prozacpark

I swear, it's like the universe knows that I am coming back to comics and throws a comicbook tragedy my way.

So I spent last week reading Terry Moore's "Echo" series, which is all kinds of awesome, and gah, I had forgotten how well Moore does triads where I am happily multishipping all over the place. And the epic women! Always the epic women. I must review it properly in the near future when I am not in mourning.

Then I get out my comics reading list, so I can go through them, and a large number of these are DC comics. Pre-reboot, because you can't pay me to read anything post-reboot after the Oracle drama.

And now! I have found out that Helena Bertinelli, my One True Character, the only reason I ever read DC comics, has been written out of continuity. What the fuck is wrong with DC comics? I mean, okay, Marvel does its reboots, and we suddenly end up with Kitty who is no longer in love with Pete Wisdom or Rachel whose entire existence is suddently defined by her fake parents, or, well, MADYLYNE, who is suddenly EVIL and a CLONE OF JEAN GREY (why, yes, I am still bitter about that!), but it doesn't, like, reinvent its entire universe every few decades and goes "OH, that never happened! Alternate universe! Forget everything you have invested in for the last twenty years! Oh, BTW, THIS IS THE NEW UNIVERSE!"

Honestly, how is it possible to maintain longterm investment in this? And how do people read these without going insane? I am so glad that I ended up reading Marvel despite actively hating them these days, and even so: Why, DC, WHY?!

aphrodite_mine and I will be running a rare women fandom fic exchange, with the major difference from other rare fandom ficathons being that you can only offer/request fic featuring women. So, basically, you can check ANY on several fandoms without fearing that you will be FORCED to write m/m slash, or you know, fearing that you'll get m/m slash even though you specifically ASKED for female character centric fic.

Obscure female characters in larger fandoms, as well as all female characters in smaller fandoms, are eligible for nomination. Everything from tv fandoms to super obscure literary texts in dead languages that only you have read are eligible.

The nominations will run until Janunary 21st. The final request/offers will have to come from the finalized nomination list. More details here.
But mostly, go and nominate awesome female characters. Each person can nominate five fandoms, and up to five women within each of those fandoms. If you're at all planning to pinch hit, write, or request in this, go make sure that your favorite female characters are on this list. Otherwise, go nominate them.

I...can't promise that this will be the last time I'll be plugging this here, but I will probably be more brief in the future.

1). I loved the first season of "Veronica Mars" a lot, and possibly enjoyed it more than 90% of the things I have watched. Because not only did it have an awesomely perky and fun heroine who got stuff done, I actually liked the perky protagonist that the show wanted me to like. However, I will never, ever own any part of that show because the third season went out of its way to paint feminism as evil and made a point of distancing its heroine from feminism. How do you write a female character that awesomely positive yet see feminists as evil? Honestly, it feels a lot like BSG where the last season completely rewrote everything I thought I was watching, and the earlier seasons can never be viewed without that fail filter.

I have a million issues with Joss Whedon, as we know, but I appreciate that Joss did not shy away from the 'feminist' label publicly when he was first starting out (and still doesn't, but I have posted about issues with claiming that now), which means a lot in a world where most creators and actors *do* go out of their way to remind us that they're NOT feminist and no, that awesomely positive female character you love is not a feminist statement. This is a huge part of why I no longer read actor/creator interviews. If I had a feminist tv show for every actor or creator who went out of her/his way to distance themselves from the feminist movement, I would have TV to watch for the rest of my life.

These issues were brought back by watching Feminist Frequency's video on Straw Feminist trope.

2). Dear World - Imagine for a minute that you're walking down a fairly crowded hallway while reading a book/texting your BFF/fishing for your cell phone in your purse. Thusly distracted, you run into Jane, who then spills her coffee all over herself and her purse and its contents all over the floor. What do you do?

a). Apologize for actually bumping into her and making her spill her coffee/drop her purse.
b). Refuse to help and claim, "I didn't mean to bump into you! It's not my fault!" Then proceed to explain exactly how it wasn't your fault.

