I am sometimes a Mean Girl in many ways.
Feb. 13th, 2011 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreToday I learned that the best way to bring out my nasty side in fandom is the "Female Character X was awesome until she had implied romantic feelings for Male Character Y, and then she was wimpy and her life is all about mooning over him" argument.
(Character context for the discussion is Sam Carter and Jack O'Neil in Stargate: SG-1. I'm always 99% certain that there were 2 versions of that show, because the one I watched seemed to have Jack being the way more smitten of the two.)
But really, this POV makes no sense? And even if it did, it would be the standard case of blaming the character for the writer/narrative. Also, these cases usually actually have the characters of both characters being emphasized, and since most shows default to thestraight white if you're in the US male POV, there's often more focus on the guy's feelings, so if anyone should get the negative feedback over mooning it's usually the guy? But we're so conditioned to see men as being multi-purpose and women primarily as wives/girlfriends/homemakers, especially in fiction, that people seem to automatically jump to the conclusion that "feelings=weak and clingy" when it comes to women.
(I suspect we'd also get a lot of this reaction proportionately-based on what I've seen-with LGBT characters if more were portrayed as sexual. Or, you know, around at all. Like, everyone loves Diana in White Collar, as far as I can tell, and we know she has a long term girlfriend, but aside from flirting with someone in the pilot, she's been relatively asexual onscreen. And, granted, so has Jones, but the treatment of Jones-HOW IS HE STILL A GUEST STAR HE'S IN EVERY SINGLE EPISODE-is another, separate issue from Diana's portrayal.)
I mean, we can argue all we want about men being written better in fiction (I usually think it's less that and more that the writers spend more time-good or bad-on them) and more central to the story, but the reader her/him-self is what determines how it's perceived and interpretted, and will frequently interpret similar situations the same no matter how the individual canon portrays it.
But anyway, has anyone ever seen this with straight men? Possibly more pertinently, has anyone ever seen this crop up when Male Character Y wasn't being shipped-actively or passively-with someone else? (I want to say that I've seen it more with m/m-centric folks than f/m-and definitely f/f- ones, but I think it'd come out even if I discounted 13-17-year-old shounen fans.)
*leaves to get to places way late*
(Character context for the discussion is Sam Carter and Jack O'Neil in Stargate: SG-1. I'm always 99% certain that there were 2 versions of that show, because the one I watched seemed to have Jack being the way more smitten of the two.)
But really, this POV makes no sense? And even if it did, it would be the standard case of blaming the character for the writer/narrative. Also, these cases usually actually have the characters of both characters being emphasized, and since most shows default to the
(I suspect we'd also get a lot of this reaction proportionately-based on what I've seen-with LGBT characters if more were portrayed as sexual. Or, you know, around at all. Like, everyone loves Diana in White Collar, as far as I can tell, and we know she has a long term girlfriend, but aside from flirting with someone in the pilot, she's been relatively asexual onscreen. And, granted, so has Jones, but the treatment of Jones-HOW IS HE STILL A GUEST STAR HE'S IN EVERY SINGLE EPISODE-is another, separate issue from Diana's portrayal.)
I mean, we can argue all we want about men being written better in fiction (I usually think it's less that and more that the writers spend more time-good or bad-on them) and more central to the story, but the reader her/him-self is what determines how it's perceived and interpretted, and will frequently interpret similar situations the same no matter how the individual canon portrays it.
But anyway, has anyone ever seen this with straight men? Possibly more pertinently, has anyone ever seen this crop up when Male Character Y wasn't being shipped-actively or passively-with someone else? (I want to say that I've seen it more with m/m-centric folks than f/m-and definitely f/f- ones, but I think it'd come out even if I discounted 13-17-year-old shounen fans.)
*leaves to get to places way late*