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I think I'm going to be sick
Jan. 14th, 2014 06:40 pmI know I shouldn't get this worked up over somebody's stupid AU fanfic, but . . .
( cut for feminist nerdrage )
( cut for feminist nerdrage )
Deeply disappointed by casting fail
Oct. 16th, 2013 12:49 pmThose of you who know me know that I love the Hunger Games books and that my favorite characters are all the female tributes. (Yes, all of them. Yes, even her. Yes, I've heard that before, and I'd like to see your evidence that you or any male person would behave better-- whatever your definition of better might be--in her situation.) And you know I had problems with the casting for the first movie. I can't help but think the casting problem is even worse for the second movie. I've had time to get used to it, but I just can't get over this. The casting department made Mags white. They made Wiress white. They made Joanna white. Seeder has apparently been cut out of the story altogether, or her role has been cut down so much that nobody even bothered to include her in any promotional materials, even though they did choose to include Cashmere (who, as a "classically beautiful" blonde, is the only female tribute whose casting perfectly matches her book description). And who is the one prominent female character from Catching Fire who gets played by a woman of color? Enobaria. Enobaria, whose book description in no way implies that she is a woman of color, unlike Mags and Seeder and Wiress. Enobaria, the "savage" victor from the district that is most hated in the fandom (hated even more than the Capital by fans who missed the point of "remember who the real enemy is"), whose entire characterization is built on acceptance of her assigned role as a violent and merciless killer, who seems to be going along with what the Capital wants right up until the very end, who has the least sympathetic portrayal of all the female victors, whose most famous accomplishment is tearing out another tribute's throat with her teeth. Yeah, Joanna is not nice either, but her role in the story is much bigger and more complicated than Enobaria's, and the audience gets to see more of Joanna's reasons for being the way she is. I love book!Enobaria as much as the others. She is exactly what the Capital made her. She internalized the values of the Hunger Games so deeply that rebelling didn't even seem worth it to her, perhaps more deeply than the powers that be in the Capital ever intended because her choice at the end demonstrates that her lack of empathy for the other people of the districts also extends to Capital citizens and their children who were supposed to be safe from the brutality of the Hunger Games. She's an interesting figure, if an unpleasant one. But it looks really, really racist to make her alone a woman of color while making all the other named female characters white. And the alteration to her teeth makes that impression even worse-- the movie could have gone with cyberpunk-inspired metallic teeth, but somebody somewhere in the decision-making chain somehow decided that giving her teeth that look like they've just been filed to points was a totally okay thing to do. It just makes it seem like the people in charge of this movie were actively trying to be racist. I normally don't like to attribute to malice what could be simply stupidity, but how did anyone miss the implications of those teeth on the only woman of color in the group?
I am so sick of seeing "omegaverse" or "A/B/O" fic for every single fandom, it's not even funny anymore. There's so much to hate: the complete failure at biology for all time and eternity, the breath-taking level of misogyny built into the very foundations of the world, the insistence on assembling all the worst romance tropes ever and turning them all up so far it should have blown a fuse in everybody's brain by now, and the infiltration of every fandom no matter how wildly inappropriate. It's like somebody said, "Wow, I love Pern for the old school sexism, the weird homophobia, and the romanticizing of rape and deeply gendered class oppression, but those boring dragons keep getting in the way." Then that thought somehow became encoded in a virus, which then swept through all the fandoms and not even Madagascar had time to close its port.
Beyond Bechdel-Wallace
Jul. 22nd, 2013 09:06 pmIt has come to my attention that some people on this very internet are misusing the Bechdel-Wallace test to an egregious degree. Specifically, they have been asserting that anything that clears this very low bar is a net good for "female representation in media," even if the thing in question is Oz: The Great and Powerful or A Game of Thrones. Also, they've been arguing that anything that fails this one test-- such as Pacific Rim--is therefore more sexist than anything that passes-- such as the Star Trek reboot movie, which passed on a technicality because of a single conversation during which both women were in their underwear and a guy whom one of them didn't know was there was watching them from under a bed.
So first of all, I'd like remind anyone who happens to read this that the Bechdel-Wallace test was not intended to be used by all feminists everywhere as a test of the definitive test of the goodness of any one movie. The comic in which it first appeared was pointing out how skewed the movie industry as whole is, when it's hard to think of many movies that pass this test. Part of the point is that passing it should be really, really easy and not a big deal and not necessarily an indication that the movie is pro-feminist or portrays women well. After all, you could have a really sexist story in which the women spend all their time together complimenting each others outfits and swapping recipes and hair styling tips. It's messed up that, in a society where women are slightly more than half the population, most movies can't even manage that. On the other side of same coin, an individual movie can fail the Bechdel-Wallace test without being anti-feminist or a bad movie in general. There are some settings in which an all-male or heavily male-skewed cast would be the only logical or historically accurate way to go. The problems are that 1) so very many casts are more male-skewed than they logically should be, 2) we don't see an equally large number of movies that have female-skewed casts getting made, and 3) movies that do have multiple female characters very often portray them as revolving entirely around the male characters instead of being interesting and important in themselves.
Next, I'd like to propose a multilayered system for discussing how female characters are portrayed in movies and other narrative media. This system would have multiple "tests." Passing or failing any one of them doesn't tell you much about the quality of an individual story (although it's perfectly reasonable for any individual person to decide that she's sick and tired of one kind of "fail" and won't consume any more movies/books/etc. that fail that test). But when the scores start adding up, things get interesting. Here are the tests I find useful, with suggested names:
Bechdel-Wallace test, aka, Mo's Movie Measure: I don't believe in fixing what's not broken, so we'll start with the original. The story passes if it has two or more named female characters who talk to each other about something other than man.
Gail Simone test, aka the refrigerator test: Another well-established test, this one comes from the world of superhero comics. A storyline fails the simple version if it shows a female character getting murdered, raped, or de-powered. A more sophisticated version that makes allowances for more grim'n'gritty storylines declares a complete fail only if the main narrative impact of the bad thing happening to a female character is that it makes a male character distraught and vengeful. My preference is to declare a simple fail for de-powering, sexual assault, or murder (not counting battles) of a female character and double or compound fail for the event being framed in terms of its emotional impact on a male character.
Takeuchi test: A newly formulated standard named in honor of the creator of Sailor Moon, the Takeuchi test is more about how a female character's importance to the "A plot" of a story. A manga, movie, novel, etc. pass if a female character actively contributes to the resolution of the problem around which the story revolves. In an action movie, this might mean striking a crucial blow in battle. In other contexts, it could mean solving a crime or a scientific problem or doing any number of other things. The point is that a female character decides to take action and uses her skills; being mind-controlled into fighting, saying something silly that causes a smarter character to think of the right answer, and inspiring a man to take action don't count. It's also important that female character's action actually does resolve or help resolve the main plot crisis; this test is about taking female characters out of the "nice but not that important subplot in a male-centric story" cage. For each female character who actively contributes to the resolution, the Takeuchi score increases.
