This article originally appeared in T&S Issue 34, Winter 1996/97.
Brookside was supposed to be different from other soap operas — more political, more hard-hitting in its treatment of social issues and especially, more responsive to feminist concerns. Women’s lives are central to soap opera as a genre, but Brookside promised to treat women’s experience in a less traditional and patronising way than its more established rivals. Has the promise been kept? Vicki Coppock looks back over storylines past and present, and comes to the conclusion it’s a load of old flannel.
The first episode of Brookside appeared on our TV screens back in November 1982 when it was broadcast on the opening night of the launch of Channel Four. In so far as it proclaimed itself to be ‘different’, ‘distinctive’ and ‘alternative’ the programme reflected the aspirations of the new Channel itself. The pre- and post-launch hype promised much — a new era in both the content and ‘form’ of the traditional soap. Phil Redmond, Brookside’s creator and Executive Producer, spoke of the programme’s commitment to ‘realism’ — both at the level of narrative and technical production. Redmond also made much of his intention to ensure that the programme gave time and space to ‘women’s issues’ (cited in Woman 4 December, 1982). Many of us might have been (and, in truth, probably were) optimistically drawn into anticipating a new dawn in British television drama, seduced into suspending our critical gaze by the promise of progressive, radical, alternative viewing. The extent to which Brookside has lived up to, or failed to live up to, the generous optimism which greeted it in 1982 is the focus of this article. The research and analysis are derived from two closely related projects — an unpublished M.A. thesis and a recently published co-authored book The Illusions of ‘Post-Feminism’: New Women, Old Myths. These projects draw on interviews I conducted with people involved in the programme.
Representations: Lagging behind?
A central proposition of the ‘post-feminism’ debate is that sex discrimination legislation and equal opportunities policies have virtually eradicated inequality between the sexes. The Illusions of ‘Post-Feminism’ demonstrates that this proposition is simply unsustainable, whether at the level of women’s interpersonal relationships or at the level of institutions such as education, work and the media. And, just as equal opportunities legislation has lagged behind reality, so social and cultural representations of women have lagged behind the law. Beneath the veneer of equality and ‘alternative’ images of ‘new liberated women’ lie the established misogynist messages.
Writing in last Winter’s issue of T&S, Dee Dee Glass struck an all too familiar chord in her analysis of the relationship between women employed in British television and the production of women’s programmes:
The sad fact is that while there are now more women employed (though unevenly) throughout television, it is actually harder to make programmes with any kind of feminist agenda (p 40).
Both this work and the analysis developed in The Illusions of ‘Post-Feminism’ expose the contradiction between discourses which proclaim equality for women in the media — both at the level of production and representation — and the reality of persistent media sexism. Not only does the media reflect prevailing sexist ideology (thereby providing an important barometer of women’s position in general), it also has an active role to play in constructing sexist ideology. Meanings do not simply live in images — they circulate between the representation, the receiver of the image and the wider society. The receiver of the image plays an active role in the process of creating meaning. For example, ‘knowledge about women’ portrayed in the media is always produced from something believed to be ‘already known’, which then acts as its seal of approval and endows it with ‘truth’. So when media messages coincide with and reinforce existing ideas and values widely held in society, the effect is cumulative and very powerful. As Ruth Betterton commented in her book Looking On, images of glamorous women or perfect mothers may not correspond to the experience of most women, but they do define femininity in ways which are perceived as actually existing. In this sense the signifying practices of the media are inextricably connected to personal and collective identity.
Although media sexism cannot be divorced or isolated from other oppressions, nor decontextualised from the history of those oppressions, nevertheless the value of critical feminist media analysis needs to be recognised. It can provide a framework within which the ideas and assumptions which inform the representation of women’s lives can be teased out. Moreover, it pursues its analysis at both the visible, transparent level of appearances and content and also at the less obvious, below-surface level of hidden meaning and context.
A woman-centred programme?
