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Television crime series, women police, and fuddy-duddy feminism

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 13; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14680777.2011.652143

1471-5902

Charlotte Brunsdon,

Digital Games and Media

Abstract This essay argues that Prime Suspect has become a canonical text for feminist television studies and that Helen Mirren's performance of Lynda La Plante's creation has provided an influential template for television, and the broader culture, to imagine what a senior female police officer is like. So Jane Tennison is important not only within the depicted world of the "canteen culture" of the police in Prime Suspect, but also within the broader context of television production where she has demonstrated that crime shows with female leads can be extremely successful. Juxtaposing Prime Suspect with two later "girly" British TV police series, I ask how we might approach the "daughters of Jane Tennison" found in series such as Ghost Squad (2005) and Murder in Suburbia (2004–2006). Are these "postfeminist" shows? I argue that attention to these programmes can productively inform our understanding of what is entailed for women in not being "fuddy-duddy," and my comments thus engage, in the continuing debate about the utility and periodisation of the notion of "postfeminism." Keywords: postfeminism Prime Suspect Helen Mirrentelevision crime series Acknowledgements The first version of this paper was a plenary presentation to the conference "What Happened Next? Feminist Television Studies in Postfeminist Times" (University of Sunderland, September 2010). Thanks to Vicky Ball for inviting me. Notes 1. The first Prime Suspect (Granada, 1991, wr. Lynda La Plante, d. Christopher Menaul), showed DCI Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) fighting sexism within the police to lead a successful investigation into a serial killer. Deborah Jermyn (2010 Jermyn, Deborah. 2010. Prime Suspect, London: BFI. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) provides a detailed analysis of the series and its continuation through to 2006. 2. For example, Mirren, Tennison and Prime Suspect were referred to in the obituary of Shirley Becke, a senior policewoman who retired in 1974 (Campbell 2011). 3. Prime Suspect has been widely exported, and, after the first series, also attracted funding from WGBH Boston, broadcast in the US on PBS. This essay will concentrate on its British televisual context. The US TV remake (NBC 2011), without Mirren, is about to air at the time of writing. 4. As Hallam (2005 Hallam, Julia. 2005. Lynda La Plante, Manchester: Manchester University Press. [Google Scholar]) and Jermyn (2010 Jermyn, Deborah. 2010. Prime Suspect, London: BFI. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) document, changing production regimes make it difficult to discuss the whole of PS as if it is unified by a single vision of Tennison's career. The paradox of Tennison coming to be remembered in relation to a certain type of feminism is her isolation throughout the programmes. The inclusion of Tennison within the clip programme Ball Breakers on the Box (d. Irene McMillan, tx April 16, 2001), contextualised her within a rather longer tradition of bossy women which included Hattie Jacques' "Matron" in the Carry On films. 5. Mirren's career too has expanded since 1991, and her image as a sexy older star has been consolidated. See Sadie Wearing (2011 Wearing, Sadie. 2011. "Exemplary or exceptional embodiment? Discourses of ageing in the case of Helen Mirren and Calendar Girls". In Ageing Femininities, Edited by: Dolan, Josie. Cambridge: Scholars Press. [Google Scholar]) for analysis of Mirren's star image in relation to glamour, ageing and postfeminism. Thanks to Sadie Wearing for providing a prepublication manuscript copy. 6. See Brunsdon (1998 Brunsdon, Charlotte. 1998. Structure of anxiety: recent British television crime fiction. Screen, 39(3): 223–243. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) for a discussion of Prime Suspect 1 within the context of the 1979–1997 Conservative government. 7. A comparison between the first (Charlotte Brunsdon, Julie D'Acci, and Lynn Spigel 1997 Brunsdon, Charlotte, D'Acci, Julie and Spigel, Lynn, eds. 1997. Feminist Television Criticism: A reader, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]) and second edition (Brunsdon & Spigel 2007 Brunsdon, Charlotte and Spigel, Lynn, eds. 2007. Feminist Television Criticism: A reader, 2nd edn, Maidenhead: Open University Press. [Google Scholar]) of Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader is instructive here, as it was difficult to find material that was not engaged with the postfeminist girl for the second edition, although she is hardly present in the first. 