The Atlantic Report: TV's Renaissance for Strong Women

Son of Brock Landers at 28 Sherman recently rolled his eyes at this season's exceptionally feminine TV schedule. Kevin O'Keefe gives us a round of cheer-and-fear with "TV's Renaissance for Strong Women Is Happening in a Surprising Place."

"Cheer-and-fear?" That's the static low-grade panic the left has to maintain in the face of triumph. We progress--yay!--but we may still regress at any moment--shiver. I discussed an example here.

The days of female movie stars retreating to cable—HBO, Showtime, FX—to find good work are coming to a close. Now, by the grace of, well, something, actresses can find plenty of exciting leading roles to play on the big four networks. What was once well-worn territory feels fresh again, a place to push boundaries. How did that happen?

It takes several paragraphs before O'Keefe reveals the big secret why women are coming to dominate network television:

But a quick look at numbers offers an obvious explanation: Women viewers dominate broadcast ratings. There are exceptions, of course, and it's hardly a bit of wisdom exclusive to the modern era, but in the past few years it’s become clear that for a majority of American households, women control the remote. They also enthrall advertisers; adults 25-54 remain the most attractive demographic, with special focus on the women that can be hard for advertisers to hit.

Oh, women are the ones watching network TV? That's all?

The Atlantic, I've come to discover, bolsters its intellectual reputation by dotting its clickbait with charts and graphs. Take a look at these, presented in the order given:

Science? You're soaking in it.

O'Keefe rolled up the sleeves of his lab coat to crunch these numbers himself. His choice of the phrase "strong roles" is puzzling--not because it's inaccurate but because he sneers at the term earlier:  "Strong Female Character—the unintentionally humorous title Netflix bestows on any television woman who stands tall at the center of her own show."

Finding that Netflix's description is probably the best one possible, O'Keefe uses it to describe roles "either be the obvious main one or a dominant force even among other leads," as well as " shows with multiple strong characters of the same gender." He does allow that "[t]his is an unscientific analysis," but I think he might have just misspelled "useless."

But numbers don't lie--women are falling behind! From 53% of the strong roles on television in 2011 to a paltry 50% today! By the end of the century, we will surely have returned to Elizabethan times and all female roles will be played by men.

The most insidious, reactionary trend is the growth of strong male roles on cable--a staggering 9% increase! And this, when only a single strong female cable role has been added. It's enough to make one stop making up arbitrary definitions and give up bean-counting in despair.

What O'Keefe finds heartening about the feminine TV landscape is that, at long last, strong female characters are allowed to be flawed. At least, flawed in the exact same way male anti-heroes are; references to emulating Walter White comes up three times.

He quotes associate professor Amanda Lotz, who says, "As a culture, we may still be a little bit squeamish about depicting women in anything less than a positive way."

That's not what Tumblr's been telling me.