The history of TV Shows

Before becoming the dominant audiovisual format that we know today, recognized by some as the 8th art, offering us many and many heroes accompanying us on a daily basis for several years and on several platforms, tv series made their timid appearance long after the cinema.


It was at the end of the 1940s that television series were born in the United States. Why then are you going to tell me? Quite simply because it was at this time that television was commercially produced and invaded homes en masse. Of course, above all, without television…. Well there is no TV series!

The genesis

The appearance of the TV series is therefore the result of numerous technical, scriptwriting and narrative attempts carried out on different media and in particular radio.
You probably know soap operas?

but if, don’t do like there, these stupid things where the same thing always happens like “The young and the restless”, “Santa Barbara” and so on. Well even if it can be hard to hear, know that Breaking bad, X-files, Peaky blinders, Game of thrones and even The Wire are its descendants. Indeed, soap operas were a hit on the radios in the early 1930s for several reasons. First of all because like today’s series they have a very specific target, here the American housewife, the taste for theatrical twists, a multi-episode format to keep the housewife as long as possible and above all the talent to relaunch and constantly maintain the viewer’s attention. Basically the basics of all series today.

This radio origin largely explains why TV series have for years put more emphasis on the script than on the production. Although of course there are many exceptions!
And here I feel that you are wondering

“Hey, but why are they called “soap opera”? »

Quite simply because they were sponsored by detergent brands. Yeah, that’s a disappointing explanation.


Short ! In 1928 General Electric develops its famous W2XB, that is to say a television channel, an electromechanical TV station which will allow the first broadcasts of TV shows but also of the very first television fiction, “The Queen’s Messenger “. Obviously the result is not crazy, the image keeps disappearing and reappearing but the goal at the time was above all to test this technology which was going to revolutionize, for better or for worse, our fashions. of life !

The first golden age

From 1948 we entered the first golden age of the TV series with 4 channels that would broadcast non-stop. This is how we see series of 3 types appear:


  • The “soap opera” therefore, of which they adapt the radio versions to the screen while integrating an advertising page at the beginning. (Well yeah the guys are no less stupid than at YouTube huh.)

  • The sitcom, abbreviation of “Situation and Comedy”, whose episodes are shot in the studio, live in front of an audience, and which will experience the enormous success that we know of him by educating us until today as “bewitched », « Friends » or even « The office »!
    Thank you “I love Lucy” who is responsible for the popularity of the genre until today! And which, moreover, it is important to note, was the work of a woman, Lucille Ball, who then approached the theme of female emancipation through work. Something rare at the time, since sitcoms were above all an opportunity to broadcast a lot of Puritan values ​​to the American public. Remark…. our European values ​​were not necessarily better!
  • Finally, the last genre is the Anthology or drama. That is to say, a more dramatic TV series which will mainly consist of more or less filming plays. And we will not regret this format because it allowed the emergence of Marlon Brando, James Dean, Paul Newman and Sidney Lumet!

Then as soon as the technique makes it possible to record the series, without necessarily shooting live, the format will evolve by trying out different genres such as with “Alfred Hitchcock presents”, or even “The Twilight Zone”. Flagship series of this first golden age, which could be described as an author series, since its creator, Rod Serling wrote ⅔ of the 156 episodes by addressing a lot of metaphysical, philosophical and societal subjects. (Yes I’m a fan!!!!)

But at the end of the 1950s, 7 of the most watched series were Westerns, simply because it was the fashionable genre in cinema at the time. Which proves in passing the strong synergy between the TV series and the cinema.

In short, the series are beginning to have a real purpose, and represent, like all works, the spirit of their time. And at the end of the 1960s, there were clearly 2 currents in this tune that clashed on television. That of the conservative and puritan America of the 50s, praising the family against that of the counterculture and the sexual liberation of the 1960s. And of course in the middle of all that there is a whole gradient nuances, as for example with “Bewitched”, where the image of the housewife changes a little thanks to her magical powers. Without, however, ever questioning her place as housewife, ultimately returning her to the archaic vision of a witch woman.


We also see series with an anti-communist unconscious, where extraterrestrials infiltrate humanity as in “The Invaders”, or, on the contrary, those representing the fantasy of an America carrying democracy and bringing peace throughout the world. with “Star Trek”


Then the format will gradually be revolutionized with series like “Columbo”, which breaks the narrative codes by reversing them, or even “The Wild Wild West”, “Mission: impossible”, etc.

