Drunk Historians for the Win!

Back in July 2016, I told you about the television show Drunk History on the Comedy Central network.  To recap,

The show's creator gets a storyteller drunk and the storyteller then attempts to tell the audience an interesting story about a historical figure or event.  As the story unfolds, a team of actors in period costume faithfully acts out the inebriated story.  Add some low-budget special effects and some celebrity cameos and you have an entertaining (if unsophisticated) show. 

What was more relevant for our purposes was the show's surprisingly progressive/feminist themes.  Over the course of three seasons, the show had increased the percentage of female storytellers to 42% and the percentage of woman-centered stories to around 25%, all without making a big fuss about it.  I predicted that at the current rate, Season 4 might get even closer to parity.

With Season 4 now complete with 10 episodes exploring 28 stories, how did they do?

Female Storytellers

Starting with the storytellers, I counted 17 male storytellers and 11 female storytellers across all ten episodes.  This works out to about 40% female storytellers across the season, roughly equal to the representation in Season 3.  No increase, but not too shabby.

Stories About Women

Turning to the stories themselves, I counted 11 stories featuring a woman (or several women) in a significant way (see the list below).  This amounts to about 40% of the Season 4 stories!  Remember, Seasons 2 and 3 averaged only about 25% stories with a female focus.  The fourth season gave us more that 50% more stories about women!!

• Ella Fitzgerald and Marylin Monroe (Episode 2)
• Carrie Nation (Episode 3)
• Marsha P. Johnson (Episode 3)
• Eleanor Roosevelt & Lyudmila Pavlichenko (Episode 4)
• Sadie the Goat and Gallus Mag (Episode 5)
• Katharine Wright (Episode 6)
• The Kopp Sisters (Episode 6)
• The Fox Sisters (Episode 6)
• Emily Roebling (Episode 7)
• Julia Child (Episode 8)
• The Cherry Sisters (Episode 10)

But, Wait! There's More!

As if 50% more stories about women wasn't enough, the show's creators added an interesting new feature to the fourth season. As the episodes progressed, I noticed that many of the background and supporting roles were performed by the show's female cast in trouser or pants roles.  For example, business man no. 2 would be a woman wearing a suit and mustache.  Or Shakespearean actor no. 3 would be a woman in men's garb.  At first I thought they were just short-staffed on those filming days, but it happened enough to seem intentional.

Then it happened . . . Episode 9 "Hamilton" featuring a very drunk Lin-Manuel Miranda.

The Hamilton-Burr story goes way back to the show's beginnings as a web-series, so I was a little surprised they were tackling it again.  But this time you have Lin-Manuel Miranda and an entire episode devoted to the two men and their relationship.  You also have both Hamilton and Burr played by women.  That's right, female founding fathers.  BOOM!

Did I mention that this show is hosted by drunk people?  Where is the rest of the entertainment industry?!  Probably hiding with embarrassment because they're so far behind the times.  Would they have cast women to represent the founding fathers?  I don't think so.  They couldn't even imagine casting Asian-American actor John Cho as Shakespeare (episode 8).  Oh, yeah, Drunk History did that too.

Drunk historians for the win!

SNL Fails Margot Robbie

Saturday Night Live opened its 42nd season last month with Margot Robbie as their first host.  Ms. Robbie is an Australian actress known for her work in films like The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Whisky Tango Foxtrot (2016), and, most recently, for her standout performance as Harley Quinn in an otherwise flawed Suicide Squad (2016).

Oh, and she's physically attractive.

Source

This was all the SNL writers seemed to think was relevant when pitching sketches for their season opener.  Setting aside the big election-mocking ensemble sketches, Robbie's starring moments came in two sketches I can only describe as cringe worthy.

First, we have LIVE REPORT where a local news team reports on a car-swallowing sinkhole at a local shopping center.  When the location reporter turns to interview the locals, the story quickly becomes Hot Woman with Lame Guy?!  The five-minute sketch only devolves from there.  Lame guy must be rich?  No!  He's a puppeteer!? He must be well endowed then?  No, he doesn't even have a penis!?  I'm not making this up.  Margo Robbie gets to stand there and look hot while everyone else wonders how her character could possibly have picked a man that doesn't fit society's standards.  I'm wondering how this ever made it to air.

Second, we have THE LIBRARIAN.  You can probably guess how this goes.  A student pines for the sexy librarian and his friend decides to embarrass him by drawing this fact to the librarian's attention.  She responds by launching into an increasingly disturbing erotic display, eventually turning into some kind of demon creature and literally blowing the boys' minds.  I honestly don't know what to make of this.  Maybe it was supposed to be subversive?  If so, I don't think it worked and we now have two sexy-host sketches.  They couldn't think of anything better for her to do?

These disasters look worse given the other missed opportunities throughout the show.  For example, my hopes were raised somewhat as I started on ACTRESS ROUND TABLE.  Here was a sketch with five women representing show-business role models (Keira Knightly, Marion Cotillard, Lupita Nyong'o) discussing their industry and craft.  What a great opportunity to showcase female performances in some cutting feminist satire!  Unfortunately, the sketch was mostly a vehicle for (the fabulous) Kate McKinnon to do one of her unhinged old-biddy characters.  What could have been a strong feminist sketch slowly died in a pool of dementia-based humor.  Ms. Robbie's turn as Keira Knightly barely registers.

