I've seen at least one of these types of major problems in every fandom for shows that include female characters or CoC at all, and very often all three. Which is probably part of the reason fandom drives me to look (often futilely) for stories with either strong nonsexual relationships between women, or femslash... for example, when it comes to Homicide, almost everyone seems to 'ship what's apparently that fandom's One True Female Character, Kay Howard, with John Munch, but I'm not interested in that non-canonical pairing at all; I'd mostly rather see her with other interesting women on the show (at the beginning of S3, Kay had a huge, obvious crush on a major new female character that was deflated only when the latter cut her down, but there's all of one story that's ever been written about them). Well, and I think fandom in general could stand to celebrate more heterosocial relationships that aren't necessarily romantic or sexual. And in SCC, the subtext is so strong in one of the two relationships I thought had the most chemistry that the IMDB page for the most important episode in that relationship actually lists "Lesbian Subtext" as a keyword. Yet there are all of three tiny stories about that relationship in all the interwebz, as far as I can tell.
Oh... so where was I? Heh. Well, I know someone who only started watching with the third-to-last episode of S2, and she's enjoyed what she's seen even if she is confused! I think she is going back and filling in the gaps. It's not so hard! I encourage it!
I've got most of a nine-page post put together that's all about why I love Jesse in particular, but I'll leave you with a few Jesse quotes (not in chronological order), hopefully minus major spoilers. (Though I think it's not too much of a spoiler to say I love a woman who'll deliberately pick a fight with a bar full of military!) Imagine them being said in a totally alluring, sardonic Australian drawl...
[at a bar] Man: What you drinkin'? Jesse: I don't know. Man: [amused] You don't know what you're drinking? Jesse: There's booze in it... some sugary crap to cut the hell out of the burning taste, and some ice.
Man: What happened to your face? Jesse: You ask a lot of questions for a guy who wants to get in my pants. Man: Do I? Jesse: Yeah, see, there's another one.
*** Derek: I don't think I've ever thanked you for what you said that day. Jesse: I think the exact words were... "Your fly is open." Derek: Yeah. Jesse: It was.
*** [in a hospital bed, close to death] Jesse: You know what Oscar Wilde's last words were? "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." [laughs]
You know, SGA is over, I'm between seasons with everything else I watch, it's almost past crunch time with school and I'm finished with Carnivale (at least until get my season 2 DVDs); I have time. Based on this recomendation - because I really do trust your opinion when it comes to television; it seems like you have good taste - I might start up with this show. Though I might have to make the rounds with my friends, see if anyone has season 1, at least, on DVD - I really rather hate watching it online, more so lately, because my computer seems determined to never ever play videos correctly and in general just behave like a small mechanical bitch.
And you're right; Jesse sounds like the absolute bomb. (Is it strange that she reminds me of His Girl Friday Rosalind Russell?)
yay! hearing that you're thinking about starting SCC is the best thank-you possible for my tl;dr, heh. I was going to offer some links for episodes if you were interested, but if your computer's having trouble playing downloaded videos as well as streaming, that's probably no good.
Jesse is complicated and amazing, and I think it's not weird at all to be reminded of Hildy Johnson! At least with respect to the wit and the no-nonsense, type A attitude. Of course, only about five other people in all of SCC fandom feel the way I do about Jesse (one of them is making a video about her, something I had not even dared to hope for!), but I remain undeterred. A woman who throws the first punch in a bar brawl is the woman for me—plus there's other spoiler-y things I love about Jesse. And that guy in the bar, despite being kind of cute and funny, entirely fails at getting into her pants. Not his fault at all, but hee!
... yeah, my love for SCC, like my love for Jesse, has become pretty epic. I can think of several occasions when I've had problems with the show's treatment of female characters, but the other 80-85 percent is consistently good. (No knowledge of the films is required in order to understand what's going on in the show, btw. Anything a viewer would need to recall, the show incorporates in as much detail—usually not much—as necessary.) I love how in general, the show's women make hard choices unflinchingly and without tragical closeups even when the human cost ends up being so high. I love the way the show's handled violence, at its best making violent acts by its major female characters intense and disturbing but not gratuitous or voyeuristic. I'll close this round of tl;dr with a few minimally spoiler-y comments by others on this aspect of SCC.
Terminator: TSCC's "The Good Wound" [and "Some Must Watch, While Others Must Sleep," plus other SCC episodes] and Dollhouse's "The Target" are object lessons in how to do and how not to do female suffering. In one of them it's treated as a serious subject, we see pain and strength, we see the least eroticized female fear and pain I've ever seen. I mean, seriously, the camera work! It's amazing.
