Comments | prozacpark: on gender fail, in general. And tv renewals.

prozacpark

on gender fail, in general. And tv renewals.

May 15, 2009 22:16

So, apparently, Dollhouse has been renewed. I...shouldn't be depressed by this news because I can always just, you know, not watch. But...sigh. It's hard to put in words, but this, along with the new wave of Gender Fail on "Supernatural" is depressing me. Who wants to bet "Supernatural" is totally getting renewed, too ( Read more... )

women in fiction, supernatural, gender fail, dollhouse, gender issues

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arby_m May 16 2009, 04:24:29 UTC

I used to love Supernatural, but it just doesn't love me back and in fact has been hurting me for a long time. I'm quitting ( ... )

abrakadabrah May 16 2009, 15:14:46 UTC

PPS I just defriended someone because their reaction to SPN finale was "It was so satisfying watching Dean twist the knife in Ruby" and "Thank God the brothers are back together, that's all that matters". I am sickened by my fandom. Ex-fandom now I guess. I can't be a fan of this show in good conscience anymore. So how would you have preferred him to dispatch her? Of course he was going to twist the knife - she had just spent two years successfully undermining and debauching and ruining Sammy and exulting in it secretly until this point and enjoying the hell out of it. That's Dean. That's how Dean acts. Is the only objection that she is a female demon? Should he have done it in a more mannerly way? He twisted the knife when he was torturing Alastair as well - was that all right because Alastair was male? But it's not when it's Ruby ( ... )

arby_m May 16 2009, 20:10:04 UTC

A couple of things -

They didn't have to make Ruby turn out to be evil. (Or Lilith, for that matter. Wouldn't it have been a bigger twist ending to have Lilith be good? And Sam kills her anyway by mistake? Of course that would have undermined their apparent running theme this year of "Bitches that had it coming get what they deserve".) But even if one accepts that as a storytelling choice for dramatic purposes (which I can, I don't have to like it but I can see it as valid to some extent) the staging of the actual killing shot was very disturbing. The visual picture of Sam holding Ruby while Dean twisted the knife, like a proxy for sex, and the way the camera lingered on it while the light was flashing - it was very sexualized. Let me ask this - why couldn't Ruby have been fighting back? Why did they decide to stage it this way?
Look at Alistair's torture vs. Lilith's and the nurse's - he was sitting up, they were always lying down, bent back in again a very sexual posture, and they moaned and writhed about in a way I find very ( ... )

abrakadabrah May 16 2009, 20:56:48 UTC

They didn't have to make Ruby turn out to be evil.

Yeah, they did.

In the SPN verse, there is no category like Season 5-6 Spike, let alone Season 7 Spike and Angel. Things aren't ambiguous - like Clem. Demons are always going to be evil. Hell, half the angels we've seen are evil sons of bitches on SPN. So I don't think it would have been a twist, it would have been outside the rules of their verse. When you don't know what it is on SPN, it's evil. It's a horror genre, so things end badly. Just like we saw on Jump the Shark. You knew Adam was going to turn out to be evil, the only question was how ( ... )

abrakadabrah May 16 2009, 20:57:23 UTC

Part II ( ... )

meganbmoore May 16 2009, 21:54:07 UTC

I believe the issue is that by making the closest thing the series has to a female lead an evil traitor, the show retroactively and textually justified the endless misogyny and sexism of season 3, and what I understand of season 4.

abrakadabrah May 16 2009, 22:07:13 UTC

Well, I disagree with your premises. I don't think the show was endlessly misogynistic in season 3, let alone season 4. Different things ting people's meters and SPN doesn't ting mine at all.

I had a different reaction.

I thought the show had Ruby doing a brilliant job of undermining and subverting Sam all year. And made Sam look like he had been having a giant tantrum from the point of Dean's death onwards. And making stupid and terrible choices all year long.

So that Ruby was the evil genius and "brilliant" Sam looked dumber than heck. She played him in every way possible for two years straight and beat him at every turn. Even if, in the end, she paid for it with her life, he's still ass whupped until Sunday. She made him destroy himself. And she got what she wanted more than her existence, which was the rebirth of Lucifer.

So even in death, she wins.

meganbmoore May 16 2009, 21:51:05 UTC

I've been considering arbitrarily defriending every person on my flist who isn't pissed at SPN textually justifying the misogyny and sexism by having the closest thing to a female lead the show has be an evil traitor.

Out of curiosity, was your Inara comment regarding the character, or the show's not backing up how she was supposedly the "respectable" one.

arby_m May 17 2009, 00:36:42 UTC

I've been considering arbitrarily defriending every person on my flist who isn't pissed at SPN

Yeah. Or who can't see or doesn't want to hear about the issues.

re: Inara - I was more talking about Fox execs, and to some extent about Joss's "prostitution is okay if it's her choice" stance. You can't put it in a vacuum (literally in this case), and telling isn't showing. Joss tried to pretend that in this future prostitution was respected - but the fact that Mal literally and textually called her a whore throughout the series and she still went out pining for him belied his words. There really was not much subversion of the trope there. (Don't even get me started on "Heart of Gold".)

If the character of Inara had been male - gay or straight - at least it would have been something different. But then you couldn't have had all that great UST between her and Mal! *rolls eyes*

meganbmoore May 17 2009, 00:42:29 UTC

I thought that's what you meant about Inara, but I have a kneejerk reaction to some things said about her, due to bashing and/or justification I've encountered. In a way, even more than how Mal treated her (and how she had to change for their being together to be a possibility in the movie, but he didn't) I got bugged by when it was somehow cute and charming when one of her clients suggested that she rigged the clocks to rob them of time? Like, I know we weren't supposed to take it as he really thought that, but how could someone not be offended by jokes about how they cheated and robbed in their profession?

prozacpark May 17 2009, 00:45:02 UTC

It's not a profession, Megan! It's an ART form! Ancient, and lost! AND RESPECTED!

arby_m May 17 2009, 00:51:09 UTC

Ugh, I forgot about that. The whole Companion thing made me kind of sick. I wanted to like Inara herself (Morena Baccarin is so beautiful and I liked her calm, zen vibe) but it was hard for me to see her in this pseudo-liberated role - not to mention the way everyone else treated her. What about Jayne when the senator visited? Ugh.

Put it this way - I don't at all blame the character for the lousy way Joss treated her. I wasn't trying to insult her by calling her a space whore, it's more the fun-feminism behind her creation.

meganbmoore May 17 2009, 01:06:58 UTC

I admit, the bit with Jayne doesn't annoy me as much because (unl.ike Mal and the client) we're supposed to think he's an a** in that scene. And, you know, in general.

And yeah, like I said, it's a knee jerk reaction to people who like to talk about how she's weak or not good enough for Mal or how Mal was justified in how he treated her, etc. (The sad thing is that I like the idea of them as a pairing, but I hate how so much of it ended up working.)

In a lot of ways, I think the main reason I was able to get into Firefly was the composure with which Morena Baccarin and Gina Torres played their characters. Like, in some ways, I think both actresses rose above the actual material.

arby_m May 17 2009, 01:35:07 UTC

people who like to talk about how she's weak or not good enough for Mal or how Mal was justified in how he treated her

WHAT. There are people who say that??? *vomits* This is why I didn't read much Firefly meta or reactions because I can't even.

The sad thing is that I like the idea of them as a pairing, but I hate how so much of it ended up working.

Yes. This. I wanted to like them so much. MB and NF had fantastic chemistry. But the persistent, underlying fail of the writing undermined them constantly.

both actresses rose above the actual material

Yes, absolutely. GT in particular was simply amazing.

*needs Firefly icons*

meganbmoore May 17 2009, 01:48:58 UTC

Zoe is literally the only character to seriously threaten Cordy's place as my favorite Whedon character.

And...yeah. It's like, you know how you can arguably use reactions to Dollhouse to learn what some people really think and human rights and the treatment of women in fiction? In some ways, I find Mal/Inara to be a bit similar, with whether or not you view them as equals and/or think the show treated them as such (I think the characters were equals, but they weren't TREATED as equals) and how you view their interactions and how her role is changed in Serenity, but more in terms of gender dynamics and which you "see" a pairing through. (Like, it seems most people look at pairings through the eyes of the men and if the women are "good" enough, but I tend to look at them more in terms of how well the men treat the women.)

prozacpark May 17 2009, 00:55:05 UTC

Firstly, just the fact that you know of the existence of "The Inside" and "Wonderfalls" alone is sort of filling me with love ( ... )

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