TY - JOUR
AU1 - Petruska,, Karen
AB - Abstract This article argues that television recaps are a unique critical genre that provide uncommon attention to women-targeted content. As an episodic form of critical engagement, recaps provide new opportunities for emerging female writers and writers of color to comment upon television’s representational challenges and successes. As women-targeted media gains new traction in the marketplace, recaps can not only be an important vehicle for needed commentary about undervalued content, but they also may serve as a marker of the value of these programs for a historically underserved audience. Featuring interviews with five recappers and two editors from major entertainment-focused publications including The AV Club, Vulture, Vox, Hello Beautiful, Go Fug Yourself and Buzzfeed, this article explores the recap as a distinct genre with feminist potential to elevate new voices, to disrupt traditional taste hierarchies, and to embrace pleasure as a measure of quality. Introduction: reducing critical distance and taste hierarchies According to a recent count, there are almost 500 original programs airing across the various television platforms, including broadcast, cable, and streaming (Adalian, 2018). In some ways, this is terrific for diverse audiences, assuming that more might mean more diverse. Television remains, however, a medium dominated by white men and their stories, for as critic Maureen “Mo” Ryan has reported repeatedly, television lacks diversity, both in front of and behind the camera (Ryan, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018). More content has seemingly brought more opportunities for female media workers, for there are more programs now featuring women in lead roles, and sometimes these programs are written by and/or directed by women (Deggans, 2017; Ramos, 2018). Representation is more than quantitative data, though, so counting the programs that reach the air is merely one measure of diversity. As scholar Kristen Warner explored in a recent twitter thread, excerpted below (see Figure 1), media studies has tried to explore questions of the camera’s address of the audience though the concept of the female gaze, yet somehow the actual workings of media on and with female audiences remains troublesome to theorize and revolutionize (Warner, 2018).1 This article considers the role of online recaps, or episodic commentary, in providing a consistent and critical space for discussions of televisual diversity by interviewing recappers of women-targeted television. Because we continue to struggle to understand how industry, economy, and culture combine to shape the female audience’s experience of mainstream media, journalistic spaces in which critics and viewers read and discuss become one site of documentation, exploring challenging questions of representation. Figure 1 View largeDownload slide Two tweets from a longer thread about the gaze written by Kristen Warner (@kristenwarner). Figure 1 View largeDownload slide Two tweets from a longer thread about the gaze written by Kristen Warner (@kristenwarner). “Women-targeted” defies easy definition but the term calls attention to the interrelationship of industry and audience, including the industry’s imagined audience (which often follows stereotypical concepts of gender, class, and other demographic markers) and the real audience viewing the program, which may or may not align with industry expectations. Acting as a modifier for media, “women-targeted” assumes that much of media addresses a “universal, unmarked audience” that tends to be white and male, and therefore content aimed at women requires a modifier. This renders so-called universal content as relevant to all, but limits women-targeted content as niche. Moreover, replacing the unmarked audience with an explicitly female one does not necessarily create liberating or satisfying representational images. As feminist scholar Becca Cragin cautions, the fact that a program addresses a female audience does not mean it creates a feminist subject position (2010). Not all women-targeted content is feminist, and not all feminist content is necessarily women-targeted. The term “women-targeted” can therefore be applied to critique industry notions of audience, to celebrate particular examples of audience reception, or to explore the tension that may exist between the two. As employed here, women-targeted focuses more on the tension through the focal object of the recap, which serves as a discursive form of cultural analysis and evaluation. As explored in this article, recaps are a space of potential, where diverse voices may discuss diverse content in new ways. Operating at the intersection of media industry studies (Holt & Perren, 2009) and television studies (Gray & Lotz, 2012; Hilmes, 2007; Mittell, 2009), this article positions the television recap within a broad industrial frame to posit that it is valuable for studies of women-targeted TV to isolate the recap as a distinctive form of criticism. The term “recap” can be hard to define, as well, and it has only existed for a handful of decades, born of the 24/7 news cycle and (seemingly) endless space allotment enabled by the Internet. Recaps typically cover every episode of a focal TV series within a season of television, exploring significant developments of plot or character, and sometimes commenting on or predicting the season’s overall trajectory. They can be found today on a wide-range of websites, but coverage can be deeply inconsistent, with no site covering all programs and with many sites covering some programs only for select seasons (see Figure 2).2 TV recaps may appear on journalistic sites committed to media coverage of all types (Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, TVLine), on sites that cover culture broadly but address a specific audience (Hello Beautiful), or on sites that cover a specific aspect of culture, like the fashion sites Tom and Lorenzo: Fabulous and Opinionated and Go Fug Yourself. When consistent, recaps might even create an archive of commentary for a complete series. Like all forms of critical writing, they vary in their depth and focus, with some operating as summary and others digging deep into cultural analysis. Some sites, like The AV Club, host active comment sections, in which viewers react to the episode, the recap and recapper, and each other.3 As episodic criticism, recaps document reactions to a series as its airs (or as it is consumed, if binged). Figure 2 View largeDownload slide Example of inconsistent seasonal coverage for one long-term series, Grey’s Anatomy. Figure 2 View largeDownload slide Example of inconsistent seasonal coverage for one long-term series, Grey’s Anatomy. Recaps can be evaluative but they are not exclusively or primarily evaluative, unlike television reviews, and this is one reason they are a useful discursive site to explore women-targeted content. In the early days of the recaps’ emergence online, scholars like Myles McNutt issued a clear distinction between the terms “review” and “recap,” to mark the difference between works of deep analysis and works of plot summary (2010). Journalists who have documented the history and popularity of recaps have traced their evolution and expansion, acknowledging their attention to plot summary, their granularity, their often humorous tone, and their role contributing to the sense that television today is better than in the past, achieving a “Golden Age” of content quality (Bliss, 2015; Herman, 2018; Loofbourow, 2014; Morales, 2012; Morrison, 2012). The granularity of recaps, then, provides a detailed consideration of how women’s stories are being told today, and because they are more agnostic about evaluating excellence, programs like Grey’s Anatomy may continue to be covered long after their days of peak popularity and peak quality. Recap coverage may be determined by editors or by recappers who volunteer for particular series, which means which shows get covered can sometimes seem random, but the randomness may also create novel possibilities. This article identifies recaps as a space of opportunity for unexpected programs to be covered or covered in unexpected ways. Recaps are different than reviews, then, but for the purposes of this article, what most distinguishes a recap from a review is time and routine. A recap follows a program every week. It acknowledges television as an episodic medium, with writers breaking down the events of every episode. The writers of recaps follow the audience in viewing and analyzing every week (or every binge session, depending on episode availability). As Allie Pape, a recapper at Vulture, told me, she believes the week-by-week structure works best because “it creates more space for speculation” that increases the viewer’s desire to watch and then read recaps the next week (Allie Pape, personal interview, August 30, 2018). Recaps, in some ways, are more populist than traditional reviews because they do not highlight only the best but instead trace minor rises and dips in the action. They are also populist in the sense that they often cover TV that rarely appear on a “best of” list, including reality programs like Survivor (2000–) or Love & Hip Hop (2010–), or even long-standing comedy series like Saturday Night Live (1975–). Recaps simply provide more space for more commentary—about more episodes, certainly, but also more programs. A full-time professional critic only has so much time and space to view and review, but a recapper commits to an entire season of episodes, sometimes multiple seasons. This article argues that recaps are a unique critical genre that provide uncommon attention to women-targeted content. In short, they have the potential to emerge as a discursive form that provides opportunities for female writers and writers of color to comment upon television’s representational challenges and successes. As women-targeted media gains new traction in the marketplace, recaps can not only be an important vehicle for needed commentary about undervalued content, but they also may serve as a marker of the value of these programs for an historically underserved audience. This attention to recaps is particularly urgent as recaps may be evolving or dissolving as a distinct form of criticism. Journalist Alison Herman argued recently in The Ringer that the television recap appears to be in decline (2018). Speaking with several prominent critics who have played a role in developing the relatively new genre of the recap, Herman associates the recap with other significant shifts within the contemporary TV industry, including peak TV4 (Press, 2018; Rose & Guthrie, 2015), binge culture5 (Mareike, 2016; McNutt, 2016), and complex TV6 (Mittell, 2015). The recap, therefore, is one of several defining characteristics for the contemporary moment of change for television, particularly as it is experienced online. It is not yet clear, though, whether the recap will be a permanent feature of television in the future. Method: recappers, precarity, and marginality To learn more about women-targeted recaps, I interviewed professional recappers from entertainment-focused websites such as Vulture, The AV Club, and Buzzfeed, and their voices appear throughout the discussion below. To select recappers, I focused on major entertainment sites and then identified recappers covering programs that would largely be described as women-targeted.7 For example, Carrie Raisler of The AV Club wrote recaps for The CW’s iZombie (2015–), The Vampire Diaries (2009–2017), The Carrie Diaries (2013–2014), Showtime’s The Affair (2014–), ABC’s Revenge (2011–2015), and ABC Family/Freeform’s Switched at Birth (2011–2017) and The Fosters (2013–2018). While Raisler also recapped CBS’s Survivor (2000–), the majority of her focus was on programs aimed at female audiences, especially young females. Another example is Starr Rhett Rocque of Hello Beautiful, who recaps such programs as Love Is (2018), Love & Hip Hop (many iterations, including Hollywood, NY, ATL, Miami), Power, Real Housewives of Atlanta (2008–), Scandal (2012–2018), Empire (2015–), How to Get Away with Murder (2014–), Insecure (2016–), and more, and she provided useful commentary on black women-targeted content. Allie Pape of Vulture, Sylvia Obell of Buzzfeed, and Heather Cocks of Go Fug Yourself also shared their experiences as recappers. In addition, informants connected me with two editors, Chris Heller of