Opinions on TV feminism

[Finder]

I was curious how you feel about shows like "Desperate Housewives" and "Sex in the City"? I personally have never seen DH but I am slogging my way though the seasons of SitC for a project.

Do you feel these shows represent modern feminism? Do you feel they are damaging or empowering to the movement today?

[FizzFuzz]

1. I wish I had an answer, but I've never seen either

There is a British cop show that features a woman chief detective as the star. She is middle aged, average looking. The show depends on story line, not bust line. It is such a divergence from American sex-you-up everything, that I was stunned for a few minutes the first time I saw it.

Cant tell you the name or channel, sorry--I hardly watch TV so don't know when ANYTHING is on. I don't even know when Jon Stewart is on! :cry:

I just catch bits and peices and rant about them. heh

[Finder]

2. I hear ya

I don't watch TV either--except Cspan and documentaries for the most part. Some of the stuff in sitcoms are really out there.

[Warpy]

13. PBS Mystery Hour

and the title of the show is "Prime Suspect." There have only been a handful of them. Helen Mirren is the star, and the blatant and rampant sexism she has to fight in every case is part of the plot.

Keep your eye out for this series. I think there may be a new one this year. The plots are amazing, the writing excellent, and the acting superb. It's quite a contrast to the wooden acting and choppy story line in the Law & Order and CSI franchise shows.

[FizzFuzz]

21. Thank you Warpy!

might be worth sitting in front of the TV for

Funny, I've gotten so far away from TV, it will take a serious effort to watch now.

Not that that's a bad thing.... ;)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

24. Prime Suspect is being repeated on BBCAmerica beginning

next Monday or the Monday after, i forget which.

[BlueIris]

3. I confess, I hate "Sex and the City."

Not (primarily) as a feminist of the stripe and color I am, but as a television viewer. I've loved so much of HBOs original programming, but not that series. The reason? It's just not funny to me. It basically never succeeded in making me laugh.

I could blather about this forever, so I'll try to keep it short (also, I would like to point out that some of my best friends love "Sex and the City," think it's hysterical, and we can all get along just fine). My take on a lot of what was happening on "SatC," was a portrait of four women who were behaving, in many instances, exactly the way they perceived the men they interacted with to behave with regard to relationships, sex, and their careers. This included a lot of behavior on the part of the four female characters that wasn't so much "typically" as it was stereotypically "male," including grotesque objectification of their partners, use of extremely shallow criteria, or no criteria when it came to selecting partners, the occasional irresponsible, non-self-respecting failure to protect themselves against STDs or unintended pregnancy, alcohol and drug abuse, and an inability to find lasting relationships with members of the opposite sex that could satisfy them in a substantial way. So, I saw it reinforcing a lot of gender stereotypes, which even for a sweet, light, sex-themed sit-com, bothered me. Some friends have pointed out to me that they felt that by deliberately reinforcing those stereotypes, the writers were condemning them, and members of both genders for engaging in some less-than-positive behaviors, and I wish I could say I ever got that impression. I didn't. My gut reaction whenever anyone tells me, " but 'SatC' is such a feminist show," is "Why? What's inherently feminist about women running their lives and relationships like that?"

Two other things which really bugged me about "SatC," particularly when people were describing it as "feminist"--why did viewers, and those characters, mistake those four women for friends? At best, I thought they were all individually friends with Carrie Bradshaw...sort of. The "friends" I used to have who treated me and each other like that? Not in my life anymore. Also--I was always irritated at how dumb all of those characters could be. Especially given their ages, levels of education and life experience. I should point out that one of my pet peeves as a woman and a feminist is the idea that a "good" feminist heroine in a television show has to be perfect, or superhuman or has to refuse, at all costs, to sacrifice any of her feminist ideals. Whatever. Life is pretty complicated and occasionally, we all struggle to balance our respect and love for feminism within our jobs, relationships and family lives, and you can't always be the uncompromising feminist all the time. But the bottom line for me is that as a sane, healthy, rational person who is also a woman and a feminist you should at least be trying to make smart, self-loving decisions about how to live your life. Sometimes those characters really did not seem to know how to do that, be aware that they weren't doing that, or care that they weren't. So, no, it isn't that I couldn't see them as "good" feminist icons, or characters whose existance said something positive about the impact of feminsm on the world just because they were ordinary and occasionally pretty stupid (or at least made stupid choices). I just wanted to see them at least trying to make more intelligent choices about the way they lived (in order to make themselves happier) than I did.

