Ashley Futterman - American Media and Popular Culture
Ashley Futterman graduated from UC Berkeley in 2021 with a major in American Studies and dual minors in English and Journalism. She currently works in film acquisitions at Searchlight Pictures in Los Angeles, after beginning her career in independent film finance, development, and production. Her work centers on the life of stories — how they’re made, financed, and received — and she’s interested in the ways narrative shapes culture, memory, and everyday experience. In other words, she found a way to monetize overanalyzing pop culture.
Area of Concentration Courses
American Studies 110 - The Secret History of America
Sociology 160 - Sociology of Culture
English 161 - Introduction to Literary Theory
History 136C - Gender, Power and Violence in American History
Sociology 150 - Social Psychology
Thesis
Girl Talk: The Portrayal of Women and Female Friendship in Modern American Television
“Girl Talk: The Portrayal of Women and Female Friendship in Modern American Television” examines how women and female friendships are represented in modern American television, situating these portrayals within broader cultural, historical, and theoretical frameworks. The thesis focuses on selected female-centered programs — Sex and the City, Broad City, Insecure, Girlfriends, Gossip Girl, Fleabag, and Girls — while also considering male-centered narratives such as The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire, and Breaking Bad. By placing these shows in dialogue, it explores the evolution of female friendships on-screen, highlighting where women’s experiences diverge from traditional male-centric storytelling and how these portrayals engage with broader cultural expectations and feminist theory. In particular, the project examines how women’s on-screen relationships have historically been tethered to men and male-driven narratives, a dynamic rooted in what Laura Mulvey identifies as the “male gaze.”
The thesis draws on feminist and cultural theory, including the work of Freud, John Berger, and Alison Bechdel, as well as canonical literary figures such as Virginia Woolf, to explore both the reflective and prescriptive roles of television in American society. It argues that media is not merely illustrative but actively shapes social scripts governing women’s lives, while also negotiating the possibilities of the female gaze. The project situates these representations within a broader understanding of female friendship as a culturally and biologically coded phenomenon, examining assumptions about women’s emotional and relational tendencies.
Complementing textual analysis, the thesis includes an original documentary in which the author and her female roommates reflect on how they internalize, resist, or reinterpret these tropes in their own lives. The film’s structure, subject positioning, and the interactions of filmmaker and participants further illustrate the dynamics of male versus female gaze, highlighting the material and performative dimensions of feminist media consumption.
Ultimately, Girl Talk presents an argument about feminism in culture as a negotiation. Following Anne Balsamo’s reflections on evolving feminist theory and Donna Haraway’s considerations of hegemonic social structures, the thesis maintains that portrayals of women cannot be simplistically categorized within the binary of feminist or non-feminist. Instead, the study evaluates how media representations are either reductive or empowering, and how they might be expanded to convey the complexity of women’s lived experiences. Engaging with Paula Teichler’s pedagogical frameworks and the ethos of the Riot Grrrl Manifesto, the project foregrounds media and pop culture as a site for critical reflection, community-building, and social critique — illuminating the ongoing potential of narrative media and cultural products to both mirror and reshape women’s cultural realities.
