(no subject)
Am feeling spammy tonight.
You know what I'm tired of in genre tv? The shows about the geeky guys who, for whatever reason, have kinda cool abnormal things happen to them and a whole television is spawned from that event. Sure, great, fine, but where are the shows about geeky girls? And don't try to bring up Buffy. I love Buffy but she so totally does not fit the criterion before or after her Slayer-fication (and neither does Willow, for other sidekick-y reasons).
It's just, I get tired sometimes (ok, more than sometimes) of how television seems to completely disregard the single adult female geek portion of the population. Okay, so we're not a terribly huge segment of the viewing public but we are among the most loyal. And, gah, once again I'm having a hard time articulating why exactly this rankles so much.
And it's not even as if this is a problem only affecting genre television. It's endemic across the board. There are far fewer books about female superheroes, most fantasy and sci-fi novels have male protagonists as do the vast majority of genre movies. There are, of course, some wonderful exceptions to that generalized rule but they are few and far between. When's the last time a girl from a small town discovered that she had some innate specialness and headed off on a hero's quest? Even genre fiction written by women tends to highlight male characters.
So sue me, I find women interesting. I would like to one day have the experience of reading a book or watching a tv show and for once be able to identify with the female character rather than one of the male. It would be nice.
Here endeth the rant.
One of these days I might put up a whole post about how Supernatural is gender subversive, in a way, and how a show that wraps itself in the trappings of traditional American masculinity is traditionally female in perspective. But today is not that day. ;-)
You know what I'm tired of in genre tv? The shows about the geeky guys who, for whatever reason, have kinda cool abnormal things happen to them and a whole television is spawned from that event. Sure, great, fine, but where are the shows about geeky girls? And don't try to bring up Buffy. I love Buffy but she so totally does not fit the criterion before or after her Slayer-fication (and neither does Willow, for other sidekick-y reasons).
It's just, I get tired sometimes (ok, more than sometimes) of how television seems to completely disregard the single adult female geek portion of the population. Okay, so we're not a terribly huge segment of the viewing public but we are among the most loyal. And, gah, once again I'm having a hard time articulating why exactly this rankles so much.
And it's not even as if this is a problem only affecting genre television. It's endemic across the board. There are far fewer books about female superheroes, most fantasy and sci-fi novels have male protagonists as do the vast majority of genre movies. There are, of course, some wonderful exceptions to that generalized rule but they are few and far between. When's the last time a girl from a small town discovered that she had some innate specialness and headed off on a hero's quest? Even genre fiction written by women tends to highlight male characters.
So sue me, I find women interesting. I would like to one day have the experience of reading a book or watching a tv show and for once be able to identify with the female character rather than one of the male. It would be nice.
Here endeth the rant.
One of these days I might put up a whole post about how Supernatural is gender subversive, in a way, and how a show that wraps itself in the trappings of traditional American masculinity is traditionally female in perspective. But today is not that day. ;-)