On Manpain. And the Fridge. And Things That Make Me See Red.
Spammy McSpamerson today, but I can't help posting this, and this special part I'm not even going to cut, because it gave me such an explosion of YES YES YES that I can't even cope. Full text of this amazing article is here. Thanks to surreallis for the link.
HERE IS MY OWN SPECIAL FAVORITE PART, FOR REASONS EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER READ A WORD OF MY JOURNAL WILL ALREADY KNOW;)
"How To Defend Manpain:
Of course, because shows and movies so often set things up in this way - "the woman has to die so that the man can have a story" - manpain becomes easy to defend, in fannish circles, via a sort of fatalistic Watsonian attitude. "Why did they fridge that lady," folks will say, and other folks will come in to helpfully explain to you that hey, if they hadn't killed the lady, how would the plot have possibly gone on? They needed that lady to die in order for the dude to have an emotional arc! There is no other possible writing decision that can create plot! Also often writers don't seem to exist, or producers, or directors - the show will seem to just spring organically from the ground, rather than being made by people who made choices. Check out, for example, this amazing page on the internet: Renee Walker's Death Scene. This is a page about a character's ridiculous and sudden death on 24, and it's on a website that's devoted to the actress who plays her, so everyone there is pretty sad or pissed off about her death - they loved that character and that actress! But I think the whole comments section really shows how manpain works, and how it gets propped up and defended, all that talk about what "has to happen," about "what's necessary to trigger the plot," about how this isn't a "shock value" death, but an "important" one - and when they say "important," they mean "important to Jack Bauer, the dude with the manpain."
What really amazes me, speaking of shock value deaths, is the degree to which these manpain-inducing moments, especially the ones where ladies die, are defended as "edgy" storytelling in some way, as "shocking" - when in fact they're anything but. They're blase, boring, predictable, and so repetitious that . . . well, that I could make this vid. No one is shocked when the hero's girlfriend dies, and it's as far from edgy as could be; edgy storytelling would look very different. Manpain isn't used as a narrative technique because it's creative or surprising - it's used because it's easy, lazy, and follows on well-tread paths that are familiarly and comfortably sexist, racist, and heterosexist."
Thank you, yes, that is all, the end, kthnxbai. *cheers*
HERE IS MY OWN SPECIAL FAVORITE PART, FOR REASONS EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER READ A WORD OF MY JOURNAL WILL ALREADY KNOW;)
"How To Defend Manpain:
Of course, because shows and movies so often set things up in this way - "the woman has to die so that the man can have a story" - manpain becomes easy to defend, in fannish circles, via a sort of fatalistic Watsonian attitude. "Why did they fridge that lady," folks will say, and other folks will come in to helpfully explain to you that hey, if they hadn't killed the lady, how would the plot have possibly gone on? They needed that lady to die in order for the dude to have an emotional arc! There is no other possible writing decision that can create plot! Also often writers don't seem to exist, or producers, or directors - the show will seem to just spring organically from the ground, rather than being made by people who made choices. Check out, for example, this amazing page on the internet: Renee Walker's Death Scene. This is a page about a character's ridiculous and sudden death on 24, and it's on a website that's devoted to the actress who plays her, so everyone there is pretty sad or pissed off about her death - they loved that character and that actress! But I think the whole comments section really shows how manpain works, and how it gets propped up and defended, all that talk about what "has to happen," about "what's necessary to trigger the plot," about how this isn't a "shock value" death, but an "important" one - and when they say "important," they mean "important to Jack Bauer, the dude with the manpain."
What really amazes me, speaking of shock value deaths, is the degree to which these manpain-inducing moments, especially the ones where ladies die, are defended as "edgy" storytelling in some way, as "shocking" - when in fact they're anything but. They're blase, boring, predictable, and so repetitious that . . . well, that I could make this vid. No one is shocked when the hero's girlfriend dies, and it's as far from edgy as could be; edgy storytelling would look very different. Manpain isn't used as a narrative technique because it's creative or surprising - it's used because it's easy, lazy, and follows on well-tread paths that are familiarly and comfortably sexist, racist, and heterosexist."
Thank you, yes, that is all, the end, kthnxbai. *cheers*