fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2686 ]

[ SECRET POST #2686 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2686 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 059 secrets from Secret Submission Post #384.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Whatever floats you boat. I love most those shows. I hate the idea that TV needs to be all polite and politically correct. Horrible things happen in real life, and while some shows are more happy and feel-good, some will show you the full load of shit that the human experience can entail.

Writing characters that do evil things (including to women) or people who have bad things happen to them (including women)IS part of this world and I do not want every fictional work to downplay it because it might offend. And being the writer/maker of material like that, doesn't mean you condone it just because you show it. It seems a lot of people seem not to get that.

I agree completely.

But most of the feminist critiques I see aren't about people doing bad things. It's about having characters and situations that conform to stereotypes and reinforce harmful ideas about marginalized groups.

I think it depends. If we're talking tings like Hannibal or True Detective, I think a lot of the critique is that women very victimized (quite literally) and were displayed post mortem in elaborate ways. Which, they didn't have to show - but, I do not think it's irrelevant to the plot, atmosphere and story, either. TD was also low on female characters because they went for the whole male cop partner thing.
But, i do not think it's an inherently misogynist show. If anything, I think Marty's problematic interactions with women were shown as a huge character flaw - neither protagonist was truly a "good guy" and that was the point.

A lot of GoT critique is about the rape content lately - and while I do think it's completely valid to use that as means to discus rape and its depiction, I've found two things there that did stand out to me in the discussion that rub me the wrong way.
The first is that other horrible things in the show or books (and I'm talking things like infanticide, crucifixion of children, dismemberment,castration, graphic torture) didn't get anywhere near as much outrage as the rape scenes. Which DOES make me think that people either actively want a double standard in relation to sexual violence, or they just still do not get this is not a happy show and were waiting until it gets better. The second thing is that I think it's realistic to actually show sexual violence in some contexts because realistically it would happen, but people feel like it shouldn't be done because it's "entertainment". And I disagree there,actually.

But maybe you've seen other critiques - I do not actively seek them out personally.

Regarding TD, I also read someone speculate somewhere that the point of the show was pretty much 'the terrible things men do to women and children'; like, the show made it pretty obvious that the way the men treated the women and girls was terrible, from Marty cheating to everything happening with the kids. I never got why people thought it was misogynistic, because I thought it was purposefully played out that way.

The main critique I've seen of rape in GoT is that, in real-life historical wars, murder might happen to anyone. Infanticide might happen to anyone. Rape might happen to anyone. But in Got, Murder can happen to anyone, infanticide can happen to anyone, and rape happens almost exclusively to women. So there's this implication that depicting female rape is so awesome they'll sometimes just use it as set dressing, but depicting male rape is somehow taboo. And yeah, that feels a little sexist.

Well, that and women get paraded around naked pretty regularly, but even during sex the dudes are usually not showing anything you wouldn't see at the beach. Which is frankly my biggest complaint. I mean, come on, all those pretty men and nothing?

Most of the stuff with Hannibal is that the cast started out with excellent female representation, all written like real people and not just cut-outs, and then... well, I don't want to spoil anything, but there's a trend. https://31.media.tumblr.com/dcdcd1d39e96df70bd153dd13e21ae8d/tumblr_inline_n5ccnfpmQU1r0p839.png [a chart showing the fates of the lead/recurring characters so far, split by gender; spoilers up through the most recent episode, examine at your own risk]

At least for me, my concern isn't that women are being killed/hurt; it's a crime show, what else is going to happen? And in terms of the regular John/Jane Doe victims they've done a very good job of avoiding really explicit/sexual deaths and "sexy corpses", which a lot of people appreciate. But out of the important/recurring characters who've died or been maimed, it's almost exclusively women. And for a show that's promoted as being very feminist/gender-balanced, that's kind of not good.

I completely agree with your point, I do. Horrible things happens and they should show it. The Wire is possibly my favorite TV show ever and there's lots of horrible stuff in it - I even love the Song of Ice and Fire books - there's rape and murder gallore and it's a good thing that he writes about that.

What I hate with the adaption is not that horrible things happen to women, it's how they happen. Women gets lined up naked, graphically raped in ways that in no way furthers the plot - rather, the plot pretends it never happened. Like, the scene where Theon gets his dick cut off - I love penis, and for me that could have been the worst scene in the entire season because for some reason the prospect of NO SEX really upsets me - even that scene was designed and directed to turn on the average male viewer. I don't want to see myself represented as a sex object.

And I don't want to see myself missing at all either, and if absolutely every character that's "out in the field" firing guns and saving people is a white man, I feel a little sick - surely half of the world's population can't be hiding underground or being busy housewifing in whatever alternative universe the series is set in?

Maybe it's entirely about perception then - but the Theon torture was definitely the part of GoT that I found most difficult to watch over all seasons, hands down. And I think it was deliberately made that way. To part with the girls before castration didn't strike me so much as titillating, so much as emphasizing what he's about to lose. So, it made sense to me story-wise and I didn't perceive it as gratuitous.

I agree the female/male nudity ratio is skewed quite prominently towards women (and in that sense I found the brothel scenes worse than violent scenes, because they just seem to showcase nudity without it contributing much to the plot). That being said, though, using sex as a political tool IS part of the plot. So while I do think GoT has some problems with the way it sows women, I also think sex and violence are inherently parts of how that story is told.

I do get your point, I just see some of those shows differently, and am not inherently bothered by some shows mainly focusing on white male protagonists (though more variation over the overall TV landscape would be nice).

Also, I don't think you can ignore the fact that you can get away with showing a lot more female nudity on screen than you can male nudity. That's just the way the current ratings system is.