Heinlein test: You've come a long way, baby. In the so-called golden age of science fiction, writers often portrayed women as flighty, frivolous, illogical, and unimaginative if they bothered to portray women at all. Robert Heinlein didn't see the appeal of that. He liked his women intelligent, athletic, and ultra-competent, as well as drop-dead gorgeous and up for any sexual experience he cared to imagine. Unfortunately, a lot of SF dudes haven't moved on from Heinlein-inspired views of women, and a lot of women in fandom accept this as the best we're going to get. A book, TV series, or movie might have several named female characters who all have military rank and hard science degrees, but it can still be annoying to women and harmful to girls if it sends the message that a woman's looks and sexual availability are more important than her skills. To pass the Heinlein test, it must have at least one major female character who is not gratuitously shown undressing or otherwise used for fan service, whose looks are irrelevant to her role in the story (so "she uses her sex appeal to manipulate the good/bad guys" doesn't rate a pass), whose character development is not defined by sex, and who is not disparaged for being unsexy by the narrative.
So first of all, I'd like remind anyone who happens to read this that the Bechdel-Wallace test was not intended to be used by all feminists everywhere as a test of the definitive test of the goodness of any one movie. The comic in which it first appeared was pointing out how skewed the movie industry as whole is, when it's hard to think of many movies that pass this test. Part of the point is that passing it should be really, really easy and not a big deal and not necessarily an indication that the movie is pro-feminist or portrays women well. After all, you could have a really sexist story in which the women spend all their time together complimenting each others outfits and swapping recipes and hair styling tips. It's messed up that, in a society where women are slightly more than half the population, most movies can't even manage that. On the other side of same coin, an individual movie can fail the Bechdel-Wallace test without being anti-feminist or a bad movie in general. There are some settings in which an all-male or heavily male-skewed cast would be the only logical or historically accurate way to go. The problems are that 1) so very many casts are more male-skewed than they logically should be, 2) we don't see an equally large number of movies that have female-skewed casts getting made, and 3) movies that do have multiple female characters very often portray them as revolving entirely around the male characters instead of being interesting and important in themselves.
Next, I'd like to propose a multilayered system for discussing how female characters are portrayed in movies and other narrative media. This system would have multiple "tests." Passing or failing any one of them doesn't tell you much about the quality of an individual story (although it's perfectly reasonable for any individual person to decide that she's sick and tired of one kind of "fail" and won't consume any more movies/books/etc. that fail that test). But when the scores start adding up, things get interesting. Here are the tests I find useful, with suggested names:
Bechdel-Wallace test, aka, Mo's Movie Measure: I don't believe in fixing what's not broken, so we'll start with the original. The story passes if it has two or more named female characters who talk to each other about something other than man.
Gail Simone test, aka the refrigerator test: Another well-established test, this one comes from the world of superhero comics. A storyline fails the simple version if it shows a female character getting murdered, raped, or de-powered. A more sophisticated version that makes allowances for more grim'n'gritty storylines declares a complete fail only if the main narrative impact of the bad thing happening to a female character is that it makes a male character distraught and vengeful. My preference is to declare a simple fail for de-powering, sexual assault, or murder (not counting battles) of a female character and double or compound fail for the event being framed in terms of its emotional impact on a male character.
Takeuchi test: A newly formulated standard named in honor of the creator of Sailor Moon, the Takeuchi test is more about how a female character's importance to the "A plot" of a story. A manga, movie, novel, etc. pass if a female character actively contributes to the resolution of the problem around which the story revolves. In an action movie, this might mean striking a crucial blow in battle. In other contexts, it could mean solving a crime or a scientific problem or doing any number of other things. The point is that a female character decides to take action and uses her skills; being mind-controlled into fighting, saying something silly that causes a smarter character to think of the right answer, and inspiring a man to take action don't count. It's also important that female character's action actually does resolve or help resolve the main plot crisis; this test is about taking female characters out of the "nice but not that important subplot in a male-centric story" cage. For each female character who actively contributes to the resolution, the Takeuchi score increases.
Heinlein test: You've come a long way, baby. In the so-called golden age of science fiction, writers often portrayed women as flighty, frivolous, illogical, and unimaginative if they bothered to portray women at all. Robert Heinlein didn't see the appeal of that. He liked his women intelligent, athletic, and ultra-competent, as well as drop-dead gorgeous and up for any sexual experience he cared to imagine. Unfortunately, a lot of SF dudes haven't moved on from Heinlein-inspired views of women, and a lot of women in fandom accept this as the best we're going to get. A book, TV series, or movie might have several named female characters who all have military rank and hard science degrees, but it can still be annoying to women and harmful to girls if it sends the message that a woman's looks and sexual availability are more important than her skills. To pass the Heinlein test, it must have at least one major female character who is not gratuitously shown undressing or otherwise used for fan service, whose looks are irrelevant to her role in the story (so "she uses her sex appeal to manipulate the good/bad guys" doesn't rate a pass), whose character development is not defined by sex, and who is not disparaged for being unsexy by the narrative.
Still Forms on Foxfield
Jun. 6th, 2013 06:44 pmI've started reading Still Forms on Foxfield, a short-by-today's-standards science fiction novel by Joan Slonczewski that published in 1980. I'm posting about it partly because it's just a really interesting book and as a follow-up to my earlier post about how I'd like to see more nerdy feminist discussion about science fiction and fantasy books written by women as opposed to discussions centered around female characters written by men. This post is not a review in the traditional sense, although I might write a review of the book later. For now, I just want to post of list of things about the book that I like and/or find interesting, especially those that stand out in the context of that earlier post and the discussion that ensued in its comments.
1. The set-up is one that I find myself using again and again in my own original writing: A group of humans settle on an extrasolar planet and lose contact with the rest of humankind for period of many Earth-standard years. They adapt to their environment and live in close association with sentient native species. Eventually, representatives of an interstellar human civilization reestablish contact, perceiving themselves as advanced and civilized and the humans who have adapted to the new planet as a technologically primitive and culturally backward "lost colony." The so-called lost colonists are all like, "Oh no, let us explain you a thing. If you think about it in the right way, you will find it is you who are lost."
2. This is a fairly common set-up in SF (although I have the completely unquantitative impression that it isn't as popular among the current crop of writers as it was when I was a kid). Slonczewski's twist on the idea is that the people who fled Earth and settled on the new planet were Quakers. They weren't setting up a colony, they were seeking refuge from a world-wide nuclear war that threatened to destroy Earth and its nearby (in astronomical terms) colonies.
3. One of the popular tropes of "lost colony" stories (which I interrogate in various ways in my own writing) is that, once the humans lose or surrender their spacefaring capabilities and some of the other advanced technology they had access to back on Earth, their society inevitably does a replay of the author's conception of Medieval European civilization or white settler culture on the American "frontier" (I'll save interrogating the mythos of the US frontier for another time), complete with lots of casual two-way violence between men and casual one-way violence of men against women and a set of laws and mores that force women into chattel (actually, women tend to be even more restricted in many of these fictional narratives than they were in those real life historical situations, but that is another post for another time). The settlers on Foxfield don't do that. Because they're Quakers.