Now, you know that most people will, in fact, pick option one. Because *of course* you didn't mean to bump into someone in the hallway, but you still DID, so you apologize.

So why does this principle not apply to the media, race conversations, and sexism? When you say something stupid that's perceived as sexist/racist/homophobic by a person of less privilege than you, why is the response, "I DID NOT MEAN IT THAT WAY!" And not, "I am sorry that I hurt you. Let me explain what I meant." Or even owning your privilege and moving on. It doesn't matter how you meant it. It's the effect of your words that counts.

"I/They/He/She didn't mean it" is not a valid defense. It's an *excuse* for things to continue to be racist/sexist/homophobic/problematic. It doesn't change anything, and it makes YOU part of the problem.

3). I keep seeing the term 'gender' applied to women as if it's some MAGICAL thing that only happens to people with a vagina. WTF, fandom? No, really, what? There is the whole "femslash has gender issues but m/m slash doesn't!" There was the time when someone was writing an essay about how Dean Winchester was really a Strong Female Character but the writers wrote him as a man so he wasn't gendered. (What does that even *mean*?!)

And then there was this prompt on Dragon Age Kink meme: "It seems to me that Isabela's gender often becomes an overwhelming aspect of her character. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it got me to wondering about how Isabela would be both different and the same if she were a man. How would her companions and the world around her respond?"

And this is especially messed up in a universe where I feel that Isabela's sexuality is, for the most part, treated exactly as it would be if she were a man? It's only in fandom that you see her GENDER becoming an issue in terms of her sexuality.

4). I've been reading Zelda Fitzgerald's biographies, and while doing so, I became interested in Hadley Heminway, Ernest Hemingway's first wife. Sources tell me that their marriage never recovered from the fact that Hadley LOST a suitcase filled with Hemingway's unpublished manuscripts, and so his first finished novel was lost to the world, along with many short stories and poetry. This amuses me greatly because as far as I am concerned, Hadley did humanity a GIANT FAVOR. She's my new accidental hero. <3 Sigh, if only she had accidently lost HIM...at the bottom of the ocean or something.

And it's just mind-boggling that after reading all about how Fitzgerald happily let his wife have affairs for INSPIRATION for his novels and then had her locked/committed when she actually fell in love with the guy and how he delibrately tried driving her to have more mental breakdowns to keep her from publishing her own novel/diaries that he was plagerizing from all along? Hemingway is somehow still the biggest asshole of his generation.

5). My new laptop got here a week ago, and I...haven't touched it. I am not ready to let go of Vendetta, and am ACTUALLY considering returning the new computer. WTF? This is NOT healthy. Maybe naming the laptop was a mistake? IT MAKES IT FEEL LIKE A PERSON, OH GOD, HOW CAN I ABANDON HER?

If American culture were at all comfortable with homosexuality or even 50% less homophobic, I fully believe that every single romance movie would, in fact, be about a male/male relationship. I have to go to the movies tonight, and just looking at the list of movies out is making me ragey. Any movie that looks halfway decent is made up of ONLY a male cast, which I am not interested in. The only movies out with women are romance movies, a genre I am not a huge fan of. And I am fully, fully convinced that if Hollywood didn't hate gay people more than it hates women, all of our romance narratives would feature men. I mean, just look at fandom, and how as soon as it got a bit more comfortable with homosexuality, suddenly, most of the romance fic became SLASH fic.

Also, possibly worse than anything else is this movie:

The Descendants - Native islander Matt King (George Clooney) lives with his family in Hawaii. Their world shatters when a tragic accident leaves his wife in a coma. Not only must Matt struggle with the stipulation in his wife's will that she be allowed to die with dignity, but he also faces pressure from relatives to sell their family's enormous land trust. Angry and terrified at the same time, Matt tries to be a good father to his young daughters as they too try to cope with their mother's possible death.

Firstly, why does this exist? Secondly, I don't need to see this movie to know that someone who is not a Native Hawaiian is playing one, and that the plot depends on the woman being refrigerated so the man could angst over her. And how his right to Man Pain somehow is more important than her right to choose how she wants to die. So, TBH, I don't really get the "You can't judge this until you've seen it!" argument, because more often than not? You actually *can* with only minimal knowlege of tropes and narrative structure.