8. See Brunsdon (1997 Brunsdon, Charlotte. 1997. Screen Tastes, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], pp. 47–53, pp. 81–102) for my use of "girly." Thames Television's Murder Investigation Team (2003, 2005) and the Caroline Quentin vehicle, Blue Murder (Granada, 2003–2009) offer rather less girly female cops and would reward further analysis. 9. There is now an extensive literature on postfeminist culture. See in particular: Rosalind Gill (2006, 2007), Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley (2006 Hollows, Joanne and Moseley, Rachel, eds. 2006. Feminism in Popular Culture, Oxford: Berg. [Google Scholar]), Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra (2007 Tasker, Yvonne and Negra, Diane. 2007. Interrogating Post-Feminism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Mcrobbie (2009 Mcrobbie, Angela. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism, London: Sage. [Google Scholar]), Negra (2009 Negra, Diane. 2009. What a Girl Wants: Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism, London: Routledge. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Susan Douglas (2010 Douglas, Susan. 2010. Enlightened Sexism, New York: Times Books. [Google Scholar]), Hilary Radner (2011 Radner, Hilary. 2011. Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture, New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). 10. See Brunsdon (1997 Brunsdon, Charlotte. 1997. Screen Tastes, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 2006 Brunsdon, Charlotte. 2006. "The feminist in the kitchen: Martha, Martha and Nigella". In Feminism in Popular Culture, Edited by: Hollows, Joanne and Moseley, Rachel. Oxford: Berg. [Google Scholar]) for a longer discussion of my use of "postfeminism." 11. The late evening screening on a terrestrial channel, with the next episode available immediately afterwards on the digital E4, points to a scheduling of the programming as possible cult viewing for a younger audience. 12. Tony Garnett interviewed in Call the Cops ep. 1, (d. K. McMunigal, BBC 2008). 13. It was broadcast as seven episodes, concluding with a double. Company Pictures has a record of engaged, mainly contemporary, programmes, including Skins, The Lakes, Shameless, George Gently, and North Square. 14. Viewers were warned before the first episode that it contained "very strong language and scenes of a bloody and violent racist nature" Channel 4 Announcer, Nov. 15, 2005, 22.02 pm. 15. The 1999 report of the public inquiry into the murder to Stephen Lawrence, which concluded that 'institutional racism' was one of the factors in the failure to secure a conviction is commonly referred to as 'The Macpherson Report' after its Chair, Sir William Macpherson. 16. Exemplified by widely exported Agatha Christie (and other golden age) adaptations. 17. This behaviour is anticipated in PS 5, where Tennison is notably brisker with a young female subordinate than she is with her male colleagues. Unlike the Sally Marshall character in The Ghost Squad, Jane Tennison does not characteristically recognise a "we" of women. 18. McRobbie (2009 Mcrobbie, Angela. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism, London: Sage. [Google Scholar], p. 16) selects this as one of her symptomatic ads. See also Janet Winship (2000 Winship, Janice. 2000. Women outdoors: advertising, controversy and disputing feminism in the 1990s. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 31(1): 27–55. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 19. Radner (2011 Radner, Hilary. 2011. Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture, New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]) is so emphatic about this relationship that she argues that "neofeminism" more accurately describes what has frequently been referred to as postfeminism. 20. See, for example, Aniko Imre (2009 Imre, Anikó. 2009. Gender and quality television: a transcultural feminist project. Feminist Media Studies, 9(4): 391–406. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) on the reception of Sex and the City in the former Soviet Empire. 21. Radner's (2011 Radner, Hilary. 2011. Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture, New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]) book was published before the premiere of I Don't Know How She Does It (2011), a US film based on the book by the British journalist Allison Pearson, which exemplifies the neoliberal/neofeminist relation in its banker mama drama. 22. The week beginning May 1 saw four new crime/thrillers: Vera (ITV, Sunday at 8.00, May 1, 2011+4), Exile (BBC1, Sunday at 9.00), Case Sensitive (ITV, Monday at 9.00), and The Shadow Line (BBC2, Thursday at 9.00), of which two had female leads.