"Deadly Women": Examining (Audio)Visual (Re)Presentations of Violent Women and Girls in Infotainment Media

Abstract

Women have historically been the subject of stereotypes – especially criminalized women as they are constructed in the mass media. These stereotypes become particularly problematic when they are invoked in infotainment media – a genre that combines information and entertainment and presents itself as primarily factual. As such, ideological messages delivered through infotainment are also (re)presented as truthful and may be more likely to be taken up by an unquestioning audience. This research aimed to answer the following research question: How does infotainment portray women who commit serious violent crime? In order to answer this question, a qualitative content analysis was employed and “Deadly Women”, a televised infotainment series that narrates and re-enacts true crime stories of women who kill, was selected as a case study. The sample consisted of previously identified typologies: mothers who kill their children, women who kill their partners, adolescent girls who kill, and vigilantes who kill their abusers. Stemming from a critical feminist framework, the analysis revealed that Deadly Women relies on two primary trajectories to explain the violence committed by women and girls. While both trajectories emphasized gendered stereotypes that involved emotionality and mental health issues, they were nonetheless distinct. The first trajectory evoked narratives of the ‘emotionless’ and ‘psychopathic’ perpetrator; while the second trajectory characterized the offender as overly ‘emotional’ and ‘depressed’. These trajectories, along with their related variables, problematically (re)presented violent women and girls in simplistic and dualistic manners that served to obscure rather than to clarify the circumstances surrounding their crimes.