4. The women are shown as being equal to the men both in theory and in practice. The only thing that's not great from a 21st century feminist perspective is that there is social pressure on women to bear multiple children because the human population is so small. But there's no attempt to force the issue if a woman really doesn't want to, and being a mother is not treated as incompatible with being an astronomer, a doctor, a community leader, or anything else. I think that's worthy of comment because lots of SF takes it as given that a low human population means fast reproduction is needed which means women must be forced into broodmare duty which means women must also be denied political rights and prevented from doing jobs that the author's RL culture considers unfeminine. Sadly, this assumption is very common even today. Even when it's not baldly stated (as it so often is in settling-a-new-planet SF), the SF and fantasy genres as a whole are really terrible about portraying mothers (again, that could be a whole post on its own). The genres and lots of fandom spaces can be rather hostile to the idea that a human can be both a person and a mother. In this context, it's significant that the main character in Still Forms on Foxfield is a woman who is an astronomer and also the mother of one child (and not looking to have another, which the community doctor, also a woman, mildly disapproves of because population growth and we lost people in last year's flood).
5. In other "lost colony" stories, one of the more popular alternatives to the "traditional patriarchal families" strategy of promoting population growth is enforced heterosexual promiscuity as a means of both getting a high rate of natural increase and maximizing genetic recombination within a limited population. Again, the Foxfield Friends don't go there. Because they're Quakers. They use artificial insemination to minimize genetic drift, which I wish more writers took seriously. Realistically, the technology needed to do artificial insemination is not very advanced. If your fictional society has lost the knowledge of how to do that, they must have lost a lot of other things that usually stick around in these stories. In the settlement on Foxfield, monogamy is the norm or at least the ideal. Heterosexual marriage is standard, and the community is in the process of reaching consensus about homosexual marriage (published in 1980, remember). If there's any adultery going on, it's not mentioned in the first half of the book. Presumably, either it's rare because everybody knows everybody else's business or it's irrelevant because the narrator has bigger fish to fry.
6. This really stands out to me: In the seventies and the eighties, it must have seemed plausible, even probable, that nuclear annihilation would become reality before same sex marriage became reality.
7. This is one of the few "old" SF works I've read that portrays technological changes in everyday life that stand up to today's reality. Besides space travel being trivial, the main technological development that makes life in the interstellar we're-not-an-empire-we-swear very different from the author's RL culture is communication equipment. Most other SF I've read from around the same time has people on other planets storing all their information on cassette tapes and calling each other on wall-mounted communication units. Slonczewski has people who accept the benefits (which are free until they aren't) of the System keeping in constant contact with each other (and the duly appointed/elected authorities, naturally) via wristbands that serve the functions of iphones, debit cards, medical monitors, and more. This is one old future that still seems actually futuristic.
8. That's not only because of the communication tech; it's also because Slonczewski put some work into making the System not look too much like the US or the USSR circa 1979. She envisioned greater changes in social values and daily life practices than many other SF writers of the same era.
9. Tying in with #8 and also with the earlier points about the status of women on Foxfield, she also avoided the popular trope of having a cataclysmic event on Earth (nuclear war, plague, environmental collapse, zombies, or whatever) turn the remnants of human civilization into an anti-feminist nightmare where the men are badass warriors and leaders and women (barring the occasional Special Girl) are limited to being broodmares, prostitutes, and/or rape victims (Gosh, I'm sensing a theme here). The System is full of women in government, in science, and in a host of middling-status jobs; women are both illustrious VIPs and ordinary citizens (so the appearance of a woman isn't a signal to Watch This Space in order to see either Sexiness or a Statement About Womankind). There's a casual mention that in the aftermath of the war which came close to destroying life on Earth, reproducing parthenogenetically was fashionable for a time because many of the survivors attributed the war to the inherent aggressiveness of male political leaders and decided that a female-skewed population had better chances of avoiding future wars. That passed, so men still exist . . . no big deal.
10. OMG THE ALIENS!!!! The native sapient lifeforms of Foxfield are EXCELLENTLY IMAGINED! They are loosely based on fungi. Their reproductive biology is like nothing animals do, physiologically or psychologically, so they don't have dimorphic sexes. The Foxfield Friends speak English, so they default to feminine pronouns for their fungi-like neighbors, whom they refer to collectively as the Commensals or 'mensals. The Commensals seem very alien, which I strongly approve of on general principle. It's fascinating how the Friends and the Commensals live side-by-side, learn from each other, and communicate with each other during the period in which the action takes place.
11. It's also important to note that their first contact would have gone extremely badly with any other group of human settlers I've ever read about. Neither group realized the other was sapient at first, some of the native Foxfielders killed some of the human newcomers and then realized their mistake and tried to communicate with the still-living humans. And this set of humans, alone of all the space settlers I've ever encountered in my life of reading science fiction, responded by trying to communicate back instead of trying to wipe them out. Because they're Quakers.
1. The set-up is one that I find myself using again and again in my own original writing: A group of humans settle on an extrasolar planet and lose contact with the rest of humankind for period of many Earth-standard years. They adapt to their environment and live in close association with sentient native species. Eventually, representatives of an interstellar human civilization reestablish contact, perceiving themselves as advanced and civilized and the humans who have adapted to the new planet as a technologically primitive and culturally backward "lost colony." The so-called lost colonists are all like, "Oh no, let us explain you a thing. If you think about it in the right way, you will find it is you who are lost."
2. This is a fairly common set-up in SF (although I have the completely unquantitative impression that it isn't as popular among the current crop of writers as it was when I was a kid). Slonczewski's twist on the idea is that the people who fled Earth and settled on the new planet were Quakers. They weren't setting up a colony, they were seeking refuge from a world-wide nuclear war that threatened to destroy Earth and its nearby (in astronomical terms) colonies.
3. One of the popular tropes of "lost colony" stories (which I interrogate in various ways in my own writing) is that, once the humans lose or surrender their spacefaring capabilities and some of the other advanced technology they had access to back on Earth, their society inevitably does a replay of the author's conception of Medieval European civilization or white settler culture on the American "frontier" (I'll save interrogating the mythos of the US frontier for another time), complete with lots of casual two-way violence between men and casual one-way violence of men against women and a set of laws and mores that force women into chattel (actually, women tend to be even more restricted in many of these fictional narratives than they were in those real life historical situations, but that is another post for another time). The settlers on Foxfield don't do that. Because they're Quakers.
4. The women are shown as being equal to the men both in theory and in practice. The only thing that's not great from a 21st century feminist perspective is that there is social pressure on women to bear multiple children because the human population is so small. But there's no attempt to force the issue if a woman really doesn't want to, and being a mother is not treated as incompatible with being an astronomer, a doctor, a community leader, or anything else. I think that's worthy of comment because lots of SF takes it as given that a low human population means fast reproduction is needed which means women must be forced into broodmare duty which means women must also be denied political rights and prevented from doing jobs that the author's RL culture considers unfeminine. Sadly, this assumption is very common even today. Even when it's not baldly stated (as it so often is in settling-a-new-planet SF), the SF and fantasy genres as a whole are really terrible about portraying mothers (again, that could be a whole post on its own). The genres and lots of fandom spaces can be rather hostile to the idea that a human can be both a person and a mother. In this context, it's significant that the main character in Still Forms on Foxfield is a woman who is an astronomer and also the mother of one child (and not looking to have another, which the community doctor, also a woman, mildly disapproves of because population growth and we lost people in last year's flood).
5. In other "lost colony" stories, one of the more popular alternatives to the "traditional patriarchal families" strategy of promoting population growth is enforced heterosexual promiscuity as a means of both getting a high rate of natural increase and maximizing genetic recombination within a limited population. Again, the Foxfield Friends don't go there. Because they're Quakers. They use artificial insemination to minimize genetic drift, which I wish more writers took seriously. Realistically, the technology needed to do artificial insemination is not very advanced. If your fictional society has lost the knowledge of how to do that, they must have lost a lot of other things that usually stick around in these stories. In the settlement on Foxfield, monogamy is the norm or at least the ideal. Heterosexual marriage is standard, and the community is in the process of reaching consensus about homosexual marriage (published in 1980, remember). If there's any adultery going on, it's not mentioned in the first half of the book. Presumably, either it's rare because everybody knows everybody else's business or it's irrelevant because the narrator has bigger fish to fry.
6. This really stands out to me: In the seventies and the eighties, it must have seemed plausible, even probable, that nuclear annihilation would become reality before same sex marriage became reality.
7. This is one of the few "old" SF works I've read that portrays technological changes in everyday life that stand up to today's reality. Besides space travel being trivial, the main technological development that makes life in the interstellar we're-not-an-empire-we-swear very different from the author's RL culture is communication equipment. Most other SF I've read from around the same time has people on other planets storing all their information on cassette tapes and calling each other on wall-mounted communication units. Slonczewski has people who accept the benefits (which are free until they aren't) of the System keeping in constant contact with each other (and the duly appointed/elected authorities, naturally) via wristbands that serve the functions of iphones, debit cards, medical monitors, and more. This is one old future that still seems actually futuristic.
8. That's not only because of the communication tech; it's also because Slonczewski put some work into making the System not look too much like the US or the USSR circa 1979. She envisioned greater changes in social values and daily life practices than many other SF writers of the same era.
9. Tying in with #8 and also with the earlier points about the status of women on Foxfield, she also avoided the popular trope of having a cataclysmic event on Earth (nuclear war, plague, environmental collapse, zombies, or whatever) turn the remnants of human civilization into an anti-feminist nightmare where the men are badass warriors and leaders and women (barring the occasional Special Girl) are limited to being broodmares, prostitutes, and/or rape victims (Gosh, I'm sensing a theme here). The System is full of women in government, in science, and in a host of middling-status jobs; women are both illustrious VIPs and ordinary citizens (so the appearance of a woman isn't a signal to Watch This Space in order to see either Sexiness or a Statement About Womankind). There's a casual mention that in the aftermath of the war which came close to destroying life on Earth, reproducing parthenogenetically was fashionable for a time because many of the survivors attributed the war to the inherent aggressiveness of male political leaders and decided that a female-skewed population had better chances of avoiding future wars. That passed, so men still exist . . . no big deal.
10. OMG THE ALIENS!!!! The native sapient lifeforms of Foxfield are EXCELLENTLY IMAGINED! They are loosely based on fungi. Their reproductive biology is like nothing animals do, physiologically or psychologically, so they don't have dimorphic sexes. The Foxfield Friends speak English, so they default to feminine pronouns for their fungi-like neighbors, whom they refer to collectively as the Commensals or 'mensals. The Commensals seem very alien, which I strongly approve of on general principle. It's fascinating how the Friends and the Commensals live side-by-side, learn from each other, and communicate with each other during the period in which the action takes place.
11. It's also important to note that their first contact would have gone extremely badly with any other group of human settlers I've ever read about. Neither group realized the other was sapient at first, some of the native Foxfielders killed some of the human newcomers and then realized their mistake and tried to communicate with the still-living humans. And this set of humans, alone of all the space settlers I've ever encountered in my life of reading science fiction, responded by trying to communicate back instead of trying to wipe them out. Because they're Quakers.
Having just put down yet another urban fantasy in which the main character hates every other woman in the universe, but that's okay because they all turn out to be meeeeeean to her eventually, I think I've finally figured out a decent in-universe explanation for why Sso many UF heroines meet with so much hostility from the rest of the female cast. In UF worlds, most of the women are psychic! Sure, few to none of them have powers that can match those of the super-special awesome blossom heroine who is simultaneously One Of The Guys and the Sexiest Woman In The World (in each world, there can be only one!), but most of them are psychic enough to sense that she hates them just for not being dudes. Rude secretaries in these books aren't rude in general; they're just rude to Bonnie Torres because they know that she'll use her powers to ruin another woman's very expensive phone because it amuses her to make life difficult for any woman who dares to give the impression that she has important things to do despite not being a 22-year-old pseudo-goth named Bonnie. Every woman who's dating a guy with preternatural powers knows that Anita Blake really is out to steal her man. That "bitch" math professor with the "nasally voice" and the short-skirt-wearing blonde who is allegedly just pursuing her Mrs. degree know how the male students in the story talk about them behind their backs, and they also know that what's-her-name mocks them for the amusement of the dudes even though she doesn't even take the class and barely knows them. They're all psychic, and they all know they have perfectly valid reasons to resent (and in some cases fear) Ms. Snowflake.
Aging in fannish years
May. 7th, 2013 08:51 pmI'm at a really weird place in my life right now. My career is moving forward, and I feel more mentally healthy and stable than ever before, but I'm not making friends in my new town (is it still new by the end of my second semester?) as easily as I did last time around. So I could really go for some nerd bonding, even if it's only online, just get some genuine, unforced social contact. At the same time, I'm gearing up for a period of high activity/stress related to SCIENCE!, and I really miss having fandom nonsense to dive into between bouts of Serious Business to keep different parts of my mind active. But the fandom landscape has changed, and nearly everything I'm interesting in fangirling over falls into one of more of the following categories: obscure, dead, popular with people who are so much younger than me that I feel acutely uncomfortable about the existence of anything that's not totally G-rated, or awash in tropes I absolutely cannot stand for one more bloody prompt, including AUs based on Supernatural and crossovers with Supernatural and (ugh!) the increasingly ubiquitous "omegaverse" or "A/B/O dynamics" AUs. Yes, I'm kink-shaming. Hard.
I really, really miss being in an active fandom that based on a source text I like. Yeah, part of my problem is that I'm just getting older and naturally moving from "lol, fifteen-year-olds writing bad smut, I'm so glad that I was soooooo much more mature when I was their age and didn't have internet access!" to "Fifteen-year-olds reading smut? But they'll internalize damaging messages! They're too young for their imaginary boyfriends! Think of the children! And eat your vegetables or you'll get scurvy!" Meanwhile, older fans have moved on from where we were back then, but I seem to have moved in very different directions than most older fans. I've become increasingly sensitive about misogynistic portrayals of female characters and sexual abuse and over-the-top gross-out violence and the glamorization of allegedly sociopathic characters and the the glorification of arrogant, snarky dudes who deserve to get away murder because they're sooooo much smarter than everyone else. But when I look at what's popular on the internet now, I get a sense that online fandom as a whole has either stayed the same or gotten more desensitized to those things. So I'm the weird dumpy grown woman wandering around the YA section in search of something "safe" to read while most of the grown-ups are watching Game of Thrones and Hannibal.
