proprietary fannish love; or, who "ruined" my female character
Yesterday I participated in a discussion about what this whole fanfic thing is all about, anyway. Yesterday and today I participated in two different discussions about female characters. I propose that there are some similar principles underlying both sets of discussions.
( cut for somewhat inexcusable length--sorry! )
( cut for somewhat inexcusable length--sorry! )
Yes! Thank you! That's a major facet of the problem for me. I also agree with you on the "strength of characterization" bit. I've found, overall, women tend to be written far more inconsistently than men. Or, maybe a better way to put it is when I see women characters written inconsistently, more often than not, the men are written significantly *more* consistently. Consistency, in this instance would be in-universe - even though we've never seen Character A do this before, it makes *complete* sense that he/she would go home and polish off a bottle of Jack after Traumatic Event Y. When every new thing we learn about a character slots into what we already know (builds a clearer picture) without the aid of a crowbar, that's consistent writing. Characters grow from their pasts, just as real people do (or they *should* ;-). When, however, a character demonstrates a pattern of behavior or thought that contradicts their known traits (note 'pattern' - smart people do stupid things from time to time) that messes with the characterization. At that point, I have to revise my initial impression of the character to incorporate the new data (if it was intended as such, or not) and, 9 times out of 10, it's to the character's detriment. Personally, I'm far more interested in *consistently* written women characters than simply in women demonstrating agency (great term and spot on), though both would be lovely.
And I'm rambling on past where your comment led me. :-) Off to read the rest of these.
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When, however, a character demonstrates a pattern of behavior or thought that contradicts their known traits (note 'pattern' - smart people do stupid things from time to time) that messes with the characterization.
The new pattern of behavior *can* be growth and if so, that's great. Where I find it inconsistent is when the impact of the new information is ignored. Character A has been shown to be a bit of a slob from day one. Oh, she can find whatever she needs and is in no danger from the health department, but she's not into the whole orderliness thing. ;-) Suddenly, she's shown to be very fastidious about hanging clothes or folding towels just so and her apartment is suddenly in good order. At work, her desk is no longer hip deep in paper with files overflowing onto the floor. Now, this could be a point of character growth. Had she suffered from depression that has now lifted? Did she get a maid? Did she have some kind of epiphany that made her change her habits? What kind? How else is it affecting her personality? Nothing happens in a vacuum.
The traits we exhibit in our private lives bleed (in some manner) into our working lives and into our relationships. The highly organized executive who requires structure on the job to feel comfortable will not live in a home overflowing with six weeks of unopened mail, old newspapers and never do laundry until she's down to her last pair of underwear. She may *hate* domestic tasks. She may hire someone else to do them for her. But she's not going to live in a mess without going postal (which could be a very nice storyline, now that I think of it ;-).
The problem comes in when there's not only no foundation for the change, but it has no other impact on the character and it is never even noticed. People are creatures of habit. Even when we do weird things, we tend to do the same *kinds* of weird things. Characters, while patterned after people, aren't. Characters exist as a single component to a story, or in the case of television, and such, a universe with some overriding dramatic flow. Might be saving the world, or solving crimes or exploring what it's like to be a teenaged witch in the normal world (my kid loves Sabrina ;-). The upshot is that since we, the audience, have special knowledge about characters (we know all that exists about a character at any given moment in time... until the next episode airs) we *are* going to hold them to higher standards than we would people. We're also following whatever the overriding dramatic (I'm struggling for the right word here) 'point' of the series and when the characters stop being believable, the whole thing can lose cohesion. Ya don't put olive oil in a car engine, at least not if you expect it to last.
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If this is true (and I think it is more true in some shows that in others, probably with a general industry-wide tendency, unfortunately, to be more true than not), what then interests me, and what I was trying to gesture to in the post, is what do fans do with this inconsistency--any fan and any character, but particularly a self-identified feminist fan and a female character. Personally, I love my female characters, and I need them. I need them even when they're written inconsistently, though obviously I far prefer it when they're not. And when a character displays traits that startle me, I do try to assimilate that information, and I try to figure out how this fits into the character's development--and sometimes it's just wacky. Lazy writing or whatever. And if it seems to be lazy writing--by which I usually mean that the writers did not think about the character's motivation for given actions, about whether or not that character would actually react in that way, but rather just went with whatever they thought would fit their story, or worse yet, fell back on assumptions (and when it's a female character, these assumptions are often enough assumptions based on sexist stereotypes: all women want babies, or whatever).