Dee Dee Glass highlights three conditions which must be fulfilled before a programme can be considered to be truly ‘woman-centred’:
- that it is consciously, transparently and aggressively non-exploitative of those who do not own society;
- that it must interrogate, explain and offer alternatives to dominant ideology;
- that it must be awash with clear ideas for change — either overtly systemic or in thinking and then in action.
So how does Brookside measure up on this basis? In a glossy public relations brochure published in 1988, Phil Redmond stated:
the soap opera genre, heavily centred on domestic, ‘maternal’ events, has typically provided strong women characters of special interest to its presumed female audience. Brookside does not fit easily into the sex-stereotyping formula. Though it has at times been criticised by feminists for not doing enough for women, this charge would be difficult to sustain over the life-span of the serial (p 27).
Closer examination of Brookside’s women characters over some fourteen years of episodes tells a somewhat different story. Such an examination reveals consistent assumptions about women and the way in which stereotyped definitions of women — in terms of motherhood, sexuality, race and political identity — are constructed and sustained.
Motherhood and family
As early as March 1983 (just four months into the serial) Christine Geraghty critically commented that Brookside stood guilty of reinforcing sexual stereotyping rather than representing women or women’s issues in any radical or challenging way. She noted in particular how the women characters were defined by their roles within the family — Sheila Grant, Annabel Collins and Doreen Corkhill were classic examples in the early years. Sheila Grant was always portrayed as a woman of strength with views of her own, often faced with difficult decisions in her life. But Sheila’s commitment to her Open University course was frequently undermined by storylines which pulled her back into her role as wife and mother. In the development of her character beyond her eventual divorce from Bobby Grant, Sheila was portrayed on the surface as a more ‘liberated’ woman in her relationship with Billy Corkhill. However, an opportunity to see Sheila establishing an independent life for herself was not grasped. As Eithne Browne, the actor who played Chrissy Rogers, commented during interview, the story was written in such a way that Sheila needed a man to be able to leave Bobby and set up home again in ‘the Close’. Sue Johnston, who played Sheila Grant, expressed similar disappointment with the character,
I was really sad that it ended up her becoming even more of an appendage to another man (Billy) and the studies disappeared. I felt that was when I started to lose my interest in Sheila Grant.
Interestingly, the Chrissy Rogers character was to suffer a similar fate. In 1990 a woman scriptwriter for Brookside remarked during interview that she found Chrissy to be the worst example of sex-stereotyping, ‘She’s always this slightly ratty, but underneath it, loving mother, and I wish she’d fucking well stop it!’. As with Sheila Grant, storylines focused on Chrissy’s self-sacrificial devotion to her family. Eithne Browne was equally frustrated with the character:
She started off as a really strong mother who would go and fight for her children and what she believed was right. That was for about the first eighteen months and then I thought she was a good character and I believed in her all the way. Then after that you just never saw her out of the kitchen and it was very lack-lustre and very unbelievable.
By 1992 Chrissy had transformed into a discontented, dissatisfied woman who had ‘out-grown’ her husband, eventually to leave her family and resume her long-abandoned teacher-training career. What had changed? The truth was that Eithne Browne had had enough,
There are only two ways around it — you just keep going on, trying, with your character, or you just keep your head down and take the money. I couldn’t do that and it did come to a head to head conflict…‘if you don’t like it, go’.
Eithne’s explanation was supported independently by one of the women script writers, ‘The minute they get uppity they get elbowed out it seems to me…I’m not sure she wanted to go so much as she was bolshy as an actress!’. Chrissy’s disillusionment was only reinforced by a final storyline which appeared to re-invigorate the character,
They suddenly wanted Chrissy to have this outgoing life when they knew I was leaving… I just felt complete betrayal of the character… My argument would be they could have written these things months back, years back.
