Posts
Gentle readers, I am going to check out Community on your say-so. I'll let you know what I discover.
I'm done with the gender thing for awhile (hooray! say you all), with one final note -- WonderCon would totally and completely fail the Cornell Ratio. In fact, of the ten participants on a Writing for Genre TV panel, there are two women. Now, if we're talking about comic books and whatnot, it might be tough to find more women to put on a panel, and that's work that should be done in the future. But a Writing For TV panel? Seriously? Two? That's IT?
Anyway.
Some serious TeeVee scholars gave the business about the TeeVee model and how it's being ruined/isn't being ruined. This started with this post about how The Sopranos ruined episodic television. The short version is that the blog fellow thinks The Sopranos' tendency towards serialization made other networks/shows realize that they don't have to do traditional episodic television anymore. Episodes don't have to stand on their own, and this blog fellow considers this a move towards the novelization of television, where "installments" replace "episodes." To which I go, "The Sopranos? Really? That's your bete noir?"
It was entirely possible to pick up an episode of The Sopranos and figure out what was going on. And while The Sopranos wasn't episodic in the same way something like CSI is, it was episodic. There were episodes, and things happened in them, and then those things were wrapped up. Yes, the show tended more towards serialization but not any more than your average nightly soap, and it certainly didn't give anyone license to go crazy and serialize the shit out of everything. The blog fellow then goes on to talk about the USA shows, which he figures are the standard-bearers for episodic television. The USA shows, in fact, are not episodic because USA invented episodic television. The USA shows (by which I refer to USA, TNT and those types of cable networks that require something very specific) are an outgrowth of network television, y'all. If you're old enough to remember Quinn Martin, then you know what I'm talking about. USA is doing Quinn Martin shows. They're doing 80s detective shows. This is a model that isn't working on network TeeVee right now, so these cable nets have taken it and have run with it.
So the contention that USA somehow INVENTED the model that has been around since fucking DRAGNET is bizarre.
I think the uproar over the ending of the first season of The Killing has emboldened people to write this sort of thing. But the problem with The Killing wasn't that they didn't solve Rosie Larsen's murder. The problem was that the marketing for the show TOLD the audience that you would find out who killed Rosie. That's not the show's fault. But sure, if you buy into the marketing and you are watching the show for that specific reveal, then you feel ripped off. Because you WERE ripped off. But that has nothing to do with the quality of the show. Consumers do not like dishonesty.
So this guy thinks The Sopranos started us down the slippery slope where all the networks are crushing on serialization. This is simply not true, because they are not. At this point, I don't think anyone even considers HBO, Showtime, AMC or Starz as actual television. People are not being fooled into thinking that you can sell an HBO idea to NBC. The business has become incredibly specialized and if you're blogging about television, shouldn't you know this? I was having this very conversation the other day. When you come up with ideas to pitch, you can no longer take one idea all around town. When this began, you had network ideas, and cable ideas. Which was a bit of a pain, to have to develop more ideas. Because prior to the beginning of this fragmentation, writers generally had one idea that they pitched to the networks. If you didn't sell it, then cable was the dumping ground. But as the business changed and networks passed on more stuff that cable was able to turn into hits, people started turning more towards cable and developing just for them. Hence the network ideas, and the cable ideas. Cable networks started developing their own identities.
But then cable, led mostly by the success of the USA shows, began to build on that. More cable networks developed more identities. And as these networks are mostly owned by the studios that own broadcast networks, the success of that model started to bleed into networks. Establishing a brand identity is crucial to the success of a network. I know that's obvious, but I think it can get a little muddled because the broadcast networks are having a tough time. There's no viewer loyalty because we can basically watch anything we want whenever we want to watch it. So people don't settle in on CBS. They don't watch ABC, or NBC. This makes branding incredibly difficult. But over on USA, every show has the same structure, feel and look. They don't have to branch out and do comedy, reality, family drama, or darker shows. The broadcast networks are, I think, struggling because they still adhere to an old model. It's SO much easier to cross-promote your shows when all of your shows are watched by the same audience. The broadcast networks seem to think that this is still happening for them, but it isn't. So cross-promoting a drama during a comedy or a reality show (which causes its own sets of problems on broadcast) isn't going to work. It's not the same audience. But cross-promoting The Royal Pains during Burn Notice, that is absolutely going to work.
The scope has narrowed so much that a network's brand identity can't exist in comedy, drama and reality. It just can't. When Lost became a hit, then the networks all wanted the next Lost. This is not a successful strategy, because Lost was unique... like ALL hits are. And that's what made it a hit. But rather than accepting the alchemy of the situation, the networks tried to deconstruct what made it a hit. And that's impossible. They still try it because in the corporate atmosphere that these executives unfortunately have to occupy, they generally aren't going to get fired if they build a show based on what came before. But if they take a chance on something and it fails, then they can be considered to blame. So it's fairly obvious why they take the route they take, and who can blame them?
So the executives are getting more specific with what they want. For example, a network may tell the writers they have on deals (these are mostly the writers who will sell projects, BTW) that they want a modern take on The Count Of Monte Cristo. While there are all kinds of things wrong with this that go straight to the heart of what makes television work in the first place, for right now, this makes sense. The broadcast networks have put themselves in the position of having to narrow their focus. So it's better that they tell writers exactly what they need instead of pretending that it's still all about a writer's passion. That's not where we are right now.
Where we are is, writers have to come up with ideas for each outlet. We know this, but the industry hasn't quite caught up with it, which makes "development season" rather a cluster-fuck. Everybody needs to understand that we are no longer going to be able to take out one idea and ride that sucker all the way to the end of the pitching season. Producers are starting to get this, which is fantastic. Now everyone else needs to get onboard. We don't have the luxury to just be dreamers anymore. We have to be practical and proactive. Writers and producers and agents and managers have to become marketing professionals and develop specifically for each market. This is super tough for a lot of writers, who may struggle with one idea for a year and put all of their hopes on it. This is somewhat easier for writers on deals, because they know going in which market they will attempt to crack. For the rest of us, who are on our own, that's a shitload of ideas to prepare. Not only is it about coming up with the idea, but then you have to create an entire television show - which takes a long fucking time - only to pitch it at one or (if you're lucky) two places. And unless you're pitching at HBO or Showtime (and you're not), you have to make sure the show seems episodic. Easier if it's a cop show. Harder if it isn't. Because at the end of the day, they all still have syndication in the backs of their minds, and you have to be aware of that. If someone tells you that your show doesn't feel like a show, that probably has a lot to do with it.
What is truly frustrating is that even with all of these different and unique markets, there still isn't a strong place to sell a genre show.
We're still not working with a new business model, but I think we're getting closer to doing that. Nobody knows exactly what it is, but I think the first step has to do with the stories. What do networks want to hear? Who do they want to hear it from? How will writers react to being directed in a much more stringent way?
Personally, tell me what you want and I'll come up with a pitch. I think we need to be this way but it's tricky because agents and producers don't all seem to get this yet. Instead, you wind up crafting pitches in a black hole and then find out afterwards that you can't pitch them anywhere. That's a huge fucking waste of time. I am giddy when a rep sends me a list of demands from a network. Giddy! Because the directives are getting so specific so if that's what they're looking for, that makes my job easier no matter what anyone thinks. PLEASE JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT, HOLLYWOOD. I don't need my ego stroked here. I want to sell some shows.
And that is, to me, the state of television at the moment.
So when some blog fellow talks about how there's no such thing as episodic television anymore because The Sopranos ruined it, he doesn't know what he's talking about. He hasn't done the work necessary to understand the state of the business. It's one thing to glance at the surface of things and it's another entirely to get down into the gutter and figure out what's happened to the business that has created these symptoms. I think that's much more interesting than complaining about people mainlining seasons of Breaking Bad.
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
ConFusion
By now, everyone's seen this article about this blog by British writer Paul Cornell. See how clever I am, to wait to write about it until you have already read it? SO CLEVER.
For those who are going, "Huh? I've been busy learning horse racing from the ground up so I can follow LUCK," here's the short version: Paul Cornell thinks there isn't enough female representation on convention panels and while he can't turn an entire industry around, he can effect how he handles it, which is to walk off of panels where there isn't a 50/50 gender split.
This has caused all kinds of consternation around the Internet. Geeks and nerds of every stripe are terrified that this means they won't get to see their comic writing hero at Comic Con because his spot will be filled by Some Woman. AS IF THAT WOULD EVER HAPPEN, first of all, and secondly, this isn't about a global protest. It's about one writer highlighting something he deems unfair. Fans moan about how now it will go from being The Most Talented People In The World to them plus some lame girl who isn't nearly as talented. Because that's what a lot of people think affirmative action is. It's about making every workplace look like a Benetton ad. At the bitter backend of this is the implication that people are successful because they are talented and work hard, which is certainly true, BUT ALSO ONLY THAT. So if a woman or a minority needs a hand up, it means that they need it because they aren't as talented, and they don't work as hard. It's easier to think of people not as successful as you as less talented, or even lazy. We've all heard this from politicians. If only poor people would get a job, then the economic crisis would be solved.
What I don't understand is why people think there's a finite amount of talent and hard work, and if some woman or minority wants a seat at the table, that somehow means one of the privileged guys already at the table has been diminished. If a woman is talented and works hard but hasn't gotten the breaks that a white male has gotten, that doesn't mean he's any less talented or works any less hard. It doesn't TAKE AWAY from the folks who are already at the table. So why the fear?
Some people have said, "You just aren't going to the right conventions." That's not a reason for anything. I have no doubt that there are conventions that feature more women, but we're talking about the biggies here, like Comic Con and WonderCon. Comic Con suffers even more because it's basically Movie Con now, which means that the panels about movies feature the filmmakers and stars of those movies, and I would peg that number at about 99.9999% male. So if you're talking about an Avengers panel, then trying to make that 50% female is obviously not going to work. But if you're talking about a discussion panel, confining the women to the "Women In Genre" panel, or the "Women in SF" panel, or the "Women in Comics" panel while all the other actually fun panels are all dudes, well... that's as unfair as putting the minority writers on the "Minorities in Comics" panel. After awhile, you don't necessarily want to talk about your gender or your race and how it pertains to whateverthefuck dumb topic you've been forced to blather on about. You just want your perspective to count as much as the white guys' perspectives do, and you don't necessarily want that perspective to be confined to gender. Just because wimmin is wimmin doesn't mean they want to talk about uteruses all the time. Or EVER, frankly.
One female commenter on another blog said that she went to conventions to see her favorite comics writers, and they happened to be male, so she doesn't want to see just random women on these panels JUST BECAUSE. I totally get her point. I wouldn't want that either. But what this topic does for me is to shine a light on the real problem - there would be more women on panels if there were more women creating content, and then more people would want to see them speak on panels. I think that, ultimately, is what Paul Cornell is talking about. Other people thought it was stupid that a successful white guy was going to try to prove a point, and why don't the women try to prove the point instead? Well, that would mean that women would have to walk off of panels that were not representative of their gender, which nobody would notice BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ENOUGH WOMEN ON PANELS. It's a problem when there IS a discussion, or a comment, about womens' points of view and all some idiot can come up with is to clone Jane Espenson.
NO, I WILL NEVER GET OVER HOW DUMB THAT WAS.
It'll be interesting to see how many women are on panels at WonderCon next month. I will have plenty of time to count, since I am not on any panels. HA! And the women who are going to be on panels are probably going to be women who write for television. They won't have to talk about ovaries or uteruses. They will be talking about the television show they write for. So why should non-TeeVee female writers have to just talk about lady business?
Look, not every woman wants to talk about their ovaries or how the character should have children or dress better. They're FORCED to, because whenever a woman is present somewhere in public like on a panel, it must be pointed out that the writer is female and therefore only there to talk about lady business. I don't WANT to talk about lady business. I want to talk about time travel and spaceships and robots and ask the question why, when female characters are introduced in stories, they have to be just about their vaginas and not about the fact that they are PEOPLE. I don't want to be handed a particular story because it's a "female issue," and therefore a good story for a woman to write.
Speaking of panels, Paul Cornell totes would have walked off Darrell Issa's dumb "let's insert shit into vaginas" panel, especially since there were no women on it at all. But they did have a black guy, so they probably thought they'd hit the diversity just fine.
Someone in the comments posted this utterly astonishing piece by Dan Harmon, creator of COMMUNITY, about how he was forced to staff his show with 50% women. He was as horrified as you could imagine, until he wasn't. And what I find most interesting is that the quota isn't what it usually is -- ONE woman, usually either very low level or very high level to charge off development -- but that it was HALF. I've been on shows that have more than one woman on staff because I have a female writing partner HA HA! But I've been on staffs that have had more than the two of us, too. People tend to relax when there's more than one woman on staff. Gender parity means that the chances of overreacting to THE WOMAN IN THE ROOM are much slimmer. It seems weird when there's one, because the inference is that it's a quota issue. But more than one, and that issue starts to go away.
Harmon also talks about how few female writers he could FIND, and how he had to work harder to staff his show. That's both sad and awesome. Comedy tilts towards a more male ratio than does drama, so it's much more of a natural boy's club. What's also interesting is how he talks about how the women fit in, how afraid he was that everyone was going to have to be vigilant about not offending them, and how it was very nearly the other way around. Seeing a male comedy showrunner have these revelations is just what the business needs.
I think about how the women are the real stars of Mad Men, and what kind of a boss Don Draper is. Peggy Olson is awfully prickly about her status as the female copywriter, and I love how Don doesn't let her get away with that. For all of his misogyny and horrible treatment of women, he's a gem with Peggy. He wants her to realize that the fact that she's a woman has no bearing on her ability, but that she has to get that chip off her shoulder so she can truly grow. It's an astonishing relationship on a show full of them, AND I CANNOT GODDAM WAIT FOR IT TO COME BACK ARRRRGHHH.
I've never seen Community but having read this, I'm going to check it out. Dan Harmon and Paul Cornell, you are the heroes for the day.
For those who are going, "Huh? I've been busy learning horse racing from the ground up so I can follow LUCK," here's the short version: Paul Cornell thinks there isn't enough female representation on convention panels and while he can't turn an entire industry around, he can effect how he handles it, which is to walk off of panels where there isn't a 50/50 gender split.
This has caused all kinds of consternation around the Internet. Geeks and nerds of every stripe are terrified that this means they won't get to see their comic writing hero at Comic Con because his spot will be filled by Some Woman. AS IF THAT WOULD EVER HAPPEN, first of all, and secondly, this isn't about a global protest. It's about one writer highlighting something he deems unfair. Fans moan about how now it will go from being The Most Talented People In The World to them plus some lame girl who isn't nearly as talented. Because that's what a lot of people think affirmative action is. It's about making every workplace look like a Benetton ad. At the bitter backend of this is the implication that people are successful because they are talented and work hard, which is certainly true, BUT ALSO ONLY THAT. So if a woman or a minority needs a hand up, it means that they need it because they aren't as talented, and they don't work as hard. It's easier to think of people not as successful as you as less talented, or even lazy. We've all heard this from politicians. If only poor people would get a job, then the economic crisis would be solved.
What I don't understand is why people think there's a finite amount of talent and hard work, and if some woman or minority wants a seat at the table, that somehow means one of the privileged guys already at the table has been diminished. If a woman is talented and works hard but hasn't gotten the breaks that a white male has gotten, that doesn't mean he's any less talented or works any less hard. It doesn't TAKE AWAY from the folks who are already at the table. So why the fear?
Some people have said, "You just aren't going to the right conventions." That's not a reason for anything. I have no doubt that there are conventions that feature more women, but we're talking about the biggies here, like Comic Con and WonderCon. Comic Con suffers even more because it's basically Movie Con now, which means that the panels about movies feature the filmmakers and stars of those movies, and I would peg that number at about 99.9999% male. So if you're talking about an Avengers panel, then trying to make that 50% female is obviously not going to work. But if you're talking about a discussion panel, confining the women to the "Women In Genre" panel, or the "Women in SF" panel, or the "Women in Comics" panel while all the other actually fun panels are all dudes, well... that's as unfair as putting the minority writers on the "Minorities in Comics" panel. After awhile, you don't necessarily want to talk about your gender or your race and how it pertains to whateverthefuck dumb topic you've been forced to blather on about. You just want your perspective to count as much as the white guys' perspectives do, and you don't necessarily want that perspective to be confined to gender. Just because wimmin is wimmin doesn't mean they want to talk about uteruses all the time. Or EVER, frankly.
One female commenter on another blog said that she went to conventions to see her favorite comics writers, and they happened to be male, so she doesn't want to see just random women on these panels JUST BECAUSE. I totally get her point. I wouldn't want that either. But what this topic does for me is to shine a light on the real problem - there would be more women on panels if there were more women creating content, and then more people would want to see them speak on panels. I think that, ultimately, is what Paul Cornell is talking about. Other people thought it was stupid that a successful white guy was going to try to prove a point, and why don't the women try to prove the point instead? Well, that would mean that women would have to walk off of panels that were not representative of their gender, which nobody would notice BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ENOUGH WOMEN ON PANELS. It's a problem when there IS a discussion, or a comment, about womens' points of view and all some idiot can come up with is to clone Jane Espenson.
NO, I WILL NEVER GET OVER HOW DUMB THAT WAS.
It'll be interesting to see how many women are on panels at WonderCon next month. I will have plenty of time to count, since I am not on any panels. HA! And the women who are going to be on panels are probably going to be women who write for television. They won't have to talk about ovaries or uteruses. They will be talking about the television show they write for. So why should non-TeeVee female writers have to just talk about lady business?
Look, not every woman wants to talk about their ovaries or how the character should have children or dress better. They're FORCED to, because whenever a woman is present somewhere in public like on a panel, it must be pointed out that the writer is female and therefore only there to talk about lady business. I don't WANT to talk about lady business. I want to talk about time travel and spaceships and robots and ask the question why, when female characters are introduced in stories, they have to be just about their vaginas and not about the fact that they are PEOPLE. I don't want to be handed a particular story because it's a "female issue," and therefore a good story for a woman to write.
Speaking of panels, Paul Cornell totes would have walked off Darrell Issa's dumb "let's insert shit into vaginas" panel, especially since there were no women on it at all. But they did have a black guy, so they probably thought they'd hit the diversity just fine.
Someone in the comments posted this utterly astonishing piece by Dan Harmon, creator of COMMUNITY, about how he was forced to staff his show with 50% women. He was as horrified as you could imagine, until he wasn't. And what I find most interesting is that the quota isn't what it usually is -- ONE woman, usually either very low level or very high level to charge off development -- but that it was HALF. I've been on shows that have more than one woman on staff because I have a female writing partner HA HA! But I've been on staffs that have had more than the two of us, too. People tend to relax when there's more than one woman on staff. Gender parity means that the chances of overreacting to THE WOMAN IN THE ROOM are much slimmer. It seems weird when there's one, because the inference is that it's a quota issue. But more than one, and that issue starts to go away.
