more stuff about female characters

[kattahj]

Concerning my previous little exercise with gender statistics, sometimes when people talk in fandom it sounds as if female characters on TV, especially strong female characters, is something brand new. That 15-20 years ago, you'd be lucky to find one girl on a show, and she was usually the secretary or love interest. This has confused me a bit.

Comments

[roseveare]

Blake's 7 had kick-ass women. Unfortunately? it also had 2-3 extremely strong, well characterised and fairly unique male characters so the only one that tends to stand out when looking at the series as a whole is the villain, Servalan. But Jenna, Cally, Soolin and Dayna individually were all pretty damn fine. And this is getting on for 30 years old genre TV.

I don't know if tehre's a point buried in this comment anywhere.

[kattahj]

The point would be that there have been good parts for women on TV for a very long time, if less so than for men. :-)

Also, coming to think of it, Barbara Wright seems pretty awesome from what I've seen, and that's 44 years ago.

Of course, that's UK. I don't know if UK and US differ.

[starbright73]

I'd say the feminist back-slash has affected the media, big time. I'm re-watching the late 80ies show with Bruce Willis and the females are more true to life and not all suffering from plastic surgery syndrome and serous wall-paper status. I do feel that the female characters on TV these day are worse off than they were 10 years ago.

Some ethnic groups are doing a tad better thou, not much but there is some more variety in the portraying of the members.

[kattahj]

I do feel that the female characters on TV these day are worse off than they were 10 years ago.

I sometimes get that feeling too, though it depends on what I'm watching - currently I'm working my way through Carnivale and it has wonderful female characters. Even the strippers didn't suffer from plastic surgery syndrome. :-) Then again, that show DID get cancelled after just 24 eps...

I think I'm also affected by having spent my teen years watching Press Gang (where the lead char had canonically horrible dress sense and everyone else lived in the 80s) and My So-Called Life (grunge). Most women on new shows feel overdressed to me, styled up to look pretty even in situations where that doesn't make any sense.

OTOH, there's no denying that some shows I watched in my younger years had rather few female chars - TYR is an example of this, as is 21 Jump Street.

Which Bruce Willis show, btw, Moonlighting?

[starbright73]

Yeah, I love Agnes to death *g*

It's the main-stream shows, like CSI (yes I am guilty) and GA (caught one ep) that has the major problems in portraying women as anything but women, if you catch my drift. *g* I watched Weed and the females were truer to life in that one too. Just like in Dead Like me - but those shows seem to get canceled very fast. It seems that the popular US-series tend to rely on what's safe, womanly women and manly men. sighs* Now UK-series are more relaxed in the beauty department, and gender-specifics, IMHO.

It's no wonder that the US is the only 'country' that has most diagnosed "youth with gender-issues" - and that exploded in the late 90ies - I wonder why? *g*

[kattahj]

Agnes is awesome. I love her way of answering the phone.

I'm guilty too - I mean, I'm nuts about Heroes, and it's not good from a gender perspective. Which doesn't stop me from loving Angela and to some extent Claire, but it has so many issues I'm scared to even start counting them. Women getting killed off, women needing rescue when their powers should provide them of ways to rescue themselves, women having clothes that are completely inappropriate for the situation. (Why does Claire need her cheerleader uniform to jump off a bridge? Why does Candice wear miniskirts in the workplace?)

And I think UK shows are in a sense a whole different creature. The book "Tvål" has a hilarious comparison between UK and US soaps using Coronation Street and Melrose Place as examples. (With tough-but-fair females on both shows but looking very different.)

[go_back_chief]

(btw, was Montgomery gay in the series too or just the film?)

As far as I remember, that character wasn't in the series. I don't think the Peurto Rican dude was either. But they had lots of characters who weren't in the movie. Iirc, the teachers were mostly the same, but out of the students there were only Doris (who seemed to have quite a different personality in the movie), Coco and Leroy. Was Bruno in the movie?

[kattahj]

Montgomery was in the series, but only during the first season, and played by a different actor. Here are the opening credits for season 1. And yeah, Bruno was in the movie, played by the same actor and all. The scenes between Shorofsky and him have some of the movie's best lines. (For example: "This isn't your dick you're holding! It's a violin bow! Hold it with respect, like... " "...Your dick?")

Of the people in the 1982 opening credits, Lydia was in the film but had a much smaller part, Bruno, Shorofsky and Leroy were in the film, and Coco, Sherwood, Doris and Montgomery were in the film played by different people. Danny was not in the film, and I suspect he's a replacement for Ralph, since they're both comedians - the difference being that Ralph was massively fucked up and Danny isn't. Julie isn't in the film, but as I recall it, she transfers to the school in the pilot episode. So the only character that comes out of nowhere is Danny,

[go_back_chief]

I remember that Danny had a friend whom he was always with. Was that Montgomery? Also, there were two dancer girls in the movie that I don't remember from the series, one who changed to theatre and one who got pregnant. (And yeah, as I remember it, Danny wasn't much like Ralph at all.)

[kattahj]

As I recall it, Danny was pretty much attached to Doris's hip.

And no, Lisa (the one who switched to theater and Hilary (the pregnant one) didn't make it to the show.