Backlash and girl power

The contradictory developments in women's lives - increased participation in paid employment despite Tory insistence on "family values" - since the 70s have a parallel in the changing portrayals of women in popular film and television. Sexism remains depressingly evident in the media: look at the scantily-clad women who drape themselves over TV quiz show prizes. The return of Miss World to British TV after years of absence is perhaps one of the most striking examples of the anti-feminist backlash. Despite such imagery, though, and while they are undoubtedly guilty of stereotyping feminists as generally man-hating and unattractive, the popular media have nonetheless assimilated some feminist ideas.

This article deals with some key portrayals of women in popular film and television since the 1970s women's movement. It doesn't deal with the whole debate - an important one in media studies - about how audiences relate to film and television programmes and the question of to what extent "alternative" meanings (that is, meanings other than those intended by the producers) can be derived by viewers from the media. But it is important to remember that it isn't just the producers of film and TV whose work has been influenced by feminist ideas, but also the people watching.

Historically, the ideas of successful movements have had an enormous impact on the cultural life of the societies they have affected. And the counter-cultures created by revolutionary movements are often subsequently adopted into the mainstream. Myra Macdonald, writing about the representation of women in popular culture, says of the images of women in advertising:

"Advertisers in the later 1980s and 1990s happily made use of concepts that had acquired new status thanks to the feminist and other civil liberties movements. 'Freedom', 'independence' and 'pleasure'... were reduced to matters of lifestyle and consumption." She cites the Peugeot 106 ad - a take-off of Thelma and Louise in which two women friends take to the road in their new car - as a prime example. It is far from being the only one.

For straightforwardly bourgeois feminists, that is, those who believed that all that was necessary for women's liberation was equality under the capitalist system, the election in 1979 of Britain's first woman Prime Minister was something to celebrate. Margaret Thatcher was a symbol of women's achievement, her election a triumph of feminist struggle. A similar attitude was evident around the 1997 General Election, when the number of women MPs topped 100 (out of 659) for the first time. The fact that those women went on to cut benefits to lone mothers was neither here nor there to some: their very existence was, apparently, a victory.

The Tory ideology of enterprise, materialism, the power of the free market, not surprisingly found their reflection in the popular icons of the 1980s.

"I am a material girl," sang Madonna. One of the most successful businesswomen in pop, she has accumulated a fortune over the course of a career in which she has repeatedly reinvented her public image. But her up-front sexuality and independence would, surely, have been unthinkable without the feminism which went before.

Perhaps most emblematic of the Thatcher/Reagan years on TV were the soaps Dallas and Dynasty. Ostentatious wealth, shoulder-padded power dressing and bizarre plots held the viewers transfixed. Less blatant, but nonetheless very much of its time was the film Working Girl, in which Melanie Griffith's ambitious secretary impersonates her hospitalised boss, thus pulling off a successful business deal and winning the affections of Harrison Ford. Any woman could make it in this world, you see, if she took advantage of the opportunities available.

Even ten years and more later, the Spice Girls were consciously positioning themselves in the post-Thatcher tradition. "We Spice Girls are true Thatcherites," declared Geri Halliwell in an interview with the Spectator. "Thatcher was the first Spice Girl, the pioneer of our ideology - Girl Power."

Yet the Thatcherites didn't have it all their own way. Alternatives began to seep through into the popular consciousness.

Along with the changing reality of women at work, the media portrayals began to change too. In 1970 The Mary Tyler Moore Show was the first US prime-time TV show to centre around a woman's life at work. The lead character, a woman in a male-dominated workplace, is widely regarded as owing much to the increased consciousness of feminist ideas aroused by the women's movement.

Others followed. Cagney and Lacey, a TV drama about two women police officers, set a trend for a whole series of women investigators on film. Gillian Anderson in the X-Files, Jamie Lee Curtis in Blue Steel, Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs: these characters are working women, and the films - more or less - are based around them doing their jobs. It has become increasingly acceptable for a woman character to occupy the traditional role of hero, to be the motivating force of a drama's developments. A recent example of this would be Jackie Brown in which the traditionally male-dominated gangster genre is reworked with a female lead, who successfully outwits the various men who are trying to exploit her.

Yet although the existence of such women characters is significant, they are still in a minority, as a look through the pages of any listings magazine will demonstrate.

The late 1980s also saw more explicitly feminist issues taken up in the mainstream media. Films like The Accused (1988), about a rape victim and her female lawyer fighting for justice, or Thelma and Louise (1991), a female buddy movie about two friends who go on the run after they kill the man who tried to rape one of them, were both highly acclaimed.

Interestingly, though, both were directed by men: although the number of women directors in Hollywood is slowly increasing, their subjects have not been so explicitly feminist.

Although the number of women at work portrayed on film and TV has increased, most have been clearly middle class. While working class men have long been staple characters for TV programming (Auf Wiedersehen Pet is a good example) their women counterparts are few.

Roseanne is perhaps the most notable example of a working class woman character leading a TV programme. Yet she is situated within the domestic sphere: her partner and family are central to the sitcom. It is hard to think of a comparable British television programme: Sharon and Tracey in Birds of a Feather are obviously working class in background but the series is, again, based around their oddly affluent domestic life. Victoria Wood's latest series, dinnerladies, is set in a women-dominated workplace - but its humour is based on women's gossip: the setting is not at all essential to the narrative.

There are obviously working class women characters to be found in the soaps: Coronation Street, EastEnders, Brookside all have a variety to choose from. But their portrayal as working class women suffers from the peculiarity of the genre that - for narrative interest - tends to make the majority of its characters self-employed or, at least, employed within a limited number of local businesses.

Absolutely Fabulous (1992) was a rare example of a television show centred around women. Its chief characters - Jennifer Saunders as Edina, her mother (June Whitfield) daughter (Julia Sawalha) best friend Patsy (Joanna Lumley) and PA (Jane Horrocks) - stumbled through the bizarre world of high-fashion PR. The few male characters were a side interest, rarely motivating forces in the plot. In those terms it was a refreshing change in TV comedy which, with a few honourable exceptions, remains very largely the preserve of men.

By the mid-1990s the increasing numbers of single and divorced women were receiving some recognition from the media. The US networks had three new series led by single women characters: Cybill, Ellen, and Grace Under Fire. Cybill (Shepherd) plays a divorced actress, whose relationship with her best woman friend is important to the storylines. Ellen became the first lesbian character on prime-time TV. Grace was the only one of these characters to be working class: she worked in an oil refinery and had been a battered wife. Women were no longer required to exist within a traditional family setting - or necessarily be angling to achieve one.

Yet very many women characters still are. Ally McBeal may be a successful lawyer, but the motivation of the series lies in her personal life and her ongoing troubles with men. The cases she deals with reflect this preoccupation. Similarly in the world of publishing, Bridget Jones has been something of a phenomenon. Helen Fielding's thirty-something single diarist, lost in a sea of couples and considering the merits of an office affair, inspired a whole sub-genre of the popular commuter-read "woman in and/or out of relationship" novel. Getting a man, it seems, is still the central issue.

The changing portrayal of lesbian relationships in film and television provides some evidence of progress in the media's attitudes.

The first big openly lesbian feature film, Donna Deitch's Desert Hearts (1985) was an independent production, funded by a grass-roots appeal for funds. In the same year, Steven Spielberg's mainstream film version of The Color Purple (1985) made the lesbian protagonists of Alice Walker's book just good friends.

In Britain it took the campaign against Section 28 to put lesbian and gay issues firmly into the public view. Ironically for a piece of legislation that aimed to force people back into the closet, Section 28 inspired a campaign which dramatically increased their visibility.

And so, a few years later, lesbian chic, for a while, hit the magazines and the TV screens.

Brookside had a lesbian - the avowedly heterosexual Anna Friel as femme Beth Jordache. Emmerdale had one too (although I think she turned out bisexual). EastEnders got in on the act with Della and Binnie - one white and one black lesbian, no less. All were pretty, none wore dungarees.

The lesbian singer k d lang and the definitely-not-lesbian supermodel Cindy Crawford posed together for the cover of Vanity Fair. Time Out was one of many lifestyle magazines to feature this latest fashion.

Even so, after a while it all faded out of view. And mainstream film was decidedly uneasy about the whole business. Sharon Stone's portrayal of a bisexual woman in the thriller Basic Instinct - and the film's general treatment of issues of sexuality - was far from progressive.

The first attempt by the mainstream US TV networks to feature a lead lesbian character didn't come until 1994. Ellen, a sitcom featuring Ellen DeGeneres, a stand-up comedian, came to rely on the joke of its lead character (and the actress playing her) being a closet lesbian. Yet once Ellen (and her character) came out, the show's popularity fell and it wasn't recommissioned. Out lesbian and bisexual women characters remain relegated to supporting (Ross's ex-wife in Friends) or occasionally ensemble (Helen in Drop the Dead Donkey) roles. Gay male characters are becoming more and more acceptable: Queer As Folk focused on three gay men; Gimme Gimme Gimme is a comedy about a gay man and his straight female flatmate. Their female counterparts have a long way to go to catch up.

At the beginning of the 21st century, then, how are we doing? As I have argued, there have been clear gains for women in terms of portrayal in the popular media since the second-wave women's movement. Women's sexuality is more openly discussed than ever before. It has become more and more acceptable - particularly on film - for women to take the "hero" role in drama.

But in the last few years there has undoubtedly also been an increase in overtly sexist material. The Loaded genre of lads' magazine and its televisual post-pub equivalents (like TFI Friday) has, under a thin cover of so-called postmodern irony, rehabilitated old-fashioned Page Three sexism. The new Channel Five has a regular late-night slot for poor quality soft porn. The reappearance of Miss World on our screens is perhaps the clearest indicator of this backlash.

And while men continue overwhelmingly to dominate jobs in the new medium of the Internet and computer technology, who is the woman most associated with the world of computing? Why, one Lara Croft, not, of course, a real person but the cyber-babe star of computer game Tomb Raider, whose iconic status is confirmed by an appearance on the cover of the lads' magazine Loaded.

If there is a revival of feminist ideas in political life, then that may well be reflected in the mass media. Past evidence is that it will be, to some extent. But the experience of the last few years shows that gains can easily fall away when political pressure from women's activism declines and commercial pressure for profit holds sway.