Harmon also talks about how few female writers he could FIND, and how he had to work harder to staff his show. That's both sad and awesome. Comedy tilts towards a more male ratio than does drama, so it's much more of a natural boy's club. What's also interesting is how he talks about how the women fit in, how afraid he was that everyone was going to have to be vigilant about not offending them, and how it was very nearly the other way around. Seeing a male comedy showrunner have these revelations is just what the business needs.
I think about how the women are the real stars of Mad Men, and what kind of a boss Don Draper is. Peggy Olson is awfully prickly about her status as the female copywriter, and I love how Don doesn't let her get away with that. For all of his misogyny and horrible treatment of women, he's a gem with Peggy. He wants her to realize that the fact that she's a woman has no bearing on her ability, but that she has to get that chip off her shoulder so she can truly grow. It's an astonishing relationship on a show full of them, AND I CANNOT GODDAM WAIT FOR IT TO COME BACK ARRRRGHHH.
I've never seen Community but having read this, I'm going to check it out. Dan Harmon and Paul Cornell, you are the heroes for the day.
Sunday, February 05, 2012
GenderBender Redux
Everyone's gonna have to wait for a sec while I do this:
Ian Tregillis writes:
Gentle readers, SERIOUSLY, read Bitter Seeds. I mean it. Do it. I'll wait...
cgeye:
I am not watching Lost Girl because of the changeling/faerie stuff and a similar project. But hey, if someone is actually able to do a succubus and not have it be ridiculous, more power to them.
Sasha:
You can create the situation but have the characters react to it differently. Elena could be passive and inert, like Bella, but she isn't. And that's why the show works. They will create situations for the characters and then they actually go, "So how does Caroline react to this? How would Tyler behave after this happened?" I love that about the show and because the characters are so well defined, they can blow through plot like no other show.
So while you can, on the surface, see Katherine and Elena as purely sexualized women, it's so obvious to me that they aren't.
Wills:
Well. I don't want to get too bogged down here. I appreciate the thought that went into all of y'all's posts. Guys, look. It boils down to this for me -- no, you do not have the right to tell me what is misogynistic and what isn't, just as I don't have the right to tell a minority person what is racist and what isn't. Your opinion on this is not informed. You may have an idea about what is misogynistic and what isn't, but that has absolutely NOTHING to do with WHAT ACTUALLY IS. Because sorry, but women make that determination. That being said, there are varying degrees of what women will find misogynistic. So I am only speaking for me, to you, when I say that you don't get to dictate that to me.
I say this without anger or rancor. I just find it curious that so many men are so ready to fill me in on what misogyny is, or what feminism is. You think we're on the same page here, but we're not. You think, as far as I can glean, that Moffat's Adler is a forward-thinking woman, a reaction to modern femininity, a woman who owns her sexuality. But really, Moriarty owns it, doesn't he? To me, this is similar to the women who take pole-dancing classes because they find it empowering to own what was devised as a male fantasy. That's a crock. Women don't have to own it. They can fucking ignore it. This is the same as the folks who find The Woman to be a feminist horror film. It isn't.
This isn't to say that a female character who uses sexuality as coercion, or even as a weapon, is always across the board a bad idea. It's not at all. But when that's all a female character is then yes, we are going to have a problem. And that's all Adler is. I do appreciate that people read that scene as Adler removing physical clues for Sherlock, but that's not how Moffat intended it, that's not how the actors read it (much to my dismay), and if you really think about it, simply removing clothing isn't going to cut it because Sherlock's gotten physical clues off hands and fingernails and faces and hair and eyes and feet and ears and from posture and body language and vocal inflection... the list goes on and on. So you're all being a tiny bit too clever (like Moffat wants you to be) to find some value here. But it's Moffat who is forgetting what Sherlock's power is here. IF Moffat intended what you all read into it -- and he didn't, but IF he did -- then wouldn't it have been MORE interesting if she'd been fully clothed and Sherlock STILL couldn't get anything from her? My God, that would REALLY set him off. He wouldn't be able to stop thinking about her. How does she do it? How can she confound him like that?
I'm sure you'll have reasons for why her being naked works better. I'm a little surprised, though, that you are both ignoring the stone-cold obvious FACT that Moffat did NOT intend it the way you read it. Which certainly puts the two of you head and shoulders above Moffat, FWIW.
Moffat reversed the power structure, as you put it, in a very obvious, lazy way. He wasn't at all inventive about it. He stopped at "dominatrix." How that character could possibly confound someone like Sherlock is beyond me, since she is such an obvious construct. And at the end of the day, that's the biggest disappointment -- that she was so one-dimensional. And then there's the further degradation of the character by having her need to be rescued. Blech.
And if you haven't seen Moffat's treatment of women in Doctor Who, then sure, I can imagine that this is completely flummoxing to you!
Women can and should be about many things, just as men can and should. The only reason female characters get singled out is because a large segment of the population seems to think it's okay to use them as objects. The current political climate doesn't help, as it is apparent to a lot of folks that discussing what rights a woman has is a normal discussion to have.
For a look at a real woman doing real things, check out Steven Soderbergh's Haywire. And read this article, which is a pretty even look at the film and contains some interesting ideas about women in film. For the record, I have read something recently with a female character who is using sex as a coercion tactic and it not only works well, but the character is fascinating and you want to know more about her. I won't say what it is at the moment, but maybe later. Just know that it CAN work, if you're not lazy about it and you bother to look below the surface to the character and figure out what makes the character tick.
And that is all for the weekly rant!
Ian Tregillis writes:
Thank you for the kind words.OMG! I have no words. Thanks! It's a travesty that I have to wait until July to read the sequel to Bitter Seeds, though. JULY! Someone could have made the movie already!
I just watched your book trailer and read your post on In Obscura-- HOLY CRAP you had me at magic/secret history/ancient conspiracies.
Also: Millennium rocked my socks. Thank you for that.
Gentle readers, SERIOUSLY, read Bitter Seeds. I mean it. Do it. I'll wait...
cgeye:
I am not watching Lost Girl because of the changeling/faerie stuff and a similar project. But hey, if someone is actually able to do a succubus and not have it be ridiculous, more power to them.
Sasha:
Since you've mentioned the show before -- what do you think about the weaponized sexuality idea w/r/t Vampire Diaries, specifically Elena/Katherine?Ah, interesting! It doesn't bug me because unlike when Moffat does it, it's not salacious. I get the sense that he's way titillated by Adler but with Vampire Diaries, that's who the characters are. Katherine, of course, is the true femme fatale of the show but what's interesting about her is how often her power structure shifts. And you start to get the feeling that what she really longs for is somewhere to fit. I feel like she hasn't come to terms with her history, and that she's been fighting being the Petrova for her entire life. Katherine made the determination that she wouldn't be a victim, but at the expense of her humanity. Elena, on the other hand, refuses to be a victim but hangs onto her humanity, which is what makes her strong. This isn't a weepy girl who likes being fought over, or who likes being protected. She hates what being the Petrova means, but she's also accepted it in a cool way so who knows where that will take her. Whenever someone, whether it be Stefan, Damon, Alaric or anyone else, decides that they will concoct a plan that will protect Elena, it never works out. She finds out and sticks her nose in. Not only that, but she isn't constantly screwing things up, either, not like that character would on a lesser show. In fact, for someone who is ostensibly so important that everyone must keep her alive and protect her, Elena is largely responsible for driving the show. She doesn't accept the inevitable, or the destiny that the vampires and other supernatural creatures accept so readily. And she's starting to infect everyone around her with her individuality, too.
You can create the situation but have the characters react to it differently. Elena could be passive and inert, like Bella, but she isn't. And that's why the show works. They will create situations for the characters and then they actually go, "So how does Caroline react to this? How would Tyler behave after this happened?" I love that about the show and because the characters are so well defined, they can blow through plot like no other show.
So while you can, on the surface, see Katherine and Elena as purely sexualized women, it's so obvious to me that they aren't.
Wills:
Well. I don't want to get too bogged down here. I appreciate the thought that went into all of y'all's posts. Guys, look. It boils down to this for me -- no, you do not have the right to tell me what is misogynistic and what isn't, just as I don't have the right to tell a minority person what is racist and what isn't. Your opinion on this is not informed. You may have an idea about what is misogynistic and what isn't, but that has absolutely NOTHING to do with WHAT ACTUALLY IS. Because sorry, but women make that determination. That being said, there are varying degrees of what women will find misogynistic. So I am only speaking for me, to you, when I say that you don't get to dictate that to me.
I say this without anger or rancor. I just find it curious that so many men are so ready to fill me in on what misogyny is, or what feminism is. You think we're on the same page here, but we're not. You think, as far as I can glean, that Moffat's Adler is a forward-thinking woman, a reaction to modern femininity, a woman who owns her sexuality. But really, Moriarty owns it, doesn't he? To me, this is similar to the women who take pole-dancing classes because they find it empowering to own what was devised as a male fantasy. That's a crock. Women don't have to own it. They can fucking ignore it. This is the same as the folks who find The Woman to be a feminist horror film. It isn't.
This isn't to say that a female character who uses sexuality as coercion, or even as a weapon, is always across the board a bad idea. It's not at all. But when that's all a female character is then yes, we are going to have a problem. And that's all Adler is. I do appreciate that people read that scene as Adler removing physical clues for Sherlock, but that's not how Moffat intended it, that's not how the actors read it (much to my dismay), and if you really think about it, simply removing clothing isn't going to cut it because Sherlock's gotten physical clues off hands and fingernails and faces and hair and eyes and feet and ears and from posture and body language and vocal inflection... the list goes on and on. So you're all being a tiny bit too clever (like Moffat wants you to be) to find some value here. But it's Moffat who is forgetting what Sherlock's power is here. IF Moffat intended what you all read into it -- and he didn't, but IF he did -- then wouldn't it have been MORE interesting if she'd been fully clothed and Sherlock STILL couldn't get anything from her? My God, that would REALLY set him off. He wouldn't be able to stop thinking about her. How does she do it? How can she confound him like that?
I'm sure you'll have reasons for why her being naked works better. I'm a little surprised, though, that you are both ignoring the stone-cold obvious FACT that Moffat did NOT intend it the way you read it. Which certainly puts the two of you head and shoulders above Moffat, FWIW.
Moffat reversed the power structure, as you put it, in a very obvious, lazy way. He wasn't at all inventive about it. He stopped at "dominatrix." How that character could possibly confound someone like Sherlock is beyond me, since she is such an obvious construct. And at the end of the day, that's the biggest disappointment -- that she was so one-dimensional. And then there's the further degradation of the character by having her need to be rescued. Blech.
And if you haven't seen Moffat's treatment of women in Doctor Who, then sure, I can imagine that this is completely flummoxing to you!
Women can and should be about many things, just as men can and should. The only reason female characters get singled out is because a large segment of the population seems to think it's okay to use them as objects. The current political climate doesn't help, as it is apparent to a lot of folks that discussing what rights a woman has is a normal discussion to have.
For a look at a real woman doing real things, check out Steven Soderbergh's Haywire. And read this article, which is a pretty even look at the film and contains some interesting ideas about women in film. For the record, I have read something recently with a female character who is using sex as a coercion tactic and it not only works well, but the character is fascinating and you want to know more about her. I won't say what it is at the moment, but maybe later. Just know that it CAN work, if you're not lazy about it and you bother to look below the surface to the character and figure out what makes the character tick.
And that is all for the weekly rant!
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Genderbender
A few interesting comments on the SHERLOCK post.
cgeye:
Night Flyer:
So once again, we have Woman As Object and not a character. And when we're talking about Sherlock Holmes, I do expect that if he's going to be taken down, it will be by someone fascinating. And it so sadly was not.
Will Shetterly says:
And sure it's legit. It's also the easy way out for someone who doesn't want to think about a female who isn't simply an object. That's the problem, you see, when women keep seeing this over and over and men justify it by saying what you just said. The only female character Moffat has created that really worked for me was Jekyll's wife. That woman was awesome. But he seems to have backslid a bit. That's not to say that I didn't like the Adler episode. I liked it a lot. But just because a female character isn't overtly a disaster doesn't mean there aren't issues that could be addressed. Adler as a dominatrix was frankly boring and expected. I'm sure all the guys liked seeing her naked. Good for you. But as a modern-day foil for Sherlock, she didn't work as well as she could have if Moffat had taken her out of that box.
Certainly going from Victorian courtesan to dominatrix makes sense to a guy. Of course it does. Sex to sex. Sure. But. Why does it have to such a straight-across substitution? What was different about Adler as courtesan was that she was seemingly a Victorian woman, but she was obviously aware of the limitations imposed on women by society and was flaunting those limitations by not being that woman. This modern-day Adler, on the other hand, is just a dominatrix, and frankly we saw a Goddam dominatrix in the pilot for DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, so YAWN. Dominatrix as a stereotype is quite different as dominatrix from a character standpoint, and the latter is NOT what we got. It's pretty sad when the MOVIE version of Adler -- which is period -- is much more interesting than the modern-day version.
Why is she a dominatrix? What led her here? Who was she before? What was her life like? What IS her life like? WHO THE HELL IS THIS CHARACTER? She's nothing. She's a shell. An amusing shell, a sexy shell, but just a shell. And as someone else pointed out, she's working for Moriarty, so she's not even doing any of this ON HER OWN. She's working for a man, she's brought down to her female emotions by a man, and she's saved by a man.
How am I supposed to feel about this, do you think?
I wonder how men saw Lisbeth Salander. Not objectified enough for you to be interesting? Not female enough? Too weird? Too obviously a well-rounded character, thereby a threat? God forbid she should be a PERSON. An OBJECT is much easier to keep at arm's length.
will says:
I think this might say more about you than it does about men in general (g). Suffice to say, that is not and has never been MY experience.
And really, there is NOTHING I like more than being told by a man that my reading of misogyny is wrong. Don't misunderstand. I appreciate the thoughtfulness of all the comments, and the attempts by the guys to describe why they loved Adler. I really do appreciate it, because the alternative is for people to be assholes about it, and none of the comments here was from that point of view at all. However, it's a bit ironic that you accuse me of missing the point when you miss the point that it is not a man's place to explain to a woman what is misogynistic, just as it is not a white person's place to tell a minority person what is racist. But for some reason that I think is fairly obvious if you think about it for three seconds, it's generally considered okay for me to tell women how to feel and think.
I've been told, VERY recently, that I am too sensitive to feminist issues. First of all, I'm not. So if the person who said this to me ever actually met a woman who was REALLY sensitive, it would be quite a shock. I don't go as far as a lot of women do. But then any type of militancy is rather exhausting and I don't think it helps the cause to be that way.
So what happens is, women ignore a lot of stuff. Some of it by choice, some of it because of workplace situations. Women still have to pick their battles and when they're working with men who are, frankly, terrified of women (which is what the evidence tells me about Moffat), that job gets harder and more frustrating. This is not to say that the men who ARE afraid of women, or who can't stand women, or who think they're just alien beings that are so different they have to be treated as such, are bad writers. That's not it at all. Steven Moffat has proven himself on many occasions to be a terrific writer. But the dude has blind spots, with story and with female characters.
An aside on this -- if you haven't seen the third episode of Sherlock, it is utterly, mind-bogglingly, earth-shatteringly wonderful. There's SO much for the actors, such wonderfully juicy, emotional scenes. There's a lot of that trademark Moffat misdirection, but the episode really lands on the friendship between Sherlock and John and it does so beautifully. What's distressing about it, to me, is another Moffat Achilles heel. After the episode aired, he teased the audience by telling them that they missed the clues. This is what he does. He sits there all smug and tells people that he littered the thing with clues that they will never find because they are not as awesome as he is (not to mention that if you create something, you are obviously going to know what the clues are and it doesn't mean your audience is stupid). But what he seems to be missing here is that I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE CLUES. The episode works SO well on a character level and to have him just demean it by bleating about clues is just weird. DUDE. YOU DID AWESOME WORK THERE. ACCEPT IT.
Moving on. Anyway, I do not appreciate being told, by men, that I'm wrong about this. Because you see it from a different point of view, and because you are male, does not mean you're right. In fact, you're just proving my point by being intractable and rather patronizing about it.
There's also the simplistic view that because I say this, I think you're a misogynistic asshole, which is simply NOT true. There are degrees, and most men fall on the mild side of it like you seem to, which is still not completely okay but because I'm not a raging crazy feminist, it's easier to handle. But when you are telling me what misogyny is, then we are gonna have an issue. But sure, it's hard for you to completely understand someone else's experience. Expecting you to grok this totally isn't possible, but the insistence upon telling me what is or isn't misogynistic is plain wrong.
I've already been HERE in the past, but I can think of one male writer who writes the everlong SHIT out of female characters, and his female characters are the best on TeeVee at the moment. That would be Matt Weiner. He's treading a fine line of writing strong women in an age when women were not considered strong. They still had rather Victorian roles thrust upon them, and the interesting thing about the women of MAD MEN is that they clearly do not FIT into these roles. But society won't let them off the hook so they either try to fit into these roles because they don't know how NOT to (Betty and Joan), or they say, "You know what, roles? FUCK YOU." Like Peggy, who is going to be as frustrated as Betty and Joan, but she's going to register that frustration outwardly, which is healthier for her but might wind up being more destructive to her with regards to society. Still, I would choose that over the quiet desperation of Joan and Betty.
MARCH 25TH. MAD MEN. OMFG I CAN'T WAIT.
I wrote about STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET earlier and everytime misogyny rears its awful puss, this seems relevant. The same guys who told me that STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET is misogynistic because of how Kim Novak's unhappy suburbanite is objectified by men thought that Lucky McKee's THE WOMAN was a glorious feminist film.
Sidebar: If you haven't seen this piece of shit (I could have sworn I ranted about it but it doesn't seem like I have), then DO NOT SEE IT. If I ever see this Lucky McKee creature in person, he'd better be able to run pretty Goddam fast. Basically, a feral woman is kidnapped by a family man who, you find out, isn't really that nice a guy, beats his wife, rapes his daughter, etc. Blah. BLAH. Male filmmakers, do us a favor. Don't try to make a feminist film. I'm begging you. You're off the hook for these, okay? Just give us good female characters in movies.
So. STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET - see. THE WOMAN - avoid.
When I first got on the Internet, guys were terribly surprised to find out that I was female, because I didn't talk about knitting or whatever, and because I had strong opinions. This still happens to women online. What does THAT tell you about where we are? Female gamers still get harassed, too, and are being forced to announce their gender in the game, which... you can imagine what happens next. Pretending that because women got the vote and can work outside the home means that gender discrimination is off the table smacks of male privilege and it's just unacceptable.
I just tire of the lectures about what is misogynistic, or snarky comments about my sensitivity when BELIEVE YOU ME I am not nearly as sensitive as I could be. Because I choose not to be. I'm not offended by everything but obviously when something sticks in my craw, I'm going to talk about it.
To recap - thanks very much for the thoughtful comments, even if I don't agree with them! Hopefully something appalling will happen this week so I'll have an actual topic for next week. God willing.
cgeye:
And, a "highly functional sociopath" being thrown off his game by a lesser, slutty sociopath seems beneath him. If he's just discombobulated because of the punanny, well... doesn't that out him as sexually immature, instead of possessing an intellect so beyond normal sexuality that it takes a woman of rare intellect to swerve his game? For a man who can attempt every other manner of mystery, he couldn't hole up for a week with every type of porn, to understand others' sexual motivations?Excellent point. I fear it tells us more about Steven Moffat than we really want to know. It's juvenile in its way and it's funny that I gave that scene the benefit of the doubt and then had to sigh and take it back upon reading interviews. "Yeah, Sherlock's totally flummoxed because THAT WOMAN IS PURE SEX!" Oh, brother.
Night Flyer:
I believe the intention here was only that Adler initially befuddles Sherlock not because she's naked, but as the accompanying visual gag shows, she has no clues on her person for him to "read" like he does with everyone else. She outsmarts the show's established gimmick.Heh. Interesting take, although given the recent interviews I've read you've searched for something that isn't there. It was all about her nudity, and not about her taking away the visual clues. But I love that idea. I don't mind good sexual tension, not at all. But you say yourself that "dominatrix" isn't exactly a nuanced character description. You can't just go, "Okay, we're updating her to be a dominatrix" and then stop right there. Moffat's women have a bit of an issue with this. They are their descriptions, or their roles, and there's generally no more character work done.
To the creators, "dominatrix" is likely just an edgy-sounding word more than a character-defining, nuanced definition. Sherlock is always pining for a challenge/mystery worthy of his attention, and this time he's found one that's personified in Adler. The attraction has nothing to do with sex. Sherlock and Adler were both uniquely immune to each other's primary weapons, which made them each try even harder to use them. Thus evolved a kind of mutual respect.
I didn't see any real sexual tension in what followed, just faux-sparring to misdirect viewers. What Will calls the "ignorance of sex" was most likely intended as cutesy humor directed at the same segment of fandom that giggles hysterically when a character mistakes Sherlock and Watson for a gay couple fifty times an episode.
So once again, we have Woman As Object and not a character. And when we're talking about Sherlock Holmes, I do expect that if he's going to be taken down, it will be by someone fascinating. And it so sadly was not.
Will Shetterly says:
"There are a lot of men who think that women use their gender and their sexuality as a weapon, which is essentially what Adler does and it supposedly blinds Sherlock to who she is.* ... *That's not how I read it at first because I gave Moffat the benefit of the doubt but based on interviews, that's exactly how it happened, which is rather a great disappointment."Closer scrutiny? Exactly how much scrutiny will you allow me? Does he have to create ten poorly drawn women? Twenty? Fifty? I appreciate being given permission to go there, but based on Amy Pond existing as a walking uterus for two years, and the deconstruction of River Song from a strong woman into a simpering Doctor lover, I think we already had enough evidence before Irene Adler showed up.
Hmm. I think you'd have to consider the other women in the show before drawing that conclusion. Moffatt's update is based on a story about a woman who uses sexuality as a weapon, so I think it's legit to make that choice again for Adler.
That said, since Watson can't keep his girlfriends straight in this ep, I grant that Moffatt's feminist creds deserve closer scrutiny.
And sure it's legit. It's also the easy way out for someone who doesn't want to think about a female who isn't simply an object. That's the problem, you see, when women keep seeing this over and over and men justify it by saying what you just said. The only female character Moffat has created that really worked for me was Jekyll's wife. That woman was awesome. But he seems to have backslid a bit. That's not to say that I didn't like the Adler episode. I liked it a lot. But just because a female character isn't overtly a disaster doesn't mean there aren't issues that could be addressed. Adler as a dominatrix was frankly boring and expected. I'm sure all the guys liked seeing her naked. Good for you. But as a modern-day foil for Sherlock, she didn't work as well as she could have if Moffat had taken her out of that box.
Certainly going from Victorian courtesan to dominatrix makes sense to a guy. Of course it does. Sex to sex. Sure. But. Why does it have to such a straight-across substitution? What was different about Adler as courtesan was that she was seemingly a Victorian woman, but she was obviously aware of the limitations imposed on women by society and was flaunting those limitations by not being that woman. This modern-day Adler, on the other hand, is just a dominatrix, and frankly we saw a Goddam dominatrix in the pilot for DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, so YAWN. Dominatrix as a stereotype is quite different as dominatrix from a character standpoint, and the latter is NOT what we got. It's pretty sad when the MOVIE version of Adler -- which is period -- is much more interesting than the modern-day version.
Why is she a dominatrix? What led her here? Who was she before? What was her life like? What IS her life like? WHO THE HELL IS THIS CHARACTER? She's nothing. She's a shell. An amusing shell, a sexy shell, but just a shell. And as someone else pointed out, she's working for Moriarty, so she's not even doing any of this ON HER OWN. She's working for a man, she's brought down to her female emotions by a man, and she's saved by a man.
How am I supposed to feel about this, do you think?
I wonder how men saw Lisbeth Salander. Not objectified enough for you to be interesting? Not female enough? Too weird? Too obviously a well-rounded character, thereby a threat? God forbid she should be a PERSON. An OBJECT is much easier to keep at arm's length.
A point I've been thinking about: part of what redeems this Adler as an antagonist for me is that she totally loves Sherlock...and she's still totally willing to throw him to the wolves in order to win. She didn't fail because of her love for Sherlock. She failed because he was tricky enough to note the physiological cues that she loved him, which gave him the hint that she might've been too cocky when choosing her password.And funnily enough, part of what destroys her as an antagonist is that she totally loves Sherlock. I can't tell you how Goddam tired I am of strong women being weakened by their love for a man. Maybe this is such a strong male fantasy that it blinds you to the obvious. Love does not have to diminish a character. And when it is used that way, it's virtually always used to diminish a woman. It's women who have to give up their strengths for the man. It's women who have to give up their lives or their careers for a man. That may not seem like a big deal for you but if you constantly saw this negative stereotype of your gender throughout your entire life, you'd get a little sick of it, too.
will says:
I think the key here is to understand the underlying point of a Dominatrix. It is not SEX that is the key in a Dominatrix deal - it is POWER.The evidence doesn't bear this out. If it was NOT sexual, then it would not be presented as sexual. But that's how it IS presented.
My point is that rich men (and women) don't hire a Dominatrix to provide sex. It's to upend their power structure. For most who indulge, I would imagine it IS a sexual, fetish experience. But the fact remains that the "customer" gets off NOT from physical stimulation, but from MENTAL (ie, they find the power shift titillating, despite it being objectively non-sexual. Think people into girls holding balloons - not inherently sexual, but still generates a huge amount of "porn" for those who enjoy it).
THAT is the key to Adler in the BBC version. I'll admit that this is somewhat muddied by her unarguably sexual teasing of Sherlock. But think about what she was actually doing; Sherlock is (apparently) a virgin. That means he's never experienced sex. This is a person who HOLDS OVER HIM something that SHERLOCK doesn't know (what sex is like). Because sex generates such a primal response in our lives, Sherlock can easily be made to feel that he's missing out on something - which he tries to cover with bluster.And like others have said, it's not in keeping with Sherlock's character that he wouldn't know everything there was to know about sex. BECAUSE THAT IS WHO HE IS. And so this was rather disappointing. But see, when some people conceive of a female character, that's what they start with -- the female part. Rather than coming up with an interesting character who happens to be female. She is tits and a vagina first and then maybe some clever dialogue, blah blah blah. BORING. Tired of it.
All this to say: I thought the portrayal of Adler as a Dominatrix was - while on the surface somewhat obvious - a fairly brilliant update, given that a Dominatrix challenges power conventions nowadays the same way Adler herself did back then (I admit I don't see quite the same weaponized sexuality in the Conan Doyle stories that you're finding). Yes, they could have played her lurid and graphic, but they chose whip-smart and surprisingly contained. I loved it.I'm sure you did, because you have the luxury of not having to look past your own gender and see what women always see with characters like this.
(This comment is long enough as it is, but I have a great deal of response for your comments about men's interpretation of women weaponizing their sexuality. The basic point is that I think you're again missing the power forest for the sex trees. The empowered (weaponized) sexuality is merely a symptom of a different attitude of gender relations. That's what men find terrifying, not the sexy part. But we confuse it for the sexy part. OF EQUAL IMPORT is that when women are aroused, there is an EXPECTATION of sex from the man in their life (boyfriend, husband, etc)(obviously I'm only talking about heterosexual couples, etc etc). Often, however, I think guys might not be as into it as the media would seem to expect. However, there is no way to back out - you're a MAN, it's GIRLY to "be too tired" or whatever. So then you have to perform - and perform WELL, cause you're a MAN. It's Pavlovian - eventually you start to instinctually recoil from sex - which makes women's natural, regular old sexy advances seem terrifying. Not hugely related, but just figured that might be a bit of insight into the male psyche you had not considered.)
I think this might say more about you than it does about men in general (g). Suffice to say, that is not and has never been MY experience.
And really, there is NOTHING I like more than being told by a man that my reading of misogyny is wrong. Don't misunderstand. I appreciate the thoughtfulness of all the comments, and the attempts by the guys to describe why they loved Adler. I really do appreciate it, because the alternative is for people to be assholes about it, and none of the comments here was from that point of view at all. However, it's a bit ironic that you accuse me of missing the point when you miss the point that it is not a man's place to explain to a woman what is misogynistic, just as it is not a white person's place to tell a minority person what is racist. But for some reason that I think is fairly obvious if you think about it for three seconds, it's generally considered okay for me to tell women how to feel and think.
I've been told, VERY recently, that I am too sensitive to feminist issues. First of all, I'm not. So if the person who said this to me ever actually met a woman who was REALLY sensitive, it would be quite a shock. I don't go as far as a lot of women do. But then any type of militancy is rather exhausting and I don't think it helps the cause to be that way.
So what happens is, women ignore a lot of stuff. Some of it by choice, some of it because of workplace situations. Women still have to pick their battles and when they're working with men who are, frankly, terrified of women (which is what the evidence tells me about Moffat), that job gets harder and more frustrating. This is not to say that the men who ARE afraid of women, or who can't stand women, or who think they're just alien beings that are so different they have to be treated as such, are bad writers. That's not it at all. Steven Moffat has proven himself on many occasions to be a terrific writer. But the dude has blind spots, with story and with female characters.
An aside on this -- if you haven't seen the third episode of Sherlock, it is utterly, mind-bogglingly, earth-shatteringly wonderful. There's SO much for the actors, such wonderfully juicy, emotional scenes. There's a lot of that trademark Moffat misdirection, but the episode really lands on the friendship between Sherlock and John and it does so beautifully. What's distressing about it, to me, is another Moffat Achilles heel. After the episode aired, he teased the audience by telling them that they missed the clues. This is what he does. He sits there all smug and tells people that he littered the thing with clues that they will never find because they are not as awesome as he is (not to mention that if you create something, you are obviously going to know what the clues are and it doesn't mean your audience is stupid). But what he seems to be missing here is that I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE CLUES. The episode works SO well on a character level and to have him just demean it by bleating about clues is just weird. DUDE. YOU DID AWESOME WORK THERE. ACCEPT IT.
Moving on. Anyway, I do not appreciate being told, by men, that I'm wrong about this. Because you see it from a different point of view, and because you are male, does not mean you're right. In fact, you're just proving my point by being intractable and rather patronizing about it.
There's also the simplistic view that because I say this, I think you're a misogynistic asshole, which is simply NOT true. There are degrees, and most men fall on the mild side of it like you seem to, which is still not completely okay but because I'm not a raging crazy feminist, it's easier to handle. But when you are telling me what misogyny is, then we are gonna have an issue. But sure, it's hard for you to completely understand someone else's experience. Expecting you to grok this totally isn't possible, but the insistence upon telling me what is or isn't misogynistic is plain wrong.
I've already been HERE in the past, but I can think of one male writer who writes the everlong SHIT out of female characters, and his female characters are the best on TeeVee at the moment. That would be Matt Weiner. He's treading a fine line of writing strong women in an age when women were not considered strong. They still had rather Victorian roles thrust upon them, and the interesting thing about the women of MAD MEN is that they clearly do not FIT into these roles. But society won't let them off the hook so they either try to fit into these roles because they don't know how NOT to (Betty and Joan), or they say, "You know what, roles? FUCK YOU." Like Peggy, who is going to be as frustrated as Betty and Joan, but she's going to register that frustration outwardly, which is healthier for her but might wind up being more destructive to her with regards to society. Still, I would choose that over the quiet desperation of Joan and Betty.
MARCH 25TH. MAD MEN. OMFG I CAN'T WAIT.
I wrote about STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET earlier and everytime misogyny rears its awful puss, this seems relevant. The same guys who told me that STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET is misogynistic because of how Kim Novak's unhappy suburbanite is objectified by men thought that Lucky McKee's THE WOMAN was a glorious feminist film.
Sidebar: If you haven't seen this piece of shit (I could have sworn I ranted about it but it doesn't seem like I have), then DO NOT SEE IT. If I ever see this Lucky McKee creature in person, he'd better be able to run pretty Goddam fast. Basically, a feral woman is kidnapped by a family man who, you find out, isn't really that nice a guy, beats his wife, rapes his daughter, etc. Blah. BLAH. Male filmmakers, do us a favor. Don't try to make a feminist film. I'm begging you. You're off the hook for these, okay? Just give us good female characters in movies.
So. STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET - see. THE WOMAN - avoid.
When I first got on the Internet, guys were terribly surprised to find out that I was female, because I didn't talk about knitting or whatever, and because I had strong opinions. This still happens to women online. What does THAT tell you about where we are? Female gamers still get harassed, too, and are being forced to announce their gender in the game, which... you can imagine what happens next. Pretending that because women got the vote and can work outside the home means that gender discrimination is off the table smacks of male privilege and it's just unacceptable.
I just tire of the lectures about what is misogynistic, or snarky comments about my sensitivity when BELIEVE YOU ME I am not nearly as sensitive as I could be. Because I choose not to be. I'm not offended by everything but obviously when something sticks in my craw, I'm going to talk about it.
To recap - thanks very much for the thoughtful comments, even if I don't agree with them! Hopefully something appalling will happen this week so I'll have an actual topic for next week. God willing.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Blackout!!!
Today is the SOPA blackout, when sites like Wikipedia and Reddit shut down to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. These acts, which were driven by massive donations to the Internet-stupid Congress by the Internet-stupid MPAA, are designed to wipe out online piracy, like, FOREVS. Since the attempts to stop music piracy wound up destroying the music industry, I think we can see where this is going. I am not a lawmaker, or an expert in lawmaking. I am not an expert in Internet things (I'm proud of being able to post the above widget, for example). I cannot state with any fact the amount of money piracy has taken from MY pocket, but as someone who marched with a Goddam sign for several months back in 2007, I know what it's like to make what turned out to be a rather feeble attempt to protect my intellectual property.
That didn't work out too well, by the way. Just take a look at who gets the most chunk of change from sales and rentals. Take a look at whose paychecks are bigger. And then look at who's really serious about stopping piracy. A hint - it ain't the actual content creators. The notion of a massive corporation thundering about intellectual property is beyond weird, especially in this age of remakes and sequels and the crushing of originality. Obviously the entertainment business is a BUSINESS that couldn't exist unless it made money, but come on. These guys aren't stupid. They don't honestly and truly believe that SOPA is going to STOP PIRACY. Only dumb old Congress believes that, because they are ignorant patsies and lovers of campaign contributions. But the MPAA and the studios probably fall to their knees every morning and thank the gods that Congress is such a bunch of dumbasses. Fortunately they had evidence of that before, back when Congress voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq.
People are starting to crowdsource. Content creators are raising their own money and making their own movies and television shows. They're bypassing the corporate tangle of publishing to publish their own books. And this is all happening because of the Internet. So if you really imagine that the MPAA is going to allow content creators to use this Internet to make their own movies and television shows, you are sadly mistaken. SOPA is their gambit, their effort to assert control. "It won't affect me," you say, because you have never pirated anything. Sure, tell that to the people who got socked with million-dollar lawsuits even though they didn't steal a Britney Spears song. Everything is rented. The Cloud is NOT the great idea it's presented to be because your content can be taken from you at any time. ANY law that pretends to be For The People but that is this vaguely restrictive can be tightened around our necks, one byte at a time, until we are ALL considered criminals.
Piracy is never going to be stopped, and we should just accept that. DRM certainly didn't stop it. Instead, DRM pissed people off and made them not buy things. Remember the Sony rootkit? Yeah, good times. We are living in an age where you pay a bazillion dollars for cable, and then the cable companies take channels away from you, stick them in other packages, and make you pay even more. We're living in a time when we can instantaneously watch something, yet these monolithic companies want you to wait months to watch British shows. FOR NO GOOD REASON. It was bad enough when cable and satellite providers (but especially evil, evil cable HI TIME WARNER WHASSUP) were divvying up service areas. But now they're divvying up CONTENT. I don't mind paying for what I watch, read or listen to, but I strongly resent the Sophie's Choice way they're screwing us.
How much more would you pay if you could choose your programming a la carte? Why won't they let us do that? Think about THAT for blackout day.
And now, some blackout day links for you:
Whatever
Wil Wheaton
That didn't work out too well, by the way. Just take a look at who gets the most chunk of change from sales and rentals. Take a look at whose paychecks are bigger. And then look at who's really serious about stopping piracy. A hint - it ain't the actual content creators. The notion of a massive corporation thundering about intellectual property is beyond weird, especially in this age of remakes and sequels and the crushing of originality. Obviously the entertainment business is a BUSINESS that couldn't exist unless it made money, but come on. These guys aren't stupid. They don't honestly and truly believe that SOPA is going to STOP PIRACY. Only dumb old Congress believes that, because they are ignorant patsies and lovers of campaign contributions. But the MPAA and the studios probably fall to their knees every morning and thank the gods that Congress is such a bunch of dumbasses. Fortunately they had evidence of that before, back when Congress voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq.
People are starting to crowdsource. Content creators are raising their own money and making their own movies and television shows. They're bypassing the corporate tangle of publishing to publish their own books. And this is all happening because of the Internet. So if you really imagine that the MPAA is going to allow content creators to use this Internet to make their own movies and television shows, you are sadly mistaken. SOPA is their gambit, their effort to assert control. "It won't affect me," you say, because you have never pirated anything. Sure, tell that to the people who got socked with million-dollar lawsuits even though they didn't steal a Britney Spears song. Everything is rented. The Cloud is NOT the great idea it's presented to be because your content can be taken from you at any time. ANY law that pretends to be For The People but that is this vaguely restrictive can be tightened around our necks, one byte at a time, until we are ALL considered criminals.
Piracy is never going to be stopped, and we should just accept that. DRM certainly didn't stop it. Instead, DRM pissed people off and made them not buy things. Remember the Sony rootkit? Yeah, good times. We are living in an age where you pay a bazillion dollars for cable, and then the cable companies take channels away from you, stick them in other packages, and make you pay even more. We're living in a time when we can instantaneously watch something, yet these monolithic companies want you to wait months to watch British shows. FOR NO GOOD REASON. It was bad enough when cable and satellite providers (but especially evil, evil cable HI TIME WARNER WHASSUP) were divvying up service areas. But now they're divvying up CONTENT. I don't mind paying for what I watch, read or listen to, but I strongly resent the Sophie's Choice way they're screwing us.
How much more would you pay if you could choose your programming a la carte? Why won't they let us do that? Think about THAT for blackout day.
And now, some blackout day links for you:
Whatever
Wil Wheaton
Saturday, January 14, 2012
The Woman
For some TeeVee viewers in the world, the new series of SHERLOCK has started. For U.S. viewers who don't know how to do anything, it won't be seen until May. It's January now, which means that in FIVE MONTHS y'all will get to see SHERLOCK.
In the olden days, when physical films and/or videotapes had to be physically sent over to another country on a tramp steamer, this probably made sense. But it doesn't now. At all. But no mind. I've seen the first two episodes and I also saw THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, which was my first exposure to the series. These two things actually DO have something in common -- the concept of a gender-defying woman.
In the case of DRAGON TATTOO, that woman is obviously Lisbeth Salander, and based on interviews with the writer, director and actress, a lot of thought went into the concept of the character. Mostly, into what they didn't want her to be. And then why is she who she is? Why does she act the way she does? Dress the way she does? Why is she so good at her kind of research? What results from this is fascinating, complex, contradictory but logically created character.
And then there's SHERLOCK and the introduction of Irene Adler. One of the things I like most about this version of SHERLOCK is how Mark Gattiss and Steven Moffat have updated the characters and the world. This Sherlock is not afraid of technology. He even uses it to his advantage. So does Watson, who isn't a musty old book writer but instead writes a blog. The writers have given this a lot of thought and it's always fun to see it manifested. For those who haven't seen any of the new series yet, there's more and it's delightful.
Anyway. The original incarnation of Irene Adler was basically the Victorian version of Barbara Stanwyck's BABY FACE -- a user of men, a social climber, etc. Kind of a typical female character of that time. But she was unique in that she was able to pull the wool over Holmes's eyes, and he never forgot it. So good for her, then, right?
The other recent version we have of Adler is from the Guy Ritchie movies, in which she is an American (which she is in the Holmes stories but not in the BBC version) but also a skilled thief. What I like about this Adler is that she defies convention. She doesn't have to be a fucking courtesan, thank you very much, because she has skillz. She's a bold, blustery American. Which seems kind of perfect.
The Adler in SHERLOCK is a dominatrix.
YAWN.
The way she is presented and written and edited makes it clear that the writers consider this a bold, fresh choice, leading me to believe that they have never seen an episode of any American crime show. Now, I understand that in the updating of Irene Adler you may go there. At first. But then you SHOULD go, "Yeah, we COULD do that, but it's a bit lazy, isn't it? Shouldn't we come up with something that is a bit more bold? More fresh? More distinct?"
There are a lot of men who think that women use their gender and their sexuality as a weapon, which is essentially what Adler does and it supposedly blinds Sherlock to who she is.*
This is not true, and all you have to do is watch the rape scene in THE ACCUSED to get that. How many times has a female victim been told that she was asking for it? Which, by the way, is never the case -- women simply do not ask to be raped. But how many court cases have there been where a famous athlete, for example, claims that the woman he assaulted deserved it, or was asking for it?
I think that men think women do this because men CAN use their gender and sexuality as a weapon. They can get aggressive and in someone's face and they can threaten each other and usually, one dude backs down. So I suppose it makes sense that they would think women can use their sexuality to do the same thing, only it obviously doesn't work that way.
Women, let me ask you this -- if you can avoid it, do you stop for gas at night? When you're walking down the street and a few dudes are walking towards you, do you take off all your clothes and face them boldly, using your sexuality as a weapon? NO YOU DO NOT. While 99.999% of men aren't ever going to do anything to you, there's always that wild card. So you just never know, and you have to always protect yourself. And that's not even counting the guys who will whistle, or say dumb shit like, "Hey, smile!" Like we're there to entertain them which, let's face it, some of them believe.
Based on this incarnation of Irene Adler, that's what Steven Moffat believes. It's as if Adler knows that when she strips totally nekkid, or cracks that whip, all men immediately bow before her and are incapable of thought. This is stupid of Adler but in the fictional world in which she lives, that's kind of how things work. Because Moffat doesn't make her ashamed of her sexuality, or her body. But the way she wields it is the sort of male fetish fantasy that doesn't exist anywhere, y'all. She knows being so unselfconscious in front of Holmes is going to fuck with his radar. But not because that's how human nature works. No, she knows it because that's how human nature works in Steven Moffat's mind. And frankly, it diminishes Holmes somewhat for me. I think less of him because he doesn't see through this shit right away and turn the tables on her.
You see, Adler is putting this on. There's nothing emotional or personal about it. It's a game with her and for Holmes to not see that, well, it doesn't feel like Holmes. This is Moffat using a woman to fuck with Holmes, but the woman doesn't get to use her intelligence. She gets to use her -- well, you get the idea. She uses the only thing that Moffat seems to recognize in women, which was also present in the Christmas episode of DOCTOR WHO. There, he had a perfectly organic reason for Madge's strength -- the fact that she was holding onto such incredible grief and being strong for her kids. But no, instead he dives right for the uterus. Disappointing.
So although I quite enjoyed aspects of Adler in the new SHERLOCK, and very much enjoyed the interplay between Holmes & Watson and MY GOD the Sherlock/Mycroft stuff is utterly magnificent, I thought Moffat really missed the boat on much of Adler. And seeing THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, I wondered how much more effective Adler would have been if she had been more Lisbeth Salander.
Lisbeth hides her gender and sexuality and creates an armor of protection around herself. She doesn't do this because she wants to fuck with men and play games. She does it because she's trying to fucking SURVIVE. She didn't sit there and one day go, "So here's my plan to totally transform myself." She just DID IT. And if you asked her why she cut her hair like that, or pierced what she pierced, or ANYTHING, she would just stare off to the side and not answer you. Lisbeth is only female when she's violated by a monster (but boy, does she turn on him in a satisfying way) or when she chooses to be with Mikael. But even then there's something off about her. Lisbeth is the woman who slips through the cracks, but doesn't moan about it. She just tries to live. She is barely contained rage but her control is magnificent. And if you apply that control to her mind-fucking Sherlock Holmes, I think it would be pretty interesting.
How would Holmes react to a woman who didn't use ANY of her male-perceived weaponry, but who instead was bristling with contradictions that aren't the society-approved ones? How would Holmes deal with a woman who is wearing such a mighty figurative suit of armor? How do you predict what a character like Lisbeth is going to do? Well, all you CAN predict is that she'd survive. Because that's how she's created herself. Adler, on the other hand -- I don't want to spoil anything for y'all but there's a twist and a big disappointment at the end that is just SO VERY MOFFAT.
But Holmes vs. Lisbeth Salander, that is interesting. Because she isn't going to give him ANYTHING, but she can become anyone. She plays things even closer to the vest than HE does and on a certain level, they are equally damaged. She's nobody's fantasy. But she also doesn't dwell on what's happened to her. She just creates another wall to slide in next to the existing ones. And then she matter-of-factly goes about the business of fucking people over in unbelievably creative ways.
If you haven't seen SHERLOCK yet, just keep Lisbeth in mind when you do. It'll be interesting to hear what y'all think.
Also, this week's episode of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES was frakkin AMAZEBALLS.
*That's not how I read it at first because I gave Moffat the benefit of the doubt but based on interviews, that's exactly how it happened, which is rather a great disappointment.
In the olden days, when physical films and/or videotapes had to be physically sent over to another country on a tramp steamer, this probably made sense. But it doesn't now. At all. But no mind. I've seen the first two episodes and I also saw THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, which was my first exposure to the series. These two things actually DO have something in common -- the concept of a gender-defying woman.
In the case of DRAGON TATTOO, that woman is obviously Lisbeth Salander, and based on interviews with the writer, director and actress, a lot of thought went into the concept of the character. Mostly, into what they didn't want her to be. And then why is she who she is? Why does she act the way she does? Dress the way she does? Why is she so good at her kind of research? What results from this is fascinating, complex, contradictory but logically created character.
And then there's SHERLOCK and the introduction of Irene Adler. One of the things I like most about this version of SHERLOCK is how Mark Gattiss and Steven Moffat have updated the characters and the world. This Sherlock is not afraid of technology. He even uses it to his advantage. So does Watson, who isn't a musty old book writer but instead writes a blog. The writers have given this a lot of thought and it's always fun to see it manifested. For those who haven't seen any of the new series yet, there's more and it's delightful.
Anyway. The original incarnation of Irene Adler was basically the Victorian version of Barbara Stanwyck's BABY FACE -- a user of men, a social climber, etc. Kind of a typical female character of that time. But she was unique in that she was able to pull the wool over Holmes's eyes, and he never forgot it. So good for her, then, right?
The other recent version we have of Adler is from the Guy Ritchie movies, in which she is an American (which she is in the Holmes stories but not in the BBC version) but also a skilled thief. What I like about this Adler is that she defies convention. She doesn't have to be a fucking courtesan, thank you very much, because she has skillz. She's a bold, blustery American. Which seems kind of perfect.
The Adler in SHERLOCK is a dominatrix.
YAWN.
The way she is presented and written and edited makes it clear that the writers consider this a bold, fresh choice, leading me to believe that they have never seen an episode of any American crime show. Now, I understand that in the updating of Irene Adler you may go there. At first. But then you SHOULD go, "Yeah, we COULD do that, but it's a bit lazy, isn't it? Shouldn't we come up with something that is a bit more bold? More fresh? More distinct?"
There are a lot of men who think that women use their gender and their sexuality as a weapon, which is essentially what Adler does and it supposedly blinds Sherlock to who she is.*
This is not true, and all you have to do is watch the rape scene in THE ACCUSED to get that. How many times has a female victim been told that she was asking for it? Which, by the way, is never the case -- women simply do not ask to be raped. But how many court cases have there been where a famous athlete, for example, claims that the woman he assaulted deserved it, or was asking for it?
I think that men think women do this because men CAN use their gender and sexuality as a weapon. They can get aggressive and in someone's face and they can threaten each other and usually, one dude backs down. So I suppose it makes sense that they would think women can use their sexuality to do the same thing, only it obviously doesn't work that way.
Women, let me ask you this -- if you can avoid it, do you stop for gas at night? When you're walking down the street and a few dudes are walking towards you, do you take off all your clothes and face them boldly, using your sexuality as a weapon? NO YOU DO NOT. While 99.999% of men aren't ever going to do anything to you, there's always that wild card. So you just never know, and you have to always protect yourself. And that's not even counting the guys who will whistle, or say dumb shit like, "Hey, smile!" Like we're there to entertain them which, let's face it, some of them believe.
Based on this incarnation of Irene Adler, that's what Steven Moffat believes. It's as if Adler knows that when she strips totally nekkid, or cracks that whip, all men immediately bow before her and are incapable of thought. This is stupid of Adler but in the fictional world in which she lives, that's kind of how things work. Because Moffat doesn't make her ashamed of her sexuality, or her body. But the way she wields it is the sort of male fetish fantasy that doesn't exist anywhere, y'all. She knows being so unselfconscious in front of Holmes is going to fuck with his radar. But not because that's how human nature works. No, she knows it because that's how human nature works in Steven Moffat's mind. And frankly, it diminishes Holmes somewhat for me. I think less of him because he doesn't see through this shit right away and turn the tables on her.
You see, Adler is putting this on. There's nothing emotional or personal about it. It's a game with her and for Holmes to not see that, well, it doesn't feel like Holmes. This is Moffat using a woman to fuck with Holmes, but the woman doesn't get to use her intelligence. She gets to use her -- well, you get the idea. She uses the only thing that Moffat seems to recognize in women, which was also present in the Christmas episode of DOCTOR WHO. There, he had a perfectly organic reason for Madge's strength -- the fact that she was holding onto such incredible grief and being strong for her kids. But no, instead he dives right for the uterus. Disappointing.
So although I quite enjoyed aspects of Adler in the new SHERLOCK, and very much enjoyed the interplay between Holmes & Watson and MY GOD the Sherlock/Mycroft stuff is utterly magnificent, I thought Moffat really missed the boat on much of Adler. And seeing THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, I wondered how much more effective Adler would have been if she had been more Lisbeth Salander.
Lisbeth hides her gender and sexuality and creates an armor of protection around herself. She doesn't do this because she wants to fuck with men and play games. She does it because she's trying to fucking SURVIVE. She didn't sit there and one day go, "So here's my plan to totally transform myself." She just DID IT. And if you asked her why she cut her hair like that, or pierced what she pierced, or ANYTHING, she would just stare off to the side and not answer you. Lisbeth is only female when she's violated by a monster (but boy, does she turn on him in a satisfying way) or when she chooses to be with Mikael. But even then there's something off about her. Lisbeth is the woman who slips through the cracks, but doesn't moan about it. She just tries to live. She is barely contained rage but her control is magnificent. And if you apply that control to her mind-fucking Sherlock Holmes, I think it would be pretty interesting.
How would Holmes react to a woman who didn't use ANY of her male-perceived weaponry, but who instead was bristling with contradictions that aren't the society-approved ones? How would Holmes deal with a woman who is wearing such a mighty figurative suit of armor? How do you predict what a character like Lisbeth is going to do? Well, all you CAN predict is that she'd survive. Because that's how she's created herself. Adler, on the other hand -- I don't want to spoil anything for y'all but there's a twist and a big disappointment at the end that is just SO VERY MOFFAT.
But Holmes vs. Lisbeth Salander, that is interesting. Because she isn't going to give him ANYTHING, but she can become anyone. She plays things even closer to the vest than HE does and on a certain level, they are equally damaged. She's nobody's fantasy. But she also doesn't dwell on what's happened to her. She just creates another wall to slide in next to the existing ones. And then she matter-of-factly goes about the business of fucking people over in unbelievably creative ways.
If you haven't seen SHERLOCK yet, just keep Lisbeth in mind when you do. It'll be interesting to hear what y'all think.
Also, this week's episode of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES was frakkin AMAZEBALLS.
*That's not how I read it at first because I gave Moffat the benefit of the doubt but based on interviews, that's exactly how it happened, which is rather a great disappointment.
Sunday, January 08, 2012
A Mild Case of Self-promotion
It really IS mild. And short. There will be a more substantial post next week (I'm trying to post at least a little something every week, so let's see how it goes). Although most Americans won't see the new season of SHERLOCK until fucking ridiculous MAY, there is much to discuss that will not be too spoilery. I suppose it WILL be spoilery if you've never heard of Irene Adler. But I suspect you have.
So in the meantime, here's a little self-promotion. Firstly, Erin and I did a podcast for the very cool Millennium site backtofrankblack.com, and it is here. Troy and James asked terrific questions and going back to look at the show after so long was a very weird experience. Millennium totally holds up, and the differences between then and now aren't as apparent because Millennium wasn't a gimmicky show. It wasn't trying to be hip or edgy or any of that. It just WAS. And that means well-told stories, simple, effective editing, and just not so much TRYING. A lot of it was ahead of the curve, which you simply do NOT get credit for. EVER. And that sucks.
Something I really noticed was the use of sound. I think reality shows have fucked TeeVee sound design because every single potential moment is scored, and it's usually scored with that whooshing noise that is supposed to make you look up from the laundry and watch what's happening. Reality shows have wall-to-wall noise and sound and since that seems to be effective, people have no choice but to follow that lead. TeeVee viewership hadn't fractured as badly back when Millennium was on, but now it's all about doing whatever it takes to get eyeballs on your show. Hence the different sound design, IMO.
Millennium is a very quiet show, actually. You can hear the sound effects. Wind, footsteps, breathing, whatever. There are long stretches of the show with little to no dialogue. And editing was done differently, too. I think the minimalism helps the show to not feel dated. And there's something to be said for timelessness. But thins are different now, of course. Technology changes so quickly that it's pretty disposable. You buy an amazing phone and then six months later, there's an even more amazing one. So we don't even get a moment to enjoy and appreciate the advancement. Entertainment is like that, too. It's all files and DVRs that are easy to manipulate. You don't hold the physical representation of entertainment anymore, which might be why I like buying TeeVee shows on DVD. Because of how disposable things are, entertainment has to find different ways to get people to notice. Hence the whooshing.
HEY YOU KIDS, GET OFF MY LAWN!
Anyway.
The other bit of self-promotion is that I wrote a longish short story that I wanted to put on the Kindle for free, but Amazon won't let you do that. So it's up here for 99 cents. But I made a free ePub version that I put here, and so you can download that if you prefer. It's a pretty fun story, if your idea of fun is my idea of fun.
Here's the cover. I'm pretty proud of my rudimentary Photoshop skillz:
Till next week, cats and kittens...
So in the meantime, here's a little self-promotion. Firstly, Erin and I did a podcast for the very cool Millennium site backtofrankblack.com, and it is here. Troy and James asked terrific questions and going back to look at the show after so long was a very weird experience. Millennium totally holds up, and the differences between then and now aren't as apparent because Millennium wasn't a gimmicky show. It wasn't trying to be hip or edgy or any of that. It just WAS. And that means well-told stories, simple, effective editing, and just not so much TRYING. A lot of it was ahead of the curve, which you simply do NOT get credit for. EVER. And that sucks.
Something I really noticed was the use of sound. I think reality shows have fucked TeeVee sound design because every single potential moment is scored, and it's usually scored with that whooshing noise that is supposed to make you look up from the laundry and watch what's happening. Reality shows have wall-to-wall noise and sound and since that seems to be effective, people have no choice but to follow that lead. TeeVee viewership hadn't fractured as badly back when Millennium was on, but now it's all about doing whatever it takes to get eyeballs on your show. Hence the different sound design, IMO.
Millennium is a very quiet show, actually. You can hear the sound effects. Wind, footsteps, breathing, whatever. There are long stretches of the show with little to no dialogue. And editing was done differently, too. I think the minimalism helps the show to not feel dated. And there's something to be said for timelessness. But thins are different now, of course. Technology changes so quickly that it's pretty disposable. You buy an amazing phone and then six months later, there's an even more amazing one. So we don't even get a moment to enjoy and appreciate the advancement. Entertainment is like that, too. It's all files and DVRs that are easy to manipulate. You don't hold the physical representation of entertainment anymore, which might be why I like buying TeeVee shows on DVD. Because of how disposable things are, entertainment has to find different ways to get people to notice. Hence the whooshing.
HEY YOU KIDS, GET OFF MY LAWN!
Anyway.
The other bit of self-promotion is that I wrote a longish short story that I wanted to put on the Kindle for free, but Amazon won't let you do that. So it's up here for 99 cents. But I made a free ePub version that I put here, and so you can download that if you prefer. It's a pretty fun story, if your idea of fun is my idea of fun.
Here's the cover. I'm pretty proud of my rudimentary Photoshop skillz:
Till next week, cats and kittens...
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