just thinking
Jan. 26th, 2005 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rusty_haloSo aside from being massively amused by a stupid kerfuffle, I've been thinking about why I so rarely find female characters appealing.
Clearly, I am a self-hating misogynist... oh, wait... actually...
I think it boils down to the fact that I sense a falseness in the way the vast majority of female characters are written. These women aren't like me. They don't think the way I do, they don't act the way I act, their concerns and priorities and behaviors are completely uninteresting and irrelevant to me.
Maybe it's because they are usually written by men, and so they end up being filtered through this idealizing/objectifying/simplifying gaze. Fred, for example. She's perfect and brilliant and damaged, so every man adores her and wants to take care of her. How lame.
Or maybe it's because I'm just not a typical woman. I live on my own in NYC, with no interest in marriage and very little interest in men; I have no interest in children; my emphasis is on career; I don't give a fuck about fashion... etc. I was always that lone girl in the advanced math class full of boys.... the third grader who was off in the corner reading Star Wars novels instead of gossiping about who was dating whom... you know.
I remember when "My So Called Life" came out, and everyone was saying "OMG finally they've perfectly captured the actual teenage female experience." Um, no. That sure as hell was not my teenage female experience.
I don't care about fashion, or motherhood, or sisterhood, or lipstick, or shoes, or the mall, or fitting in, or ... whatever it is that these TV women tend to prioritize. Buffy wanting to be prom queen, or whatever it was? WHY DO YOU CARE? Or Sex in the City--it's not about individuality, it's about expensive shoes. I never gave a crap about that stuff... it boils down to conformity and consumerism, and I got over that when I was ten.
Women worried about being a mother, or finding a man--it seems like the priority of every TV woman is to find a man. I'm SO not interested in that typical woman's role, romance and motherhood and whatever. Buffy secretly fantasizing about "Wind Beneath My Wings" playing at her wedding, Angel leaving her because he couldn't give her children.... it's all irrelvant to me. Live your own life, stop worrying about fitting into this preordained social role. (Not to insult the women who DO want that--but I don't, and would like to see some fictional women who feel the same as I do [and aren't evil].) The thing that annoyed me the most about Buffy was her obsession with being "normal." She would've HATED being normal; it would've suppressed everything that made her unique and gave her strength; yet she never managed to get over this ridiculous obsession with being exactly like everyone else.
And sense of humor. Why can't a woman be strong AND funny? Why do the female heroes have to be so dour and miserable and serious all the time? Strong men can be dark and funny at the same time. Strong women are just written to be boring. Wolverine gets the cute one-liners. Storm and Jean Grey never stop being serious. (In the movies; never read the comics.)
And female characters are so rarely allowed to embrace their darkness. Male characters can be dark and fucked up and it can be a continuing story without a nice little wrap-up. Female characters who go dark have to feel all guilty and apologetic. Wesley could go dark and he never had to cry about how guilty he felt for being a "bad boy" (a phrase that has such a different connotation than "bad girl"). Buffy, OTOH, had to be all sad and guilt-ridden and repentent; she had to apologize to XANDER because she slept with Spike (??!!!), she didn't even seem to ENJOY her dark period, despite all the hot Spikesex. Willow's darkness was a joke; all she had to do was cry and say it wasn't really her, and all was forgiven. A male character could've gone SO MUCH DARKER and had such a much more interesting story--if they had done that with Willow, gone REALLY dark, that story would've been a million times better.
Fictional men are so much more often allowed to exist as fully realized characters, as compared to fictional women who are so often defined by their gender role. You don't see nearly as many male characters who are entirely defined by the fact that they want a relationship and children. You don't see male characters so obsessed with fashion and conformity and consumerism. They're allowed to exist as characters with their own uniqueness and their own agendas, their own ideas and positions that aren't ABOUT pre-ordained social roles based on gender.
