The Feminist Filter: Ted

[gabrielleabelle]

I wanted to post this on Weds or Thurs, but LJ was going wonky. Now it's not. So here! :)

Mission Statement:This series is intended to outline the feminist text of each episode so as to provoke and encourage open discussion. It's not so much about making value judgments about events and/or characters but about analyzing the series from a feminist

Comments

[norwie2010]

Ted is a robot from the 50s, a period with notably distinct gender roles. What can we take away from Ted's behavior in light of this context? As noted in the Feminist Fine-Toothed Comb, Ted comes from a time when family dynamics revolved around a patriarchal assumption, literally a “rule of the fathers”.

Ted "from the fifties" is very successful economically, as well as socially (so to speak) in the nineties. In fact, people admire and love him (or are jealous of him): his work colleagues, Joyce, the Scoobies, etcpp.

I think that says a lot about how not very different our times are from the fifties on the gender front. I think the whole "from the fifties" metaphor is a cover, it makes it easier to tell this story and brings some "creep" factor in as well for good fun. At the end of the day, the ideology Ted represents is very much alive now. (Otherwise Buffy wouldn't challenge it day in, day out

[gabrielleabelle]

Fantastic point, yes!

I think there's an added subversion in that Joyce and the Scoobies loved Ted specifically because he drugged them. The drugs, in this case, being symbolic of cultural misogyny.

[doublemeat]

The drugs also emphasize that Ted is wholly fake. The Ted of this episode, having been constructed by long-dead and unseen human Ted, is pure artifice. As a robot, he doesn't even have agency of his own; all he does is carry out programmed instructions corresponding to desires he can never understand or fulfill, and manipulate others to do the same by removing their agency. That's a pretty obvious metaphor for the constraints imposed by socially inherited ideas (specifically patriarchal culture).

[gabrielleabelle]

Very good point. *nods*

[alexeia_drae]

Joyce is commenting on the difficulty of an older woman - specifically an older woman with a kid - in finding a partner. This limited range of options appears to exacerbate the abuse by Ted in which he drugs her into submission. Is this episode giving us some social commentary in that respect?

Then you wonder why Joyce, by all means a successful woman (isn't she the curator of a museum?) feels that she needs to have a man in her life. Of course, Buffy mirrors this throughout the show.

This episode reminds me of the phenomenon where a single mother starts dating some creep who mistreats her kids, and she is either blind to it or stands behind her man, which is still alive and well today.

Now if Joyce was portrayed as being happy with her job, family, and friends but happens to fall in love is one thing. But when this successful woman feels like she has to take whatever comes her way as that line indicates...

[gabrielleabelle]

isn't she the curator of a museum?

More than that, she owns her own gallery!

And I agree. I think it's a noteworthy example of the expectation that women need a man for their life to be complete. I'm not sure if the episode is playing into it so much as critiquing it (cause...Joyce does end up dating a serial killer robot from the 50s).

[enigmaticblues]

You know, the funny thing about "Ted" is that it's probably one of the episodes that makes me feel MOST uncomfortable. There are certain ways in which it really bucks stereotypes and gender roles, or at least questions them. And then, there are other ways, as alexeia_drae comments, in which it underscores certain tropes, like that of a woman needing a man to be "successful", particularly if you look at it in light of the entire series

[gabrielleabelle]

It's a disquieting episode. I feel especially anxious for Buffy as she starts to feel trapped in a poisonous household with a mother who won't stand up for her.

[ceciliaj]

I find that disquieting, too, but I also feel for Joyce. I think she disregards Buffy's concerns far too quickly and comprehensively, but I also think that things aren't easy for her, and I can forgive her some missteps along the way to finding a social circle that works for her (which does not happen until Buffy moves out, but we hear about it a few times in S4). Parents should always stand up for their children against abuse, but I don't think that Joyce fully realized that she had the power to reject Ted until after the fact. It is a shame that Joyce thinks that she needs a man, but it is understandable that she needs a friend her own age, and I'm glad she eventually finds some. /iz Watsonian

written anonymously to protect family

[enigmaticblues]

I hear you here, and I think it’s important to look at what scripts are available for people socially. The story is, you make friends when you are in high school and college, and then you grow up, and then you make friends at the workplace (Joyce doesn’t seem to interact with that many people there), interact with the friends you have left over (she lost those when she moved/divorced), and then you can date. The social model for how you make friends as an adult not through work really sucks, because friendship is supposed to come naturally. It’s okay to work at finding a husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend/etc, because that’s something you’re supposed to want and something you’re specifically supposed to seek. In the Ted model from the 1950’s especially, the nuclear family is THE thing that is more important than anything else, and men and women are incomplete without each other, and then, once it’s just the two of them, they don’t really need anyone else. The script is that you need a partner, and then the partner becomes

[concinnity]

Man. This is one of my favorite episodes. It is so, so, smart and creepy. And SUPER FUCKING OBVIOUS, which I just adore about it.

*cue Xander voice* "Hey Kids! You know what's neat! That almost nothing has changed for women in the last fifty years! Isn't that great?! /XanderVoice.

And then they quite literally beat you over the head with the idea. A frying pan to the head. I'm trying to think of a more obvious metaphor....nope, can't get there. I also love how this episode works to shift the audience boundaries; along with Ted, we get a chance to see Buffy, et al, as someone outside their little bubble. I think the BtVS team sometimes doesn't get enough credit for how well they alternate perspectives for us - it is particularly deft work, imo. :)

[gabrielleabelle]

Haha! Yep, it is anvilicious in its application of the metaphor. Actually, a lot of S2 are. Some Assembly Required, Go Fish, Reptile Boy. Heavy-handed, yet still largely effective. :)

[local_max]

I think I would put Willow as decisive in this episode. She notices the cookies are drugged, figures out where they come from. The Scoobies (which includes Cordelia as well) discovered where Ted came from. I think that's a big deal for our understanding of the episode.

[gabrielleabelle]

Hmmmm. I see your point. I'm a bit unsure as to whether that qualifies as Willow making a decision, though. When she notices the cookie making Xander act wonky, she's already been investigating Ted (something that Giles asks them to do before he leaves). So while Willow helps the investigation, I don't know that I'd say she made any active decision in that regard.