InDePeNdEnT StUdy

‘Prison: A place for the confinement of persons in lawful detention, especially persons convicted of crimes’ How are the women of Larkhall Prison represented in this multi-award winning drama?

A place for the confinement of persons in lawful detention, especially persons convicted of crimes [1] Times are changing , it is now safe to identify, celebrate and analyse the distinctions between men and women. In families where both spouses work, the wives out-earn their husbands in 22.7% of these households.

Women head 40% of those households [2] Film and television have more or less changed the way in which women are portrayed. Women are now seen to be more powerful and thus hold some of lead roles in film and television today (Tomb Raider, Charlie’s Angels etc) Television programmes such as ‘Ally Mcbeal’ (David E. Kelley 1997-2002) ‘Sex and the City’ (Darren Star 1998-2004) and ‘Sugarush’ are showing women of all ages being more free and independent more now then ever before, exploring their sexualities and challenging the usual stereotypes.

The first series of Bad Girls was shown on ITV1 in 1999, lasting 10 episodes. There have been eight series in total, ranging from 10 to 16 episodes. Christmas specials were produced in 2005 and 2006. All series have been shown on ITV1, at 9pm, the days varied between Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.[3]

Bad Girls is no ordinary drama serial, it challenges the usual stereotype of women conforming to societies rules and regulations, it breaks free from the housewife or successful woman and moves to representing the women that haven't exactly abided by the rules in their life. Women from all backgrounds are shown being convicted of crimes such as arson, murder and robbery. The officers of Larkhall Prison have no time to deal with petty theft.

I chose to focus on the representation of women within today’s society, as I found this a highly topical issue. I decided to centre my independent study on Bad Girls as I felt as if though it was one of many other programmes that tried to subvert the typical representations of women.

Bad Girls having been shown on ITV is now in its 8th series. Each series contains 10-16 episodes, each episode contains many different issues and problems that these women have to deal with. The way in which the programme is aired is different to many others. It has about 4 breaks and the programme itself lasts for about 1 hour. As it is only shown once a week this is why it is an hour long rather then the usual half an hour programmes.

It is the only series to follow around the lives of women in prisons, other programmes that follow similar codes and conventions are ‘Prison Break’ ‘Escaping Prison was Just the Beginning, ‘Escaping the Country is now the priority‘ [4] Although Prison Break is dedicated to the way in which men are seen to be portrayed in prison, they also find an escape route out of prison, once again adhering to the patriarchal society we live in today.

ITV network broadcast was created in 1993 in order to fulfil a requirement of the Broadcasting Act 1990 that ITV should commission and schedule programmes through a separate, independent body [5]

Bad Girls is shown ITV every Wednesday at 9.00pm, this is after the watershed. Appealing to an audience from 16-25 year olds.

Bad Girls is produced by Shed Productions, Shed has produced well over two hundred hours of prime time drama, with Bad Girls now being re-commissioned for an 8th series and Footballers Wives 5 is being transmitted early 2006. Shed retains the associated rights attached to its productions, and distributes its products to broadcasters in over 25 major territories.[6]

Shed’s programme library continues to perform very well in DVD and the international market and a key highlight of 2005 was the sale of both Footballers’ Wives and Bad Girls to BBC America.

Bad Girls not only is aired to entertain the public, but also to raise awareness with certain issues. Well Bad Girls tried to make us as an audience more aware of these things. Breakthrough Breast Cancer received over 600 calls in response to the two episodes of Bad Girls after which ITV promoted their information line details [7]. A third of those callers asked for further information.

This is regarded as an unprecedented achievement for a TV drama. The scary statistics mean that somebody in everybody's family is more and more likely to get breast cancer unless much more is done to fight it and protect us. One way we can all do something positive with our fear and anger is to support Breakthrough's campaign to achieve a future free from this terrible disease.

Julie Johnston one the characters in Bad Girls comforts June whilst she is going through a bad stage in her life (suffering from cancer) ‘Don’t worry Jules, I’ll be here for you, through everything and anything, we’re as thick as thieves we are…’ [8] not only does Bad Girls represent the different types of women within society but it also maintains and progresses in other issues involving friendship, something which everyone can say they have with someone.

This just goes to show how much today’s media has such an effect on the audience, as well as misusing the media, we can also use it to our own benefit and Bad Girls is just on example of how we can use it to our own benefit, by making people aware of breast cancer we can beat the number of women that get it as they can spot it earlier overall benefiting society today.

When referring to the text Bad Girls one can also look at the different waves of feminism and the these different waves actually effected the representation of women as time went on. 1970’s brought the wave of feminism were women had the right to stand up for themselves and what they believed in. Feminism as an organized movement appeared in the late 19th century in a number of countries, and agitation for votes for women became increasingly visible and vocal at the beginning of the twentieth century [8]

The first wave of feminism is known to many as being popular during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century , the second wave soon followed and was known during the early nineteen sixties and late nineteen eighties.

The movement encouraged women to understand aspects of their own personal lives as deeply politicised, and reflective of a sexist structure of power.[9] The second wave of feminism was also more probing towards other issues such as the end to oppression and discrimination that women received.

A historical text that I can discuss is ‘Prisoner Cell Block H’ this series was much like Bad Girls. It followed similar codes and conventions and was extremely popular in Australian in the late 1970’s. The tagline for the show was ‘The phenomenon from down under’ Its original channel being the Ten network. Prisoner was created by Reg Watson, who had previously produced the British soap opera Crossroads from 1964 to 1976, and would go on to create such popular Australian dramas as The Young Doctors, Sons and Daughters and Neighbours.[10]

Several lesbian characters were featured throughout the show's run [11] just like Bad Girls features lesbians, one could see that sexualities were being explored in more detail more then ever before. The producers of Prisoner Cell Block H were Reg Grundy Organisation.

Reg Grundy Organisation was an Australian television production company founded by Reg Grundy in 1959.[12] It has since branched out into Europe and the USA. The company first produced game shows, before branching into soap operas in 1973, thus making Prisoner Cell Block H a success.

Both programmes that are being discussed could be seen to be similar in many ways. Moving stereotypical views away form society by ensuring women in their programmes are not shown to be looked-at-ness or more so to be just there for the male pleasure of just looking at them.

Women have been represented din these programmes to be more then just objects of a males desire/male gaze [13] (Laura Mulvey "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema)
Men in more cases then others are also represented as the active role within the household. They always take a certain amount of control over the woman, however Bad Girls represents the women that don’t have these stereotypical men in their lives, an even if they do they wear the ‘trousers’ in the relationship[14]

Furthermore one can see that the introduction of magazines such as Cosmopolitan, ELLE, etc are making men especially see that there is more the ‘woman’ then meets the eye.

Cosmopolitan is a magazine for women, sometimes referred to as "Cosmo", It has been published for more than a century. It began as a family magazine, land launched itself in 1886 by Schlicht & Field as officially being called ‘The Cosmopolitan.’

[15] Cosmopolitan had an advertising income of $5,000,000.
Emphasizing fiction in the 1940s, it was subtitled The Four-Book Magazine since the first section had one novelette, six or eight short stories, two serials, six to eight articles and eight or nine special features [16] During World War 2 it was reported that Cosmopolitan sales peaked at 2,000,000.

In conclusion one can see that the representations of women in Bad Girls are those that divert typical representations of women towards another aspect, a new wave of thinking.

From the typical representations to what women were shown to be in the 1960’s, they have progressed and thus come a long way. Men and women’s representations in the media whether it be television or print text is very important, it not only moulds one outer shell but it also sets an example to the many other men and women that watch and read print text.

Overall Bad Girls amongst many other programmes has fulfilled its objective to try and subvert stereotypes and thus create new, exciting and more meaningful relationships within society. Creating social bonds and reuniting communities, trying to set an example to the world around us.



Bibliography
- Gauntlett, David (2002) Media, Gender & Identity, London and New York: Routledge
- Macdonald, Myra (1995) Representing Women: Myths of Femininity in the Popular Media, London: Arnold.
- Walter, Natasha (1998) The New Feminism, London: Little, Brown
- Gunter, Barrie (1995) Television and Gender Representation, London: John Libbey
- Scheibe, C. (1979) ‘Sex Roles in TV Commercials’, Journal of Advertising Research, 19, 23-28
- Greer, Germaine (1999) The Whole Women, London: Doubleday
Internet http://theoryhead.com/gender/interview1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-wave_feminism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femme_fataleHistory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-wave_feminism
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze09.html