Vulture and Emily Todd VanDerWerff8 of Vox, who provided broader industrial context for staff diversity and other management decisions. Most interviews were conducted over the phone, though two were completed through an emailed set of questions. Though I spoke with professionals, it is important to note that though paid to write about television, many of these writers lack a stable, full-time position as a television critic. Television studies has produced some fine scholarship about the mediating role of the professional critic, positioned at the intersection of journalism, industry, and audience but fully inhabiting none of those spaces (Gray, 2010; Lotz, 2008; Mittell, 2010; Rixon, 2011). These frameworks help account for the critic as a mediating figure, moving between the industry (that provides access to programs, stars, and executives) and the audience (with whom they share their evaluations and recommendations). What these frameworks miss, particularly in terms of recappers, is attention to precarity, something experienced by many of the informants featured here (Curtin & Sanson, 2016). For example, Carrie Raisler worked as a recapper for extra money but now no longer needs that second-stream of income, having secured full-time work in another field. She therefore will soon end her time as a recapper for The AV Club. Allie Pape works full-time as an editor at a San Francisco local news website, and freelances as a journalist and Vulture recapper on the side. Starr Rhett Rocque is a digital content producer, and among her paid side gigs discussing television are her recap work for Hello Beautiful and a job tweeting for Essence magazine. The two editors with whom I spoke are employed full time by their publications, and Heather Cocks is the co-creator of her website, Go Fug Yourself, but both VanDerWerff and Cocks began their culture writing careers as TV recappers. Unlike critics, who tend to be employed full-time with some job security, a recap writer is hired on a temporary basis, paid to write about one program.9 Recappers tend to be lightly edited, they try to post their work as soon after airing as possible, and because they write about every episode, they do not always benefit from advanced screeners. Interestingly, they often receive little feedback from their readers, too. Informants spoke of sending their recaps off into a void, with continuation or cancelation of their coverage the only indicator of relative success. The recapper, therefore, wields the legitimacy of affiliation with an online publication, but this institutional legitimacy is provisional and limited. Rixon frames the professional TV critic as an audience stand-in but one position removed (Rixon, 2011); according to this framework, the recapper would be positioned further from the privileges of the critic and therefore even closer to the regular viewer. From another perspective, if the full-time critic inhabits the masculinized position of security, the recapper inhabits the feminized position of precarity, leveling the assumed authority of the recapper. The writers spotlighting women-targeted content, then, are often themselves marginalized. Women-targeted television gains a sort of legitimacy in the recap space—earning attention for this content—but the layers of marginalization qualify this success. Recaps and female voices From their origin, recaps have spotlighted women-targeted TV, including especially programs that were unlikely to earn praise from professional critics, and they also provided new outlets for young female writers to develop their critical insights. One of the first programs to be recapped was Dawson’s Creek (1998–2003), the uber-text for Television Without Pity (TWOP) creators, Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting (Morales, 2012). With its soap opera-like embrace of teen angst and romance, Dawson’s was decidedly “women targeted,” as was the network that gave it a home, the WB (Andrejevic, 2008). Perhaps important to note, then, was the tone of TWOP, which included a good deal of humor, an affectionate mockery when the programs failed to live up to expectations. This “snarky” tone perhaps gave cover to the recappers to indulge in discussions of this undervalued programming, but it nevertheless also confirmed that the content could withstand such intense scrutiny while continuing to provide pleasure to viewers. Television Without Pity also featured writers—often female writers—who became known for their distinctive voices, which created a brief heyday of the recapper being the attraction, even more than the program (Herman, 2018).10 Some of these women have gone on to become full-time professional cultural critics, including NPR’s Linda Holmes and Go Fug Yourself founders Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, and their work inspired other female critics like Emily Nussbaum at The New Yorker. Television Without Pity helped produce a generation of female critics through its approach to recapping TV; beyond that site, the recap—as a distinct genre—has become a space where diverse new writers can get their start. According to the interviews I conducted, sites like Vulture and The AV Club set out to diversify their staff through the hiring of recap writers. When it wanted to expand the demographics of its audience, for example, Allie Pape shared that Vulture hired more women and writers of color to recap TV shows, providing a space in which those writers could mature as critics in their weekly posts. Editor at Vulture, Chris Heller, explained why recaps can nurture young writers: “we definitely look for writers who want to develop their voices and haven’t had the chance to do so elsewhere. The best recaps are driven by strongly defined voices and perspectives” (Chris Heller, personal correspondence, September 22, 2018). Emily Todd VanDerWerff led a similar diversification effort for The AV Club’s TV review site. An anecdotal finding shared by VanDerWerff suggests these efforts to diversify staff and program coverage produced the desired results: attracting a more diverse audience. The editors found that “if you build it, they will come,” for once the site expanded beyond its traditional programming focus, the site’s