on gender fail, in general. And tv renewals.
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... )
And somehow the fact that Dollhouse got renewed while The Inside (and Wonderfalls, for that matter) didn't? Makes perfect sense to me. Joss finally got obvious enough about his sexism for Fox. Inara the Space Whore was too complicated for them.
I find this really depressing. When I look back at Joss's oeuvre I can see how we've been trending this way ever since The First Slayer turned out to have been raped by demons. Buffy was a fluke that he did his best to undo over the course of the show, and has been contradicting more and more ever since.
I am not sure about Fray, because it's been so long since I've read it. I liked it at the time, but I thought I liked Firefly too.
And I guess you don't watch Smallville (smart!) but Chloe and Davis's storyline has been yet another blow for strong female characters everywhere.
PS hi! I've been lurking and friended you, thanks for returning the favor.
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.
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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?
I just don't get this issue.
In another review I read that objected to the ending, someone made the point that Lilith should have possessed a male body which somehow would have made the finale less sexist. That's crazy - Lilith, from antiquity, is a female demon. Having to make her male for the finale just so it won't offend sensibilities seems to me like female demon affirmative action.
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Anyway. I don't want to derail prozacpark's journal with SPN bickering. Also not trying to cause a lot of drama with this unfriending talk. I shouldn't have even mentioned it, I was a bit upset. Personally speaking, I just don't want to read any more fen glorying in the abuse of women on this show. (Or on Dollhouse for that matter.)
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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.
The same rule applies to Lilith - and, really, after what Lilith did to Sam and Dean last year, how could she be anything but evil? Now it's true that they didn't have to off all of them at once, or have them be allies - I actually thought Ruby was working directly for Lucifer, rather than for Lilith, and that's how she got that knife - but if Ruby had remained next year - after her cover was blown - what would have been her role?
Now the one place I've been disappointed a bit in SPN is the follow up role for Anna, 3 seconds here and there and that is it - but that's me. I loved Anna and I thought she was great for Dean because she gave Dean what no one else ever had when he needed it most - solace and complete understanding.
But I think they gave her so little follow up in part because a lot of the fans were very vocal about not liking her at all. I, actually, found that fan reaction a complete turnoff. Like any female who touches Dean must be reviled. I'm hoping she shows up again next year since we got so little resolution for her, but I'm not counting on it.
People were also upset that Pamela was killed off because she was a great female character - yeah, that bothered me, but it also bothered me that Alastair was killed off so quickly, because he was maybe my favorite minor character of the entire show. So I don't think it is just a thing that happens to female characters - I think it happens to characters all the time on SPN. That's why it's so hard to be Sam and Dean - because people around them are always being killed off (though of course they don't mind when it is demons.)
Plus, I think a lot of people wanted Ruby to be good, because they weren't seeing the story straight on, so they could find a way to justify Sam's behavior.
(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 they are not bitches - they are demons - just like Azazel had it coming for 25 years and, one imagines, Lucifer will have it coming in Season 5. And Alastair, my favorite, for a few paltry months - plus 40 years in Hell. It's your choice to see them as bitches, instead of demons. Like all the other demons who happen to be male. Why should the female demons get special treatment?
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?
Well, the whole Sam/Ruby relationship in the last few months was a proxy for sex, as well as a proxy for brotherhood - Ruby taking over Dean's role when Dean wasn't around - and also a proxy for motherhood - Ruby being the source of the fluids Sam was sucking from her body by way of demon nourishment and strength, something he was dependent on for these things, as he let himself be convinced. In the last episode, when he threw her on the bed and got on top of her - just like they were having sex - and then started sucking on her arm, both of their body language was entirely sexualized.
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Ruby was also the only one - outside of family - ever to succeed at getting between the brothers and driving them apart from each other - so on a symbolic level, it also made sense that she was killed while sandwiched between the two of them, in exactly the wedge position she had inserted herself into.
So, while I agree that it was a bit of a cheat that she didn't get a chance to fight back - Sam grabs her before she has much of a chance to do anything. But I also think exactly the same thing about Azazel when Dean shoots him in 2.22 - and have thought so since the first time I saw it. It always looks to me like he had enough time to exit the body in the amount of time it takes Dean to line up the gun and shoot. So that bit of cheating does not strike me as sex based either.
BTW, I didn't hate Ruby - she was a great character. I mean, I enjoyed her character being evil on screen and watching her pull off her manipulations. I suppose she could have escaped and come back next year and played a role - but her cover was entirely blown.
Anyway - I don't think this is at all like the double sided issue of the presentation of women in Dollhouse which I find more problematic. But I find DH problematic in other ways as well. OTOH, it's supposed to be problematic, in all kinds of ways - just that sometimes it is problematic in ways not intended by Joss.
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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.
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Out of curiosity, was your Inara comment regarding the character, or the show's not backing up how she was supposedly the "respectable" one.
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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*
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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.
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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.
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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*
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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.)
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"Buffy" was, really, one of the few heroines we had whose power didn't come from some tragic past wherein she was abused sexually and physically, so the fact that they retconned the getting of Slayer powers to be a rape metaphor? Fail on such a major level that I really don't understand how anyone who loved the first five seasons can reconcile the last two with what came before. The last two seasons undo so much of what "Buffy" was good at, and yes, Joss has consistently failed since then. First on "Angel," then X-men, and now on "Dollhouse."
And the thing is, I don't think he's actually...doing this on purpose? But when someone who is a self-proclaimed feminist fails at gender issues *this* much, what can we expect from the rest of them? It's depressing, really.
I don't watch "Smallville," but I did hear about the Chloe/Davis fail. Though it was mostly in the context of shipper woe at its ending. If you decide to write about the gender fail in it, I would definitely be interested in that meta. :)
"It was so satisfying watching Dean twist the knife in Ruby"
t's not just that they die, but the fact that canon is so disgustingly gleeful about their very gendered deaths and that the fans cheer this? Is wrong on a million different levels.
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