Masters Of Sex Analysis

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Logan Hill’s article “13 Rules for Creating a Prestige Television Drama”, on top of being funny, demonstrates that once considered ‘revolutionary’, prestige television dramas have now become formulaic. Within the context of the class on difficult men, the first rule described by the article is particularly relevant: “start with an anti-hero”. To do so, you should “make him middle-aged”, “give him a health problem and a traumatic memory”, “make him great at his job”, “make his business a microcosm of the American Dream”, “give him a secret”, and “make him a woman”. The television shows studied this semester do follow these rules and so does the show that I suggest to add to the watching list, Masters of Sex, yet another period drama featuring a difficult man as a main character, William “Bill” Masters.
Masters of Sex is a heavily fictionalized biopic television show inspired by Thomas Maier’s biography Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of Williams Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught American How to Love published in 2009. Broadcasted on the American channel “Showtime” since 2013, Masters of Sex tells the story of Dr. William Masters (played by Michael Sheen) and his assistant Ms. Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan), who started to research the physiology of human sexual response within the conservative context of America in …show more content…

What distinguishes it from the shows we are already watching and would make Masters of Sex worth a discussion? I argue that 1) since the show is made by a female show runner, it offers a female and feminist perspective on masculinity as incarnated by the difficult man that is Bill Masters; 2) it would lead to a discussion about American puritanism in relation to sexuality as depicted in the show; 3) masculinity, as exemplified in Masters of Sex, will be redefined with regard to the contemporary understanding of family and fatherhood, as well as gender, sex, and

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