"Don't hurt her" - non-relationships on tv
So yesterday morning I watched the newest episode of The Mentalist and this morning as I was lying in bed it sparked off a lot of thoughts about how characters are portrayed when they are not in a relationship, but still have feelings for each other.
For the purposes of this post I will not be talking about shows directly targeted to women (eg Sex in the City), not because they don't fit the tropes necessarily but because I rarely if ever watch them and so have no idea what tropes they do use. This is about gender-neutral programming, which tends to have overlapping tropes with tv directed towards men.
So, starting with men and unrequited love. A man who has unrequited feelings for a woman is, by and large, normal. It may have developed over time. It may have been love at first sight. They may have been in a relationship and then broke up for whatever reason. Whatever the circumstances, it is a neutral and accepted state of affairs that often serves to make the character more sympathetic.
He will act in one of two fashions, though there can be significant overlap between them - either he will be honourable, or he will be persistent. If he's honourable he'll pine, generally from a distance. His feelings will be a topic of conversations with friends and occasionally he'll dote on the object of his affections (and isn't that a creepy turn of phrase?), worrying about her if there's the slightest whiff of danger, protecting her from dangers real or imagined, even if she doesn't want him to. If he's persistent, he will pursue her, attempting to win her over or change her mind through sheer stubbornness.
Enter a third party - the love interest has a boyfriend. Again, our lovelorn male has two general options. Either he is honourable and they have a man-to-man talk, which will almost always contain the words, "Don't hurt her." Our hero is protecting her, because as we all know, anonymous men love to date women for the sole purpose of breaking her heart, but will desist from doing so once one of her friends tells him not to. The other option is rampant jealousy. He will not want to accept the state of affairs and will complain about the relationship to anyone who'll listen. He may act out so that he's actually affecting the relationship negatively. He may suspect the boyfriend of wrongdoing and engage in illicit methods of finding out what he's up to. (If the boyfriend actually is doing something hinky, a male character suffering unrequited love will be the only cast member to suspect him, and his suspicions will be dismissed by other characters as irrational jealousy.)
The important thing is that a man who acts persistently and/or jealously will not be portrayed badly if he's a main character. His love is pure and righteous, even if he and the woman he loves never actually have interactions with each other that could allow chemistry to develop or show itself.
Now, a woman who's in love with a man - and remember we're not talking media that's directed to women, because seems to have completely different rules. In most tv, a woman in this situation has no guarantee that she'll be portrayed positively. Women don't nobly protect their love interests on tv. They pine. Sometimes it's played for laughs - like Rose in Two And A Half Men, who is legitimately obsessed with Charlie, who stalks him and names both her ferrets after him. Oddly enough I can't think of many examples of main character females who just happen to suffer from unrequited love, not like I can for males, but I can think of countless movies and tv dramas about psychotic women stalking the man they're obsessed with. Swimfan would be an obvious example. Women rarely seem to be the victims of actual stalking on television - they're the victims of crime, absolutely (even Criminal Minds is starting to be particularly fixated on the white woman victim), and some of that crime does involve stalking, but it's not often the same kind of stalking that makes it into the more psychological thrillers like Swimfan. It's temporary stalking. It's a means to achieve the crime that is the main focus. It's not the nightmare hell that so many women actually experience in real life, the kind that's skeezy and insidious and frightening but each incident in and of itself doesn't actually sound criminal when you describe them. Women also extremely rarely fall in love with a man at first sight, unless they're to be portrayed as psychotic stalkers, whereas, taking the show that originally made me think about this as an example, Rigsby's feelings for Van Pelt were established in the very first episode where Grace is very new to the team, and have remained consistent for the entire nearly three seasons of the show so far. Even guest characters - Walter Mashburn, who was in an episode in each of seasons two and three, set his sights on Teresa straight away, and that dynamic continued in his second appearance a year later. But he's portrayed as amusing and a little bit quirky, a guy who has everything and just wants something new and interesting to happen, basically.
On tv, a guy who can't get a woman is to be sympathised with. He's an Everyman who's cruelly treated and overlooked by his female acquaintances who take him for granted. A woman who can't get a man is to be pitied and reviled, because there are no ugly or plain women on tv (though sometimes they like to pretend there are) and if a woman has looks and still can't get laid she has to be doing something massively wrong. A trite way to put it would be, if a girl can't get a guy, there's something wrong with her - and if a guy can't get a girl, there's something wrong with her.
When it comes down to it, women's feelings in these situations don't matter. No one actually asks Grace how she feels about Wayne. When Wayne tells Cho that he told her he loved her and she didn't respond, Cho says, "Tell her again." There's no acknowledgement that, quite often, a woman feels the best way to respond to an admission of unwanted feelings is to.... well, not respond. Because actually rejecting him would be rude and cruel and bitchy, and surely it's pretty damn obvious to everyone that if you tell someone something like that and they don't come back later all "so what you were saying earlier :D:D", they probably don't want to discuss it, right? Except... apparently not, because apparently if a woman doesn't respond it simply means that she wants to be pestered. Because women don't develop feelings in their own right - on their own they regard everyone neutrally, until a man decides he loves her. Only then will she be pleased and flattered and love him back with appropriate gratefulness. And loving someone who doesn't love her is one of the greatest sins a woman can commit, because she's not fitting in neatly to the desires of men.
This entry was originally posted at http://keieeeye.dreamwidth.org/148613.html. Feel free to comment there instead because LJ is a poo.
For the purposes of this post I will not be talking about shows directly targeted to women (eg Sex in the City), not because they don't fit the tropes necessarily but because I rarely if ever watch them and so have no idea what tropes they do use. This is about gender-neutral programming, which tends to have overlapping tropes with tv directed towards men.
So, starting with men and unrequited love. A man who has unrequited feelings for a woman is, by and large, normal. It may have developed over time. It may have been love at first sight. They may have been in a relationship and then broke up for whatever reason. Whatever the circumstances, it is a neutral and accepted state of affairs that often serves to make the character more sympathetic.
He will act in one of two fashions, though there can be significant overlap between them - either he will be honourable, or he will be persistent. If he's honourable he'll pine, generally from a distance. His feelings will be a topic of conversations with friends and occasionally he'll dote on the object of his affections (and isn't that a creepy turn of phrase?), worrying about her if there's the slightest whiff of danger, protecting her from dangers real or imagined, even if she doesn't want him to. If he's persistent, he will pursue her, attempting to win her over or change her mind through sheer stubbornness.
Enter a third party - the love interest has a boyfriend. Again, our lovelorn male has two general options. Either he is honourable and they have a man-to-man talk, which will almost always contain the words, "Don't hurt her." Our hero is protecting her, because as we all know, anonymous men love to date women for the sole purpose of breaking her heart, but will desist from doing so once one of her friends tells him not to. The other option is rampant jealousy. He will not want to accept the state of affairs and will complain about the relationship to anyone who'll listen. He may act out so that he's actually affecting the relationship negatively. He may suspect the boyfriend of wrongdoing and engage in illicit methods of finding out what he's up to. (If the boyfriend actually is doing something hinky, a male character suffering unrequited love will be the only cast member to suspect him, and his suspicions will be dismissed by other characters as irrational jealousy.)
The important thing is that a man who acts persistently and/or jealously will not be portrayed badly if he's a main character. His love is pure and righteous, even if he and the woman he loves never actually have interactions with each other that could allow chemistry to develop or show itself.
Now, a woman who's in love with a man - and remember we're not talking media that's directed to women, because seems to have completely different rules. In most tv, a woman in this situation has no guarantee that she'll be portrayed positively. Women don't nobly protect their love interests on tv. They pine. Sometimes it's played for laughs - like Rose in Two And A Half Men, who is legitimately obsessed with Charlie, who stalks him and names both her ferrets after him. Oddly enough I can't think of many examples of main character females who just happen to suffer from unrequited love, not like I can for males, but I can think of countless movies and tv dramas about psychotic women stalking the man they're obsessed with. Swimfan would be an obvious example. Women rarely seem to be the victims of actual stalking on television - they're the victims of crime, absolutely (even Criminal Minds is starting to be particularly fixated on the white woman victim), and some of that crime does involve stalking, but it's not often the same kind of stalking that makes it into the more psychological thrillers like Swimfan. It's temporary stalking. It's a means to achieve the crime that is the main focus. It's not the nightmare hell that so many women actually experience in real life, the kind that's skeezy and insidious and frightening but each incident in and of itself doesn't actually sound criminal when you describe them. Women also extremely rarely fall in love with a man at first sight, unless they're to be portrayed as psychotic stalkers, whereas, taking the show that originally made me think about this as an example, Rigsby's feelings for Van Pelt were established in the very first episode where Grace is very new to the team, and have remained consistent for the entire nearly three seasons of the show so far. Even guest characters - Walter Mashburn, who was in an episode in each of seasons two and three, set his sights on Teresa straight away, and that dynamic continued in his second appearance a year later. But he's portrayed as amusing and a little bit quirky, a guy who has everything and just wants something new and interesting to happen, basically.
On tv, a guy who can't get a woman is to be sympathised with. He's an Everyman who's cruelly treated and overlooked by his female acquaintances who take him for granted. A woman who can't get a man is to be pitied and reviled, because there are no ugly or plain women on tv (though sometimes they like to pretend there are) and if a woman has looks and still can't get laid she has to be doing something massively wrong. A trite way to put it would be, if a girl can't get a guy, there's something wrong with her - and if a guy can't get a girl, there's something wrong with her.
When it comes down to it, women's feelings in these situations don't matter. No one actually asks Grace how she feels about Wayne. When Wayne tells Cho that he told her he loved her and she didn't respond, Cho says, "Tell her again." There's no acknowledgement that, quite often, a woman feels the best way to respond to an admission of unwanted feelings is to.... well, not respond. Because actually rejecting him would be rude and cruel and bitchy, and surely it's pretty damn obvious to everyone that if you tell someone something like that and they don't come back later all "so what you were saying earlier :D:D", they probably don't want to discuss it, right? Except... apparently not, because apparently if a woman doesn't respond it simply means that she wants to be pestered. Because women don't develop feelings in their own right - on their own they regard everyone neutrally, until a man decides he loves her. Only then will she be pleased and flattered and love him back with appropriate gratefulness. And loving someone who doesn't love her is one of the greatest sins a woman can commit, because she's not fitting in neatly to the desires of men.
This entry was originally posted at http://keieeeye.dreamwidth.org/148613.html. Feel free to comment there instead because LJ is a poo.