I Just Decided To
I heard y'all loud and clear when you said that watching two non-consecutive hours wasn't enough to dismiss Game of Thrones (at least publicly, anyway). So, now that I'm more than halfway through the first season of The Newsroom, I consider it fair game for me to complain about it at considerable length
( Read more... )
It really is weird that people have badgered you about this on Twitter, but I think it's some TV-nerd equivalent to the comic book fans who were going after people who dared say anything bad about The Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man or Dark Knight Rises before they were released. At some base level I think it's because lots of people, rightly or wrongly, identify themselves by the things they like. "Because my identity is wrapped up, at least in part, in my interests, when you say something bad about something I like (or something I think I'm going to like, in the case of movies or television shows that I haven't actually had the opportunity to see for myself yet), you're insulting me." This kind of thing gets even more emotionally charged when the problems in the show/movie/whatever under discussion have to do with subjects like sexism or racism because now the first emotional reaction is "I like this thing and you're calling it misogynistic, so you're calling me a misogynist." Obviously that initial emotional reaction is not productive, but it seems to be where a lot of people writing comments on those kinds of articles get stuck. So they get dismissive, or even nasty, out of misguided defensiveness. (And I don't know what the overlap is, if any, between Sorkin/TV nerds and video game, comic book and even movie nerds, but those subcultures definitely have problems with ugly misogyny/racism/homophobia. I think it was FilmCritHulk who stirred up a hornets nest last year by writing an essay about sexism in the Batman: Arkham City game. Video game AND comic book venom!)
There's also the fact that probably all of the male commenters are watching the show through a lens of male privilege that doesn't place so much weight on whether the writing treats its female characters well (because men are almost never treated unfairly in the same way in popular culture). I certainly have that luxury/have been guilty of it, and there have definitely been times where I've had to remember to swallow my defensive emotional reaction when hearing your objections after an episode. Maggie's panic attack is a good example of that, because I mostly reacted to that as being an interesting subject, a person suffering a (seemingly realistic?) panic attack in a high-stress work environment, that I hadn't seen explored on television (since The Sopranos, I guess). But obviously, when taken with the show's other women problems and the treatment of the Maggie character in general, it obviously isn't unfair to complain about that scene as another of the show's offenses. And I certainly don't want to make it sound like I'm saying that "lens of male privilege" is a good thing, just that it exists and explains (not excuses) some of the dismissive comments.
I also do think it makes the conversation trickier when the show in question has real pleasures side by side with its glaring problems. It's got a wonderful cast, snappy dialogue (I know you don't like that kind of thing but it isn't inherently connected to the misogyny, so that's just a taste thing), interesting dramatic subjects, and a lot of lovely idealistic notions about the role of the news media in the public discourse. And yep, varying amounts of queasy, unpleasant issues with its portrayal of women. I still find it possible to enjoy the good stuff (without having to "hate watch"), but I'm also a man so you can take that with whatever grain of salt. And it would obviously be a much better (and almost certainly even more interesting) show without the latter.
Reply
I feel this is another Sorkin hallmark (at least of the two shows I've seen). People are often billed at the best at what they do, and everyone talks about them as such, while all of the evidence you actually see points to the contrary. (Like Harriet not being able to tell a joke.) Not that Mackenzie has messed up during a broadcast yet, but she doesn't really live up to other characters' descriptions of her. See also: Will being a great guy, or Matthew Perry being the savior of comedy in Studio 60, etc.
It really is weird that people have badgered you about this on Twitter, but I think it's some TV-nerd equivalent to the comic book fans who were going after people who dared say anything bad about The Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man or Dark Knight Rises before they were released.
I think this makes sense if I was a movie blog that other people read widely. But if someone is going to defend The Newsroom against every Tweet from every stranger that says something bad about it, man, that person is in for a long night.
There's also the fact that probably all of the male commenters are watching the show through a lens of male privilege that doesn't place so much weight on whether the writing treats its female characters well
The crazy thing is, I don't think all of the people who were tweeting at me were men (though the "#FeministGoggles" guy definitely was). I think it's more that the show is more insidiously sexist than overtly sexist. For example, there is Kendra, a woman on the show--and African American, too--who has only had a handful of lines, and none of them have been stupid yet, and Will revealed in the first couple episodes that she aced the SAT, so how can the show be sexist? Sloan was definitely the antidote to the sexism charge for a lot of these people, but that was before the past couple of episodes (still not sure how I feel about the lighting-the-cabinet-member-on-fire thing). If someone is a fan of the show and wants to find proof that the show isn't sexist, there are examples they can point to, which is definitely kind of hard to argue on Twitter. I just think when the whole thing is weighed, it doesn't come out equal for the men and the women. (The thing that bothered me most about Maggie's panic attack is the feeling that he'd never have a male character have one, at least judging from the shows of his I've seen.)
(I know you don't like that kind of thing but it isn't inherently connected to the misogyny, so that's just a taste thing)
I don't hate snappy dialogue inherently. I just hate when it's overused. To me, it would make sense that most of the characters in Kicking and Screaming would talk like that--if you have an insular group of friends, they do kind of adopt each other's speech patterns after a while. But in the Sorkinverse (and the Whedonverse), everybody in the whole, wide world talks that way. Did they screen the security service to get Will the quippiest bodyguard in the country? Not that idea of a quippy bodyguard is impossible, but when it's the bodyguard, and the psychiatrist, and the random plane passengers, and so on, it starts to get tiresome. Also, sometimes in Sorkin/Whedon shows (and Veronica Mars), dialogue is so stacked to give the characters we like the best comebacks/zingers, and to me it rings so false that I start to feel angry at the people that I'm supposed to like and start siding with the straw men.
I also do think it makes the conversation trickier when the show in question has real pleasures side by side with its glaring problems.
I'm not sure what the pleasures/problems split is yet, but I'd guess it's around 30/70. It's not boring, but even the things I like about it (the idea of doing a good news show) comes packaged in so much crap (preachiness, sentimentality) that I'm not really sure why I watch it at all.
Reply
I think this makes sense if I was a movie blog that other people read widely.
See, this still wouldn't make sense to me. Defending something you haven't actually seen from the people who have actually seen it (in the case of those comic book movies)? At least the people badgering you had presumably seen the show. And they just had to click on the #newsroom hashtag to read your comment (and I noticed that it also got favorited a bunch and retweeted, so it wasn't all negative attention from strangers, right?).
I definitely saw some critics of those comic book movies on Twitter being insulted by people who had clearly created accounts just to yell at them, with feeds that started that day and consisted only of bile & angry defenses. All this stuff seems like part of a strange fan defensiveness spectrum. It's a weird, ugly internet thing that seems new-ish to me. Or at least like it's getting more common.
The crazy thing is, I don't think all of the people who were tweeting at me were men
Yeah, I didn't mention it because I am less confident about this part of it, but I suspect that some of the women responding to you on Twitter also have a kind of default male lens for pop culture just because so much of it is dominated by men. The same lack of choices that gets many (most?) little girls used to watching stories about male protagonists, with a male point of view, might leave them with the same skewed perspective that men have, that a much greater variety and depth of representations of one half of the population over the other is "normal." I'm pretty confident that my mom would agree that these problems exist in the show if you pointed them out to her but she also really likes the show and probably wouldn't notice them or articulate them if you didn't point them out (also pretty confident, of course, that she wouldn't go after you on Twitter for voicing your objections).
And I think you're right about the not overtly hostile nature of the misogyny in The Newsroom probably having a lot to do with they way people try to defend against those accusations. On their own, most of the marks against the show (at least on the sexism front) can be explained as jokes, attempts at cute/quirky character foibles, or even illustrations of the sexism/patriarchy in the actual news media (particularly the patronizing attitude of the male authority figures) but when you put them all in one show they end up being a pretty unsavory combination (setting aside that some of them are irritating/not good all by themselves). And it's a combination that the show doesn't seem self-aware enough to get. I really dug the moment when Sloan yelled at Charlie for calling her "girl," as I think it did carry a charge of addressing the "boys' club" issue (the same chauvinism that led to her being hired explicitly because she was qualified and quite attractive). Of course, I was then deflated when they called it back at the end and had Charlie himself be the one to relinquish calling her that, as a way to say she was no longer in trouble.
I don't hate snappy dialogue inherently. I just hate when it's overused.
That's exactly what I meant when I said it's a taste thing. I know we've talked before about your feelings about dialogue & haven't necessarily gotten anywhere, but it still strikes me as a straight up taste thing & not really as much to do with the quality of the writing. That said, I am curious to hear what you think the divide is between Sorkin/Whedon/Veronica Mars dialogue and Hudsucker/Pushing Daisies dialogue that makes the latter acceptable and the former unacceptable (I'm under the impression that all of them would fail the "people don't really talk like that" sniff test).
Reply
That's the thing, though. It's not just who screws up and who doesn't (or who has flaws and who doesn't), it's what screw-ups and what flaws each character gets that unnerves me. To me, getting totally high when you don't know you're going to go on the air isn't the same as not being able to subtract, or understand basic economics, or get dressed without putting your skirt on backwards, or know that Don Quixote was originally in Spanish. It's almost like, "For this episode, Will does something too cool and rebellious and counter-cultural for TV." If I were a TV character, I'd rather have that be my quirk than having to count on my fingers. I know the whole season was produced before any of it aired, but I don't expect any improvements when Sorkin has said he doesn't really understand the difference. The only thing that's really equal so far is that, once the show goes live, everyone snaps back to being competent.
Defending something you haven't actually seen from the people who have actually seen it (in the case of those comic book movies)?
Agreed that if you haven't seen something, it's totally weird to deride or defend it. I just meant it would make more sense for fans of those properties, assuming they'd seen it, to go after movie sites than Twitter individuals.
I really dug the moment when Sloan yelled at Charlie for calling her "girl," as I think it did carry a charge of addressing the "boys' club" issue (the same chauvinism that led to her being hired explicitly because she was qualified and quite attractive).
Grumble, grumble. I liked that the scene involved Sloan really sticking up for herself, but is it calling out the "boys club" thing, or playing into it? It does kinda fall into the idea that "girl" is an insult because it's female, a Sorkin trope.(That Vulture piece outlines how many times Sorkin characters say "you're a real woman, you know that?" as a pejorative.) And I'm not sure if I agree with this, but Willa Paskin says that the fact that she said "don't call me girl, sir," with the "sir" at the end, just plays into his "authority fetish." Like everything involving Newsroom, that scene gives me mixed emotions.
Reply
It is definitely a taste thing--a lot of people whose opinions I respect really love that kind of patter. But to me, the Hudsucker and Pushing Daisies worlds are so stylized anyway, and the way they talk is just a part of that. With some of the Sorkin/Whedon shows and VMars, it felt to me more like it's used mainly to turn the "good" characters into literate superheroes and always give them the verbal upper hand. I know this isn't actually the case, but I get the feeling that the creators had arguments in real life, thought of the perfect responses later, and gave those responses to their stand-in tv characters. I really stopped watching Veronica Mars in the first episode when she made a cool, clever Outsiders dig to a for-real biker gang. Coming up with the perfect reference in the face of danger was too Mary Sue-ish for me.
And, with the Sorkin shows, at least, it seems like the only response is an even snappier comeback. No one ever says, "What the hell are you talking about?" or "That was a stretch" or "fuck you, asshole," or "What was that? I wasn't listening anymore," or something that would derail the back-and-forth from being the perfect patter, even if it makes no sense for those characters to be talking that way. (I remember there was an episode of Studio 60 where they go to the hospital and even the doctors were talking like that. It was like, "No, we have to go to this hospital, where all of the doctors went to hyper-literate medical school and can keep up with our tete-a-tetes!") I just wish there were people on the show who weren't interested in verbal sparring, or sounded like idiots, when it's appropriate and not for a hateful reason, like a well-meaning but stoner-sounding friend of Will's or something.
Reply
Leave a comment