Intimacy Coordination as a Call to Action: Embedding processes of care in the UK TV industry

Abstract

Calls for the UK TV industry to better prioritize care for workers have increased in recent years, amplified by the deficit of care exposed by recent scandals, #MeToo, Covid-19, pervasive poor mental health, and persistent inequities in the workforce. Yet, what care might look like in media production remains ill-defined. This article focuses on intimacy coordination, identified as one of several emergent roles designed to address unethical, abusive, and unreflective production practices. We consider how the profession seeks to embed processes of care in media production, and thereby challenges normative, individualist working models. We argue that looking at intimacy coordination through a feminist ethics of care lens enables a more nuanced understanding of both the labor of intimacy coordinators, and the profession’s wider significance in helping to re-imagine a more caring, equitable industry that places a concern for workers’ welfare at its core.