Ever feel like someone else watched a completely different show than you did?
First Cracked listed Firefly‘s River Tam in its rundown of the “Randall Munroe — which I thought was sort of ridiculous, partly because I don’t agree with it, and partly because I don’t think River was an attempt at feminism. I’m not convinced that every female character has to be.
And then they linked to that LJ post as some kind of proof or approbation of their theory…
When I read that “beyond a shadow of a doubt” Joss Whedon obviously abuses his own wife, the essay went from being just an extremely flawed reading of Firefly to being downright insulting. I waded through just enough of her current blog to see that she considers Whedon “a profound misogynist,” and men in general to be, at best,”superfluous creatures.” (At worst, we’re violent misogynist bastards not to be trusted around anyone else.)
That’s when I realized that we had, in fact, seen two very different shows, and we were never going to agree on something like this.
A couple of weeks ago, Mary Ann took some of the Firefly (and Torchwood) characters to task for being racial stereotypes. And while I didn’t really agree with her on that, I could definitely see her point. As a middle-class American white guy, I’ll admit my persepctive may be different, and I may not be as sensitive to these things as I could be.
I don’t think Joss Whedon, Russell T. Davies, or anyone else should get a free pass. When they do wrong — or could do better — they should be called on it. But, at the same time, I don’t think every time a person of color displays a character flaw that that’s racism, or that every time a female character shows some sign of weakness it’s because the writer is a profound misogynist. Sometimes it’s actually just good writing. People are often flawed; people are sometimes weak. If all we have are predictably flawed and weak characters, then we have a problem. And if all of those characters are women and/or non-white, then the root of that problem could very well be racism and/or misogyny, and that needs to be fixed.
I don’t think Whedon is a perfect feminist, by any means, but I do think he’s more a part of the solution than the problem.
It’s also worth pointing out that sometimes people are flawed in stereotypical or cliched ways. Sometimes, some women behave in ways that are stereotypically female and men behave in ways that are stereotypically male. I think when people criticize authors for having characters that have stereotypical weaknesses, sometimes what they’re really doing is complaining that fiction appears to spring from actual experience.
A moment of weakness doesn’t make a character *weak*. And for me, there is nothing more boring than an unflawed hero. Its the flaws that make characters real and identifiable. If you have a character that always knows the perfect thing to say or do to save the day and always behaves honorably and nobly and appropriately… what’s the point? Too many flaws can be a problem, but no flaws isn’t any better. A breakdown or a mistake or a moment of vulnerability here and there makes for an infinitely more interesting character. And far more real, imo. It has nothing to do with being a woman or being non-white. It’s about being human and by definition, fallible.
Ever feel like someone else watched a completely different show than you did?
All. The. Time.
Seriously, this isn’t much different or much worse than many of the accusations of sexism and racism and, yes, even homophobia that I’ve seen hurled at the new version of Doctor Who. And it seems as if for every person who has a thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis of how such issues are handled on television, there are five or six others who are apparently watching some bizarro version written by wife-beaters in white sheets. (Then again, there was also the article I read once which complained that, given its Western sensibilities, Firefly ought to have had all its women submissive, barefoot, and pregnant, but “charitably” suggested that Joss Whedon — about whom the writer clearly knew nothing whatsoever — might have wanted to keep those womenfolk in their proper place, but had to bow to public pressure in favor of stronger female characters. Honestly, it was equal parts hilarious and sad.)
I tend to have really mixed feelings when it comes to these kinds of considerations, myself. To my mind, on a TV show (or any other work of fiction) believable and vivid characterization is the key thing. Of course you don’t want to rely on stereotypes to create characters, not just because it’s offensive but because it’s bad writing. But I can’t help but believe that characters, like real people, should be free to be anything along the vast spectrum of human variation. There is, I think, a fairly real danger of falling into a different sort of stereotyping, for instance feeling constrained to present only female characters who are “strong” in certain stereotypical ways, and that’s not good writing, either. (Incidentally, I don’t think Joss Whedon generally falls prey to that one, as I find his characterization of strong women much more nuanced than that.)
I do, however, find it a bit hard to reconcile my desire to regard every character as an individual and my tendency to get rather upset when it’s implied that anybody, real or fictional, should be expected to display certain characteristics and lack others based on their race and their gender with my simultaneous desire to see real race and gender equality on television. In individual cases, at least when it comes to any show that’s actually well written, my impulse is always to defend the writing in character terms. E.g.: Zoe calls Mal “sir” because he’s her captain — duh! — and because he was her superior in the armed forces. It has everything to do with their shared military background and the specific relationship between them, and nothing at all to do with some generalized notion that women should defer to men. If anything, it’s an implicit statement about how women can, do, and should fit perfectly well into traditionally male-dominated hierarchical systems. All of which is perfectly true, and yet it may be possible to defend every single instance of a woman on TV appearing to defer to a man in perfectly acceptable character terms like that and yet still end up with a general pattern of women-subservient-to-men that’s troubling and hard to defend.
And, um, wow, I appear to have written an entire essay there. I didn’t realize I was rambling that much…