Femininity and Women'S Labor in U.S. Broadcast Crime Programming, 1945-1975
Subsequent Statement of Responsibility
Jaramillo, Deborah L.;Rzepka, Charles J.
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Boston University
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
2020
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item
574
DISSERTATION (THESIS) NOTE
Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree
Ph.D.
Body granting the degree
Boston University
Text preceding or following the note
2020
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
You Don't Have to Be a Bad Girl to Love Crime uses archival research, textual analysis, and industrial and cultural studies frameworks to re-evaluate women's representation in post-World War II American radio and television crime dramas. It complicates popular and scholarly understandings that postwar broadcasters simply responded to audience desires by marginalizing women across their schedules and removing recurring female characters from crime dramas altogether. Rather, the three major networks (NBC, CBS, and ABC) that dominated the broadcast industry's transition from radio to television joined conservative religious and anti-communist groups to silence public debate over women's roles. While late-1940s network radio programming incorporated varied opinions about postwar women's desire and potential to expand their influence in the workplace and politics, postwar television naturalized a vision of passive housewives embracing husbands' patriarchal authority. Women who chose to fight crime challenged this authority by claiming the right to enforce the law and judge their fellow citizens.