Ghost Whisperer and the Politics of Crossover Appeal on TV

I suspect few think Ghost Whisperer a touchstone for the discussion of television. Yet it seems to me notable because of the elements it brought together. Consider how here we had a show with a female protagonist (Melinda Gordon) who was the independent owner of an (apparently) successful business of a relatively "romantic" and "fun" type, an antique store. She is happily married to a man who is at once from a rich family but also a handy blue-collar type making a good blue-collar living as a firefighter/paramedic and a doctor (one night they are talking about him going back to school, then fast-forward five years and BAM! he's a white-coated M.D. at the local hospital), a bro who plays poker with other bros but is also Mr. Sensitive and all in all the perfect "supportive" husband. All this is convenient because she happens to have a psychic ability that lets her see and hear the souls of those who have passed but not yet "walked into the light," for being her own boss, with said supportive husband, she has the time and freedom required to help those ghosts settle their affairs so that they can move on, which going by the frequency with which these have to do with family affairs, romantic relationships and the like make her a sort of therapist to the dead, which, in spite of darker moments, means lots and lots of touchy-feely stuff in an essentially soothing show.

In all this one can see a fair amount of material that is conventionally expected to appeal to a female audience--but not necessarily much conventionally expected to appeal to a male audience, which may indeed find significant elements of all this off-putting. (If in respectable mainstream commentary it is women's resentment of men's desires and expectations that gets aired, men too have their resentments of women's desiderata in men, especially their being a good many unlikely, frequently difficult and often contradictory things at once--like all the things Jim Gordon happens to be. And of course, the stuff of the average Ghost Whisperer plot was exactly the kind of thing to make a certain sort of male stereotype say "Feelings? Ugh!") Still, if the show could seem very, even exceptionally, female-oriented in these ways it was not wholly without its element of male appeal, most obviously in the producers making the actress playing Melinda Gordon, Jennifer Love Hewitt--one of Hollywood's last true sex symbols, with the considerable male fan base going with that (certainly, going by what we see in Internet searches), with the show (within reason) giving that fan base their share of "eye candy." One might add that if Melinda certainly qualifies as a Strong Female Protagonist, in contrast with those Strong Female Protagonists whose writers endeavor to prove to the viewer that they are strong by having them be insufferable to everybody in that my-rudeness-is-proof-of-my-strength way to which American culture is so addicted today (indeed, Hewitt had played characters like that before, as in the underrated Jackie Chan action-comedy The Tuxedo) here she is in "cute and likable" mode. The result was that the show was not wholly ignored by male viewers, a fact which likely helped keep it on the air for five years.

Such a blend of appeal and audience is rare today, female-oriented shows much less likely to make such concessions to male viewers in the hope of broadening their audience. Quite the contrary, female-oriented shows today often seem to shout "I don't care if men like it or not!" or even "Part of the fun here is making something men will hate!" (with Bridgerton, for example, the go-to case). At the same time it is hard to think of male-oriented shows quite so cavalier about potentially alienating a female audience. Much as some prefer not to have such things pointed out there is an undeniable asymmetry in that, and especially in light of how much time and energy the pop cultural kulturkampf absorbs, and how much ill will it may be generating (less significant in my view than many others have it, but still, not helpful . . .), also something to be said about it. Where this is concerned those who regard Hollywood as captive to "woke lunacy" see such an asymmetry as reflective of the fact. Yet, while there is no denying the extent to which elites, especially in the creative industries, have been identity politics-minded (because of their conservatism rather than in spite of it) I find hard interest a far more plausible explanation for what people in business (for TV production is a business) than decision makers' views on gender. Simply put, the obvious, easy male concession that makers of female-oriented fare could make to a male audience--Ghost Whisperer-style indulgence of the male gaze with sexy images of sexy women--ceased to be so amid the intensity of feminist flak over it, especially post-#MeToo, as the flak got more intense, and some viewers more sensitized. This was in fact such that even the makers of material for men are now squeamish about it, with this reinforced by the hope of drawing a female audience for their own fare--the conventional wisdom holding that women are more easily drawn to male-oriented material than the other way around, though it is also the case that, especially with women having more alternatives than before, they are more demanding and less forgiving (such that men's fare is now obliged to have Strong Female Characters as well). This does not change the fact of an asymmetry, but it is a matter of commercial imperatives--and of ideology only insofar as ideology becomes a factor from the standpoint of money--in a reminder of what in the end drives politics in this sphere as in every other.