Having been home sick for a few days, I have had the dubious pleasure of viewing some daytime TV. I find most of the shows quite bizarre-take for example “Jerry Springer”: he seems to thrive on showing us the sordid side of life-he even solicits people to air their most sordid affairs on TV. For example, he had an assortment of women who were having affairs behind their husband’s backs-and showing off in front of these men. Since these shows are targetted to a mainly female audience, I have to conclude that many women like to revel in the misfortunes ofothers…they appear to like seeing terribly gross things revealed in public!
Another popular sjhow-“DIVORCE COURT”, in which divorcing couples recite the reasons for the breakdown of their marriages in nauseating detail. So, do women really like this?
I don’t know about Jerry Springer, but I do get a kick out of soap operas because their target audience is women, and they do not at all paint women in a nice light.
Women on soap operas kill their ex-husbands, have kids with men other than their husbands, drug men into sleeping with them so they can trick their sister’s fiance into thinking he fathered their child but it was really his half-brother who did the deed (Days of Our Lives, anyone?), plot the murder a high school girl along with an old witch who lives next door because the intended victim’s amnesia from the first attack isn’t preventing her from getting back together with the boyfriend she had but the other girl wants (Passions), dump their boyfriend of years to become a stripper and sleep with the strip club owner but forget to tell their boyfriend about all of this because she was reliving the time her mother dumped her ex-boyfriend (General Hospital).
Not that the men on soaps are any less evil, but I wonder why women want to see other women be that devious.
nooooooooohhh, I’m a woman, and I cannot abide sopas or reality tv or “talk” shows like Jerry Springer.
I believe there are more shows like JS’s show out there…glad I never watched them.
I think it’s more a social class that’s represented in those shows than a gender.
On other days you’d find men doing the dirt on their wifes, and spreading it out on TV…
It seems to be about empowerment. Not necessarially using that power to hurt others, as a sadist would, but having that power in the first place. Imagine you were a housewife who had nothing better to do than watch these shows, would you want to live vicariously through empowered women(even if they used that power for selfish and devious means) or would you rather live vicariously through disenfranchised women who never get to do anything interesting?
The power each woman in those shows wields seems to be the attraction, not necessarially the use they put the power to.
Enjoy,
Steven
Why assume that it’s just WOMEN at home in the daytime? Rather a 1950s assumption?
I can think of quite a few social groups who are potential daytime tv fodder, apart from mothers of young children and professional ‘housewives’,
eg: unemployed people, students, the retired and elderly, the mentally ill, the disabled, writers, journalists, drug-dealers, gangsters, novelists, nightclub workers, ‘resting’ actors, shift-workers, sex-workers…for starters. Hardly an all-female collection.
Are the majority of soap opera viewers male or female?
I don’t think it’s sadism as much as it is voyuerism.
Watching soap operas is a bit like looking into the lives (albeit fictional) of others. I think a lot of women are naturally interested in the love-lives of others, either as comparison, or fantasy. Soap operas let you peek into other people’s lives. You see them eat, sleep, make love, and cry . . . everything except going to the bathroom. You also see the glamour of being fabulously wealthy, working in a high-status buisness occupation (but not actually WORKING to the extent where you can’t get up and leave for the rest of the day if your social life demands it,) and people with perfect hair who never wear the same outfit twice.
The voueryism aspect is even stronger on “freak-show” daytime talk: these people reveal the most intimate details of their lives. Middle class people in comfortable, stable lives can watch and feel especially seperate from “the other half.” There’s also the shock factor, or “how horrible can these people actually behave?” You’re watching people behave in ways you would never dream of doing yourself. For some, there’s also that faint aspect of pity: who are these people who would air their dirty laundy before the entire country for no compensation other than the fleeting glory of appearing on TV?
A couple of things I’ve always pointed out to friends.
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When a man tries to go after a woman on the Jerry Springer show, the security crew always jumps to hold him back. When a woman goes after a man, she’s allowed to get some swings in before she’s restrained.
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When a woman who was cheating on her boyfriend is brought out on the stage of the Rikki Lake show, the primarily female crowd applauds. Cheatin’ men are booed, on the other hand.
How sure are you that it’s mainly women watching TV in the daytime? I’m a housewife, and I don’t have the time or inclination to watch TV during the day. How’bout unemployed, uneducated guys? Aren’t there any of them watching?
I agree that it’s about the voyeurism–and primetime TV has become plenty voyeuristic as well.
Having also just had a few days at home ill, during which I admit I watched a bit of daytime TV, I have to wonder at the target audience for this type of show.
I was watching “Trisha” - guest was a 17 year old girl who wanted to have a baby (apparently because all her friends have babies and she feels left out when they shopping for cute baby stuff). She intended the father to be her boyfriend. He’s in prison. She didn’t know how long he’d be in prison for. She had no job, no home of her own and no formal educational qualifications. Yet she remained adamant that she would support the baby emotionally and financially. As they say across the pond, “go figure”.
These daytime freak shows are engineered to be as bizarre as possible. I’d not be surprised to discover that the majority of these situations actually use actors paid to pull off these stunts.
I am trying to imagine any housewife, at all, anywhere, who truly has nothing better to do than watch TV. I know quite a few housewives, and most of them are busier than I am, and I work full-time.
Anyway. Lissa, right on. I think you’ve captured it perfectly.
And beyond that, let’s look at prime time television, shall we? Most of those shows, if not targetting men directly, at least assume that their viewership has a large male component. And those shows often feature gruesome murders, shoot-outs, betrayals, back-stabbing, family quarrells, infidelity, legal battles, etc., etc. Are we to assume that because shows like Law & Order, C.S.I., NYPD Blue, Survivor, Fear Factor and others feature one or more of the elements above, that men must be sadists?
People of all stripes get off on escapist entertainment. As far as I can imagine, I will never kill anyone. I will never investigate a murder. I will never be completely beautiful and put-together at all times, while running a business empire and cheating on my husband with my stepfather’s brother and faking a pregnancy. I will never scheme to bilk someone out of their money. I will never eat goat testicles to win $50,000. But, shows about people who do those things are interesting. I don’t enjoy the suffering of real people, but I enjoy protrayals of human struggle, intrigue, violence, sex, love because I am a human being and like to see what other humans, real and imagined, are up to.
Women aren’t naturally sadistic any more than are the millions of men who play bloody video games, write and read grisly novels and go to movies where countless things are blow’d up.
I dont think that all women are naturally sadistic.
They just seem that way because theyre so good at it…
now now ladies …dont hurt me!!