I really, really miss being in an active fandom that based on a source text I like. Yeah, part of my problem is that I'm just getting older and naturally moving from "lol, fifteen-year-olds writing bad smut, I'm so glad that I was soooooo much more mature when I was their age and didn't have internet access!" to "Fifteen-year-olds reading smut? But they'll internalize damaging messages! They're too young for their imaginary boyfriends! Think of the children! And eat your vegetables or you'll get scurvy!" Meanwhile, older fans have moved on from where we were back then, but I seem to have moved in very different directions than most older fans. I've become increasingly sensitive about misogynistic portrayals of female characters and sexual abuse and over-the-top gross-out violence and the glamorization of allegedly sociopathic characters and the the glorification of arrogant, snarky dudes who deserve to get away murder because they're sooooo much smarter than everyone else. But when I look at what's popular on the internet now, I get a sense that online fandom as a whole has either stayed the same or gotten more desensitized to those things. So I'm the weird dumpy grown woman wandering around the YA section in search of something "safe" to read while most of the grown-ups are watching Game of Thrones and Hannibal.
We should pick another series
Apr. 16th, 2013 04:08 pmI am becoming increasingly dismayed by the amount of cultural space taken up by A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones, especially in what I'll call, for lack of a better term, nerd feminist discourse. This isn't just another "I'm tired of popular thing I don't like" complaint. Wherever I go to read women's thoughts about the fantasy genre or fandom or female characters in popular fiction or feminism from a nerdy, bookwormish perspective, a big part of the conversation is dominated by ASOIAF. So many women spend so much energy dissecting this series, analyzing its gender dynamics, defending its female characters . . . and yet the author is a man, and a man who makes creepy, fetishizing comments about abused adolescent girl characters and who has never even pretended to be even slightly feminist-friendly at that. The longer it goes on and the farther it spreads, the more desperately I want to know Who the hell put George RR Martin, of all people, in charge of setting the terms of conversation about women in fantasy fiction, and why are so many intelligent women who have some awareness of feminist issues so ready to accept that state of affairs?
Yes, I know the standard answer is "That's a lot of female characters!" But I'm not satisfied with that. First of all, ASOIAF is a long series that has a lot of characters, period. Soap operas have a lot of female characters too, and at least their sensationalized rape storylines aren't handled in a way that has "MALE GAZE" stamped all over them. Secondly, those characters in the books are a little too obviously written by a man for an audience of men. I understand that the HBO series is supposed to be somewhat better in terms of letting the more negatively portrayed women have some human qualities, but it's also worse about gratuitously inserting explicit sex with gross power imbalances, so yeah. Finally and most importantly, there are plenty of real life women who have written stories about multiple female characters, and very few of those have gotten the level of attention and wide-ranging discussion that ASOIAF and some other male-authored texts I can think of have recently received even from women who are all about the feminist analysis.
The only women authors I can think of right off the top of my head who take up a comparable amount of cultural space are Jane Austen (who didn't write fantasy) and J.K. Rowling (whose children's books do feature more prominent male than female characters and whose non-fantasy adult novel is still pretty well overshadowed by the earlier children's fantasy series). Stephenie Meyer has name recognition, but her work is treated as a (very, very stale) joke in the circles I run in, and her reputation as a bad writer who became popular with teenage girls is often wielded as a weapon against other women who want to write novels, participate in fandom, or just have their opinions respected. The closest thing I can think of to a woman-authored ASOIAF equivalent is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which is somehow mysteriously just not considered as fitting a topic for ongoing serious discussion and is often dismissed out of hand with highly inaccurate comparisons to Meyer's Twilight. All the others just kind of fall through the cracks. Somehow. Just like Joanna Russ said. Speaking of Joanna Russ, she and the other feminist SF authors of the seventies and eighties wrote about a lot of female characters, and some of them wrote more "grim and gritty" fiction than Martin or Richard K. Morgan or the rest of the "grim and gritty" fantasy dudes could ever envision. Sure, it's dated in some ways, but I've been surprised more than once by how many "second wave" concern are still relevant today.
So, to sum up, I am: a) SO sick of discussions about female characters being driven by a man, b) fully intending to come up with a list of science fiction and fantasy by women that includes many female characters and perhaps does other things that ASOIAF gets credit for and does them better, and c) especially sick of seeing it implied or stated outright that women who find Cersei Lannister a poorly written aggregation of misogynist stereotypes instead of a sympathetic portrayal of a woman coping with patriarchy only feel that way because of our own internalized misogyny.
Yes, I know the standard answer is "That's a lot of female characters!" But I'm not satisfied with that. First of all, ASOIAF is a long series that has a lot of characters, period. Soap operas have a lot of female characters too, and at least their sensationalized rape storylines aren't handled in a way that has "MALE GAZE" stamped all over them. Secondly, those characters in the books are a little too obviously written by a man for an audience of men. I understand that the HBO series is supposed to be somewhat better in terms of letting the more negatively portrayed women have some human qualities, but it's also worse about gratuitously inserting explicit sex with gross power imbalances, so yeah. Finally and most importantly, there are plenty of real life women who have written stories about multiple female characters, and very few of those have gotten the level of attention and wide-ranging discussion that ASOIAF and some other male-authored texts I can think of have recently received even from women who are all about the feminist analysis.
The only women authors I can think of right off the top of my head who take up a comparable amount of cultural space are Jane Austen (who didn't write fantasy) and J.K. Rowling (whose children's books do feature more prominent male than female characters and whose non-fantasy adult novel is still pretty well overshadowed by the earlier children's fantasy series). Stephenie Meyer has name recognition, but her work is treated as a (very, very stale) joke in the circles I run in, and her reputation as a bad writer who became popular with teenage girls is often wielded as a weapon against other women who want to write novels, participate in fandom, or just have their opinions respected. The closest thing I can think of to a woman-authored ASOIAF equivalent is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which is somehow mysteriously just not considered as fitting a topic for ongoing serious discussion and is often dismissed out of hand with highly inaccurate comparisons to Meyer's Twilight. All the others just kind of fall through the cracks. Somehow. Just like Joanna Russ said. Speaking of Joanna Russ, she and the other feminist SF authors of the seventies and eighties wrote about a lot of female characters, and some of them wrote more "grim and gritty" fiction than Martin or Richard K. Morgan or the rest of the "grim and gritty" fantasy dudes could ever envision. Sure, it's dated in some ways, but I've been surprised more than once by how many "second wave" concern are still relevant today.
So, to sum up, I am: a) SO sick of discussions about female characters being driven by a man, b) fully intending to come up with a list of science fiction and fantasy by women that includes many female characters and perhaps does other things that ASOIAF gets credit for and does them better, and c) especially sick of seeing it implied or stated outright that women who find Cersei Lannister a poorly written aggregation of misogynist stereotypes instead of a sympathetic portrayal of a woman coping with patriarchy only feel that way because of our own internalized misogyny.