And in the other one a nubile girl with heaving breasts is hunted like a deer. After the camera work and writing explicitly equate the death of the prey with sexual climax.
And okay, I personally think Eliza Dushku is sexier than Lena Headley, but it's really not about the actresses or the ages of the actresses. It's about cinematography and writing and framing.
And the terrible thing, as sisabet and sockkpuppett 's "Women's Work" demonstrates for Supernatural and implies for other visual media, is that the rare one of this pairing is Terminator.
oh, I agree completely! I have been going on and on about SCC and how they are so very careful, whenever a woman is shown to be suffering or bound or tortured or hit, to give her loose clothes that show no cleavage, to focus the camera on her face, to let her get as bloody and sweaty as male characters on other shows get - bloody and sweaty in a way that implies suffering and resilience, rather than snuff porn. They take such care with that, and I am just so grateful every time. ["Some Must Watch, While Others Must Sleep"] does especially well on those terms, because it doesn't deny the power dynamics present in a man keeping a woman bound and captive (they do the thing with her pants being undone), but it's quick and subtle and not at all eroticized. It's like the writers and directors really get that you can't just "treat women like men," that you have to think through the presentations of women in pain very carefully. I love them for it.
mswyrr:
I would love to be a fly on the wall for some of the discussions the directors, writers, etc. have about this stuff. I'd love to see how the culture of such a positive set works compared to the others; right now I'm picturing merry chats about deconstructing the male gaze at the craft services table. An everything bagel and coffee with a side of Laura Mulvey's criticism. Yum.
It's like the writers and directors really get that you can't just "treat women like men," that you have to think through the presentations of women in pain very carefully. I'm sorry I don't have more to say to this until I get my grab-hands on some of the episodes*, but I can say: wow. That's a strange and rare thing, right there.
Speaking of fantastic portrayals of women in media: are you a comic reader, and if so, have you ever heard of Y: The Last Man? If not, I strongly urge you to check it out. It's like the SCC of the comic pantheon. I'm not saying it doesn't have its problems, because it does, but it for what it's worth it's got an interesting and thought-provoking premise, and an almost all-female cast (out of necessity, but still). Most importantly, like SCC, it uses a pretty far-fetched SciFi premise to examine a real world theme: how women define themselves. (Like the Congressmen's wives who define themselves through their husbands, or the soldier in Israel who defines herself in opposition to her male copatriots.)
*Actually, some of those download links might be useful afterall. Are they downloading (like, .avi files), or streaming? It's mostly the latter my computer has problems with.
I'll e-mail you about the episodes. (I don't want to get bounced for linking in a public post.) Same e-mail address, right?
I've read about Y: The Last Man before: one negative review (I don't remember the specifics, although the points seemed interesting at the time) and at least one positive review. How women define and redefine themselves is definitely of interest to me; I'll look into it! I admit I've never bought a graphic novel. I have read a few from the public library and online. A friend recently recommended Carla Speed McNeil's Finder series, which is not available through my library system... a little frustrating, because everything I've read about it has been full of accolades.
I was thinking a little more about SCC fandom... about 10 percent of what gets out there is Sarah/Cameron, which interested me for the first few episodes; I think that pairing is holding steady at third place in fandom. Then, well, I don't think it's overly spoiler-y to say that as Sarah's attitude became more rather than less unrelenting toward Cameron, the pairing lost my attention. As usual, fandom did not bend to my wishes (hee!) by providing stories about Sarah and Cameron as two women in a difficult partnership, raising a rebellious teenager—a partnership in which it gradually becomes still more clear that one of the partners is (incorrigibly, and not necessarily in a positive way) alien in how she perceives human beings and her own relationship to humans and their human reactions. Which wouldn't even be the biggest emotional issue. Also, subsequent developments would probably make the pairing too uncomfortably Oedipal for me, especially given an initial setup that already tended that way. (Not that I didn't love the initial setup too, because I did!) However, in S2 I found a different relationship between two female characters fascinating, and would read stories capitalizing on the heavily implied subtext any day. Yet as I noted before, there are virtually none. Oh, SCC fandom!
There are a couple of times that stand out in my memory, with respect to SCC failing at presentations of women in fear and pain: in one episode, the strangling of a woman taking a shower; in another episode, twenty plotless minutes too many of a teenage girl crying and fleeing in horror-movie style terror. As far as I recall, the show avoids cleavage shots on either. The relatively brief shot of the woman in the shower is from the neck up and the girl is wearing loose-fitting clothing that covers her from neck to ankle.