I would LOVE to embrace more female characters, but there are so few of them out there that interest me. I liked Faith: she had a genuine darkness, an actual sense of humor, and her story arc wasn't ABOUT gender; she could've been a male character and it would have been just as good. I liked Anya because she was independent and funny, but she never got over her Xander obsession and the writers barely developed her. I liked early Cordelia, before she turned into a saint, because she had no shame and she was both smart and FUNNY. I liked Lilah, because she kicked ass and was dark and smart and funny, but of course she had to die. I like Chloe on Smallville, because she's smart, has a sense of humor, and has actual career ambitions; she isn't just obsessed with boys/clothes/self-pity. I liked Kyra on Star Trek DS9, if you want to go back farther. I liked Princess Leia in the first Star Wars movie, and was really annoyed when she just turned into an object for Han and Luke to squabble over. I like Danaerys Targaryen in A Song of Ice and Fire, who is learning to be strong and powerful and who consistently rejects traditional female roles in pursuit of what she believes is right. (I have issues with the whole destiny thing, but that's another topic.)
There are no female characters LIKE ME on TV. People who prize personal ethics and independence above fashion and conformity. People who don't give a fuck what society thinks of them. (Notice how all the goth chicks on TV are dismissed as crazy evil sex fiends? Women who embrace unconventional social roles always have to be demonized.) You find male characters like this, with whom I tend to indentify--Spike before he wussed out; Jaime Lannister in the Song of Ice and Fire book series; Wolverine in the X-Men movies; Methos on Highlander. Not that these guys are all perfect, but I relate to them much more than I do to the boring conformists on "Sex and the City."
Or it could just be that I'm a woman-hating misogynist. :P
Clearly, I am a self-hating misogynist... oh, wait... actually...
I think it boils down to the fact that I sense a falseness in the way the vast majority of female characters are written. These women aren't like me. They don't think the way I do, they don't act the way I act, their concerns and priorities and behaviors are completely uninteresting and irrelevant to me.
Maybe it's because they are usually written by men, and so they end up being filtered through this idealizing/objectifying/simplifying gaze. Fred, for example. She's perfect and brilliant and damaged, so every man adores her and wants to take care of her. How lame.
Or maybe it's because I'm just not a typical woman. I live on my own in NYC, with no interest in marriage and very little interest in men; I have no interest in children; my emphasis is on career; I don't give a fuck about fashion... etc. I was always that lone girl in the advanced math class full of boys.... the third grader who was off in the corner reading Star Wars novels instead of gossiping about who was dating whom... you know.
I remember when "My So Called Life" came out, and everyone was saying "OMG finally they've perfectly captured the actual teenage female experience." Um, no. That sure as hell was not my teenage female experience.
I don't care about fashion, or motherhood, or sisterhood, or lipstick, or shoes, or the mall, or fitting in, or ... whatever it is that these TV women tend to prioritize. Buffy wanting to be prom queen, or whatever it was? WHY DO YOU CARE? Or Sex in the City--it's not about individuality, it's about expensive shoes. I never gave a crap about that stuff... it boils down to conformity and consumerism, and I got over that when I was ten.
Women worried about being a mother, or finding a man--it seems like the priority of every TV woman is to find a man. I'm SO not interested in that typical woman's role, romance and motherhood and whatever. Buffy secretly fantasizing about "Wind Beneath My Wings" playing at her wedding, Angel leaving her because he couldn't give her children.... it's all irrelvant to me. Live your own life, stop worrying about fitting into this preordained social role. (Not to insult the women who DO want that--but I don't, and would like to see some fictional women who feel the same as I do [and aren't evil].) The thing that annoyed me the most about Buffy was her obsession with being "normal." She would've HATED being normal; it would've suppressed everything that made her unique and gave her strength; yet she never managed to get over this ridiculous obsession with being exactly like everyone else.
And sense of humor. Why can't a woman be strong AND funny? Why do the female heroes have to be so dour and miserable and serious all the time? Strong men can be dark and funny at the same time. Strong women are just written to be boring. Wolverine gets the cute one-liners. Storm and Jean Grey never stop being serious. (In the movies; never read the comics.)
And female characters are so rarely allowed to embrace their darkness. Male characters can be dark and fucked up and it can be a continuing story without a nice little wrap-up. Female characters who go dark have to feel all guilty and apologetic. Wesley could go dark and he never had to cry about how guilty he felt for being a "bad boy" (a phrase that has such a different connotation than "bad girl"). Buffy, OTOH, had to be all sad and guilt-ridden and repentent; she had to apologize to XANDER because she slept with Spike (??!!!), she didn't even seem to ENJOY her dark period, despite all the hot Spikesex. Willow's darkness was a joke; all she had to do was cry and say it wasn't really her, and all was forgiven. A male character could've gone SO MUCH DARKER and had such a much more interesting story--if they had done that with Willow, gone REALLY dark, that story would've been a million times better.