I probably should have realized sooner
Mar. 7th, 2013 07:49 pmI just realized what certain points of my feminist philosophy that conflict with a lot the shallow pop feminism on the internet have in common with my dissatisfaction with a lot of the escapist reading I try to do only to be thwarted by unpleasant in the world I'm supposed to prefer to this one. I believe that any better world worth building in reality or escaping to in fiction must be a world where my mother's life could have been a happier one. That means that mothers aren't confined to narrow little boxes from which only the childless women can escape. It means that heterosexual pair-bonding can happen without the woman becoming the servant of the man, sacrificing important parts of her life to his comfort, or getting blamed for his mistakes. It means that women with disabilities are treated with as much respect and concern as the "badass" and "kickass" women who run marathons and kick dudes in the face. I already knew that my blood boils whenever I see anyone, in a politically conscious context or a fannish one, putting down moms, sneering at women who still want monogamous relationships with men, Monday morning quarterbacking about what some woman could have or should have done to change her husband's behavior, or acting like a woman who can't run is some kind of disgrace to feminism. Sometimes I've felt vaguely guilty for taking it so personally and feeling so let down and/or fired up when I don't have kids, I'm sitting out the whole sex/romance/sexual politics thing, and I don't have a severe or visible disability. I couldn't help but wonder if I was doing something wrong. And I knew that some people consider it strange that my relationship with my mother didn't go through a long rough patch in my adolescence. But I'm just now putting it all together, how my mother's love and care and support got me through the worst times in my life, how much it hurts to remember the crap she's gotten from my dad, from religious figures who insisted that she could fix him by being more submissive and more patient and thinner and prettier and a better cook and mobility limitations are no excuse for slacking off on housework or weight loss, from mainstream and patriarchal society generally. And how much I relish the thought of hulking out whenever I notice that, once again, someone who is holding up the banner of making the world better for women or promoting something as a safe, fluffy escape for women is doing the same damn thing and implying that women like my mother deserve whatever crap they get and should be excluded and left behind. When I think about it like that, it's no wonder I take it personally.
Let's play bingo!!!
Feb. 16th, 2013 03:21 pmI need to make cards for Wanky "Hard" SF Writer Bingo. These are the spaces I have so far:
Turing Test that Alan Turing wouldn't have passed- Proving an entity's sapience and personhood involves demonstrating that the entity has a prurient interest in young, female humans. In many cases of this, the entity in question does not even have an organic body.
Hide the white women- Young, thin, human women or teenage girls with extremely pale skin (and usually with blond hair too) are super-attractive to all beings.
Obsessed with their own breasts- Any being with breasts is constantly aware of their shape, size, movement, nipple size, color and size of areolae, how the breasts are squished or held in place or not by completely standard everyday clothing, etc.
You keep using that word- Rape used as a metaphor for a thing that has absolutely nothing to do with non-consensual sex.
There's a word for that- Non-consensual sex occurs, but the narrative voice or a sympathetic character takes pains to point out that it was NOT RAPE.
Naked for the greater good- A contrived situation emerges in which the only logical course of action for a character is to remove every stitch of clothing and perform some series of athletic feats that give a watching mixed crowd a great view of everything. While she's doing this, she thinks about how some women would refuse to do this or think badly of her for doing this because it's immodest, but it doesn't bother her at all because modesty is a frivolous luxury that a woman who has her priorities in order simply cannot afford.
Adult writer audibly drooling over teenage character- Self-explanatory. The older I get, the more disgusting I find this.
Species of rational misogyny- Alien species in which males are sapient and females are not.
Species of dirty old men- Alien species whose biology requires extremely young females to bear the children of much older males.
Species of hot space babes- Alien species whose members look like female humanoids who are super-attractive by the standards of the writer's culture; males are either non-existent or super-ugly.
Does anybody out there have more? I just started (and quit) a book that had Adult writer audibly drooling over teenage character, You keep using that word, Obsessed with their own breasts, Turing Test that Alan Turing wouldn't have passed, Hide the white women and some ultra-creepy emotional incest that I'm not sure how to describe all in the first 32 pages.
Turing Test that Alan Turing wouldn't have passed- Proving an entity's sapience and personhood involves demonstrating that the entity has a prurient interest in young, female humans. In many cases of this, the entity in question does not even have an organic body.
Hide the white women- Young, thin, human women or teenage girls with extremely pale skin (and usually with blond hair too) are super-attractive to all beings.
Obsessed with their own breasts- Any being with breasts is constantly aware of their shape, size, movement, nipple size, color and size of areolae, how the breasts are squished or held in place or not by completely standard everyday clothing, etc.
You keep using that word- Rape used as a metaphor for a thing that has absolutely nothing to do with non-consensual sex.
There's a word for that- Non-consensual sex occurs, but the narrative voice or a sympathetic character takes pains to point out that it was NOT RAPE.
Naked for the greater good- A contrived situation emerges in which the only logical course of action for a character is to remove every stitch of clothing and perform some series of athletic feats that give a watching mixed crowd a great view of everything. While she's doing this, she thinks about how some women would refuse to do this or think badly of her for doing this because it's immodest, but it doesn't bother her at all because modesty is a frivolous luxury that a woman who has her priorities in order simply cannot afford.
Adult writer audibly drooling over teenage character- Self-explanatory. The older I get, the more disgusting I find this.
Species of rational misogyny- Alien species in which males are sapient and females are not.
Species of dirty old men- Alien species whose biology requires extremely young females to bear the children of much older males.
Species of hot space babes- Alien species whose members look like female humanoids who are super-attractive by the standards of the writer's culture; males are either non-existent or super-ugly.
Does anybody out there have more? I just started (and quit) a book that had Adult writer audibly drooling over teenage character, You keep using that word, Obsessed with their own breasts, Turing Test that Alan Turing wouldn't have passed, Hide the white women and some ultra-creepy emotional incest that I'm not sure how to describe all in the first 32 pages.
A small mystery solved
Jan. 19th, 2013 09:00 pmA little background: Years and years ago, a very long time indeed by internet standards, I read the book Les Miserables and frequented a message board (remember those?) for fans of the book. I never saw the musical because I lived way out in the middle of nowhere until such as I had moved onto other fandoms. I remember there being a great deal "they're so dumb and we're so superior" attitude toward fans of "Eppie Sue"-- that is, musical-first and musical-only fans who over-identified with Eponine and used her as their self-insert in fan fiction. So I was aware that rabid Eponine fangirls and Eponine/Marius shippers existed, but I didn't understand why anyone would form that particular fannish fixation. I didn't get into griping about them too much unless they crossed the line into Cosette-bashing, but their preferences made no sense to me. I mean, why would anyone want to be Eponine? People who had seen the musical told me that musical!Eponine and musical!Marius were actually friends instead of a stalker and a guy who pities her a little and is slightly creeped out by her when he bothers to notice her at all. But still, who would want to be Eponine or think Marius was such a great catch?
Now that I've seen the movie, it's not so baffling anymore, mainly because Marius is not a giant tool there like he is in the book. Also, this version of Eponine seems a lot less beaten down than book!Eponine. Obviously, she's still poor and her parents are still awful, but she's more spirited and less resigned to a life of misery. I think I can understand why a teenager with a crush on a friend who likes someone richer/more popular/generally luckier would get invested in Eponine now, especially if they happened to see a production with a handsome actor playing Marius.
Now that I've seen the movie, it's not so baffling anymore, mainly because Marius is not a giant tool there like he is in the book. Also, this version of Eponine seems a lot less beaten down than book!Eponine. Obviously, she's still poor and her parents are still awful, but she's more spirited and less resigned to a life of misery. I think I can understand why a teenager with a crush on a friend who likes someone richer/more popular/generally luckier would get invested in Eponine now, especially if they happened to see a production with a handsome actor playing Marius.