I thought about the show some more, and there are more close-ups of Sarah looking melancholy-stoic-tragical than I indicated earlier, though I think they're mostly in early S2 and drop off to an acceptable level thereafter. And at the beginning of S2 the voiceovers go away, to reappear in only two episodes (one is okay, the other is awesome). That's a good thing, because while Sarah's voiceovers are never as stupid as Mohinder's were on Heroes, SCC's creator realized the show works better without them most of the time.
Since you're bound to notice... there's one exceptionally ludicrous instance when the basic biological science is wrong wrong wrong in a way that could totally have been avoided, and it's likely you'll also laugh at the emergency medicine in at least one episode.
This Married to the Sea comic startlingly evokes Sarah's archetypal nightmare, but with hilarity! (http://www.marriedtothesea.com/011808/same-city-different-universe.gif)
Oh, curse you, ticketsonmyself! All this talk of themes and character dynamics is downright intriguing. Now you have me wanting to watch just so I can write for this (sadly-lacking-in-femslash) fandom!
Bwee! My job is done! (And I guess Sarah/Cameron started pinging me as possibly overly incestuous—not Oedipal like I said earlier, that's the wrong gender... though Oedipal would kind of apply to a different-and-also-charming relationship, especially earlier in the show—due to other increasingly pseudo-incestuous developments that were deliberately developed on the show. I found the dynamic between Sarah and Cameron intriguing and even charming at the beginning, though! I should also—if somewhat begrudgingly—correct what I said earlier about SCC's most popular pairing, in that on the show the pairing does eventually move up from slightly weird subtext to a weird, non-teenybopper, unconventional level. I actually didn't disapprove too much of the execution of that. Not really a spoiler out of context: incestuous ribcage surgery!)
If you ever do end up writing my favorite femslash pairing that's almost nonexistent in SCC fandom, watch out! All seven [redacted pairing] fans will get the bulletin, and so will every general SCC or femslash-friendly community I know of! (Uh, but only if you want that to happen. Hee!) Be told!! (In other words, THUMBS UP for any such enterprise. Or SCC fic from you in general, if you do go for it.)
Oh, trust me, I laugh at almost every mention of emergency medicine in pop culture. Maybe it's because we've all been on an ambulance once or twice, but no one ever seems to consult with the professionals, like they do with doctors; they just assume they know exactly what happens, which is inevitably always wrong. Then again, I've heard that Terminator - the movies, anyways - are actually pretty good when it comes to details. My teacher actually used a clip from the second movie to illustrate the stages of cardiopulmonary arrest.
Maybe it's because we've all been on an ambulance once or twice, but no one ever seems to consult with the professionals, like they do with doctors; they just assume they know exactly what happens, which is inevitably always wrong.
Hee!
Then again, I've heard that Terminator - the movies, anyways - are actually pretty good when it comes to details. My teacher actually used a clip from the second movie to illustrate the stages of cardiopulmonary arrest.
I haven't seen the movies in years, but interesting! There's one particular SCC episode in which the emergency medicine, and indeed the basic biological science, struck me (and I guess everyone, judging from fan reactions) as particularly ridiculous. A transparent exchange of science for plot device!
On a different note: if you're watching Stargate SG-1, I thought you might be interested in dsudis's ongoing series of fix-it episode tags for SG-1 episodes that fail the Bechdel-Wallace rule (http://dsudis.livejournal.com/tag/bechdel+test?format=light) (as vee_fic wrote, a pass basically means the episode includes two women talking to each other onscreen about something other than a man). dsudis and ceresi recently put up a wiki called Characters Count (http://characterscount.pbwiki.com/) for charts relating to character demographics -- how many characters were female, how many were persons of color, and how often they talked to each other about things other than men/white people. Right now it's got charts for SG-1 seasons one and two, Torchwood, and Merlin. Most episodes in at least those two seasons of SG-1 fail both the Bechdel and the race-Bechdel. I've been loving dsudis's episode tags so far. If you've started watching SG-1 from the beginning, I recommend them!
I haven't been watching Stargate SG-1 in any serious way; as I recall, I hunted down "48 Hours", "The Pegasus Project", and "The Road Not Taken" (or whatever it is) because they had to do with Atlantis canon, and since then - having liked what I saw - I've caught an episode or two on SciFi when they're on. (And, of course, I saw the movie, which probably doesn't count.)
Usually, I'm not too excited about fix-its, but I'm game to give them a look-see. Do you know up to what point she's written them so far?
She started with the first episode of season one, "Children of the Gods," and has written stories through episode six, "Cold Lazarus." New ones almost daily! I do hope she keeps it up... I think she just started watching season three.
