“This is me making armpit fudge!”: Construction of a Misunderstood Group on Television

Abstract

Noticing that there are ever more popular television shows centering around the working-class, this thesis analyses the complex representations of working-class, female characters on the popular prime-time television shows 2 Broke Girls, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, and Shameless through a mixed method, phenomenological approach focusing on a visual and textual analysis. Primarily making use of a Cultural Studies and feminist lens, I focus on deconstructing the categorical codes: body language, attire, attitude, language, interaction with others, and class comparisons that present themselves in each episode and argue that these shows’ representation follow both a dominant ideological framework and present forms of agency that illustrate how intersectional these characters are.