Fictional men are so much more often allowed to exist as fully realized characters, as compared to fictional women who are so often defined by their gender role. You don't see nearly as many male characters who are entirely defined by the fact that they want a relationship and children. You don't see male characters so obsessed with fashion and conformity and consumerism. They're allowed to exist as characters with their own uniqueness and their own agendas, their own ideas and positions that aren't ABOUT pre-ordained social roles based on gender.
I would LOVE to embrace more female characters, but there are so few of them out there that interest me. I liked Faith: she had a genuine darkness, an actual sense of humor, and her story arc wasn't ABOUT gender; she could've been a male character and it would have been just as good. I liked Anya because she was independent and funny, but she never got over her Xander obsession and the writers barely developed her. I liked early Cordelia, before she turned into a saint, because she had no shame and she was both smart and FUNNY. I liked Lilah, because she kicked ass and was dark and smart and funny, but of course she had to die. I like Chloe on Smallville, because she's smart, has a sense of humor, and has actual career ambitions; she isn't just obsessed with boys/clothes/self-pity. I liked Kyra on Star Trek DS9, if you want to go back farther. I liked Princess Leia in the first Star Wars movie, and was really annoyed when she just turned into an object for Han and Luke to squabble over. I like Danaerys Targaryen in A Song of Ice and Fire, who is learning to be strong and powerful and who consistently rejects traditional female roles in pursuit of what she believes is right. (I have issues with the whole destiny thing, but that's another topic.)
There are no female characters LIKE ME on TV. People who prize personal ethics and independence above fashion and conformity. People who don't give a fuck what society thinks of them. (Notice how all the goth chicks on TV are dismissed as crazy evil sex fiends? Women who embrace unconventional social roles always have to be demonized.) You find male characters like this, with whom I tend to indentify--Spike before he wussed out; Jaime Lannister in the Song of Ice and Fire book series; Wolverine in the X-Men movies; Methos on Highlander. Not that these guys are all perfect, but I relate to them much more than I do to the boring conformists on "Sex and the City."
Or it could just be that I'm a woman-hating misogynist. :P
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 02:27 pm (UTC)You have SO put your finger on exactly what really made my head explode about the way the show ended. Because I'd liked Buffy - that is, before the decision was made to turn her into a boring depressive that for some reason seemed to have no interest in addressing her emotional problems that were later resolved in a way that hardly made for a very workable model for real-life depression (oh, just get over it! the sun's shining already!), and then a tedious speechy leader role, wtf? Buffy's little "normality" obsession in her early years had played as a sort of joke to me - of course she would hate being normal, it was obvious she enjoyed having strength (remember "Helpless"?), and I waited for seven years for the punchline where she realized it. Instead, Buffy's goals were rewritten into a sort of canned fantasy of what a straight male pictures to be a "strong" woman - and as you've observed, she's pretty humorless and no fun, yet simultaneously fascainted by things men don't actually give a shit about, such as shoes and going out with men who wear nice suits. With this kind of female lead to work with - the product of a self-reinforcing chain of show after show all taking cues off each other (e.g., like after Heathers came out, never again could one do a high school story without the requisite bitch clique), female characters get more narrowed down to one-note obsessions or prefab desires, and if they break out of those roles? Smackdown. Yeah, it's pretty sexist.
I really, really think that this kind of thing is an underrecognized cause for the surge of interest in reality TV. Because even in forced situations, these are at least REAL people, not those that writers have contrived to tell us are real.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-27 08:05 am (UTC)I'd never thought of this as a cause for the surge of interest in reality TV. That's really interesting... I'd love to read more if you decide to expand on that theory.
To be honest I've never had even the tiniest bit of desire to watch reality TV, so I haven't really thought much about it at all. Though it seems, from the tiny bit I've seen, that the shows are constructed by the editors into narratives that reinforce traditional ideals anyway. (Sort of like how they used to parade goth kids on daytime talk shows just to mock and ridicule and stereotype them in the exact same ways, without listening to anything the individual kids actually had to say).
But since I haven't watched an entire episode of a reality TV show since The Real World 1993, I'm probably missing a lot of nuance. ;)