I like dsudis's series because the (very short) stories are like missing scenes: she provides a screen cap or two of the characters if they're very minor ones so you have a visual, and the stories themselves are anchored in circumstance and theme to important things left unexplored in the series; they're not frivolous at all, even if it's just an brief conversation between two people, one of whom has a name the other character can't recall. And of course, I'm always delighted to encounter dialogue between women in fiction that's not about a man—or stereotypically "girly" subjects, for that matter!
Not to mention, when she does tackle the "girly" subjects - and yes, I have been reading them, though not as fast as I'd like - she does them with respect and thoughtfulness, like in Uncommon Threads (http://dsudis.livejournal.com/498246.html). I love that story, even though I have no idea of the context; for scarcely a thousand words, it touches on so many issues, provokes so much thought.
And the end bit of Sisters in Arms (http://dsudis.livejournal.com/495600.html#cutid1):
"It's different here?" Sam asked. "Women aren't allowed to fight?"
Sha're looked up at that, and gave a wry smile--not the least bit downtrodden, not remotely oppressed and seeking to be made free, not again. She looked proud, and weary, and said only, "We have our own battles. We carry other weapons."
From a liberal American perspective, where all women are characterized as completely equal and identical to men - ideally, anyway - or the oppressed needing to be "freed", like the author said... it's interesting.
From a liberal American perspective, where all women are characterized as completely equal and identical to men - ideally, anyway - or the oppressed needing to be "freed", like the author said... it's interesting.
Yeah, there are fundamental problems with just about everything in that liberal ideal/goal for women, from what different groups of women with varying levels of privilege actually want "equal" to mean for themselves and for each other, to the anti-trans implications in strict nurture-over-nature interpretations of gender held by a good number of the people calling themselves radical feminists (I would not consider anyone feminist, period, who clings to transphobic views; I have failed at exactly that type of intersectionality before and have since repudiated that transphobia)... the themes of "Sisters in Arms" remind me strongly of what's covered in "How to Write About Muslims (for real)" (http://muslimahmediawatch.org/2009/03/04/how-to-write-about-muslims-for-real/) at Muslimah Media Watch, especially
Rule #1: Don’t assume that Muslim women need to be saved, or that you know how to save them.
By making this assumption, what one is essentially doing is:
* Assuming that all Muslim women are somehow oppressed at the hands of their fellow Muslims. The Muslim community is just as diverse as any other. By generalizing in such a way, one maligns the entire community, including the women. This is offensive to the many women who are treated with respect and equality by their fellow Muslims, including Muslim men. This assumption also ignores the forms of oppression that Muslim women may be facing from outside of the Muslim community, such as racism and Islamophobia (or even war and occupation, in cases like Iraq and Afghanistan), which for some women can be much more disastrous than anything they experience from their Muslim community. * Assuming that Muslim women can’t take care of themselves. This is very patronizing. Muslim women have agency, and a great deal of it. Throughout history and today, Muslim women have been taking various forms of leadership. In situations where women are being oppressed, they are resisting in all sort of ways that the media doesn’t always think about. Additionally, most Muslim countries have Muslim women’s organizations that are working hard to support themselves and other women. * Assuming that what you’re going to do for them is going to be helpful. The assumption is that you know better than them what’s good for them. It also suggests that you are actually in a position to help them, which might not be true.
(More on that from another MMW writer at "Truth or Propaganda: Muslim Women Need to Be Saved" (http://muslimahmediawatch.org/2009/01/21/truth-or-propaganda-muslim-women-need-to-be-saved/) and "We want more of the oppressed, helpless Muslim woman." (http://muslimahmediawatch.org/2008/07/16/we-want-more-of-the-oppressed-helpless-muslim-woman-2/))
All told, this kind of thing is why I've come to distrust liberalism in general (as opposed not to conservative but to progressive or radical or liberationist, as Jessica Hoffmann notes in her last footnote to "On Prisons, Borders, Safety, and Privilege: An Open Letter to White Feminists" (http://avp-virginia.blogspot.com/2008/04/on-prisons-borders-safety-and-privilege.html)), and also a lot of white middle-class feminism (a good example of this is popular white fantasy author Tamora Pierce's post complaining about some women of colour choosing not to call themselves "feminists" after some massive examples of racist fail in feminist blogging and publishing; Seeking Avalon's May 1, 2008 entry under this tag (http://seeking-avalon.blogspot.com/search/label/respectfully%20disagree) is a short but powerful open-letter response by Avalon's Willow, who identifies as black, an immigrant, and gay).
I've read the open letter before and you're right, it's several punches to the gut.
Of course, the other nasty bit about the American view of Muslim women - i.e. backwards and oppressed - is that the real problems about gender inequality in the Muslim community - as Faith said, the things that need to be given a "cold, hard look in the mirror" about - are so often used as excuse for American behavior towards Muslims, and conduct in the Middle East, but ignored when it's not profitable to us. We invaded to bring democracy and freedom! Or something. Because the Taliban oppress women (true) and they wear those scarf things and have oil! So there.
sometimes I love reading outside the fandoms with which I'm really familiar for that very reason—when thematically, a story's that complete and thought-provoking in itself, it can be really rewarding! and I think one of the reasons "Uncommon Threads" succeeds is that it takes the dismissive, sexist (and strongly implicitly racist, given casting and the way that society is characterized in the episode) treatment of that "girly" embroidered dress by both Sam the character and the show itself, and just turns a 2D portrayal into something amazing and 3D. I am all up with love for discussion of dynamics of power and privilege and means of production, making visible what's usually invisible in industrialized societies—and a non-condescending exploration, however brief, of what they might mean for women and women's labor in more than one society... well, I would be all over portrayals of "girly" or "chick-flick" subjects in popular media if they habitually included this type of thing. as it is, though the often-overwhelming implicit classism and racism in such portrayals tend to put me off, I do think pervasive sexism in the potential audience is frequently responsible for the undervalued status of "girly" topics in popular media (and of course, if a work has more than a few scenes passing the Bechdel-Wallace rule, it's going to be written off as a chick flick or chick lit or whatever).
Ah, but the portrayal of women in media is like the portrayal of POCs: we don't need to think about it! We claim artistic license! So, of course, "chick flick" almost synonymous with "mindless stereotyped entertainment that reinforces sexist tropes, and often imperialist, anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim, or racist ones as well"! House Bunny, for a recently-watched example. Here is a movie about a woman whose greatest aspiration is to be on the Playboy Bunny calendar, reforming a sorority house of "misfits" (read: interesting individuals with opinions of their own) until they look and act just like her. Watch Barbie Shelley bend over backwards for a date, pretending to be smart until it's revealed that what the guy really wants is for her to be "herself": pretty, sexual, and brainless! Because no matter what anyone says, Playboy Bunnies do not pop fully formed out of the womb; they're made that way. And the movie ends in an uplifting number where the sorority numbers break free from their "ugliness", revealing underneath: thin waists! Big boobs! Long legs! Puffed up lips and no facial piercings!
All the women in the movie, of course, are portrayed as petty, jealous, and small-minded, while the men are even-headed and kind. And even though the movie is comprised of an almost entirely female cast, I'm not sure if it even passes the Bechdel-Wallace test. Not a word of anything real. No "Uncommon Threads" here.
You know what really pisses me off about all this, and all the movies like this one?
yay! here's hoping! going on about SCC here has really made for my own resurgence of SCC love—when my hands are more up to it and I've done more of what's on my list, I want to write a complete episode-by-episode review of S1 and S2... it'd only be capsule reviews, with spoilers under lj cuts, but I feel inspired. true, most of my SCC episodes are on unlabeled CDs (d'oh!), which could make it harder, but still!
most of my SCC episodes are on unlabeled CDs (d'oh!)
Ha. I myself am quite familiar with the plight of the unmarked CDs. Especially how one always seems to find the buggers in this order - disks 1, 3, 4, 6, 5, and never 2. Also: "hands up to it"?
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branchandroot
long comment on SCC, SCC fandom, and fandom in general, part 4 (final part!)
Date: 2009-04-16 09:04 am (UTC)Oh... so where was I? Heh. Well, I know someone who only started watching with the third-to-last episode of S2, and she's enjoyed what she's seen even if she is confused! I think she is going back and filling in the gaps. It's not so hard! I encourage it!
I've got most of a nine-page post put together that's all about why I love Jesse in particular, but I'll leave you with a few Jesse quotes (not in chronological order), hopefully minus major spoilers. (Though I think it's not too much of a spoiler to say I love a woman who'll deliberately pick a fight with a bar full of military!) Imagine them being said in a totally alluring, sardonic Australian drawl...
[at a bar]
Man: What you drinkin'?
Jesse: I don't know.
Man: [amused] You don't know what you're drinking?
Jesse: There's booze in it... some sugary crap to cut the hell out of the burning taste, and some ice.
Man: What happened to your face?
Jesse: You ask a lot of questions for a guy who wants to get in my pants.
