fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #1577 ]

[ SECRET POST #1577 ]

⌈ Secret Post #1577 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 044 secrets from Secret Submission Post #225.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 2 - repeats ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I think there are kind of two factors with this. One part is that the problem isn't the existence of a certain kind of female character, but the idea that a certain type of woman is the only good kind. That's a pretty sexist notion, and of course there's backlash when it crops up.

On the other hand, there's also a lot of old-fashioned character bashing under a veneer of feminism, and that isn't about furthering a political agenda, that's about misogyny with a new face on it.

And if something is badly written because it relies on cliches and stereotypes, and those cliches and stereotypes are sexist ones, then it isn't 'just' bad writing, it's still sexist, and therefore still a feminist issue.)

(You know what would be really great? If more shows/books/etc had multiple sympathetic female characters, so you could have a fluffy princess type and a braniac and an action girl and a very non-sexual girl and a girl who slept around a lot, and they could be portrayed as different and all okay. Maybe some of those girls could even be the same character so that they could have more than one personality trait!)

Have you seen Sailor Moon? You might find all you're looking for there and more.

Seconding this. Sailor Moon has pretty much every "type" of female character there is

If more shows/books/etc had multiple sympathetic female characters, so you could have a fluffy princess type and a braniac and an action girl and a very non-sexual girl and a girl who slept around a lot, and they could be portrayed as different and all okay.

Too bad when you get shows like that, people complain that the writer is trying for ~grrl power~ or whatever and then bitch about said book/movie/TV show/whatever ANYWAY. Usually because omg one girl is ~too feminine~ or another is ~too sexual~ or another is ~too weak~ and obviously everyone IRL embodies every personality trait/quality possible! Or they find something else to complain about.

E.g., Sailor Moon is ~anime omg~, Pretty Little Liars is ~guilty pleasure~, Sucker Punch is ~sexist~ ... etc, etc. Female-oriented shows are always criticized for something -- which is probably why there aren't a lot of [whatever] with lead female characters, and then that minimizes the chance of girls having (shockingly) different personalities.

And thaaat part is just plain straight-up misogynist bullshit. But at least the snow itself would be pretty damn feminist. (And anyone who says trying for girl power is sexist ought to be taken out back and beat with a dictionary.)

afaksfjaf I hate that so much, especially Sucker Punch. Why the fuck Zach "For my first original script I will write a story about women working together to achieve their goals, and also I will try to critique the patriarchy!" Snyder gets more heat than, say, Christopher "My thirty-something dude protagonist needs more angst, KILL A CHICK" Nolan, I will never understand.)

Because Sucker Punch was almost entirely fetish fuel? Most of their escape was powered by Baby Doll's sexy dancing, and the plan wasn't exactly rocket science -- they even left proof written on a chalkboard! The actual scenes where we see them fight are straight-up male fantasy (sexy girls fighting in improbable outfits), and the only girl who actually escapes is the one who was most willing to go along with the status quo in the first place. THAT is why Snyder is taking heat.

(And I'm generally against all this fandom SJ bullshit to begin with, so it says something that Sucker Punch got me riled enough to wank.)

I've actually discussed this movie in a certain amount of detail here (http://sour-idealist.livejournal.com/44389.html), but point by point:

1) Sweet Pea took a while to come around, yes, but she isn't being rewarded for sticking to the status quo; she escapes by eventually defying it. Also, she was very explicitly not okay with the status quo, but she was initially more afraid of getting her sister killed.

2) The plan was "locate exit and key, create distraction, stab anyone who gets in our way." Not unnecessarily complicated, but it would work.

3) Yes. The escape was powered by Baby Doll's unseen dancing. This would be a case of a woman turning her exploitation back on itself and taking control by using it to further her own ends.

And the outfits thing is a complicated question. First of all, the intent seems to be to shame the people who might normally be aroused by it; second, it makes sense from a psychological standpoint if the girls had in some way internalized the idea that they had to be sexy (which happens).

Most of all, though, the fact that they looked sexy does not erase the fact that it's still a movie about a group of women coming together and supporting each other to achieve their own ends, and that the story was entirely about their journey and their struggle to gain control of their own lives. I am sure as hell not saying it was perfect, but I'm saying that's a lot closer to right than a story wherein women don't even have a presence or personality and are immediately killed off not so that we will mourn them, but so that the audience will have a reason to feel sorry for the hero. Sucker Punch was definitely not perfect, but it was far from the most sexist action flick in recent memory.