I guess ultimately, I don't have anything to post about whether I think "SatC" is having a "negative" or a "positive" impact on what exists of today's feminist movement, though. I'm tempted to say it doesn't have much of an impact at all. I'll be interested to see what others have to contribute on that score.

[lukasahero]

5. Excellent post

And I agree 100%.

The idea that in order to be "equal" women have to be just ill-behaved and stupid as some men just doesn't fly with me.

I happened to catch Tomb Raider last week and thought to myself, in order to have a woman hero/star in a movie, she's had to become a guy. (Albeit a very sexy guy.) If a movie features a female hero/star who isn't kicking butts and taking names, it's a "chick-flick".

I also had the horrendous misfortune of catching Bravo's "Greatest Heroes, Vixens and Villains" a couple of weeks ago. The "Heroes" were (obviously if you pay attention to culture in America) all men. Spider Man was number 1. (You know, that skinny, smart nice guy who gets to save the world? Every little guy's dream, huh? Lots of little girls too I'd imagine.)

But the "girl heroes" were listed among the "Vixens" including Buffy (#6, I believe) and Lara Croft. Number 2 on that list was, get this, the "Bond Girls". Are they f*cking kidding me? You know what that says to me as a woman? It says, you can save the world from the apocalypse but unless you're a sexy cardboard cut-out willing to satisfy every man's sexual fantasy, you're just not good enough. (No.1 was Catwoman - yeah, she's actually a villain. :eyes:)

[Chovexani]

7. Lara Croft

I think a lot of the flack that Lara takes is unfair, and too many people misunderstand what she is really about. We had a very interesting discussion about her during a panel on women in games at an anime convention I went to last summer, and I'll bring up some of the points that were made.

I'm a long-time fan of the games, and a big Lara Croft fan in general. As a female gamer you tend to have to put up with a lot of misogynist male fantasy crap (Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball being a recent example), and I actually avoided Tomb Raider for a long time when it came out because of Eidos' (the game's publisher) insistance on playing up her sexuality and her impossible figure. (As an aside, since the fourth game in the series Lara's character model has less and less Barbie-esque proportions and in the upcoming one she actually looks like a normal woman. Goddess bless technology, I guess)

Then I played the demo, and was hooked. Aside from the fact that it was a truly revolutionary game in terms of the gameplay, the original Tomb Raider was more about solving puzzles and less about shooting people. Lara herself is a fascinating character, and a very strong woman who certainly hasn't "become a guy" (whatever that means). Much has been said about the way Lara became a pop culture sexpot icon, but the flipside of that is many women were brought into gaming because of her. There were certainly female gaming heroes before her (Samus Aran of the Metroid games), but Lara was the first to really have a personality and not just be an androgynous bit of dots on the screen. Samus, who was based on Ellen Ripley from the Alien movies, wears a special space suit, and you didn't even know she was female until the very end of the first Metroid game on the NES, when she takes her helmet off.

Lara's backstory has been retconned a couple times over the years (particularly in her younger years), but I'll sum the original up (BTW, the movie TOTALLY ignored all this and made up some crap, which is one reason I can't enjoy it as anything but a popcorn movie). Lara was a very proper English aristocrat, spoiled princess type who was the daughter of a wealthy family. Her life changed when a plane she was on crashed in the Himalayas, and she was trapped alone in the wilderness and had to find a way to survive. Lara really should have died out there, but somehow she found the strength to make it out alive, and it changed her. When she came home she couldn't go back to her old, shallow life and decided to become a seeker of truths, large and small...that's when she got into archeology and became an adventurer.