Perhaps most damning of all is the absolutely fantastic MR. ROBOT sketch in which Leslie Jones co-opts the show's hacker protagonist to help reveal the people behind her recent nude photo hack.  The sketch is a brilliant FU to all the haters and it proves that the SNL writers can produce brilliant satire at the highest level.  Margot Robbie has an 8-second cameo.  Where was this brilliance when they were writing for her?! This was the season premiere! 

FAIL.  She deserved better.

Drunk Feminist History

After spilling 1,850 words in my last post lambasting Conan O'Brien for his awful sexist video game reviews, I feel obliged to highlight some surprisingly feminist entertainment to restore balance to the Dropout blog.

While we hold our feminist principles sacred, not all entertainment needs to offer sophisticated social commentary.  I love watching feminist comedy shows like Inside Amy Schumer, but sometimes I just need to turn off my brain and be entertained.  Comedy Central's Drunk History, surprisingly, fills this niche very well.

As the title suggests, Drunk History doesn't provide sophisticated, highbrow entertainment.  The show's creator gets a storyteller drunk and the storyteller then attempts to tell the audience an interesting story about a historical figure or event.  As the story unfolds, a team of actors in period costume faithfully acts out the inebriated story.  Add some low-budget special effects and some celebrity cameos and you have an entertaining (if unsophisticated) show.  [Note: The UK has its own version of this show, based on the US version for once.]

One might not expect particularly progressive or feminist themes given the show's dependence on drunkness, but I've been pleasantly surprised on two fronts.

Female Storytellers

First, the show includes a surprising number of female storytellers.  In the show's first incarnation as a Funny or Die series, 2 of the 8 storytellers (25%) were women.  This ratio stayed the same in Series 1 on Comedy Central (2013); 6 of the 24 storytellers (25%) were women.  Season 2 (2014) saw the ratio increase to 30%, with 9 of 30 storytellers being women.  Season 3 (2015) increased the representation even further to include 15 women among the 36 storytellers (42%).  At this rate, Season 4 might easily have 50% female representation among its storytellers.

Stories About Women

Second, an increasingly large minority of the stories focus on women.
[Full episodes for seasons 1-3 are available behind a paywall on Hulu.]

Funny or Die Series: 1 woman's story out of 8 total stories (13%)

• Oney Judge (episode 3)

Season 1: 4 women's stories out of 24 total stories (17%)

• Mary Dyer (episode 4)
• Mary Ellen Pleasant (episode 5)
• Patty Hearst (episode 5)
• Dolly Parton (episode 7)

Season 2: 9 women's stories out of 33 total stories (27%) 

• Claudette Colvin (episode 1)
• Sybil Ludington (episode 2)
• Nellie Bly (episode 2)
• Sylvia Robinson (episode 3)
• Peggy Shippen (episode 8)
• Babe Didrikson (episode 9)
• Frances Cleveland (episode 10)
• Edith Wilson (episode 10)
• Dolly Madison (episode 10)

Season 3: 8 women's stories out of 36 total stories (22%) 

• Griselda Blanco (episode 2)
• Harriet Tubman (episode 4)
• Virginia Hall (episode 4)
• Dorothy Fuldheim (episode 5)
• Kentucky Daisey (episode 7)
• Nellie Bly & Elizabeth Bisland (episode 8)
• Mary Phelps Jacob (episode 11)
• Ann Druyan (episode 13)

If the trend continues, we can expect roughly one in four stories in Season 4 to focus on women.

This isn't 50/50 representation, but the show does a nice job including entertaining stories, voices, and performances from women without making a big fuss about it.  It's just what they do.  If I wasn't a feminist blogger I probably wouldn't have noticed I wasn't getting 100% white male stories.  (The show also makes a point to regularly include stories highlighting minority groups.)

Ultimately, this silly show makes me wonder why more media products don't do more to present women's stories.  If a show full of drunk people can do the right thing by women and minorities and be successful, it can't be that hard. (I'm looking at you Conan.)

The Fall: A Feminist Crime Show

Ever since binge watching the second season of the  BBC crime drama tv show, The Fall, broadcast in the US via Netflix, I've been trying to figure out how to put together my thoughts on the show.

Luckily, as of Jan 22nd, Madeline Davies on Jezebel has done it for me!  See her article here.

Originally, I wasn't too keen on the show.  I originally started watching it because of Gillian Anderson who plays the main character, Stella Gibson--- a police detective trying to catch a serial killer who has murdered several women in Northern Ireland.  To quote Davies synopsis of the show:

"The Fall's ingenious twist is that it's not a whodunnit. The murderer, Paul Spector (played with terrifying coldness by Jamie Dornan), is identified to the audience in the first episode and the plot is as much his as it is Stella Gibson's. The tension that drives you to binge watch comes not from suspicion, but from watching Spector and Gibson's stories as they head towards an intersection, break away from each other, and intersect again.

