Comments | slightlyoffaxis: I Just Decided To

slightlyoffaxis

I Just Decided To

Jul 31, 2012 00:07

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... )

Comments 15

ext_1115841 July 31 2012, 13:45:59 UTC

Well, C.J. is awesome, but all that means is that The West Wing is a much better show than any of the Late Period Sorkin stuff. It doesn't mean that Sorkin doesn't have a problem with women. Sports Night does feature the annoying Sorkin tic of women being totally incompetent at managing their personal lives, but at least the women on that show are very good at their jobs.

Honestly, I get the sense that something happened to Sorkin between WW and Studio 60. He got angry at some specific woman (I think Christine Chenowith?) and has written that anger into everything he's done since. Even The Social Network has this sort of problem - it has very few women, and one of them is flat out crazy.

slightlyoffaxis July 31 2012, 14:34:24 UTC

He got angry at some specific woman (I think Christine Chenowith?) and has written that anger into everything he's done since.

I get that sense, too (though I don't know what he was like before, he just seems like a person scorned), which is why I thought it was so weird that all of these random Twitterers jumped on me (and commenters jumped on that Vulture blogger) when I tweeted about it. Open your eyes, people!

rockmarooned July 31 2012, 16:30:14 UTC

In The Social Network -- I remember Marisa and Nathaniel and I talking about this at length -- at least Sorkin is really writing about male ego and bravado, and (a.) two of the most prominent female roles are the girl who calls Mark out on his bullshit and the female lawyer played by Rashida Jones who regards this all with a kind of empathetic but slightly put-off fascination (b.) honestly, the "crazy" girl in that situation didn't come off so much crazy to me as desperate and frustrated -- the product of an ill-tended relationship with a well-meaning but kind of ineffectual guy. But then, I think that's what makes Social Network so much better than a lot of his recent work: it has the freedom from Sorkin's insistence that the characters are likable or charming (in fact, given his disdain for certain types of characters on his recent shows -- characters both straw-man and not -- I'm impressed by how much empathy he's able to generate on all sides of the Facebook story). The male Sorkin character who actually has real-life incompetence ( ... )

slightlyoffaxis July 31 2012, 16:56:45 UTC

*Yeah, I remember that conversation with Nathaniel, too. I can see why people were bothered by the depiction of women in The Social Network, but you can explain it by saying that those were the women that immature and arrogant men like their main characters would want to associate with (as opposed to people smarter and more competent than they are). It says something about Sorkin that he turned real-life people who weren't like that into those kind of characters, but it's not hard to believe (even if it's not what actual happened--it rings true dramatically). STILL, when you have a female character LIGHT SOMEONE ELSE'S APARTMENT ON FIRE, you can't just shrug your shoulders and say, "There was nothing else she could do ( ... )

Thread 8

anonymous August 3 2012, 14:35:23 UTC

Hey Marisa, it's Anne S. I could not agree more, and I've stopped watching the show for exactly the reasons you describe. I saw this article -- http://culture.wnyc.org/npr_articles/2012/apr/02/aaron-sorkins-the-newsroom-the-ten-most-sorkin-things-in-the-trailer/ -- that came out even before the pilot, and it's funny how accurate it is on this point. Hey, even in West Wing there too many weird scenes wherein women (even C.J.) wouldn't know about something pretty obvious and would sheepishly ask a male character to explain it to her at length. Often this was an excuse to "teach" viewers something (about the census, for instance, which Sam Seaborn *taught* C.J. about over several wretched/boring/offensive bits of one episode). And there were occasional rhapsodic speeches by, say, Bartlett, about all the great women in their lives (grouping his wife, coworkers, and daughter into one bunch ( ... )

slightlyoffaxis August 6 2012, 16:21:29 UTC

Yes! I read about how he defended the show recently, basically saying that once you establish that the characters are good at their jobs, you can have them "slip on as many banana peels as you want.” But there's no recognition there that the banana peels he gives to his men are totally different than the banana peels he gives to his women. It will never be a woman who has to give a long speech teaching something to a man--it'll never be a man that doesn't get basic economics and needs Sloan to explain them to her. I'm still watching the show, but something makes me cringe in every episode.

freakjaw August 6 2012, 22:42:22 UTC

Agreed! I was pretty disappointed (and confused!) when the second episode seemed to betray MacKenzie as a flibbertigibbet after the pilot seemed to stress how good she was going to be at that job. And Sorkin's insistence in writing (or thinking he's writing) romantic comedy into half of the show is frustrating and seems to give rise to some of these problems (Maggie sniping at Jim about his sex life at work, which wasn't super cute or funny or realistic or 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. 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 ( ... )

slightlyoffaxis August 7 2012, 02:17:48 UTC

I was pretty disappointed (and confused!) when the second episode seemed to betray MacKenzie as a flibbertigibbet after the pilot seemed to stress how good she was going to be at that job.

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 ( ... )

freakjaw August 7 2012, 13:14:55 UTC

On the sexism front, at least in this last episode Will was clearly the screw-up "figure of fun" and MacKenzie was on the ball and doing her job. The season was produced by the time the outside world started pointing out the problems with the show, so there's no reason to consider it a course correction or anything, & it doesn't really mitigate the bad stuff that's come before, but here's hoping Sorkin liked it enough to realize his show might benefit from letting somebody else win one instead of Will.

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 ( ... )

slightlyoffaxis August 7 2012, 14:09:00 UTC

On the sexism front, at least in this last episode Will was clearly the screw-up "figure of fun" and MacKenzie was on the ball and doing her job.

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 ( ... )

Thread 5