Man: Do I?
Jesse: Yeah, see, there's another one.
***
Derek: I don't think I've ever thanked you for what you said that day.
Jesse: I think the exact words were... "Your fly is open."
Derek: Yeah.
Jesse: It was.
***
[in a hospital bed, close to death]
Jesse: You know what Oscar Wilde's last words were? "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." [laughs]
Re: long comment on SCC, SCC fandom, and fandom in general, part 4 (final part!)
Date: 2009-04-18 11:59 pm (UTC)You know, SGA is over, I'm between seasons with everything else I watch, it's almost past crunch time with school and I'm finished with Carnivale (at least until get my season 2 DVDs); I have time. Based on this recomendation - because I really do trust your opinion when it comes to television; it seems like you have good taste - I might start up with this show. Though I might have to make the rounds with my friends, see if anyone has season 1, at least, on DVD - I really rather hate watching it online, more so lately, because my computer seems determined to never ever play videos correctly and in general just behave like a small mechanical bitch.
And you're right; Jesse sounds like the absolute bomb. (Is it strange that she reminds me of His Girl Friday Rosalind Russell?)
"No, he should make some girl real happy. ...Slap-happy."
Date: 2009-04-19 07:03 am (UTC)Jesse is complicated and amazing, and I think it's not weird at all to be reminded of Hildy Johnson! At least with respect to the wit and the no-nonsense, type A attitude. Of course, only about five other people in all of SCC fandom feel the way I do about Jesse (one of them is making a video about her, something I had not even dared to hope for!), but I remain undeterred. A woman who throws the first punch in a bar brawl is the woman for me—plus there's other spoiler-y things I love about Jesse. And that guy in the bar, despite being kind of cute and funny, entirely fails at getting into her pants. Not his fault at all, but hee!
... yeah, my love for SCC, like my love for Jesse, has become pretty epic. I can think of several occasions when I've had problems with the show's treatment of female characters, but the other 80-85 percent is consistently good. (No knowledge of the films is required in order to understand what's going on in the show, btw. Anything a viewer would need to recall, the show incorporates in as much detail—usually not much—as necessary.) I love how in general, the show's women make hard choices unflinchingly and without tragical closeups even when the human cost ends up being so high. I love the way the show's handled violence, at its best making violent acts by its major female characters intense and disturbing but not gratuitous or voyeuristic. I'll close this round of tl;dr with a few minimally spoiler-y comments by others on this aspect of SCC.
Re: "No, he should make some girl real happy. ...Slap-happy."
Date: 2009-04-20 08:23 pm (UTC)Speaking of fantastic portrayals of women in media: are you a comic reader, and if so, have you ever heard of Y: The Last Man? If not, I strongly urge you to check it out. It's like the SCC of the comic pantheon. I'm not saying it doesn't have its problems, because it does, but it for what it's worth it's got an interesting and thought-provoking premise, and an almost all-female cast (out of necessity, but still). Most importantly, like SCC, it uses a pretty far-fetched SciFi premise to examine a real world theme: how women define themselves. (Like the Congressmen's wives who define themselves through their husbands, or the soldier in Israel who defines herself in opposition to her male copatriots.)
*Actually, some of those download links might be useful afterall. Are they downloading (like, .avi files), or streaming? It's mostly the latter my computer has problems with.
more rambling on SCC?
Date: 2009-04-21 12:29 am (UTC)I've read about Y: The Last Man before: one negative review (I don't remember the specifics, although the points seemed interesting at the time) and at least one positive review. How women define and redefine themselves is definitely of interest to me; I'll look into it! I admit I've never bought a graphic novel. I have read a few from the public library and online. A friend recently recommended Carla Speed McNeil's Finder series, which is not available through my library system... a little frustrating, because everything I've read about it has been full of accolades.
I was thinking a little more about SCC fandom... about 10 percent of what gets out there is Sarah/Cameron, which interested me for the first few episodes; I think that pairing is holding steady at third place in fandom. Then, well, I don't think it's overly spoiler-y to say that as Sarah's attitude became more rather than less unrelenting toward Cameron, the pairing lost my attention. As usual, fandom did not bend to my wishes (hee!) by providing stories about Sarah and Cameron as two women in a difficult partnership, raising a rebellious teenager—a partnership in which it gradually becomes still more clear that one of the partners is (incorrigibly, and not necessarily in a positive way) alien in how she perceives human beings and her own relationship to humans and their human reactions. Which wouldn't even be the biggest emotional issue. Also, subsequent developments would probably make the pairing too uncomfortably Oedipal for me, especially given an initial setup that already tended that way. (Not that I didn't love the initial setup too, because I did!) However, in S2 I found a different relationship between two female characters fascinating, and would read stories capitalizing on the heavily implied subtext any day. Yet as I noted before, there are virtually none. Oh, SCC fandom!
