Ally McBeal and her Homies

Abstract

This article critically analyzes the popular television show, Ally McBeal, with a specific focus on how women and ethnic minorities are stereotypically portrayed. Through Complicity Theory, Standpoint Feminist, and Womanism, this article contends that the mediated representations of women and ethnic minorities on Ally McBeal are largely negative, and that stereotypical images of these groups continue to be perpetuated in the media. In an effort to interrogate and problematize these mediated images; that is, what is “womanhood” and who are “ethnic minorities,” a move from complicity to implicature theory is offered.

Diagnosing Drama: Grey's Anatomy, Blind Casting, and the Politics of Representation

“…Moreover, this incident reveals the ways that racialized and gendered assumptions come into play in what is presumably a “color blind” casting process. As Tracy Owens Patton notes, “ethnic minority women” rarely see their “beauty … reified as something positive” in mainstream media outlets (241). Grey's Anatomy continues this tradition by casting a white woman in the role of the particularly attractive former model.…”