Fixing feminism: Women's liberation and the rhetoric of television documentary

Quarterly Journal of Speech

Volumn 90, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 53-80

  Dow, Bonnie J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Civil Rights; Framing; Ideology; Liberalism; Marlene Sanders; Media; Second wave Feminism; Social Movements; Television Documentary; Women's Liberation

Indexed keywords

EID: 2542534721     PISSN: 00335630     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0033563042000206817     Document Type: Review

References (80)

1. Charles M. Hammond, Jr., The Image Decade: Television Documentary, 1965-1975 (New York: Hastings House, 1991), 162.
2. See Flora Davis, Moving the Mountain: The Women's Movement in America Since 1960 (New York: Touchstone, 1991), 111-114, for a description of the Ladies Home Journal protest.
3. Marlene Sanders and Marcia Rock, Waiting for Prime-Time: The Women of Television News (New York: Harper and Row), 117.
4. Sanders and Rock, 117.
5. The term "second wave" is used by historians to differentiate the late-twentieth-century U.S. women's movement, beginning around 1963, from the "first wave" of feminist activism, dated from roughly 1848 to 1920, which culminated in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote. First usage of the "wave" terminology is found in Martha Weinman Lear, "The Second Feminist Wave," New York Times Magazine, 10 March 1968, 24.
6. See Bonnie J. Dow, "Feminism, Miss America, and Media Mythology," Rhetoric and Public Affairs 6 (2003): 127-149, for a description of the 1968 Miss America protest.
7. Jo Freeman, The Politics of Women's Liberation (New York, Longman, 1975), 148. See also Davis; Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Random House, 1994).
8. Jo Freeman, The Politics of Women's Liberation (New York, Longman, 1975), 148. See also Davis; Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Random House, 1994).
9. See Sara Davidson, "An 'Oppressed Majority' Demands Its Rights," Life, 12 December 1969, 66-78; "The New Feminists: Revolt Against 'Sexism,'" Time, 21 November 1969, 53-56; Lucy Komisar, "The New Feminism," Saturday Review, 21 February 1970, 27-30; "Woman's Place," Atlantic Monthly, 3 March 1970, 81-126; Helen Dudar, "Women's Lib: The War on 'Sexism,'" Newsweek, 23 March 1970, 71-74, 78; and Susan Brownmiller, '"Sisterhood is Powerful': A Member of the Women's Liberation Movement Explains What It's All About," New York Times Magazine, 15 March 1970, 26-27, 128-136, 140.
10. See Sara Davidson, "An 'Oppressed Majority' Demands Its Rights," Life, 12 December 1969, 66-78; "The New Feminists: Revolt Against 'Sexism,'" Time, 21 November 1969, 53-56; Lucy Komisar, "The New Feminism," Saturday Review, 21 February 1970, 27-30; "Woman's Place," Atlantic Monthly, 3 March 1970, 81-126; Helen Dudar, "Women's Lib: The War on 'Sexism,'" Newsweek, 23 March 1970, 71-74, 78; and Susan Brownmiller, '"Sisterhood is Powerful': A Member of the Women's Liberation Movement Explains What It's All About," New York Times Magazine, 15 March 1970, 26-27, 128-136, 140.
11. See Sara Davidson, "An 'Oppressed Majority' Demands Its Rights," Life, 12 December 1969, 66-78; "The New Feminists: Revolt Against 'Sexism,'" Time, 21 November 1969, 53-56; Lucy Komisar, "The New Feminism," Saturday Review, 21 February 1970, 27-30; "Woman's Place," Atlantic Monthly, 3 March 1970, 81-126; Helen Dudar, "Women's Lib: The War on 'Sexism,'" Newsweek, 23 March 1970, 71-74, 78; and Susan Brownmiller, '"Sisterhood is Powerful': A Member of the Women's Liberation Movement Explains What It's All About," New York Times Magazine, 15 March 1970, 26-27, 128-136, 140.
12. See Sara Davidson, "An 'Oppressed Majority' Demands Its Rights," Life, 12 December 1969, 66-78; "The New Feminists: Revolt Against 'Sexism,'" Time, 21 November 1969, 53-56; Lucy Komisar, "The New Feminism," Saturday Review, 21 February 1970, 27-30; "Woman's Place," Atlantic Monthly, 3 March 1970, 81-126; Helen Dudar, "Women's Lib: The War on 'Sexism,'" Newsweek, 23 March 1970, 71-74, 78; and Susan Brownmiller, '"Sisterhood is Powerful': A Member of the Women's Liberation Movement Explains What It's All About," New York Times Magazine, 15 March 1970, 26-27, 128-136, 140.
13. See Sara Davidson, "An 'Oppressed Majority' Demands Its Rights," Life, 12 December 1969, 66-78; "The New Feminists: Revolt Against 'Sexism,'" Time, 21 November 1969, 53-56; Lucy Komisar, "The New Feminism," Saturday Review, 21 February 1970, 27-30; "Woman's Place," Atlantic Monthly, 3 March 1970, 81-126; Helen Dudar, "Women's Lib: The War on 'Sexism,'" Newsweek, 23 March 1970, 71-74, 78; and Susan Brownmiller, '"Sisterhood is Powerful': A Member of the Women's Liberation Movement Explains What It's All About," New York Times Magazine, 15 March 1970, 26-27, 128-136, 140.
14. See Sara Davidson, "An 'Oppressed Majority' Demands Its Rights," Life, 12 December 1969, 66-78; "The New Feminists: Revolt Against 'Sexism,'" Time, 21 November 1969, 53-56; Lucy Komisar, "The New Feminism," Saturday Review, 21 February 1970, 27-30; "Woman's Place," Atlantic Monthly, 3 March 1970, 81-126; Helen Dudar, "Women's Lib: The War on 'Sexism,'" Newsweek, 23 March 1970, 71-74, 78; and Susan Brownmiller, '"Sisterhood is Powerful': A Member of the Women's Liberation Movement Explains What It's All About," New York Times Magazine, 15 March 1970, 26-27, 128-136, 140.
15. See Bonnie J. Dow, "Spectacle, Spectatorship, and Gender Anxiety in Television News Coverage of the 1970 Women's Strike for Equality," Communication Studies 50 (1999): 143-157.
16. Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1978), 139.
17. Douglas, 175, 186; see also Freeman, 111-114; Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (New York: Viking, 2000), Chapter 9; Elizabeth A. van Zoonen, "The Women's Movement and the Media: Constructing a Public Identity," European Journal of Communication 7 (1992): 453-476.
18. Douglas, 175, 186; see also Freeman, 111-114; Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (New York: Viking, 2000), Chapter 9; Elizabeth A. van Zoonen, "The Women's Movement and the Media: Constructing a Public Identity," European Journal of Communication 7 (1992): 453-476.
19. Douglas, 175, 186; see also Freeman, 111-114; Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (New York: Viking, 2000), Chapter 9; Elizabeth A. van Zoonen, "The Women's Movement and the Media: Constructing a Public Identity," European Journal of Communication 7 (1992): 453-476.
20. Douglas, 175, 186; see also Freeman, 111-114; Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (New York: Viking, 2000), Chapter 9; Elizabeth A. van Zoonen, "The Women's Movement and the Media: Constructing a Public Identity," European Journal of Communication 7 (1992): 453-476.
21. Sanders and Rock, 118-119. In addition, women's status as media professionals was at issue in 1970. In March, on the same day that Newsweek's cover story on women's liberation appeared on newsstands, women employees of Newsweek held a press conference to announce that they had filed sex discrimination charges against the magazine with the EEOC. Within two months, in early May of 1970, women employees of both The Washington Post and Time, Inc. gathered together to protest discrimination within their respective organizations. In a four-page statement presented to the paper's editors, women editorial employees of The Washington Post objected to the paper's coverage of the women's movement - and women in general - and charged that editors denied women reporters prestigious assignments because of their sex. Time's women employees went even farther, filing charges with the New York State Division of Human Rights, citing instances of discrimination in several of Time, Inc.'s divisions, including Time magazine, Life, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, and Time-Life Books. See Davis, 110-111.
22. Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (New York: The Dial Press, 1999), 63, 140.
23. Freeman, 113.
24. Interestingly, the TV Guide description of the "Women's Liberation" documentary, in its May 23 issue, contained in one of the "Close-Up" boxes that the magazine used to highlight noteworthy programming, includes the following line: "Marlene Sanders (a working mother), produced, wrote, and narrated this report." At no point in the documentary does Sanders mention anything about her personal life, and the knowledge that she was a "working" mother must have been derived from another source. This bit of personal information about Sanders in TV Guide's description of the documentary allows for the speculative conclusion that TV Guide mentioned her complete control over the documentary in conjunction with her "working mother" status as a way to signal suspicion about her objectivity, especially because the description goes on to note that one of the topics discussed in the documentary was the need for daycare centers for working mothers ("discussed" is perhaps too expansive a term - day care is mentioned briefly by one interviewee in the program and is not a major topic in the documentary in any sense). See "Close-up," TV Guide, 23 May 1970, A35.
25. See Eric Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford, 1990); James Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in America Since 1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Mary Ann Watson, "The Golden Age of Television Documentary," Television Quarterly 23 (1988): 58-75.
26. See Eric Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford, 1990); James Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in America Since 1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Mary Ann Watson, "The Golden Age of Television Documentary," Television Quarterly 23 (1988): 58-75.
27. See Eric Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford, 1990); James Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in America Since 1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Mary Ann Watson, "The Golden Age of Television Documentary," Television Quarterly 23 (1988): 58-75.
28. Hammond, 106.
29. Barnouw, 444-445. See Watson for a discussion of the role of television documentaries in the shifting of public opinion toward the war in Vietnam.
30. Rosen, 239-252.
31. Bernadette Barker-Plummer, "News as a Political Resource: Media Strategies and Political Identity in the U.S. Women's Movement," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12 (1995): 312. See also Bernadette Barker-Plummer, "Producing Public Voice: Resource Mobilization and Media Access in the National Organization for Women," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 79 (2002): 188-205.
32. Bernadette Barker-Plummer, "News as a Political Resource: Media Strategies and Political Identity in the U.S. Women's Movement," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12 (1995): 312. See also Bernadette Barker-Plummer, "Producing Public Voice: Resource Mobilization and Media Access in the National Organization for Women," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 79 (2002): 188-205.
33. Carl Plantinga, Rhetoric and Representation in Non-Fiction Film (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 27, 28, 17, 38.
34. Michael Curtin, "Packaging Reality: The Influence of Fictional Forms on the Early Development of Television Documentary," Journalism Monographs 137 (1993): 1-37; see also Hammond; Watson.
35. Michael Curtin, "Packaging Reality: The Influence of Fictional Forms on the Early Development of Television Documentary," Journalism Monographs 137 (1993): 1-37; see also Hammond; Watson.
36. Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 37.
37. Plantinga, 18; Thomas Rosteck, See It Now Confronts McCarthyism: Television Documentary and the Politics of Representation (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994), 45.
38. Plantinga, 18; Thomas Rosteck, See It Now Confronts McCarthyism: Television Documentary and the Politics of Representation (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994), 45.
39. Rosteck, 32.
40. Nichols, 35.
41. Plantinga, 30; see also Rosteck, 30-33.
42. Plantinga, 30; see also Rosteck, 30-33.
43. Nichols, 34; Rosteck, 183.
44. Nichols, 34; Rosteck, 183.
45. Plantinga, 38.
46. Nichols, 34, 35.
47. Lauren R. Tucker, "The Framing of Calvin Klein: A Frame Analysis of Media Discourse About the August 1995 Calvin Klein Jeans Advertising Campaign," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 15 (1998): 141-157.
48. Jean Fagan Yellin, Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
49. See Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Vintage, 1979).
50. Rosen, 109.
51. See Alice Echols, Shaky Ground: The Sixties and Its Aftershocks (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2002), 84-85; Ellen Willis, No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press), 112.
52. See Alice Echols, Shaky Ground: The Sixties and Its Aftershocks (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2002), 84-85; Ellen Willis, No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press), 112.
53. Lisa Maria Hogeland, Feminism and Its Fictions: The Consciousness-Raising Novel and Women's Liberation Movement (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 130.
54. Catherine Stimpson, Where the Meanings Are: Feminism and Cultural Spaces (New York: Routledge, 1988), 32-33.
55. John M. Murphy, "Domesticating Dissent: The Kennedys and the Freedom Rides," Communication Monographs 59 (1992): 61-79.
56. Barker-Plummer, "Producing Public Voice," 198.
57. Nichols, 38. See Rosteck for a discussion of the liberal ideology of television documentary.
58. Dow, "Spectacle, Spectatorship, and Gender Anxiety," 155.
59. Indeed, in 1970, feminists were still hopeful about federal attention to childcare. In 1971, the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which was supported by a coalition of feminists and would have provided for a national childcare system, passed both houses of Congress; however, President Nixon vetoed the act, and its allies were unable to override the veto. See Rosen, 90-91. To this day, the U.S. remains the only Western industrialized nation without federally subsidized childcare.