/bitter.

Is there anything halfway decent that's out that I am somehow missing?

Second article I wrote for Bitch Flicks, which provides a feminist interpretation for one of my favorite movies, "The Ring." Long after Samara stopped scaring me, this movie and concept continue to compell me and a large part of that is the feminist subtext I read into the text.


Infection in the sentence breeds
We may inhale Despair
At distances of Centuries
-Emily Dickinson

By some stroke of fate, right around the time I had gotten over my fear of Samara enough to want to rewatch “The Ring” multiple times in order to analyze it, I happened to be taking a feminist lit class whose major concern was how patriarchal narrative patterns and male-centered heroic stories where women are often silenced or marginalized influence women to reproduce those stories. The theories we studied were built around Gilbert and Gubar’s “Infection in the Sentence,” which explores how these harmful fictional patterns spread like a sickness and infect unsuspecting minds with their problematic views of women. This is a metaphor that has stayed with me, and it’s something “The Ring” seems to play into, so my reading of this movie may be more feminist than was the intention of the people involved. I won’t try to decipher what the writers/directors meant to do with this movie except to say that they are definitely interested in how stories spread, evolve, and infect people who consume them. I will primarily attempt to deconstruct the aspects of the movie that speak to the feminist themes touched upon by Gilbert and Gubar’s analysis of women's literature.

“The Ring” opens with two young girls flipping through the channels as they discuss how the energy waves of the television influence people’s minds. As they do this, Becca tells Katie about the rumors she’s heard about a video tape that kills, elaborating on the elements of the tape. As we later find out, this story holds only bits of truth and seems to have gained some elements in its retelling. Already the movie is exploring evolution of stories through word of mouth. The end of the teaser sees the death of Katie, who has seen the tape, setting up the first mystery of the movie.

Rachel Keller, Katie’s aunt, happens to be an investigative reporter and, perhaps more importantly, a writer. She’s asked by her sister Ruth to look into the death of Katie, leading her to discover the stories about a tape that kills. She’s rightly skeptic until she herself watches the tape, which in Becca’s words is like watching “sombody’s nightmare.” Rachel sets out to deconstruct this nightmare and its originator, and the movie’s metaphors take a turn towards a feminist gothic discovery.

At the center of the mystery are Samara and her mother, Anna, both women whose sanity is questioned by the narrative. At first glance, the movie seems to be Anna’s creation, and it’s her face that we see in the images on the tape. Anna is implied to have been driven to the brink of insanity and eventually to suicide by Samara, who somehow creates images that burn themselves into the minds of those around her. Samara herself is an ambivalent figure that the movie does not seem to be sure about, which leaves her open to interpretation. While I was convinced of her pure evilness initially, subsequent viewings have made her emerge as a less sinister figure, especially given her portrayal in the Japanese version of the story. I believe that Samara retains the echoes of that positivity even in this version, particularly in the light of some of the gothic themes the movie is playing with.

“The things she'd show you,” exclaims Richard Morgan, Samara’s father right before committing suicide, and we’re told by Dr. Grasnik that Anna needed psychiatric help because of Samara. Given the gothic themes the movie seems to be playing with, I have to wonder about the exact nature of Anna’s sickness. Certainly, the movie implies that Samara was the root of the problem, but is the movie also implying that Anna is somehow responsible for Samara’s condition? The initial description of Anna’s visits seems to imply some sort of post-partum depression, but we’re also led to believe that there was something wrong with Samara. Particularly noteworthy is the scene where Rachel talks with Dr. Grasnik about the two women. Dr. Graskin says, “When Darby there was born, we knew something wasn't right with him. But we loved him anyway. Takes work, you know. Some people have limits.” The last bit seems to imply that whatever was wrong with Samara tested the Morgans’ limits rather than implying that whatever was wrong with Samara would’ve gotten any parent to reject her.