Lara is strong, incredibly intelligent, and brooks no nonsense from anyone. She's an independent woman and doesn't live off daddy's money, or stolen treasures despite the fact that she is a treasure hunter (she writes travel books in her spare time). She is not crude, or needlessly cruel to people. In the first game, a conniving CEO tries to appeal to her greed in order to find some ancient Atlantean artifacts, but Lara only agrees to do it because she wishes to study and write about them. Her sense of morality says that just because she can do something, that doesn't mean she SHOULD do something. She's never arrogant and is always cautious and respectful of ancient cultures. And when she makes a mistake, she sucks it up and tries to fix it, even if it may cost her her life (and it nearly did a few times, esp. in the fourth game).

Okay, now I'm just rambling. :P I guess I'm angry and sad that so many people seem to see Lara as just another gun-toting femme fatale sexpot, largely because that is how the developer chose to market her character. She's really so much more than that. The one thing I will give the movie is that I can't think of a better person to play her than Angelina Jolie. That may be the raging Angelina Jolie fangirl in me talking, though.

BTW, the second movie? So much better. Not even a comparison. It actually made sense, and had a plot and stuff.

[lukasahero]

12. Don't get me wrong - my issue isn't with Lara Croft

it's with the world that will only allow a woman to be a hero if she is like Lara Croft. While her character traits are certainly viable for women, it's the fact that unless the movie features a woman who is as "tough" and strong as a guy, it's a "chick-flick". A mentally strong or emotionally strong woman isn't a "hero" and half the population will only accept her as one if she can beat a guy up.

It gets back to the old cliche that has been used for so long as to why men are superior to women - they're stronger. Yeah, so? That's admirable?

I like Lara Croft alot so I'm sorry if it sounded like I was criticizing the woman (character) - I was trying to criticize society's acceptance of a female hero only if she fit the description of hero in male terms.

[lukasahero]

4. Somehow I don't think of either of these shows as a demonstration

of feminism. My definition of feminism has never been simply "women get horny too". Murphy Brown, Mary Tyler Moore, Grace Under Fire, even Star Trek (later generations) all seem more suitable for such a discussion.

[geniph]

6. Sex In the City was like watching Martians for me

the women in that show, while funny, had such bizarre motivations and impulses that they might as well have been from another planet. I also found it rather pathetic that everything in their lives revolved around whether or not they were getting any, but then again, the title should be a tipoff that those're gonna be the main storylines. I did find some of it very touching, particularly Anne Meara in the last few episodes. The character of Charlotte was, overall, quite possibly the most irritating stereotype I've ever seen, from her moneygrubbing to her fastidiousness and prudishness. Horrid character. The whole storyline between her and her mother-in-law fighting over the apartment played into every stereotype of golddiggers and bitchy mothers-in-law in the world.

Most of the men were cardboard cutouts and every bit as alien to me as the women.

Now, if you want to talk about a feminist icon on TV, how about Aeryn Sun on Farscape? Aeryn rocks!

[Chovexani]

8. I hate Sex and the City

If for no other reason than ignorant, consumerist females in other parts of the country suddenly thought this was how women in NY lived (newsflash: MOST OF US DON'T, WE'RE BROKE FROM TRYING TO PAY RENT). I think you have to go to sci-fi and fantasy to find real feminist icons on TV (and not Ally McBeal types).

As much as Aeryn rocks and she does indeed rock the house, Ivanova is god. Ivanova is always right. :P I disliked Voyager (and Seven), but Janeway was an awesome character. Then there's Scully from the X-Files, and of course Xena and Gabrielle...

[geniph]

9. You mean all women in NYC DON'T live like that?

I'm shocked, shocked, I tell ya! I thought you were all out there spending $10K a year on stiletto heels so you can walk ten miles a day in the city on 'em!

;-)

(In a city where most folks walk everywhere, I'm frankly surprised anyone even WEARS heels...)

[Chovexani]

16. Secretary sneakers

That's what I call 'em. Most of us wear sneakers to work and only wear the heels when we're at our desks. ;)

[BlueIris]

10. Janeway WAS an awesome character.

Post what you want about Katie Mulgrew's "acting" abilities but I can't knock Janeway's terrific command skills. One of the most interesting things I ever saw anywhere was a poll at a sci-fi site I used to frequent, asking registrants who the best Star Trek captains were. Despite the fact that the site was 65% male, and its discussion forums contained a ton of criticisms of every member of the cast of the "Voyager" series and its charcters, the respondants picked Janeway by a mile. And in the corresponding discussion to that poll, users at that site defended Janeway as their choice with remarks like, "best and fairest disciplinarian," "crew respected her," "never backed down from an argument or a conflict," and "good leader." Nowhere within the realm of the posts did I see anyone refer to Janeway with any of the overtly or vaguely sexist phrases I would expect to see within a discussion among "normal" people, even Trekkies, even those who considered themselves non-sexist, when talking about a woman in a leadership role within a male-dominated profession (ie; "sometimes a bitch," "was mean to subordinates," or "seemed 'overly critical' of males around her, especially"). It was amazing.

[Chovexani]

17. She was Voyager's saving grace

Janeway was by far the best thing about a show that was otherwise very flawed. It was just a pleasure to see a strong, intelligent and fair woman in command of a Federation starship. Sure, she liked to play fast and loose with the Prime Directive (though she still wasn't nearly as bad with that as Kirk), but she was very even-handed and fair with the crew. She was a consumate stateswoman but she could also be a steely bad ass when the situation demanded it. I think she's right up there with Picard as one of the best Trek captains.

That's a good point you make about how she was treated in the fandom, too. Male fans really respected her character, which is something that is sadly rare with some of them when it comes to strong women in sci-fi/fantasy.

[MuseRider]

19. I had never watched

the show until out friends kids were cast in it for a short while. I was intrigued by Janeway and watched a few shows in re run. She was a very good role model, one of the best I have seen.

[Hello_Kitty]

15. I actually like it but it is totally unrealistic

The women live in lavish digs with no discernable jobs. Supposedly, they are in PR or practice law or run a museum or something. And Carrie types a sentence or two into a laptop occasionally. But they never seem to be working at any given time. As if. Most New Yorkers work 80 hours a week just to keep their heads above water.
At the same time they maintain impossibly slim figures while scarfing down bagels, lattes, martinis, and trendy restaurant meals almost non-stop. Again, as if.

[Finder]

18. I thought so at first too

but while watching the series to critique those points I found they were realistic. I also spent some time in NYC to compare--had a blast. For my critique, I am using a single male in the city for a comparison.

[atommom]

22. I had the same reaction. DH loved the show, but I just found

it strange. Sometimes it was funny, but it struck me as a male fantasy about how "liberated women" might act. I was irritated by the dumb things these "smart, successful women" did in their quest for love/lust/rampant sex. It was like an evil women's magazine come to life. :shrug:

[Warpy]

11. I don't see any feminism in "Desperate Housewives"

but I think I made it for only about 15 minutes before deciding the dialog was third rate, the characters were stereotypes, and the story line was beneath contempt.

If feminism means defining oneself through one's body and its relationships with males, then I suppose that show is feminist. I just didn't see it that way.

[BlueIris]

14. I can't disagree, even though I've only watched sporadically. nt.

[MuseRider]

20. I have never seen either.

Even the names of the shows turned me off. I can't see anything feminist about what I have read or heard about either. In my own mind feminism has little to do with money, sex, acting like men or being desperate. Having not seen them I should probably not discuss it more than that. Perhaps they are entertaining but I will take your words for how they actually do portray women.

[Eloriel]

25. Same boat -- and all, well almost all, the posts here have only

confirmed my initial sense of the shows was entirely correct. I just could NOT get past the title of either.

[BlueIris]

23. Did anyone watch "The Closer"? It was great.

In fact, it was so great, I started a thread. I hope some other people got to watch.