readership among women increased “by some tremendous number, I don’t remember, something like 200%” (Emily Todd VanDerWerff, personal interview, September 26, 2018). Without losing its male readers, then, the site was able to attract a female audience through women-targeted recaps who would then sample other content. VanDerWerff did qualify The AV Club’s success by admitting the site largely did not build a roster of writers of color to recap diverse content, and therefore did not grow its readership with those audiences. Women who joined The AV Club as recappers, like Carrie Raisler, nevertheless found the change palpable. Raisler perceived that “it was a culture shift, for the site, and for the readers of the site and for the commenters. It was a huge cultural shift” (Carrie Raisler, personal interview, August 28, 2018). This was not merely additional content, then, but rather a reworking of the site’s more masculine DNA. Although mainstream entertainment sites have been trying to expand their coverage of women-targeted TV, it is minority-targeted sites like Hello Beautiful where recaps of programs featuring black casts dominate content. For recapper Starr Rhett Rocque, it is important that her recaps be fun, and she inserts gifs throughout as a sort of commentary on the action. But Rocque is also aware of how some might disparage reality TV, so she hopes her recaps prove that “someone smart” can enjoy ratchet culture (Starr Rhett Rocque, personal interview, August 22, 2018). The fact of her effort in covering these shows is a testament to the value she, and other viewers, find in the programs. This echoes an editorial written by scholar Racquel Gates in the New York Times. Writing about why she appreciates VH1’s reality series Love & Hip Hop (2010–), Gates argues that programs like this “aren’t fluff—they’re subversive, self-aware and capable of depicting the complexities of women of color in nuanced ways” (2018). Gates doesn’t merely enjoy the series because it is fun or easy to watch. Rather, she performs intellectual work when watching this show. Rocque’s recaps, similarly, try to give reality TV shows that address a black audience their due, reflecting that they are a weekly ritual for many, creating the stuff of daily cultural life that fuels debates about identity and value. Rocque also described a mutually beneficial relationship with her writing on Twitter, believing that her audience will follow her from there to Hello Beautiful and back.11 The idea of women-targeted content belies the fact that not all content addresses all women equally—programs featuring African-American women are covered by recaps much less frequently than programs featuring white women. Scholar Jess Butler addresses this discrepancy as a larger problem within feminism, condemning the ways post-feminist discourse imposes a form of white supremacy. Butler observes that this discourse not only tends to focus on white lady texts, but it even “[works] to exclude women of color and reproduce racial inequality by producing (Western) whiteness as a cultural norm” (2013, p. 47). In her discussion of three women-targeted programs, scholar Caitlin Benson-Allott echoes Butler by demonstrating that television’s version of girl power continues to sideline women of color. Analyzing Insecure, I Love Dick (2016), and GLOW (2017–), Benson-Allot finds that only Insecure features truly intersectional feminism rather than merely a white-woman version of feminism (2017). Recaps for sites like Hello Beautiful expose the inconsistencies in mainstream coverage of black woman-targeted content, while also suggesting the embodied and lived experience of the writers covering these programs produces distinctive recap content. For example, while VanDerWerff proudly explained The AV Club was covering Scandal well before other site’s caught on to the fact that it was going to be a phenomenon, she also admitted with some chagrin that they had a white man covering it. Having a person of color discussing content that targets minority audiences creates a needed addition to the discourse about that television, and any consideration of women-targeted TV must account for the gaps in minority-targeted content. Recaps can be a vehicle to fill gaps in coverage because the writers are hired to cover specific content. For a show like Issa Rae’s black-women focused series for HBO, Insecure (2016–), then, having recappers of color elaborates the complexities of representation in an industry that still demands universal appeal. In her writing about Insecure, scholar Kristen Warner addresses Rae’s challenge of speaking at once to a “universal” (read: white) audience while also containing enough specificity to call out to the black audience who will read more deeply into the show. Warner writes, “At every level of Insecure’s construction, the series makes sure to speak to two audiences simultaneously: from its title that is inclusive in a way that the invisible but normatively understood (white) Girls never attempted to be” (2016). Unlike the resident, full-time critic, who (historically) tries to address ALL content, a recapper develops a personal approach to a specific program and therefore is well positioned to explore how effectively Insecure juggles what Warner describes here: the address of a universal and specific audience, all at once. Buzzfeed’s Sylvia Obell developed a recap video series that emerged during season three of Insecure to address the “specificity” Warner highlights above. As a press release for the video series celebrated, Obell’s Hella Opinions is “unapologetically black and culturally aware” (Mills, 2018). She picked the series because it features content that is relatable to Obell as a recapper—as a twenty-something black woman, Insecure is the only show on TV right now representing her day-to-day life (Obell, personal interview, December 14, 2018). I asked if Hella Opinions would cover, for example, Donald Glover’s Atlanta (2016–) on FX, which Obell referenced as another show that explores life as a young black adult, and her reply gets to the heart of what the recap can do for women-targeted TV. Obell questioned whether a female recapper “would do Atlanta its best service.” As a program very