9 - Feminising Television: the Mother Role in Six Feet Under (HBO 2001–6) and Brothers & Sisters (ABC 2006–)

Summary

Following an analysis of three ‘quality’ television programmes, the last chapter considered formal qualities that elicit emotion, such as music, editing, characterisation, writing and the longevity of a series. This chapter focuses on one device in particular: it considers how the mother figure in two television series is used to draw out emotional and intimate details from the ensemble cast. In centring on the mother and her relationship to her children, the series foreground the affective attachments within families and the dramas that come from such close bonds. This chapter also considers the way in which feminism is raised, negotiated and handled in popular series such as Six Feet Under (HBO 2001–6) and Brothers & Sisters (ABC 2006–) in order to think about how the domestic, the ‘home’, frames and figures older women's sexuality.

Whether looking at television programmes such as Sex and the City (HBO 1998–2004), Ally McBeal (20th Century Fox 1997–2004) or films like Bridget Jones's Diary (Sharon Maguire 2001) from the position of their popularity, their presence within feminist theory or their appeal to viewers, theorists note the ambivalence and contradiction that mark them (see Lotz 2001; Arthurs 2004; Brunsdon 2006). One of the primary ways in which this contradiction and ambivalence is structured is through emotion. Ally McBeal, for instance, uses emotion to distinguish Ally's way of confronting problems in the workplace and in her life decisions. Her emotional responses, sometimes excessive ones, mark her ambivalence towards her career and lifestyle choices and reiterate her contradictory choices (see Gorton 2008a).