On Television – Page 19

In Spite of Mean Girls: The Radical Vision of ‘Pretty Little Liars’

In her bestselling collection ‘Bad Feminist,’ Roxane Gay starts the listicle entitled “How to Be Friends with Another Woman” with this as the very first item: “Abandon the cultural myth that all female friendships must be bitchy, toxic, or competitive. This myth is like heels and purses—pretty but designed to SLOW women down.”

This guest post by Jessica Freeman-Slade appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

In her bestselling collection Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay starts the listicle entitled “How to Be Friends with Another Woman” with this as the very first item: “Abandon the cultural myth that all female friendships must be bitchy, toxic, or competitive. This myth is like heels and purses—pretty but designed to SLOW women down.”

Pretty Little Liars, a show on ABC Family that just wrapped its fifth season, looks on the surface to be all about the things that slow female friendships down, especially in high school—the fabulous heels, the purses, the toxicity of secret-keeping and back-stabbing. (For a long time I assumed it was Gossip Girl in suburbia, all about teenagers behaving badly and looking great while doing it.) Yet upon closer inspection, it presents itself as the most radical show about women, and specifically female friendship, on television, a treatise on what might happen when four friends refuse to become mean girls, and choose something to embark on something far more difficult: genuine support of each other. That might explain why the show is the most Tweeted-about series of all time (yes, surpassing Scandal, with 11.7 million Tweets sent during its season 2 finale in 2013), and why it’s proven to be much more than just a pretty teenage drama.

Based upon the YA series by Sara Shepard, PLL takes place in the fictional town of Rosewood, Pennsylvania, where queen bee Alison (Sasha Pieterse) has been missing for almost a year, and her formerly tight clique has broken up as they enter their junior year of high school. Star swimmer Emily (Shay Mitchell), who once nursed a deeply closeted crush on Alison, is just starting to assert her sexuality and independence. Straight-A student Spencer (Troian Bellisario) is tiptoeing around her uber-competitive sister Melissa (Torrey DeVitto). The fashionista Hanna (Ashley Benson) spends most of her time shoplifting and looking the other way while her single mother cleans up her messes. And artistic Aria (Lucy Hale) has just returned from a year abroad with her family, and immediately falls for Ezra (Ian Harding), a cute guy who—tada!—turns out to be her English teacher. These characters seem like archetypes (jock, Type-A, ditz, flower child) with very little beyond typical teenage drama to concern them. But then Alison’s dead body is discovered, and the girls start receiving texts from a mysterious “A” who seems to know all their unflattering secrets, lies, and desires, and worst, the details that could easily nail them for a terrible crime. But rather than turn away from each other, the girls immediately come back together, breaking those archetypes open and forming an alliance to uncover their texting tormentor and bring Alison’s killer to justice. As its millions of rabidly texting fans would attest, Pretty Little Liars has become the rare teen-oriented show that embraces all types of girls, the importance of supporting your friends and how they choose to be happy, and most importantly, how to fight against a bully who keeps you down.

Initially it seems that the villain is the mysterious “A,” whose threats scare the girls into silence or keep them at a distance from what makes them happy. (One of the gentler A threats is in Season 1, when A steals photographs of Emily kissing her new girlfriend and threatens to reveal them to her family.) But the real spectre of terror over the entire series is Alison: the glamorous, manipulative, power-hungry, and freakishly intelligent teenage girl who can bend anybody to her will.

In life, Alison bullied and teased her so-called friends and kept them from showing their own strengths. Hanna in particular withered under her rule, as Alison called her “Hefty Hanna” until she became bulimic. And even after death, the secrets that Alison had kept for the girls serve as A’s material for ripping their lives apart—to reveal Aria’s relationship with Ezra as well as her father’s (Chad Lowe) infidelity, to expose Spencer’s plagiarism of an award-winning essay, and to send Hanna’s mother to jail for stealing money as they’re on the verge of foreclosure. The villainy at the core of PLL is Alison’s undue influence, the one cool girl who rules over other girls and takes away their power.

But instead of becoming more like their tormentor, Pretty Little Liars gives its characters the choice of telling the truth, trusting each other, and taking on the consequences of their mistakes rather than lying their way out of them. Aria confronts her father about the infidelity, and Spencer withdraws her essay from the competition and disappoints her family in the process. Emily comes out of the closet, despite her fears—and her friends are genuinely happy and supportive of her. And to earn back the balance of her mother’s stolen money, on A’s orders Hanna consumes a dozen cupcakes, triggering a flashback to her days of binge eating. Yet when A texts her to do what Alison taught her, to “get rid of it,” Hanna refuses to go down the same old road. Instead of becoming more like Alison, the girls decide to become more like themselves, the selves that they know to be powerful and beautiful, inside and out.

Let’s revisit that #1 rule of female friendship from Roxane Gay—too often we ascribe a kind of inherent toxicity to female friendship, to the way women negotiate power dynamics and competition amongst themselves, as though there was a finite amount of beauty, intelligence, and influence in the room. The perpetuation of “girl-on-girl” crime doesn’t have as much to do with actual criminality or offense (when a cheating boyfriend is caught, why do we blame the other woman?), as it does with the notion that only one girl can win at any given moment. Yet in embracing the differences of the four Liars, the show allows a kind of multiplicity in its portraits of good girls who are not goodie two-shoes, and what winning in a community of women can look like. These girls kick butt together, and they do it with strengths drawn directly from their personalities, without the supernatural powers or exceptionally strong kickboxing or archery skills that we expect from other heroines of pop culture. For Emily, it’s her disarming honesty and candor that allows people to trust and open up to her.

Aria is small but fierce, and her wisdom beyond her years empowers her to make decisions that she can stand by.

Hanna is loyal to the core, and because she herself had been an outsider, she refuses to tolerate deceit from the people around her.

And for Spencer, in a constantly evolving and Emmy-worth performance by Bellisario, it’s her supreme intelligence and drive makes her the perfect troop leader, galvanizing her friends to stop settling for misery and start exposing the threats around them.

To be sure, the show has plenty of faults: the various relationship between teenage girls and some much-older love interests gives me plenty of heebie-jeebies, as do the increasingly improbable plot twists and the immaculate wardrobe, hair, and makeup choices on display at all times. (When, in all that mystery solving and running around in the woods, do they have enough time to pick out such cute outfits?) And, if you agree with A.O. Scott’s recent handwringing over the “death of adulthood” in contemporary media, you might wonder why so much of this positive friendship conversation has to be about teenagers rather than grown women. But these girls are exactly at the age where major decisions about character are made—when you move from childhood into adulthood, you stop absorbing information from your role models and start making your own choices. And the choice—to be a mean girl, and rule over everyone else, or to be a kind girl and to form meaningful relationships—is at the very center of Pretty Little Liars.

Most importantly, the stakes for these friendships are truly, massively high. These girls are literally saving each other FROM DEATH—breaking each other out of cages, chasing down bad guys, and fighting back against people who would like to silence them. While the plotting of the show may be highly tongue-in-cheek in treating death-defying an extracurricular activity, you have to admire how high the stakes have been placed. Without having each other’s backs, without their friendships, these girls would be dead—friendship is not only a positive choice, it is a lifesaving choice. And that is a pretty darn heroic proposition, especially for teenage girls.

Jessica Freeman-Slade is a cookbook editor at Random House, and has written reviews for The Rumpus, The Millions, The TK Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Specter Magazine, among others. She lives in Morningside Heights, NY.

Sex and The ‘Penny Dreadful’

The control of sex and sexuality was a fascination of the 19th century. In a reaction to the thought to be morally bankrupt licentiousness of the regency period, Victorian sexual values were characterized by repression, control and purity. Fitting as a common theme of the era was man’s victory over nature. It was a time when the medical establishment was obsessed with classifying and categorizing and “disorders” such as homosexuality and hysteria were invented

Penny Dreadful is a dark gothic horror television show; its main appeal is its excellent cast, which includes Eva Green, Timothy Dalton, and Josh Hartnett, and the fact that it features popular horror characters that are now in the public domain, including both doctor and creature Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, Mina Harker, and Van Helsing. The London it portrays is dark and brooding and slides with ease between the unfettered opulence of the rich to degradation of the poor. The show manages to capture the atmospheric blend of strife and ambition that seems to characterize the period of industrialization.

The control of sex and sexuality was a fascination of the 19^th century. In a reaction to the thought-to-be morally bankrupt licentiousness of the regency period, Victorian sexual values were characterized by repression, control and purity. Fitting as a common theme of the era was man’s victory over nature. It was a time when the medical establishment was obsessed with classifying and categorizing and “disorders” such as homosexuality and hysteria were invented. The latter led to the invention of the vibrator as women were treated for the condition by being stimulated to orgasm by doctors. Ironically, masturbation in men (women were not really thought to be capable) was heavily pathologised and blamed for a vast array of ills. However the obsession with strict sexual morality and the regulation of sexual impulses meant society was obsessed with talking about and policing it, hence the prevalence of sexuality as a theme in both medicine and art during the period. Parallel to the puritanical public standards existed a large private world of sex work and pornography.

The character of Brona Croft, played by Billie Piper, a northern Irish sex worker plagued with consumption, represents the particular paradox of the sex worker in the 19^th century. Her life is difficult, she is poor, and there is the ever-present threat of violence which is made apparent on the show by the reports of sex workers being torn apart by what might be the re-emergence of Jack the Ripper. However, Brona also on a certain level exists outside of the highly patriarchal social structures of the day. She makes her own money, she decides how to spend it and chooses her own relationships, freedoms most other women do not have. Brona is a fully realized character in a way that sex workers normally are not on television. We learn that she came to the trade because she was replaced by a machine in her factory job, but she prefers it anyway because the money is better and she doesn’t have to spend her days cooped up inside never seeing the sun. She speaks eloquently about the grim poverty of her childhood and her escape from an abusive relationship. Her sex work is not viewed as a barrier to her having meaningful romantic relationships. Her profession is an aspect of her but it is not who she is. I can’t believe just how refreshing it is to have a sex worker on television that is fully human in her own right and not just a plot device to be thrown away at the writers whims. Brona certainly does not fit into the “happy hooker” trope. There are many issues that she has to contend with that the show addresses; some are due to her work and some are not. What matters though is that Brona’s life is not tragic simply because she is a sex worker, nor is it perfect because she is. For example, she is dying of consumption, but this is portrayed to be more a symptom of her poverty rather than a punishment for her work.

Vanessa Ives (played by Eva Green), on the other hand, is a Victorian lady of leisure. She lives with Sir Malcolm Murray, a famed explorer of the African continent, and their relationship is not explained until mid-season but seems vaguely paternal. What we do know is that Vanessa is in the possession of some super natural abilities and is helping Sir Malcolm to locate his daughter who is currently under the power of a vampire. Vanessa’s sexuality is constantly and consistently pathologised. She ruminates on whether viewing a sexual act for the first time awoken a wickedness inside of her. Her very first sexual experience ended up breaking up two families who had been very close and triggering her first episode, of what is referred to by two different doctors over the course of the season, a “psycho-sexual” illness. The treatments that she is subjected for this illness amount very literally to torture and Vanessa’s mother ends up dying of shock when witnessing a display of her daughter’s sexuality. For Vanessa, her sexuality is not the source of her freedom from restrictive patriarchal norms of the day; it is a curse that she must control with utmost care otherwise the consequences could be devastating. Vanessa’s sexuality is dangerous–not just to her but to the people around her.

Having the two characters on the same show makes for a really interesting dynamic. It seems to capture the sheer obsession Victorian society had with the policing of sexuality and channelling it into the proper avenues while at the same time there existed many women who manage to carve out lives outside the structures of society despite the extreme social disapproval. Overall, the show manages to capture the two sides of the society quite nicely and explores both characters in a way that does justice to their humanity.

Gaayathri Nair is currently living and writing in Auckland, New Zealand. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Story and tweet her @A_Gaayathri

Talking Horse Anchors Adult Comedy For Everyone: ‘Bojack Horseman’

Most surprising of all was the content. ‘Bojack Horseman’ is a late night style comedy that doesn’t shut anyone out. Though the series abounds with the typical crude humor, it’s threaded through with a surprising amount of feminism, nothing I’d expect at first glance.
There’s no shortage of fascinating female characters, both major and minor.

Bojack Horseman, my latest comedy binge-watch, was a real surprise. I’d heard nothing about it before it showed up on Netflix, but I gave it a try. I’m glad it I did, it was super fun time that left me wanting more. Thankfully, Netflix has already renewed it for a second season.

Theme song image from Bojack Horseman — Theme song image from *Bojack Horseman*

Everyone’s favorite magician, Will Arnett, stars as Bojack, a formerly famous 90s sitcom star, conceited womanizer, and literal man-horse struggling through a strange version of Hollywood that keeps our pop cultural touchstone and ads anthropomorphic animals. Cats chase dangling strings on the treadmill, birds at the window are paparazzi, and two dogs converse like stereotypical annoying TV women about how much they love chocolate even though it could kill them.

Arnett is joined by a great cast, a veritable who’s who of beloved comedic actors, among them Alison Brie, Kristen Schaal, Paul F. Tompkins, Patton Oswalt, and Amy Sedaris. Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul takes a comedic term and gives an unexpected, often scene-stealing performance as Bojack’s slacker roommate who’s obsessed with composing a rock opera.

Most surprising of all was the content. Bojack Horseman is a late night style comedy that doesn’t shut anyone out. Though the series abounds with the typical crude humor, it’s threaded through with a surprising amount of feminism, nothing I’d expect at first glance.

Bojack’s agent and girlfriend Princess Carolyn often has complicated schemes

There’s no shortage of fascinating female characters, both major and minor. First off, Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris, who should really be in more things) is, in addition to being a giant pink Persian cat, Bojack’s agent and on-again/off-again girlfriend. She’s is driven and goal-obsessed, and in her dynamic with Bojack maintains the unique skill of compartmentalizing, speaking to him either as agent or lover. With her Machiavellian schemes and air-tight manipulations, she might even be the closest thing the series has to a villain, besides Bojack’s colossal ego. Sadly, her role begins to peter out towards the end of the season, though her remaining plot line, about unknowingly dating Vincent Adultman, three kids stacked on top of each other in a trench coat, is worthy off-the-wall material.

Diane gives Naomi Watts tips on how to play a complex character

As a show set in a Hollywood, Bojack Horseman also makes several stirring points satirizing celebrity culture. Naomi Watts shows up for a episode to play a role in a movie based on Bojack’s life, ironically because she is tired of getting complicated, three-dimensional roles. When the role becomes much meatier, she gets frustrated and loses interest in the movie. Much seen but little remembered character actress Margo Martindale appears multiple times as a sort of actress for hire. Fed up with the limited roles normally offered to her as an older woman, she accepts roles offered to her by Bojack, which include posing as a bank robber and pulling off a real bank heist. Ultimately she turns to a life of crime and relishes her time in jail because she considers it the role of a lifetime.

Most fascinating are Sarah Lynn (Kristen Schaal) and Diane Nygen (Alison Brie), the most important women in Bojack’s life. Sarah Lynn was his TV daughter on the sitcom Horsin’ Around and today is a washed-up former pop princess, crucified by the media who have no use for her now that she’s turned 30. In flashbacks to her teenage years, we see her as a self-obsessed young woman attempting to rebel against the cutesy little girl image with songs that twist her TV nickname, prickly pear into a vaginal euphemism. All her music is about sex and she announces on a talk show that she plans to be sexy forever. But when she hits 30, she’s replaced by new it-girl Sextina Aquafina. Sextina says she grew up with Sarah Lynn’s music, but she is now irrelevant and has no reason to be famous anymore.

Bojack tries to fix his TV daughter, Sarah Lynn

Today, Sarah Lynn is like many of our former child stars. She’s dramatic and out of control, and spends her time popping pills, partying, and trying to kill herself when her boyfriend breaks up with her. Her relationship with Bojack is incredibly complicated, though she’s always looked at him as a father figure and he sees her as a surrogate daughter, they end up sleeping together when Bojack decides to try to “fix her.” Sarah Lynn rightfully calls him out on this, yelling at him for claiming to know how she feels and trying to be her savior. She tells him she has been exploited her whole life, first by her mother, a stage-mom, then by the scores of men who write her every day to tell her she is the first person they ever masturbated to. Bojack, she feels, has no right to try to be her father or her lover.

Young Sarah Lynn looked to Bojack as a father figure

Diane is a writer who meets Bojack when he hires her to ghostwrite his memoirs. Though she is meant to be desirable and is described as attractive, Diane is drawn with an average woman’s body and wears a boxy jacket and thick glasses. In fact, she looks a lot like Daria, a show she’d probably love. The main character and others, fall in love with her and most of the first season is a love triangle revolving around her. Although love triangles are a bit of a tired plot device, it was refreshing to see one involving such a realistic idea of a woman. Diane is no two dimensional dream girl. She’s a writer with a thriving career and intense interests and opinions. She’s sarcastic and well-informed, but she can also be self-centered and brutally ambitious, such as in plot line towards the end of the season where she attempts to publish an unflattering portrayal of Bojack without his permission. It’s crucial that Diane is never made to look like an evil seductress who manipulates Bojack. She’s just a person and even though she is eventually vindicated, it’s acknowledged that it was a terrible thing to do.

Bojack falls for his feminist ghostwriter, Diane — Bojack falls for his ghostwriter, a third wave feminist named Diane

Diane identifies as a third wave feminist, but is unsure what that means for her. In one scene, she enters into a long monologue about pop singer Sarah Lynn who she claims not to think much about. She’s conflicted, on one hand she appreciates how Sarah Lynn has reclaimed her sexuality but on the other, she questions whether it is truly possible to do so in a patriarchal society.

Diane is also an interesting conversation point for discussions of race in animation. The character is Vietnamese, yet she is voiced by a white actress. Though I loved Alison Brie in the role, this casting made me question whether there is a distinction between racebent casting in live action and animated programs. Unlike stereotypical animated characters, like Apu on The Simpsons, Diane does not have either a subtle or exaggerated Vietnamese accent, so there’d be no specific distinction between her and a Vietnamese actress in the role. But does it matter whether white actors lend their voices to animated POCs?

We must not forget that any media project, especially these days, has a meta-textual component, such as interviews, photo shoots, recommendations, and career opportunities for its stars and creators. Though Brie is excellent, this could have been a great opportunity for a Vietnamese actress to make a name for herself. I’m not sure what to think on the issue or whether it is indeed an issue, it just occurred to me as an interesting idea to consider. Kudos to the team behind Bojack for creating an Asian-American woman character to play such an integral part of the story regardless.

Diane is often frustrated with her happy-go-lucky boyfriend Mr. Peanut Butter

Though on multiple occasions the show mentions an in-world personality test, “Zoe or Zelda,” that reduces each person to one of two types, the women on the show are not so easily reduced to virgins or whores. Sensible Diane has a vibrant sex life with her dog-boyfriend Mr. Peanut Butter, while sex-pot Sarah Lynn has given a great deal of thought to her image and desires to control it. It’s great touches like these, and its intricate animal-person analogies that make Bojack Horseman worthy of a watch. Other than its covert feminism, the most unique thing about the program is its sequential story. Unlike most adult animated comedies, that tell one-off self-contained stories, the first season unfolds as a complete a well-paced story arc.

Of course, if you’re not into late night comedies, Bojack may not be the show for you. But I recommend giving it a chance. It starts slow, but only gets better.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

20 Years Later: Powerful Realism and Nostalgia in ‘My So-Called Life’

Twenty years later, we need more of what My So-Called Life gave us a taste of. We need teenage girl protagonists to be sexual, not sexy. We need honest portrayals of what it is to be a teenager–not only for teenagers who need to see themselves in faithful mirrors, but also for adults who are still trying to figure themselves out.

: My So-Called Life

This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as My So-Called Life turns 20.

Our teenage years are often unfulfilled and disappointing. We relentlessly try to find ourselves, to make things good, but those short years are over quickly, and we don’t truly get it until much later.

These years are much like the short-lived My So-Called Life, which aired from 1994 to early 1995, and was canceled after just one season. The protagonist of My So-Called Life, Angela Chase (Claire Danes), is a powerful representation of those short teenage years. She is self-centered, horny, and emotional. She is pulled from every direction, trying to separate from her parents and evolve with new friends. She has high expectations and deep disappointments. Angela and her friends are painfully accurate portrayals of what it is to be a teenager.

As sad and unjust as it is that the show only lasted one season, there’s something poignant about how it was short and open-ended, yet packed such intensity into 19 episodes. My So-Called Life is, essentially, a mirror image of adolescence not only in narrative, but also in format.

: Angela Chase

My So-Called Life is a gold mine for feminist analysis–the show includes many thoughtful critiques of what it means to be a young woman in our culture, what it means to be a wife and mother, what it means to be a man, and what it means to be gay. Topics typically reserved for superficial after-school specials (sexuality, drug use, abuse, coming out) are treated with an intensely real humanity that many critics have argued completely changed the genre of adolescent and family dramas.

Being a teenage girl in our culture is fraught with cultural expectations and disappointments. Angela–along with girlfriends Rayanne and Sharon–are portrayed not as caricatures, not as virgins or whores, not as good girls or bad girls. They are complex and sexual; they are selfish and confused; they are wonderful and awful.

Teenagers are typically–biologically–self-centered and sexual, and the power of nostalgia drives us to consider and reconsider our teen years (in them and after them). My So-Called Life stands the test of time because it deals with these issues through characters and plot lines that reflect reality.

Self-Centered

Early in the season, the writers frame most episodes with lessons that the students are learning in school. Kafka’s Metamorphosis is juxtaposed with Angela changing her looks (dying her hair red) and feeling misunderstood by her parents. Angela sits in a class about JFK’s assassination, and says she’s “jealous” that she hasn’t had that defining moment in life that she’ll always remember where she was when it happened. Malcolm X’s words are turned into a lament about a zit. Students flirt and make out, ignoring the art on a field trip to the art museum.

On the surface, these woven-together stories seem jarring–we watch Angela turn everything into an insignificant comparison to her own life. But this is exactly what we do in adolescence. We pout that nothing important has happened in our lifetime without understanding the weight of history because we think that we are the center of history. There is scientific proof that teenagers’ brains function differently–it’s important to remind ourselves of that.

My So-Called Life, specifically through Angela’s narrative, portrays that era of life perfectly. Creator/writer/producer Winnie Holzman said, “I just went back to what it was like to be a teenager for me. Sure, Angela’s me. But at the risk of sounding. . . whatever, all the characters were me.” Holzman researched further by teaching at a high school for a couple of days, and realized that teenagers were “exactly the same” as they always had been (which is perhaps why the show still seems so real).

: The unending journey to define “self”

This selfishness is not presented with judgment or disdain, though. All of the characters–teens and adults alike–have human motivations, which we sometimes like, and sometimes don’t. Their selfishness is examined through the consequences and normality of being self-centered as a teenager, and how that looks and feels different when one is a parent or teacher. Angela worrying about a zit over Malcolm X’s words seems off-putting, but it’s painfully real.

Angela’s relationships with her friends–Rayanne, Rickie, Brian, and Sharon–also highlight the inflated sense of self that navigates us through those formative years.

Horny

One of my favorite aspects of the show is the way young female sexuality is portrayed. Angela is horny as hell. Those fresh, out-of-control adolescent sexual urges are clear and accurate throughout the series, and the writers deal with teenage sexuality with truth and nuance that is too rare in portrayals of teenage sexuality (especially teenage girls’ sexuality). Angela’s inner monologues about–and eventual makeouts with–Jordan Catalano reveal that intensity.

: Intense

Angela is clearly sexual, but also struggles with the disappointing reality of teenage male sexuality when Jordan tongue-attacks her with a terrible, awkward kiss, or expects sex before she’s ready. She wants him so much, but the expectations and imbalance of sexual power are crushing. Angela is never anti-sex, but she is nervous. She speaks with her doctor about protection, and opens up to Sharon. Her reasons for not being quite ready don’t have to do with her parents or religion–it’s about her. And that’s just how it should be.

Meanwhile, straight-laced Sharon is getting it on constantly. She shares with Angela that the expectations that disregard female agency are problematic, but she enthusiastically enjoys sex. While Sharon seems the most judgmental and prudish, she has a fulfilling and active sex life. Angela realizes–as do we–that sexual acts don’t define a person, but sexuality is an important part of who we are.

Rayanne is known by her peers as promiscuous and “slutty,” but we are also challenged to look beyond that. She wants to define herself, and that’s the label that has stuck–so she decides to be proud of the designation (she and Sharon share sub-plots about their sexual reputations). Her sexual experiences–the drunken night with Jordan being the only time we know she has sex–don’t seem to be healthy or for her. All of the characters needed more seasons to have their stories fully realized, but Rayanne especially needed more than 19 episodes to be explored.

My So-Called Life turns the virgin-whore dichotomy on its head. Young women’s sexuality–the intensity, the confusion, the expectations–is presented realistically, and the message that when it’s good, it’s good, is loud and clear.

: INTENSE

Angela and Jordan’s makeout scenes are, well, amazing, and the female gaze is often catered to. When Angela is skipping geometry study sessions to go make out with Jordan in the boiler room, we understand why she’s doing it. That episode has some excellent commentary on young women’s educational motivations, especially mathematics. When an instructor laments that it’s “so sad” when these smart girls don’t try, another instructor says that it’s because of their low self-esteem.

While that’s not an untrue assessment, it’s also important to recognize that in Angela’s case, she was horny as hell. We brush off boys’ behavior–the idea that they can’t stop thinking about sex in their teen years–but girls are right there, too.

As Angela tells a confused Brian, “Boys don’t have the monopoly on thinking about it.”

My So-Called Life reiterates that idea, which is heartbreakingly rare in depictions of teenage girl protagonists.

: Commentary on the pressures that teenage girls face is woven throughout the show.

Nostalgic

The Greek roots of the word nostalgia are to return (home) with pain. We often think of nostalgia as telling stories with old friends, or looking through old yearbooks as we reminisce. But it’s much more than that.

Angela says, “I mean, this whole thing with yearbook — it’s like, everybody’s in this big hurry to make this book, to supposedly remember what happened. Because if you made a book of what really happened, it’d be a really upsetting book.”

My So-Called Life ends with Angela stepping into a car with Jordan and driving away. Jordan has just met her mother, Patty, and the two sit and visit. Patty has been waiting for her old high-school love interest to stop by for a drink (and a business conversation), but he doesn’t show up. Patty and Jordan share a fairly intimate conversation, and both seem to understand something they hadn’t before.

Jordan comes outside, asks Angela to come along with him, and says that her mom says it’s OK. In understanding her own trajectory from teenager to adult, Patty has released Angela.

It’s sudden, it’s unclear, and it’s vague. It–the show, and adolescence–goes by so quickly, and we can’t fully understand it until we look back at the literal and figurative pictures of our life. Not just the smiling yearbook photos, but those things that remain inside.

We don’t know exactly where Angela is going at the end of My So-Called Life, and neither does she. The restraints and possibilities of adolescence can be overwhelming, and as life changes into adulthood, the restraints and possibilities both tighten and grow. By looking back–in all of its pleasure and pain–into those years of intense growth and confusion, we can better know ourselves.

: Angela rides away with Jordan at the end.

When My So-Called Life originally aired, I was in middle school. Our antenna didn’t pick up ABC, so I wasn’t able to watch it in real time. I knew, however, from the occasional Sassy magazine that I wanted to be Angela Chase, and I wanted Jordan Catalano. Years later, after living through almost all of the plot lines of the show, I watched the entire series. And then again, years after that. I’m struck by how much I can still feel what I felt at 15 by listening to Angela’s internal monologue. Good television, like good literature, can do that–take us, through fiction, back to times and places. Whether those times and places are crushing or celebratory, there is a distinct pain in going back–that nostalgia that shapes us and creates our realities.

: Imagine the power in seeing this ad as a teenage girl: “Yes, I DO know how it feels!”

Twenty years later, we need more of what My So-Called Life gave us a taste of. We need teenage girl protagonists to be sexual, not sexy. We need honest portrayals of what it is to be a teenager–not only for teenagers who need to see themselves in faithful mirrors, but also for adults who are still trying to figure themselves out.

That season of our lives is fleeting, open-ended, and ends abruptly. It’s meaningful but unfortunate that My So-Called Life so accurately portrayed those particular aspects of adolescence.

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Maybe She Could Rescue Him: How a Time Traveler Saves 1950 in Showtime’s ‘Masters of Sex’

‘Masters of Sex’ is not a great show. It’s awkward and safe and seems to think that we’re impressed by watching people masturbate. But it’s also this really strange, kind-of cool story all about the masculine ideal and a time traveler who tries to break the cycle of self-hatred that supports it.

Written by Katherine Murray.

Masters of Sex is not a great show. It’s awkward and safe and seems to think that we’re impressed by watching people masturbate. But it’s also this really strange, kind-of cool story all about the masculine ideal and a time traveler who tries to break the cycle of self-hatred that supports it.

Masters of Sex, if you haven’t been watching or hate-watching it, is a fictionalized account of the work done by of real-life sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson in the late 1950s. Officially, the series is about the study they conducted and the breakthroughs they made in our understanding of human sexuality. Unofficially, it’s a love story, too.

We know from history that the real Masters and Johnson eventually married, and the tension in Masters of Sex isn’t about whether they’ll get together. The tension in Masters of Sex is about whether Virginia can rescue Bill from his sense of self-hatred by freeing him from 1950s gender norms. She is the hero, and that is her quest; if she succeeds – and we think she’ll succeed – her reward will be his love.

Most of what we’ve learned about Bill, so far, has been in service of explaining Virginia’s quest to save him. He’s smart and sensitive and, basically, a good, well-meaning person, but he has a tragic backstory involving an abusive father, and an internalized sense of shame around his own emotions. With his wife – he’s married when he meets Virginia – he acts out the gender roles he’s learned. That is, he treats her kindly, but like something that’s foreign to him; a creature from another planet that he can’t quite understand. He doesn’t feel that he can talk to her about his troubles; he thinks that she depends on him to be a stable presence. He would like her to admire him, and thinks that he would damage their relationship by revealing his true self.

The reality, of course – and this is dramatized well by Masters of Sex – is that Bill’s wife would like nothing more than to be emotionally intimate with him – to know what he’s thinking and feeling, to have a sense that they’re on the same team. Unfortunately, her own ideas about gender are just as antiquated as Bill’s, and she is, in fact, alarmed when he shows signs of strong emotion. She also treats him like something foreign and unintelligible, hiding her own feelings, and acting like he’s more of a guest in their house than someone who actually lives there.

Virginia, just as stereotypes would have it, is the mistress that Bill can be his true self with. It’s a little bit because he looks down on her, a little bit because he respects her, and a lot because Virginia is a time traveler from 2014.

As the character the audience is most invited to identify with, Virginia is the mouthpiece for most of our beliefs. Masters of Sex is awfully proud of itself for telling us things like “the clitoris exists,” but its target audience is people who already know all this stuff. Specifically, the target audience seems to be women like Virginia – smart, single, independent, self-supporting, sex-positive women with liberal values and a soft spot in their hearts for closed-off men. Virginia is us, wearing a dress from the 1950s, and we get to vicariously rescue the 1950s, and Bill, from the backwards social taboos of the time.

It’s a story-telling strategy that’s sometimes extremely annoying, and other times strangely effective.

On the annoying front, Masters of Sex doesn’t usually challenge us. Despite the fact that it’s supposedly about two people who had radical ideas for their time, the show’s pretty safe by today’s standards. It takes the bold stance, for example, that gay people shouldn’t try to turn themselves straight with electroshock therapy. And that women can have careers outside the home. And that people can have sex for recreational purposes. And that you shouldn’t be a dick to someone just because they’re black.

None of these are radical ideas by today’s standards, and we’re invited to look backwards at the 1950s with a sense of satisfaction about how much things have changed. At least so far, there’s very little attempt to examine racism, sexism, or homophobia from an angle that would highlight ongoing problems today. It’s all done retrospectively, like, “Can you believe what people were like?!?” And we share Virginia’s bewilderment and exasperation. She’s essentially A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court with a social rather than technological advantage. If we identify with her, we might enjoy the sense of feeling forward-looking and superior, but we don’t learn very much about ourselves.

Masters and Johnson’s actual research, as presented by the show, isn’t exactly a bag of surprises, either. We watch all of the characters freak out over discoveries like, “women can have multiple orgasms” and “people curl their toes during sex.” Were you aware that not everyone who has sex does so in the missionary position? Or that sometimes they think about something other than the person they’re having sex with? If so, you won’t learn anything new, here.

In some ways, this backward-looking orientation is most frustrating when the show is just barely unable to address information that’s actually useful today. There is, for example, a really topical B-plot about cervical cancer that can’t communicate the most important fact we now know about cervical cancer – that it’s caused by HPV, and that there are vaccines for that. The bitter irony of leading the audience to think about cervical cancer each week, without telling them the one thing they might need to know, is almost too much to take. Instead of learning something that might be of actual use, the audience is invited to feel good about the fact that pap smears are now a common practice.

We’re generally invited, through the benefit of hindsight, to see 1950s America as misguided and conservative, and to see Virginia as a hero who’s fighting a noble battle to achieve the future. We know that, in most cases, history is on her side, and we see that she faithfully represents our values. Somehow, she hasn’t internalized any of the bullshit in her culture. That makes her annoying, sometimes, but it’s also what makes her the perfect champion for Bill – she stands outside of everything that makes him hate himself, and offers the perspective that only a (highly improbable) outsider can give.

The root of Bill’s self-hatred is the masculine ideal. The cornerstone of any really excellent/terrible patriarchy, the masculine ideal is the notion that there is only one really desirable Way for a person to Be. Women are automatically excluded from being that Way, but so are most men. In the USA, and cultures like it, the masculine ideal of the 1950s required things like: heterosexuality; skill in physical combat;

avoiding the outward display of any emotion except, perhaps, anger; and courage in the face of physical danger. Trying to meet the requirements of that ideal – trying to be a “real man” and win approval from one’s peers – could lead to aggression, misogyny, homophobia, and the construction of a private emotional prison where normal feelings like sadness, embarrassment, grief, loneliness, uncertainty, and fear could fester until they got twisted.

The 1950s – the era that present-day conservatives harken back to when they talk about the good old days – is really a peak in the backlash against equal rights for people who weren’t straight, white men. It was a doubling down on rigid ideas that we now understand can hurt everyone – even the straight, white men who supposedly benefit from them.

Virginia, as a time traveler with values from the future, can give Bill something that nobody else – including his well-meaning wife – can deliver. She can give him a space where it’s safe to let go of all of the things he’s been taught about who he should be, and find out who he is underneath. It’s like Idina Menzel on that mountain.

“Fight,” the series’ best and most critically lauded episode so far, is nothing but a really heavy-handed treatise on this point. Bill and Virginia meet to have sex in a hotel, and a hugely symbolic boxing match on television leads Bill to confess, for the first time out loud, that his father used to beat him as a child and that his only form of protest was to take it “like a man” by not allowing himself to reveal how much it hurt him.

Virginia, who is horrified by this, tells Bill that she won’t raise her son to think that that’s the way to be a man.

The episode uses boxing as a metaphor for several other things, but the point it eventually drives at is that the ability to be vulnerable in front of other people is a strength. This is an idea that’s decidedly 2014, where we’re starting to understand the cost that comes from raising people to suppress their feelings, and shifting to a greater emphasis on mental and emotional health.

The idea that a woman can “save” a man by teaching him to talk about his feelings has become a cliché in the genre, but it’s one that makes sense in this setting. Virginia is the spokesperson for a future where feminists have already largely succeeded in challenging the masculine ideal – where everyone has benefited from discovering that there is more than one right Way to Be. Bill’s anguish and emotional isolation are a reminder of why no one should want to go back to the so-called golden era where men were “real men.”

The informative part of the series – “this is how anatomy works!” – isn’t telling us anything new, and the social values it promotes aren’t very challenging, but, if there’s something relevant buried deep within Masters of Sex, it’s the pointed view it takes of masculinity. It shows us how rigid notions of gender hurt everyone, not just specifically women, and highlights not just the distance we’ve traveled, but why it’s important to go there.

The series’ discussion of gender is the rare instance where its visionary characters have a vision that extends into our future. One where we stop feeling nostalgic for the 50s, and look forward to what we’ll become when we’ve let that all go.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.

Morello’s Fractured Relationship with Romance in ‘Orange Is the New Black’

Morello’s abovementioned childlike room, her harping on about how her and Christopher’s romance is “meant to be,” like something out of ‘Notting Hill,’ ‘Pretty Woman’ or ‘Cinderella,’ and her psychotic break that sees her stealing the prison van to break into Christopher’s marital home, shows just how damaging society’s “wedding industrial complex and… [its] need to infantalise grown women,” as Nicky puts it, can be. It’s also an all-too-common one drummed into Western women everywhere they turn.

This guest post by Scarlett Harris originally appeared on The Scarlett Woman and is cross-posted with permission.

One of the most explosive backstories on this season of Orange is the New Black has been Lorna Morello’s.

The Italian-American, played by Australian actress Yael Stone, is presumably in prison for credit card fraud, as the opening segments of her life before Litchfield in episode four of the second season that aired last night on Showcase would indicate. We see a Jersey Shore-esque Morello returning to her chaotic familial home after seeing Twilight at the cinema for the “14^th time.” She retreats from her accusatory sister, ignorant father, wayward nieces and nephews and sick mother to her bedroom which is adorned with posters of West Side Story (the classic tale of Romeo and Juliet in 1950s New York, with a healthy serving of racism, which Morello is inclined to dish out), male celebrities, and wedding collages. She pauses to caress the glossy face of one of them before calling a mail-order luxury clothing company to request a refund for the patchwork Prada platforms she’s currently wearing but claims she never received.

Many of the women of OITNB have been busted for financial fraud—Sophia and Gloria come to mind—so it seems logical that Morello would be in for a similar crime. But as the episode progresses, it is revealed that Morello’s inner demons are much more extensive. During a trip to the post office to retrieve parcels of designer goods she’ll no doubt attempt to get reimbursed for, she “literally crashes into” the infamous Chris-tuh-phuh, as Morello pronounces it. Christopher promptly asks her out for a coffee after their meet-cute, and the rest is history, if the future Litchfield inmate is to be believed.

The juxtaposition between the following flashback scenes—Morello getting ready for a weekend away with Christopher and her trial on charges of stalking, harassment, violating a restraining order and credit card fraud—illustrates the fractured reality she exists in. Despite Christopher electing not to pursue Lorna after their first date, Morello still believes they’re together years later.

Stone plays Morello so sympathetically the audience feels sorry for her when we—or at least her fellow inmates—should approach with caution. The consensus at Litchfield seems to be that Morello’s fantastical romance with Christopher may not be etched in truth and word slowly starts to get around that her former “fiancé” is marrying another woman. When you’re bonding with Crazy Eyes (whom the show is taking pains in its second season not to fetishise and to address by her given name, Suzanne) about unrequited love, it’s clear that something’s not quite right.

Morello’s abovementioned childlike room, her harping on about how her and Christopher’s romance is “meant to be,” like something out of Notting Hill, Pretty Woman, or Cinderella, and her psychotic break that sees her stealing the prison van to break into Christopher’s marital home, shows just how damaging society’s “wedding industrial complex and… [its] need to infantalise grown women,” as Nicky puts it, can be. It’s also an all-too-common one drummed into Western women everywhere they turn.

In a recent Buzzfeed longread, Anne Helen Peterson dissects the films based on Nicholas Sparks’ novels and their contribution to a Taylor Swiftian world where men perform romance and women have it thrust upon them:

“… Many women (and some men) use Sparks’ narratives to replace the lack of emotional intimacy and satisfaction in their own lives and, as a result, cultivate unrealistic ideals about what a relationship—and love—should resemble…

“The Sparks narrative offers a life—and a love story nested within it—that extracts its protagonist from [the concerns of everyday life] and consolidates the demands of life into one, simple task: Open yourself to love, and love in return.”

In a way Morello is like the mirror image of the Santa Barbara shooter, Elliot Rodger: the same but opposite. Rodger took his anger at his lack of attention from women—spurred on by porn and men’s rights forums—out on the female population in general in the most violent way, whereas Morello continues her stereotypically feminine obsession with romance and fixates on one man, dangerously crafting an alternate life with him. In Morello’s fictional existence no one died, but that’s not to say she didn’t try to kill anyone. (In the courtroom she is accused of strapping a homemade bomb to Christopher’s fiancé’s car.) Think that’s too heavy handed a tar with the same brush? They are both criminals with mental health issues, after all.

In one of the closing scenes of the season, Morello simplistically attempts to explain to the cancer-stricken Miss Rosa the plot of one of her favourite movies, Toy Story (again with the juvenile interests–though, to be fair, Toy Story has universal appeal). Her warped grasp of the children’s classic leads Rosa to exclaim, “You have one fucked up view of the world, kid!”

Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based freelance writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about feminism, social issues, and pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter.

The Awesome Women of ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’

Aside from the great characters, female and otherwise, I also want to give props to ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ for being a sitcom set in Brooklyn that isn’t all about white people. In fact, more than half the regular cast are people of color. Even more refreshingly, ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ doesn’t take a ‘Puzzle Place’ approach to diversity where one-and-done token characters fill each “slot” and make room for more white people. And aside from being more like the real world, avoiding tokenism allows for stronger characters who aren’t required to be the sole representative of a supposedly monolithic race. Rosa Diaz is not the be all and end all of Latina women on this show, there’s Amy Santiago one desk over, and they’re completely different. Their race is a part of their character, but not the point of their character.

We TV lovers are in the dog days of summer. Unless you are a MasterChef superfan (Isn’t Cutter the worst!?), a premium cable subscriber (Twitter sure seems to like Masters of Sex), or the type of masochist who watches Under the Dome (get help), the long waiting period between Orange is the New Black and the start of the fall TV season usually gets unbearable around mid-August.

The only possible solutions are to go outside (ew!) or catch up on TV shows you might have missed. And for that second category I humbly submit Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

The cast of 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine' — The cast of *Brooklyn Nine-Nine*

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is so off-the-line formulaic as a workplace sitcom some terrible hipster part of me wanted to hate it. And yes, it is pretty much exactly the same as every other workplace sitcoms you’ve seen, but the ones you’ve loved so much you put the theme song as your ringtone and you drink your coffee out of a tie-in merchandise mug and you named your cat after your favorite character.

Co-created by Mike Schur of Parks and Recreation fame, you can easily map most of the characters in the 99th Precinct to the Pawnee Parks Department. Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg, the nominal lead character) is the best case scenario of what would have happened had Andy Dwyer passed his police academy psych screening. Andre Braugher’s Captain Holt is as resolute and commanding as Ron Swanson, but with the entirely different politics that come with being a gay Black intellectual. There’s even room for TWO Jerrys in the background cast, and one of them is named Hitchcock, which gives me a little thrill every time they say his name.

Relevant to the interests of our readership not-necessarily-sharing-my-surname, the three women in the main cast of Brooklyn Nine-Nine are all AMAZING:

Melissa Fumero’s Amy Santiago is a tightly wound ultra-achiever in the vein of Leslie Knope, but with crushing insecurity in place of Leslie’s joyful drive. Amy still gets it done, closely rivaling Jake’s arrest record, and she’s clearly her own biggest doubter. While I don’t think “frazzled desperate-to-please goody-two-shoes” is a particularly revolutionary female character type, I like how Amy is still respected by the characters and the storytellers despite her neuroses. Like Leslie Knope, she is not judged for her ambition. And even though she can seem as emotionally fragile as spun glass, she’s never treated as insufficiently tough for her job.

Amy salutes herself wearing her Captain's hat in a compact mirror — Amy salutes herself wearing her Captain’s hat in a compact mirror

Meanwhile, Sergeant Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews) struggles with panic attacks, which, while they are sometimes played for laughs, are also not treated as anything shameful. With these characters, Brooklyn Nine-Nine knocks down the masculine “toughness” that we associate with law enforcement characters.

Every bit of that stereotypical toughness is funneled into Stephanie Beatriz’s Detective Rosa Diaz, who makes Parks’ April Ludgate seem like Miss Congeniality. Rosa has a “formal” leather jacket: “the one without any blood on it.” She will not hesitate to tell you “your entire life is garbage” or “your shirt looks like vomit.” Her darkest secret is that she trained as a ballerina, an embarrassment slightly tempered by having been kicked out of the academy for beating up other ballerinas. Rosa is a wish-fulfillment character for every chick who has swallowed her anger one too many times and wishes for a little more fear and respect from the masses.

Unfortunately, Rosa got bogged down in the most unfortunate plot of the first season, as the subject of her partner Boyle’s unrequited “crush” (read: unhealthy obsession). Similar to Andy Dwyer’s creepy attempts to “win back” Ann on Parks and Recreation, it seemed the audience was meant to find Boyle’s clearly unwelcome wooing charming in some way. Fortunately the writers pulled up before the Boyle/Diaz dynamic crashed and burned the entire show by having Boyle move on to another woman romantically and reestablish his relationship with Rosa as a relatively healthy friendship. Boyle was single again by the first season’s end, but I hope we won’t see more allegedly sympathetic harassment. Especially because I’m desperate to see more of Rosa’s actual dating life, which ideally for her consists of “cheap dinner, watch basketball, bone down.”

Finally, there’s Chelsea Peretti’s Gina Linetti, the rare female example a sitcom’s obligatory Prime Oddball in the mold of Reverend Jim and Cosmo Kramer. Gina also shares some DNA with April Ludgate in that she’s an aggressively lazy assistant who is secretly really good at her job, as well as with Tom Haverford for her ego and self-serious ridiculousness (Tom would probably hire Gina’s dance troupe Floorgasm for an Entertainment Seven-Twenty event), and Donna Meagle for her undeniable fabulousness and financial savvy. Gina’s a broad amalgam of a character but she works because Chelsea Peretti holds her together with the same enchantingly dry delivery whether she’s speaking in emoji or soliciting crime from her desk in the precinct or offering surprisingly sincere advice laced with references to The Little Mermaid.

Gina thinks she is "The Paris of people." — Gina thinks she is “The Paris of people.”

Aside from the great characters, female and otherwise, I also want to give props to Brooklyn Nine-Nine for being a sitcom set in Brooklyn that isn’t all about white people. In fact, more than half the regular cast are people of color. Even more refreshingly, Brooklyn Nine-Nine doesn’t take a Puzzle Place approach to diversity where one-and-done token characters fill each “slot” and make room for more white people. And aside from being more like the real world, avoiding tokenism allows for stronger characters who aren’t required to be the sole representative of a supposedly monolithic race. Rosa Diaz is not the be all and end all of Latina women on this show, there’s Amy Santiago one desk over, and they’re completely different. Their race is a part of their characters, but not the point of their characters.

Terry Crews, who plays Sergeant Jeffords, one of the two Black men in command of the precinct, told NBC news:

I was working on this thing for a month before I realized that there’s two black guys running the precinct—and I work on the show! I didn’t even think about that, which is so cool because, oh my God, we have all been there. I’ve turned down a lot of stuff where the message was “We’re going to be diverse!” Give me a break. We’re in Brooklyn. If you don’t make it diverse, it looks funny. We are what Friends should have been.

Have I convinced you to watch this show yet? Season 2 of Brooklyn Nine-Nine premieres on FOX on Sept. 28, so catch up now.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who wishes she had a dance troupe, a dress that makes her look like a mermaid, and a formal leather jacket.

What ‘Baby Daddy’ Can Learn from ‘Parks and Recreation’

Baby Daddy and Parks and Recreation — *Parks and Recreation* and *Baby Daddy*

This is a guest post by Nia McRae.

Baby Daddy is a cute and funny show with a progressive edge. However, it’s not without its flaws. It deconstructs stereotypes in some areas but reinforces stereotypes in other areas. Its issues could be fixed by taking cues from one of my favorite modern comedy shows, Parks and Recreation.
First, the good: BD accomplishes its main goal which is to be funny. The funniest moments usually include Ben’s spitfire mother, Bonnie and goofball friend, Tucker, played by the talented Melissa Peterman and Tahj Mowry respectively. It shines in other ways too:

1. Male stereotypes are deconstructed.

Ben, Tucker, and Danny in Baby Daddy — Ben, Tucker, and Danny in *Baby Daddy*

Ben’s two roommates are Danny–his brother–and Tucker. All three of them are shown handling Emma with tender love and care. Their softness towards her is never framed as emasculating. In the beginning stages, the three bachelors fumble when it comes to taking care of Emma but it has less to do with them being guys and more to do with them being young and inexperienced when it comes to babies.

Danny is a handsome hockey player who predictably is a ladies’ man. In any other show or movie, he would be a dumb and/or mean sports player character or he would be an emotionally-stunted playboy archetype. He can be dumb at times but so can his brother who isn’t a sports player. So, Danny’s occasional dimwittedness is framed more as a family trait than a jock trait. He refreshingly contradicts the jock stereotype by being sensitive, romantic, and sweet. Despite his promiscuity, he is secretly in love with his childhood friend, Riley.

2. Old-fashioned mother stereotypes are dismantled.

Bonnie is far from the 1950s-stereotype perfect mother and that’s what makes her so entertaining. She’s a sassy, loving mother and just like her sons, she enjoys playing the field. Usually women, especially mothers, are expected to be the moral center. Sometimes, she is the voice of reason. But most of the time, she exhibits the same immaturity, narcissism, and selfishness as her sons but never does it go to the point of her being irredeemable. She isn’t demonized for being imperfect and free-spirited. Just like Elaine from Seinfeld, her quirks and flaws make her funny, charming and likeable.