much about black male experiences, Obell pondered which voices could best speak to Atlanta’s goals and the point of view of the program. She wasn’t saying that her contributions to a discussion of the show would have no value, and in fact, she thinks a female recapper might provide a useful perspective of the sometimes negative representation of women in Atlanta. On her own show, Obell regularly features one or two male guests discussing Insecure with her. Obell’s question about Atlanta draws attention to a historic and persistent deficit of female and LGBTQI critics and critics of color within cultural criticism. Because recaps can be a space to invite new voices, this article looks to them as the place to feature a diversity of voices who address the increased diversity of perspectives available on TV. When I asked Vulture’s Allie Pape if women-targeted TV needed to be recapped by women, she said, “no,” but she expressed concern that men do not express interest in shows that address a female audience. As an example, she cited Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015–2019), admitting that her friends don’t read her work because they don’t watch the show: “I think if I was writing about Game of Thrones (2011–2019), I could reliably trust that almost everybody I knew would be watching the show and potentially interested in reading my recaps.” Writing recaps for her fashion-focused website Go Fug Yourself, Heather Cocks claims that TV’s increasing attempts to develop sophisticated content aimed at women can perhaps best be evaluated by women. “Coming FROM the audience at which the [media] is intended, sometimes the message is more easily heard” (Heather Cocks, personal correspondence, September 21, 2018). Having women do that work from the perspective of enjoying the show and seeing its value for its target audience becomes its own quality argument. These comments are not arguing that men do not have anything to add to discussions of women-targeted TV, nor are they envisioning a cordoned off space on websites for the “girl shows.” As Allie Pape told me, she would love to recap a major drama at some point, when the opportunity arises. That granted, programs that consciously reject the “universal” and “white” norms of TV benefit from a recapper who can address that intentional construction and potential commentary. There is a difference between assuming women-targeted media will ONLY interest women and acknowledging that programs can invite different types of subject positions, bringing specificity to content that reflects embodied experiences of gender and race in contemporary America. In her work as culture editor for Vox, a progressive site focused on left-leaning policy issues, Emily Todd VanDerWerff has learned that her experience as a white person may not be the most useful critical interpretation for site readers. For example, VanDerWerff didn’t love Crazy Rich Asians (2018) but she knows that for many audience members, representation is the reason to see the film: “I have come around to the thought that I didn’t think this worked about Crazy Rich Asians, but also nobody cares. And that’s fine. Criticism is not about trying to win an argument. It is about trying to have a discussion.” Recaps are not reviews. They do not have to issue a comprehensive evaluation of the media covered. Instead, they are a space to nurture a discussion, particularly when they are created by writers who can provide insight into the pleasures of women-targeted media. Quality and pleasure Up to this point, this article has considered the ways the recap opens doors—for new voices to criticism and the discovery of content that might otherwise be overlooked. When new voices enter, they can expose unspoken norms, like the fact that much of television is white and assumes a universal (straight, male) audience. Another norm that drives much of television criticism is the discourse of quality that often influences which programs earn critical attention, in particular the ways women-targeted TV may suffer when weighed against this quality discourse. Below I explore how quality discourses may disadvantage women-targeted media, with recaps serving as a possible corrective to the lower cultural esteem granted these programs. Giving women-targeted TV the attention of episode analysis affirms that the text deserves that level of consideration. Recaps can also emphasize new terms through which to weigh value, highlighting, in particular, how pleasurable are many of these shows. While not traditionally considered one of the criteria for quality, pleasure serves as a crucial lens through which this content should be evaluated, and its value for audiences should not be underestimated or discarded. Quality is a cultural construct, and it shifts as attitudes towards television change. Recent efforts by scholars to appraise television aesthetics more thoroughly, particularly through a method of textual analysis, have helped scholars expand the possible criticism of television beyond ideological and “use” frameworks (Cardwell, 2006). This was an important step in countering historical degradation of the medium and allows scholars to be more nimble in their interpretive strategies. A similar move has happened in journalistic criticism, with critics trying to describe television’s formal achievements in addition to its cultural value (Seitz, 2015). That said, to apply evaluative frameworks without considering how gendered ideologies undergird the criteria acts as a “politics of admission.” This phrase from Janet Staiger cautions against celebrating texts that reinscribe accepted notions of value yet fail to radically transform understandings of a medium (1985). Television may have a better reputation today than in the past, but women-targeted content hasn’t been credited as much as so-called universal texts, which tend to celebrate white men and their stories. There is an irony to television’s current rising cultural esteem—a medium that was historically derided as a feminine form has been gaining currency by adopting characteristics that frame universal quality through gendered binaries. Television has long suffered a low cultural status, referred to by such negative terms as “the