Moffat's Women
I've been uneasy about Steven Moffat's depiction of women for a while - pretty everything I've seen since Press Gang, I suspect. The outpouring in favour of motherhood in the Doctor Who Christmas special left a nasty taste in my mouth, Amy Pond's job as kissogram seemed a little dubious and I wasn't entirely happy with some of the background to River Song. The woman at the centre of last year's Christmas special felt a little thinly written too.
I didn't have any especial alarm bells ring for Sherlock "A Scandal in Belgravia", as expectations were lowered. It was fankwank, I suspect. Just as we've had random reference to Androzani in Doctor Who, so there are references to Valley of Fear and various other cases. It did strike me that Irene Adler's dominatrix was a little, um, post-watershed. Moffat's Adler has clearly stood on a few corns.
Note the various girlfriends of Watson, comic foils all, the neurotic Mrs Hudson (with convenient cleavage) and the silly, unrequited lover of Holmes, Molly Hooper. Conan Doyle was no great creator of women, but Moffat (and Mark Gatiss) don't do much better. It is all too par for the course - and it sounds like the second Robert Downey Jr film is not much better (C.E. Murphy: http://mizkit.livejournal.com/710466.html).
ETA: Stewart Lee: (One of the few female characters in the original Holmes stories, Irene Adler, was changed from an opera singer to a prostitute. Out Mrs Hudson as an angel and the whole gamut of TV roles for women will be covered.)"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/08/stewart-lee-christmas-traditions-pogues?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038
I didn't have any especial alarm bells ring for Sherlock "A Scandal in Belgravia", as expectations were lowered. It was fankwank, I suspect. Just as we've had random reference to Androzani in Doctor Who, so there are references to Valley of Fear and various other cases. It did strike me that Irene Adler's dominatrix was a little, um, post-watershed. Moffat's Adler has clearly stood on a few corns.
- Juliet McKenna: http://jemckenna.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/on-irene-adler-and-outrage-and-influences-and-charoleia/
- Jane Clare Jones: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/03/sherlock-sexist-steven-moffat?newsfeed=true
- Another Angry Woman: http://stavvers.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/irene-adler-how-to-butcher-a-brilliant-woman-character/.
Note the various girlfriends of Watson, comic foils all, the neurotic Mrs Hudson (with convenient cleavage) and the silly, unrequited lover of Holmes, Molly Hooper. Conan Doyle was no great creator of women, but Moffat (and Mark Gatiss) don't do much better. It is all too par for the course - and it sounds like the second Robert Downey Jr film is not much better (C.E. Murphy: http://mizkit.livejournal.com/710466.html).
ETA: Stewart Lee: (One of the few female characters in the original Holmes stories, Irene Adler, was changed from an opera singer to a prostitute. Out Mrs Hudson as an angel and the whole gamut of TV roles for women will be covered.)"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/08/stewart-lee-christmas-traditions-pogues?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038