Feminist meta for the day

[katie_m]

Chuck is sexist, but not misogynist. Battlestar Galactica was far more feminist, but also far more misogynist. Discuss.

No, okay, you don't have to discuss, but I was thinking about this in context of some discussion of Chuck over at cofax7's, and it works for me. Chuck is an intensely boyish show, and I use the term "boy" intentionally. It's

Comments

[jenlev]

*word* . It's one of the reasons I stopped watching BSG.

As for Chuck....I guess what I want from that show is an echo of what it felt like to watch Robert Wagner in It Takes A Thief. Which may not make sense...but it's the subjective feel I get watching both shows.

Please bring your good technological magic up this-a-way. On principle I say this because I don't actually have any new technology that I've recently cursed. Er...except for just typing that I suppose. *headdesk*

[elz]

That's an excellent point. I think of Chuck as a show that tries to have it both ways: they get their obnoxious sexist humor in via the guys at the Buy More and then they have Chuck be the good guy with the right opinions who disapproves of their shenanigans; the women are often scantily clad, but they're also smart, talented and caring.

I guess that might be more frustrating for some people because it's so deliberate ("we need more viewers! viewers like half-naked beautiful women! get Sarah in her underwear again!"), but yeah, the lack of mean-spiritedness to it is probably what helps me shrug it off most of the time.

[katie_m]

they get their obnoxious sexist humor in via the guys at the Buy More and then they have Chuck be the good guy with the right opinions who disapproves of their shenanigans

But not, of course, enough to actually do anything about it. If Chuck were a real guy, that would totally put me off of him. But as it is, meh.

[serenada]

I've always been really bothered by Sarah. I think she's a cardboard cutout of an action heroine--there to be sexy rather than strong, hot rather than cool.

I do agree with the critique that cofax linked to. There's no writing for women on the show.

BSG, on the other hand, wrote women. It beat women, but it beat men--do you really feel that women were punished for their gender? I think the show was pretty egregious in rape as a weapon, and it was conventionally heterosexually targeted, but I consider that separate.

[katie_m]

I guess I feel like BSG started strong and ended poorly--Dee and Cally and Tori all dead (Laura I don't mind; she was supposed to die and she did), Kara gone, a bunch of guys lying around the African savanna talking about having sex with non-verbal females, you know?

I dunno. It'd be interesting to flip the genders and see how I reacted; I think some elements of Kara's story bug me that wouldn't if she were male, which means it may be my issue rather than the show's.

[serenada]

Women exercised a lot of power throughout though, physical, political, and sexual, and I appreciated that diversity (although I wasn't totally a fan of the show). And for all the Cylons were the antagonists, the women weren't the evil ones, and they were strong, and most of them thrived.

I don't feel the skewing was statistically significant, whereas on Chuck, I really feel there are no women of depth or interest.

[septembergrrl]

... there's feminist critique of Chuck? I tend to stop at it passing the Bechdel test (all right, technically Sarah and Beckman are usually talking about Chuck in some way, shape or form, but it's not like they're romantic rivals) and having a female action hero.

Male POV, yes, but honestly I think a show from Sarah's POV would be incredibly dark if you look at what the show's told us about her worldview. She lies to everyone, trusts no one, and has been killing people as part of her job since her teens. Not much joy, there.

I'm so out of the loop. I dunno. I still like the show a lot, though like you I wish they'd let things go somewhere for Chuck and Sarah, or even for Chuck's career. But I was over the Buy More a while back.

[katie_m]

Here's the original post, if you're interested.

I, too, am basically over the Buy More, though it's such a big part of the premise of the show that I think it'd be tricky to get rid of it. (And I'd miss Ellie and Awesome if Chuck left!) It's one of those shows that could really do with the ability to end, but of course people working on a show have some resistance to that idea for obvious reasons...

[septembergrrl]

Skimmed it -- the writer doesn't like the show at all, which is fine but ... I think I'm less interested in criticism by people who just don't like something than I am in criticism by people who like it but see problems? Like, my commentary about NCIS wouldn't be terribly valid, since I simply don't care for the show. Some things strike a chord with you, some things don't, and so it goes. I disagree with many of her her conclusions, but I think it's all a matter of taste more than anything else.

Which is a long way of saying I appreciate the link!

[danceswithwords]

It's incredibly male-gazey, the "us" is clearly the male characters, etc. But it does like its women; we are expected to think of its female characters as awesome.

I've always felt that way too, and while the criticisms are totally valid, the show is such an OTT production, and everyone is such a caricature, that it's hard to take it seriously. I also think BSG suffered from a bait-and-switch problem, which was that we the audience had every reason to expect that the show was the collective story of all of these characters, until it suddenly became all about the manpain; whereas Chuck was clearly (with the title and everything!) Chuck's story from the beginning, and everyone else was along for the ride.

I do miss Anna, though, and the representation of the female geek. Her absence feels like a step backwards.

[katie_m]

I do miss Anna, though, and the representation of the female geek. Her absence feels like a step backwards.

Yeah. I mean, on the a Watsonian level, go Anna for escaping the Buy More event horizon! But I miss her too.