Annoying sexism and Joss Whedon

[alias_sqbr]

Reading through the latest Feminist sf carnival I hit some links which made me go "yes! That! Grr!". So I thought I would share the joy :)

Joss Whedon and feminist cookies Makes the point that one can (and should) acknowledge the effort of feminist writers like Joss Whedon..while still calling them on their mistakes. And oh, does he make some mistakes. Also, this comment captures some of the dodginess of the "Women corrupted by power" archetype.

On a similar subject Firefly: The Trouble With Saffron, on the fact that having a sweet innocent female victim of abuse who has pity taken on her turn out to be an evil sexy seductress is, uh, kind of creepy, especially given that it's done so often. I think there's a subtext to the "Turn a victimised group who 'everyone cares about' into the villain" thing which plays on the fact that deep down people don't want to sympathise with victims, and get annoyed at having to care about them, so get a real sense of catharsis from having them turn out to have been evil all along.

It got me thinking about the sheer absurd fetishisation of the "Woman who becomes evil automatically starts dressing an acting more sexily" thing. I'm not saying that women can't use sexuality to gain power, or that being sexy is inherently bad (or good) But it's just one way to be powerful, and it plays both into the "woman + sex=evil" trope and the "Women exist to serve men" trope (since she is titillating the male viewers rather than doing what makes sense for the character) It's way overdone in Supernatural, I'd love to see an evil female character who is genuinely gross (like, a zombie or something(*)) do the whole "creepy touching" thing (in order to deliberately creep the guy out, not in a failed attempt to be sexy), then it would be actually creepy rather than a thinly veiled excuse for men to despise the women they're attracted to. And why can't a woman be aggressively sexy and dressed in leather and not evil? Actually, I guess that was Xena. Yay Xena :) EDIT: Yeah, ok, so there's MANY counterexamples to this :)

EDIT: Oh hey, metafandom :) Man, I really didn't put much thought into this post, and now I have to justify my dodgy arguments with a fuzzy brain...All disclaimers are in operation!

(*)Except I hate zombies. Hmm.

Comments

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

I'm just posting here to say how much I love Xena. And the best thing about her, at times she was sexual, but for most of the time, she was just downright powerful - and portrayed in a way where she didn't use her sexuality to achieve results (with a few exceptions, and that was with Hercules, so meh).

[alias_sqbr]

You know, I really think I'm going to give Xena a go :)

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

It is worth a try, but I do know the show can be a matter of taste.

If you're a fan of Buffy, you might find Xena a little challenging in a linear fashion. Xena changes it's genre quite a bit, you'll get the comedy slapstick eps, and then the angsty dramatic types side by side, without any warning - and the show is amazingly campy at times.

The first Season was aimed at the family/kiddy timeslot, then it suddenly veered right in the second Season and went to some fairly dark places. Frankly I'm amazed they didn't have more problems with it's timeslotting because of the difference, and finding an audience.

Season 3 was the controversial one (some dodgy unhealthy interdependent relationship problems in that season) , and fans did complain (with good cause) that Xena was inappropriately sexualised in the final season. But I mostly forgave it because the Xena/Gabrielle relationship practically became canon.

So yeah, have fun :)

[alias_sqbr]

I've found with shows like that which may annoy me I just have to watch it in the right frame of mind. It took me some time to start Supernatural, for example, and it's been slow going, but I'm still enjoying it.

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

I've never been able to watch Supernatural. But yeah, I have a friend who only watches the comedy episodes of Xena, she can't handle the angsty eps.

Me, I love the angsty ones, and some of the better comedy ones. The first season is very light-hearted, quite easy to watch. I don't think it has any triggering issues.

I can't watch Supernatural because it doesn't have any strong female characters, and I like regular strong female characters. I'm really into Japanese RPG console games at the moment (Final Fantasy), many of them glorifying the honourable warrior, soldier comraderie etc, and Japanese culture isn't the most progressive when it comes to gender, but they still have a lot of really good female characters. Go figure.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, the lack of female characters is the main thing putting me off the show. That and the sexism, the last episode was so annoying I had to read a novel about an adventuring princess and then write a few chapters of female-pov fanfic to get it out of my system :D

Final Fantasy <3. I just finished FFXII, started playing FFVIII and then realised I don't have the right sort of memory cartridge to save on a PS2 :(

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

12 is awesome. I love Ashe, Basch, Fran and Balthier, so much love.

I watched Crisis Core, which is the prequel to FFVII (and a slasher's dream) via cut scenes on youtube, I got the sequel film Advent Children from a DVD bargain box for $10 and I was all squeely about that.

There is also an Anime series focusing on the Turks, I think you can get most of that on Youtube as well. I'm still quite flaily about FFVII, ha. And I got a PS3 so I could play FFXIII when it's released next year.

[alias_sqbr]

I never got around to finishing 7, and now have no access to a copy. I bought one online and it's NTSC so I can't play it :(

I'm seriously considering a PS3 for that reason though. It's funny, my husband is the one who gets all excited about consoles and thus buys them but I'm the one who ends up playing with them the most :)

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

I played 7 so long ago I can't even remember the entire storyline, except Cloud wins and the world is saved. OK, a little more then that, what with pseudo--mystical gaia earth lifestream new age magic, but I think it's valid when wikipedia says that FF7 is considered one of the most complicated storylines in RPG console history.

I just watched Advent Children went oooh shiny, and then went and read wikipedia and got the storyline in a nutshell (which I still don't entirely understand), then went and read a whole lot of fanfiction

And watched a lot of shiny songvids with incredibly beautiful people, seriously, Crisis Core has some of the prettiest and shiniest male characters I've ever seen.

[alias_sqbr]

Heh. Even without finishing the game "Cloud saves the day" is pretty much what I was expecting :)

I may have to check these out.