Color of Rape: Gender and Race in Television's Public Spheres

5. Testifying in the Court of Talk Shows

Recently the university where I teach decided to undertake a series of initiatives to facilitate diversity in the classroom. The first session replicated the structure of the daytime talk show. Students, university administrators, and faculty comprised the panelists who were placed on a stage. All of them narrated their personal experiences with issues of diversity, primarily those pertaining to racial difference. The organizer then proclaimed mockingly that she would be Oprah Winfrey for the hour and proceeded to thrust a microphone at audience members to develop the conversation. As is common in talk shows, the results of the session were mixed: the audience and the guests provided empathetic, moving accounts of their experiences. The topic was discussed from multiple perspectives, but the session offered little resolution. The only thing effectively communicated was the existence of a problem. What is striking about this event is that discussion of issues in academe, the hothouse of expert knowledge, is usually characterized by expositional discourses. The decision to resort to the talk show model, where the storied voices explain the difficulty of ensuring diversity in classrooms, reveals the extent to which the experiential and conversational aspects of talk shows have seeped into everyday culture.1 Was it the topic that led to this format? Would the organizers have used a similar format if the topic were the honor system or student enrollment policies? Can topics dealing with race, gender, or identity issues, still characterized largely as private, be discussed productively only in the conversational format? When addressing public issues the traditional form of debate, using empirically verifiable evidence to marshal 149 5 Testifying in the Court of Talk Shows one’s arguments, is preferred. An exploration of the dynamics of gender and race hierarchies appears to be more productively conducted in a format that replicates the intimacy of conversations associated with the domestic sphere. In this chapter I explore the contributions the “intimate,” emotional, and sometimes raucous conversations of daytime talk shows make toward the democratic public sphere. Critical responses to the genre have either celebrated the energy and vitality that characterize the multiple, ordinary voices that prevail on the shows or have been dismissive of the sensational and spectacular topics they address. Eschewing these two positions, I both validate the progressive impulse of the genre and point out its limits. This double focus characterizes the structure of this chapter. A central argument I put forth in the following analysis is that while daytime talk shows do not facilitate the rational-critical debate that Habermas defines as being integral to the public sphere, they offer the first steps toward the formation of a counter-public sphere. Indeed, I contend that the daytime talk show makes possible an affective public sphere, one where discussion of issues pertaining to the body and emotions become central to democratic community formations. As I pointed out in Chapter 1 of this book, many scholars, notably feminists, have argued against the construction of a monolithic public sphere, especially one that brackets out issues pertaining to identity . They suggest that multiple, overlapping, and competing public spheres, counter-public spheres, more accurately account for the processes through which individuals participate in society. A counter-public sphere does not claim a representative universality. Instead, through a recognition of differences , it affirms the formation of identities specific to gender, race, class, and so on. A counter-public sphere is one of many public spheres enabling democratic community formation, particularly by giving voice to marginalized subjects. The majority of this chapter outlines the modalities through which talk shows could facilitate the formation of a counter-public sphere, an affective public sphere, that coalesces around the topic of sexual violence experienced by women. In the final section, I critically scrutinize the validity of this counter-public sphere—which aspects of rape, gender, and race are highlighted in the shared identities encouraged by these conversations. I analyze only two venues of the daytime talk show: Oprah: The Oprah Winfrey show and Donahue. (Hereafter, I address the former as Oprah.) Since the dynamics of the host-guest interactions shape the conversations developed , the arguments I make in this chapter are specific to these two shows and should not be extended to the genre as a whole. Even these two shows, as I illustrate below, are marked by tremendous differences in the nature of the debate they promote. Nevertheless, these two shows are often used as the 150 COLOR OF RAPE [18.188.61.223] Project MUSE (2024-04...