98, 113–­14; in Insecure, 144, 160–­ 62, 166–­72, 174–­77; in Scandal, 75, 86. See also “extra”; surveillance excrement, 146–­47, 159. See also body, female “extra,” 169–­70, 174 Facebook: and Hannah Horvath, 122; and Issa Dee, 175. See also social media failure: and aspirationalism, 12–­13, 119–­21, 207; in Broad City, 140, 144–­47, 241n15; and female antihero in drama, 22, 204; and female comedic antiheroes, 20–­21, 23, 118; in Girls, 119–­20, 123, 125, 138–­39; in Homeland, 99, 113–­14; in Insecure, 141, 161, 167, 169–­70; in SMILF, 182, 188. See also anti-­aspirationalism; aspirationalism; shame and shamelessness Failure (Appadurai and Alexander), 241n15 Faludi, Susan, 63 family, alternative: in Girls, 207; in Scandal, 77–­78, 207; in SMILF, 191, 193, 196–­98. See also community, female; kinship family, conventional and nuclear: in The Americans, 49–­51, 58–­59, 67–­68, 226n4; and female antihero, 6, 22; in Game of Thrones, 30, 32–­33, 44; hierarchical nature of, 68; in Homeland, 100, 101–­5, 106, 108, 234n37; in Insecure, 161; role of women in, xiii; in SMILF, 183–­84; on television, 4, 8, 16, 22, 238n17; as vulnerability, 105–­7 fantasy (genre): Game of Thrones as critique of, 28, 48

257 fantasy, aspirational: in Broad City, 158; in Insecure, 173–­78; in SMILF, 191–­92 fantasy, postracial: of Scandal, 72–­75, 82–­83 fascism, 30, 33, 34 fatherhood and fathers: in The Americans, 57–­59, 65; in Girls, 131–­32; in Homeland, 99–­100, 106–­ 7, 235n62; and male antihero, 5; in Scandal, 76, 87–­93; in SMILF, 185, 188–­89, 196–­99, 201. See also family, conventional and nuclear; masculinity; motherhood and mothers; paternalism feces. See excrement Felicity, 46, 49, 51–­54, 52f, 56, 63 femininity, conventional and idealized: in The Americans, 49–­50, 54, 55–­56, 60–­62; and Blackness, 6; in Broad City, 141, 143, 146, 155; in Felicity, 51–­54; and female antiheroes, xiii, 4, 118–­19; and feminism, 18; in Game of Thrones, 27, 30, 32, 36, 45–­46, 50; in Girls, 133–­39; in Homeland, 95, 97–­101, 112–­13; in Insecure, 167–­68, 176; and motherhood, 5–­6; as portrayed in television, x, xi, 8, 14; in Scandal, 80–­81; in SMILF, 189, 190, 192–­93; as standard ideal, 3, 4, 6. See also patriarchy; status quo feminism, “lean-­in,” “lifestyle” or empowerment: in The Americans, 63; in Broad City, 143; in Game of Thrones, 33, 38, 38f, 39f, 42, 48; in Girls, 131; in mainstream feminism, xi, 12, 16–­20, 23, 119; in Scandal, 78, 82–­83; in SMILF, 192. See also anti-­aspirationalism; aspirationalism; neoliberalism feminism, mainstream, liberal, or second-­wave: in The Americans, 63–­64; aspirational fantasy of, 11–­15; in Broad City, 141, 143–­44, 151–­52, 153; concerns with marriage, 63–­64; failures of, xi, 11–­12, 15–­17, 117–­19; in Game of Thrones, 30, 31, 33, 41, 43, 45, 47; and girlhood, 20; in Girls, 119–­21, 124–­25, 129; goals of, 17–­19, 23; in Homeland, 98–­99, 108; postfeminism as reaction to, 15–­19; and selfishness, 44–­45; in Scandal, 82; in SMILF, 182, 187, 191, 197–­202; and television, 19–­21, 23. See also anti-­aspirationalism; postfeminism Ferguson, MO, 74, 86 fertility, female: in America, 10–­11; power and prestige of, 31, 46–­47, 221n6; when fallow, 109–­10 Fitch, John, III, 1 Fleabag (character and show), ix, 22, 118 Florida, Richard, 188 Florrick, Alicia (character in The Good Wife), 4, 180 Flynn, Ed, 181–­82 Flynn, Peter, 180 food and eating: in Broad City, 152–­53; in Girls, 123; in Homeland, 108–­9, 112–­13, 236n73; in SMILF, 184, 188