The clockwork woman
Nov. 25th, 2012 06:36 pmHey, if anybody is still keeping up with this journal, what are your thoughts on gendering robot/AI characters? The practice of assigning social genders to characters who don't have sexes in the biological sense has been on my mind lately. Among other things, I'm trying to sort out how the category of "robots that humans prefer to think of as girls" fits alongside the category of "female characters." I find that I tend to like "girl robot" characters in media intended for younger audiences but usually find their portrayal in media intended for adults extremely unsettling and discouraging because works written for mature audiences so often use the "robot that looks like a woman=sexbot" trope. Also, children's stories seem to be more likely to have a "girl robot" interacting with other robots or a varied mix of creatures, whereas stories for older audiences are more likely to make her half of a dyad with a human man, which brings in some weird politics. I'm flipping through the card catalog of my memory, looking for girl robots that were a) created by women for b) an adult audience, and all the examples I can come up with were blatantly created to critique or express frustration with RL exploitation and/or the popularity of the concept of the robotic woman as sexual and domestic servant.
All the other girls
Jul. 22nd, 2012 06:41 pmI am just about fed up with books in which the main character is female but all the important supporting characters are male, especially when the setting is one which appears to have equality on the surface (no expressions of surprise to find a woman doing the heroine's job or holding certain titles, no evidence that family law favors husbands/fathers over wives/mothers, girls going to school with boys presented as completely normal and unworthy of comment, some high-ranking women referred to in passing or given walk-on roles) and yet all the people who really matter in Our Heroine's life and career and adventures just happen to be men. This is bothering me so much more than it used to. Maybe it's because I've begun to notice it more, or maybe it's just because I've recently started two different books which I picked up in part because they featured female main characters, and in both cases, after I got into the story, it occurred to me that they were completely surrounded by male characters. One of them looked very promising at first, with women other than the main holding positions of authority and/or jobs that are heavily male-dominated in the real world, but as the plot progressed, they turned out to be very minor characters, whereas there are multiple male characters who are moving the plot as much as or more than the heroine and who have much more character development than any of the other female characters. I don't just want fantasy about a world where one woman is special enough to have a story told from her point of view; I want fantasy about a world where women are half the population and the story reflects that.
Meme time!
Jul. 10th, 2012 03:06 pmGive me the name of a character from anything you know I've read/watched, and I'll give you three headcanons about them.
The state of my fannish leanings
Jul. 1st, 2012 09:15 pmSo . . . y'all probably noticed some sudden changes in my LJ and DW recently, as well as a complete lack of commentary on the sequel to the series for which I had the most icons and produced the most fic, followed by multiple posts about a game fandom I didn't write much about before. ( Cut for stuff that people who haven't had me friended since the early days probably won't find interesting )
Pensive Pyro
Jun. 27th, 2012 08:35 pmOkay . . . I think I've pulled myself back together after my Pyrosplosion. I'm ready to get meta. I don't plan to link to or explicitly describe anything gory this time, but I'll use a cut anyway because it's going to get long.
( Thoughts about TF2 and its fandom )
( Thoughts about TF2 and its fandom )
The promised book post
Jun. 4th, 2012 09:12 pmYesterday I did something that I had previously told myself I'd never do: I reread The Great Gatsby. I first encountered this book as required reading in high school and predictably hated it. Recently, someone who loves it convinced me to give it another try, having argued convincingly that one needs life experience to appreciate all its merits. So, I've read it again. I do not love this book like my acquaintance does, but I also do not hate it. I now understand for the first time how someone could love it, and my reasons for not loving it are rather different from the reasons I hated it before.
I'm not the sort of reader who normally notices or cares very much about the stylistic quality of the language with which a story is told. I'm more a fan of storytelling than of literature. But even I have to admit that Fitzgerald's use of language is here a great thing in its own right, painting vivid scenes and keeping them zipping along one right after the other. The book dragged for me in high school, but as an adult, I devoured it at a pace I normally reserve for action-packed stories that make me eager to find out what happens next. I still don't like any of the characters, but I now understand, in a way I didn't when I was younger, that I'm not necessarily supposed to. And even though I don't like any of them, I do recognize them now, whereas I didn't have enough real world experience to recognize them before. The problems that I have with the story now are all the same ones I have with all the other well-regarded stories by Famous Dead White Guys and many of the Not-As-Famous Living White Guys.
The main lesson I have taken away from the experience is that The Great Gatsby should not be required reading for high school students because they won't understand it and they'll end up hating it for all the wrong reasons. It makes me wonder why this is ever assigned to high school students in the first place. Its themes are not ones that make sense to most high school students. I mean, yeah, they know what adultery is, but they don't grasp the full social significance of it and probably won't even notice how much it recurs in the books. It's obvious that Tom is having an affair with Mrs. Wilson and that Gatsby wants to have an affair with Daisy, but as a teenager I honestly did not notice that adultery is all over the background. Teenagers might have a rudimentary grasp of the distinction between old money and nouveau riche, but very, very few of them have ever seen that kind of snobbery in action, and the ones who have seen it surely didn't understand all the implications. The themes of the work that really stood out for me on my second reading are disillusionment and the futility of trying to recover lost chances-- not themes that seventeen-year-olds are likely to pick up on! They still have too many of their illusions. They have not had enough time to make much of an attempt to recover their lost chances. No themes stood out to me on my long-ago first reading, and there's a reason for that.
I'm not the sort of reader who normally notices or cares very much about the stylistic quality of the language with which a story is told. I'm more a fan of storytelling than of literature. But even I have to admit that Fitzgerald's use of language is here a great thing in its own right, painting vivid scenes and keeping them zipping along one right after the other. The book dragged for me in high school, but as an adult, I devoured it at a pace I normally reserve for action-packed stories that make me eager to find out what happens next. I still don't like any of the characters, but I now understand, in a way I didn't when I was younger, that I'm not necessarily supposed to. And even though I don't like any of them, I do recognize them now, whereas I didn't have enough real world experience to recognize them before. The problems that I have with the story now are all the same ones I have with all the other well-regarded stories by Famous Dead White Guys and many of the Not-As-Famous Living White Guys.
The main lesson I have taken away from the experience is that The Great Gatsby should not be required reading for high school students because they won't understand it and they'll end up hating it for all the wrong reasons. It makes me wonder why this is ever assigned to high school students in the first place. Its themes are not ones that make sense to most high school students. I mean, yeah, they know what adultery is, but they don't grasp the full social significance of it and probably won't even notice how much it recurs in the books. It's obvious that Tom is having an affair with Mrs. Wilson and that Gatsby wants to have an affair with Daisy, but as a teenager I honestly did not notice that adultery is all over the background. Teenagers might have a rudimentary grasp of the distinction between old money and nouveau riche, but very, very few of them have ever seen that kind of snobbery in action, and the ones who have seen it surely didn't understand all the implications. The themes of the work that really stood out for me on my second reading are disillusionment and the futility of trying to recover lost chances-- not themes that seventeen-year-olds are likely to pick up on! They still have too many of their illusions. They have not had enough time to make much of an attempt to recover their lost chances. No themes stood out to me on my long-ago first reading, and there's a reason for that.
