Marching Forward with #MeToo: The Representations of Women in American Political Television Series

Abstract

One year has passed since the #MeToo movement started to spread on social media in October, 2017. This powerful movement has connected women not only in the United States but also around the globe to form a strong alliance to renegotiate women’s roles and status in contemporary society in which sexism and misogyny are becoming a rising trend and women are challenged by the threat of sexual assault and harassment in the workplace. In the recent October issue of The Economist, a front-page op-ed puts forward that #Metoo “is not about sex so much as about power—how power is distributed, and how people are held accountable when power is abused” (“#MeToo, One Year On” 13). In the world of law and politics, such biased power distribution between men and women is even more apparent. Struggling at the periphery of legal and political fields, women have been challenged by gender stereotypes and have been insulated from power and leadership. Over the past decades, American women have made significant progresses in legal and political professions. In the 2018 election, Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland became the first two Native American women elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. More and more women politicians rise up to seize power, subvert the malecentric system, and, therefore, provide real-life examples for numerous American television series featuring women’s advancement in law and politics.

The present article aims to investigate the representations of women in two American political television series—House of Cards (Netflix, 2013-2018) and The Good Wife (CBS, 2009-2016)—by tackling one major question, namely, the representations of women and how they deal with the sexual assault cases. In particular, the analysis concentrates on the female rape victims (including one female politician) who have experienced sexual assault, and women lawyers who represent and help the female rape victims. By focusing on the rape-centered episodes in these two television dramas, this article also attempts to connect with some real-life incidents, for instance, the #MeToo movement, so as to contemplate existing problems with respect to women’s empowerment, gender equality, sexual misconducts, and social justice in and beyond legal and political fields.