Warning: Mei-chan rant
OK, I kinda feel like I am kicking a puppy or being one of these women ranting that Kate Hudson chickflicks aren't feminist or whatever but...
but...
I am on ep 3 of Mei-chan No Shitsuji and I cannot take it any more!
I cannot!
It's pushing my wrong/squick buttons entirely too much. It's the whole creepy "we shall subnegate ourselves to our ladies' wishes/we are super-happy to train to be the best servants ever/we have no will of our own/can I carry you over teeny puddle of water and braid your hair like some sort of trained dog" thing. And all this for a bunch of spoiled teenage girls? At least in a medieval context, you do it for a liege lord who gives you rights, land, military protection, and has done something to earn such devotion. And even then you don't walk around starry-eyed or do such ridiculous things. (The alternative reason for them doing it is that they are hormonally sex-thralled to the cute cute girls and just do it because they are so in lust/love/adoration, they'll do whatever, but that's even more disturbing in a very different way).
UGH.
Not cool. I loathe power imbalances with a passion and the one thing that freaks me out more is when the person lower on the totem pole in such a wildly unequal relationship is perfectly happy to be the subservient fulfiller of the other person's every wish like some sort of brain-washed slave. (No, the fact that they are men doesn't make it more acceptable. It's just as repulsive to me).
I don't mind if one of the protagonists is in a socially inferior position - Muhyul from Kingdom of the Winds and Hong Gil Dong from HGD both started their lives as slaves and they are huge favorites. But they both rebelled against this (Muhyul on a personal level, Gil Dong against the whole societal structure). The heroine of Damo is a slave and her "master" is an excellent person (much more worthy of admiration than the silly girls here) but while she might care for him and respect him, she is hardly a happy-with-her-lot mindless drone, but someone who feels her situation and does not like it.
Or to use a modern equivalent, in Hana Yori Dango, Makino is very low on the social totem pole but instead of worshipping all the lovely rich people, she kicks the closest approximation of superior social being that world has (i.e. Domyouji) in the face. I can get behind that. According to the logic of Mei-chan, she should have been bringing him biscuits and shining his shoes instead, or just be happy to be in the same school as the almighty F4.
There is nothing wrong if you have to earn your living as a servant, or even taking pride in your job. But the sickening slavish adoration of someone who is supposed to treat you as an inferior being? The genuine belief they are above you and your only purpose in life is to serve them? Unless they donated a kidney to your aged mother or saved your little sister from a burning building, no. Just no. UGH.
The strongest deside McNS insipres in me is to hand out a bunch of butcher knives to the butlers and then incite them to a glorious workers' revolution!
Yes, I just wrote a power-balance rant about McNS. I know it makes me batshit. But there it is...People are not pets - this is exactly the problem I had with Kimi Wa Petto. It freaked me the hell out.
Of course, as I pointed out above, the altenative is that this is some weird fetishist fantasy of role-playing/powerplay, in which case, while I don't care what people do for fun in private, it makes me pretty uncomfortable to watch.
Also, I can suspend my disbelief past a certain point, but no matter how odd the set-up, the emotional reactions have to be believable in some sort of a real-world way. The way these people act is so far from realistic, it's in another universe.
but...
I am on ep 3 of Mei-chan No Shitsuji and I cannot take it any more!
I cannot!
It's pushing my wrong/squick buttons entirely too much. It's the whole creepy "we shall subnegate ourselves to our ladies' wishes/we are super-happy to train to be the best servants ever/we have no will of our own/can I carry you over teeny puddle of water and braid your hair like some sort of trained dog" thing. And all this for a bunch of spoiled teenage girls? At least in a medieval context, you do it for a liege lord who gives you rights, land, military protection, and has done something to earn such devotion. And even then you don't walk around starry-eyed or do such ridiculous things. (The alternative reason for them doing it is that they are hormonally sex-thralled to the cute cute girls and just do it because they are so in lust/love/adoration, they'll do whatever, but that's even more disturbing in a very different way).
UGH.
Not cool. I loathe power imbalances with a passion and the one thing that freaks me out more is when the person lower on the totem pole in such a wildly unequal relationship is perfectly happy to be the subservient fulfiller of the other person's every wish like some sort of brain-washed slave. (No, the fact that they are men doesn't make it more acceptable. It's just as repulsive to me).
I don't mind if one of the protagonists is in a socially inferior position - Muhyul from Kingdom of the Winds and Hong Gil Dong from HGD both started their lives as slaves and they are huge favorites. But they both rebelled against this (Muhyul on a personal level, Gil Dong against the whole societal structure). The heroine of Damo is a slave and her "master" is an excellent person (much more worthy of admiration than the silly girls here) but while she might care for him and respect him, she is hardly a happy-with-her-lot mindless drone, but someone who feels her situation and does not like it.
Or to use a modern equivalent, in Hana Yori Dango, Makino is very low on the social totem pole but instead of worshipping all the lovely rich people, she kicks the closest approximation of superior social being that world has (i.e. Domyouji) in the face. I can get behind that. According to the logic of Mei-chan, she should have been bringing him biscuits and shining his shoes instead, or just be happy to be in the same school as the almighty F4.
There is nothing wrong if you have to earn your living as a servant, or even taking pride in your job. But the sickening slavish adoration of someone who is supposed to treat you as an inferior being? The genuine belief they are above you and your only purpose in life is to serve them? Unless they donated a kidney to your aged mother or saved your little sister from a burning building, no. Just no. UGH.
The strongest deside McNS insipres in me is to hand out a bunch of butcher knives to the butlers and then incite them to a glorious workers' revolution!
Yes, I just wrote a power-balance rant about McNS. I know it makes me batshit. But there it is...People are not pets - this is exactly the problem I had with Kimi Wa Petto. It freaked me the hell out.
Of course, as I pointed out above, the altenative is that this is some weird fetishist fantasy of role-playing/powerplay, in which case, while I don't care what people do for fun in private, it makes me pretty uncomfortable to watch.
Also, I can suspend my disbelief past a certain point, but no matter how odd the set-up, the emotional reactions have to be believable in some sort of a real-world way. The way these people act is so far from realistic, it's in another universe.