more stuff about female characters
Concerning my previous little exercise with gender statistics, sometimes when people talk in fandom it sounds as if female characters on TV, especially strong female characters, is something brand new. That 15-20 years ago, you'd be lucky to find one girl on a show, and she was usually the secretary or love interest. This has confused me a bit. Sure, at 27, I'm a bit "brand new" myself, but surely having womenfolk on TV didn't start with Buffy?
I decided to apply my power of statistics to the three American TV shows that are the very first I remember: Fame, Little House on the Prairie, and The Cosby Show. As it turns out, Fame has the same number of male and female regulars, Little House has 10 male and 7 female (though more women in the core cast), and The Cosby Show has more female than male regulars. This, of course, says nothing about the quality of the characters. It's been a long time since I saw any of the shows, but as I recall it, Little House had a bunch of sanctimonious asses, but not necessarily with the men on top. In The Cosby Show, Claire was definitely more in charge than Cliff was, though of course he was the "star" of the show. With Fame, I just can't remember, but if the show was anything like the movie, there certainly wasn't any lack of good female characters.
Another interesting angle is that while I have no reason to doubt those who claim TV is becoming more racially diverse, the combo of these three shows provided me with different melanin in my TV friends. On Little House, everyone and their long-lost uncle was white. On The Cosby Show, everyone and their long-lost uncle was black. On Fame, people were all sorts of things. The 1982 opening credits has the following lineup: Black woman, Italian man, black woman (biracial? She was biracial in the film), Jewish man, Italian man, anglo woman, Jewish woman, anglo man (btw, was Montgomery gay in the series too or just the film?), black man and anglo woman. (The film's Puerto-Rican and Dutch stars didn't make it into the series.)
And wow, now I really get the urge to rewatch Fame and see what it was "really" like. I've rewatched the film lots of time (and heard the director badmouth the TV series, which is fun), but I haven't seen the show since the early 90s. Maybe when I'm done with all the other stuff I'm watching I can see if it can be hunted down.
Anyway. These are all non-genre shows, so I waved my magical statistics wand over the first SF show I watched: Star Trek TNG. According to the Swedish wikipedia, it had 4 female leads to 6 male ones, though it should be noted that of those four, two were alternate, one was killed off, and the remaining was Deanna Troi. Of the mentioned recurring characters, six were women, eight were men, and one was a cat. Ethnicity was hard to put numbers on, so I didn't do that, though I can say that it's whiter than Fame but nowhere near as white as Little House.
Of this we can draw the conclusion that the 80s according to Katta wasn't all that different from the 00s according to Katta, that Gene Roddenberry seems to think the 24th century won't be all that different from either, and that Deanna Troi sucks.
Oh wait. That last bit was just random opinion thrown in.
I decided to apply my power of statistics to the three American TV shows that are the very first I remember: Fame, Little House on the Prairie, and The Cosby Show. As it turns out, Fame has the same number of male and female regulars, Little House has 10 male and 7 female (though more women in the core cast), and The Cosby Show has more female than male regulars. This, of course, says nothing about the quality of the characters. It's been a long time since I saw any of the shows, but as I recall it, Little House had a bunch of sanctimonious asses, but not necessarily with the men on top. In The Cosby Show, Claire was definitely more in charge than Cliff was, though of course he was the "star" of the show. With Fame, I just can't remember, but if the show was anything like the movie, there certainly wasn't any lack of good female characters.
Another interesting angle is that while I have no reason to doubt those who claim TV is becoming more racially diverse, the combo of these three shows provided me with different melanin in my TV friends. On Little House, everyone and their long-lost uncle was white. On The Cosby Show, everyone and their long-lost uncle was black. On Fame, people were all sorts of things. The 1982 opening credits has the following lineup: Black woman, Italian man, black woman (biracial? She was biracial in the film), Jewish man, Italian man, anglo woman, Jewish woman, anglo man (btw, was Montgomery gay in the series too or just the film?), black man and anglo woman. (The film's Puerto-Rican and Dutch stars didn't make it into the series.)
And wow, now I really get the urge to rewatch Fame and see what it was "really" like. I've rewatched the film lots of time (and heard the director badmouth the TV series, which is fun), but I haven't seen the show since the early 90s. Maybe when I'm done with all the other stuff I'm watching I can see if it can be hunted down.
Anyway. These are all non-genre shows, so I waved my magical statistics wand over the first SF show I watched: Star Trek TNG. According to the Swedish wikipedia, it had 4 female leads to 6 male ones, though it should be noted that of those four, two were alternate, one was killed off, and the remaining was Deanna Troi. Of the mentioned recurring characters, six were women, eight were men, and one was a cat. Ethnicity was hard to put numbers on, so I didn't do that, though I can say that it's whiter than Fame but nowhere near as white as Little House.
Of this we can draw the conclusion that the 80s according to Katta wasn't all that different from the 00s according to Katta, that Gene Roddenberry seems to think the 24th century won't be all that different from either, and that Deanna Troi sucks.
Oh wait. That last bit was just random opinion thrown in.