At this point, Rachel beings to question the treatment of Samara as well, despite suspecting that something was wrong with her. As it happens, Rachel also has a child who could be called a little out of the ordinary, so it makes sense for Rachel to cast Samara in a more positive light than she’s been given reason to. These suspicions reach their peak when Rachel discovers the barn room where Samara was kept in isolation. While the movie’s treatment of Samara is ambivalent (possibly to add to the shocking ending), the use of yellow wallpaper inside Samara’s attic-like isolation room seems to be deliberate.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short feminist story by Charlotte Gilman that explores the narrator’s slow descent into madness brought on by the isolation imposed on her by her husband, who is also her doctor, in order to cure her of her post-partum depression. The woman, trapped in a room where the most stimulating thing is its strangely patterned yellow wallpaper, is forbidden from engaging in most socially and/or mentally engaging tasks. She becomes obsessed with discovering the secrets of the wallpaper and convinces herself that there’s a woman trapped inside the wallpaper who crawls inside the walls at night and creeps by the windows during daytime. The narrator, in time, becomes obsessed with the need to tear off the wallpaper and free this creeping, crawling woman from her prison.

It’s hard not to see Samara as the creeping, crawling woman trapped inside the wallpaper, while Rachel as the protagonist bent on freeing her. Given this, perhaps it’s no coincidence that Rachel’s final discovery of Samara’s resting place comes through her own tearing away of the yellow wallpaper. However, before she tears away the wallpaper, she expresses concern over the isolation of Samara, and Noah points out that Samara had the company of a television set.

The TV, and not the yellow wallpaper, then, is Samara’s lone stimulant in this confinement, so she uses that as her medium of communication with the outside world, just as the crawling woman uses the wallpaper as her way of letting people know that she’s trapped inside. Initially, the movie seems to warn against spreading people’s tragedies “like a sickness.” However, it should be noted that Richard Morgan is perhaps our most sinister character, given the control he exerted over Samara’s life and how he used it to isolate her and how our protagonist views him.

Gilbert and Gubar note that women’s fiction is filled with themes of weakness and silence, a reflection of how their stories have been repressed in the male-authored texts they see themselves reflected in. They suggest that the only way to overcome these themes would be to create a model of writing/story-telling that empowers, "To heal herself, the woman writer must exorcise the sentences which bred her infection in the first place; she must overtly or covertly free herself of the despair she inhaled." As much as Rachel is a writer, Samara, too, can be read as a sort of artist.

Given that the opening scene plays with the idea of evolution of stories, it’s useful to examine the evolution of “The Ring” story itself. While the American version de-ages Samara to a child and makes her more overtly sinister, her Japanese precursor, Sadako, is initially a much more sympathetic figure who is a victim of male perpetrated violence in both versions. In the “Ringu” novel, Sadako is a 19-year-old actress who has inherited her mother’s supernatural abilities. In the course of the story, she’s raped by a doctor who then murders her and throws her down the well. In the movie version, her father kills her after her powers begin to emerge. For the original Sadako, the creation of the tape is really the only way to get her story out and she views it as a form of revenge.

“She just wanted to be heard,” Rachel says about Samara, after discovering her fate. And Rachel inadvertently heals herself by giving Samara more power (something that unsettles both Richard Morgan and Aiden), ensuring that her story is heard. Taking into account the long literary and historical tradition of suppressing and erasing women’s histories, stories, and the violence perpetrated against them, “The Ring” really seems to be endorsing the passing on of Samara’s story. It helps that the narrative rewards the people who agree to pass the story on. Certainly, there are more sinister ways to read the ending. However, let’s see the two possible life trajectories of those who view the tape: Watching the movie and remaining silent about Samara’s story would lead to death. However, if the person agrees to make a copy and passes it on with the cure, what’s the worst that’ll come out of that cycle? Some creepy nightmares and a look inside Samara’s head that lasts for seven days. Really, given the usual fate of people in horror movies, Samara at least gives her victims a clear and relatively easy way out, but perhaps, it’s a cure that could only have been discovered by someone who cared to deconstruct Samara’s elusive nightmare.