idiot box” or “the boob tube.” Historically aimed primarily at housewives, through the many ads that were meant to guide home purchase decisions, the fact of television’s blatant commercialism has negatively influenced cultural perceptions of it. But these low conceptions almost always implicate the audience as well, blamed for enjoying content aimed at the lowest common denominator. Eileen Meehan addresses television’s bad reputation in Why TV is Not Our Fault, arguing that whereas the audience was often blamed for poor content because they watched it, critics should instead assign blame to the industry, for its tendency to simplify content and underestimate viewers (2005). Television studies, as a field, has worked to counter persistent negative associations with television, as seminal works about soap opera and popular programming assert that there is value not only in the form of the medium but also in the audience enjoying it (Allen, 1985; Brunsdon, 2000; Newcomb, 1974). Historical and contemporary notions of what counts as “quality” content on television often disadvantage women-targeted programming. When VanDerWerff described The AV Club’s effort to cover more women-targeted content, she said it was a shift away from their purported mission to cover “the best” of TV. She did not mean to say none of women-targeted content would be considered “the best,” but it is true that discussions of quality television often reference male-dominated television more than women-dominated television. For example, Alan Sepinwall, a prominent TV critic who got his start as a recapper, explores twelve transformative dramas in his book, The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers, and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever (2013), Of these 12 series, only one of them—Buffy, the Vampire Slayer (1996–2003)—may be called women-targeted. Critic Emily Nussbaum has written about this type of privileging of male stories in her defense of Sex and the City as a crucial text that is frequently left off lists of contemporary Golden Age programs (2013). Despite its HBO pedigree, Sex and the City’s focus on romance and female friendship distinguishes it from the male anti-hero programs so characteristic of quality discourses right now.12 Gendered assumptions underlie how the different forms of media are described and assessed, and while they do not define any natural or inevitable features of the media, expectations about that media can become naturalized. Elana Levine and Michael Z. Newman’s Legitimating Television helps unpack the ways quality discourses tend to reinforce the patriarchal structures upon which most media have depended for legibility—with quality dictated by characteristics like coherence, closure, complexity, and class. Arguing that gender is a classificatory system, Newman and Levine state unequivocally: “that television has been classified as feminine, and thereby as a less worthy, significant, and serious medium, has been a fact of its history” (2012, p. 10). Moreover, as noted above, television’s business model feminized it, for the sponsors who underwrote the programming targeted primarily the homemakers in the audience understood to be the shoppers. In other words, neither film nor television is necessarily consciously produced exclusively for one gender or another, but features of its form and operation have been interpreted or described through gendered language and understandings. This includes notions of excellence, or quality.13 Decisions of what is recappable are also guided by gendered value assessments. When Sepinwall, who started his career by writing recaps about NYPD Blue, explains what it means to be recappable, he prioritizes complexity and points to two texts focused on the male anti-hero: “Sopranos and Mad Men are two of the best shows to write recaps of, because they’re so dense and laden with meaning and subtext and symbolism” (Herman, 2018). Density matters for recaps because the critic assumes there is “enough” to discuss, including plot complications and character development. A dense fantasy program like Game of Thrones is a case in point, spawning two different recaps on The AV Club, one for readers of the source material and one for “newbies” to the series. As VanDerWerff joked, a site could post anything in the hours after Game of Thrones airs and readers will click on it. The fact that these recappable programs tend to feature male protagonists, violent and/or sexual content, and intricate plotting renders these characteristics of quality normative. Carrie Raisler of The AV Club surmises, with no small degree of irony, “The idea of quality is a fake metric. Anything on HBO, Starz, Showtime automatically gets the sheen of quality. For example, Outlander is a swash-buckling, historical romance. And it is a ridiculous show. I mean, I like Outlander, but it gets the quality sheen because it is on Starz and they have a good budget.” In other words, Outlander is women-targeted, which means it embraces feminine modes of narrative, particularly excess and overt emotional displays. The fact that it is considered quality, according to Raisler, doesn’t elevate women-targeted content as much as it exposes the inconsistency of quality assessments. Conscious of the ways women-targeted TV may be undervalued, recappers who focus on these programs often have a sense of mission invested in their work. Writing for The AV Club, Carrie Raisler viewed her work as an argument that women-targeted TV matters: “I think the fact that someone was writing serious, weekly recaps about The Vampire Diaries made people think about that show differently.” Her recaps, hosted on a “dude heavy” site like The AV Club, created a parity between The Vampire Diaries and the so-called “best” of TV featured there. Heather Cocks expressed a similar sense of mission, explaining that her site recapped The CW’s Hart of Dixie (2011–2015), a show about a young, female New Yorker finding work and love in the south, because she and her partner Jessica Morgan, who actually wrote these recaps, thought the program was underestimated and deserved more viewers. As these women describe their work, recaps can counter negative assumptions about the