Representing Recovery: A discourse analysis of the television shows You, AJ and the Queen, and Mom

Abstract

This thesis analyses representations of mothers seeking recovery from drug use in the first season of three serial shows available on Netflix: Mom, AJ and the Queen, and You. Prior to the main analysis of these shows, a literature review was conducted resulting in the opportunity to address a lacuna in the literature related to gender-focused studies looking at recovery from addiction. The shows that were chosen all include at least one character who is a mother and begins the process of recovery. These shows possess striking similarities in their portrayals of an abstinence-based approach to addiction recovery as well as intersecting discourses of addicted women as bad mothers who reproduce deviance through their children. A discursive analysis of Mom, AJ and the Queen, and You seeks to understand which discourses of addiction, drug use, gender, motherhood, and deviance are present in these representations and the messages that are communicated to the viewing public. This thesis illustrates that these representations reproduce dominant, gendered discourses which construct drug using women as deviant women and “bad mothers” who produce “bad children”. These representations further reinforce the dominant abstinence-based recovery discourse that creates a dichotomous understanding of addiction and recovery as active use as the problem and total abstinence as the only solution. Despite the presence of some resistance to these discourses, these shows ultimately reproduce stereotypical, and often harmful, gendered discourses of addiction and recovery.