Tea and thoughts
I went to a holiday party recently wherein, for my gift exchange, I received four seasons of "Sex and the City" on video. I've watched these before, but it's been a good while, and I really love this show, so it's been fun rewatching (on a tangental note, I also love watching "Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country" over and over, so maybe it's a Kim Cattrell thing - but that's another post elsewhere).
If you've never seen this show, you should. I'm not going to take hours to explain the concept. Basically, Carrie is our narrator, a sex columnist and girl-about-town. Charlotte is the most traditional, wanting marriage and family; Miranda is a lawyer, independent and kind of brash; and Samantha lives her sex life much like a man, love 'em and leave 'em, and is mostly happy with that. If you've seen it, you don't need any of this summary.
I love all of these characters. They sleep around a lot, they make mistakes, they get hurt - there's nothing I don't like about them as characters, female, male, otherwise. They're flawed and fun and occasionally maddening.
It really struck me, watching last night (for the fifth or sixth night in a row - parceling out the episodes 2-3 to a night, jumping seasons), what annoys me about the new Elizabeth Swann: The girl has no concept of humility, nor does she suffer negative consequences for her actions. And perhaps - just maybe - she's still too young for me to really like, for these reasons.
Where this really stood out to me was the storyline in which Carrie is dating Aidan, but having an affair with the married Mr. Big on the side. I like Aidan, so I really wanted to hate Carrie for what she was doing to him. And briefly, I did. But she suffered for her actions and even after the affair was over, she chose to tell Aidan because she couldn't stand keeping that kind of secret from him. It broke them up, and Carrie suffered for her choices.
Another thing is that even though each of the women has confidence in herself overall, each is attacked by self-doubt from time to time. Each of them is rejected at some point by a man, a boss, a friend, or a relative - we see them having to deal with this. Not everybody loves each of them. And each admits she has flaws, or has it pointed out to her and has to accept and deal with it. Even Charlotte, who is usually somewhat high and mighty and frowns over Samantha's bawdy accounts of her conquests, has to occasionally admit she feels the same urges and acts on them (and in one episode, is judged by her own old friends as harshly as she judges Samantha) - and admits later that she acted on them.
These women are all in their thirties. I don't mean to discriminate, but seriously? Maybe that's part of why I like them. By that age, a woman's endured trials, suffered losses, screwed up multiple times, been humiliated and disgraced at least once or twice - and most of the time, it's the best things that could happen to her in the long run (I think the same of men, BTW). I'm not saying there aren't teenagers or twentysomethings who don't suffer (I know of a teenager recently whose mother died, and that has to be awful to deal with, especially that young), but by and large, the older you get, the more willing you are to admit ignorance and flaws and accept you're not the center of the universe. (And just maybe when I'm 60, I'll think seniors are more appealing than 30-year-olds - but even as a teenager, I recognized that I liked the qualities of women in their thirties and older, than of girls my own age.)
Unfortunately, Lizzie Swann has been made the center of the POTC-verse, has been handed every advantage, is chased by every good-looking man she runs into, and gets to act like a pirate while all the time bragging about what honor and decency she possesses ... and while I hope that changes in AWE, I don't really see how it can, from all the spoiler photos I've seen and the spoilers I've read. She'll continue to be the center of this fictional-verse.
I don't mind if people disagree with me. I've read several comments over the past few months from women and girls who love Lizzie, toward those who don't like her or her actions so much, that they're all perpetuating a double standard or are somehow sexist. Well, I'm not sexist, and this sort of explains my feelings on the matter - and just maybe it explains part of what someone else out there might feel, as well. And I hope it also helps explain why I've had such a hard time trying to figure out this character change over the past few months, too.
(crossposted to my own journal)
If you've never seen this show, you should. I'm not going to take hours to explain the concept. Basically, Carrie is our narrator, a sex columnist and girl-about-town. Charlotte is the most traditional, wanting marriage and family; Miranda is a lawyer, independent and kind of brash; and Samantha lives her sex life much like a man, love 'em and leave 'em, and is mostly happy with that. If you've seen it, you don't need any of this summary.
I love all of these characters. They sleep around a lot, they make mistakes, they get hurt - there's nothing I don't like about them as characters, female, male, otherwise. They're flawed and fun and occasionally maddening.
It really struck me, watching last night (for the fifth or sixth night in a row - parceling out the episodes 2-3 to a night, jumping seasons), what annoys me about the new Elizabeth Swann: The girl has no concept of humility, nor does she suffer negative consequences for her actions. And perhaps - just maybe - she's still too young for me to really like, for these reasons.
Where this really stood out to me was the storyline in which Carrie is dating Aidan, but having an affair with the married Mr. Big on the side. I like Aidan, so I really wanted to hate Carrie for what she was doing to him. And briefly, I did. But she suffered for her actions and even after the affair was over, she chose to tell Aidan because she couldn't stand keeping that kind of secret from him. It broke them up, and Carrie suffered for her choices.
Another thing is that even though each of the women has confidence in herself overall, each is attacked by self-doubt from time to time. Each of them is rejected at some point by a man, a boss, a friend, or a relative - we see them having to deal with this. Not everybody loves each of them. And each admits she has flaws, or has it pointed out to her and has to accept and deal with it. Even Charlotte, who is usually somewhat high and mighty and frowns over Samantha's bawdy accounts of her conquests, has to occasionally admit she feels the same urges and acts on them (and in one episode, is judged by her own old friends as harshly as she judges Samantha) - and admits later that she acted on them.
These women are all in their thirties. I don't mean to discriminate, but seriously? Maybe that's part of why I like them. By that age, a woman's endured trials, suffered losses, screwed up multiple times, been humiliated and disgraced at least once or twice - and most of the time, it's the best things that could happen to her in the long run (I think the same of men, BTW). I'm not saying there aren't teenagers or twentysomethings who don't suffer (I know of a teenager recently whose mother died, and that has to be awful to deal with, especially that young), but by and large, the older you get, the more willing you are to admit ignorance and flaws and accept you're not the center of the universe. (And just maybe when I'm 60, I'll think seniors are more appealing than 30-year-olds - but even as a teenager, I recognized that I liked the qualities of women in their thirties and older, than of girls my own age.)
Unfortunately, Lizzie Swann has been made the center of the POTC-verse, has been handed every advantage, is chased by every good-looking man she runs into, and gets to act like a pirate while all the time bragging about what honor and decency she possesses ... and while I hope that changes in AWE, I don't really see how it can, from all the spoiler photos I've seen and the spoilers I've read. She'll continue to be the center of this fictional-verse.
I don't mind if people disagree with me. I've read several comments over the past few months from women and girls who love Lizzie, toward those who don't like her or her actions so much, that they're all perpetuating a double standard or are somehow sexist. Well, I'm not sexist, and this sort of explains my feelings on the matter - and just maybe it explains part of what someone else out there might feel, as well. And I hope it also helps explain why I've had such a hard time trying to figure out this character change over the past few months, too.
(crossposted to my own journal)