Given all of these themes, the origins of Samara’s story, and the ominous use of the yellow wallpaper in Samara’s prison, I can’t help but read this movie as a warning against suppressing women’s stories and silencing women’s voices. It deals with the infection of ideas that comes from consuming media, and at its heart is a woman searching for and trying to free another woman who seems to have been abused. Now, it’s entirely possible to read Samara as a completely evil figure, and really, the movie is scarier that way. However, a lot of feminist and race-conscious readings of texts emphasize reading these narratives from the point of view of the Other because history is written by the winners and women, people of color, and other minorities are continually being silenced. So yeah, Samara’s story isn’t pretty, and it comes with its own dangers, but the consequences of suppressing that story and of remaining silent about what happened are much, much worse.

This information is not going to be news to anyone who has been reading this LJ because we have been saying this for a long time. But next time someone tells me that "It's just a story," or how I should spend my time being a REAL activist, or even how the writer didn't mean to be sexist, I might actually suppress the urge to punch them long enough to link them to this:



This is an extended trailer for a documentary that looks at ways that women are conditioned by the media to give up their power. It also suggests that the only way to fix this is to, HI, LET WOMEN TELL THEIR OWN STORIES. I haven't seen the documentary, but I have read good things about it, and the clips have got me looking very forward to tonight, when it makes its world premiere at 9/8 central on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). If you have access to this network, be sure to watch/TIVO it because I believe the ratings are something people are going to be looking at, and Missrepresentation.org is asking people to spread the word.

I chose to post the extended trailer because it has PATTY HEWES. If anyone can save the world fix our problematic metanarratives, it's Patty Hewes. <3

All in all, a much easier way to make people get this than, you know, asking them to read "The Madwoman in the Attic," which is 700 pages of meta arguing just this, in between analyzing 19th century women's lit.

Once it's aired, I'll see if I can find a link and post it with my review of it some time this weekend.

I binged on the 1995 version of "Pride and Prejudice" with Heather this weekend, which is one of my favorite movies/books, not least because it's immensely enjoyable and fun (as opposed to my usual leanings towards doom and gloom fiction). But one thing that leaves me really uncomfortable with the ending is Lydia being married to Wickham. She's what...16, at MOST, at the end of the book? That's not nearly old enough to be getting punished so harshly for the choices she made at such a young age. I understand that an average 16-year-old woman in the 19th century was probably more mature than an average 16-year-old today, but Lydia is still the youngest of the sisters, which almost necessarily means that she's been spoiled (by her mother, whom I also don't blame. I mostly just *really* dislike Mr. Bennet.) and been allowed to shirk responsibility and I think that while Jane and Elizabeth are responsible, she was somehow allowed to be more under Mrs. Bennet's wing, and I think a large part of that is that no one is really expecting her to end up being married or with any sort of responsibility for a long while yet.

But with a husband like Wickham, Lydia is going to learn some harsh lessons very quickly. Not just in terms of his cheating, but he is going to gamble everything away, and I don't think Lydia would much like being poor or socially disgraced and shunned, which they will be within the year with Wickham's general assholery. In Lydia's case, it doesn't even seem like she's being actively punished as much as Austen just went "They're both shallow and kind of deserve each other." Which, well. Wickham is someone who is willfully malicious and deceptive by design, while Lydia's biggest crime is being thoughtless and shallow...at the ripe old age of SIXTEEN. As opposed to Isabella Thrope from "Northanger Abbey," (whom I adore, BTW), who actually actively drops a well-off man to go after a much richer one with the intentions of marrying up. Isabella's ending is another one that makes me really uncomfortable. Of course, when we leave her at the end of the book, her future is uncertain, but we know enough to know that she's not headed for a good one. And I feel iffy about the conversation between Henry and Catherine that pretty much says that Isabella got what she deserved and/or invited her doom by being ambitious.

This yuletide, one of the things I am most looking forward to asking for is some Isabella fanfic, where she finds her happy ending and satisfies her gold-digging tendencies. Possibly with even Captain Tilney, because I sort of like the idea of her ending up with someone who *knows* she's a gold-digger, but doesn't care. I might have to reread to see how much I actually hate Captain Tilney and if he could be redeemed. I'll never understand how gold-digging in women is somehow WORSE than men wanting to marry pretty girls. Both equally shallow (although one is VERY practical and ambitious, so <3), but somehow, since beauty is a part of you, he really is in love with YOU. As opposed to wealth, which is an external thing. OTBH, I have no idea how this works. Except that all our narratives are secretly from the Male POV so women being deceptive towards men makes everyone freak out, while men can do whatever and it's fine because that's who most people are going to be identifying with. Sigh.

While the "Pride and Prejudice" movie did not cover this part (do any versions cover this part?), and I actually generally love all the bits of interaction that take place between Lizzie and Darcy after the engagement, my only issue with their entire romance narrative takes place during a conversation between the two of them. Elizabeth asks Mr. Darcy what first attracted him to her, to which, he has no specific answer. So she proceeds to analyze his feelings thusly, "The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking, and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them."

Now, I like the first part of the conversation (not quoted here), where you get the impression that he loves her because she was snarky to him (he insists that it was for the "liveliness of her mind," which I adore!). And I generally like het romances where the man has to do the emotional work because the woman is either emotionally unavailable/distant/unstable or just plain not interested, in which case, the guy actually has to respect her wishes and back-off (as Mr. Darcy does) when she asks , because other wise, it goes into a creepy territory. So Lizzie/Darcy kind of push all kinds of shipping buttons for me. But this second bit, where Elizabeth sort of...somehow puts the other women down, makes me a bit iffy because it really brings to attention the weird double standard of the Romantic Period, especially when compared to the treatment of Isabella. A successful woman is she who marries well...but the only one who *deserves* to marry well is the one who doesn't actually *want* wealth. So you have a culture that encourages you to find a rich husband that also actually looks down on your for wanting to find a rich husband. This is so...messed up, and how does that even WORK? So Elizabeth is deserving of all this happiness because this is not the happiness she desired, but Isabella, who wants wealth and fortune and actually WORKS for it, deserves to be disgraced and punished. Now, of course, I love Elizabeth dearly and she is probably one of my favorite heroines in all of literature, so I am not putting her down in any way. But...Isabella amuses me greatly, and she's so...deceptive and artful and works SO hard for what she wants that I just...really, really can't help but want her to get her rich husband, who also happens to love her. And as always, I am bothered by how fiction endorses the happiness of a certain kind of woman while denying that to the more unconventional women.

I kind of wish I remembered more of "Mansfield Park" so I could talk about the gold-digger character in there? But as it is, I can't even remember her name, but I do know that there is apparently one and that a lot of you hate her treatment in the text.

So there you have it, more of my issues with Austen and gold-digging/shallow women. One day, I'll know exactly what I think of it in the light of all the things I love about Jane Austen, given that heroines like Elizabeth *were* unconventional back then, and a heroine like Emma Woodhouse is still insanely hard to find even today. But until then, you're all doomed to see these random thoughts as they occur.

In other news, I see that there's a book about Lydia Bennet giving her a happy ending. I am ambivalent on the reviews, but I think I might get it. If only "Northanger Abbey" were popular enough for such a thing to exist for Isabella...

So, I went to see X-men: First Class last night because apparently, when it's not being marred by my disdain for Wolverine, Emma Frost's appearance in a movie is just as much of a draw for me as one would expect. Friendslist, have I mentioned lately how much I love Emma Frost? And how I wish I could grow up to be her? And how she's the one who started me down the path of my love affair with Machiavellian Women in Charge? Because, yes, all of that. So as one would expect, I fully expected to post a squee filled entry talking about my love of Emma Frost and her epic hardcore awesomeness.

Except, I'm not. The beauty of Emma Frost is that she exists exactly where the line between Machiavellian Woman in Charge crosses over with Femme Fatale, which doesn't happen often because the latter is usually seen as a type who secretly manipulates people to have her way, but never really wants power openly. Emma is happy to play the femme fatale for the end results, but her goal is always to be in power. So what happens when you take power out of that equation? Something very unfortunate, of course. Emma gets reduced to her sexuality, which is something the comics have been guilty of lately.

