Heroines? or Abuse of Substance?

I've said it once, and I'll say it again: I really enjoy bad television.  Granted bad is a subjective term, there's something to be said about realizing how bad the show you're watching is and still being unable to tear your attention away from it.  The program in question today is the Maury Povich Show and in particular his exposes on teen girls who want to have a baby.  This one is perhaps my favorite:

The general pattern of these shows is that the 'deviant' teen in question is usually booed by the audience and gently berated by Maury into recognizing the irresponsibility of their decisions or possible future choices.  What does it look like if we however maybe take a step into Victoria's shoes?  I proceed by presenting a possibly feminist re-reading of her character.  Here we go...

Clearly, Victoria is a modern girl-on-the go who knows what she wants. She is gonna have her baby.  Clearly Victoria has thought out her decision and planned accordingly.  She's been preparing herself by building up an array of baby care paraphernalia.  That's right, if her baby loses its pacifier, that's okay, she's got three more.  She also has a vivid financial plan for how to take on the monetary burden of a child.  She's prepared to sell her body to care of her child.  This clearly points to her a sexual agent who has cast off the rhetoric of sexual fear so often aimed at teens.  In fact, she's so unabashedly unashamed about her sexuality that she's willing to not only cast off parental guilt by having sex in her mother's bed but able to confront society's stigma of teen sexuality by having sex in public places including parking lots, staircases and playgrounds.  The last of which points her ability to successful claim her own sexual nature and symbolically debunk the myth of the absence of childhood sexuality.  As a sexual agent with plans for the future, why do we insist on demonization Victoria, our teen sexuality warrior?

No, but seriously, putting aside this sarcastic tonality, why is the underlying logic that captivates both myself and the rest of the Maury viewing population?  One aspect of spectactorship that may have a hand in this is that television talk shows simultaneously place the viewer as an audience member and an omniscient viewer by cutting between shot of the stage directly and by pulling back to show audience responses and interactions.  This affect makes us both identify as the audience and have a critical outsiderness to it.  Does the audience's disapproval match our own or does their mass response serve us to question their motives?

These exposes also utilize several sensationalizing functions such as detailing the numbers of sexual partners, the age of sexual partners, the exchange of money or other items for sex and the public locations of sexual interactions.  In surveying several of these types of episodes it becomes clear that maybe the numbers are fictive or skewed.  For example, when touting total numbers of sex partners, the sums are always multiples of five, Victoria of course alleging fifteen, and also thirty seems to be quite a popular number as well.  Another episode makes sure to note that the teens involved have slept with older men, always highlighting 'in their fifties' or 'sixties.' The girls are generally depicted in their introduction montages on the street, up against chainlink fences or posing in front of dumpsters.  What do these images say about the way these issues are being framed visually.  Finally, there seems to be a ludicrousness about the motives: one girl is proud to admit that she had sex with a guy for a cheeseburger....with bacon. Sarcastic voice aside, if Angelique wanted a bacon cheeseburger that bad, why shouldn't be allowed to use sex to get it?

These shows present a hyberbolic representation of female teen sexuality.  These girls are in turn demonized for being sexual beings and in addition are berated for exhibiting a false consciousness for their desires whether that be reproductive or sexual.  I'm not necessarily saying that I may agree with these girls' decisions, but they ways in which they are hyped-up serve to further alienate young viewers from their own sexual feelings and choices by barraging them with an audience that shames and stigmatizes.  An audience in fact in which they are a part when watching these shows.  Furthermore, these teens are overly represented as working class women of color highlighting the ways in which racism interacts with negative representations of young girls' sexuality.

I so want to applaud the girls for yelling back at the audience when verbally attacked and provoked, but the way that the show is produced, their rebuttals are framed as comical.  It's a difficult question that I must pose to both myself and others: what are we really laughing at here?