The Disposable Woman
By Anna Holmes
Published: March 3, 2011
These assumptions about women, about powerful men, about bad behavior have roots that go way back but find endorsement in todays unscripted TV culture. Indeed, its difficult for many to discern any difference between Mr. Sheens real-life, round-the-clock, recorded outbursts and the sexist narratives devised by reality television producers, in which women are routinely portrayed as backstabbing floozies, and dreadful behavior by males is explained away as a side effect of unbridled passion or too much pilsner.
As Jennifer Pozner points out in her recent book Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty-Pleasure TV, misogyny is embedded within the DNA of the reality genre. One of the very first millennial shows, in fact, Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire, was notable in that it auctioned off what producers called the biggest prize of all: a supposedly wealthy B-movie writer named Rick Rockwell who was later revealed to have had a restraining order filed against him by a woman hed threatened to kill. According to Ms. Pozner, the reaction of one of the producers of Multimillionaire was, Great! More publicity!
On reality television, gratuitous violence and explicit sexuality are not only entertainment but a means to an end. These enthusiastically documented humiliations are positioned as necessities in the service of some final prize or larger benefit a marriage proposal, a modeling contract, $1 million. But they also make assault and abasement seem commonplace, acceptable behavior, tolerated by women and encouraged in men.
Which brings us back to Mr. Morgan, who, like many of Mr. Sheens past and present press enablers, showed little to no urgency in addressing the question of violence against women. Youre entitled to behave however the hell you like as long as you dont scare the horses and the children, Mr. Morgan said at one point. Scaring women, it seems, was just fine.
During the interview, a series of images played on a continuous loop. One of them was a defiant and confident-looking Charlie Sheen, in a mug shot taken after his 2009 domestic violence arrest.
Anna Holmes is a writer and the creator of the Web site Jezebel.
By Anna Holmes
Published: March 3, 2011
These assumptions about women, about powerful men, about bad behavior have roots that go way back but find endorsement in todays unscripted TV culture. Indeed, its difficult for many to discern any difference between Mr. Sheens real-life, round-the-clock, recorded outbursts and the sexist narratives devised by reality television producers, in which women are routinely portrayed as backstabbing floozies, and dreadful behavior by males is explained away as a side effect of unbridled passion or too much pilsner.
As Jennifer Pozner points out in her recent book Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty-Pleasure TV, misogyny is embedded within the DNA of the reality genre. One of the very first millennial shows, in fact, Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire, was notable in that it auctioned off what producers called the biggest prize of all: a supposedly wealthy B-movie writer named Rick Rockwell who was later revealed to have had a restraining order filed against him by a woman hed threatened to kill. According to Ms. Pozner, the reaction of one of the producers of Multimillionaire was, Great! More publicity!
On reality television, gratuitous violence and explicit sexuality are not only entertainment but a means to an end. These enthusiastically documented humiliations are positioned as necessities in the service of some final prize or larger benefit a marriage proposal, a modeling contract, $1 million. But they also make assault and abasement seem commonplace, acceptable behavior, tolerated by women and encouraged in men.
Which brings us back to Mr. Morgan, who, like many of Mr. Sheens past and present press enablers, showed little to no urgency in addressing the question of violence against women. Youre entitled to behave however the hell you like as long as you dont scare the horses and the children, Mr. Morgan said at one point. Scaring women, it seems, was just fine.
During the interview, a series of images played on a continuous loop. One of them was a defiant and confident-looking Charlie Sheen, in a mug shot taken after his 2009 domestic violence arrest.
Anna Holmes is a writer and the creator of the Web site Jezebel.