There are a couple of times that stand out in my memory, with respect to SCC failing at presentations of women in fear and pain: in one episode, the strangling of a woman taking a shower; in another episode, twenty plotless minutes too many of a teenage girl crying and fleeing in horror-movie style terror. As far as I recall, the show avoids cleavage shots on either. The relatively brief shot of the woman in the shower is from the neck up and the girl is wearing loose-fitting clothing that covers her from neck to ankle.
I thought about the show some more, and there are more close-ups of Sarah looking melancholy-stoic-tragical than I indicated earlier, though I think they're mostly in early S2 and drop off to an acceptable level thereafter. And at the beginning of S2 the voiceovers go away, to reappear in only two episodes (one is okay, the other is awesome). That's a good thing, because while Sarah's voiceovers are never as stupid as Mohinder's were on Heroes, SCC's creator realized the show works better without them most of the time.
Since you're bound to notice... there's one exceptionally ludicrous instance when the basic biological science is wrong wrong wrong in a way that could totally have been avoided, and it's likely you'll also laugh at the emergency medicine in at least one episode.
This Married to the Sea comic startlingly evokes Sarah's archetypal nightmare, but with hilarity! (http://www.marriedtothesea.com/011808/same-city-different-universe.gif)
Re: more rambling on SCC?
Date: 2009-04-23 10:31 pm (UTC)You evil, evil creature. ;)
Re: more rambling on SCC?
Date: 2009-04-23 11:22 pm (UTC)If you ever do end up writing my favorite femslash pairing that's almost nonexistent in SCC fandom, watch out! All seven [redacted pairing] fans will get the bulletin, and so will every general SCC or femslash-friendly community I know of! (Uh, but only if you want that to happen. Hee!) Be told!! (In other words, THUMBS UP for any such enterprise. Or SCC fic from you in general, if you do go for it.)
Re: more rambling on SCC?
Date: 2009-04-23 10:36 pm (UTC)Re: more rambling on SCC?
Date: 2009-04-23 11:37 pm (UTC)Hee!
Then again, I've heard that Terminator - the movies, anyways - are actually pretty good when it comes to details. My teacher actually used a clip from the second movie to illustrate the stages of cardiopulmonary arrest.
I haven't seen the movies in years, but interesting! There's one particular SCC episode in which the emergency medicine, and indeed the basic biological science, struck me (and I guess everyone, judging from fan reactions) as particularly ridiculous. A transparent exchange of science for plot device!
Re: "No, he should make some girl real happy. ...Slap-happy."
Date: 2009-04-21 12:32 am (UTC)Re: "No, he should make some girl real happy. ...Slap-happy."
Date: 2009-04-23 10:28 pm (UTC)Usually, I'm not too excited about fix-its, but I'm game to give them a look-see. Do you know up to what point she's written them so far?
Re: "No, he should make some girl real happy. ...Slap-happy."
Date: 2009-04-23 11:27 pm (UTC)oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
Date: 2009-04-27 04:04 pm (UTC)Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
Date: 2009-05-02 02:17 am (UTC)Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
Date: 2009-05-02 02:37 am (UTC)"It's different here?" Sam asked. "Women aren't allowed to fight?"
Sha're looked up at that, and gave a wry smile--not the least bit downtrodden, not remotely oppressed and seeking to be made free, not again. She looked proud, and weary, and said only, "We have our own battles. We carry other weapons."
From a liberal American perspective, where all women are characterized as completely equal and identical to men - ideally, anyway - or the oppressed needing to be "freed", like the author said... it's interesting.
"We have our own battles. We carry other weapons."