quality or value of a program and its audience. They approach their work with a “generosity” that scholar Hollis Griffin argues can be productive in bridging the gap between ideological and aesthetic analysis (2017). Their work also speaks to an overlooked value of women-targeted television, and a value that scholars have struggled to measure—pleasure. As C. Lee Harrington and Denise Bielby (2005) identify the problem, scholars have traditionally viewed pleasure uncritically as a marker of audience agency or overly critically as evidence only of industry manipulation (2005). With women-targeted media, the problem of pleasure may be more pronounced, particularly when it seems indebted to patriarchal fantasies or other modes that work against gender equality or non-essentialism. Understanding how viewers experience pleasure is an ongoing problematic for feminist scholars, according to Janet McCabe and Kim Akass, and one way to approach the challenges is to embrace a plurality of voices (2006). Recaps promulgate these voices for all the reasons noted above—their shift of emphasis from evaluation to exploration, their use as a means to diversify staff and content coverage, and their lower stakes as an accompaniment for the everyday practices of viewing. Conclusion: the limits of the recap In the days of peak TV, professional critics have had to shift their focus from coverage of all of TV to “curating” television, as Hollywood Reporter critic Tim Goodman calls his new role. About the traditional review, he writes that its importance is lessening, or maybe just time-shifting: “While the review isn’t dead, it’s decidedly less important—although it’s relatively new state of being is evergreen (something I wrote about in the summer of 2017). In that column, I said the premiere and the finale of a series have much less value than they have ever had, which was true then and more true now.” He does not address recaps as a genre, but they fit the viewing modes of the moment. When viewers watch on delayed schedules, they can no longer gather with friends to chat; the recap, therefore, becomes the space where viewers can find program reactions in time with their own viewing patterns. As explored here, recaps can do even more than be a watercooler friend. In the tweet below, scholar Faye Woods expresses frustration that she cannot find a recap written by a woman about HBO’s The Deuce (see Figure 3). While I wouldn’t consider this program woman-targeted, it features a strong and complex female character and documents the rise of the porn industry, which raises question about female agency. Woods’ tweet speaks to a desire to create a shared experience of television viewing, and recaps provide an outlet for this desire. Figure 3 View largeDownload slide A tweet from scholar Faye Woods (@FaybellineW) about David Simon’s The Deuce. Figure 3 View largeDownload slide A tweet from scholar Faye Woods (@FaybellineW) about David Simon’s The Deuce. There are economic challenges that may limit the persistence and growth of the recap as a distinct form. Emiy Todd VanDerWerff explained how recap economics worked when she was an editor of TV coverage at The AV Club, though it is worth noting that her data is historical and therefore may not reflect current metrics at any of the entertainment sites featured here. When VanDerWerff oversaw The AV Club from 2010 through her departure for Vox in 2014, 3,000 page views could sustain recap coverage, with advertising underwriting the costs of the recapper’s freelance fee.14 Five thousand pageviews was the threshold for the site to earn a profit, that it could then put towards increased investments in additional content. Under her management, she did not let numbers alone dictate recap coverage decisions. For example, Raisler’s coverage of Switched at Birth (2011–2018) generally accrued around 3,500 views, and VanDerWerff said she had to fight to justify that program’s continued coverage. As an additional metric, VanDerWerff identified that Raisler’s recaps brought unique visitors—the Switched at Birth viewers came to The AV Club because it was one of the few sites recapping that series, but then they would stay and consume other content. Moreover, these readers were loyal and consistent, returning to the site every week for Raisler’s latest post. But that unique audience wasn’t large, and eventually, the site stopped hosting them, ending Raisler’s recaps for that show. Metrics matter for all websites that earn revenue from ad dollars, so perceptions that women-targeted TV addresses only women may be one reason these recaps struggle for readers. Also troubling for recappers of women-targeted content, the perception that these programs are niche may limit potential audience and therefore limit the longevity of the recap gig, which may narrow the pool of writers eager to do that coverage. This article defines the recap as a distinctive genre with feminist potential to elevate new voices, to disrupt traditional taste hierarchies, and to embrace pleasure as a measure of quality. Rather than conduct a genre analysis of the form, I have tried to sketch the structures that gave birth to and sustain recaps, particularly by talking with writers responsible for creating the work in the first place. The value of the recap highlighted here is the way these writers indulge in a detailed, consistent, generous consideration of television as an episodic medium. Sites can contract writers for one season, which lowers barriers for entry and allows experimentation with programs that may not immediately prove themselves as hits. Interestingly, Sylvia Obell confirmed that text-only recaps have some advantages because as a television show—with all the financial investments that go along with that form—Hella Opinions has to spotlight only those programs that will justify the financial investment. Thus while all entertainment sites have financial goals and metrics to inform coverage decisions, print sites can be more promiscuous than video-based recaps. VanDerWerff now works at Vox, a site that does not publish many recaps, though her own sense of the value of the genre has not diminished.15 As a site focused on cultural politics, Vox has necessitated a shift in