Okay, it’s interesting what’s happening in the United States, but where we are?
In Europe, it is above all Great Britain which occupies the front of the stage in this regard, and which continues to occupy it well elsewhere. This is how we owe them great classics like “The Avengers” (NO! I won’t make the joke about the guys in tights), “Doctor Who” and “The Prisoner”.


True work anchored in its time and addressing many political and social themes such as the alienation of man in the face of a capitalist and bureaucratic world.

So yes, I don’t often talk about politics on my blog but those who know me won’t be surprised to see me using words such as “capitalism” and “alienation” 2, 3 times anyway! By the way, to stay within the theme, here are some examples of series from this era that say a lot about the political and social context in which they were born. And no, I promise you it won’t be boring!

At the end of the 1960s, the parenthesis of flower power closed around the Vietnam War and an authoritarian policy. Progressives and reactionaries face each other more than ever and inevitably that infuses in a good number of series. And the one perfectly embodying this opposition, is :


“All in the family”, where a young hippie faces his reactionary father-in-law. In the same line we can cite “Happy days” or “Little House on the Prairie” where we feel the fantasy of a past era and above all a desire to return to the pre-hippie years.


But we also see the emergence of feminist ideas such as equal pay or how women can live their celibacy with the series The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Or even an anti-militarist thought in the satirical series M.A.S.H.


America is also trying to face its slavery past with the series “Roots” without offering real roles to African-Americans in the series of the time. Which clearly shows the limits of such a format, always caught up in a societal unconscious where mores take a long time to evolve. A very good example of this is the “charlie’s angels” series:


At first glance we see 3 women who have been able to emancipate themselves from their social status and housewives, by studying and integrating a rather masculine job, policeman. Then it is indeed because they still occupy thankless tasks assigned to women that they emancipate themselves once again from their work by integrating a private agency where they will finally be in the foreground. But despite what seems like a great victory for the time, they are nevertheless, once again, under the orders of a man, Charlie, and serve as objects of fantasy for the spectator during the fight scenes.
In short, there is still a long way to go!


Especially since in 1978 appears a series which will be totally the incarnation of a
America Reaganienne, liberal, paternalistic and reactionary, “Dallas”! And it will last until 1991! And this is how many series will have served as cultural imperialism, soft propaganda to serve us the American way of life as the most enviable, as the horizon to reach! And it hurts to say it but among these we find for example “K2000”, “MacGyver”, “The Dukes of Hazzard”, “The A-Team” etc.


At this time, we also see the arrival of Super Hero series, such as The Incredible Hulk and Wonder Woman. And they meet with great success, demonstrating the need to reassure a population traumatized by certain military defeats such as Vietnam. A population that needed to rediscover the image of a strong and protective America embodying the return of heroes to the country.


But in short! For the moment, the series are still all cast in the same mold and differ a little from those of today. And surprisingly it is a detective series, very little known to us, which will revolutionize serial art: “Hill Street Blues”. Indeed, this series will reinvent the usual narration by bringing much more realism and nuance, by de-idealizing the figure of the American policeman. But it is above all with it that we see many of the narrative springs used in all today’s series appear, especially with the creation of parallel plots associated with the main narrative arcs running over several episodes.
Kind of like X-files. But it is especially with them that we see the appearance of the pre-credits that we love so much when we launch our series of the moment.

The revolution

We are in 1990 and the series have existed for about 40 years! And as we know, 40 is the age of the midlife crisis, this crisis where we want to relive our youth a little and put subversion in our lives! And that’s exactly what happens with the appearance of series that will no longer aim to reassure us and brush us in the right direction, but that will be ambiguous, acerbic, precisely criticizing all this pop culture that has constructed as a spectator. This is how 2 masterpieces once again revolutionized the genre with The Simpsons by Matt Groening and the mystical-cult Twin Peaks by the great David Lynch.


2 series that will take 10 years to impose a genre that has become the norm today. And indeed it is clearly thanks to Lynch, who introduced cinematographic ambition through the series on television, that today many great directors want to have their series. Do you remember when I told you that serial art, like all art, says a lot about the evolution of our lifestyles, our sociology, etc.?
Well this is once again what will happen with the appearance of series like Friends or even Seinfeld which this time will focus more on the lives of young single people, since the classic family model has lost some of its superb.

In reality and as with everything, this is mainly due to the fact that these young single people have precisely become the new main target of the consumer society which has found a new niche here. As she also did with the teenagers of our generation by precisely creating the series for teens with for example “Beverly Hills”, “Buffy the vampire slayer”, “Teen Wolf”, “Supernatural”…

Second Golden Age


And I think we can all thank the HBO channel, which historically was rather associated with sports and cinema, for having started producing series, each one more cult than the other. And above all more radical, leaving authors and directors the freedom to create their works. So Netflix can also thank them I think! The cause of all this? Well, as often, money and transgression, because HBO being a subscription channel, it was able to overcome the fear of not pleasing advertisers to offer something completely different.
Moreover, as a cable channel, it is not subject to the Federal Communications Commission, which prohibited sex and vulgarity. Suffice to say that she will take advantage of this freedom without skimping with the Oz series where the prison universe had never been shown with such realism, without any limit.


Will obviously follow, The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under until Game of Thrones today.
In short, since it works for HBO, all the other channels finally get started, making advertisers happy with all these series that we know by heart: “Lost”, “Dexter”, “Dr House”, “Weeds “, “Nip Tuck”, “CSI”, Desperate Housewives…
In England we are entitled to Dr Who and The Office…

The Netflix era

2007 arrives and with it the economic crisis. A crisis that will encourage channels to make sequels and other remakes rather than continuing to innovate. But fortunately or not, it’s not up to me to decide, the streaming platforms are coming, re-bringing a fresh wind to all this and giving a boost of creativity. It must be said that with streaming and other illegal downloads, our consumption habits have drastically changed and it has become out of the question to wait each week for the broadcast of your series on a channel.
of TV! Exception made with Game of Thrones which still manages to stay the course with its many twists which will also make its signature and create a new genre, that of the Blockbuster series.

But in short, with the internet and the attention economy, everything goes faster and precisely our attention needs to be captured in the midst of the hundreds of proposals that we receive per day. This is how platforms such as Netflix, Disney+, or even Amazon Prime Video arrive, offering us entire seasons without having to wait patiently for 1 or 2 episodes each week. And therefore with less risk of being spoiled by an asshole colleague / classmate!

Yes ! Yes, I still have resentment!


And this is how many directors come to find in the series, the new comforter for consumers, the artistic freedom that they no longer have in the Cinema.
In short, the series really gains its letters of nobility and becomes the format of audiovisual consumption par excellence. In particular, she appropriates the codes of her time with, for example, a much more feminist and transidentitarian approach which began in particular with “Madmen” until the famous “Sense8”, “Orange is the New Black” or even “The Handmaid’s Tale”.

We also have a number of so-called “historical” series which are starting to make a name for themselves, such as “Vikings” for example, and which, through their commercial success, reinforce stereotypes or propagate fantasized versions of History. In Vikings, it is the figure of the barbarian who is put forward, in “Downton Abbey”, an idealized aristocratic society is born, while “Game of Thrones”, largely inspired by History,
conveys the image of a still dark and violent Middle Ages.
This should not be seen as a necessarily negative criticism on my part, like other media, historical series allow the general public to be interested in them, and that’s already not bad!

So much for my little overview of the history of TV series. I hope you found the reading interesting.
I leave you until next week with a new Ethereal Stories.
Until then, take care of yourself and your loved ones and see you soon!

We are all fragments


after an experience gone awry, Seth Brandle turns into a fly. And, as his body loses its integrity, which becomes something else, Seth Brandle constitutes the Seth Brandle Museum. A museum of spare parts, pieces of bodies that have bowed out. A museum entirely dedicated to what he was until then. Seth Brandle deconstructs himself to evolve while celebrating a past that is no longer just a fantasy.

The vestiges of him are still there so “He” is still there in a way, terrified that he is no longer himself. But what exactly is “Him”? Where is the Seth Brandle entity? In this ear? In this eye, his brain, his DNA? At what point in his transformation can we consider that this is it, we are facing something else? Total otherness, without a return ticket?

Is that when his human features disappear? Is it when he gives up his human morals in order to survive or does Brandle just boil down to remembering being himself? Seth Brandle is the experience that continually transforms us. An event, an accident, a meeting, the discovery of a work … Brandle is the illusion of what we think of as identity. We are fragments.


This Hook scene always broke my heart and for a long time I couldn’t quite say exactly why.

The children of Peter and Moïra come back from Never Land and throughout the film there was a strange relationship with memory. By becoming Peter Pan again, remembering what he was. The hero forgets for a moment that he has children, yet he is there to save. And as his son Jack lets himself be consumed by his resentment towards him, he even begins to forget that he has a father. And then this end. Returning to their room, the children, for a moment barely recognize their own mother. Yet it’s an ethereal, happy moment but it makes me sad. There is something oddly scary about this. Why do you think Jack’s voice is shaking despite his smile? This little detail touches me every time.

