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
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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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