Fracking Pern! *punches wall*
May. 19th, 2012 09:30 pmEarlier, I was in a comment thread that took a turn for both the creepy and the WHAT.
( cut for fictional consent issues )
( cut for fictional consent issues )
This one is going in my vocabulary!
Apr. 18th, 2012 03:12 pmAna Mardoll, who has written a series of posts analyzing C.S. Lewis's Narnia books and frequently getting all rage-smashy over their sexism, decided to add a post about the movie adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe from a few years ago. She was bothered by what she perceives as extra sexism added to the movie, especially in how Susan, who was obviously not Lewis's favorite Pevensie sibling to begin with, comes off even worse in the movie than in the book. Anyway, I love this line from Ana's post because it so neatly sums up my own problems not only with that particular adaptation but with a lot of other adaptations too, plus SO VERY MANY discussions in fandom and a good many derivative and transformative works themselves:
It's like you get that telling girls that they shouldn't fight in war is sexist and controversial, but you can't get that completely changing a brave character in order to be The Great Doubter of Temptressness is maybe side-stepping a pothole to fall off a cliff.
Just change a key phrase or two and it applies to so many different situations:
It's like you get that telling girls that they shouldn't fight in war is sexist and controversial, but you can't that completely changing a politically savvy character in order to be The Spoiled, Naive Girl Who Does Whatever Feels Good at the Moment, Regardless of Consequences is maybe side-stepping a pothole to fall off a cliff.
It's like you get that telling girls that they shouldn't fight in war is sexist and controversial, but you can't get that completely changing a clever, skilled, and powerful character in order to be The Representative of All Little Sisters Everywhere So That a Man Can Save Her To Make a Point and Not Even Because He Likes Her As an Individual is maybe side-stepping a pothole to fall off a cliff.
It's like you get that telling girls that they have to get married and become mothers is sexist and controversial, but you can't get that insisting that a character who marries a partner you disapprove of and/or has more children than you think she should is a Completely Worthless Failure whose mistakes in her personal life erase everything else she has ever been or done is maybe side-stepping a pothole to fall off a cliff.
This is going to be very useful to me because almost every time I check out a discussion of sexism or any other prejudice in fandom, I notice people complaining about potholes and suggesting the alternative of jumping off a cliff.
It's like you get that telling girls that they shouldn't fight in war is sexist and controversial, but you can't get that completely changing a brave character in order to be The Great Doubter of Temptressness is maybe side-stepping a pothole to fall off a cliff.
Just change a key phrase or two and it applies to so many different situations:
It's like you get that telling girls that they shouldn't fight in war is sexist and controversial, but you can't that completely changing a politically savvy character in order to be The Spoiled, Naive Girl Who Does Whatever Feels Good at the Moment, Regardless of Consequences is maybe side-stepping a pothole to fall off a cliff.
It's like you get that telling girls that they shouldn't fight in war is sexist and controversial, but you can't get that completely changing a clever, skilled, and powerful character in order to be The Representative of All Little Sisters Everywhere So That a Man Can Save Her To Make a Point and Not Even Because He Likes Her As an Individual is maybe side-stepping a pothole to fall off a cliff.
It's like you get that telling girls that they have to get married and become mothers is sexist and controversial, but you can't get that insisting that a character who marries a partner you disapprove of and/or has more children than you think she should is a Completely Worthless Failure whose mistakes in her personal life erase everything else she has ever been or done is maybe side-stepping a pothole to fall off a cliff.
This is going to be very useful to me because almost every time I check out a discussion of sexism or any other prejudice in fandom, I notice people complaining about potholes and suggesting the alternative of jumping off a cliff.
Merida and the Forest of Fear!
Mar. 18th, 2012 01:48 pmI just finished watching (and re-watching) the Japanese trailer for the movie that's being released as Brave in the United States, and I've got to say this trailer looks a lot more interesting than the US trailer to me, both as a fantasy fan (Hey, this movie DOES have supernatural elements after all!) and as feminist. This trailer, which has English subtitles with voice actors and narrator speaking Japanese, doesn't set my internalized misogyny meter beeping nearly as much: It reveals a third significant female character (the movie still looks very man-heavy for what was originally supposed to be a mother-daughter story, but at least it's a little better). It reveals a plot beyond Special Girl Is Special and Defies Oppressively Girly Mother To Prove She's As Good As a Man. Merida's mother is shown talking about other things besides how Merida should be more ladylike, and she's also shown with a very poignant expression of worry; the Japanese trailer paints the mother character as someone who has legitimate worries about her daughter's safety based on knowledge of past events, whereas the US trailer pains her as an unreasonable, unthinking rule-enforcer who wants Merida to Be More Ladylike because that's what she should do according to The Rules for Princesses.
Most interestingly to me, the Japanese trailer attributes Merida's dissatisfaction with the status quo to her feeling too constrained and wanting freedom in a very broad sense, and the suitors who are so prominent in the US trailer just background characters here. The US trailer put a lot of emphasis on the competition to marry Merida and how unimpressed Merida and her father were with her suitors-- so much so that it's unclear whether Merida's displeasure with the situation was because she didn't want to be the prize in a contest or because the men who entered the contest just aren't tough enough/manly enough for her. The Japanese trailer makes me expect Merida's happy ending to be saving the kingdom, whereas the US trailer just made me worry that it might be finding a prince who can outshoot her.
Plus, there are curses and magic and little blue fairy-creatures, and ominous forest spirits and a horse that seems to be really perceptive about human body language! That fits a lot better with Pixar's other movies about strange adventures than the message I was getting from the US trailer, which seemed to be all about how this unusually boyish-and-therefore-special girl was going to get out of having to wear tight dresses and marry a wimp. Now, anybody who's been following my journal for any length of time knows that I am totally against anyone being forced to wear tight clothes, wear dresses, or marry anyone they don't want to. But I'm really, really uncomfortable with that being what The One Story with a Girl Lead boils down to, when stories about boys get so much variety, weirdness, and excitement.
Most interestingly to me, the Japanese trailer attributes Merida's dissatisfaction with the status quo to her feeling too constrained and wanting freedom in a very broad sense, and the suitors who are so prominent in the US trailer just background characters here. The US trailer put a lot of emphasis on the competition to marry Merida and how unimpressed Merida and her father were with her suitors-- so much so that it's unclear whether Merida's displeasure with the situation was because she didn't want to be the prize in a contest or because the men who entered the contest just aren't tough enough/manly enough for her. The Japanese trailer makes me expect Merida's happy ending to be saving the kingdom, whereas the US trailer just made me worry that it might be finding a prince who can outshoot her.
Plus, there are curses and magic and little blue fairy-creatures, and ominous forest spirits and a horse that seems to be really perceptive about human body language! That fits a lot better with Pixar's other movies about strange adventures than the message I was getting from the US trailer, which seemed to be all about how this unusually boyish-and-therefore-special girl was going to get out of having to wear tight dresses and marry a wimp. Now, anybody who's been following my journal for any length of time knows that I am totally against anyone being forced to wear tight clothes, wear dresses, or marry anyone they don't want to. But I'm really, really uncomfortable with that being what The One Story with a Girl Lead boils down to, when stories about boys get so much variety, weirdness, and excitement.