Despite that, the movie starts out well. The Magneto backstory is compelling, but I might be biased because Magneto is possibly my favorite male character in all of X-men. The team dynamics are good, and not all about, you know, Wolverine. I was shipping everyone with everyone else, and squeeing, and happy, and thinking "OMG, this is the best X-men movie yet," and then we hit halfway point, Emma Frost left my screen, and gave me time to focus on the bigger picture. Where they wrote out all the woman from Plot A so we could focus on the Big Boys playing war games and directing politics. Where women apparently have no place.

However, it's entirely possible that Rose Bryne as Moira MacTaggert shooting people makes the entire movie worth it. It's hands down the hottest thing in the entire movie, even given my giant crush on Magneto (Um, I still find the old Magneto hotter). It almost makes the switch from world class scientist to a random CIA agent worth it. Almost.

( Spoilery thoughts on Mystique, Moira, Emma Frost, and the Bromance that can't contain women in its narrative, obviously.  )

This is somewhat of a follow-up to my earlier meta on authorial intent fail (mainly on BSG), where I argued that writers' lack of concrete authorial intent when writing female characters leads to female characters being read in widely different ways in fandom, often in ways that the canon did not intend. I did recap the ideas from there here, but the original meta is here, for those interested in it.

So I talked a bit before about the slut-shaming of certain types of characters in fandom, and I've been trying to figure out why reasons number 1 through 6 for hating Vala made me giggle at the person's fail, but the list calling her a whore inspired rage. Or how I'm generally amused by the Emma-hating that comes out of the Jean/Scott shipper pain, but Christy Marx dismissing Emma as a slut inspired thoughts of violence.

I think what’s especially telling about fandom’s perception of Vala as a whore and Emma as a slut is that even given the traditional (and entirely sexist!) definitions of the (sexist/offensive) words prostitute and slut, neither Emma nor Vala meet those definitions? There’s a level of patriarchal judgment going into these labels, of course. But there’s also a reinvention of canon in order to justify hating these women. Which I don’t think is uncommon in fandom, so I wanted to describe, name, and give examples of this phenomenon. Because I think this is where I break up with fandom.

I've talked before about how the abject and/or object position that most women occupy in fiction makes them more likely to be...interpreted widely differently. And often in ways that canon didn't intend or didn't care enough to make clear. Female characters, in general, are often written in relation to the more important male characters and filtered through the male gaze/male pov/male narrative, so the writers constantly fail to elaborate on their motivations/desires, especially when these things fall outside the things women are traditionally seen as wanting. I had suggested earlier that we approach texts more loosely as women in terms of authorial intent, similar to how research has shown women approaching patriarchal religions. So women, when faced with problematic portrayals of women in fiction, do one of the following things with the text: reject, repress, or reinvent.

I’ve always thought that part of the reason that women have a problem relating to other female characters in fiction is because so much of our fiction still approaches female characters as the other/object. So when women consume fiction, they have to make a choice: either continue to see themselves as Subject and identify with the male subject, or identify with the women and give up the subject position. This, of course, doesn’t excuse in any way the fact that most people refuse to take that extra step in trying to approach fiction from a different POV, but it’s still a factor in how women/minorities consume fiction. So what happens when you actually realize this pattern consciously or subconsciously, or realize that fiction is treating women in ways that it might not treat men? You can either drop that show/comic/book, and reject it. You can repress that bit of canon. Or you can reinvent canon by writing fic, vidding, fanwanking, or having your own personal fanon or interpretation.

One of the things I mentioned off-handedly that I didn't really explore was the idea of what I called 'negative reinvention.' Where a person deliberately chooses to read a female character in such a way as to justify her/his dislike of the character. In the absence of the female POV, we're constantly forced to rearrange bits of the narrative in our heads for them to give them motivation that the narrative didn't care to explore. And I think how we do that, in large part, indicates how we feel about female characters in general.

( Read more... )