*sigh*
So I'm watching a random episode of Stargate: Atlantis on Hulu and there's this scene near the beginning where Shepard meets up with another team - that happens to be all women - on a planet. He gets a little speechless and gawking and the following exchange happens"I didn't realize that you, uh..."
"That my team was a bunch of girls, sir?"
"...That's not what I was gonna say... But, you know, now that you mention it..."
*headdesk*
There's something I love about the original Star Trek* - people generally didn't pull that kind of crap with Uhura or the other female crew members. The odd non-Starfleet person might go a little ga-ga, but the crew acted professionally. Uhura was just there, doing her job, and when male crew members came onto the bridge they didn't get all weird and "But, but... you're a girl" on her.
I concede that there may be times when it's important - for the story, the characters, or the audience - to draw attention to the fact that a woman is doing a particular job or that the person doing a particular job is a woman. Yet, I feel that, in a contemporary show with a modern or non-dystopian future setting and no purposefully misogynist characters, usually it's better to lead by example and distribute the roles among the genders without commenting on it.
This is particularly true in a show where either it can be presumed that it's not uncommon for women to be working along side men in the same jobs (because they do so in real life), or it has actually been shown on-screen that they do - in superior positions, even.
The audience will be perfectly aware who is and isn't a woman, and if they are surprised to see a woman in a particular position, then hooray, they're surprised. They don't need to be told "This should surprise you. Marvel at how progressive we are."
Not to hate on the Stargate franchise, but maybe I shouldn't expect much from the spin-off of a show that had the single worst example of this problem that I've ever seen.
Star Trek got this more or less right in the sixties. Decades later, and it still has to be this whole thing, where there's animosity and people posture and the woman has to prove herself and the guy grudgingly gives her respect and it all comes off as very sexist when the intention may very well have been to make a statement against sexism, which just makes the fail worse.
So, um, TV? Knock it off, please.
*Not that the spin-offs didn't do this too, but they were less ahead of their time in that respect.
"That my team was a bunch of girls, sir?"
"...That's not what I was gonna say... But, you know, now that you mention it..."
*headdesk*
There's something I love about the original Star Trek* - people generally didn't pull that kind of crap with Uhura or the other female crew members. The odd non-Starfleet person might go a little ga-ga, but the crew acted professionally. Uhura was just there, doing her job, and when male crew members came onto the bridge they didn't get all weird and "But, but... you're a girl" on her.
I concede that there may be times when it's important - for the story, the characters, or the audience - to draw attention to the fact that a woman is doing a particular job or that the person doing a particular job is a woman. Yet, I feel that, in a contemporary show with a modern or non-dystopian future setting and no purposefully misogynist characters, usually it's better to lead by example and distribute the roles among the genders without commenting on it.
This is particularly true in a show where either it can be presumed that it's not uncommon for women to be working along side men in the same jobs (because they do so in real life), or it has actually been shown on-screen that they do - in superior positions, even.
The audience will be perfectly aware who is and isn't a woman, and if they are surprised to see a woman in a particular position, then hooray, they're surprised. They don't need to be told "This should surprise you. Marvel at how progressive we are."
Not to hate on the Stargate franchise, but maybe I shouldn't expect much from the spin-off of a show that had the single worst example of this problem that I've ever seen.
Star Trek got this more or less right in the sixties. Decades later, and it still has to be this whole thing, where there's animosity and people posture and the woman has to prove herself and the guy grudgingly gives her respect and it all comes off as very sexist when the intention may very well have been to make a statement against sexism, which just makes the fail worse.
So, um, TV? Knock it off, please.
*Not that the spin-offs didn't do this too, but they were less ahead of their time in that respect.