Horrible things happen in real life, and while some shows are more happy and feel-good, some will show you the full load of shit that the human experience can entail.

When did people start to believe that anyone getting sick of gratuitously horrible things being done to minority characters in an often poorly-handed way meant that those same people can't handle any bad things happening to anyone in stories ever? Like, just because I don't see the point of a lovingly graphic and drawn out rape/torture/murder scene, I must want unicorns and rainbows instead? Maybe I just like things in stories to have a narrative purpose beyond "look how horrible this is, no, really, look"?

Amen!

I'm sick of people telling me that because I don't want to watch GoT anymore, I must not really "get it".

Wow, just because I don't want to watch a gratutious rape scene that does nothing to further the plot, must mean I can't handle the edginess.

I watch other shows and films that have plenty of darkness in them. Hell, I watch Hannibal, and that's a show that had a horse unbirthing and Colombian neckties.

It's the way the darkness is handled, and the way it serves the plot, that I have issue with. I also take issue with the general idea that "dark & edgy" automatically equals "better & more mature".

"I also take issue with the general idea that "dark & edgy" automatically equals "better & more mature"."

YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES. I loathe and despise this idea, and it seems to be every-fucking-where. It even infected Star Wars, which was the least dark'n'edgy big-name franchise out there. It infects EVERYTHING, especially literature from what I've seen (I read a lot. Like, a LOT a lot. It is SO DAMN HARD to find literary fiction that isn't dark and depressing and full of Bad Things happening to everyone.)

HNNNNNG. MY RAGE ABOUT LITFIC IS UNPARALLELED.

Like, okay, i get that the author wants dark & bad & scary things to happen. that's cool. i am totally down with that, in fact, i like spooky weird things.

but for god's sake, would it kill them to have a likeable main character? or just one good, genuinely nice character we can root for? or a happy ending, after much trial & struggle?

it reminds me of this time my mother & I went to see a play by Anton Chekhov (I think it was The Seagull). and i understand that it's a classic and everyone artistic loves it. but i hated it, because there was not a single likeable character in that play. by the end of it, i just wished they'd all hurry up and die already and quit whining.

I felt that way when I studied A Streetcar Named Desire. By 2/3 of the way through I was just like "They're all insufferable and I don't care what happens to them."

Exactly, the most mature media I've ever seen finds a balance between dark and light, which is actually a reflection of the real world that isn't a relentless march into the blood-soaked void. I'm not even offended by torture porn anymore, just bored and aggravated. When do we get back to the plot? And if that is the plot, well, count me out.

...wait, what's a Columbian necktie? *googles* Oh. Well, I learned something today.

oh geez i'm sorry you googled that!

probably should have warned you. :/

and yeah, IA about torture porn. it's either boring to me, or unintentionally hilarious. i think gore is most effective when used in small amounts - in The Sixth Sense, for example, those few moments were really chilling.

I was discussing this with a friend of mine the other day -- we were talking about the way violence on "Justified" has so much more of an impact, not because it's more gory or bloody or graphic, but the reverse, it's because of how it's shot and cut: it's just plain shocking. They either build up the tension with awareness of the situation, with the dialogue mounting between the characters in this folksy, story-telling kind of way where one of the characters knows what's going on and maybe the other is completely oblivious to the gun hidden behind the other's back until BLAM! violence. Except, they don't show blood or guts or anything, just the person going down. The violence is in the capping off of all the tension.

Or, alternately, the violence happens so suddenly, so out of the blue, the audience is taken unprepared, and that is the shock. But either way, not a lot of gore. No tender, loving pans of guts spilling to the ground or whatever.

Personally, I think Justified does a terrific job of pushing the envelope and showing why violence is so troubling to begin with -- it's in the impulses between human beings.

I've never seen Justified, but as a fan of the 'less is more' doctrine, I'm glad to hear there's a show that hasn't jumped on the gore bandwagon. Honestly, very little of the graphic violence or sex I've seen on TV or in movies did anything for the story at all. So good for Justified.

The thing is that in some of those shows (like GoT), but even True Detective or Hannibal - some really, really horrible things happen to white male characters, too. Hell, in GoT and Breaking Bad, I'd say MOST bad shit happens to (white) male characters.

Obviously no-one is obligating you to watch anything, you can hate a show and I'm not going to convince you otherwise.

I agree some scenes were more gratuitous than they should have been. But, I think it's completely unfair to state that most those shows specifically single out women for (sexual) violence against them. And, I also think, that in my of the cases, the sex and violence ARE actually part of the narrative, and the way characters develop.

Again, it's perfectly valid to hate it as a genre, but it's not bad storytelling.

I don't like unnecessary crap aimed at white male characters, either, it's only more frustrating when it's women/nonwhites because there's usually a lot less of them in the primary roles than white dudes, and a lot more of those white dudes are gonna get away scott free than the minorities.

Like I said, I don't care that bad things happen, and it's totally fair that some folks consider certain scenes or events more necessary to a story that I do - I can argue my opinion, but ultimately it's just that, an opinion. What I was protesting is that the idea that if I don't like it, it must be because I can't deal with dark topics. My problem is usually with the way I feel such topics are handled, not that they happen at all. There's stories/scenes wherein I feel violence, particularly violence against women, is handled capably, and stories/scenes where I feel it isn't.

I think I'll copy this one, too.

I'm copying and pasting this for inevitable future internet arguments.

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[ SECRET POST #2686 ]

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OP!

SPOILERS GOT then, here and above.

Re: SPOILERS GOT then, here and above.

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