Author: Amber Hardiman, Department of Film, Television, and Media, University of Michigan - MediaCommons, ORCID

Abstract: »This article identifies an emergent television genre that has developed with the dissolution of traditional genre distinctions at a time of amplified cultural, industrial, and technological media convergence. I call this genre premium advocacy documentary TV. Through a close analysis of Hulu’s Untouchable: The Rise and Fall of Harvey Weinstein (2019), I explore how the streaming industry’s acceleration of media convergence across digital platforms permits competing and coexisting discursive attitudes toward feminist advocacy. I argue that changes in the configuration of genre have enabled the production of post-#MeToo television documentaries that claim to uphold care-based feminist ethics and advocacy practices, even as they are mutually underpinned by the values of popular and neoliberal feminism. I demonstrate how such programming illustrates the cultural and economic valuation of “prestige” media production through its narrative alignment with “quality” television programs responding to the dissolution of hegemonic masculinity at the turn of the twenty-first century. By exploring how Untouchable pursues industrial legitimacy and advocacy-based cultural status simultaneously, I demonstrate how women’s testimony in such docuseries is filtered through the formal and narrative affordances of multimedia convergence and its facilitation of multiple iterations of genre in an era of digital television streaming.« (Source: Feminist Media Studies)

Contents:

	Abstract (p. 1)
	Premium advocacy documentary television and Hulu’s Untouchable: The Rise and Fall of Harvey Weinstein (2019) (p. 5)
	Popular feminism and the ethics of caring in Hulu’s untouchable (p. 8)
	Untouchable as a prestige media object: complex masculinity and the legitimation of premium advocacy documentary television (p. 11)
	Conclusion (p. 14)
	Notes (p. 14)
	Disclosure statement (p. 15)
	Funding (p. 15)
	Notes on contributor (p. 15)
	References (p. 15)

Wikipedia: History of the Americas: History of the United States | Television: Television documentary / Untouchable (2019 film) | Sex and the law: Sexual assault / Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases