SCREAM QUEENS REVIEW

SCREAM QUEENS IS MISOGYNY ON TV

 Male TV writers and producers will never stop pushing the envelope of Misogyny until young women finally say "Enough, already."

The new TV show, Scream Queens, will likely appeal to male viewers as a source of comedy and sexualized humiliation of women, but the saddest part is that the prime audience demographic will probably be young women viewers, who will likely make this show a huge hit.

In just the first five minutes of the Pilot episode of Scream Queens, Thursday night, 8pm, on the Fox network, the male writers and producers (Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, Ian Brennan) of this show made it clear why women should not support this program. So many men get rich creating TV shows that insult and degrade women.  Stand up to this practice, Ladies!  If we watch, we are contributing to their success at women’s expense! 

The very first thing this episode did was give us is the image of a dead young woman, upright and fully clothed in a dry bathtub, eyes open, in full makeup and party clothes.  In other words, another “sexy image” of a dead young woman. Even without the “sexy,” or humorous gross-out, it is also just yet another image of a dead young woman (one of TV’s favorite images they like to give audiences to look at, for some reason), contributing to the desensitization of our reactions to such “horrors.”  There are countless similar images thrown at us on TV on a daily basis.  Not only is it unoriginal, it is misogyny ladies.  And TV misogyny against women is everywhere, by the way.  All you have to do is start noticing it and start to question the motives of why these images are so prevalent in “mainstream media” created by men.

The very next scene after the dead girl in the bathtub begins with some cliché, “rich bitch” sorority sisters being verbally dressed down by their presumed sorority leader, who begins her speech to these girls with the charming greeting, “Hello, Slits.” 

OK, I get it.  That’s supposed to be funny and this show is supposed to be a ridiculous comedy.  But the point is this:  Men have been calling women sluts for eons and of course the term is now ubiquitous with anything female on both mainstream TV and in porn.  But at least a slut is still a woman, still a person, who is being called that based on their actions.  Reducing women to being called “slits” is not simply just a funny, tongue-in-cheek way to call them sluts.  It literally reduces the female “slut” to her female anatomy, that being her slit. It’s the ULTIMATE insult, even worse than the C-word.

And isn’t calling a women “slits” on TV exactly the same as calling women the C-word on TV?   If that sorority leader came right out and said, “Hello C---ts,” female viewers would be outraged, right?  So, these clever, misogynistic, loser A-holes who are writing this show get away with using the word “slits” instead because they can sneak it by the censors. 

This is an outrage and it encourages the use of that word to get out into the mainstream.  Do you really want junior high and high school-aged boys starting a new trend calling girls slits? Seriously? Then don’t put up with this crap on TV!

Ladies, GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN.  Don’t support this show’s success by watching it.  If no one’s watching, no one will advertise on the show, and the show will be taken off the air. WOMEN HAVE THE POWER HERE to influence change. Yet, women and girls prove on a daily basis how clueless and ignorant we are about male media misogyny, by not only putting up with this B.S. on TV but by supporting it and watching it.  This show will become a huge hit for FOX, and I bet much of the audience demographic will be female viewers. 

Don’t do it.  Don’t let them show you images of your dead self and then call you a slit. Oh, and you know what happened next, after the slit scene? They showed a close up of a sleeping girl’s breast, covered by her pajamas, and a male hand rubbing her breast as she slept, and it was obvious she was not wearing a bra.  This is at 8pm, in prime time, on a regular, non-cable television network!  It’s one step above porn on TV!

Girls and women deserve better than this.  We are not slits and sluts and cunts and breasts whose only function on TV is to be dead girls and humiliated sex objects.  And people that want to make shows that depict women in such a way should be given a loud message: That We Aren’t Going To Take it Anymore. 

If women would just refuse to watch insulting crap like that on TV, the show will fail.  The show producers are counting on their success being driven by the presumed “fact” that women love to be insulted and humiliated and put down on TV.  Look into it yourself if you don’t believe me. The evidence is all around you, including on this show.

My theory is, if a TV series can’t even go one episode (or even 5 minutes into the very first episode) without insulting women, why on earth should we watch this show ever again?  Obviously the mentality of the male writers and producers has been revealed to us already.  It will not change as the show goes on, duh. It will only get worse, as they continue to get away with ever-pushing the envelope of what can be shown and said on TV with regard to women and women’s bodies.