But Eithne had broader concerns than just those surrounding her own character:
I don’t believe that the programme is really indicative of the way women really are, and the pressures that women really face, and the fantastic jobs that mothers and women really do… When you have this very downtrodden image of women where if they can’t cope they just leave, you give women nothing to feel good about. Why are there no single women on Brookside? Why can’t women achieve on their own?… There is a very macho, misogynist feel in the way women are being portrayed by Brookside as the deceivers, as the leavers, and all these poor men are left behind…
Discourse around the sanctity of motherhood is very powerful. Two women scriptwriters for Brookside explained how this had been particularly significant in the storyline conferences around the characterisation of Patricia Farnham. They described the anxieties of the male scriptwriters, who feared Patricia would become an antipathetic character if she was seen to put her career before her young child. Such anxieties have presumably been allayed in more recent storylines which have redirected Patricia away from her successful career and back into the home, reinforcing one of the ‘post-feminist’ myths that women are unable to combine work and motherhood without some savage penalty to themselves, their relationships or their offspring. The real life struggles women face in the tensions between work and personal relationships are overshadowed by representations which are unsympathetic and narrative which is heavily traditionalist, moralistic and judgmental.
Sexuality and sexual violence
As already established, the channelling of female sexuality into motherhood appears to take precedence over other expressions of that sexuality in Brookside. Single women characters have frequently been portrayed negatively in Brookside as symptomatic of that ‘dangerous’ female sexuality which exists outside of the boundaries of the family. At its most extreme this took the form of Jenny Swift, the ‘psycho-teacher from hell’, who in a bizarre Fatal Attraction storyline rip-off, was romantically obsessed with ‘poor’ Mick Johnson to the point of his attempted murder when her love was unrequited! Bev McLoughlin and Patricia Farnham both epitomised the stereotypical predatory ‘other woman’ in their early characterisations. They have only become slightly more ‘sympathetic’ characters as their identities have become more firmly located within their respective ‘reconstituted families’ as wives and mothers.
The dichotomy between ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ expressions of female sexuality is reinforced by women characters conforming to the ‘acceptable’ stereotype and being given the dialogue with which to berate other women. The vitriolic reactions to Beth Jordache’s lesbianism by Bev McLoughlin and Jacqui Dixon illustrate the point, along with the incessant judgemental gossip-mongering of Julia Brogan — Brookside’s equivalent of Coronation Street’s Hilda Ogden or EastEnders’ Dot Cotton.
The double standard of morality was forcefully illustrated through a recent storyline which involved Max Farnham standing trial, wrongly accused of kerb-crawling. Although Max was the focus of much neighbourhood tittle-tattle, the storyline was overwhelmingly sympathetic to Max as an ‘innocent victim’ of circumstances.
Inevitably issues such as this, and attempts by Brookside to deal sensitively with other issues such as men’s physical and sexual violence, are difficult for an early evening soap and the expectations of drama-documentary analysis are sometimes too demanding. Yet it remains important that they are dealt with knowledgeably and that they challenge stereotypes. To that end there was a commitment to a storyline which did not ‘blame’ Sheila Grant for the rape which she suffered. Yet during interview, Jimmy McGovern who wrote that particular script acknowledged that he ‘could be accused of fulfilling every working-class male’s nightmare. If you let your woman do an Open University course some slick bastard’s going to be at her, so keep your woman barefoot and pregnant’.
Likewise the ‘date rape’ storyline involving Diana Corkhill and Peter Harrison was acknowledged for its attempt to deal with the emotional turmoil of a rape trial. However, in contrast to the Sheila Grant rape storyline, viewers had little previous sympathy for the woman character, and from the outset the question of whether she really had been raped was presented very equivocally, reinforcing a range of popularly-held prejudices about the validity of women’s experiences and testimonies relating to male violence. Peter Harrison’s subsequent acquittal might not of itself have been objectionable had it represented an attempt to comment on the difficulties women have in seeking justice through the law. But the whole context of the storyline and the presentation of the allegation as possibly false was broadcast at the precise time that women in real life were experiencing a backlash over their ‘date rape’ allegations against ‘respectable’ men who were known to them. Further, the ‘routine’ events and the ‘ordinariness’ of male violence can be diminished by storylines which either focus on isolated or comparatively rare examples, or attribute causation to ‘deviant’, ‘pathological’ individuals and families.