The film does not only capture this fear of losing loved ones, it captures this floating and cottony moment between sleep and waking up when for a moment, we are no longer ourselves. Where the memories that make us “Us” fade away. This moment when identity is more fragile than you thought.

Sincerely with the little girl who talks about her mother as an angel, this almost divine light, where even this sequence just after, euphoric to the point of absurdity where this woman enjoys seeing an old man flying instead of s ‘surprise or even be afraid.
Spielberg is well aware of this ambiguity.

Yes we are surely in a tale but also possibly elsewhere. An elsewhere much less easy to accept. For such a colorful film, there is still some sacred darkness lurking on the edge.

It’s so easy to forget

Memory loss

In a story, memory loss is perhaps one of the most worn-out story arcs but, strangely, also one of what affects us the most because it causes so much discomfort. particular. We can come out of it grown up, but we know it’s going to be a long time to pass.

Memory loss can symbolize a whole lot of things. The passage of time, just like becoming the ideal hiding place for a secret, but above all we touch on what seems to us a little too often to “who”, identity.


When you touch memory, you touch a fear that is very strange. This fear of thinking that if a memory is no longer shared with someone, what makes it real?
What made all “that” real?

Look at his movie posters, all of which represent “the spirit”. There is one idea that brings them all together. A very simple visual idea. The idea of Multiplicity.

Multiplicity

Multiplicity of memories, multiplicity of facets of the personality, blurred border of the psyche, unfathomable potential that overflows well beyond ourselves.
Visually, one way or another, this is what comes obvious to so many artists who represent the spirit.

There are many of us. The thing, however, is that the vast majority of works tend to show us this multiplicity as an evil, a disorder that leads the characters to either their demise or destruction. Pure tradition of Lovecraft with its protagonists who discover a cursed ancestry that lies dormant in them. Fiction illustrates again and again this fear that we have of losing our “me”, fear of seeing our identity dissolve and therefore all these sometimes simplistic concrete barriers to protect it.


Among the exceptions we can cite the fourth volume of the “Cycle of Dune” where the character of the emperor Letho II Atreide who gradually turns into a sand worm while possessing in his heart the memory and the personalities of all his ancestors.

This is a logic that we had already seen in the Cycle of Dune, in particular with the reverend mothers of the order of Bene Gesserite, but which there, is pushed to its climax with this relationship so particular to long time and to a kind of intimate immensity to be conquered. There the inner multiplicity is shown as an opening to something greater. Towards an extended consciousness of the world and of oneself.

Here, unlike memory loss, it is therefore a kind of “hyper memory” that questions the boundaries of identity, which is no longer a simple, closed whole, but rather a tree structure. The fear has been neutralized.
Over time has so oversold us characters built as cohesive units, oversold us assertiveness like a simplistic sign, that we ended up forgetting.
We are fragments.

Start the video at minute 2.

Brienne has mellowed over the seasons, of course, but she would never have cried. Not here, not like this, not for this. There you betray the sap, you betray the essence of something. But once again this essence, where exactly is it? What do we know?
We expect characters to be human and complex without being chaotic. And here we are, a walking paradox, clinging to what makes us “us”, while wanting “more”.

“Life is a cut up. Every time we walk down the street, or we look through the window, your consciousness is cut by random factors. And there you start to realize there aren’t that random, that it makes sense to you.” 

William S.Burroughs: 

Cut Up, this technique popularized in particular by the writer William Burroghs in the 1960s, which consists of cutting up a work and randomly rearranging the ends so that a new meaning emerges.

A technique that has inspired a lot of artists but also the whole internet culture, this culture of mashup and collage that you know so well.
Life is a Cut Up. Our experience of the outside world.

With Seth Brandle, who does a kind of Cut Up with his body, which becomes a new form of life, in accelerated mode, we are dealing with one of the deliberately extreme cases where the multiplicity which is in us is shown as negative.

That said, for a moment through his natural and scientific curiosity, Brandle is tempted to greet this transformation with serenity, without judgment. Very quickly, human fear takes over. As if there was, no matter what, an insurmountable frontier for the mind. We have to close the loop. However, there was the start of something, there was a tangent. As in the end of Hook, in the background we explore this “what if”.
Unfortunately, the two films do not really follow through on this idea. One because Spielberg, despite his doubts, has to make a feel good and accessible film. The other, by its horrific specifications. But what if becoming “other” wasn’t really the end of “self”?

Memories, that glue that gives shape to our fragments, that make our lives tell something.
We always tell of a change and inevitably we get hooked. We cling to our tastes, we cling to the stories that have built us, we cling to them as over a precipice, at the risk that sometimes it boils down to a simple road map of taste and opinions.