When I first started watching I couldn't take the dramatic irony.  As the viewer, especially in the first several episodes, you are privy to build up (and follow through) of acts of violence done by Spector without the power to intervene.  If only you could jump in and alert Gibson and her colleagues . . . but you can't.  This was too upsetting to me initially and I stopped watching after only a couple episodes.

Skip ahead to about six months later, I learn that Colin Morgan is in the show's second season, so I decide to give the show another chance.  I'm really glad I did.  This show is about way more than Colin Morgan showing up halfway through the second season.  Because this show--- despite maintaining the traditional focus on the dead bodies of women--- is a FEMINIST crime show.  And it's more than that.   It's a very cleverly constructed feminist criticism of the detective genre.

Blogs We Love: Feminist Frequency

To continue the "Blogs We Love" thread I'd like to introduce one of my new finds, Feminist Frequency and it's accompanying YouTube channel.  Led by media critic Anita Sarkeesian, this site presents "a video webseries that explores the representations of women in pop culture narratives."

Well researched and well presented, the "Tropes vs Women" video series focuses particularly on video games and traditional media.  Videos exploring recurring "stories, themes and representations of women in Hollywood films and TV shows" include:

1. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl
2. Women in Refrigerators
3. The Smurfette Principle
4. The Evil Demon Seductress
5. The Mystical Pregnancy
6. The Straw Feminist

Video game related topics have included:

• Damsel in Distress (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
• Ms. Male Character
• Women as Background Decoration (currently Part 1).

Sarkeesian does a wonderful job presenting well balanced and well organized evidence for each "trope" gathered from both media sources and academic research.  I found the identification and naming of specific "tropes" to be an empowering approach as it ultimately offers targeted avenues for change.

The site also links to Ms. Sarkeesian's TEDxWomen talk regarding online harassment, a variety of other videos, and lists of games, TV shows, novels & comics, films, blogs, nonfiction books, etc. that might be of interest.  It's definitely worth checking out!

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

I was really surprised to see this article on the Australian television series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries.  Primarily I was surprised because a mainstream blog had developed an entire article to one of the obscure costume dramas that only people who subscribe to Acorn TV seem to know about. 

(Note:  Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries is a murder mystery show set in Australia in the 1920s.  It features a firebrand flapper/female detective who helps the police solve murders, whether they want her to help or not!)

I tend not to read netflix reviews, but it is a bit disappointing that people are still so narrow-minded.  Actually one of the first things I was pleasantly surprised to find in this series, was a female PI who philandered as much as much as all the male PIs.  It is a little bit unbelievable for an unmarried woman in the twenties, but also a bit believable (it's the twenties!) and more importantly, more fun . . . this is fiction after all!  The show is light, upbeat, fashionable, and refreshingly devoid of slut-shaming characters . . . too bad that the audience seems to be making up for that last point and missing out on all the other good stuff!

In particular all these shallow Netflix reviewers are missing out on a show that has not only a great female character, but a bunch of great female characters and a great community in which these female characters can go about their business.  The women in this show do not fall into the old stereotypes of judging each other and being 'catty.'  Rather they support each other and try to stand up for each other, even when they don't really understand each other or agree with each other.  For example, Miss Fisher's right-hand girl Dot, doesn't really agree with her carefree lifestyle, but she tries not to judge and see all the great things about Miss Fisher and is grateful for her friendship, mentorship, and protection.  She even takes a page out of Miss Fisher's book when her priest tells her she needs to dump her Protestant boyfriend (Ack! Kissing Protestants! The horror!).  Miss Fisher and Dot in turn help many other women, not by judging them and shaming them, but by just facing the facts and helping to stop suffering and injustice as best they can.

These two are supported by a cast of equally accepting male characters: Miss Fisher's stodgy but dreamy police Inspector, Dot's Protestant police constable, their reliable housekeeper Mr. Butler, and two handymen.  These men recognize these women as being somewhat anomalous but try their best to understand their unique ways and support them in their quests for justice.

But finally, the other great thing about this series is that it showcase women's history in a refreshing way, in that it actually shows women lives.  I love costume dramas but am continually frustrated by them because so often lazy writers seem to thing that prior to WWII (if you are lucky) women were either mothers or prostitutes.  I know that career opportunities have historically been limited for women, but they seriously still did manage to do other things than be burdened by children or have sex with men for money (and no, managing a brothel does not count!).  This show actually shows women doing other things!  Perhaps a lady detective is a bit of stretch, but in this show women serve as domestic help, women work in factories, women are nurses and physicians, women write for women's periodicals, women manage companies, women run schools, women manage cocaine smuggling rings, women are performers, women are part of the communist movement, women are pickpockets . . . and that is only about half way through the first season.  It is refreshing to see women's history sneaking onto the screen!

Some other television series that I've been enjoying for this reason: Bomb Girls (Canadian), Land Girls (UK), The Hour (UK), Call the Midwife (UK).  I don't mean to imply by this list that there are no American shows that do this, I just watch a lot of British stuff.

If anyone has any suggestions of what to add to this list please let me know!