The storylines involving the Jordache family reflected this tendency. Trevor Jordache was presented as the ‘sick’ wife-beater of Mandy and ‘perverted’ sexual abuser of his daughter, Beth. The characterisations of Mandy and Beth were problematic with Mandy the stereotypical, weak, passive, ‘appropriate’ or inevitable victim of verbal and physical violence who failed to protect her daughter from Trevor. Eventually her ‘rescue’ was due to the intervention of another man — Sinbad.
Beth’s character initially conveyed the genuine courage and determination of a survivor of sexual violence, but this was undermined by a storyline involving the development of her lesbian identity. Had this storyline focused on another woman character it might have been a more positive portrayal, but the choice of Beth hopelessly sabotaged the attempt by connecting her developing sexuality to childhood damage.
The commitment to challenging male aggression and violence has been undermined by other storylines which appear to give legitimacy to the notion that a man has a right to use his physicality in order to discipline ‘his’ woman. The storyline around the characters of Terry and Sue Sullivan was particularly contentious. Inadvertently, Terry discovered he was not the father of Sue’s child. Sue’s ‘betrayal’ threatened Terry’s sexuality especially since it coincided with the discovery of his infertility. Terry reacted violently towards Sue, throwing her and the baby out of the house. Terry’s dialogue was tinged with misogynist phrases for several weeks afterwards. Strong images of hegemonic masculinity were (and have consistently been) evident in the narrative of Terry’s longstanding ‘mate’ Barry Grant. His reaction to Sue regarding the above storyline is a striking example — ‘If I were Terry, you’d be a corpse now. You’re not fit to be a mother. You don’t deserve Terry’. Sue Johnston recalled during interview how Brian Regan (who plays Terry) received many letters following that episode from men who applauded his violent behaviour. Eithne Browne revealed during interview how in real life both she and Annie Miles (who played Sue) had been verbally abused by men in the streets as a consequence of these storylines in which they had challenged the patriarchal authority of their husbands. Such incidents indicate the presence of a process of male bonding between the ‘fantasy’ of the characterisations and ‘real life’ men — a process which is often underplayed in terms of its significance and consequences for all women by those responsible for creating and presenting such images.
Race and Black women
There have been very few Black central women characters in Brookside. Those there have been are problematic. Josie Johnson was portrayed as the archetypal slack, Black working-class woman who did her husband, children (and gender) wrong in her preference for ‘freedom’ over domesticity and motherhood. In deserting the duties of marriage and motherhood she was duly ‘punished’ via a heavy moralistic dialogue from other characters, both men and women. The portrayal was negative and distinctly male-centred, evoking sympathy for the long-suffering and ever-patient Mick. Her punishment was institutionalised as she lost custody of the children and Mick was further rewarded with a ‘new’ woman, worthy of him: Marianne Dwyer. Marianne was presented as an articulate, ambitious, middle-class Black woman. The contrast in her character with that of Josie was unmistakeable, yet Marianne also developed negatively as a scheming whingeing, hard-nosed and selfish woman. She dumped Mick’s brother at the altar in preference for Mick — revealing her ‘deceitful’ nature. There followed a ‘sexual harassment at work’ storyline which focused mainly on Mick’s angst over the situation (‘is she another Josie?’; ‘has she given her boss the “come-on”?’). Mick’s response was stereotypically spontaneous, aggressive and confrontational. The Black working-class ‘male protector’ of ‘his’ woman was set against Marianne’s cool, scheming, feminine guile, through which she eventually turned the tables on her (Black) boss. In fact her character developed as the stereotypical middle-class ‘superwoman’ of the 1990s, giving a distorted representation of the dynamics of male violence and power. It reinforced the idea that it is primarily the responsibility of women to put an end to harassment.
The subtext of these storylines carried clear expressions of misogyny and racism. Should women, particularly Black women, want to compete in the ‘white man’s world’ they should be prepared to take the consequences. It was a theme confirmed in Marianne’s characterisation: could she really ‘hack it’ in taking tough decisions in the world of business? In this struggle she became the ‘tortured’, ‘unhappy’, ‘whining’, ‘post-feminist’ woman of the 1990s. She wanted a career, she wanted a relationship with Mick, but she rejected marriage and was consistently impatient when dealing with Mick’s children. This was constructed as both selfish and deviant. Her ‘punishment’ was the introduction of a competitor for Mick’s affections — Carol, an uncomplicated, bubbly, white, working-class Liverpool woman with no aspirations above those of her class or gender. The women were locked in a tactical struggle for Mick. Unsurprisingly, Marianne was compelled to sacrifice her successful job away from home in order to ‘keep’ her man. Initially, to secure the relationship, she gave up her independence and became engaged to Mick. It was only in a subsequent storyline revolving around Mick’s wrongful arrest for burglary on their wedding day that a rift appears in the relationship and Marianne decides to move away and resume her professional career. The possibility of representing this positively as a really difficult decision for Marianne was overshadowed by narrative which ensured maximum sympathy for Mick. Marianne was once again cast as the villain, deserting Mick in his hour of need.
Political identity
The political identity of the women characters in Brookside is significantly underdeveloped. By focusing on individual women’s personal relationships as wives, mothers, girlfriends, mistresses, women’s economic exploitation is conveniently side-stepped, neglecting all recognition of women’s potential as a powerful, political force within society. It appears that women are allowed to be narrowly ‘political’ only in the relatively compartmentalised and marginalised area of ‘women’s issues’: infertility, menstruation, rape, domestic violence, housework. For example it is Eddie Banks (like Bobby Grant and Frank Rogers before him) whose storylines have involved trades union struggles. By contrast Rosie Banks’s ‘struggle’ was her fight for an official apology and compensation after having been subjected to an unwanted and unnecessary hysterectomy. The political legitimacy of this storyline is unquestionable as an issue of concern to women. However an opportunity to develop a powerful narrative around the medicalisation of women’s physical and mental health was lost. Rather than expose the patriarchal assumptions which inform the uses (and abuses) of gynaecological theory and practice, the storyline changed tack and concentrated on Rosie’s ‘pathological’ deterioration into a gambling ‘addiction’.
Rare moments of solidarity amongst women are evident in Brookside as for example in the ‘Free the Jordaches’ campaign. Yet even this storyline failed to deliver what could have been a powerful representation of sisterhood in so far as the Brookside women sought to distance themselves from the other women protesters who joined them. These ‘other women’, visibly dressed in the instantly recognisable ‘feminist uniform’, were portrayed as violent trouble-makers. The message that feminist politics and action is deviant and dangerous and of no relevance to ‘ordinary’ women came across loud and clear. Given that ‘real-life’ feminists involved with Justice for Women had given so much of their time and energy to Brookside during the development of the Jordache storylines ensuring that the representation was as accurate and realistic as possible and giving crucial support to women viewers reflecting on their own experiences of domestic violence, the way those same feminists were subsequently represented was unsurprisingly experienced as a betrayal.
Making Brookside
An examination of the day to day working relationships on the set at Brookside reveals similar concerns in the area of programme production as to those in content. Eithne Browne recalled during interview,
There was a great deal of sexism against female directors. There was one comment from an actor to a Black female director — ‘It’s bad enough having to work with a woman, but a Black woman?!’
Also you would find that when people were being viewed by the directors and the editors upstairs in the box, comments about various parts of their bodies were not uncommon. So you’re still not viewed as an equal individual, as a person who works with them, you’re just somebody with big bosoms or a person that they would like to explore further given the chance. That just goes to show that there is so much more to be done so that a woman could walk across ‘Brookside Close’ and they wouldn’t notice her bosoms… and she could be viewed as another individual and not as a sexual object.