258 Fox (television network), 162 Fraiman, Susan, 236n5, 243n65 Freud, Sigmund, 4, 183, 197 Friedan, Betty, 17, 63 friendship, female: in Broad City, 141, 146, 155–­59; in Insecure, 161, 166–­68, 178; in SMILF, 187, 193, 200–­202. See also community, female; family, alternative Furst, Lillian, 1 Future Girl (Harris), 11–­12 futurism, reproductive, 23, 120, 124 futurity: rejection of, 23, 120, 141–­42; as threat to female friendship, 158–­59. See also aspirationalism Game of Thrones, 27–­48; ambition and power of Cersei, 39–­47; ambition and power of Daenerys, 33–­38; and anger, 39–­40; and colonialism, 33–­37, 44; and conventional femininity, 27–­28, 30, 32, 42, 45–­46; and fantasy genre, 28; and fascism, 30, 33, 34; and “lean-­in” or empowerment feminism, 33, 38, 42, 48; menopause and aging in, 29, 42, 46–­47; and motherhood, 5, 31–­33, 198; and nakedness, 36, 38, 42; parallels between Daenerys and Cersei, 29–­30, 41–­43, 47–­48, 221n7; referenced in Insecure, 173; and selfishness, 44–­45; and sexuality, 30–­32; and slavery, 32–­36; and supernatural, 28, 29, 35, 36, 43–­44, 48. See also Lannister, Cersei; Song of Ice and Fire, A; Targaryen, Daenerys “gaze, the”: of female friendship, 141–­42, 147, 155, 157, 159; of masculinity, 121, 137; and race, 90–­91, 144. See also audience, awareness of; surveillance gender: and female antihero, 2–­3, 28; as nationality in The Americans, 55, 58; and socioeconomics, 9–­11, 18. See also femininity, conventional and idealized; feminism, “lean-­in”; feminism, mainstream; masculinity gender, performative: of Elizabeth Jennings, 49–­ 51, 55–­56; of Philip Jennings, 59–­63 Gershwin, George, 149–­50. See also Jewishness Gill, Rosalind, 12 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 109–­11 girlhood, 12, 20, 157 “girl power,” 11, 12 Girls, 117–­39; and adventure, 122–­27; anti-­ aspirationalism of, 120–­21, 125, 139; compared to Issa Rae, 161–­62; compared to SMILF, 179; and economic precarity, 118, 132; and failure, 118, 120–­21, 123, 125, 139; and female bodies, 133–­ 38; and millennial generation, 119; and motherhood, 5, 198; and nakedness, 133–­34, 134f, 138; and privilege, 119–­20; and selfishness, 118–­20, 132; and shame, 121–­27; and sexuality, 127–­32;

index and “single girl” sitcom, 117–­18, 124, 128, 131, 136; and unlikeability, 118, 121, 133–­34; whiteness of, 6–­7, 120–­21. See also anti-­aspirationalism; Dunham, Lena; Horvath, Hannah; Shame TV “gladiators” in Scandal, 72, 75, 77, 85–­86, 89 Glazer, Ilana (actor and writer), 140–­59, 154f; as actor, 143; on Jewish identities, 150; as writer, 146, 155, 205. See also Broad City; Wexler, Ilana Good and Mad (Traister), 39–­40 Good Wife, The, 4, 180 Grant, Fitzgerald “Fitz,” III (character in Scandal), 73, 76, 78, 85, 91–­92 Gray, Herman, 82–­83 Grey’s Anatomy, 74, 158 Griffin, Rachel Alicia, 78 hair and haircuts: in Broad City, 206–­7; and con­ ventional femininity, 17; in Felicity, 51–­54, 52f; in Game of Thrones, 30, 36, 45–­46, 223n34; in Scandal, 80–­82; in SMILF, 191–­93. See also femininity, conventional and idealized Halberstam, Jack: on aspirationalism, 12–­13; on bathrooms, 80–­81; on failure, 120 Hargitay, Mariska, 201–­2 Harris, Anita, 11–­12 Harrison, Laura, 195 Hartinger, Brent, 28 Hathaway, Anne, 98, 99f “having it all,” xii, xiii, 23, 119, 125, 178. See also anti-­aspirationalism; aspirationalism; feminism, mainstream Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 121 HBO (television network): compared to Showtime, 249n54; and Insecure, 162–­64, 171–­72; and The Sopranos, 8. See also television, prestige Headey, Lena, 27, 46f. See also Lannister, Cersei heterosexuality: of Carrie Mathison, 113, 236n76; escape from in Broad City, 141–­42, 157; of women on television, 4 hip-­hop culture: in Broad City, 140, 147–­54; in Insecure, 167–­69, 173, 175. See also Blackness Hirshman, Linda, 107 Hogan, Mike, 107–­8 Hollows, Joanne, 21 Hollywood: and The Americans, 53; and Blackness, 162–­64, 171; and bodies, 82, 118, 133. See also television home, domestic space of: in The Americans, 49–­ 50, 57–­58, 59, 67–­68; in Homeland, 96–­99, 101–­ 14; in Insecure, 172–­73, 175, 177; in Scandal, 87, 92. See also bathroom and bathtub; domestic space, domesticity, and domestication; public/ private divide

index Homeland, 95–­114: and disordered femininity, 95, 97, 98–­99, 100, 112; and domesticity, 97, 99, 101–­5, 106–­7, 108–­13; and female antihero of comedy, 113–­14; and hysteria, 98–­101, 112; and mental illness, 97–­98, 103, 106, 112; and motherhood, 5, 107–­8, 198; parody of, 98, 113; and professional competence, 22, 95–­97, 100–­ 101, 105, 107; and public/private divide, 96–­97, 104–­5, 109–­13; and surveillance, 101–­3, 109–­13; and Western genre, 96–­97. See also Mathison, Carrie hooks, bell, 90–­91 Horvath, Hannah, 117–­39, 136f; and anti-­aspira­ tionalism, 120–­21, 125; body of, 133–­38; clothing choices of, 135–­37, 136f; and economic precarity, 132; as evolution of Carrie Mathison’s excess, 113; as female antihero, ix; as mother, 5, 22–­23, 198; and privilege, 119–­20; sexuality of, 123–­25, 128–­31, 132; as writer, 119, 122, 124–­27. See also Dunham, Lena; Girls Houston, Pam, 44 How to Get Away with Murder, 22, 165–­66 HPV (human papillomavirus), 123–­27, 152–­54 Huckleberry Finn (Twain), xii–­xiii humiliation. See shame and shamelessness Hurston, Zora Neale, 75 hysteria, 96–­101, 109–­12 Ida (character in SMILF), 190–­93 ideology, political: of Elizabeth Jennings, 50, 56–­ 63, 64–­67; of Republican mothers, 67–­68 illness, mental. See mental illness I Love Dick, vi, 22 I Love Lucy, x–­xi, 143, 238n17 I May Destroy You, 22, 118 incest, 29, 221n7 individuation, 197–­98. See also motherhood and mothers Insecure, 160–­78; and awkwardness, 160, 161, 163; and Black creativity, 164–­65, 167, 172–­77; and “Black Girl Magic,” 164; and Black television, 162–­66; and class, 161, 169, 172–­73, 175–­77; compared to Broad City, 141; compared to Girls, 162; and female friendship, 166–­68, 177–­ 78; and the public/private divide, 162, 168–­69, 172–­74; and racism, 169–­7 1, 174–­75; and rap, 167–­68, 172–­77; and respectability, 172, 176–­77; and shame, 161–­62; “shows within a show” of, 165–­66; and surveillance, 166, 170–­72. See also Blackness; Dee, Issa; Rae, Issa insecurity, economic. See precarity, economic Instagram, 15, 126f, 133–­34, 134f, 192. See also social media interior shows of Insecure, 165–­66 intersectionality, 82–­83, 143, 182