Life is a Cut Up. This article is a form of Cut Up. Fragments of emotion, fragment of memories, of thoughts. The fragments of films which, once taken out of context, begin to tell something quite different.
Editing means shuffling the cards, finding an unexpected meaning in the random.

Conclusion

In “The Fly” David Cronenberg and his director of photography lit up certain scenes like an old film noir. All the visual codes are there. The dim light of the blinds, the soft and ethereal lighting on the face of the femme fatale, a woman who stands out in the doorframe, who is therefore the center of attention but who is also lost in the frame, the only source of grace in a dirty and chaotic world. And of course a disillusioned main character, the unwilling detective Brandle investigating human identity. Fragment of one cinematographic genre lost in another.

Or how the film illustrates its point by becoming it self a Seth Brandle, and by showing that all films, at various levels, are Seth Brandles. Fragmented over and over and over again …
Maybe in the middle of it all, in the midst of this inevitably flawed, never-ending puzzle, something will resonate. We are multiple, we are fragments.

Personally I am never more stimulated, when I create something, when I have the impression that it is beyond my control, that strangely, it is not my conscious part which has acted but something more mysterious, something something freer, which is not necessarily the “me” that I know. For a few moments, we become a little more than the sum of our tastes or our memories.

We are more than an abstract line, like an arrow crossing the void.

We have become like everyone else, but in the way that no one can become like everyone else.

We painted the world on ourselves, and not ourselves on the world.

To create, to feel deep down, is to welcome the other.

Mean Girls in Teen Movies and series!

They are called “mean girls” or “queen bees”, they are the wicked of high school and sow terror in the corridors. They are very ambitious young women, very manipulative, very calculating and who managed to establish themselves as a type of character very stereotyped American TV series for teenagers.
Do they really exist? How is this type of character built? Does it really bring something to the plot of a series and to the audience,?
Today, I tell you all about this type of character that fascinates me.
So let’s go!

The wicked have not waited for the democratization of television series for teens to exist. it’s a kind of character that we already met in many movies and TV movies for teenagers. Indeed the teen movie is a kind to whole, whose codes vary according to the country and which evolve according to the times. In the United States, some characters often come back:
The sportsman, the geek, the shy intellectual and … the mean girl.

It has become a fundamental part of teen movies, especially when the teen movie seeks to target young women. “Heathers” with Wynona Ryder in the 80s, “Clueless” in the 90’s and more recently the cult “Mean Girls” written by Tina Fey and released in 2005. These films have become true references when talking about teen movies, simply because they have popularized this colorful and incredibly cruel character.
So he has also become a recurring character in the American series for teens. And if this wicked exists, it’s for a reason:

It’s to fuck shit. Do not look! They are only there for that. What makes it interesting is that it manipulates individuals. Sometimes to achieve his ends, sometimes just to have fun. It will gradually structure relations between people and structure the plot.
But to make sure that this character has interest it must of course work. If this character was all the time similar, it would become boring, but especially incredibly predictable. And, as it is there to essentially create twists, the stakes and succeed in getting around this kind of difficulties.

Patrice A Oppliger, professor of Communication at Boston University has written a lot about the figure of the mean girls in popular culture. This is how she was able to organize them into four different categories that sometimes come together. between them and found in works from pop culture (and therefore TV series):
     1. The Mean Girl Mean
     2. The Snobby Mean Girl
     3. The Sexpot Mean Girl
     4. The Deceit

The Basic Mean Girl is the one that comes back most often. Full of confidence, she is rich and very pretty, having 2 or 3 friends to surround her. Very often we find the same elements that would explain his wickedness with others. Successful parents and putting a lot of pressure on her for her future career, seeing extremely rich parents, working a lot, always absent and not interested in their daughter.

The Snobby Mean Girl does not seem to have a weak point unlike the previous one. Being spoiled rotten is a trait she claims and justifies her Machiavellian side. It also very often questions the subordination to adults, especially the principal or the teachers. Unlike the Basic Mean Girl, the Snobby is much more disillusioned: she will certainly not succeed in her life but, not especially ambitious, she does not care and then she will marry someone rich or will eventually touch a legacy of his parents.

The Sexpot mean girl is less recurrent in the series for very young teens, rather for those seeking to reach an audience of high school students and adulescent. All the interest of his entourage is on his silhouette, how she instrumentalizes her body to achieve what she wants. She very often plays her sex appeal and makes her sexuality a tool to come to an end.

The deceit is essentially known because his character has the best replicas. Often very petty, constantly passive aggressive, all the interest of her character lies in the interactions she maintains with others and the repartee she shows to annihilate them.

And if Oppliger denounces these four figures of the mean girl in popular culture, she finds that movies like “Mean Girls” have tended to glamorize and value this type of behavior. Behaviors that, according to her, would be based on deeply sexist stereotypes: superficial young women, venal, hypocritical, manipulative, unambitious and using their sexuality to achieve their ends. To erect such a model seems dangerous to him, and at that level she could not be especially wrong.
It has been almost 15 years since this theme is extremely present in the United States. The film “Mean Girls” appeared precisely at that time. According to the National Institutes of Health in 2001: 30% of students said they had suffered in the USA.
In 2011 another study showed that high school students were 45%.
School bullying brings together a lot of different elements:
Repeated and targeted mockery, from physical aggression to the desire to hurt psychologically.

I love this film!

The forms of harassment are multiple, more or less visible, it is often wrong to quantify in this way their severity. In fact, in 2010, 70% of teens say they have been cyber-harassed compared to 70% of parents who say they do not worry about cyber-harassment for their children. Very often we hear that new technologies have created or reinforced school bullying, which is not especially true.

Before the appearance of the Internet or the mobile phone, school bullying already existed, other forms, sometimes less visible, only there were no traces, no evidence of this harassment, no means to identify really the culprits. With respect to harassment, school bullying never occurs in isolation. In 85% of cases, the person doing this has accomplices. In 81% of cases, these peers are there to encourage this behavior and of its 81%, 48 will participate actively.
In this 81% there is everything: those who follow because they follow, those who are afraid and who prefer to see this violence carry over to others, brief full of different cases, and those who follow have often already undergone school harassment . The leader no, but the followers yes. Hence the fact of seeking to be under the protection of the brute so as not to relive it again.

Harassers are often domineering, often go faster in a quarter turn, have little empathy, struggle to follow the rules and see violence in a positive way. For there to be harassment there must be a form of repetition, deliberate, and the person who is targeted has obviously never sought it. How one educates his child plays a lot. Parents who do not invest too much in the education of their children, who lack discipline with them, who are absent or violent, who are extremely strict in teaching them to enter constantly in competition, do not necessarily help to that their children have very healthy relationships with others.

Very often, school bullying perpetrated by adolescents is considered to be different from that perpetrated by adolescent girls. Men would be more susceptible to physical aggression and women would be more likely to experience what is known as “social aggression”. The principle of social aggression is that their violence is more verbal, it is revealed in the interactions they have with people. They will seek to harass morally, to marginalize. It’s more insidious, it’s more passive aggressive for some, it would be more “psychological”.
Which is rather false since the physical aggressions can have enormous damage on our psyche.
The researcher Kaj Biorkvist has worked extensively on the different ways of attacking someone from a verbal or physical point of view. In the 1990s, he spoke of his side “indirect” aggression to highlight the forms of aggression that women use between them, including social aggression.
If women use words more than they are, they would not learn as much about the use of physical violence, but it is also because they enter into a dual process of this use of speech. They are often taught to shut up and let the other person speak but at the same time speech becomes one of the few tools they can use as a mechanism for attack or defense.
They are a use of words much more strategic, that’s why they are often associated with rumors peddled or cyber harassment. Language is their medium. Violence in women, would it be unrecognized or rather devalued?
It is often said that girls would often be “worse between her”. Which is rather false.

And for two reasons;
First, studies have shown that when women spoke about their friendships with girls, they showed much more attachment and affection than when men talked to each other, since they were taught more to express their emotions. And that might partly explain why girls place a higher emotional importance on them and therefore they will not argue with each other more easily. Moreover, although they often say they prefer the company of boys, they still hang around more often with girls, as boys also attend boys more often.
In reality, therefore, the way in which they live the relationships and of which they speak of them is substantially different.

Then we must understand that it is not worse, but different. In men, therefore, the aggression that comes back most often and is most often staged is the physical aggression: we fight, we show his muscles and his gold strength, this form of domination very manly is enormously valued by our company. It is therefore more easily overlooked when it comes to pointing the finger. But a wicked woman is a threat, she goes out of her predefined role and the techniques she uses to spread her wickedness are not legitimized by society, because they are not male practices.

In addition to not wanting to admit that women can also be violent is a form of violence that is not recognized, and this violence can be ridiculed: the roles of mean girls in drama are rare , they are often rather present in the comedies. What they do is considered something light and not serious and is not generally perceived as violence. Add to that that female harassers are often much more represented than male harassers in the teenage series or film, and this is a huge problem, because even though women are the ones who are most often harassed, she does not necessarily harassed by other women.