60. See Hogeland, chapter 4, for a discussion of this issue in radical feminist discourse. One exception to mainstream media's general neglect of the movement's implications for men appears in the August 1970 issue of Time that focused on the movement. The issue included an essay by Gloria Steinem, who was newly emerging as a feminist "leader" in the eyes of the media. In her essay, Steinem talks at length about the ways that men's lives will improve if feminism succeeds, and concludes with this line: "If Women's Lib wins, perhaps we all do." Steinem's arguments are an exemplar of the liberal feminist emphasis on choice and greater opportunities for both sexes, once they are freed from restrictive gender roles, and her claim that "Men will have to give up ruling-class privileges, but in return they will no longer be the only ones to support the family, get drafted, bear the strain of power and responsibility" is an echo of the kind of statements that Sanders' interviewees make about the movement's benefits for men. See Gloria Steinem, "What It Would Be like If Women Win," Time, 31 August 1970, 22-23.
61. See Hogeland, chapter 4, for a discussion of this issue in radical feminist discourse. One exception to mainstream media's general neglect of the movement's implications for men appears in the August 1970 issue of Time that focused on the movement. The issue included an essay by Gloria Steinem, who was newly emerging as a feminist "leader" in the eyes of the media. In her essay, Steinem talks at length about the ways that men's lives will improve if feminism succeeds, and concludes with this line: "If Women's Lib wins, perhaps we all do." Steinem's arguments are an exemplar of the liberal feminist emphasis on choice and greater opportunities for both sexes, once they are freed from restrictive gender roles, and her claim that "Men will have to give up ruling-class privileges, but in return they will no longer be the only ones to support the family, get drafted, bear the strain of power and responsibility" is an echo of the kind of statements that Sanders' interviewees make about the movement's benefits for men. See Gloria Steinem, "What It Would Be like If Women Win," Time, 31 August 1970, 22-23.
62. See Davidson; Dudar; Diana Gerrity, "Miss Superfist," Atlantic Monthly, March 1970, 91-93.
63. Brownmiller, "Sisterhood is Powerful," 27. For a discussion of the role of karate in the movement, see Kyra Pearson, "Mapping Rhetorical Interventions in 'National' Feminist Histories: Second-Wave Feminism and Ain't I A Woman" Communication Studies 50 (1999): 158-173.
64. Brownmiller, "Sisterhood is Powerful," 27. For a discussion of the role of karate in the movement, see Kyra Pearson, "Mapping Rhetorical Interventions in 'National' Feminist Histories: Second-Wave Feminism and Ain't I A Woman" Communication Studies 50 (1999): 158-173.
65. Rosen, 299-300. See also Brownmiller, In Our Time, and Marcia Cohen, The Sisterhood: The True Story of the Women Who Changed the World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988).
66. Rosen, 299-300. See also Brownmiller, In Our Time, and Marcia Cohen, The Sisterhood: The True Story of the Women Who Changed the World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988).
67. Alice Echols, Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-75 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 212.
68. Julia d'Acci, "Leading Up to Roe v. Wade: Television Documentaries in the Abortion Debate," in Television, History, and American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays, ed. Mary Beth Haralovich and Lauren Rabinovitz (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 135-136.
69. Katie King, Theory in its Feminist Travels: Conversations in U.S. Women's Movements (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 124.
70. Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, & Barbara Smith, eds., All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies (New York: Feminist Press, 1982).
71. Stimpson, 34.
72. Echols, Daring to be Bad, 284-85; for another discussion of the decline of radical feminism and the ascendance of liberal feminism, see Willis.
73. Echols, Daring to be Bad, 284-85; for another discussion of the decline of radical feminism and the ascendance of liberal feminism, see Willis.
74. Barker-Plummer, "Producing Public Voice."
75. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California, 1980), 273.
76. Marjorie Ferguson, "Images of Power and the Feminist Fallacy," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 7 (1990): 215-230.
77. Rosteck, 4.
78. Tuchman, 155.
79. For example, in an April 1970 interview she gave to the campus newspaper while shooting portions of the documentary at UNC, Sanders is quoted as observing that "the most success for the movement will come in the areas where the movement is making specific requests, such as legislation to end discrimination in jobs and wages." See Mike McCall, "ABC Newswoman Pictures WLM," Daily Tarheel, 8 April 1970, n.p.
80. Rosteck, 198.