3. Racial minority characters and gay characters aren’t stereotypical.

Tucker is one of the leads and he is African American. His personality has nothing to do with his race. Various racial minorities show up as minor characters throughout the series, never appearing as offensive stereotypes. Positive depictions of gay people are in the episode “The Christening” and a few other episodes too.

Now, let’s move on to the bad:

1. There are too many underwritten female characters.

In a show about a young man raising a daughter, you would think the female characters would be better than this. When it comes to the male characters on BD–like Tucker’s uptight dad, for instance–there are layers to them; they’re never as bad as they seem. However, if they’re not boring pretty faces like Tucker’s girlfriend, Vanessa, then most of the female side characters are just as evil as they seem. They’re also usually the source of conflict–whether it’s Riley’s childhood female rival or Danny’s female general manager. The worst offender was Emma’s mom, Angela, who was already framed as a terrible slut for forgoing being a mother. Her terribleness was further emphasized by having her be an evil seductress who tries to tear Riley and Ben apart.

Solution:

Add more three-dimensional female characters that have quirks and interests the way the male characters do. Every major and minor female character on P and R is unique and interesting because they aren’t solely defined by being a girlfriend. In P and R, April Ludgate could have easily been written as a one-dimensional vixen like Angela. But April’s meanness is not shaped by her sexuality. And every now and then, she shows her softer side. She’s grown over time, showing that she has great admiration and respect for Leslie even if outwardly she pretends to be annoyed by her.

Even though Tammy, Ron’s ex wife, can be argued to be similar to Angela of BD, she was written in a more tongue-in-cheek way for the audience to laugh at-especially considering the fact that the actors that play Ron and “evil” Tammy are married in real life. So, the character was more a parody on the seductress archetype.

Leslie & Tammy on Parks and Recreation — Leslie and Tammy on *Parks and Recreation*

2. There’s too much female rivalry and not enough female friendship.

Tucker, Ben, and Danny are roommates who have a friendship that’s a joy to watch; they joke with each other, they support each other, they tease each other, and they love each other even when they disagree. Their positive male friendship is at the center of the show while positive female friendships are sadly nonexistent. Female characters usually barely interact with each other. When they do, there’s either indifference or an adversarial feeling between them. Even Bonnie succumbs to it; she shows hostility towards the only other prominent female character, Riley. She gets along better with Tucker more than women her own age. There’s one episode where Riley explains she doesn’t have female friends because all girls are catty. I’m sick of male friendships being framed as superior to female friendships.

Cat Fight on Baby Daddy — Cat fight on *Baby Daddy*

Solution:

P and R portrays female friendships so much better by not flattening female characters or their relationship to each other. I’m not asking BD to romanticize female relations either. Leslie Knope gets along better with some women (like Ann) than she does with other women (like Joan Callamezzo) just like she gets along with some men (like Ron) better than other men (like Congressman Jamm). That’s life. The show did have women disliking each other–for example, April disliking Ann. But they also showed women getting along in the form of Ann and Leslie. Who someone gets along with depends more on how their personalities mesh together rather than gender. P and R doesn’t set up a false dichotomy that all women are catty and all men are nice. Women get to be individuals just like the men do. Please follow suit, BD.

Ann & Leslie on Parks and Recreation — Ann and Leslie on *Parks and Recreation*

3. There aren’t enough entertaining platonic male-female relationships

Just like I don’t like gender stereotypes being used to dismiss same-sex friendships between women, I don’t want gender stereotypes being used to dismiss friendships between men and women. If women can’t be friends with women because of cattiness and they can’t be friends with men because of sexual/romantic tension then who can women befriend? The love triangle between Ben, Riley, and Danny and then Ben, Riley, and Angela adds to the archaic belief that men and women can’t be friends. Making Riley the love interest/childhood friend is an easy trope to use to create drama between the male leads. Tucker is the only one of the three male leads that doesn’t have feelings for her.

Solution:

Being friends with people of the opposite gender is important because ideally it can bridge empathy gaps. Leslie and Ron have a mutual respect for each other even when they don’t see eye to eye. Despite Ron being a super macho guy that you would assume to be sexist, he’s actually very supportive of Leslie. Whenever they have disagreements, it’s more to do with her enthusiasm for government than with her gender. They advise each other on different matters and they help each other out when one is in trouble. Their friendship isn’t framed as a consolation prize to the “superior” thing of being a couple. Instead, their friendship is presented as an edifying, significant thing that helps make them better people. And it’s not just about deep connections, friendships between male and females can be fun and lighthearted. Just look at Donna and Tom.

Donna & Tom — Donna and Tom on *Parks and Recreation*

Add more compelling scenes with Tucker and Riley. Add to the community raising Emma by putting in female characters for the male characters to befriend. I’m not banning BD from showing romantic relationships. I’m just saying don’t add fuel to the “friend-zone” fire by showing male-female friendships as this desert/limbo/wasteland. Show the good sides of being platonic the way P and R does.

4. Stop scraping the comedic bottom of the barrel by making fat a continual punch line.

Riley, like Monica from Friends, goes from being fat and insecure to being skinny, still insecure, but more conventionally attractive and therefore, more aesthetically pleasing to the boy she likes. There are many jokes that refer to Riley once being fat. Danny loved Riley even when she was larger which I guess is supposed to show he has a heart of gold. But chubby women shouldn’t be framed as a walking punch line nor should they be viewed as unattractive beasts that only the purest hearted of men could love/pity.

Solution:

Take Donna of P and R for instance. She’s confident, witty, and beautiful and she has no trouble attracting men. She carries herself well and dresses in flattering clothing. She’s shown doing the rejecting rather than being rejected.

Donna on Parks and Recreation — Donna on *Parks and Recreation*

She doesn’t serve as a thing to be pitied. Unlike Riley, her weight isn’t a running gag. Riley’s transformation from ugly duckling to swan didn’t have to be the same old cliché of physical transformation. Why not have made her shyness the true problem instead of her perceived physical unattractiveness? Having her attractiveness stem from becoming more confident and vivacious would have been a nice change from the weight loss arc. It’s too late to alter her character back story now, so I suggest stopping the fat jokes altogether. Also, maybe introduce a Donna-like female character whose weight isn’t her sole defining trait.

I can see BD is trying to be an enlightened comedy and it has a lot of potential. By climbing out of its cliché pitfalls, it can become a truly modern show just like P and R has done. Not only can it improve in the ways I suggested and still remain funny, it can be even funnier. After all, the best humor comes from truth, not from stereotypes (unless you’re parodying those stereotypes, of course).

Nia McRae graduated summa cum laude from Medgar Evers College where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Liberal Studies with a concentration in history. She has a strong passion for critiquing racial and gender politics in the media and putting it in historical context.

‘Orange Is the New Black’: The Crime of Passion in Media

‘OITNB’ does not always blame the id. It also wonders whether larger societal forces are culpable too. Take, for instance, adorable Lorna (Yael Stone) a modern day zeitgeist for Bridezillas. As a compulsive shopper, she’s a victim of the consumer industrial complex that taught her happiness and fulfillment can be bought. When a cute man rejects her after one date, she realizes she can’t buy or scam her way into love so it triggers a fatal attraction in her. Pornstache’s adopted patriarchal mindset that women are merely pleasure objects leaves him jobless, in jail, and alone. Officer Healey’s misogyny leads him to procure a “traditional” wife via mail order, only to discover that true companionship can’t be bought or found through biased gender roles.

This is a guest post by Katrina Majkut.

Orange Is The New Black’s second season reveals more about the lives and crimes of its supporting characters. What lies at the heart of season two is not the misdeeds these women committed that account for their imprisonment, but the relationships surrounding them and their personal desires that ultimately contributed to it.

This is a recurring theme in Jenji Kohan’s work. Consider Kohan’s first breakthrough female character, Nancy Botwin in Weeds. Botwin, a dependent housewife, turns to drug dealing once she realizes her lifestyle choice left her financially destitute. Kohan, like many women before her – Simone de Beauvoir to Betty Friedan, iterates that the real crime is the one where women believe relationships are a means to an end.

The Atlantic’s Megan Garber argues that traditional Rom-Coms are a dying Hollywood genre because they don’t include contemporary online dating. I respectfully disagree; OITNB is arguably a new age Rom-Com (plus drama) that still operates on dial-up (Wi-Fi is too fancy for that prison). It merely takes the genre’s traditional trite heterosexual storylines, the romantic city backdrops, and the saccharine plots and puts them into solitary confinement. It then throws away the key.

OITNB reinvigorates this genre by exploring more dynamic and diverse relationships: platonic and romantic, internal and external. Unlike in Rom-Coms, sex is not a driving force in OITNB. It’s merely a perk and even then can lead to complications like Officer Bennett (Matt McGorry) and Dayanara’s (Dascha Polanco) pregnancy. And the show breaks new ground in this obsolete genre with its almost all-female cast. Rom-Coms want viewers to believe that problems will resolve themselves within a relationship; Kohan’s version suggests that’s where they start.

Piper (Taylor Shilling) lies at the heart of this theory. Season two reveals how much her relationship with Alex (Laura Prepon) has negatively impacted her life. However, Piper is not committing crimes in the name of her passion for Alex. In fact, we learn her poor decision-making stems from her relationship with her parents, their habit of obscuring the truth, and her father’s infidelity. Piper’s story makes a compelling argument that one’s nurturing is more influential over personal nature. Maria Ruiz (Jessica Pimental) supports this idea by begging her taciturn boyfriend to talk to their daughter so she grows into a well-adjusted child.

To what purpose Piper is driven to commit these crimes has yet to be revealed, but the question highlights OITNB’s most interesting angle on the new age Rom-Com genre – desire. Season two unveils that the characters’ relationships are merely conduits to attain more intangible, inherent passions like – power, safety, belonging, fortune, favor, excitement, loyalty, relevance, etc.

A bloody Piper on OITNB — A bloody Piper on *OITNB*

This is most evident with Season two newcomer, Vee (Lorraine Toussaint), who, rather than quietly ride her jail time out, is driven by a passion for power and sets out to take Red’s. She’s highly aware of her psychological needs… and others’, which is how she manages to manipulate several women into doing her bidding. She plays off these characters’ needs for family, connection and approval, like Taystee’s (Danielle Brooks), who despite her book smarts, turns to drug dealing in the pursuit of motherly love. Viewers quickly learn that one can only be as healthy and wise as the company one keeps.

That also includes the relationship people have with themselves. In OITNB’s subtle exploration of nature versus nurture, viewers are also shown a compelling argument that personal nature also influences decision-making. As nature drives needs, a person can easily become his or her own worst enemy. Take for instance formerly pro-choice Pennsatucky (Taryn Manning), who, eager for affection from an inattentive boyfriend, quickly switches sides when she realizes how to earn the esteem of the pro-lifers. She’s willing to permanently win their worship by taking the life of a clinic doctor. Sister Ingalls (Beth Fowler) continues to protest despite ones from the Catholic Church, because who is she without her activist conviction more so than without Jesus? Miss Rosa’s (Barbara Rosenblat) boyfriend introduced her to bank robbing, but it was after her first heist that she realized she had a knack for it.

OITNB does not always blame the id. It also wonders whether larger societal forces are culpable too. Take, for instance, adorable Lorna (Yael Stone) a modern day zeitgeist for Bridezillas. As a compulsive shopper, she’s a victim of the consumer industrial complex that taught her happiness and fulfillment can be bought. When a cute man rejects her after one date, she realizes she can’t buy or scam her way into love so it triggers a fatal attraction in her. Pornstache’s adopted patriarchal mindset that women are merely pleasure objects leaves him jobless, in jail, and alone. Officer Healey’s misogyny leads him to procure a “traditional” wife via mail order, only to discover that true companionship can’t be bought or found through biased gender roles.

Lorna & Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" in OITNB — Lorna and Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” in *OITNB*

None of these characters is committing crimes in the name of passion per se, but their unrequited desires are usually leading them toward a perpetual cycle of bad decisions, which, for most, result in crimes. With such skewed risk and reward results, viewers have to wonder if they’re aware of what drives their poor decisions.

The prison setting provides good insight into this. Stripped of life’s comforts, the prisoners are faced with meeting the basics of Maslow’s hierarchy. Meals and a roof are nominally provided, but their social and psychological needs remain elusive. It’s not that people in love do stupid things (though that can happen), but people are willing to assume certain risks if it means earning, winning, or attaining whatever it is that they are seeking. Whether the individual characters know these desires does not ensure their survival or success, which is perfectly captured in Vee’s final scene. Soso (Kimiko Glen) sums up the importance of well-rounded relationships: “We should be leaning on each other, finding support in our fellow prisoners. So we’re not isolated…. I need a friend.”

Viewers learn that community is necessary to survive inside prison, but more importantly outside too. Matriarch Red (Kate Mulgrew), who has struggled the most with family, power, and support, appears to be reaching this important arch. This becomes evident as she gathers with her estranged prison family to break bread and offer an olive branch. Her benevolence and selflessness is rubbing off on her family too, such as when Nicky seeks help with her sobriety, who then offers Lorna the recognition of love she’s always desired (even if it’s platonic). Red mirrors the sentiment Kohan is not so subtly reaching at – that failure is inevitable if we let unhealthy relationships and desires define us. Like jail, they can easily hold people back.

Kohan’s spin on female media dives much deeper into characters and relationships than the now-suffering traditional Rom-Com genre. Rom-Coms’ superficiality is its biggest crime, which ultimately led to its lack of popularity and box-office support. OITNB is a compelling game-changer by highlighting the true nature and depth of women’s desire and making their relationships secondary.

However, it’s important to bring up The Atlantic’s controversial article by Noah Berlatsky, “Orange Is the New Black’s Irresponsible Portrayal of Men,” who accuses OITNB from his seat of male privilege that “the problem is that the ways in which OITNB focuses on women rather than men seem to be linked to stereotypically gendered ideas about who can be a victim and who can’t.” It seems that OITNB has also shaken up the crime and punishment genre.

First, he couldn’t be more off the mark about people being overly generous in their sympathy toward female victims of violent crime. If he were right, rape on US campuses wouldn’t be such an egregious current event. His lack of sympathy for victims sounds eerily like victim blaming, but I digress. Secondly, neither OITNB, nor this article, is suggesting these women are victims of their own unfulfilled desires; many take pride in their crimes! The show is merely trying to get to the psychological root of the misdeeds and decisions and if the prisoners can learn from them.

What makes OITNB such compelling entertainment is the same substance that Berlatsky criticizes. The show redefines an entertainment genre and the traditional characterization of women and prisoners. Based on Berlatsky’s argument, for example, there wouldn’t be any dynamic movies featuring female CEOs because 95.2 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions are filled by men and they’ve only ever been portrayed as Gordon Gekkos. So in Bertlatsky’s, world men deserve better portrayals first. That’s the thing he misunderstands about OITNB‘s psychoanalysis of desire–if we don’t understand what drives us, we run the risk of using our male privilege to ostracize and enrage minorities. ¿Comprende, Bertlatsky?

Media’s crime is portraying women or prisoners with limited scope and vapid storylines. Kohan’s desire to shake up two very stagnant media genres has left many feeling blindly robbed of a genre they once controlled, but for others it’s filling an empty gulf in entertainment. Season two begins to unravel the mysteries surrounding the inmates’ incarceration. It offers an intimate peek into how the nature of relationships is ultimately driven by personal desires. OITNB is honest in admitting that healthy, trustworthy, selfless, and supportive relationships are as elusive for everyone as that freedom all the inmates desire. But the real culprit is that passion, which without understanding, can get anyone in trouble in the first place.

Katrina Majkut (My’ kit) is the founder of www.TheFeministBride.com. It hopes to inspire a new generation of newlyweds who want unique and egalitarian wedding ideas to fit their modern lifestyles. It aims to empower couples to walk down the aisle as equals. As a writer, lecturer, and research-based artist, Majkut is dedicated to understanding and exploring social narratives and civil issues in Western marriage and wedding culture. She is represented by Carol Mann Agency in New York City. Please follow The Feminist Bride on Twitter @FeministBride and on Facebook.

The Women of ‘True Detective’ – Madonnas and Whores

Shots of Lisa emphasize her youth, her beauty, the perkiness of her breasts, and the roundness of her ass. Unlike Maggie, she is very sensual and perhaps the opposite of nurturing. She is openly mocking toward Marty and refuses to cater to him emotionally. Marty seems to see Lisa as a necessary evil; she allows him to deal with all the pain and degradation he sees in his job. At one point Marty says in a voiceover sequence says: “You gotta take your release where you find it, or where it finds you. I mean, in the end it’s for the good of the family”–implying that having Lisa in his life allows him to get out his “animal” urges, allowing him to be able to be a good husband and father to his family when he gets home.

As often happens when you live on an island in the South Pacific, I was late to the party with True Detective. Despite the fact that at its core it’s a show about two white dudes trying to save a bunch of ladies who are already dead, I found the show to be quite captivating because of the relationship that grows between the two anti-hero leads: Marty, played by Woody Harrelson and Rust, played masterfully by Mathew McConaughey. Unfortunately the depth afforded the two leads is not replicated for any female characters on the show. These are largely made up of sex workers who Rust and Marty come across in their investigations. There have been many analyses of the show’s portrayal of sex workers so I won’t delve into that. However I do want to talk about how the two female characters, who are perhaps most central to the show, personify a Madonna-Whore dichotomy. These are Maggie, played by Michelle Monaghan, who portrays Marty’s long-suffering wife and Lisa, played by Alexandra Daddario, who is his much younger mistress.

It is pretty easy to see how Maggie is the classic Madonna. She is portrayed as feminine and virtuous, taking care of Marty, raising his children, looking after their home, etc. At the beginning of the season she is essentially sexless. Her initial interactions with Rust are not really flirtatious but simply an extension of her maternal role. She expresses caring and concern over his mental health and shares in his sorrow over the death of his child. She nurtures him and he appreciates her for it. We don’t really know anything about Maggie outside of her relationship to Marty; everything about her seems to be subsumed into caring for him and their children.

For Lisa on the other hand, her sexuality is the largest part of her character, casting her as the Whore to Maggie’s Madonna. Shots of Lisa emphasize her youth, her beauty, the perkiness of her breasts, and the roundness of her ass. Unlike Maggie, she is very sensual and perhaps the opposite of nurturing. She is openly mocking toward Marty and refuses to cater to him emotionally. Marty seems to see Lisa as a necessary evil, she allows him to deal with all the pain and degradation he sees in his job. At one point Marty says in a voice-over sequence: “You gotta take your release where you find it, or where it finds you. I mean, in the end it’s for the good of the family”–implying that having Lisa in his life allows him to get out his “animal” urges, allowing him to be able to be a good husband and father to his family when he gets home.

Rust dismisses Lisa as “crazy pussy” despite the fact that all of her behaviour seems to be quite reasonable considering the circumstances. When they end up in the same bar on their respective dates it is not Lisa who loses control, it is Marty. He is unable to keep his eyes on her and ends up approaching her to harass her. It is Marty, not Lisa, who cannot accept that she has ended the relationship, and it is most certainly Marty, not Lisa, who gets intensely jealous and completely crosses the line by going to her house and beating and threatening her new boyfriend. By any reasonable measure it is Marty not Maggie who is acting “crazy,” but Marty is a man and is entitled to a degree of autonomy and the ability to act out from time to time without facing any consequences for it. Lisa has no such luxury as a woman who has sex with a married man. This is made abundantly clear when she tries to confront him at the courthouse where she works and where Marty is testifying.

Lisa repeatedly tells Marty that he cannot disrespect her like this, that his actions will have consequences. When she confronts him at court, he treats her like a hysterical female despite the fact she has very legitimate reasons for both being furious at him and confronting him openly. It seems logical for her next move to be to tell his wife, however Marty’s reaction is one of fury and confusion. He seems deeply confused that Lisa would firstly, act with her own agency and secondly, act in a way to hurt him. Despite everything he has done to Lisa, Marty seems think that Lisa might be a whore but she is HIS whore and the fact that she would act against him is incomprehensible.

Maggie, being the long-suffering and virtuous Madonna that she is, takes Marty back eventually and he behaves himself for a time. The upshot of all of this is that in the True Detective universe women are clearly categorized – women who are valuable and worthy and women who are not. As Lisa fulfills the role of whore in his life he feels like he can treat her however he pleases. Whereas with Maggie, who is a virtuous Madonna, Marty must work hard to earn back her love and trust. This explains why Marty reacts so violently when his daughter is found in a car with two boys. He has to punish the boys for marking his daughter as a Whore and not a Madonna. The dichotomy also plays out in the final end of Maggie and Marty’s marriage. In order to ensure that the relationship will end for good, Maggie has to cast herself in the role of Whore by having sex with Rust. To her this is the only way by which Marty will not try and earn his way back into her life and her guess is correct. Once Marty realizes she has slept with Rust she is ruined to him and the relationship is finally over.

The one positive to me in all of this is the portrayal of Lisa. While Marty does his hardest to push her down and treat her like she is worthless because she sleeps with him, she constantly asserts her agency. From the very first time we see her, turning the tables on Marty and handcuffing him to the bed, right to when she tells Maggie about their affair, she is constantly challenging Marty’s assumptions about her place. This at least serves to disrupt the notion that women who fit the role of Whore are passive and subject to the whims of men. Lisa is also not disposable; she is the one who decides when the relationship should end and firmly asserts the boundary even when Marty acts in ways that are both violent and childish.

Overall, however, the show fell into lazy tropes about women and the ways in which it explored them were not particularly interesting or revolutionary. Hopefully the next season does better.

Gaayathri Nair is currently living and writing in Auckland, New Zealand. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Story and tweet her @A_Gaayathri

Physical and Mental Health in ‘Orange is the New Black’

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Sophia leads the inmates in an episode-long exploration of “which hole” pee comes out of and the importance of knowing your body. This season really attempts to get at life in America’s underfunded and overcrowded minimum security prison system. While there’s still a ways to go in achieving a realistic portrayal of the dire reality many incarcerated women face, it’s the only piece of pop culture striving to do so.

Orange is the New Black on Netflix — *Orange is the New Black* on Netflix

This guest post by Scarlett Harris originally appeared on The Scarlett Woman and is cross-posted with permission.

Whereas last year’s inaugural season of Netflix’ women’s prison effort, Orange is the New Black, introduced us to the myriad characters in Litchfield Penitentiary through the incarceration of the WASPy Piper Chapman, this year is all about the more diverse women that wear orange (well, mostly beige).

Specifically, we see the challenges of staying physically and mentally healthy in America’s prison industrial complex.

Last season we did see some of these issues come to light; transgender inmate Sophia Burset, played by the incomparable Laverne Cox, had her hormone medication limited due to concerns about the drug’s side effects, while Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren’s mental illness was a comedic calling card for the show.

The incomparable Laverne Cox as Sophia Burset

This year Suzanne’s backstory gets more airtime, as well as an explosive trajectory for Lorna Morello, which reveals that though both women probably need psychological counseling, they’re not going to get it at the indebted Litchfield. Instead, their issues fall through the cracks so much so that only Nicky is privy to exactly what Morello did to land her in prison.

Season two has been applauded for giving more airtime to the minor characters who also happen to be from racial minorities: Gloria, the Hispanic cook who took over the kitchen from Red and is serving time for welfare fraud, and her Latina cohorts; Vee, Taystee and Poussey’s familial-love triangle cum drug ring; and Rosa, the bank robber with terminal ovarian cancer.

There’s also been an influx of older women this season, whom feminist writer Sady Doyle describes as a “knitting circle” with “an alarming tendency to shiv people.” This includes dementia-ridden Jimmy, who wanders the grounds (and even inadvertently escapes!) looking for her presumably long-dead husband, Jack. Due to her deteriorating mental state, Jimmy is given “compassionate leave” which is revealed to be not-so-compassionate when you take into account that she has no family to look after her and is without the mental faculties to secure herself a home or care. Inmate Frieda predicts she’ll be out on the streets and “dead within a week.”

OITNB Elderly Inmate — Jimmy is released on “compassionate leave”

Jimmy’s release is apparently due to the above mentioned “budget cuts,” which seem to be happening all too regularly at Litchfield. Reporter Andrew Nance contacts Piper’s ex-fiance, writer Larry, and later Piper herself, to see if he can get the inside scoop on the missing millions from Litchfield.

There was talk of the building of a new gym, but that money—along with the gym—is nowhere to be found. The inmates’ bathrooms are leaking raw sewage and they have no heating in the Eastern winter. The prison’s dire financial state comes to a festering head in the penultimate episode of the season as a storm rips through Litchfield, leaving the prison flooded and without power, a backup generator, or whatever functioning plumbing they had left.

These appalling conditions contribute to newcomer Brooke Soso, Yoga Jones, Sister Jane and some girls from Pensatucky’s former laundry crew going on a hunger strike. Sister Jane’s past as an activist comes to light, and let’s just say she’s not as selfless as she makes herself out to be. Having said that, though, she berates prison administrator Caputo for releasing Jimmy with no accountability:

“The elderly are the fastest growing population in prison and they have special needs. So-called ‘compassionate release’ in lieu of care is completely unacceptable. You can’t dump sick old ladies on the street. It’s unconscionable, inhumane and illegal.”

Surely Rosa would be a better candidate for compassionate release as she has weeks to live?

Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based freelance writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about feminism, social issues, and pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter.

Not Exactly the New ‘Buffy’: The Many Failings of ‘Supernatural’

The simplistic machismo of ‘Supernatural’ is particularly frustrating because there is so much potential for the show to challenge the norms of conventional masculinity – and yet it just doesn’t.

Written by Max Thornton.

Early in my embarrassingly emotional addiction to Supernatural, a friend pointed out that Supernatural picks up right where Buffy the Vampire Slayer left off – not only chronologically, having begun just two years after Buffy ended, but also in terms of the characters’ ages and stages in life. The Buffy gang took us demon-slaying through high school and college, while the Supernatural boys launch us on a quarter-life-crisis monster hunt as a career.

Both shows use a campy sensibility to explore questions of family, loyalty, and identity through monster metaphors. Both were resurrected after a self-contained five-season run to flounder a bit in seeking direction for continuing. Both have passionate fanbases who love to overanalyze every detail of the show.

Unfortunately, the major distinction between them arguably reflects a disturbing turn in US society at large: from the ongoing war on reproductive agency to the escalating violence against trans women, misogyny seems to be on the uptick.

It would, of course, be disingenuous to claim that the Joss Whedon brand of feminism is above reproach. We’ve covered the issues here at Bitch Flicks many times before, but the fact is, everything we criticize Whedon for – his failings with respect to race, sexuality, gender – is dialed up to 11 in Supernatural.

On the upside, they're really really pretty — On the upside, they’re really really pretty

There’s a certain charmingly riot-grrrl sensibility about the fabled origin of the concept for Buffy, Whedon’s well-documented desire to subvert the horror-movie cliché of the petite blonde victim by turning her into the superhero who punches monsters and stabs vamps. Ongoing critique of the whole “strong female character” trope problematizes the simplicity of this image, but only the most determined of naysayers could deny that Buffy Summers is a truly well-rounded, three-dimensional female character.

Supernatural, by contrast, has absolutely no feminist ambitions whatsoever. It’s a show about two estranged brothers reuniting to spend (at least) a decade working through their vast and multitudinous daddy issues by hunting and killing demons. The hunter substratum in which Dean and Sam Winchester operate is pretty traditionally macho, featuring a lot of roadtripping around the lower 48 in a ’67 Chevy Impala, listening to classic rock, being emotionally unavailable to an identikit parade of conventionally attractive women, and bottling up secrets from each other until they emerge at the most inconvenient possible moment for a melodramatic climax of raw fraternal honesty and man-tears.

The simplistic machismo of Supernatural is particularly frustrating because there is so much potential for the show to challenge the norms of conventional masculinity – and yet it just doesn’t.

After its first few seasons, which were more broadly monster-centered, Supernatural has turned its focus heavenward, to the metaphysical ministries of angels and demons. Now, a show that poaches so liberally from every belief system it’s ever met should be able to have some fun here with sexuality and gender. Angels in much of Christian tradition are ungendered beings of pure spirit, so it would make sense for the show’s angels to routinely transgress gender norms in the human bodies they take on as their vessels. It would be a great way to portray the angels’ non-humanity, showing them unwittingly and uncomprehendingly steamrolling over human gender roles because they simply do not know or care about this petty aspect of human life.

Alas, the show takes the lazy way out, adhering to the most narrowly patriarchal interpretation of angel gender. Most of the important angels are male, the female ones are seductive temptresses, and there’s no crossing or blurring of gender boundaries.

This is especially egregious, because the UST between Dean Winchester and the angel Castiel is off the charts. “Destiel” is Tumblr’s favorite romantic pairing, and it’s not hard to see why.

"NO HOMO" -- The CW — “NO HOMO” — The CW

The chemistry between actors Jensen Ackles and Misha Collins could lay the foundation for corroboration of Dean’s obvious yet canonically unacknowledged bisexuality, for an in-depth exploration of angelic nature, for a thorough dismantling of the gender binary… but of course absolutely none of that has happened. Instead, the show has taunted fans with an ongoing equilibrium of cynical queerbaiting, while acting as though a handful of episodes featuring a nerdy redheaded lesbian femme constitutes sufficient compensation.

Supernatural‘s other greatest sin is its wanton murder of female characters. Buffy may have come under a lot of criticism for fridging a beloved female character, but Supernatural winkingly lampshades its tendency to fridge women as if that somehow makes it okay.

I won’t pretend I don’t love Supernatural – I’m the middle of three brothers, so it always had me on that count alone – but I also can’t pretend that it’s not a profoundly, epically, perhaps fatally flawed show. I’ll watch the forthcoming tenth season, and I’ll hope that it gets better, but I know better than to hold my breath.

_______________________________________

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax. He wishes he knew how to quit Supernatural.