We have said that women use social aggression more often than physical aggression. But that does not mean that men do not use social aggression. They insult, they sexually assault, sometimes they sexually harass and they also peddle rumors about their female classmates.

So is this a myth?

Because even though women are the ones most often harassed, it is not necessarily women. We can then ask why we do not talk about it so much, why their indirect violence, which is obviously also present, is not so represented. The arguments you know them surely:
their violence is accepted and legitimized, as they say “boys will be boys”, it’s like that and not otherwise.
There have been studies to look at women’s violence. There is little mention of the one where vignettes are read to students, with a predefined text. The discussion exchanging between a man and a woman. It turns out that at the time of noting the aggression between the two, when it was the woman saying the dialogue deemed “aggressive” being at the heart of this interaction, her aggression was judged much more severely.

So are we really more aggressive, or more mean, or is our aggression more easily perceived because it is less legitimate? Beside, it is also interesting to see that all women seem to have experienced social aggression by other women. Others report having more difficult interactions with other women, but often the mean girl is the other and seldom herself. So there is a common problem where women, because they are taught to depreciate and depreciate their gender, immediately instils mistrust of other women. Another important element to emphasize and that is often said that we teach the woman to show their emotions more often and that men, for their part should be silent and show nothing. Which is not totally true.

Dr. K. Underwood specializes in the relationship between children reminds that girls are valued only when they show a certain type of emotions. Certain emotions such as anger, for example, are not valued at all. They come to regulate and repress these feelings, all the messages and all the negative emotions, judged as not very rewarding according to their gender. Let us also add that parents, according to gender, teach their children to manage these negative emotions in two different ways, for boys, it will pass more easily through physical aggression while girls, they will more often go through social aggression. When the girls become “mean”, they are totally bending to the stereotype of gender that is expected of her. While communicating on something that displeases them, they learn to remain “presentable”, that is to say, pretty and calm in their behavior. If they confront each other less during interactions and prefer to wait to talk behind their backs to the contrary of men who would be supposedly more sincere it is also for this reason. No they are not all hypocrites, besides being caricatural, it is also forgotten that if they try to look good in society is because it is what is expected of them.

A UCLA “mean girl” study points out that media and cultural works do not help in dealing with such violence. Because the rare times they are mentioned, this is done glamorous, exaggerated, or demonized, without any subtlety. There is no concrete analysis. By giving stereotyped representations, the “mean girl” becomes a myth, a cynical myth that we can not take seriously anymore, but yet, in what we believe, a bit like an old urban legend.

In reality, according to a study by Behm Morawitz and Mastro, people who have seen “Mean Girls” tend to come out with a vision of relations between women much more negative than others, and it does not matter the end of the film.

And these misrepresentations of pests have big drawbacks. Jacklyn Ratliff worked a lot on the myth of this “mean girl” and how this myth took up all the codes of gender stereotypes that have been assigned to women since their birth. They would be aggressive, hysterical, manipulative. What we find in the end among the mean girls.
So basically it’s a bit like saying that all women are wicked and that all wicked are women.

The principle of a stereotype is to assign traits or attributes to a group of people. These attributes make it possible to judge the members of a group, to place individuals in a certain category or a certain level, often of inferiority. As is the case with women. Elysabeth Behm-Morawitz and Mastro have been interested in presenting such portraits on a regular basis. Portraits based on gender stereotypes and still showing some form of special friendships, based on the blackmail of hypocrisy as well as on the roles of women in society.
The mean girls that we see in the series do not explain why the teenagers would be ultimately, supposedly, nasty between them. This notion of rivalry between women already existed well before the series. The series just show this problem. She shows it in a very “clichéd” way, but she shows it.

These series characters thus resume sexist clichés that already existed before the movies and series. It did not create anything new. So do not worry, if you decide to identify yourself with the bitch service is that deep down, according to them, you’re already a little mean girl at the base. It is this model that you relate to because you find things that are already part of your personality. This model gives you the feeling of being able to find solutions to certain problems in your life. Although this is done in a rather negative way, we can not say the opposite, these series have nevertheless managed to illustrate a certain problem that we find in the interaction between women, due to the way in which our gender is built. It is therefore difficult to say that social aggression between women does not exist, and also difficult to minimize, especially since women suffer a lot.

So, perhaps this is the moment to ask ourselves: do we all live simply in a culture of wickedness?
These cultural works are part of a society that cultivates sexism, which is why it is so ardent to emphasize that women are mean to each other and that this is much more serious than when men do not. is with a woman, but also a culture of wickedness?