259 Irishness, 179–­81, 193 Islam, 104–­7, 235n49 Jacobs, Alan, 147 Jacobson, Abbi (actor and writer), 140–­59, 149f; as actor, 143; on Jewish identities, 150; as writer, 155, 205. See also Abrams, Abbi; Broad City Jennings, Elizabeth, 49–­7 1, 54f, 61f; competence of, 49; and conventional femininity, 49–­50, 55–­ 57; as female antihero, ix–­x, 22, 203; as female antihero of drama genre, 13–­14; and ideological devotion to Communism, 50, 55, 59–­60, 64–­69; as mother, 5–­6, 64–­69; performative identity of, 50, 69–­70; rape of, 58–­61; and sexuality, 55–­56, 59–­60; and spycraft, 50–­51, 67–­69; as wife, 55–­ 64, 69–­7 1. See also Americans, The; marriage Jennings, Paige, 57, 58–­59, 64–­69. See also Americans, The Jennings, Philip, 61f; marriage to Elizabeth Jennings, 50–­51, 56–­64, 69–­70; masculinity of, 56–­57; performative identity of, 69–­70. See also Americans, The; Rhys, Matthew Jessa (character in Girls), 122, 123–­25, 136 Jewishness, 149–­50, 151, 159, 242n42 “jezebel,” 7, 74 Johnson, Merri Lisa, 18 Joseph, Ralina L., 232n58 Judaism. See Jewishness Kames, Lord, 2 Kanai, Akane, 19 Kaplan, Amy, 101 Karen, Robert, 138 Karenga, Maulana, 62 Kearns, Megan, 43–­44 Kerber, Linda, 67 Kev’yn (of Insecure), 166. See also “show within a show” of Insecure KGB, 49–­70. See also spycraft Khaleesi: in Game of Thrones, 29, 30–­31, 34, 38; referenced, 173, 204. See also Targaryen, Daenerys Killing Eve, 22 King, Daniel (character in Insecure), 167–­68, 173, 175–­77 King, Kendall, 78 kinship, 68, 77–­78, 191. See also family, alternative Kristeva, Julia, 197–­98 labor, domestic. See domestic labor Lacan, Jacques, 197 Lady Dynamite, 118 Lagerwey, Jorie, 9, 19, 101, 211n5 Laing, Olivia, 146 Lannister, Cersei (character in Game of Thrones), 27–­48, 46f; ambition, authority, and power

260 Lannister, Cersei (character in Game of Thrones) (cont.) of, 30, 39–­48, 73; anger of, 39–­40; antisociality of, 44, 48; compared to Carrie Mathison, 28, 95; compared to Elizabeth Jennings, 28, 50; compared to Olivia Pope, 28, 73; competence of, 23, 95; and conventional femininity, 27–­28, 30, 32, 42, 45; as female antihero, ix–­x, 4, 45, 204; as female antihero in drama, 13–­14, 28, 113, 204; haircut of, 45–­46; hatred of, 29, 30, 47; and marriage, 30, 50; menopause and aging of, 29, 42, 46–­47; as mother, 5–­6, 31–­33, 221n6; nakedness of, 42; as parallel to Daenerys Targaryen, 29–­30, 41–­43, 47–­48, 221n7; referenced on Insecure, 173; selfishness of, 44–­45; and sexuality, 31–­32. See also Game of Thrones Lannister, Jaime, 30, 43, 44 Lannister, Joffrey, 35–­36 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, 201–­2 Lawrence (character in Insecure): relationship with Issa, 175, 176–­77; respectability of, 172, 173; surveillance footage of, 170–­7 1; on working “twice as hard,” 174 leadership. See ambition “lean in” feminism. See feminism, “lean in” legitimacy: of Cersei’s children, 31, 39 Legitimating Television (Levine and Newman), 8 Leonard, Suzanne, xi, 63 Levine, Elana, 8 Lewinsky, Monica, 125 Leyda, Julia, 9, 19, 211n5 “lifestyle” feminism. See feminism, “lean-­in” Lincoln (of Broad City), 147–­49, 153–­56 Living Single, xi, 21, 162, 166, 178 Los Angeles, CA, 160, 178 Lotz, Amanda, 1, 8, 20 Louie, xii, 142, 247n1 Lowry, Brian, 75 Mad Men, 3, 4–­6, 9, 135, 195 magic. See supernatural mammy, 6–­7; Olivia Pope as, 78, 231n30 Marling, Brit, 204 Marnie (character in Girls), 118, 122, 123, 128, 136 marriage: in The Americans, 50, 51, 59–­64, 68, 70–­ 71, 226n4; in Broad City, 141–­42, 155; concerns of feminism about, 63–­64; and female antihero, ix, 22, 23, 50, 118–­19; and female-­centered television, 4; in Game of Thrones, 29, 32; in Homeland, 96, 100, 105; in Scandal, 77, 78. See also family, conventional and nuclear; futurity Martin, 162, 165 Martin, Brett, 8 Martin, George R. R., 27 Mary, Blessed Virgin, 191, 198–­99 Mary Tyler Moore Show, The, ix, x–­xi, 13, 22, 117, 132

