The worst journalists in the world are not in a newsroom.
They are in the fictions of our screens.
The trail of its questionable practice has been followed for decades in series and films, regardless of whether they were intense political
thrillers
, forgettable romantic comedies or adaptations of notorious real cases that shocked the world.
It didn't matter what genre they were placed in.
The same pattern has been repeated tirelessly over and over again: at a given moment in the plot, the chronicler would end up exchanging sex for information.
As if being a woman and a journalist it was inevitable to take off your clothes for the public good.
All embracing the cliché of the
slutty
journalist .
Sally Field slept with her source, Paul Newman, in
Absence of Malice
(1981).
Katie Holmes did not fall short in the controversial sexual scene that she talked about so much in
Thank You for Smoking
(2005).
In a terrible move for her destiny, Kate Mara did the same with Kevin Spacey in
House of Cards
(2013).
Alcoholic, seductive and liar, Amy Adams was the journalist who angered the union the most in
Open Wounds
(2018).
In the epilogue of
Gilmore Girls
, the wholesome Rory would also end up drunk in bed with one of her informants, dressed as Chewbacca.
Even Clint Eastwood fell into this trope in
Richard Jewell
(2019), when he decided that this is how journalist Kathy Scruggs (played by Olivia Wilde in the film), the reporter for the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
(AJC) who reported on the FBI investigation of the high-profile case of a security guard at the Atlanta Olympic Games who spotted a suspicious backpack that turned out to be an explosive.
The statement issued by the newspaper against the film was of little use: “The
AJC
reporter is reduced to an object that is sold for sex.
“That is entirely false and malicious, and extremely harmful and defamatory,” the text said.
Warner Bros. turned a deaf ear and viewers were left with that impression.
Melissa Benoist and Carla Cugino in a moment from 'The Girls on the Bus'.Max
With the desire to amend this tired archetype and other prejudices about female communicators, Girls on the Bus
premiered on HBO Max on March 15
.
Created by producer Julie Plec (
The Vampire Diaries
) and journalist Amy Chozick, the series is a loose adaptation of
Chasing Hillary
, Chozick's 2018 memoir about her coverage of Hillary Clinton's campaign for
The New York Times.
.
In order not to depress the audience, the series does not capture the collapse and paradigm shift that represented that presidential race that ended worse than the
Titanic
and with more twenty-something white girls crying their eyes out than at a Taylor Swift concert.
In this series, Plec and Chozick have devised an alternative universe, a fable whose plot revolves around the presidential race of several Democratic politicians who do not exist in real life: a veteran whose age raises doubts about his suitability for office, a mayor of a town beyond her minimal name recognition and a famous writer who will receive the support of a fictional Hillary Clinton, a senator who lost the previous presidential campaign.
Between absurdity and grandiloquence - tones that do not quite gel, but very common in journalism - and more in tune with the lightness of other journalist series such as
The Bold Type
than with the self-conscious solemnity of
The Newsroom
,
The Girls on the Bus
It is a light fiction that could have been a fine parody of journalism a la
Veep
, but preferred to get dangerously close to Shonda Rhimes' soap opera universe without the bed scenes.
Overcoming viral ridicule
The protagonist is Sadie McCarthy (Melissa Benoist), a correspondent for the
New York Sentinel
(what would be the
Times
), a thirty-year-old who must overcome a bad professional streak after having gone viral for ridiculous reasons in another Democratic campaign.
Sadie has recurring visions in which Hunter S. Thompson appears to her, giving her gonzo writing advice, a fact that is hardly credible for a chronicler under 40 years old raised in the heat of the fourth wave of feminism.
Its editor, Bruce (Griffin Dunne, eternal protagonist of
Jo, What a Night
and nephew of Joan Didion), is inspired by the legend of the
Times
David Carr, but here he appears as a more paternal figure, far from the halo of a seasoned and sarcastic reporter that we see in the documentary
Page One
.
Along with Sadie are the always great Carla Gugino in the role of Grace, a cynical veteran with little friend of the Pulitzer-winning social networks, capable of pretending to care about her college daughters when in reality she takes advantage of the visit to the campus to get a
scoop
(exclusive).
Lola (Natasha Benham) is the young woman on the campaign bus, a histrionic character who brings together all the laziest clichés of TikTok and Generation Z in an irritating and exaggerated way.
The fourth in contention is Kimberlyn (Christina Elmore), a racialized and Republican woman, a liberal feminist who believes she will break the glass ceiling with her merits alone and who works on a Fox News transcript, willing to overcome all obstacles. racists from your chain.
The four main reporters of 'The Girls on the Bus'.Max
Unbeatable clichés
The title of the series plays with that of the classic in American political chronicle,
The Boys on the Bus , which
Rolling Stone
reporter
Timothy Crouse wrote about the campaign between McGovern and Nixon in 1972—hence, perhaps, the ghostly presence of Hunter S. Thompson, who wrote the book's foreword.
“Maybe we started out as competitors, but we ended up becoming a family,” Sadie warns at the beginning of the series, telling viewers that the four women will discover a dark plot for which she will end up arrested.
The protagonist will fight against sexist double standards regarding communicators, even with that of the journalist who exchanges sex for information.
Only that she herself, years ago, had an affair with the man who is now the press secretary of the candidate she must follow (Malcolm Scott) and the sexual tension will increase as the series progresses.
Her feminist prayers will not be answered.
It doesn't just happen in American fiction.
In the report
The representation of female journalists in Spanish cinema
(2012), film critic Lucía Tello analyzed how female journalists were portrayed in 600 films.
In addition to verifying visibility
less than that of her fellow journalists—they rarely appeared on screen without the company of a man—she also warned that “many journalists have their partner or ex-partner as a partner or ex-partner.”
Tello rescued in his study two characters who “represent with greater strength and forcefulness the role of the authentic
vamp
[the archetype that defines women who use their sexual attractiveness to exploit men]”: Najwa Nimri as Bárbara in
Oviedo Express
(2007), "even stating that she has 'her heart between her legs'", and Monica Randall as Esmeralda in
Fourteen Seasons
(1991), "earning the title of 'Hydra', in honor of the mythical multi-headed snake that ended killing Heracles, and that gives us an idea of the concept that her environment has of the journalist.”
With
The Girls on the Bus
it seemed that it would never be repeated, but the curse on the vision of the chroniclers is still there, immutable.
Another failed mission in the revenge against the
fox
journalist .
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