"Digging for Dirt with Geraldo and Jenny—How talk shows pathologize female sexuality"

"Talk shows are the scariest thing on the planet today. You think I’m exaggerating, don’t you? Think about it: not only are they the lowest common denominator of American pop culture, but they’re also—because they’re in the form of “real” people talking about their “real” lives—taken to be some measure of truth. A talk show pretends to be a window opened by the host; the audience thinks that it’s seeing a clear, undistorted reality. But the view is anything but real—hosts, guest experts, and audience members all inject their own views of the truth into the words of the panelists, making the shows more like funhouse mirrors than windows. Talk shows are powerful propaganda, often masking a conservative, reactionary, restrictive worldview with an earnest desire to help, or a simple voyeurism. The host is always in control of the discourse, and she can run roughshod over what the guests are saying—by not listening, by twisting words to fit a preconceived notion of panelists’ behavior, by putting words into the panelists’ mouths.

When the topic is young women and sex, this kind of moralizing cultural static gets louder and louder. Take, for example, a Geraldo episode called “Teen Sex for Status: These Girls Are Out of Control,” and Jenny Jones, “My Teen Daughter Is Too Promiscuous.” The shows come pre-packaged with titles and the hosts’ viewpoints; the experts come with agendas; audience members come with their own rigid ideas about acceptable behavior. In the parallel universe that is the talk show, like almost everywhere else, female sexual agency hides in plain sight. It can’t be acknowledged—even when it’s being spoken about and demonstrated. When panelists contradict preconceived notions—when they declare that they like the way sex feels, that they fuck just for the hell of it, when they are honest about their erotic lives—their words are willfully misinterpreted and ignored by an audience that must, for its own comfort, erase the reality of female pleasure. And because of the lack of a culturally understood language of female sexual pleasure, it’s even harder for the panelists to express or defend themselves. The problem is not simply that individual girls get insulted and ignored by these particular episodes of these particular shows, but that huge chunks of our entire culture are built on the repression of female sexuality, and these shows are a symptom and a demonstration of that sad fact—and a mode of perpetuating it."

Sexuality is something that have always been regulated by societies. What is unique about today is that people feel atomized and alone. People often don't really know their neighbors, and often people don't connect with their co-workers. As such, the development of their thoughts on gender and sexuality largely happens within their own homes, or in the context of the media presentation of these things. The mass (commodified) culture is the dominant institution in our thinking on these issues. In many ways mass culture is our version of the medieval catholic church. I mean that in the sense that our moral and non-moral beliefs get formed in the context of what this media tells us.

The "talk show" is a perfect example. In a talk show, a personality who is an charge (the show is often eponymously named after them eg "oprah", "ellen" or "maury") guides the audience (in the room and at home) through celebrities, general interest stories but most of all, the socially marginal. Especially shows like "Springer", "Maury" etc feed off of presenting an exaggerated and (explicitly deplorable) form of human behavior. For an audience member at these shows, one really doesn't have the option not to cheer and basically follow the personality's line (I once attended the  Steve Wilkos show). One of the biggest topics these shows thrive on is female sexuality.

Female sexuality is problematic and contradictory in our current society. The sexual revolution had an enormous impact on female sexuality. Talk shows can be seen as a reaction. Often times these shows express purpose is to denounce female sexuality and young female sexuality. These shows tend to be attached (artificially or "organically") to what is looked at in some circles as an "old fashioned" view of sexuality. Many of these shows claim to have a general critique of teenager sexuality, but most of the people they confront are female teenagers. Because these shows are framed around particular personalities, those personalities (and their hand selected "experts) is able to tell their "guest's" story, no matter how their guest tells their story.To repeat Jarvis's critique: "The problem is not simply that individual girls get insulted and ignored by these particular episodes of these particular shows, but that huge chunks of our entire culture are built on the repression of female sexuality, and these shows are a symptom and a demonstration of that sad fact—and a mode of perpetuating it."


Works cited

Jarvis, Lisa. "Talk Shows." Bitch Media. Web. 01 May 2012. <http://bitchmagazine.org/article/talkshows>.