Two women scriptwriters for Brookside gave vivid accounts of their struggles to establish more positive representations of women characters in the programme. Their voices were often silenced or their suggestions ridiculed by the men in the storyline conferences. Additionally, one woman commented:
There is always a certain amount that we have no control over, which is partly to do with logistics or partly to do with one of Phil [Redmond]’s decisions and we know that.
One of the things that I think perhaps he (the producer) did make a decision over, management-wise, is that he would never try to pretend that the word from God wasn’t the word from God. ‘Phil says this is going to happen’ he says, and we know it’s going to happen, so we don’t waste our time.
Eithne Browne was no less blunt: ‘I think that while you’ve got a male at the top making those decisions and the greater number of male writers, then I can see women can’t help but be coerced in some way’. The tensions and conflicts that surround the process of characterisation and representation are mirror images of the real life struggles experienced by women who work at Brookside.
Failing to deliver
Whether at the level of day-to-day working relationships of actors, writers, technicians, producers, directors, administrators, or in the portrayal of women characters that ultimately appear on the screen, it is evident that when put to the test of ‘woman-centredness’ Brookside fails to deliver. In many ways the programme exploits stereotypes of women; it fails to ‘interrogate, explain or offer alternatives to dominant ideologies’; and it fails to be ‘awash with ideas for change’! As Dee Dee Glass states:
…by appearing to ‘do’ women’s issues..two dangerous illusions are created. The first is that there is no more to say about such subjects. The second is that, in any case, women’s issues do not merit serious consideration (p 45).
Anticipating the frequently hurled accusation of reading too much into the programme (after all ‘It’s only a television programme; people forget and take it seriously’ (Phil Redmond New Statesman, 1990)), I want to make it clear that Brookside is and should be taken seriously for two reasons. First, it is impossible to represent images of women and men without dealing with relationships of power and control. As discussed earlier, all media — Brookside being no exception — have considerable power to rewrite, restructure and throw back at us a version of ourselves which is presented as the ‘norm’. In a capitalist, imperialist, patriarchal society, white, middle-class, male action, thoughts and words represent the ‘norm’ and women are only defined in relation to men. Brookside fails to convince us of its ability and/or willingness to seriously challenge sexist ideology. While it might start with what appears to be a promising storyline, all too often it lacks the courage of its convictions and changes tack, as with Rosie’s ‘gambling addiction’ and Beth’s lesbianism. Whether this is a limitation of the soap genre, or a reflection of the contradictory attitudes about gender which prevail on Brookside, the effect is the same.
Second, contrary to Phil Redmond’s comment above, Brookside purposefully sets itself apart from the rest of the soaps in claiming to deal with ‘serious’, ‘real’ issues of concern to women. It should not be surprised when women put its claims to the test! Any programme which claims to have a commitment to women’s issues must do much more than bring such issues to our attention. It should demonstrate a commitment to showing women’s strength, both individually and collectively, and women’s ability to make a positive difference to their lives in spite of male oppression. Brookside’s commitment to ‘realism’ demands that women are trapped in characterisations of powerlessness, vulnerability and exploitation, unable to ‘break free’. Wrapped up in its dominant masculine ideology it presents its myths as reality denying the potential for alternative, progressive discourse. Ultimately this means that the programme is unable to represent women in any radical or challenging way. Until it is prepared to take on board a truly woman-centred philosophy and practice then Brookside shouldn’t pretend to be anything more than just another soap.
References:
R Betterton Looking On: Images of Femininity in the Visual Arts and Media (Pandora, 1987).
Brookside Productions Brookside (Brookside Productions Ltd, 1988).
V Coppock Media Representations of Working Class Liverpool Women: A Critical Feminist Analysis Unpublished M.A. Thesis, 1990.
V Coppock, D Haydon & I Richter The Illusions of ‘Post-Feminism’: New Women, Old Myths (Taylor and Francis, 1995).
C Geraghty ‘Brookside: No Common Ground’ Screen Vol 24 No 4 pp137-41, 1993).
Dee-Dee Glass ‘Screening Women Out’ Trouble and Strife 32 Winter pp39-45, 1995/96.