TL;DR: 5 scantily-clad female heroes > no major female characters, and the Sucker Punch ladies were a lot more than just their bodies in the film; it's the critics who are reducing them to their clothes.

I love you so much for this. Just saying.

(no subject)

sour-idealist.livejournal.com - 2011-04-30 01:24 (UTC) - Expand

Yeah, I definitely concur with that last bit. And I think that if the world were just, as much if not more feminist critique in fandom would focus on the absence of female characters where they could presumably exist as on the female characters themselves.

But the world is not just and neither is fandom. Go figure. :\

as much if not more feminist critique in fandom would focus on the absence of female characters where they could presumably exist as on the female characters themselves.

Yes yes YES. Thank you for putting it perfectly. Really it is pretty rare for the female character herself rather than the rest of the work to be the problem.

Justified seems to be doing very well with the whole "multiple three-dimensional women" thing, even if one of them is the most terrifying (largely because she is so complex that she is both maternal and murderous, sometimes in the same instant) baddie I have ever seen on TV.

I just wiki'd Justified and I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it before. It sounds like my kind of thing in a big way.

Also the first season seems to be available at a good price.

Thanks for the rec!

I still haven't seen any of season one. Found it on Hulu by chance, saw that it was Elmore Leonard-based and had to watch. I love Elmore Leonard's writing and he didn't let me down.

I came in at the start of season 2, but right now there are only two episodes online and I wouldn't start with them. Season one is also on Netflix if you have that.

(You know what would be really great? If more shows/books/etc had multiple sympathetic female characters, so you could have a fluffy princess type and a braniac and an action girl and a very non-sexual girl and a girl who slept around a lot, and they could be portrayed as different and all okay. Maybe some of those girls could even be the same character so that they could have more than one personality trait!)
And this is why, to my complete shock, the new My Little Pony series is one of my favourite new TV shows. (Admittedly it skips characters who sleep around.) (...Unless you count how many different partners fandom has given Rainbow Dash.)

FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC.

I WAS GONNA SAY. XD Yes, this.

Yeah, I was just about to point this out. This show is really great for that.

Just to give you another rec... :) Carnivale was very good about this, too. It has five or six major female characters who are all different in terms of personality and appearance and age and sexuality and spectrum of good/evil... it was great. (The show was also neat in that it had a number of characters shown in sexual or romantic relationships that are rare for television: a 50-something woman hooking up with a 20-something man, a heavier woman hooking up with a man with a disability, etc. Portrayed positively, too.)

*sigh* Carnivale was such an awesome show. I miss it so much!

If more shows/books/etc had multiple sympathetic female characters, so you could have a fluffy princess type and a braniac and an action girl and a very non-sexual girl and a girl who slept around a lot, and they could be portrayed as different and all okay

I think the problem with this is that defining characters by their traits makes them into stereotypes. You see this all the time in TV shows that run too long. By the later seasons the characters become stereotypical versions of the interesting, filled out characters they used to be. Probably because it's a lot easier to write the stereotype characters.

You can't just use one trait (or ever several) to accurately define a real-life person and you shouldn't be able to do so with a well written character, either. And characters don't need to have easily recognizable traits to have distinct personalities.

(...recognizable trait = thing that is distinct about the character. How do you have distinct personalities without the characters having individual and specific characteristics?)

I think what you're saying is that the characters I described wouldn't be especially deep characters, and you're right, they wouldn't. It was a generic example. I was trying to illustrate the concept of a show where several woman had certain characteristics which were considered opposite, and neither was considered less than the other.

That makes sense. I think I just get hung up on the singular traits for each character. It just sounds so... boring.

Out of curiosity, have you read any books by Tamora Pierce or Ptricia C. Wrede? They don't have quite the ensemble cast you're looking for, but they are quite good. ~~And dangit, I need someone to squee over them with! DX~~

Yes! Pretty much all of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles and (I think) every full novel by Ms. Pierce. I love both to pieces.

Then I don't need to try and sell you on the idea of the female character who wants to embrace being both a knight and a lady instead of deciding that she can only be strong by becoming a man, yes? >__>

Yay~ Icon love~~~~~~~

(Seriously, whenever someone wants strong female characters, I point them those ways. I think that they're some of my favorite author's for writing characters instead of gender roles, but YMMV)

I assure you, no need to sell me on either of them!

(Also: Sandrilene fa Toren, world-famous badass via... thread.)

(And I do almost exactly the same thing.)