Okay, so pretty much the only thing I know about radical feminism is that it includes GC, centres women, and considers prostitution and porn harmful. I have read one or two GC/anti-TRA books but nothing that delves into any other radfem views.
I am not too sure where I stand politically on some issues such as hijab/niqab, porn etc as I am not informed enough on many of these subjects to have my own opinions or awareness (beyond the obvious) and have grown up quite sheltered whilst hearing things like "Sex work is work" without giving it much thought.
I suppose Germaine Greer would be a good starting point?
Any recs about important feminist issues such as FGM, child "widows" (and similar such as the history of kumaris and devadasis) would be appreciated also. I am particularly interested in S Asia and Australia but happy with anything.
FWIW I've read 18 Months by Shannon Thrace and Born in the Right Body by Isidora Sanger.
I love Killing Eve so much.
Hanna on amazon prime would be a great one to add. Action/Drama. "Hanna is an extraordinary girl who has been raised in the forest, evading the relentless pursuit of an off-the-book CIA agent." I just finished the second season and it has a mainly female cast. It's based on the movie Hanna with Saoirse Ronan.
Dead to Me on netflix. Dark comedy. "Jen's husband recently died in a hit-and-run, and the sardonic widow is determined to solve the crime. Optimistic free spirit Judy has recently suffered a tragic loss of her own. The ladies meet at a support group and, despite their polar-opposite personalities, become unlikely friends."
Legend of Korra on netflix. Adventure/Drama animated show. Follow up to the show Avatar.
Thanks for this list!
Dead to Me season one was incredible! I want to see so many more complicated female friendships on screen like that.
Supergirl
Jessica Jones with an unnecessary TIM the last season
The Killing
The first season of Top of the Lake the second one doesn't know if it is in favor or against the sexual and reproductive exploitation of women and has an unnecessary TIM among the prostituted women like if he was one of the girls and their prostitution was like the one of women and not like other gay men.
The first season of The handmaid's tale
Anne with an E
Z: The Beginning Of Everything
Bomb girls
Home fires
Agent Carter
The Bletchley Circle
Good Girls Revolt
Russian Doll
Dietland with another unnecessary TIM who goes against what the series is supposedly defending 🤷♀️
Glow is very libfem like OITNB🤷♀️
Grace & Frankie: Grace Hanson and Frankie Bergstein, two unlikely friends who are brought together after their husbands announce they are in love with each other and plan to get married.🤨🙄
So, did you like Glow? I've seen quite contradicting reviews, so can't decide
It's high production and incredibly entertaining to watch imo. It's not going to go down in history but it has a great soundtrack and an interesting enough story. The setting is probably the most engaging part of it. It definitely had some moments I'd rather just fast forward through though
Oh no, why only the first season of The Handmaid's Tale? (I haven't seen it)
The Handmaid's Tale is one of the best examples of female storytelling in TV/film I've ever seen in my whole life, and one of the best shows ever, regardless of sex. It is an incredible show. I almost didn't watch it because I hate watching depressing shit, but it is an extremely compelling drama that makes you feel like you live in her skin...you stay on the edge of your seat rooting her, watching her progress and covertly make waves....you're completely immersed and invested. The amount of depth they've given this female character is unmatched by anything else you'll find, anywhere. This is 100% a feminist show, and it's shocking how feminist it genuinely is in this cultural climate. It depicts female oppression in a way that I've never seen displayed to me on screen, but know intimately. Between the small, daily, injustices that come from the men (and complicit women that are a little higher on the hierarchy) and the varied systems of male control. I don't think I've ever seen a show that displays how class dynamics so well. This is a show that liberal feminists accuse of being not intersectional enough...that's how female oppression centered this show is.
It pretty much turns into torture porn as it keeps going. I watched most of season 2 before asking myself "wait a minute, why do I want to watch these women humiliated, degraded and tortured?". Completely lost the point the first season was making and kinda turned into what it was criticizing.
I loved Bletchley Circle! They had such a great attitude and just got on with things. :)
I was so disappointed with the second series of Top of the Lake but oh the first!
I'll add Jane the Virgin. Comedy. Netflix. Soapy, but tongue-in-cheek about it. I've never seen a show with such a great, complex mother-daughter-grandmother relationship running through every season. There are complicated female friendships, where conflicts get resolved by talking and crying on the bathroom floor, which I find very relatable. There are complex story lines about immigration, a character gets cancer and goes through chemo (which I've never seen portrayed in TV that way), and a number of other things I don't hear talked about.
I hate that all the women have to look perfectly done up all the time in that Hollywood way, and there's some other problems with it from a feminist lens. But all in all it's a really sweet show with complex female characters who have complex relationship with each other, and I love to see that.
Edit: apparently my word of the day is "complex".
Reversing Roe [Documentary] - Small history on abortion rights in the United States. Relevant considering worldwide efforts to undermine abortion rights.
Feminists: What Were They Thinking? [Documentary] - What it was like to be a feminist in the United States several decades ago. Pictures, footage, and interviews of women in the movement. Powerful film.
A Secret Love [Documentary] - The true story of an old lesbian couple with pictures and interviews of the people involved. Very heartwarming.
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries! Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like - a PBS series about a glamorous 40ish woman in 1920's Melbourne who solves mysteries while wearing beautiful outfits and enjoying a variety of handsome men. She adopts a young girl off the streets, encourages a timid maid to be independent, and her best friend is a lesbian doctor who honestly deserves her own spin-off series.
Big LIttle Lies, drama (think it's HBO?)
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
I've been binging this lately and I forgot just how obsessed everyone was with prairie stuff in the early 90s. I love it!
Anyway, it's a fantastic show about a female doctor in 1867 who moves to the "wild west" and has to prove herself to a town that doesn't take women doctors seriously.
It features a swoon inducing Tuxedo Mask love interest I like to call "Buckskin Hatchet", plus a colorful cast of interesting supporting characters. Topics like menstruation, pregnancy, and women's rights are routinely covered.
Russian Doll is a comedy/drama on Netflix about a woman caught in a Groundhog Day-esque loop. The show was written and directed, and I believe produced, entirely by women.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt comedy on Netflix, it’s fun and lighthearted, centers on mostly female characters (as well as several female writers.) It’s been a while since I watched it so I don’t remember if there was anything offensive or misogynistic from a radfem perspective but I doubt it.
Stargirl
She-Ra
His Dark Materials
Teenage Bounty Hunters
Harley Quinn
Dickinson
Faking It
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Orange Is The New Black
South Of Nowhere
Pen15
Home Before Dark
The Babysitter's Club
Two Weeks To Live
Batwoman
I loved the books as a kid, but The Babysitter’s Club has drunk the TRA kool-aid. Kai Shappley is in it.
The Bad Mom's movie series on netflix.
On hulu there's a decent show called Bunheads.
The Worst Witch on Netflix is a new tv show doing a revival of an old one. It's an all girls witch school. I loved it.
The Wilds is a good one. It explores different radfem topics, but the one flaw is the really bizarre premise.
The show is about a group of teen girls who are stranded on an island and must work together to survive.
They put a lot of effort into adding depth to the characters involved, showing the backstory of each of the girls in a way that relates back to the unfolding events on the island.
(spoilers ahead!)
The Wilds hits this point for me where it's so close to being great, but like you said, big flaw with the bizarre premise that's so glaring it kinda ruins the rest of it. Which is a shame, because the details are so well done, and the individual backstories are great (FINALLY a teenage girl with an eating disorder not based on wanting to look pretty), and I watched the whole thing expecting some big reveal at the end that would make it all make sense because the bits revealed episode by episode about What's Really Going On made no sense and there had to be a better What's Actually Really Going On reveal at the end.... but alas, disappointment.
Thanks Lilith. Could you please edit your post and use the 'spoiler' format. It is the little shaded box. Or you can use the following code: >! sentence you want to spoiler !<
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P.S. Thanks for that insight - I have this on my watch list!
Y'all...I don't know how we've missed The Handmaid's Tale. It is the most feminist show of all time, and it returns for a new season this April. Amazing show.
Good Girls is another one of my favorite shows. Good writing...centers around 3 women's lives that get somewhat accidentally entangled in crime....it's a sort of forced digging yourself deeper into a hole type of scenario, an endless chain of events and consequences that have to be worked around. It manages to be compelling, thrilling, in depth and even light and humorous. Highly recommend.
Now, my thoughts on a few more of these shows...
Glow: Good premise and start. The writing seemed to really fall off as time went on, particularly the very last season. I like the main character, but they didn't develop her character enough, let alone any of the other women. It gets kind of boring. The show also has a bunch of scenes focusing on women's asses and bodies while they wrestle. Too much unnecessary time is dedicated to Marc Maron's character. He's not particularly interesting, and they give no reason for the audience to like him at all....not in a good way.
Insecure: Again, not enough character development, irrelevant male centering, underhanded sexism. If you watch Issa's Awkward Black Girl web series, the premises were a lot more interesting and funny with more internal monologue. There's no "Insecure" or awkward about Issa's character...not enough life situations that help connect the audience to Issa's character. It's like we're watching her experience situations, but not giving us enough on her thoughts/feelings. But worse than anything, the way men on this show treat women and the centering of men on this show, particularly Issa's ex. We keep getting forced regular checkups every season on Lawrence, a man she broke up with in season 1, throughout all 4 seasons, even though he's an irrelevant character. He's an asshole, but it seems like they keep trying to portray him as if he's a good guy. The other dude she hooks up with in the 1st season...same problem. Irrelevant, not particularly likable, little character development, he's old news, but he keeps being brought back. Why? Can't they do like Sex and the City and show her dating various men, each episode having it's own topic/issue/etc and stop showing us these same irrelevant men that bring nothing to the table?
With Molly's character, the storyline keeps implying that she somehow scares men off, insinuating that she's doing something wrong, even though the last man she dates seems like a game player and not particularly special or thoughtful, yet the audience is supposed to see him as a good guy she's scaring off. I can't stand the moralizing of low value men on this show and the expectations of the women having to be told X, Y, and Z to keep a man and the men just existing as subpar boyfriends.
There was also an episode that seemed like it was written straight from a man's porn fantasy. They depict two white women coming onto Lawrence because they're desiring of big, black dicks, so they have a threesome with him. Yeah, that's not a reality, that is a porn storyline. They frame it in a way where it seems like they're implying Lawrence is sexually objectified....give me a fucking break. It's not a reality. Women are not obsessed with dicks. Women are not obsessed with black dicks. Women are not obsessed with big dicks. Your dick is not a novelty. That's mostly white men paying for porn of black men with massive dicks fucking tiny, white women to death, not white women. But nice misogynistic spin, Insecure.
The Great on Hulu is excellent. It was created by one of the writers who worked on the similarly awesome, woman-centered movie The Favorite, which I recommend as well.
It's a period drama and dark comedy loosely based on Catherine the Great of Russia and her rise from a naive, romantic girl to a strong and wise leader. The often anachonistic humor is on point and hilarious, frequently taking feminist jabs at the time and setting. I recall one moment where Catherine is talking with a friend and there's an exchange like, "I just believe God has great plans for me..." / "Why did he make you a woman then?" / "I don't know. Comedy, maybe?"
Catherine has a fantastic character arc and while some romance is present she avoids being swept away by it. The show actually makes a point of expressing that relationships are often transient and she needs to prioritize herself and her personal goals rather than throwing everything away for one flawed man. The other women on the show are all interesting and unique characters too. You have noblewomen struggling to exert power due to their restrictive roles in addition to Peter's aunt who seems flighty at first but is actually a shrewd and pragmatic leader in her own right. There are some disturbing subjects it touches on since it doesn't shy away from the misogyny of the time, such as marital rape and assault. But these moments aren't explicit and always framed from the women's point of view. While it treats them seriously it also aptly uses humor to show Catherine's resiliency and cut down the control her abusers attempt to exert, exposing them as the weak and cowardly individuals they are.
Girls was really good. People seem to really hate Lena Dunham, but I loved that show.
The Affair was also pretty good. I was disappointed in a lot of ways with how it turned out, but overall I enjoyed it. The POVs of the main female characters were especially compelling.
No Offence
I'm currently on season 2 and may end up staying up all night to finish it and season 3. It's got a dry type of humor and the characters are amazing and real. The review below talks it up better than I can.
I didn't like the American remake of The Killing but I loved the original Danish one (called Forbrydelsen).
I used to like Bitten (werewolf show) and my friend adores Harley Quinn (the bits I've seen are hilarious) and Motherland: Fort Salem. I haven't watched those last two but they are on my list.
Way back I remember getting to watch Xena, Buffy, and La Femme Nikita (Peta Wilson) each week and thinking TV was going to be dominated by kickass women soon and then... suddenly they were again relegated to legal or hospital dramas and romantic comedies. Pfft.
Thanks for the thread! Another one Charmed reboot (CW)
One day at a time - Netflix There is one non-binary charactet starting from season 2, but I still love the show. Tge jokes are really funny and they joke about sexism abd misogyny a lot
I've only seen the trailer in passing, but Work in Progress (comedy) on Showtime is about a Butch woman
Little Fires Everywhere (drama, Hulu)
A Black Lady Sketch Show (comedy, HBO)
The 40 year old version (comedy, Netflix) sorry this is a movie, I didn't realize this was for tv only
I've just watched the first three episodes of Derry Girls, and it's hilarious. Here are my additions to your list:
Orphan Black, science fiction, about a woman who discovers she is one of many clones. Tatiana Maslany plays all the clones and she is brilliant. I don't think this show passes the reverse Bechdel test (two men having a conversation which is not about a woman). On Amazon Prime.
Wynnona Earp, fantasy/horror with humor, about a great-grandaughter of Wyatt Earp who has inherited some magical abilities and battles demons, zombies etc. The relationship between sisters is central to the show. The first 3 seasons are on Netflix.
i miss orphan black. i love it so much!
OB was fantastic. Tatiana Maslany did such a mind bogglingly good job. In those scenes where the sisters tried to impersonate one another I was always especially amazed by her acting ability!
I absolutely love Orphan Black. In my opinion, it's a masterpiece in many ways. I miss watching it!