Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2013-06-10 06:34 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2013-06-10 06:34 pm
[ SECRET POST #2351 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2350 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 113 secrets from Secret Submission Post #336.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: tl;dr ahoy
I can't say I like everything Moffat ever wrote, or even everything that he did with River. But I will say that claiming her mere existence/backstory is misogynistic is ridiculous, as is claiming Moffat is a misogynist because of the backstory he gave her. Yes, her life revolves heavily around the Doctor - she was literally raised to kill him. Because he's done enough shit and made a big enough name for himself that an entire organization dedicated itself to getting rid of him. Are we no longer allowed to give characters shitty lives or something? Or is anyone going to complain about how Rory's life revolves around Amy the same way they complain about River's life revolving around the Doctor?
Because quite frankly, River is someone who get dealt a shitty hand in life. And she was eventually able to overcome that shitty hand and become an awesome person. How is that supposed to be a bad thing?
And honestly, I also have to ask - just how much does River's life revolve around the Doctor? The show is about the Doctor, so the only times we ever see other characters is when it's something to do with the Doctor. From the looks of it, River's got other things going on in her life besides the Doctor and things to do with him. For the first major parts of her life/timeline, it was only things related to the Doctor because of what she'd been raised for, but after that it seems like she does plenty without him and unrelated to him - we just happen to see her only when her life intersects with his.
Re: tl;dr ahoy
(Anonymous) 2013-06-11 06:45 am (UTC)(link)The entire storyline of the girl from The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances revolved around her son (a boy). To boot, Rose was turned from a competent, intelligent human being into a ridiculous caricature who suddenly stopped caring about things like situation and danger to swoon around a hot dude and dance, taking her vastly out of character in a way that is sexist.
Reinette fell for the Doctor and apparently lived her entire life hoping and waiting for the Doctor to come back to her~. The Girl in the Fireplace also featured Moffat taking the Doctor vastly out of character in order to have him suddenly ready to dump everything - traveling the universe, Rose (whom he cared about), etc. - for Reinette, whom he'd only just met. Also featured Moffat putting Rose in the damsel in distress role.. again, and basically having her helplessly wait for the Doctor to stumble in and save her. Really sexist.
Let's take the time here to mention that Moffat has repeatedly expressed his dislike for Rose, including calling her a "needy girlfriend" and talking about how he applauded the Doctor for "dumping her" on a copy of himself because "sticking her in another universe didn't work"... basically insinuating that the Doctor purposely stuck Rose in the alternate universe because she was too needy and girly for him. This is not the first misogynistic comment Moffat has made about Rose, let alone anything else, and it puts a "fun" disgusting context on his treatment of Rose in the episodes where he wrote her.
Sally Sparrow inexplicably hooks up with a dude she spends a whole episode saying she wanted nothing to do with. Her friend is stalked by a dude in olden days and somehow ends up marrying him. And again, in this episode, the ones who know things are all men.. Sally Sparrow just follows directions.
Rory's life didn't revolve around Amy, though, as you asserted. Rory had an actual life with a context (something Amy lacked, actually). He was a nurse! He had family! He had a life! He had things he did and friends he had outside of Amy. His life did not revolve around her, and this is made abundantly clear over the course of the show. Further, in several instances his "devotion" to Amy comes across much more as possessive than as loving.
Amy, on the other hand.. literally her entire life revolves around the Doctor and Rory, both men. She has no family due to a crack in her wall, but even after that's fixed and her family is restored, we don't see or meet her family, and she is never shown to care or want to go back to them. She has no apparent friends or anything of the sort. Instead, she has the Doctor - whom she's been obsessing about since she was eight years old, who has literally ruled her life since then. She kept a bag packed in case he came back. She played make-believe games about him. She thought about him constantly. He was portrayed as virtually all she thought of. And then, when the Doctor shows back up, she runs off with him to adventure with him and be a damsel in distress more times than I care to count.
At several points, important knowledge about Amy's body and wellness are withheld from her for no good reason by the men in her life. She is forced into a misogynistic storyline - the forced pregnancy and childbirth, which the Doctor knew was going to happen and just never told her, robbing her of her agency and knowledge of her own body and life. She was further robbed by the narrative of the ability to choose and subjected to a very, very sex-specific form of torture (forced childbirth). This is kind of a big deal. And Amy's story doesn't stop revolving around men and men making decisions for her and how she affects men and etc. etc.
Oh, and it's worth mentioning that Moffat has said some pretty grossly sexist stuff about Amy, too. Like thinking that Karen Gillan wouldn't cut it, even though she was fantastic, because she was "wee and dumpy" until he saw that she was actually a supermodel.
Then we have River, whose life from birth to death revolves around... the Doctor! She is raised to kill him, she ends up falling in love with him, she sits around in a prison cell for a crime she didn't commit waiting for him to need her, she goes into archeology not because it's cool but because she'll have a better chance of meeting the Doctor that way.
When is a good chance to mention the sexist bits of her dialogue, like when she regenerates in Let's Kill Hitler and all she can think about is how much she weighs and what her hair looks like?
When is a good point to bring up that Moffat has made many, many other sexist remarks, such as that women are "needy" and obsessed with marriage, the lot of us, and that there's a lack of respect for men in society? Or how he didn't care about his wife or child when she was pregnant, he cared openly about how quickly her vagina would be back to normal after pregnancy and how soon she'd lose the weight?
Oh, and then there's Clara, the Doctor's walking puzzle box, whose ultimate purpose in all of her apparently many lives is to sacrifice her life for the Doctor.
All of these things have one thing in common, and it isn't that they're all ~shitty hands~. It's sexism.
Re: tl;dr ahoy
There's also the fact of the stuff she actually says, not just the things that happen to her. Like "when one is in love with an ageless god with the face of a twelve-year-old, one learns to hide the damage" and "never let him see you age". That is fucked up.
Re: tl;dr ahoy
(Anonymous) 2013-06-11 07:45 pm (UTC)(link)Re: tl;dr ahoy
I'm just pissed that Moffat felt he just had to choose that backstory for her. Why not another story about a different shitty life that wasn't loaded with all the sexist crap that the anon above me details so well? Or at least, why not a story that involves subverting and critiquing the sexist overtones present in the shitty life he chose. Or at the very, very least, why not at least write some other female characters to provide a strong contrast to River's story?
At some point, a writer is responsible for the choices of character he makes, especially when he's writing a show that is filled with morals and messages and is aimed at kids. People know he's not writing a history of real life events, and they're going to wonder why he just had to choose to write stories that have those things in it.
That's really the crux of it -- Moffat chose to write her story that way, when he could have written something else. No one was forcing him to write those particular plot points. That's the main thing that really bothers me.
And yeah, I'm sure River has other things in her life besides the Doctor. Once again, from an in-universe perspective, that's not so bad. But we never see those things affect her personality or see her deciding to do those things (even if they do happen offscreen, like you say) for herself. We do, however, see her explicitly deciding to go into archeology to look for the Doctor, and we see her saying stuff like "I live for the days I see him" without having other major goals in her life discussed, and going to jail for him even though she didn't kill him, and making every aspect of her character that is seen onscreen into something caused by the Doctor.
None of these things are ~omg terrible~ all by themselves, but the pattern when they're all put together in the absence of anything to balance them out...yeah.