Other people, though, seem to react to inconsistently-written characters by choosing to prefer the more consistently-written ones. And that's certainly a choice I understand, but if, as you allege and I'm inclined to agree, female characters are more inconsistently written on the whole than male characters, abandoning the inconsistently-written women in favor of more consistently-written men seems to me unfortunate. But my fannish inclination is very strongly female character-focused, and that certainly influences the way I see this whole issue. (Which is not to say that I don't love the guys, as well, because I do. But with only a couple of exceptions, my favorite character in any text is female; it's just the way my brain is wired.) So I would rather champion a character I love, even if she's sometimes badly written, even if she often works better in theory than in actuality, than to give up on her.
I'm not sure, in general, that I would value "consistency" as much as "motivation I can understand" in character development--and you speak to this somewhat in your comment below about character growth. My favorite characters are characters who grow and change, and my favorite shows operate under the theory that "if you get hit, it hurts" (to quote, or at least paraphrase, David Kemper, one of the main Farscape PTB): when things happen to characters, particularly traumatic things, they change. But presumably at least much of the time (barring the inevitable irrational moment, which we all have, so perhaps we should be more accepting of such in our characters), there are clear relationships and motivations. I don't need a character to be consistent so much as I need to understand why she or he has developed in the ways she/he has.
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That falls under my use of 'consistency' and if anyone has a better word, please supply it. ;-)
A lot of my willingness to ditch a poorly written female character in favor of a well-written male character, probably stems from my first foray into science fiction as a child. Trek (TOS, that is) aside, I started reading Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke when I was 9. There simply *weren't* any (many - at least not in our house) female heroes (aside from Podkayne). I learned very young to identify with male characters simply because there wasn't any other choice. I have since, of course, found excellent female characters in books (Jani in Kristine Smith's books is nothing less than perfection... which doesn't mean she's a perfect person, just an incredible character).
All my history aside, I also hesitate to embrace poorly written/handled/developed/whatevered female characters simply because I don't want TPTB (generic version ;-) to get complacent. I want them to know I expect my female characters to be handled as well as the male characters and they damned well better get to it or I'll drop their show like a hot potato. Yeah, one voice isn't going to have much impact, but one voice is all I have. I choose to exercise *my* agency and use it. ;-)
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In general, I prefer to use my own agency as a fan primarily to keep my own sanity, and part of how that works for me is to latch onto characters I love and try to work out the characterization, whether that's through fic or through analysis or just in my own mind. I really enjoy analyzing characters and trying to make seemingly disparate bits of information fit, etc. And secondarily I would use my own agency exactly as I am doing here, by raising a bunch of questions about what exactly we mean when we have these conversations, by adding my voice to the general debate about these issues and hopefully by doing so encourage whatever tiny fraction of the general community might be encouraged to pause for 30 seconds to give it a little more thought, and take that thought off to the next place of dialogue. Eventually, perhaps these dialogues might bleed into the realm of people with power. And even if not, I think the dialogue itself is valuable: debate is something I believe in very firmly, no matter the subject.
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I haven't seen Sarah Conner yet, but I keep hearing terrific things about it.
I do have very few shows I stick with, at least partly because of character issues. I do have different standards for male and female characters, simply because there *are* so few well-written female characters. Often, the best ones aren't the stars (probably because if she shows up too much the male writers get all flustered and can't handle it).
Most of the best ones I've found aren't in SF. Catherine in CSI is terrific. I find her very real, whereas Sara always annoyed me. I can't tell if Sara annoyed me because she was so well-realized and just basically unlikable, or if she was just so poorly written I couldn't get a handle on her. Fiona in Burn Notice is another one I enjoy, lack of moral compass and all. :-) Benson in whichever Law and Order she's in (I've just started watching it in reruns) looks like she might turn out to be a good solid character.
I suspect part of the problem with women in SF is there are still far too many marketing dweebs involved who still think the predominant audience is 13 year old boys.
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