Date: 2009-05-02 06:01 am (UTC)Yeah, there are fundamental problems with just about everything in that liberal ideal/goal for women, from what different groups of women with varying levels of privilege actually want "equal" to mean for themselves and for each other, to the anti-trans implications in strict nurture-over-nature interpretations of gender held by a good number of the people calling themselves radical feminists (I would not consider anyone feminist, period, who clings to transphobic views; I have failed at exactly that type of intersectionality before and have since repudiated that transphobia)... the themes of "Sisters in Arms" remind me strongly of what's covered in "How to Write About Muslims (for real)" (http://muslimahmediawatch.org/2009/03/04/how-to-write-about-muslims-for-real/) at Muslimah Media Watch, especially (More on that from another MMW writer at "Truth or Propaganda: Muslim Women Need to Be Saved" (http://muslimahmediawatch.org/2009/01/21/truth-or-propaganda-muslim-women-need-to-be-saved/) and "We want more of the oppressed, helpless Muslim woman." (http://muslimahmediawatch.org/2008/07/16/we-want-more-of-the-oppressed-helpless-muslim-woman-2/))
All told, this kind of thing is why I've come to distrust liberalism in general (as opposed not to conservative but to progressive or radical or liberationist, as Jessica Hoffmann notes in her last footnote to "On Prisons, Borders, Safety, and Privilege: An Open Letter to White Feminists" (http://avp-virginia.blogspot.com/2008/04/on-prisons-borders-safety-and-privilege.html)), and also a lot of white middle-class feminism (a good example of this is popular white fantasy author Tamora Pierce's post complaining about some women of colour choosing not to call themselves "feminists" after some massive examples of racist fail in feminist blogging and publishing; Seeking Avalon's May 1, 2008 entry under this tag (http://seeking-avalon.blogspot.com/search/label/respectfully%20disagree) is a short but powerful open-letter response by Avalon's Willow, who identifies as black, an immigrant, and gay).
Re: "We have our own battles. We carry other weapons."
Date: 2009-05-02 08:49 pm (UTC)Of course, the other nasty bit about the American view of Muslim women - i.e. backwards and oppressed - is that the real problems about gender inequality in the Muslim community - as Faith said, the things that need to be given a "cold, hard look in the mirror" about - are so often used as excuse for American behavior towards Muslims, and conduct in the Middle East, but ignored when it's not profitable to us. We invaded to bring democracy and freedom! Or something. Because the Taliban oppress women (true) and they wear those scarf things
and have oil! So there.On Darfur, for example: silence.
We don't invade Darfur.
Re: "We have our own battles. We carry other weapons."
From:Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
Date: 2009-05-02 04:58 am (UTC)Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
Date: 2009-05-02 09:02 pm (UTC)BarbieShelley bend over backwards for a date, pretending to be smart until it's revealed that what the guy really wants is for her to be "herself": pretty, sexual, and brainless! Because no matter what anyone says, Playboy Bunnies do not pop fully formed out of the womb; they're made that way. And the movie ends in an uplifting number where the sorority numbers break free from their "ugliness", revealing underneath: thin waists! Big boobs! Long legs! Puffed up lips and no facial piercings!All the women in the movie, of course, are portrayed as petty, jealous, and small-minded, while the men are even-headed and kind. And even though the movie is comprised of an almost entirely female cast, I'm not sure if it even passes the Bechdel-Wallace test. Not a word of anything real. No "Uncommon Threads" here.
You know what really pisses me off about all this, and all the movies like this one?
People think they're inspirational and uplifting.
!!!
Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
From:Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
From:WARNING for triggers re: rape
From:Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
From:Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
From:... the guy who actually cried because I corrected him on the nutritional content of peanut butter.
From:Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
From:Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
From:Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
From:Re: oh, I forgot to note: SCC episodes are .avi format!
From:just remembered SCC season one has nine episodes, not thirteen...
Date: 2009-04-23 06:24 pm (UTC)Re: just remembered SCC season one has nine episodes, not thirteen...
Date: 2009-04-23 10:29 pm (UTC)...Or something like that, anyway. I'm not very coherent right now.
Re: just remembered SCC season one has nine episodes, not thirteen...
Date: 2009-04-23 11:28 pm (UTC)Re: just remembered SCC season one has nine episodes, not thirteen...
Date: 2009-05-02 02:18 am (UTC)Re: just remembered SCC season one has nine episodes, not thirteen...
Date: 2009-05-02 06:12 am (UTC)Re: just remembered SCC season one has nine episodes, not thirteen...
Date: 2009-05-02 09:13 pm (UTC)Ha. I myself am quite familiar with the plight of the unmarked CDs. Especially how one always seems to find the buggers in this order - disks 1, 3, 4, 6, 5, and never 2. Also: "hands up to it"?
Re: just remembered SCC season one has nine episodes, not thirteen...
From:Re: just remembered SCC season one has nine episodes, not thirteen...
From:Re: just remembered SCC season one has nine episodes, not thirteen...
From:Re: just remembered SCC season one has nine episodes, not thirteen...
From:Re: just remembered SCC season one has nine episodes, not thirteen...
From:Re: just remembered SCC season one has nine episodes, not thirteen...
From:Re: just remembered SCC season one has nine episodes, not thirteen...
From: