Intersectional Female Authorship, Casting Strategies, and the Representation of Women of Colour in Female-Authored Television

Chapter 4 examines the construction and performance of intersectional authorship within the television text, interrogating how the showrunners’ personal influence, individual sensibility, and artistic vision might be identified in their work. More specifically, by focusing on Shonda Rhimes's How to Get Away with Murder (ABC, 2014–2020) and Jenji Kohan's Orange Is the New Black (Netflix, 2013–2019), the chapter analyses how women of colour are represented on screen and how these depictions inflect authorship discourses at textual and paratextual levels. The study reveals that How to Get Away with Murder features female protagonists of colour who embody postfeminist and neoliberal values, which often deconstruct gender and racial hierarchies in the series. By contrast, Orange Is the New Black begins with a postfeminist setup and uses a white, privileged female lead as a means of accessing a racially diverse cast, yet self-consciously criticises neoliberalism, postfeminism, and post-racial logics in the series. The chapter suggests that both productions and their paratexts exemplify US television's often ambivalent stance on racial politics when navigating the intersection of gender and race, which results in ideological limitations that influence the representation of women of colour on screen. Despite such limitations, the portrayal of intersectional identities plays a crucial role in shaping the authorial brands of both female showrunners. The chapter further argues that intersectional authorship is often constructed through onscreen representation as well as through the textual and paratextual foregrounding of narratives related to the showrunners’ intersectional experiences and/or presumed political commitments.