index masculinity: in The Americans, 55–­62; in Broad City, 141, 151; of contemporary life, 11; and female antiheroes, 3, 204; in Game of Thrones, 27–­28, 45–­47; in Girls, 118–­19, 134, 137; in Homeland, 104; and male antiheroes, xii–­xiii, 3, 5; of prestige television drama, 7–­8, 21; in SMILF, 181, 183, 186–­87, 197, 199–­200. See also patriarchy masculinity, toxic, 8, 11, 201 Mask, Mia, 74 Mason, Julia M., 9 masturbation: in Broad City, 140; in Girls, 129–­30 maternity. See motherhood and mothers Mathison, Carrie, 95–­114, 96f, 111f; disordered femininity of, 95, 97, 98–­99, 100, 112; and domesticity, 97, 99, 101–­5, 106–­7, 108–­13; as female antihero, x, 22, 203–­4; as female antihero in drama, 13–­14, 113–­14; and hysteria, 98–­101, 112; and mental illness, 97–­98, 103, 106, 112; as mother, 5–­6, 107–­8, 198; parody of, 98, 113; and professional competence, 13, 22, 95–­97, 100–­101, 105, 107; and public/private divide, 96–­97, 104–­ 5, 109–­13; and surveillance, 101–­3, 109–­13. See also Danes, Claire; Homeland matriarchy, 193, 196–­202. See also community, female; motherhood and mothers Maxted, Anna, 67 Maxwell, Brandon, 73, 78 McKinnon, Kate, 207 McKnight, Utz, 75 McLevy, Alex, 181 McNulty, Jimmy (character in The Wire), 2, 100 McRobbie, Angela, 12, 16–­17 media, social. See social media Melnick, Jeffrey, 149–­50 Mendible, Myra, 134 menopause, 29, 46 mental illness: bipolar disorder of Carrie Mathison, 97–­98, 103, 106, 112, 232n8; and Cersei Lannister, 42–­43; depression of Tutu Bird, 196 Mesle, Sarah, 156 meta-­commentary: in The Americans, 54; in Broad City, 149, 206, 242n34; in Girls, 131; in Insecure, 164–­66, 171–­72; on 2016 election, 207 MILF, 179, 247n4 millennial generation: in Broad City, 143–­44, 158; of female antiheroes, 7; in Girls, 119; in Insecure, 162, 164, 165 minstrelsy: and blackface, 7, 98, 149–­50; and “Bridget films,” 180 mirror (bathroom), 167, 173–­74 Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, The (Rae’s memoir), 162 Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, The (web series), 161–­63 misogyny, 22, 133, 181–­82, 192–­93, 204–­5

index Mittell, Jason, 1 Mizejewski, Linda, 135, 146 Moore, Mary Tyler, ix, x–­xi, 13, 22, 117, 132. See also Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Moseley, Rachel, 21 motherhood, Republican, 67–­68 motherhood and mothers: and ambivalence, 64–­65, 109, 196; in The Americans, 55, 62, 64–­69; and Blackness, 6; end of, 44, 69; and female antihero, 5–­6, 64–­69; in Game of Thrones, 31–­33, 34, 35, 36, 221n6; in Girls, 131–­32; in Homeland, 107–­8, 109, 113, 207; Hillary Clinton as, 206; lack of accommodation for, 107–­8; and “new momism,” 9; in Scandal, 76, 78; in SMILF, 179–­82, 183–­84, 187–­89, 191, 193–­202, 206; as spycraft, 67–­69, 113. See also children; domestic space, domesticity, and domestication; family, conventional and nuclear; femininity, conventional and idealized mothering, “good enough,” 182, 196 Mukherjee, Roopali, 82 Mundy, Liza, 10 Murphy Brown, ix, 22, 117 Murthi, Vikram, 4–­5 nakedness: in Game of Thrones, 36, 38, 42; in Girls, 121, 131, 132–­39; in SMILF, 179, 182, 247n3 narcissism. See selfishness narrative: of abuse reframed, 186–­87; of debasement reframed, 128–­31; of failure, 114; of fantasized domesticity, 102; of futurity and aspiration, 13, 119, 158; of possibility and adventure, 122–­23; of serialized television, 7–­8, 21 narrowcasting, 9 neglect, child, 189, 193–­96 Negra, Diane: on domestic surveillance, 101; on “female-­centered television,” 9, 15, 16, 19; on Irishness, 193; on media and recession, 18, 19, 211n5 Nelson (character in SMILF), 184–­85, 186–­87, 200 neoliberalism: elements of, 16, 19; in Girls, 119, 120; in Homeland, 101; in Scandal, 74; and Shame TV, 23; in SMILF, 180, 196, 202. See also aspirationalism; consumerism; feminism, “lean-­in” New Girl, 14, 133 Newman, Michael, 8 Ngai, Sianne, 173–­74 novels, reading of, 102 novelty, 122–­32, 178 nudity: in Game of Thrones, 36, 38, 42; in Girls, 121, 131, 132–­39; in SMILF, 179, 182, 247n3 Nurse Jackie, 22, 142, 195 Nussbaum, Emily, 3, 8, 56 Nygaard, Taylor, 9 Obama, Michelle, 164, 206 O’Keefe, Kevin, 9

261 Okeowo, Alexis, 163–­64 Omar, Yasmin, 9 optics. See surveillance Orange is the New Black, 4, 21, 142 Orenstein, Catherine, 14 Orgad, Shani, 12 Orley, Emily, 83 Paltrow, Gwyneth, 192, 212n9 parenting. See family, conventional and nuclear; motherhood and mothers Parker, Clarence, 87–­94 parody: bathrooms as, 80–­81; of Carrie Mathison, 98, 113; “show within a show” in Insecure, 165–­66 Paskin, Willa, 49 paternalism, 99–­100, 108–­13, 235n62. See also fatherhood and fathers patriarchy: in The Americans, 53, 63; and femininity, 20, 23; in Game of Thrones, 31–­33, 35–­37, 38, 38f, 39f, 45–­46, 47; in Homeland, 97–­98, 100, 111–­13; power and norms of, xi, 11, 17, 204; in SMILF, 180–­82, 192, 200–­201. See also feminism, “lean-­in”; feminism, mainstream; masculinity Paumgarten, Nick, 142, 155, 242n44 Petersen, Anne Helen, 143 Philadelphia, PA: as site of racial violence, 85–­86, 150, 232n51 pleasure, female: and economic recession, 19; and failure, 12–­13; in Game of Thrones, 30, 45, 47; in Girls, 128–­32; in Shame TV, 23. See also desire, female; shame and shamelessness pleasure, viewer: in The Americans, 50, 61–­62; in Broad City, 143; in Game of Thrones, 34, 41; in Girls, 133; in Irish-­American films, 181; in Scandal, 75. See also audience reaction pluck: of conventional female protagonists, ix, xi, 23, 117; incompatibility with Blackness, 178; rejection of, x, xi, 13, 18; rejection of in Girls, 118, 121, 132, 138, 139 police brutality: in Scandal, 74, 85, 86–­94, 232n51; threat of, 153–­54 politics: and feminism, 16–­21; Game of Thrones as allegory of, 28; in Scandal, 75–­77, 87, 91–­92 Pope, Olivia, 72–­94, 79f, 93f; and “Black Girl Magic,” 75; and Blackness, 72–­74, 78–­86, 87–­90, 91–­92; competence of, 13, 72, 75–­76, 82–­83, 89–­ 92, 94; and establishment politics, 73, 76–­77, 85–­86, 87–­88, 91–­92; as female antihero, ix–­x, 22, 204; as female antihero in drama, 13–­14; and “gladiators,” 72, 74, 77–­78, 85, 89; and optics or surveillance, 87, 89–­92; and postfeminism, 82–­83; and postracial fantasy, 74, 75, 82–­86; referenced in SMILF, 201; and respectability, 74, 76, 80–­82, 86, 88–­89; and status quo, 73, 76, 78, 92. See also Scandal; Washington, Kerry

262 pornography, 128, 184, 186 postfeminism: activist history of, 220n101; in The Americans, 63–­64; in Broad City, 143–­44, 152; and contemporary television, 15–­20; defined, 16–­18; in Girls, 119–­21, 137; in Scandal, 82–­83. See also aspirationalism; feminism, “lean-­in” postracial fantasy, 74–­75, 82–­84 poverty, 182–­84, 187, 189, 194, 196. See also class; precarity, economic power. See ambition precarity, economic: in Broad City, 142, 187; in Girls, 118, 132, 187; in Insecure, 177, 187; of mainstream feminism, 12, 18–­19; in SMILF, 182–­85, 187–­88, 192, 196. See also class; poverty Pretty/Funny (Mizejewski), 146 privilege (of class, of millennials, and of men): in Game of Thrones, 44; in Girls, 119–­21; in Scandal, 82, 85; in SMILF, 183–­84, 186, 188–­93, 194 privilege, white: of Broad City, 141, 147–­54; of female antiheroes, 21–­22; of Girls, 120–­21; in Insecure, 176; in SMILF, 188–­93 Probyn, Elspeth, 127–­28 progress narrative. See futurity Prynne, Hester (character in The Scarlet Letter), 121–­23 public/private divide: in Broad City, 141, 144, 151; and female antiheroes, vi; in Girls, 121–­23, 125; in Homeland, 101–­3, 107–­8, 112–­13; in Insecure, 162, 166–­67, 168–­78; and mainstream feminism, 17. See also bathroom and bathtub; domestic space, domesticity, and domestication; “gaze, the”; home, domestic space of pussy: in Broad City, 206; in Girls, 125; in Insecure, 166–­69, 172–­73; in SMILF, 183, 185, 187, 192, 250n61; and Trump, 205. See also vagina Queer Art of Failure, The (Halberstam), 120 Rabinowitz, Lauren, 16 race: in Broad City, 141, 147–­54; and conventional femininity, 3; and female antiheroes, 6, 23; and feminism, 18; in Game of Thrones, 34, 36–­37; in Girls, 120–­21; in Insecure, 160–­78; in Scandal, 72–­94; in SMILF, 181–­82, 187–­93; and transgression, xiii. See also Blackness; postracial fantasy; privilege, white; whiteness racism, structural: critique of Homeland, 235n49; in Insecure, 161–­62, 178; in Scandal, 74, 86–­94; in SMILF, 182. See also Blackness; privilege, white Rae, Issa (writer and actor), 160–­78; as writer, 160, 161–­65, 171–­72, 177–­78, 205. See also Dee, Issa; Insecure Rafi (character in SMILF), 187, 188–­89, 197, 200 rap, 164–­68, 172–­77

index rape: of Daenerys by Drogo, 30; of Elizabeth Jennings, 58–­61, 69; as metaphor for violation in Girls and Insecure, 133, 168; as war tactic in Game of Thrones, 33. See also assault, sexual; body, female Reagan, Ronald, 63, 66–­67 rebellion. See transgression reception, audience. See audience reaction recession, 9, 10–­12, 18–­19, 185. See also precarity, economic religion: in The Americans, 66–­67; in SMILF, 191, 198–­99. See also Catholicism; Jewishness resilience, xi–­xii, 19, 119, 180, 196, 211n5. See also failure; feminism, “lean-­in”; precarity, economic resistance, feminist. See “break the wheel”; status quo; transgression respectability, middle-­class or bourgeois: in Broad City, 141, 148–­49; and female antihero, xiii, 7; in Game of Thrones, 27–­28, 44–­45; in Insecure, 141, 161–­62, 167, 169–­72, 172–­78; in Scandal, 74, 78–­84, 88–­89; in SMILF, 180, 183–­84, 188–­89, 192. See also aspirationalism; Blackness; class; femininity, conventional and idealized; status quo; transgression Revolution Was Televised, The (Sepinwall), 8 Rhimes, Shonda (showrunner of Scandal), 72, 74, 83, 232n58, 250n3. See also Pope, Olivia; Scandal Rhys, Matthew, 50, 56–­57. See also Jennings, Philip Richards, Mary, xi, 117–­18. See also Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Richer Sex, The (Mundy), 10 Riot Grrls, 220n101 Rogin, Michael, 66–­68, 149 Roseanne, xi, 21, 143, 238n17, 247n1. See also Barr, Roseanne Rosin, Hanna, xi, 10 Rowe, Kathleen, xi; 155 Rubin, Jerry, 17 Russell, Keri, 46, 49, 51–­54, 52f, 54f, 61f. See also Jennings, Elizabeth Sackler, Adam (character in Girls): in relationship with Hannah Horvath, 118, 119; and sexual relationship with Hannah Horvath, 128–­31, 132; on slavery, 238n37; and weight of Hannah Horvath, 135, 137 Salam, Reihan, 10 “sapphire,” 7 Saturday Night Live, 98, 99f, 113, 207 Scandal, 72–­94; and “Black Girl Magic,” 75; and Blackness, 72–­74, 78–­86, 87–­94; competence of Olivia Pope, 75–­76, 82–­83, 89–­92, 94; and domestic spaces, 87; and establishment politics, 73, 76–­77, 85–­86, 87–­88, 91–­92; and “gladia-

index tors” as alternative family, 72, 74, 77–­78, 85, 89; and optics or surveillance, 87, 89–­92; and police brutality, 74, 85, 86–­94, 232n51; and postfeminism, 82–­83; and postracial fantasy, 74, 75, 82–­86; and respectability, 74, 76, 80–­82, 86, 88–­89; and Shonda Rhimes, 72, 74, 83; and slavery, 73, 83–­85, 91; and status quo, 73, 76, 78, 92; and Twitter, 72, 83; watched on Insecure, 165–­66; watched on SMILF, 201–­2. See also Blackness; Pope, Olivia; postracial fantasy; Rhimes, Shonda Scarlet Letter, The (Hawthorne), 121–­22, 123 Schrodt, Paul, 134–­35 Schwadron, Hannah, 242n42 Searchers, The, 96–­97 Seitz, Matt Zoller, 75 selfishness: of Bridgette Bird, 179, 191–­92, 195; in conventional female television, 4, 191; and female antihero, ix, x, 20, 118, 120, 203; and feminism, 43–­45; of Hannah Horvath, 125; of Issa Dee, 173; and male antihero, 2 Sepinwall, Alan, 8, 75 Sex and the City: compared to Girls, 121, 124; compared to Insecure, 161; as conventional female television, xi, 3–­4, 21, 22, 117; female friendship of, 155, 158; feminist work of, 8. See also Bradshaw, Carrie sexuality, female: in The Americans, 50, 55–­56, 59–­60; in Broad City, 140, 141, 142, 143, 153, 155, 206; in Game of Thrones, 30–­33; in Girls, 123–­25, 128–­31; in Homeland, 95, 112–­13; in Insecure, 166–­ 68, 173, 175, 176–­77; and postfeminism, 18, 20; in SMILF, 179–­80, 182–­86, 192, 199. See also desire, female; femininity, conventional and idealized sex work: on Broad City, 172; on SMILF, 184–­85 shame and shamelessness: in Broad City, 140, 141, 144–­47, 159; as element of comedic female antiheroes, 7, 21–­23, 118–­19; and feminism, 12–­ 13, 206; in Game of Thrones, 42, 46; in Girls as community, 121–­27; in Girls as play, 127–­33; in Girls concerning bodies, 133–­39; in Homeland, 97; in Insecure, 161–­62, 168; and male antihero, xii; in SMILF, 179, 184, 197–­99. See also Shame TV; social media Shame TV, 115–­202; conventions of, 118–­19; defined, 22–­23; SMILF as, 179 Shaw, Frankie (actor and showrunner of SMILF), 179, 180f, 181–­82, 205. See also Bird, Bridgette; SMILF Showalter, Elaine, 100, 112–­13 showrunner: female compared to male, 9, 205–­6; Frankie Shaw of SMILF, 179; Prentice Penny of Insecure, 165, 174; Shonda Rhimes of Scandal, 73, 232n58 Showtime (television network), 179, 249n54

263 “show within a show” of Insecure, 165–­66. See also community, imagined; meta-­commentary Silverman, Sarah, 146–­47, 242n42 Simien, Justin, 165–­66. See also “show within a show” of Insecure “single-girl” sitcom: and conventional female television, xi, 117; evolving into Shame TV, 22–23; in Girls, 118, 124, 128, 131, 136; in SMILF, 179–80 sisterhood: in Girls, 125; in mainstream feminism, 15; in SMILF, 186–87, 201–2. See also community, female; friendship, female Slacker, 119 slavery: in Game of Thrones, 33–­36; in Girls, 238n37; in Scandal, 73, 83–­85, 91 SMILF, 179–­202: and abuse, 185–­86, 188, 196–­97, 201; and aspirationalism or elitism, 13, 183–­84, 188–­89; and Catholicism, 198–­200; and class, 182–­85, 187–­93; and domestic labor, 189–­91; and economic precarity, 183–­86, 187–­88; and female antihero, 22–­23, 118, 200–­202; and female community, 186–­87, 197–­201; and Irish identity, 180–­81, 192–­93; and motherhood, 5, 179, 182, 188–­89, 193–­200; and sexuality, 179, 183, 184, 185–­86; and television, 200–­202; and white privilege, 6, 188–­93. See also Bird, Bridgette; Shaw, Frankie Smith-­Rosenberg, Carroll, 98–­99 Smith-­Shomade, Beretta E., 21, 166 Snow, Jon (character in Game of Thrones), 28, 29, 47–­48 soap opera, 7–­8, 75, 101–­3 sociality: of conventional femininity, 2–­3, 6–­7, 23, 203; in Felicity, 53; in Game of Thrones, 32–­33; and girlhood, 12; of motherhood, 5, 32–­33. See also antisociality; femininity, conventional and idealized social media: in Broad City, 142–­43; in Game of Thrones, 33, 38f, 39f; in Girls, 122–­27, 126f, 127f, 133–­34, 134f, 138; in Homeland, 113; in Insecure, 168, 175; and mainstream feminism, 15; in Scandal, 72, 81–­82, 83; in SMILF, 185–­86, 192 son: in The Americans, 57, 58; in contemporary life, 10–­11; in Game of Thrones, 6, 31, 33, 36, 44, 45; in Scandal, 87–­92; in SMILF, 179, 180f, 183–­84, 188–­89, 193–­99. See also children; motherhood and mothers Song of Ice and Fire, A (book series), 27, 223n34 Soprano, Carmela (character in The Sopranos), 3–­4 Soprano, Tony (character in The Sopranos), xii, 5, 9 Sopranos, The, xii, 3, 8, 21, 27 Spar, Debora, 119 spectatorship: in Girls, 123; in Insecure, 165–­66; in SMILF, 200–­202. See also television, viewing of

264 Spillers, Hortense, 31 Springer, Kimberly, 7 spy: Elizabeth Jennings as, 49–­51, 55–­7 1; Philip Jennings as, 56–­62, 67–­7 1. See also espionage spycraft: and marriage, 51, 226n4; and motherhood, 67–­69. See also espionage Stark, Arya (character in Game of Thrones), 27–­28, 32 Stark, Ned (character in Game of Thrones), 31, 32, 35–­36, 39–­40 Stark, Sansa (character in Game of Thrones), 31–­32, 225n70 Starr, Michael, 75 Stasi, Linda, 133 status quo: in Broad City, 144–­47, 152–­53; and female antihero, x, xiii, 4, 207; and female-­ centered television, 19, 23; in Game of Thrones, 28, 38, 47–­48; in Girls, 120–­21, 133–­34, 133–­39; and male antihero, xiii; in Scandal, 72–­74, 76–­78, 87–­92; and 2016 election, 205. See also “breaking the wheel”; establishment politics; femininity, conventional and idealized; patriarchy; sociality; transgression STD, 123–­27, 145. See also HPV Steinem, Gloria, 188, 206 Stern, Howard, 133 storytelling, 122–­23 suffragettes, 112–­13 supernatural, 36, 43–­44. See also Targaryen, Daenerys surveillance: in The Americans, 67–­69; in Broad City, 141, 153–­54; in Homeland, 99–­103; in Insecure, 166–­72, 171f; in Scandal, 86–­94, 91f Talbot, Margaret, 128 Talley, Margaret, 9 Targaryen, Daenerys, 27–­48: as “breaker of chains” or “breaking the wheel,” 13, 29, 47, 73; and colonialism, 33–­37, 44; and conventional femininity, 27–­28, 29, 30, 32; as fan favorite, 27, 29–­30, 38–­39, 42, 47; and fascism, 30, 33, 34; as female antihero, x; as female antihero in drama, 13–­14, 28; and “lean-­in” feminism, 33, 38, 42, 48; as liberator and master, 33–­39; as mother, 5, 31, 33, 221n6; as mother of slaves and dragons, 33–­34, 35, 36; and nakedness, 36, 38, 42; as parallel to Cersei Lannister, 29–­30, 41–­43, 47–­48, 221n7; rape of, 31; referenced on Insecure, 173; sexuality of, x, 30–­31, 33; and status quo, 13–­14, 47, 48; and supernatural, 28, 29, 35, 36, 43–­44, 48; and whiteness, 34, 37, 38, 39. See also antihero, female (in drama); Clarke, Emilia; colonialism; Game of Thrones; privilege, white Tasker, Yvonne, 16, 18, 98

index television: and Blackness, 6–­7, 72–­74, 83, 91, 160–­66, 177–­78; and comedy versus drama, 21–­23, 28, 203–­6; and conventional female figures in, ix, xi, 8, 14, 117; and conventional femininity, 46, 51–­56, 134–­35, 137–­38; and female antiheroes, x, xiii, 1, 9, 14, 118, 121, 143–­44, 203–­7; and feminism, 15–­21, 102, 201–­2; legitimation of, vi, 7–­8; and motherhood, 5–­6, 181, 193–­95; recent history of, x, 7–­9. See also Hollywood; spectatorship television, prestige: and Blackness, 162–­65, 171–­72; and drama, 21, 220n105; and male antiheroes of, xii, 8; origin of, 8; Showtime compared to HBO, 249n54 television, viewing of: in Girls, 123; in Homeland, 101–­3; in Insecure, 165–­66, 206; in SMILF, 200–­202, 206. See also meta-­commentary; spectatorship TeNea of “Tha Show,” 81–­82 terrorism, domestic, 76, 77 terrorism, international, 100–­101, 104, 108–­10 “Tha Show” (YouTube), 81–­82 This Way Up, 22, 118 Thompson, CaShawn, 164, 230n16 Thompson, Rosemarie Garland, 97 Tiffany of “Tha Show,” 81–­82 Tomkins, Silvan, 127 Tompkins, Kyla Wazana, 148 Towns, Ann, 2 Tracy, Natasha, 97 Traister, Rebecca, 39–­40 transgression, female: and Blackness, 6, 74, 93, 154, 161, 168; as consequence-­free, 141, 144, 159; and female antiheroes in drama, 44, 113; and history of television, ix, xiii, 3, 21, 27 Trump, Donald: boasting of sexual misconduct, 11; referenced in Broad City, 206; referenced in SMILF, 185; and 2016 election, 204–­5, 207; on witch hunts, 250n7 Tutu (also known as Colleen Bird, character in SMILF), 193, 196–­201 “twice as good”: advice to Olivia Pope, 6–­7, 76, 85–­86, 88; echoed in Insecure, 174; and female antiheroes in drama, 204 Twitter: and Game of Thrones, 38f, 39f; and Hannah Horvath, 122, 124–­27, 138; and Lena Dunham, 125–­27, 126f, 127f; and Scandal, 72, 83. See also social media Tyler, Imogen, 197 unlikeability: of Cersei Lannister, 30, 46–­48; of Elizabeth Jennings, 49; of female antihero mothers, 5; of female antiheroes, ix; of Hannah Horvath, 118–­19 utopian sensibility: in Broad City, 142, 152; in Insecure, 161; of shame and failure, 120

index Vaage, Margrethe Bruun, 1 vagina: in Broad City, 206; comment by Trump, 205; in Girls, 125; in Insecure, 166–­69, 172–­73; in SMILF, 183, 185, 187, 192, 250n61 viewer response: in The Americans, 62; in Felicity, 51–­54; to female antihero television, 19–­20, 30; in Game of Thrones, 29, 38f, 39f, 41, 42–­43, 45; in Girls, 133–­34, 134f, 136, 138; in Homeland, 102–­3; to motherhood, 3, 5; in Scandal, 83–­84. See also meta-­commentary; pleasure, viewer; “show within a show” of Insecure; social media viewers, community of: of Black television, 165–­ 66; for Girls, 125–­27, 138–­39; for Scandal, 83 Viner, Katharine, 17 violence: in The Americans, 50, 56, 60–­62; in Game of Thrones, 30, 35–­37, 40–­42, 43; in Scandal, 85, 86–­93 Waldman, Ayelet, 65 Walker, Marcus (character in Scandal), 86–­94 Walters, Suzanne Danuta, 195 Wanzo, Rebecca: on Broad City, 148; on “precarious girl comedies, 20, 118; on race, 7, 161–­62 Warner, Kristin J., 9, 72, 164 Warren, Elizabeth, 205, 206 Washington, Kerry, 72, 75, 79f, 192. See also Pope, Olivia Watching While Black (Smith-­Shomade), 21 WB (television network), 51–­54, 162–­63 We Got Y’All (website from Insecure), 174–­75, 175f. See also “show within a show” of Insecure weight, 133–­39. See also body, female Welter, Barbara, 3 Wessels, Emanuelle, 105 West, Lindy, 207 Western (film genre), 96–­97, 200 We Were Feminists Once (Zeisler), 15 Wexler, Ilana (character in Broad City), 140–­59, 154f; compared to Bridgette Bird, 188; com-

265 pared to characters of Insecure, 161–­62, 174; as female antihero, 20, 22–­23; as female antihero in comedy, 113, 118; and female friendship, 155–­59; and race and Jewishness, 147–­54; on 2016 election, 206; utopian and transgressive tendencies of, 142–­47. See also Broad City; Glazer, Ilana White, Walter, xii, 5, 9 whiteness: of Broad City, 140–­41, 147–­54, 154f; of female antiheroes, 6–­7, 21; in Girls, 120–­21, 238n37; in SMILF, 189–­93. See also Blackness; class; privilege, white white supremacy: in Insecure, 161–­62, 177–­78; in Scandal, 82–­85. See also Blackness; privilege, white; whiteness Why I Am Not a Feminist (Crispin), 17 Wife Inc. (Leonard), 63 Williams, Raymond, 9 Wilson, Julie Ann, 196 Winnicott, Donald, 182, 196, 250n57 Wire, The, 2, 6, 8, 75 Wiseman, Eve, 157 witches, 206–­7, 250n7 Wolfson, Sam, 168 Wollen, Audrey, 12 Wonder Woman, ix, 119 writing as practice: in Girls, 122–­23; in SMILF, 184, 188 writing for television: in Insecure, 163, 164–­65, 171–­ 72, 177–­78; male writers as compared to female writers, 205; in Scandal, 83, 89 Wurmser, Leon, 145 Yellow Wallpaper, The (Gilman), 109–­11 Yochim, Emily Chivers, 196 Young, Cate, 141 Zeisler, Andi, 15