the MANLIEST PAIN OF ALL

[pocochina]

So, we are all up to speed on thingswithwings’ phenomenal Man Pain vid and post? Well worth a watch/read but be warned of spoilers for pretty much everything ever.

It’s one of those wonderfully thought-provoking dark humor/righteous anger pieces, and it crystallized a whole set of my reactions to Man Pain itself, and other peoples’ reactions to

Comments

[pocochina]

ha, I hope this didn't come across as WHY YOU SHOULD HATE THEM. Just WHY I DO.

And yeah, I remain sympathetic to Betty, however awful she gets.

I think you already know I agree with you about Jenny. I would think far less of him if he did not grieve when she died, which was an event with multiple narrative purposes (including Jenny herself being a proactive threat to Angel). I mean, the scene in Passion surely plays into all this, because it is showing us explicitly that Angelus loves to play this game and he is the villain. An example of women being disposable? At least arguably true. But I agree, the inclusion of Giles was a little jarring for me.

Complex feelings about SaGN and the inclusion of Lee as well. Because, you know, if Dee was fridged for anyone it was to push Felix over the edge; if anyone had Man Pain rather than grief about it, it was Bill. I agree with the general anger at her having been disposable, but, idk, there was a hair of "where is the whitest dude in the room, it must be all about him" and unquestioned prioritization of marriage over other relationships in viewer reaction more so than in the narrative.

[local_max]

Yeah, I don't really see Lee in SaGN, either. I mean, I've only watched it once (as with the rest of season four, mostly), but I don't recall anything disproportionate in narrative focus on him. As you say, if anyone is influenced by it for plot purposes, it's Felix.

Interestingly, the Deep Space Nine example I brought up was another case of "unquestioned prioritization of marriage over other relationships in viewer reaction". I guess I'll go into vague spoiler mode for a second, but only vague. So, main (female) character died because the actress playing her left the show; she died a more or less accidental death which vaguely furthered one of the main arcs and affected the most central character as a result. Her husband -- who was not, in any real way, affected by the plotting surrounding her death, grieved for her -- but ultimately his grief was comparatively sedate, and the way it was expressed was, in the episode proper (and in the clips we were presented) exactly the way it had been established, repeatedly, is the cultural tradition for that (non-human) species, and one which particularly has to do with the way one's loved ones enter into the afterlife. It takes up about ten seconds of screentime. OTOH, we did have a scene of the show's main character, who again the plot actually relates to, talking over her casket about his personal problems surrounding these new plotting developments (which resulted in her death), and how sad he is that she's not there to help him through it. Which, you know, yuck. (I ultimately don't really blame the character all that much, because he was basically a wreck at this point, and understandably so; but that we were supposed to see the emotional weight of not being able to talk to his friend about his own problems as paramount over, you know, the fact that she is herself dead is, I think, a big problem.) But it's the married dude who is shown in the video. And so I do think that there is something a little uncritical about the acceptance that ManPain particularly happens in married/romantic relationships, maybe familial ones, and not otherwise.

(I think a case could be made about ManPain continuing for the husband character in the following season, as he continues to grieve; but I'm not really all that convinced.)

[pocochina]

Yeah. It's a tough distinction to make because the Man Pain talk is so close to the Women In Refrigerators talk. It sounds like it would be perfectly fair to ask why the character was killed rather than getting some other exit. And it's fine just to be fed up with female characters biting it and never like it, honestly. But the Man Pain talk does necessarily centralize the man's reaction, which means actually evaluating it past "he had one."