Via my flist.
This is one of the most intelligent discussions of fandom & writing that I've ever had the pleasure of reading.
It tackles the same issue as Your Friends Are Not Watching the Same Show You Are (And That's Okay), but from a different angle - the angle of viewing something through a particular lens and ignoring contradictory evidence. The author even brings up Spike to illustrate a point, using the difference between how some fans saw him Vs. how the show portrayed him. (Who was monster and who was victim in S6? Was Spike mistreated or was Buffy? Fandom, I love you, but the overwhelming tendency to portray EVERYTHING as black-or-white drives me insane. Hence, me rarely stepping out from my cosy corner). Because nothing is SIMPLE. Good characters are complex. And writers even more so...
F.ex. Joss is a not a shining beacon of feminism. Nor is Moffat a misogynist. And to view either through a lens like that distorts everything you see. They are storytellers, and they have strengths and weaknesses, and even these tend to change over time. (The most stellar example would probably be when RTD was accused of homophobia post-CoE... Hence my deep distrust of Fannish Accepted Wisdom, despite the fact that fandom was what taught me about privilege & -isms in the first place.)
Um, anyway, READ THIS. Have I mentioned lately that I love sensible and levelheaded people?
A Scandal in Fandom: Steven Moffat, Irene Adler, and the Fannish Gaze
A couple of choice quotes:
The thing about the latest round of "Is Steven Moffat sexist?" that's currently flapping round the blogosphere, is that if within the same week you can manage to get accused of hating women by a Guardian blogger, and simultaneously accused of championing women and hating men in the Christmas special by the Daily Mail ... you're probably doing something a little more complex than either side is giving you credit for.
[...]
Really her [Irene Adler's] reputation as The Woman Who Out-Thought Sherlock Holmes is entirely down to a couple of paragraphs of good press from Watson as narrator, rather than what she actually does in the action of the story. In that story, she doesn't actually keep pace with Holmes; she's genuinely taken in by Holmes' various deceptions -- even though she's been warned in advance to look out for him in particular. The victory she wins over Holmes is simply a matter of spotting when she's given herself away, and getting the hell outta Dodge before Holmes comes back -- having decided that she can't go up against "so formidable an opponent". Far from engaging in an intellectual battle of wits with Holmes, she's actively trying to avoid such a clash.
(Also - final one tonight! *bites nails*)
It tackles the same issue as Your Friends Are Not Watching the Same Show You Are (And That's Okay), but from a different angle - the angle of viewing something through a particular lens and ignoring contradictory evidence. The author even brings up Spike to illustrate a point, using the difference between how some fans saw him Vs. how the show portrayed him. (Who was monster and who was victim in S6? Was Spike mistreated or was Buffy? Fandom, I love you, but the overwhelming tendency to portray EVERYTHING as black-or-white drives me insane. Hence, me rarely stepping out from my cosy corner). Because nothing is SIMPLE. Good characters are complex. And writers even more so...
F.ex. Joss is a not a shining beacon of feminism. Nor is Moffat a misogynist. And to view either through a lens like that distorts everything you see. They are storytellers, and they have strengths and weaknesses, and even these tend to change over time. (The most stellar example would probably be when RTD was accused of homophobia post-CoE... Hence my deep distrust of Fannish Accepted Wisdom, despite the fact that fandom was what taught me about privilege & -isms in the first place.)
Um, anyway, READ THIS. Have I mentioned lately that I love sensible and levelheaded people?
A Scandal in Fandom: Steven Moffat, Irene Adler, and the Fannish Gaze
A couple of choice quotes:
The thing about the latest round of "Is Steven Moffat sexist?" that's currently flapping round the blogosphere, is that if within the same week you can manage to get accused of hating women by a Guardian blogger, and simultaneously accused of championing women and hating men in the Christmas special by the Daily Mail ... you're probably doing something a little more complex than either side is giving you credit for.
[...]
Really her [Irene Adler's] reputation as The Woman Who Out-Thought Sherlock Holmes is entirely down to a couple of paragraphs of good press from Watson as narrator, rather than what she actually does in the action of the story. In that story, she doesn't actually keep pace with Holmes; she's genuinely taken in by Holmes' various deceptions -- even though she's been warned in advance to look out for him in particular. The victory she wins over Holmes is simply a matter of spotting when she's given herself away, and getting the hell outta Dodge before Holmes comes back -- having decided that she can't go up against "so formidable an opponent". Far from engaging in an intellectual battle of wits with Holmes, she's actively trying to avoid such a clash.
(Also - final one tonight! *bites nails*)