We are currently in a liberal system, where as we keep saying it, the individual is an extremely valued notion, much too much according to certain people since this system would contribute to our retreat to be and cultivate a certain egoism. But this system also plays on the fact that one must be able to capitalize everything, and thus capitalize on one’s interactions; the role and the social power that this confers on us being taken into account. The peers are very important in the construction of the teenager, the network gives us a status but the unpleasant relationships are an inherent part of this type of constructions where we value everything.

In reality, popularity, being recognized, promoted, valued and appreciated is closely linked to a feeling of antipathy. The principle of power, of owning more, even from a social point of view, inevitably makes some aspects unpleasant. Let’s add that popularity is often synonymous with wealth: you have to have the latest cool gadgets, money to go out, party, to consume excessively. In short, again, ideas found deep in our liberal system.
Rosalind Wiseman and her book “Queen Bees & Wannabees” in 2004 came back on this aggression that fed on the silence and the unspoken women, but without ever taking into account where the social aggressions came from and especially how they were treated. This is why the researchers Kelly and Poremantz wanted to analyze this demonization of violence where it is much less so for other forms. Male violence or state violence.

Series do not create anything new, they just feed on a culture of aggression that already pleased viewers, because it was something that returned them to their daily lives.
And if I mention it a little bit in the past, it’s because I have the impression that things may be changing in the way mean girls are illustrated in television series. I have the impression that we are gradually getting away from this model to make something better. And if the mean girl that we currently find in the series became rather an attempt at empowerment?

Things seem to be changing lately, especially in the way mean girls are written and presented on screen. Instead of becoming a disruptive element of the plot, they become more and more the main characters, characters that we start to appreciate, to which we attach and sometimes with a real depth in the treatment of their wickedness and in their relations with others. Blair Waldorf of “Gossip Girl” is often thought to have been one of the first important serial characters.
Some spectators explain how she appreciates the power she has. This power held by a woman is no longer demonized, it has even become a crucial element of the plot and is the focus of the series.
Moreover, it is one of the first mean girl having had a plot sometimes very dramatic.
However, it is a very moderate takeover of power: the structures around it remain very rigid, it has no influence on the ambient sexism of certain characters, the diktats it imposes does not fly away and the The rules she can impose on her comrades remain extremely superficial and gendered rules. Concretely, imposing on his girlfriends to wear greenhouses will not change the world.
In the end we are always in a series that glorifies the individuals and the New York elite and that therefore wealth and liberalism and therefore everything that can be related in any way with the culture of aggression, But , this series may have provoked a new way of representing mean girls and we can note some improvements and a more critical look developed with real empowerment.

Take the example of Pretty Little Liars, who came right after. A series of very uneven quality, but having questioned this character of mean girl, where the roles are reversed and where we find ourselves on both sides, where we understand this idea of following the movement, to be mean girl by pressure but also what is the suffering of harassment. We also see young girls who gradually learn to detach themselves from their toxic and unhealthy friendships to build a true friendship: solidarity, generosity, without judging the other, where they communicate, are honest and help each other.

My last favorite at this level is undoubtedly the first season of “Scream Queens”. openly retelling the aesthetics of teen movies starring mean girls and which I mentioned at the beginning of this article. The whole series turns into ridicule and exaggerates the excessive line of these female characters who become gross and ridiculous. But the interest of Screen Queen is to have taken advantage of this caricature openly explicit to play thoroughly on the map of the girl power. By resuming the ultra-pop, glamorous and marked aesthetic of this movement, but also showing manipulative and calculating girls who are capable of physical violence and most importantly, to team up with each other when it comes to tackling a sexist guy. Here, empowerment becomes central and this girl power is an important element of their relationship. Yes, they can be detestable to each other, but when it comes to ganging up on the oppressor and putting him in his place, they manage to stay together. A scene of scream queens is downright cult at this level. The side girl power is pushed to the end, making the whole a little grotesque but the issue of substance, the fact to rise to protect against sexism is the trigger.

And sincerely, I hope that other series of the genre will follow, whether humorous or dramatic. It seems to me that there is a lot of things to do with this type of characters. It is necessary to show more seriously their wickedness without glamorizing it, but also not to make a cliché sexist and uninteresting where we fail to perceive the ins and outs of their motion background. However, a nasty character can be exciting and fascinating if you know how to master it and explain this wickedness. There are lots of perspectives, questions about power, women’s violence and women in general that are possible. And I have the impression that some series begin to finally understand these different subtleties.