Rec: Meta - The Real Woman? Why Molly Hooper is the One Who Counts

[hells_half_acre]

This is sort of a follow-up to my previous post about Women, Sex, and Power in relation to Sherlock (and Sherlock fandom)...in that rant, I stated the following:

How about we stop making every single female on television the representative for all women? Is Sherlock the representative for all men? No? Why not? Oh, because he's a possible

Comments

[indusnm]

I have to admit, I haven't seen Merlin- I'm actually too fond of Arthur and not fond enough of Merlin to sit through too much of it before I shut it off in the interest of keeping my favorite childhood myths as they are ;) And I'm always in two places on race-blind casting because it ignores that there are real race issues- if you don't acknowledge that someone is a minority, you never touch on that minority's experiences. Perhaps there were no minorities in Arthurian times (not familiar enough with the region's history at that time), but I have to admit to having some issues with Downton Abbey because I was raised in South Asia, where we still resent how brown people are sort of treated as canon fodder, where our deaths don't count. In the war scenes, there was an opportunity to acknowledge that other races WERE present (some because they were promised independence for fighting, but that is a whole other story), but all I saw there were white people. There is no race blind casting in Downton Abbey and people like them would not hire minorities as servants, so everyone is white- which I think as an American takes me back because let's face it, the NAACP would never let a popular prime time tv show get away with that. It's funny because while I get that people don't want things to change, it's hard to relate to being nostalgic for a time when I was so very unwelcome in the servant's quarters as well as in the living room.

As for Molly- I completely agree about women not needing to represent all womanhood. I was saying that I think there's where a certain judgment for Molly comes from, not that it's right. I also agree that women wouldn't have been in that world and we must acknowledge that we are there now- that we are in the courtrooms (still so glad that in the US we don't have those wigs, BTW), police stations and medical examiner's offices.

As for your paragraph beginning "Ideally.." that was what I was trying to say but you said much more ideally. That is why I relate to Molly- I think as people we are far closer to her than to spies, etc. And as for Sally, I don't hate her though I don't respect her choices (Anderson has nothing going for him and a lot going against him, IMO, and she's too hot to make that choice) until she takes that joy in needling John when he's reeling. But my point about non-canon characters is that the men we see the most of are canon, but not the women. Which makes total sense, but leads to more judgment of women in my opinion. Wrongly so, but sort of natural.

The truth is that we women make up more than half the world, and there is no one shape we can ever take. Some of us may not want to be in a position of power, even over ourselves- the trick is to be happy with where and who you are. What Molly represents, to me, is the very difficulty of that.

[indusnm]

*you said more eloquently (cannot type properly today!!!)

[hells_half_acre]

Haha, no worries...I thought you did it on purpose and it was a joke. Like, me saying that we can't be our ideals, and you saying that I said that in the most ideal way. ;)

[hells_half_acre]

Well, as Arthur is a myth, there aren't really "Arthurian times" - which, I think, gives them license to be race blind. The entire show is a metaphor for gay rights (in my opinion), with some mention of women's rights...so really, I guess they have their "minority issues" covered there. :P

Again, I really don't know anything about Downton Abbey...but, yeah, I can see what you're saying about it. Also, I hear you on the war-movies thing...I can't stand watching American movies about WW2 for that reason. It's like the only people who fought and mattered in the war were white Americans...oh and two dimensional evil Germans/Japanese. :P

It sounds like we are in agreement with Molly and women...and it's true, the fact that the women are non-canon (by necessity) does lead to them being judged more harshly.

I didn't mind Sally doing her job and following through and making sure that Sherlock really wasn't a psychopathic murderer...but she kind of lost all sympathy from me when she needled John. Everyone they meet knows that John is "in love" with Sherlock - you don't speak that way about the love of someone's life, I don't care if Sherlock really was a psychopathic murderer. But..uh...that's off topic.