VanDerWerff’s decisions of what to cover. She described a three-pronged set of criteria: (a) be something a lot of people want to read about; (b) be really interesting; or (c) be legitimately one of the best things out there—requiring that programs they feature on the site meet two of the three. These criteria provide a frame through which to envision a different set of measures that might support the continued diversification of television. As a thought experiment, how might the discursive landscape of online discourse benefit from recaps for series covered by multiple voices with different perspectives and embodied identities? What series might become most critical to help us expand our thinking about gender or race in America? How might episodic analysis evolve to contemplate the unique experience of television as an everyday medium, particularly as audiences consume it at different times and through different platforms? In terms of the archive, how can sites better support the “evergreen” characteristic of recaps, making them more easily searchable, and how might they address the fact that any longtail interest in a recap doesn’t benefit the writer financially? The above questions work to envision new possibilities, even as the field of criticism seems to be contracting. The traditional economics of journalistic criticism work against a re-positioning of recaps as a discursive space advancing feminist goals of diversity, because their lucre will be questioned. As layoffs in the world of cultural criticism and across the journalistic landscape intensify, the weaknesses of the for-profit business model supporting many of these ventures become more evident (Helmore, 2019; Littau, 2019). But that weakness has also driven a call for reconsidering funding models, and as those conversations increase, the potential for new forms of criticism and audience address may become possible (Boigon, 2017; Rosen, 2019). The weakness has also emboldened some to insist upon the broader social value of cultural criticism, despite the current struggles of the industry (VanDerWerff, 2018). This article testifies to the value of the recap as cultural discourse, attempting to make visible new possibilities even as the ground seems to shift under the feet of all media companies dependent upon advertising dollars. As all viewers struggle to redefine their relationship with a television medium that is expanding in terms of content produced and avenues for distribution, recaps wield feminist potential to upend traditional notions of what critical discourse can, and should, look like. Footnotes 1 Laura Mulvey wrote a canonical but hotly debated essay theorizing the female gaze through Lacan, but many have responded to this essay and expanded it since. For a small selection, see also Doane (1982), Sassatelli (2011), Devereaux (1990), and Benson-Allott (2017). 2 For example, Vulture features an impressive range of recap coverage, but for Grey’s Anatomy, consistently popular in the ratings through its 15 seasons, Vulture has published recaps only for seasons 3–6 and then 12–15. As will be explored in more detail later in the article, recap coverage is inconsistent due to a variety of reasons, including the popularity of the coverage and the availability of a writer interested in covering the program. 3 None of the interviewed recappers featured in this article were mandated to interact in the comments section as part of the job. 4 Peak TV, coined by the head of the FX network John Landgraf, refers to a significant increase in the number of programs airing across broadcast, cable and streaming networks. 5 Binging is a viewing mode enabled by streaming media’s tendency to release an entire season of a program, rendering an entire season of television as capable of being consumed within a 24-hour period rather than over a period of months. 6 Broadly, complex TV refers to a characteristic of serialized programming that prioritizes character complexity and intricate plotting. 7 All of the recappers interviewed ended up being women, but this was not by design but rather availability. Not all of my requests produced willing respondents. 8 VanDerWerff has previously published under “Todd VanDerWerff.” 9 Though hired on an ad-hoc basis to recap one program, many recappers write about multiple programs or even across more than one publication to earn additional cash. 10 The Columbia Journalism Review created a now out-of-date but still insightful geneology of TV critics, which helps to reveal TWOP’s role in making women-targeted TV worthy of a recap and also created a space for female writers to develop their voice and style (Morrison, 2012). 11 The relationship between recaps and twitter commentary requires more exploration than I have space to do here, for Allie Pape viewed Twitter differently than Rocque, calling it competition for audience attention. Sylvia Obell, on the other hand, looked to Twitter to show her what types of content was already drawing the attention of audiences as a guide for what to cover on her show. 12 Sex and the City is also a comedy, a genre that may have to work harder to be defined as quality than a drama. 13 The term “quality” has a rich and troubled history, whether it refers to quality audiences (Alvey, 2004), content (Nygaard & Lagerwey, 2017), networks (Feuer, 1984), or even the tastes of scholars (Hills, 2010). Quality rarely measures any objective criteria, for even the choice of the criteria is influenced by class and education; as Bourdieu found in his audience studies, we like what we learn to appreciate (1984). Whenever the term “quality” is applied to a media text, then, it calls upon a wide range of cultural factors that shape acts of evaluation, including conceptualizations of the meaning of gender. 14 VanDerWerff gave me rough dates for her employment at The AV Club. 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TI - The Recappables: Exploring a Feminist Approach to Criticism
JF - Communication, Culture & Critique
DO - 10.1093/ccc/tcz006
DA - 2019-06-02
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-recappables-exploring-a-feminist-approach-to-criticism-0TfmnFvpXU
SP - 173
VL - 12
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -