The Legitimacy of "Love Interests" In Plot
Over here ataniell93 talks about love interests, canon, and female characters. The post has spoilers for potential plot developments in Supernatural, to warn anyone who might want to click, but you really don't need to read the post to understand what I'm objecting to. About one third in ataniell93 says this and this about says it all: "New female character? Awesome.
( Read more... )
Just for example, it's treatment of minorities as their worst stereotypes. Beginning with hitting not one but five Asian stereotypes (perv, comics geek, stern businessman, submissive woman, wise old master) in a row in its four -- and its only four -- Japanese characters and moving quickly onto Mohinder Suresh as a cab driver (where, where is the logic in that? Gah), it does not lack in insults towards anyone who is not a white male. D.L. is a walking criminal stereotype and when we get that debunked he turns into, well, the dumb, whipped black man. Heroes is a show that if there were a gay hero, he'd be an interior designer or she'd be a construction worker.
But beyond the stereotypes and disgraceful treatment of, well, anything they can get their hands on, there's the plot issues. The finale is one big exercise in inconsistency and with people who should know better conveniently forgetting things they've observed and learned within the last five to seven episodes for the sake of the dramatic, emotional finale.
[Here I specifically say this: Peter knows he stops going nuclear when he's unconscious, Peter and Claire knows he can heal himself from bullet wounds because he's absorbed her power, Claire knows if she fatally shoots him he will recover from it (and can guess the only limitation might be the brain), Claire knows that if Ted was knocked unconscious while going nuclear his power will automatically turn off. Noah Bennet knows all these things because he was present for all of them. They are all present as Peter begins to go nuclear and yet none of them think about any of these things.]
So, yes, Heroes has issues across the board from plot consistency on down. Women are hardly its only issue -- and I would never deny Heroes has issues with the way it writes women because it does, in spades. It just has issues on a lot of other grounds too.
At best Heroes is an example where white men are written better than anything else -- but that's hardly the same comparison to what I'm talking about here, in this post, about love interests and the way people judge women -- in general.
- Andrea.
Reply
My mistake, then. I thought you were arguing that a show cannot write one type of characters better than another type of character. Which it seems you're not. Because, I fully agree with your assessment that Heroes has lots of other problems as well, but my point was that the problems don't hit equally. And since you seem well aware of that... uh... I don't even know why I'm still talking.
And yeah, if someone claims that a show is all hugs and puppies and fabulous in every way except the portrayal of women, I'd probably find that shady too.
Reply
Welcome to the current discussion in the Supernatural fandom. That's exactly the problem. That's the same thing we saw with Jo and now again. That's how people are talking now and how I've seen them talk about Stargate: Atlantis at points or Stargate: SG-1 at points. It's why I'm so vehement on this subject because I have seen that and not just from a crazy, vocal, small corner of fandom. It'd be nice if it were just a tiny, loud but ignorable portion.
- Andrea.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment