On Television – Page 20

Rape as Narrative Device in ‘American Horror Story’

I recently began watching ‘American Horror Story’ on Netflix to see what all the hullaballoo was about, and I quickly became a die-hard fan of the series. I’ve heard some feminist criticism that popular television’s rape trope is abused and unnecessary. Many viewers find rape scenes more difficult to endure than the goriest and bloodiest of murder scenes in film and on TV. ‘AHS’ depicts rape in each of its three seasons (season four: “Freak Show” begins in October of this year), and I’ve been trying to make some sense of these scenes: all very different, yet centered around the idea that rape is its own horror, worse than murder. Sexual violence in film has always been controversial, in part because it works as an acknowledgment of something so many victims are afraid to share or discuss, even with other victims. ‘AHS’s handful of rape scenes reference gender roles, mental illness, and identity politics, and do in fact have a place in the storylines in which we find ourselves so invested.

Written by Jenny Lapekas.

SPOILERS GALORE, PEOPLE!

I recently began watching American Horror Story on Netflix to see what all the hullaballoo was about, and I quickly became a die-hard fan of the series. I’ve heard some feminist criticism that popular television’s rape trope is abused and unnecessary. Many viewers find rape scenes more difficult to endure than the goriest and bloodiest of murder scenes in film and on TV. AHS depicts rape in each of its three seasons (season four: “Freak Show” begins in October of this year), and I’ve been trying to make some sense of these scenes: all very different, yet centered around the idea that rape is its own horror, worse than murder. Sexual violence in film has always been controversial, in part because it works as an acknowledgment of something so many victims are afraid to share or discuss, even with other victims. AHS’s handful of rape scenes reference gender roles, mental illness, and identity politics, and do in fact have a place in the storylines in which we find ourselves so invested.

We frequently discover rape in the horror genre for obvious reasons, and the well-known rape-revenge narrative (I Spit on Your Grave, Last House on the Left) is present on AHS, as well. While this marker of feminist feedback surfaces in the series, the show also works to introduce the rare female-on-male rape scene (a game-changer, for sure–see Descent) along with some very disturbing mommy issues.

AHS addresses all of our darkest fears, but the good news is that horror actually helps us to deal with our personal fears because it gives them shape and helps us to rationalize our feelings, thus unshackling us from the unknown and destroying our dread in the process. The moment something mysterious is given a name, its spell over us is broken, and we’re free to discover something else that goes bump in the night. Girls and women are told that rape is the worst thing that can happen to us (“He could have killed you…or worse”), and it’s no surprise that we find it in every season of AHS thus far, so I think it’s worthwhile to consider how the show constructs these unnerving scenes and to assess our response to them.

AHS offers the recurring theme of characters’ pasts catching up to them, reminding us that we can’t outrun the tragic mistakes we’ve made; Ben impregnates his young mistress in “Murder House,” Anne Frank recognizes Dr. Arden as an ex-Nazi in “Asylum,” and Fiona spends eternity in a farmhouse with the Axe Man for being such a wicked bitch in “Coven.” It would only make sense that the show’s rapists pay for their crimes, and this is our reward for watching some very problematic and complex rapes for three seasons.

In season one, “Murder House,” Vivien (Connie Britton) is raped by “the Rubber Man,” who is a stranger to us for a few episodes, until we discover that he’s actually Tate. The well-intentioned Ben finally forces him to admit that he raped his wife and fathered one of Vivien’s twin boys. Obviously, Tate is troubled; he shoots up his school, killing several students, and also sets his stepfather on fire, which permanently disfigures him, but we root for him anyway–not simply because female fans are in love with Evan Peters’ charm and good looks, but because we want to believe that deep down Tate is a good guy who loves Violet. It’s also significant that Tate dons the creepy rubber suit when he kills and rapes; in this way, Tate forfeits any identity associated with the costume, as if an idea were assaulting and impregnating Vivien, rather than a teenage boy.

We see Tate's potential to become a good person when he's with Violet. — We see Tate’s potential to become a good person when he’s with Violet.

Plenty of innocent people are injured and killed throughout the series: the eerie yet lovable Addy is hit and killed by a car in “Murder House,” Grace is savagely killed with an axe by Alma in “Asylum,” and Nan is drowned in a bathtub by Fiona (cinematic goddess Jessica Lange) and Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett) in “Coven” precisely because she is “innocent,” and the guilty parties always seem to pay for their crimes, in one form or another. For example, the mentally disabled Nan (the lovely and talented Jamie Brewer has Down Syndrome in real life) is sacrificed to Papa Legba (a sort of voodoo Boogie Man) as an innocent, but Fiona explains, “She killed the neighbor, but the bitch had it coming,” an example of the show’s signature black humor and also our willingness as viewers to play judge, jury, and executioner as we watch the addictive carnage of AHS. After all, the oh-so-devout neighbor did kill her husband and son both, magnifying the hypocrisy we often encounter in seemingly the most pious of individuals. Whether we’ll admit that we gain some joy and satisfaction from watching this horrid lady drink bleach and die determines what kind of viewers and people we happen to be.

I think one of the themes AHS wishes to convey is that none of us are entirely innocent…or evil for that matter. “Original sin” runs rampant throughout season two, “Asylum,” where many scenes are structured around religion and humanity’s treatment of God as deity, concept, and man’s invention. In this season, Lana is chained to a bed and raped by Dr. Thredson, a man she trusted and confided in before he abducts her. Because of his deep-seated abandonment issues with his mother, he declares, “Baby needs colostrum” and begins “nursing” from the helpless Lana. Since colostrum is the first milk produced during pregnancy, this sentiment is deeply symbolic, as the nourishment ensures bonding between mom and baby. Lana’s rape serves as a catalyst for her journalistic career and bestselling memoir, and she ultimately kills the product and evidence of the crime: her estranged son, who’s just as whacked out as his father.

At times, Lana tries to appeal to the doctor's obsession with his mother in order to escape. — At times, Lana tries to appeal to the doctor’s obsession with his mother, in order to escape.

After an exorcism is performed on a patient, of course Satan chooses the most innocent and pious resident at Briarcliff Manor: Sister Mary Eunice; yet, we’re not prepared to watch her rape the good-hearted Monsignor. An important current discussion surrounding rape culture is how any woman can overpower a man, and this scene utilizes the binary of good and evil to build on that reality. This scene also works well because the Monsignor seems to be fighting biology, trying desperately to resist what he really wants–sex with a beautiful woman, the very thing God tells him he must resist at all cost. Fittingly, the Monsignor is the one to finally rid Briarcliff of the evil spirit by throwing the sister down to the ground level, killing her (symbolism, much?!). This rape, then, is the climax of the devil’s reign at Briarcliff before he’s sent back to hell. When a strange little girl is abandoned at Briarcliff, Sister explains, “All I ever wanted was for people to like me.” Her possession story can be seen as the Sister gaining some control and self-confidence in both her personal life and her duties at the mental hospital, but sacrificing her virtue in the process. Sister Jude (Jessica Lange) tells her, “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, Sister, but it’s a decided improvement,” alerting us to the idea that we can find evil more appealing than righteousness.

Sister Mary Eunice tells the Monsignor, “Your body disagrees with you.” When he tries to explain, “I gave my body to Christ,” she (Satan) responds, “What has he given to you?” — Sister Mary Eunice tells the Monsignor, “Your body disagrees with you.” When he tries to explain, “I gave my body to Christ,” she counters, “What has he given to you?”

In season three, “Coven,” we find the rape-revenge narrative when Madison is gang-raped at a frat party in New Orleans. There’s some obvious foreshadowing when she tells a boy to get her a drink and asks him if he wants to be her slave. Within rape culture, Madison’s assault can be seen as “putting her in her place.” When the boys flee the party, she uses her powers to flip their bus and not only kill everyone onboard but break their bodies into pieces. Probably the only kind thing she does throughout season three, Madison helps Zoe to put Kyle (Evan Peters) back together using the body parts of his frat brothers. Madison says, “We take the best boy parts, attach them to Kyle’s head, and build the perfect boyfriend.” The grotesque objectification of the male body (in death, no less) is oddly refreshing. Kyle’s heart, soul, and mind are still intact after he regains his senses, and he eventually falls in love with Zoe.

Madison tells Zoe that Kyle is still "kind of cute," even when he's in a thousand pieces in a morgue. — Madison tells Zoe that Kyle is still “kind of cute,” even when he’s in a thousand pieces in a morgue.

Madison’s tight dress, celeb status, and rude treatment of a random frat guy all point to the possibility of victim blaming, but the witch doesn’t let the young men live long enough to point the finger at her. Their quick exit and attack on the innocent Kyle, however, are enough to confirm their guilt, or rather the acknowledgement that a crime had in fact been committed that night. Madison’s magical powers and ability to turn over the huge bus with a swipe of her hand are reflections of a feminist fantasy: an eye for an eye. This rape takes place early on in the series both to convey Madison’s metaphysical powers and to remind us that despite this alliance with the occult, she can still be the target of a sexual assault. We likely find ourselves joyful that these young boys die in a gruesome way after what they do to Madison. Here, the witch archetype is presented as a source of feminine power and feminist vengeance. The moral of “Coven”: Don’t piss off a witch.

A reflection of real-life headlines, the boys film the attack using their cell phones.

Another female-on-male rape takes place when Zoe visits one of Madison’s rapists in the hospital. We may be hesitant to view this as a rape scene since Zoe is a woman raping an unconscious man. Some critics may even say that the crime couldn’t possibly be rape because of course he would “want it” if he were conscious, but we should be careful not to default to that logic, because it’s the same logic used by rapists in victim blaming. Although this doesn’t seem an act of violence, Zoe rapes the boy because she has discovered that any man she sleeps with soon dies (vagina dentata, anyone?). I suppose this rule doesn’t apply to Kyle since, in a sense, he’s already dead.

Zoe tells us, “Since I’ll never be able to experience real love, I might as well put this curse to some use.”

Indeed, retribution is at work on AHS. We discover that the college-aged Kyle is chronically molested by his mother, and we’re surely cheering when he bludgeons her to death with a lamp. Evan Peters gives a stellar performance in every season of AHS thus far, and acts as an ally when he attempts to stop his frat brothers from raping Madison. While AHS clearly depicts the rape-revenge storyline in “Asylum” and “Coven,” “Murder House” offers a slightly different representation of rape. When Vivien is raped by a ghost, she’s unable to completely make sense of the situation until she becomes a ghost herself after dying in childbirth. And even after Ben forces Tate to admit all the wrongs he’s committed in both life and death, Tate is not granted any forgiveness or reprieve; rather, he’s banished by Violet, who he claims is “everything he wants.” Funny enough, what Vivien wants most–a functional family and a new baby–is partially achieved via several acts of violence: her rape, Violet’s suicide, and Ben’s scorned mistress hanging him above the stairs. In fact, the family’s last name “Harmon” sounds a lot like the word “harmony.”

Vivien thinks it's her husband Ben (Dylan McDermott) inside the rubber suit. — Vivien thinks it’s her husband Ben (Dylan McDermott) inside the rubber suit.

Biology dictates that we avoid the grotesque, the disturbing, and the bizarre, while AHS pleads with us to confront the demons and monsters around and within us, unveiling the reality that we are capable of the same evils we meet throughout the series. We can learn something from the unbelieving nun, the bible-thumping murderer next door, the ironically retarded clairvoyant: not only are appearances deceiving, but if we continue to construct our own realities from them, it will inevitably bite us in the ass.

Rape sequences are supposed to be horrifying and unsettling, and it’s important to examine how we watch rape and why its inclusion in film and television is not meant to demoralize us or assault our senses, but rather to make us think. Other than the obvious crimes of rape and murder, the show investigates adultery, the gross abuse of power, heresy in its many forms, and betrayal; in fact, there are so many knives sticking out of characters’ backs throughout each season, we’re uncertain who is going to be next. The rapists we meet on AHS inevitably pay for what they’ve done, rendering the series a feminist work and a platform for further discussion of what scares us the most and how we navigate that fear.

5 Ways ‘American Horror Story: Coven’ Both Conforms to and Challenges Misogynistic Tropes, ‘American Horror Story: Coven’ Exposes Rape Culture: Is this Social Commentary Effective?, ‘American Horror Story: Freak Show’ to be less campy than ‘Coven,’ FX chief says

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Jenny has a Master of Arts degree in English, and she is a part-time instructor at Alvernia University. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema. You can find her on WordPress and Pinterest.

The Layered Danish Pastry Called ‘Borgen’

This is a guest post by Nandini Rathi.

A subtitled Danish drama about Danish coalition politics sounds rather elitist (if not absurdly boring) and one that, at best, would appeal to a niche audience. However headlines such as “Stop what you are doing and go watch Borgen,” “Why Danish Political drama Borgen is Everything” and “Why the World fell for Borgen” from sources ranging from The Telegraph to the Buzzfeed may make you reconsider that initial assumption. Borgen, a one-hour series about a charismatic politician coming to power as the first woman Prime Minister of Denmark, defies expectations. Now internationally famous, the series has earned precious acclaim from critics and fans alike for its riveting machiavellian politics and strong female characters. The plot skillfully weaves together a fictionalized battlefield of parliamentary politics and journalistic media, without neglecting the exploration of its impact in the characters’ personal lives. Borgen anticipated a number of events — most notably, the election of Denmark’s actual first female Prime Minister (Helle Thorning-Schmidt), which occurred while the show was in its second season.

Borgen is better for a brilliant group of actors cast well for its complex characters. The main character is Birgitte Nyborg (played by Sidse Babett Knudsen), a first-rate politician in her early 40s and the leader of the Moderates, who is unexpectedly elected the Prime Minister. In a parallel story, we meet the 29-year-old Katrine Fonsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sorensen) who is a gifted political journalist dedicated to her work. In addition to featuring strong and compelling female characters, the series dramatizes some of the more universal debates in progress about gender and leadership, for instance, how women are evaluated in roles such as heads of state which have long been men’s exclusive domains.

For an international audience, Borgen’s political drama is edgy and exotic. Produced in the land of relative gender-egalitarianism and environmental consciousness, Borgen’s international charm lies in its progressive difference; it weaves together the qualities of a successful show (a unique, clever plotline and talented actors) with the best of Scandinavian achievements, that is, progressive social and environmental norms.

When it comes to the classic, age-old, question of whether a woman can have both a family and a top-notch career or in other words, can she “have it all,” Borgen offers no easy solutions. Without denying the question’s specific application to women, it also forces the viewer to consider if anyone (in Nyborg’s position – even a man) balancing private life with difficult public responsibilities can have everything. As Vicky Frost states in her article for The Guardian, Borgen’s strength lies in resisting an oversimplification of questions of gender and feminism and addressing them without making them the apparent focus of the show.

Borgen dramatizes the tension between the private and public lives of highly successful individuals, especially that of active, busy politicians. From the very outset, Birgitte Nyborg’s family and colleagues acknowledge her as extremely smart and charismatic, and initially, as a Moderate not expecting much from the parliamentary elections, her political idealism and time for family are well-preserved. In that vein, without expectations and hesitations, she gives an honest, impassioned speech about the difference between being a politician skilled at power play and doing what’s best for the people. The speech is followed by unexpected events that put Nyborg in the position to lead the government. Once she becomes the PM, she is slowly forced to make many compromises with her ideals and sacrifice her family-time in order to continue being in power.

Nyborg’s family life is a fascinating commentary on the social place and perception of working mothers. In a remarkable scene from the first episode, Birgitte’s husband, Phillip, recounts to her that while watching her debate on TV, their little son had asked him if he would grow up to be as smart as his mother. Initially, what is described by Janet Manley on The Frisky as “the most feminist marriage on TV,” drastically changes in course of the season. Phillip, who is initially highly supportive of Birgitte becoming the PM and tackles the lion’s share of child rearing and housework, eventually begins to feel neglected and emasculated as Birgitte becomes increasingly unavailable (emotionally and sexually) and his own job becomes less satisfying. At multiple occasions, Borgen draws the attention of the viewer to the fact that even in societies with greater gender equity like Denmark, neglect of family life by a busy wife is likely to be unpalatable to her husband even though the reverse expectation has long been made from wives.

Phillip encourages Birgitte when she is unsure if she wants to be the PM

Borgen begins with painting an almost-fantasy: a truly gender-equal society where men and women share childcare, women hold the same positions of power in politics and media as men, and everyone achieves the enviable work-life balance. However as the narrative progresses, it becomes clear that in a fundamentally patriarchal society, such feminist fantasies are not truly tenable. However, in spite of hardships, it is heartening to watch smart, driven and flawed characters like Birgitte and Katrine climb the ladder of professional excellence and not get personally punished for being ambitious.

Borgen’s Reception

As an instant watercooler hit in the UK and within the limited, cult following of the US, Borgen has been a darling of critics and fans alike. It has spurred all kinds of debate about progressive gender politics due to its portrayal of nuanced female characters that don’t appear too often on the American TV landscape. Birgitte Nyborg is not super-skinny, but a voluptuous woman in her forties. In Episode 3 of the first season, Katrine Fonsmark’s conflict about aborting or keeping the child from her affair with a married, dead man and her final decision to abort is dramatized with equanimity. Abortion as an issue is not a source of moral ambiguity in Borgen. Katrine gets an ultrasound to confirm her pregnancy and hides it from her employer, because she’s conflicted about being pregnant, and not because she’s worried that she will be fired. Moreover, her mother, who is a practicing Catholic, advises Katrine to avoid keeping the child for the wrong reasons — in grief of the child’s dead father. Katrine is surprised and asks her mother what God would say to that, to which her mother simply responds that God has nothing to do with this. Hope Perlman from Psychology Today, is most impressed that Katrine in Denmark “can get an abortion safely, legally, and with excellent anesthesia, apparently, in a clean and well-run health facility, on national television.”

For Perlman, the calm portrayal of Katrine’s positive experience in Borgen is a sign that Denmark is well ahead of the US, not only in terms of abortion and birth control, but also in equal pay, paid family leave and quality childcare. Nuanced discussions on the subject of abortion are still a rare event on network television shows in the US (Friday Night Lights and Grey’s Anatomy are two notable exceptions), according to Sarah, a columnist for Abortion Gang. Even on Girls, the HBO show, a legal and safe abortion almost (but not quite) took place.

Politically speaking

The aesthetic of Borgen’s sets is spare, and the color palette favors faded tones. It manifests the relatively discreet and toned-down facet of Danish politics as portrayed in Borgen. Birgitte Nyborg is attended with none of the ceremony of the U.S. President. She lives in a comfortable, yet modest family house in Copenhagen, frequently bicycles to work, takes a taxi to the Parliament on the election night and travels on diplomatic missions abroad with just a few aides. The media industry as portrayed in Borgen is similarly stripped down. The interviews often take place around a simple metal table and the news presentation is quite straightforward.

Even watching a drama about the multi-party coalition politics of the Danish Parliament is a breath of fresh air compared to the limitations of a two-party model of the US. In this regard, Borgen has even been commented upon by political scientists. Writing for the Washington Post, U. Connecticut political scientist Stephen Dyson states that “Borgen … is a revitalizing antidote to the ennui of a stymied President Obama and the frustrations of our polarized gridlock politics.” The Danish political system usually produces coalition governments and the TV series reflects this by focusing on the struggle between the “Labor” and the “Liberal” (i.e. like the UK Conservatives) which usually need the support of one or more of the “Moderates,” Greens or smaller parties further to the left or right. For many American audiences, watching this level of collaboration and compromise between the so-called enemy factions and simply having a Green party is an impressive feat in itself. Speaking more generally, Borgen manages to humanize politicians. It is remarkable to watch Nyborg’s earnest and unconflicted apology to the leader of the Right Wing, for unwittingly reminding him of his daughter’s tragic death in the middle of their heated battle over immigration policy.

Critics and “Quality TV”

Many American and British critics have praised Borgen and other Nordic shows for their fearlessness in showing the darker side of characters, unlike American network shows which usually avoid experimenting with the general likeability of their main characters. Borgen can be compared to HBO shows which can afford to experiment with genre-mixing and “edgier” programming due to their independence from commercials and the subsequent concern for show ratings. On one hand, HBO markets itself as an exclusive club for the “risk-loving,” lucrative demographics using the leverage of “original programming” which is more likely to challenge social taboos (compared to its network counterpart). On the other hand, in Denmark (and Scandinavia), shows with themes like in Borgen are featured on national, publicly funded television which is the virtual equivalent of network TV in America in its accessibility to all.

Another thing that makes Borgen a quality drama in the US is its uber-limited legal availability. One may have to spend up to $50 to gain access to one season of Borgen on DVD. Within Denmark, Borgen is probably liked as a successful political drama, comparable to the likes of shows like The West Wing in the US. However, internationally, the show acquires an especially progressive tone due to the surprisingly huge differences between social realities (for e.g. in prevailing gender equity) of two Western, developed nations. The issues that are mobilized with nuance on the national TV of a country therefore tend to be indicative of what is normative within that society.

In its content, Borgen can be seen as a superior example of collaborative, global television. Borgen’s creator, Adam Price, was inspired by his favorite show, The West Wing, as he worked on creating a political drama of his own. In her interviews with Borgen’s writers, Eva Redvall, a Media and Communications scholar at University of Copenhagen, found that the writers took inspiration from many successful shows in the international domain, rather than any Danish or European series. This focus on international series is a sign of how the writers are inspired by quality product from abroad and bring aspects of their favorite series into the national domain.

What is branded as edgy within one society can be devoid of such connotations in other places. The critical consumption of International shows like Borgen therefore reveals the shifting and relative gauge of quality in “Quality TV.”

Nandini Rathi is a recent graduate from Whitman College (Walla Walla, Washington) in Film & Media Studies and Politics. She loves traveling, pop culture, photography and adventures. She wants to be immersed in filmmaking, journalism, writing and nonprofit work to ultimately be able to contribute her bit toward making the world a better place.

Everything’s Coming up Braverman in ‘Parenthood’

‘Parenthood’ is about showing us rounded human beings, triumphantly showing us their strengths and compassionately portraying their weaknesses. The interconnectedness and communication of this family is inspiring, and the series is always true to its characters’ unique psychology.

Everyone gathered 'round the Parenthood table — Everyone gathered ’round the *Parenthood* table

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.
Spoiler Alert

Despite my largely cynical personality, I found myself really enjoying the NBC TV series Parenthood. The show follows the intergenerational lives of the Braverman family living in Berkeley, California. The family is very close-knit, helping each other raise children, weather difficult times, and answer tough questions. Sometimes bordering on goody-goody or saccharine sweetness, the show mostly impresses me with the breadth of important issues addressed and the true-to-life character depth and psychology.

First, let’s address the ways in which Parenthood falls short. The cast is predominantly white. Crosby (Dax Shepard) marries a Black woman, Jasmine (Joy Bryant), and they have two children together, who constitute most of the non-white main characters on the show.

With a cast that big, mainly casting periphery characters of color is a missed opportunity to dig into the intersection of race, culture, class, and family. Though in a limited, somewhat unsatisfactory way, the show does, however, capitalize on Crosby and Jasmine’s life together to delve into issues of interracial family. In a plotline about interracial dating, Adam (Peter Krause) and Christina’s daughter, Haddie, dates a young, Black man, which they forbid under the guise of his age and experience, when it’s clearly more about their discomfort with his class and race. It’s unclear whether or not the show truly acknowledges the racism of Haddie’s parents.

Parenthood also intersects race, class, and adoption themes when Julia and Joel adopt Victor (Xolo Maridueña), an abandoned 10-year-old Latino. Though the way the Braverman clan embraces Julia and Joel’s new son wholeheartedly is full of warmth and humanity, Victor’s representation brings into high relief the lack of class diversity depicted on the show. Though the character Sarah Braverman (Lauren Graham) struggles with money, she has the wealth and home of her parents to fall back on.

The entire Braverman clan comes out for Victor's adoption day — The entire Braverman clan comes out for Victor’s adoption day

I waited five whole seasons for them to introduce a queer character. We all thought it would be young Drew, the quiet, sensitive younger brother of Amber and son of Sarah. Nope! In the very last episode of the most recent season (Season 5), Parenthood showed a long absent Haddie (Sarah Ramos), home from college, in love with a woman.

Haddie kissed a girl...and she liked it — Haddie kissed a girl…and she liked it

Talk about a token LGBTQ character. She’s not even on the show anymore! It felt like Parenthood wanted to show us it was down with the gays without having to deal with any of the issues, hardships, or questions that come with being a young, queer woman in the US. Haddie also dated Alex, a Black man, so the implication is that she’s boundary-pushing and possibly a LUG. Not cool, Parenthood. Not cool.

Haddie Kiss Parenthood — Props for NBC’s on-screen lesbian kiss

Its shortcomings with regard to race, class, and sexuality mean that Parenthood disappointingly represents a narrow, unrealistic demographic of people. Though that seems like a massive fail, now we get to talk about the ways in which Parenthood succeeds. As I already referenced, the show deals with adoption and infertility with its Victor storyline. Not only that, but tackling the “C word,” the gentle-natured Christina (Monica Potter) is diagnosed with breast cancer. While Christina eventually goes into remission, she struggles with sickness, lack of energy, a desire to see her children through their challenges, loss of self-esteem, the death of close friends who also have cancer, and, most importantly, her own agency, her own ability to choose how she will live, how she will face cancer, and how she will prepare herself and her family for her potential death.

Christina shaves her head while undergoing chemotherapy

Fear, insecurity, trust, and love are repeatedly called into question when Parenthood deals with infidelity. We see Camille and Zeek secretly separated before they slowly repair their marriage due to an affair Zeek (Craig T. Nelson) had, showing how time, history, and forgiveness are crucial to any long-term relationship. We see Crosby destroy and slowly rebuild his family when he sleeps with Gaby (Minka Kelly), Max’s aide, which highlights how Crosby needed to grow up, accept responsibility for his actions and choices, and become more steadfast in his relationships. We see Adam and Christina weather a kiss Adam’s assistant, Rachel (Alexandra Daddario), plants on him during a rainstorm, showcasing the need for honesty and compassion within a marriage. The series primarily features male partners transgressing against their female partners, but in the most painful and drawn out indiscretion of all, we see Julia kiss another man and lie about it for a time, which leads to a separation and a difficult custody situation.

Julia and Ed acknowledge their shared attraction

Both characters are sympathetic: Julia (Erika Christensen) is desperate, lonely, and feels invisible, while Joel (Sam Jaeger) feels betrayed and unsupported by his wife in the pursuit of his career. We can also see both of their faults in the situation: Julia is selfish and can’t handle being a stay-at-home mom even though she rashly quit her job, and Joel is rigidly unforgiving and untrusting, refusing to communicate or work on their underlying marital troubles. It’s rare to see an honest, balanced, yet sympathetic portrayal of a drowning relationship due to infidelity.

Parenthood features a teen abortion without judgement. Drew’s (Miles Heizer) girlfriend, Amy (Skyler Day), becomes pregnant. Amy decides to get an abortion, and Drew, in his awkward, teenage way, tries to support her choice and be there for her. Despite his attempts to be a good boyfriend, their youthful relationship disintegrates as a result of the very adult situation they find themselves in. My major complaint is that much of this happens from the perspective of Drew, and we only get glimpses of how Amy feels and how, over a year later when Amy and Drew reconnect, Amy is still troubled by the secret she keeps from her family.

Drew and Amy's relationship falls apart after her abortion — Drew and Amy’s relationship falls apart after her abortion

One of Parenthood‘s pet issues is Asperger syndrome and more broadly autism spectrum. In Season 1, Adam and Christina’s son, Max (Max Burkholder) is diagnosed with Asperger’s. Together, the family rally, compassionately supporting Max to give him structure, safety, and a quality education that doesn’t discriminate against him. Later on, the show introduces Hank (Ray Romano), a love interest of Sarah and a mentor for Max, who is pained to discover that he, like Max, is autism spectrum.

Max and Hank share their love of photography

The series strives to show that despite the very real challenges they face, neither Max nor Hank are incapable of normal lives or of being loved. There aren’t a whole lot of representations of autism spectrum individuals that don’t tokenize them as a “character with a disability”–certainly very few make them primary characters on TV, and even fewer cast them as love interests.

I was impressed with the very real, honest depictions of addiction, in particular the plight of the loved ones of addicts. Sarah’s ex-husband, Seth (John Corbett), is an addict and an absentee father. He flits in and out of his children’s lives, promising to change and disappointing them each time. Amber (brilliantly, viscerally performed by Mae Whitman) is so sensitive that when we meet her, she is acting out, a lost teen with little self-worth who’s hardened her heart to her deadbeat dad, while her younger brother, Drew, yearns for his father, constantly forgiving him and eternally holding out hope that he’ll have a real relationship with his father this time. Sarah, herself, never gives up on Seth, and (while I think it’s unrealistic that Seth does, in fact, go to rehab and eventually maintains his recovery since it happens more often than not that people don’t ever recover) the Holt family exemplifies dysfunction and the behavioral patterns of living with an addict.

Drew finds his wasted father playing a show

For example, Sarah can’t ever choose the potential partner who has his shit together. She’s always drawn to the one who needs her most. Amber also grows up to embody this same trait when she falls in love with deeply troubled war veteran, Ryan (Matt Lauria). Ryan’s storyline allows Parenthood to delve into PTSD as well as the way in which veterans come home haunted. While I’m disappointed that the show has yet to explore PTSD as a result of sexual violence and/or trauma (especially considering how real that storyline is for so, so many people, especially women), Ryan’s arc and the way in which it intersects with Amber’s is crucial for revealing to us how much she’s internalized that responsibility of caring for someone who isn’t healthy.

Ryan nearly dies as a result of his PTSD motivated reckless behavior — Ryan nearly dies as a result of his PTSD-motivated reckless behavior

One storyline that I’ve been incredibly pleased to see is that of Camille (Bonnie Bedelia), the matriarch of the Braverman family. Her family takes her for granted and neglects her needs, invalidating her as a human being. They’ve so cast her in the role of “wife” and “mother” that they don’t see her as anything but an extension of themselves. This is clear in the resistance she meets from the entire clan when she wants to explore her love of painting on an extended, solo trip to Italy followed by her family’s baffled disbelief that she wants to sell the house in order to travel more and not be weighed down by that behemoth of a home. I’ve not often seen a story like this that calls out husbands and children for forgetting that their wives and mothers are human beings with separate hopes and desires.

Zeek realizes his love for Camille is the most important thing in his life

Bottom line, Parenthood is about showing us rounded human beings, triumphantly showing us their strengths and compassionately portraying their weaknesses. The interconnectedness and communication of this family is inspiring, and the series is always true to its characters’ unique psychology, revealing to us that every choice each of them makes is connected in a subtle way. If Season 6 would show us more race, class, and LGBTQ diversity, Parenthood would go from being a really good series to a really great one.

Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Seed & Spark: The Spectrum of #BetterRepresentation

A lot has been written recently (this week) about ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ This is strange, in 2014, because it’s a show that we’ve all stopped watching at least as many times as we’ve begun again. But for all the talk about the lack of diversity, the lack of female characters with volition, and the heyday for feminism happening now on TV, ‘Grey’s’ stands out as a show that was ahead of its time and as one that has endured. The three top surgeons at the show’s conception were African Americans. Female doctors seem to outnumber male ones and nobody in the world of the show finds that remarkable. But I do.

This is a guest post by Allie Esslinger.

A lot has been written recently (this week) about Grey’s Anatomy. This is strange, in 2014, because it’s a show that we’ve all stopped watching at least as many times as we’ve begun again. But for all the talk about the lack of diversity, the lack of female characters with volition, and the heyday for feminism happening now on TV, Grey’s stands out as a show that was ahead of its time and as one that has endured. The three top surgeons at the show’s conception were African Americans. Female doctors seem to outnumber male ones and nobody in the world of the show finds that remarkable. But I do.

I am the founder of a film start-up that sits at the intersection of two male-dominated, whitewashed industries. Basically described as a Netflix for Lesbians, Section II acquires and creates lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LBTQ) content for our multi-platform network of streaming and VOD channels, which launched last month. We talk about #BetterRepresentation of LBTQ women in popular culture a lot—it’s actually written into our bylaws as a Benefit Corporation.

I remember the early reviews of Grey’s that touted its color-blind casting, its unique brand of post-feminism, and its “Surgery is The Game” competitive mentality. But as I’ve gone back to revisit the early episodes this summer, what’s left me cold is the disconnect I feel watching so many typically marginalized characters operate in a world that itself doesn’t seem to have margins. That said, what Shonda Rhimes has done for improving visibility for minorities and women on television cannot be understated.

It’s a long-play to shape popular culture and consciousness that we believe in whole-heartedly at Section II, but the reality is that Rhimes was the only African American show runner to anchor a dramatic series on primetime when she was hired, and she still is, 10 seasons later.

The Grey’s Anatomy I know and love(d) is not the textbook after which it takes its name, but we still could learn a lot about the very real struggles of minorities and women rising to the top of their field from a show created by a room full of writers who have done just that. I am certainly not suggesting that every season needs an arc with a superseding minority struggle and/or triumph, but at least show me an episode every once in a while in which Meredith and Christina (friends who actually define their person-hood through each other) both apply for a fellowship/promotion/major award but only one of them wins— because, in reality, only a limited number of women ever win. I need more realism about the underlying competition between female friends and coworkers from a show that so acutely examines their careers. That the signs of social advancement it presents are “a given,” without fanfare or comment, is a bit of a let down.

We believe at Section II that #BetterRepresentation goes beyond a numbers game, beyond visibility. Increasing the volume of strong women and strong female characters in Hollywood is important, but it won’t change the system. It hasn’t changed the fact that the number of women each year who get to be a showrunner, to write and direct feature films, continues to decline, despite overwhelming data advocating for a more economical supply and demand chain. We can only make new space for people when we make a new system, and that’s what we should be doing. That’s what we are doing.

Our name comes from the clause in the Motion Picture Production Code that outlawed homosexuality onscreen until 1968. Our model is based on being an ally to both the producers and consumers of LBTQ content and building an ecosystem that supports the entire production process as well as the people going through it.

Addressing the issues of representation begins in development and that’s why we co-produce projects as well as distribute them. There is a lot of opportunity right now to re-define how people consume content and, as a distribution platform, we are tasked with making it the best possible experience for both content creators and consumers.

Yes, there are a lot of reasons that have led people to turn away from Grey’s Anatomy over time. (Can you still pass the Bechdel Test if a conversation starts out about a heart transplant but winds up being a metaphor for moving on after a breakup?) But it celebrated its 200^th episode last fall, and Shonda Rhimes now controls an entire night of ABC’s programming schedule. Those are the official reasons that I decided to go back to the beginning and re-watch the series this summer.

I went back to find the show that I miss, that game-changing series I truly believed in and that I honestly felt was good when I was in college. It’s still there, especially in the first 8 episodes on Hulu+. When I started, I wanted to understand what I’d stopped being a part of off-and-on throughout the years. But what I realized is that in the time since Grey’s Anatomy premiered, I changed, the tone of the show changed, and most importantly, the idea that #BetterRepresentation is for all of us, not just minorities, has changed. A night of Shonda Rhimes on network TV is one example of a system that’s improving. But we have the chance to create others. It’s time, now, for technology and content to merge together and foster creativity as the next step in the fight for equality and the ongoing fight for better representation. The game is changing again– join us.

Allie Esslinger is a Southern transplant living in Brooklyn. She has produced projects across genres and formats and recently founded Section II, a new streaming platform and film fund for LBTQ content. (Think: Netflix for Lesbians.) She studied International Affairs and Creative Writing and loves television, iced coffee, and Alabama football.

Leaning In to ‘Grey’s Anatomy’

Across its 10-season run, ‘Grey’s’ has dealt with parenting, childlessness, abortion, romantic relationships—both heterosexual and otherwise–illness, loss, friendship, and career mostly through the eyes of its female protagonist, Meredith Grey, and her colleagues, friends and family: Cristina, Izzie, Lexie, Callie, Arizona, April, Addison, Bailey and so on. This season, though, seemed to really tap into the oft-mentioned feminist issue of “having it all” (meaning kids and career) and what happens when a woman shuns that path.

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

Grey’s Anatomy is one of the more feminist shows currently on the air. Hell, it’s created by Shonda Rhimes (she of Scandal and Grey’s spin-off, Private Practice, fame), a big champion of woman-centric storytelling on TV.

Across its 10-season run, Grey’s has dealt with parenting, childlessness, abortion, romantic relationships—both heterosexual and otherwise–illness, loss, friendship and career mostly through the eyes of its female protagonist, Meredith Grey, and her colleagues, friends and family: Cristina, Izzie, Lexie, Callie, Arizona, April, Addison, Bailey and so on. This season, though, seemed to really tap into the oft-mentioned feminist issue of “having it all” (meaning kids and career) and what happens when a woman shuns that path.

Early on this season tensions were brewing between Meredith and Cristina when Meredith gave birth to her second child, Bailey, named after Dr. Miranda Bailey who helped deliver him, and leaned out of the surgery game. As Meredith’s life became increasingly family oriented, Cristina felt alienated from “her person,” with whom she used to compete for surgeries and get drunk on tequila at Joe’s bar. This is not to suggest that just because Cristina doesn’t want children (a character consistency since season one) she’s not involved in that part of Meredith’s life: Cristina is often shown caring for and engaging with Meredith’s daughter Zola. But this story arc illustrates that having two children is a lot different than parenting just one (cue Elizabeth Banks-style outrage over mothers of one child being less than mothers of more) and Meredith’s redirected attention certainly takes its toll on her friendship with Cristina.

This comes to a head in episode six of this season when Meredith chooses to continue her mother’s portal vein research using 3D printers (which Cristina later co-ops for one of her groundbreaking medical coups). This is partly because of Cristina’s recriminations in the previous episode, “I Bet It Stung,” that Meredith doesn’t do as many surgeries or as much research as Cristina because she chose to lean in to her children. There is much talk about “choosing valid choices” but ultimately Meredith identifies an impasse between the two friends and surgeons because Cristina doesn’t “have time for people who want things” that she doesn’t want.

Business continues much this way until April’s wedding, in the episode “Get Up, Stand Up,” in which Meredith and Cristina are both featured as bridesmaids. During a dress fitting, Cristina takes issue with Meredith calling her “a horrible person, over and over… because I don’t want a baby.” Harkening back to their very first day on the job, Meredith accuses Cristina of sleeping her way to the top, while Cristina retorts that in her struggle to maintain work/life balance, Meredith’s “become the thing we laughed at.” By episode’s end, Meredith acknowledges her envy of Cristina’s surgical trial successes:

“I’m so jealous of you I want to set things on fire. You did what I tried to do and I couldn’t… I don’t want to compete with you… but I do.”

Come the show’s mid-season return, Meredith and Cristina’s friendship is back on track, with them bonding over Meredith’s anger at her husband Derek reneging on their agreement to focus more on Meredith’s career upon her realisation that she doesn’t want it to slip by the wayside in the wake of motherhood. They do this while drinking wine and looking after the kids at Mere’s place while Derek’s out of town.

Derek’s absence throughout the season, in Washington D.C. on business at the behest of the President (I know!), is juxtaposed with Meredith’s desire to be an attentive mother, which she didn’t have growing up and was the cause of many of her ills, whilst balancing her first love of medicine. In last season’s “Beautiful Doom,” Meredith worries about leaving Zola in the care of others while she operates. Callie, a working mother herself, assures Meredith that “it’s good for Zola to see you work. It’s good for her to see you achieve. That’s how she becomes you.” The season finale sees Meredith decide to stay in Seattle despite Derek accepting a job in Washington D.C. She doesn’t want to become her father, who was a “trailing spouse” to her aforementioned mother.

As far as Cristina’s concerned, though, her ex-husband Owen’s desire for a family is what’s kept them in flux from on-again to off-again for the better part of the past three seasons. In the Sliding Doors-esque episode “Do You Know?” Cristina is given the option of two life paths: one in which she has children, whilst in the other she continues her focus on her career; both involve Owen, and both see Cristina becoming miserable. The married-with-children scenario elicits a certain empathetic desperation as it’s made clear Cristina’s only succumbing to it for her lover. And when Owen meets maternal-fetal surgeon, Emma, whom Cristina described as “picket fence; a dozen kids; fresh-baked goods,” it seems he’s found his happy ending. But Owen’s desire for Cristina, despite his better judgment, causes him to cheat on and subsequently end things with Emma who is befuddled at how her boyfriend went from house hunting to breaking up with her in the space of a day. Owen asserts it’s because Emma wanted to stay home with their kids when they had them and he wanted someone who is “as passionate about her work as I am.” Make up your mind, Owen!

While Owen’s indecisiveness is annoying, it’s refreshing to see a woman who doesn’t want children framed as desirable over the traditional portrait of womanhood. This is not to mention Cristina’s hardheaded drive. On the other hand, Emma represents the losing battle women face in the fight to “have it all” perpetually highlighted by the concern-trolling media: you’d better want to be a mother, but you’ve also got to be driven in your career; you have to be around to raise your children, but you’d also better be leaning in in the workplace.

Grey’s has always been a staunchly pro-choice show. Upon April and Jackson’s shotgun wedding, Jackson’s mother brings up the issue of April’s faith when it comes to raising their future children who will be on the board of the Harper Avery Foundation, but no pressure! Catherine Avery asks whether April believes in limiting reproductive rights, and whether she’ll raise her children with those views. If so, will that colour their judgment in providing funding to hospitals that perform abortions, like Seattle Grace/Seattle Grace Mercy West/Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital/whatever it’s called now?! And what about stem cell research?

Grey’s certainly doesn’t sweep these issues under the rug because it’s convenient for a storyline or for the show to remain politically unbiased. Rhimes has spoken about Cristina’s unintended pregnancy in a season one/two crossover storyline in which she was scheduled for an abortion but miscarried before she could have the procedure due to an ectopic pregnancy:

“… [T]he network freaked out a little bit. No one told me I couldn’t do it, but they could not point to an instance in which anyone had. And I sort of panicked a little bit in that moment and thought maybe this isn’t the right time for the character, we barely know her… I didn’t want it to become like what the show was about… And [Cristina’s miscarriage] bugged me. It bugged me for years.”

Come 2010/2011’s seventh season, Cristina again finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy to Owen. Rhimes said:

“I felt like we had earned all of the credentials with the audience. The audience knew these characters. The audience loved these characters. The audience stood by these characters. You know, we were in a very different place even politically, socially. Nobody blinked at the studio or the network when I wrote the storyline this time. Nobody even brought it up except to say, that was a really well written episode.”

With no signs of slowing down, but with perhaps one of TV’s most feminist characters departing, Grey’s Anatomy is sure to continue presenting women, work and the myriad choices in between in a positive and realistic way.

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 here.

The Neverending Search for Good Sci-Fi: ‘Defiance’ Edition

‘Defiance’ is good solid alien-full science fiction television, it’s reliably entertaining each week, and it definitely has better feminist cred than many other shows.

Written by Max Thornton.

Syfy, the erstwhile Sci-Fi Channel, is not renowned for the high quality of its original programming – Sharknado 2, anyone? Still less did I expect to be especially interested in a show with a tie-in MMORPG. (I talk a big talk about interactivity and fan culture, but I’m fundamentally too lazy to participate much myself.) But the involvement of Rockne O’Bannon, creator of my beloved Farscape, was sufficient motivator for me to at least give Defiance a chance, and I’m glad I did. In our post- and sub-Battlestar Galactica televisual landscape, pure science fiction shows tend to the dreary and the grim, leaving things like “fun” and “watchability” to fantasy, whether it’s the high fantasy of Game of Thrones or the campy fantasy-horror of Sleepy Hollow and Supernatural.

One day I will write about this wonderful, wonderful show.

God knows I try. I gave The Tomorrow People a fair chance, I gave Helix a fair chance (incredibly, it’s been renewed), I’m giving Extant a fair chance. I want good SF on my TV, preferably something with spaceships and aliens, to fill the void left by assorted Star Treks and Firefly and Farscape, but in all honesty Orphan Black is the only really quality sci-fi show on television at the moment.

Enter Defiance. Now, Defiance is not BSG, but it is good solid alien-full science fiction television, it’s reliably entertaining each week, and it definitely has better feminist cred than many of the other shows I have already mentioned.

A few decades after the arrival of extra-terrestrial life, Earth hosts an uneasy peace between humans and the various alien species. The former St. Louis is now the titular polis, where a number of different species, languages, and cultures coexist under the mayoral leadership of Julie Benz, whose improbably-named sister Kenya runs a brothel. Perhaps the central characters of the show, insofar as a show whose setting is its true protagonist can be said to have central characters, are the young alien Irisa and her adoptive human father.

Stephanie Leonidas as Irisa. You can tell she's an alien because she has a funny forehead. — Stephanie Leonidas as Irisa. You can tell she’s an alien because she has a funny forehead.

Irisa is one of my favorite things about the show. She appears to be some sort of Chosen One, and it’s amazing how much better the hoary old Chosen One trope becomes when its beneficiary is not a white man. She’s part of a chosen, interspecies family, and while she and her father love each other dearly, they sometimes struggle to understand one another. Irisa’s efforts to understand herself and her place in the world are somewhat analogous to the issues faced by transracial adoptees, who may have rather complicated relationships with their ethnicity.

Indeed, Defiance offers a number of sci-fi analogues to real-world issues (and, God help me, this is something I adore in my speculative fiction). One subplot follows an interspecies couple as the human wife faces difficulties in comprehending her husband’s alien culture, with its powerful honor/shame culture and its communal bathing habits. Another subplot explores workers’ rights and collective action as both human and alien laborers work in dangerous conditions in the mines. All of the aliens are immigrants, trying to negotiate the place of their culture and customs within those of the humans among whom they live, and there are resonances of (post)colonialism and the fight for independence in the masterplot of Defiance’s struggle for self-governance.

There’s an instructive comparison to be made with new show Dominion, which airs immediately after Defiance and of which I could only stomach two episodes. Its Chosen One is a deeply boring white dude, and its one significant female character is defined entirely by her father (the city’s leader), her love for the Chosen One, and the arranged marriage her father wants to push her into. There’s a waifish cancerous-looking child that the Chosen One has taken under his wing because he’s just such a good guy, and the Chosen One has a lot of manpain about putting his boring girlfriend and his blonde lisping surrogate daughter at risk by being the Chosen One. It’s all offensively tedious.

Perhaps neither Dominion nor Defiance is doing anything we haven’t seen before, but Defiance is at least doing it with good politics, interesting characters, and a fair amount of style.

Take, for example, a powerful exchange in the most recent episode between the current and former mayors. The new and heretofore unlikable mayor, quite shaken by a minor assault, talks about his teen experience of being violently raped. The ex-mayor opens up about her own rape and subsequent abortion, and the following exchange ensues:

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I didn’t want you to think you were alone, because you’re not.”

“That’s the kindest thing… thank you.”

Rape As Backstory is a trope that surely needs a few centuries of retirement, but I have rarely seen a male and a female survivor bond in a scene of such sensitivity. Let’s hope the show continues to handle it well.

Mayor Darla? I'd vote for her — Mayor Darla? I’d vote for her

Defiance is no replacement for Farscape, but it’s about as close as we’re currently getting.

_____________________________

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

Another Dead Sex Worker on ‘Game of Thrones’

Even after the finale of its fourth season, the HBO series ‘Game of Thrones’ continues its reputation for unpredictability and for subverting our genre expectations. However, a glaring pattern of predictability is emerging: all sex workers with significant roles will die horribly. Think about it.

Shae is introduced on Game of Thrones — Shae is introduced on *Game of Thrones*

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.
Spoiler Alert

Even after the finale of its fourth season, the HBO series Game of Thrones continues its reputation for unpredictability and for subverting our genre expectations. However, a glaring pattern of predictability is emerging: all sex workers with significant roles will die horribly. Think about it.

Doreah (played by Roxanne McKee), Daenerys Targaryen’s handmaiden and a prostitute: DEAD.

Doreah and Daenerys Sex Game of Thrones — Doreah is instructed to teach Dany the art of sex

Ros (played by Esmé Bianco), a Northerner who moves South to King’s Landing, working as a prostitute and trusted assistant to Littlefinger: DEAD.

Ros Game of Thrones — Ros: tough, upwardly mobile, intelligent, and independent

Finally, we have Shae (played by Sibel Kekilli): a prostitute and the lover of Tyrion Lannister who poses as a handmaiden to Sansa Stark: DEAD.

Shae soothes Tyrion's fears before the Battle of Blackwater Bay — Shae soothes Tyrion’s fears before the Battle of Blackwater Bay

What do all these women have in common? Their profession as sex workers, and they are all disloyal.

After being raped by Viserys and ordered to sexually train/service Daenerys, Doreah betrays her Khaleesi in Qarth, helping Xaro Xhoan Daxos (the man Dany instructed Doreah to sleep with) to steal Dany’s dragons. (A deleted scene even shows Doreah coldly murdering fellow handmaiden Irri.)

Doreah and Daxos Caught Game of Thrones — Doreah is caught in bed with Daxos

Ros rightfully fears her employer and seeks to help Sansa Stark by revealing to Varys Littlefinger’s plans to spirit the girl away.

Ros Dead Game of Thrones II — Littlefinger punishes Ros by letting Joffrey put a series of crossbow bolts in her

In one of the most significant acts of betrayal the series has ever depicted, Shae testifies against Tyrion in court, condemning him for the crime of regicide. We also find that she was sleeping with his father, Tywin Lannister, which the show asserts is an even greater form of betrayal than her false testimony.

Shae gives her damning, full of lies testimony

Shae’s acts of betrayal are over-the-top and out of character (remember, we’re talking about the show here, not the books). Season 4 has her being sullen and adopting a completely unrealistic attitude about the danger she and Tyrion face. She is irrationally jealous of his forced marriage to Sansa while still maintaining her affection for the young Stark girl. Overall, though, we must remember that Shae truly does love Tyrion. She has refused gold, safety, and a fine home with servants all for love of Tyrion.

We are to believe that because Tyrion white fanged Shae, she would condemn him to die by telling lies during his trial, condemn Sansa whom she loved and protected by telling lies about her, fuck Tywin, get so cozy with him that she’d call him “my Lion” and try to kill Tyrion the next time she saw him? I ain’t buying it.

Shae and Sansa watch ships arrive in King's Landing — Shae and Sansa watch ships arrive in King’s Landing

Is Shae really a woman so scorned that she’d destroy everyone she ever cared about to get revenge? Is she really so daft that she couldn’t see that Tyrion was trying to protect her all along? Is she really so malleable that Tywin could so easily manipulate her into such complete betrayal?

Though actress Sibel Kekilli claims she understands her character’s motivations in the latter part of Season 4, Shae’s actions really only accomplish two things:

Her utter betrayal is character-defining for Tyrion. That he is “forced” to kill her changes him, so her unrealistic actions and extreme betrayal merely serve to further Tyrion’s character arc, while contradicting her own characterization over the last four years.

Tyrion finds a gussied up Shae in his father's bed — Tyrion finds a gussied up Shae in his father’s bed

More importantly, Shae’s betrayal when considered alongside the double-crosses of her fellow prostitutes and their collective fates reveal a disturbing attitude toward sex workers that Game of Thrones is advancing. It claims that sex workers are disposable and that they cannot be trusted.

In the behind-the-scenes video, Game of Thrones Inside the Episode: Season 4 Episode 10, show co-creator D.B. Weiss says of Tyrion’s discovery of Shae in Tywin’s bed,

“That’s in a way, the most horrible thing he could see because she wasn’t a whore…they had become committed to each other. She’s no longer a whore. When he calls her a whore, it’s not that he believes this is what she is; it’s what he desperately needs to tell her to save her life in his mind, and, ironically, he’s ended up turning her into that very thing that she was running from.”

Weiss’ repeated use of the offensive term “whore” here encapsulates so much more than Shae’s profession as a sex worker. Weiss’ and the show’s obsession and discomfort with these women’s occupation is very masculine and very patriarchal, asserting that if you must pay a woman for sex, her morals and motivations are never to be trusted about anything ever. This stems from an ego-driven masculine notion that if a woman retains enough agency to demand payment for sex, it is impossible to know if she really enjoyed said sex, and if she might be faking that, she could be faking any and all other emotions or professed loyalties.

Game of Thrones punishes another sex worker by having her die on her back in a bed — *Game of Thrones* punishes another sex worker by having her die on her back in a bed

I’m pretty tired of seeing sex workers raped and murdered on TV. I’m sick of seeing sex workers depicted within a stereotypical trope as liars and betrayers who get what’s coming to them. It’s no secret that Game of Thrones doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to the exploitation of its female characters, liberally employing death, rapes, gratuitous nudity and crappy decision-making that runs counter to characterization in order to move the plot along, make a nonessential point or punish an “unlikeable” woman. This so disappoints me because, in other ways, Game of Thrones delights with its intricate plot, attention to detail, breathtaking visuals, character depth and endless surprises. Season 5 is being filmed right now. It’s time for the bar to be raised with this amazing series’ treatment of women and, in particular, its treatment of sex workers. I challenge the creators to stop exploiting their female and sex worker characters. I challenge them to start working as hard to give these marginalized women as much real depth and humanity as they do for their male counterparts.

***Please no book spoilers in the comments!***

The Joyful Feminist Killjoy

I get tired of constantly pointing out that something is Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™; I want to enjoy, not eviscerate. I want to laugh.

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Being an angry feminist is hard sometimes.

I mean, I had some breakthrough spotting on Monday, and I think it’s because my uterus was protesting the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby decision.

The life of a Feminist Killjoy is an intense one.

One of the most difficult arenas to navigate while feminist is comedy. Misogynist, male-centric comedies are a dime a dozen. I think back to the comedies of my youth–Dumb and Dumber, American Pie, anything with Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey–and while some of those films may have seemed funny at the time, revisiting them through a feminist lens is pretty horrifying.

I hadn’t seen There’s Something About Mary for well over a decade, and I stumbled across it last weekend. Holy shit. When Woogie–who stalked Mary in college so severely that she had to change her name and move–spits out at her at the end, “Shut up, cocktease,” it was all I could do to keep my head from spinning and short-circuiting while screaming “RAPE CULTURE,” “MISOGYNY,” “PATRIARCHY,” “MALE GAZE,” “LAURA MULVEY SAVE ME.”

Watching while feminist is exhausting. The Onion points this out in their satirical “Woman Takes Short Half-Hour Break From Being Feminist To Enjoy TV Show,” and I’m sure most of us can relate.

I get tired of constantly pointing out that something is Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™; I want to enjoy, not eviscerate. I want to laugh.

So I’ve been writhing around in feminist television and film lately, and damn, does it feel good. These are popular and critically acclaimed comedies and they are feminist as fuck. I love it. I can’t get enough of it. As we watch, I frequently look at my significant other with a shit-eating grin on my face as if to say, “Can you even believe that this exists?”

Broad City–starring Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer–debuted on Comedy Central in January and was quickly picked up for a second season. The pair started Broad City as a web series, and Amy Poehler took them under her (feminist superstar) wing and produced the TV show.

As many feminist commentators have already pointed out, this show is great. The writing, the acting, the story lines… I simply can’t get enough (really–I’ve seen all of the episodes multiple times). Abbi and Illana love sex, weed, and more than anything, one another. They also love themselves. It’s incredibly refreshing to see young women on screen who are so comfortable, even in their most uncomfortable moments.

Abbi and Ilana identify as feminists, and care deeply about diversity in media (which the show reflects in an organic way). In her Bitch article about Broad City, Andi Zeisler says,

“…Broad City‘s feminism isn’t so much sneak-attack as baked-in, with an emphasis on the ‘baked’: Ilana and Abbi are as aimless, goofy, boring, and entitled as any guy of their generation. And they’re striking a blow for equality just by subverting the image of the striving young woman who, well, sees her every move as a blow for equality. “

It’s hilarious, it’s relatable, and it’s inspirational–I’m inspired to be more confident by watching them, and I was inspired by their interior design to finally buy that Urban Outfitters quilt that I’d been lusting after (I understand this is a Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™ company, but I really wanted that quilt).

Sometimes watching young 20-somethings in the city (when I’m a 30-something in the country) can make me feel wistful, or bitter, or jealous, or judgmental, or any other cocktail of quarter-life psychoses. Broad City doesn’t evoke any emotion but joy. And maybe it’s because I can relate to a few of the story lines, but more likely it’s because it’s a universally great show.

Broad City–somewhat shockingly–isn’t the lone feminist wolf on Comedy Central (a station not known for progressive, feminist comedy).

We don’t have network or cable TV, so I sometimes have no idea what’s going on on stations I don’t frequent. Algorithms on Netflix and Amazon Prime probably have me pegged as a clear Feminist Killjoy, and avoid recommending comedies to me (“Feminist Killjoy logging in. Suggest ‘Obscure Dark Foreign Female-Centric Dramas'”).

After falling in love with Broad City, I thought we should try that Amy Schumer show I’d vaguely heard about, Inside Amy Schumer. It didn’t look like something I’d like, and if I’ve learned anything in my almost 32 years, it’s to always judge a book by its cover.

However, what I got was an onslaught of hilarious, biting feminist commentary.

When I was waxing poetic about it to a friend, she admitted that she was a fan but didn’t think that I would like it at all, seeing signs of it being, perhaps, Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™. I explained that I loved it, and what makes satire work for me is self-awareness. I can understand why it might be confusing that I hate on-screen gender essentialism, but cannot stop watching and quoting the parody commercial for SandraGel.

As Willa Paskin writes at Slate,

“In its second season, Inside Amy Schumer has become the most consistently feminist show on television, a sketch comedy series in which nearly every bit is devoted in some capacity to gender politics. But Schumer channels her perspective through an onscreen persona that is insecure, self-proclaimedly slutty, crass, selfish, glossy—onscreen, Amy Schumer thinks feminism is the ultimate F word… This pairing is extremely canny. Schumer hides her intellect in artifice and lip gloss—that’s how she performs femininity. By wrapping her ideas in a ditzy, sexy, slutty, self-hating shtick, her message goes down easy—and only then, like the alien, sticks its opinionated teeth in you.”

In “I’m So Bad” and “Compliments,” Schumer parodies stereotypical female behavior (connecting morality to food and being self-deprecating, respectively). The message, however, isn’t “Aren’t these bitches crazy?” Schumer’s comedy sketches show the insidious social construction of these ultimately ridiculous and self-destructive behaviors.

Certainly one could watch these sketches through a different lens, and think instead about the possible audience perception. If a Tosh.0 fan tunes in to Inside Amy Schumer, I’m not confident that he/she will understand the commentary in the comedy.

But I do. And I love it. Being able to laugh at ourselves and the ridiculous behaviors and norms that we are socialized to embody is powerful.

And in the Upper Northwest, Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen parody feminism in their “Feminist Bookstore” sketches on Portlandia. Portlandia turns a hilarious mirror on a certain segment of American society in front of the backdrop and personality of Portland, Oregon. In the bookstore sketches, Toni (Brownstein) and Candace (Armisen) run Women and Women First (which is based off Portland’s In Other Words, a feminist community center).

They are absolute caricatures of radical feminists, and it’s glorious. They are not mean-spirited in their depictions (in fact, they have a working relationship with In Other Words, which manned–I mean womanned–Portlandia‘s Twitter feed to live-tweet the Oscars and the Super Bowl).

Watching Portlandia gives me ample opportunity to laugh at myself. When we were contemplating putting an NPR sticker on our new used Subaru, I realized that my life is pretty much filled with Portlandia sketches that would be too boring to air. I recognize many of Toni and Candace’s scenes as extreme versions of my own thoughts and conversations. The blurring of lines between fiction and reality was clear when Toni and Candace met with gender studies professors to “debate” feminism; they brought irreverence and comedy to an otherwise serious, analytical conversation.

Contemplating blatantly satirizing women and feminism is enough to make most of us prickle a bit, and be validly concerned about further marginalization of issues that affect our lives. Laughing about the effects of estrogen on our emotions might feel dangerous when we have Supreme Court justices who don’t understand how contraception works. Hearing women repeatedly align feminism with man-hating might make chuckling at Toni and Candace feel depressing.

However, it feels empowering to laugh in the face of adversity, and put ourselves–as women and as feminists–on the line for good comedy. There’s a clear difference between comedy aimed at feminists and comedy created by feminists, and I’m so thankful that I can bask in the latter. These shows are aimed at wide audiences full of men and women, and they lift women up and laugh at them without tearing them down.

Pure joy.

I’ve been rolling around in a lot of other TV and film that’s getting me all stunk up with feminism: Obvious Child shows how incredibly moving and entertaining women’s lives are; Orange is the New Black overwhelms me with so many women’s stories, such diversity, such power; House of Cards shows that feminist media isn’t always what we think it is; and Parks and Recreation is a consistent delight.

It’s easy to get caught up in all of the terrible, misogynist bullshit that infiltrates our screens and sound waves. Seeing just the trailer for Seth McFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West almost unwound the hours and hours of feminist film and television that I’d stocked up as a defense. The Feminist Killjoy rises again and again–and she’s an important voice–but damn if sometimes it doesn’t feel good to just revel in the excellence of feminist comedy.

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

‘Faking It’: Better Than You Thought

Rather than being the exploitative show about straight girls playing gay that everyone expected, ‘Faking It’ has turned out to be an exploration of the blurry lines between friendship and romance.

Written by Max Thornton.

When I heard the premise of Faking It, I eyerolled so hard it hurt. I Kissed a Girl: The TV Show? Wow, that’s definitely what pop culture needs in 2014. But there’s almost nothing else on TV at the moment, so I watched it anyway, and…I kind of love it.

Make no mistake, this is not a good show: it is cheesy and melodramatic and cliche-ridden, and I honestly don’t know if it’s even self-aware in moments like the one where Teen Andrew Rannells calls Bargain-Basement Regina George “so two-dimensional, she’s practically a character on Glee.” And yet it’s eminently watchable, and it’s perhaps doing something a little interesting with the well-worn trope of the lesbian who’s in love with her straight friend.

I swear it's not as terrible as it looks. — I swear it’s not as terrible as it looks.

The premise is actually a little more nuanced than the way it’s been sold: two girls who attend a super-progressive high school are taken for lesbians and decide to roll with it to increase their popularity (apparently such schools do exist). The way it’s been promoted has suggested that the two girls take a much more active role in the deception than they actually do – it’s more that they are publicly and dramatically outed by Teen Andrew Rannells, and no one will believe their demurrals.

Karma (Katie Stevens), whose parents are ridiculous hippies, is definitely faking it. Amy (Rita Volk), who has conservative Christian parents, is probably not faking it. Their portmanteau name is Karmy.

Tumblr takes Karmy very seriously. — Tumblr takes Karmy *very* seriously.

Someone on the show referred to “the lipstick one,” but they are both so femmey I honestly didn’t know which one he meant until Karma pulled out fake eyelashes and Amy said, “I guess that makes me the butch one.” Thanks for the clarification, show.

Bargain-Basement Regina George is about to become Amy’s stepsister, which is a potentially intriguing twist that has been squandered. It’s used not to deepen the Regina George character at all but just to make life even more difficult for poor Amy.

Meanwhile Teen Andrew Rannells (Michael Willett) and Bargain-Basement Edward Cullen (Gregg Sulkin) are BFFs. Teen Andrew Rannells is super enthusiastic about having lesbian friends, while Bargain-Basement Edward Cullen and Karma have a gross secret affair that 0 percent of all viewers are emotionally invested in. It’s gross and terrible and Karma needs to get hit upside the head with the cluebat. But it is neat that the gay boy’s straight best friend is a dude, rather than a woman as in 99 percent of pop culture. As repellent as Bargain-Basement Edward Cullen is, it’s refreshing to see a close onscreen friendship between a gay teen boy and a straight teen boy that isn’t full of “no homo.”

Sure, their characters have names, but they'll always be Teen Andrew Rannells and Bargain-Basement Edward Cullen to me. — Sure, their characters have names, but they’ll always be Teen Andrew Rannells and Bargain-Basement Edward Cullen to me.

Hijinks and soul-searching ensue, as Karma is terrible and Amy tries to figure out her sexuality. (“I don’t want to meet another girl.” “Boy?” “I don’t want to meet another boy.” “That limits your options.” Oh honey, not as severely as you think.) The very end of the season took an unfortunate turn into a well-trod territory that needed to happen on TV never again. It might be narratively justifiable, but it seems like every single fictional lesbian ever has slept with a man, and that really needs to stop.

As Autostraddle recapper Riese pointed out, “best friendship in high school is often nearly indistinguishable from girlfriendship.” Rather than being the exploitative show about straight girls playing gay that everyone expected, Faking It has turned out to be an exploration of the blurry lines between friendship and romance.

In some ways, the show it most reminds me of is the British series Sugar Rush (which debuted almost a decade ago, oh god I feel old). Sugar Rush was another show about a high-school lesbian in love with her straight best friend, and it was also somewhat prone to cheese and melodrama, but – you know what? That is honest to the teen experience. Teenagers are prone to cheese and melodrama, especially teenagers who are struggling to figure out their sexuality (and/or hopelessly in love with their best friend).

For all its faults, Sugar Rush was formative for me as a budding queer, and for that reason it will always have a special place in my heart. American teens in 2014 have more lesbionic televisual role models than British teens in 2005; even so, if Faking It can be for even one kid what Sugar Rush was for me, its existence will be justified.

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax. He’s sorry if you now have ‘I Kissed A Girl’ stuck in your head. If it’s any consolation, he does too.

‘Adventure Time’ vs. ‘Regular Show’

There is one thing that, for me, gives ‘Adventure Time’ a bit of an edge over ‘Regular Show’, and it’s been compounded after sitting through a two-hour back-to-back marathon of both shows over the weekend. It boils down to this: while both cartoons are awesome, ‘Regular Show’ is pretty much a bro-zone while ‘Adventure Time’ has a bit more room for the ladies.

This cross-post by Amanda Lyons appears as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

I probably wouldn’t know anything about either Adventure Time or Regular Show, both awesome cartoons, if I didn’t have a young niece and nephew. Happily, I do, and they have brought these shows into my life. That’s one of the things that’s so great about having children around; they keep you young.

And I don’t think there has to be a winner and a loser – there’s room for more than one at the top, y’know? It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Besides, both of these shows are awesome. They’re funny, hip, contemporary, relevant; great for kids but stuffed with adult references and jokes as well, and the animation is really great.

(Also, as an aside, Mr. Meows and young nephew Meows both insisted, before I had seen Regular Show, that I am just like Pops. This troubled me; was this a good thing or a bad thing? Were they making fun of me? When I finally saw it, I still wasn’t sure, but I can tell you one thing: they are right! BTW Pops on sugar is analogous to me on coffee)

BUT. There is one thing that, for me, gives Adventure Time a bit of an edge over Regular Show, and it’s been compounded after sitting through a two-hour back-to-back marathon of both shows over the weekend. It boils down to this: while both cartoons are awesome, RS is pretty much a bro-zone while AT has a bit more room for the ladies.

Don’t get me wrong – RS is great, and I do love it. It’s apparently PG-rated and is often required by the Cartoon Network to be toned down. As far as cartoons go, it’s edgy for sure, definitely the hipster older brother of cartoon shows. It’s packed with knowing references to the 80’s and popular culture that may fly over the heads of my niece and nephew (while still making them laugh) but hit my sense of humor square on the target.

But over an hour of watching RS, though I really enjoyed it and laughed a lot, I also felt more and more left out. RS is hip, magical and weird, but all of this comes from men only. Women are marginal and disappointingly, exist only as glorifed T&A with typical cartoon long lashes. Bros get all the funny lines and all the adventures. Women are passive, side-line decoration.

This is thrown into stark relief when you look at the cast of characters. There’s only one (kind of) significant female, Margaret the red-breasted (huh, huh) robin. She’s a secondary character, and pretty much solely exists as a babe that Mordecai has a crush on. They take this pretty far sometimes – check out this clip – fairly hot and heavy for what is, at the end of the day, a kid’s show. (Update: in the newer episodes, Margaret features more and gets to do more stuff so she seems more rounded. They have also added in her utterly adorable friend Eileen and Muscle Man’s girlfriend Starla who’s pretty bitchin’, although she conforms to that weird cartoon law that boyfriend/girlfriend characters have to look more like brother/sister. At the end of the day though, these females are all secondary and important more for how they relate to the main male characters as girlfriends/love objects rather than characters in their own right.)

I’ve addressed this kind of thing before, in my post about The Hunger Games. Maybe some of you will think I’m being whiny and nit-picky. But I find it really disappointing because I want young girls today to have a different experience from the one I had – in which the world reflected back to me was for men only; where they had all the main roles, made all the jokes, solved all the problems, went on all the adventures, while women/girls just looked on adoringly and batted their eyelashes. And it’s not only girls who are affected by this – think of all the debates recently over whether women can be funny, whether they can possibly be authentic participators in geek culture, whether they can be effective leaders in the business world, blah blah blah ad infinitum. Why is this (still) happening? Because both men and women are affected by a severe lack of positive female role models in our culture – or should I say, exposure of said role models, because they’re there, they just don’t get the air time. As documentary Miss Representation states, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” These cartoon representations may be fictional, but they affect us in our real lives, how we act and how we perceive other people – both boys and girls.

Watching RS I’m taken back to my childhood, to pretend play, and how I would always have to ‘be’ the male characters because they were the ones who were active and funny, they were the ones I admired. RS is the same – I mean, who would want to ‘be’ Margaret?? Sure, she’s cool and all, but she doesn’t do anything except get her norks out!! It worries me the kind of takeaway that kids are going to get from that, and it worries me that kids may already be encouraged to view females as sexualized bodies – it’s all around them already, do we have to put it in cartoons as well?

Oh yeah, there’s also this little gem, from an episode in which Mordecai goes on a series of bad dates. It’s your typical montage of bad date situations, but buried in there is a humorless-looking, unsmiling woman who aggressively asserts, “Oh, so you agree that women are misrepresented in most forms of popular media?” I get that the joke is about people who press their political views on you at inappropriate times, but I feel it’s telling that the writers chose to use a feminist viewpoint, and one that I would consider fairly uncontroversial at that. (Especially as this is a complaint I feel RS could do with taking under consideration – is someone feeling a little defensive? Or worse, do they consider this question annoying or irrelevant?) I also felt like it was a “joke” which had been discarded as passe by 1988, and it was perplexing and disappointing to see it come up in a kid’s cartoon. Do we want to train a new generation of kids to laugh off legitimate feminist concerns as a joke? One wonders how this would come across if they were to replace this “uptight” woman with like, a humorless civil rights activist. Not gonna lie, that did really annoy me (just call me a feminist killjoy) and RS definitely loses a few points for that one.

Princesses: Gotta Catch 'Em All — Princesses: Gotta catch ’em all

Conversely, Adventure Time is much more female-inclusive. The main two characters are still guys, but at least in their land there are a whole lot of females that get to be a significant part of the story – there are heeeeaps and heeeeaps of Princesses with a range of looks and voices. They are rulers and they have far more characteristics than their physical appearance. There’s also a parallel-universe episode where the main characters swap genders – only a one-shot (well, several-shot) but a fascinating idea, and not just done in the name of cheap gender-jokes, but executed in a way that makes it clear the opposite-gender versions of the characters are every bit the equal of the originals – althoooough the Fionna and Cake stories I’ve seen so far have tended to have a bias towards more romantic story lines, but then Finn isn’t without this either – it’s just that because he’s the main man, he gets more variation, as well.

AT is perhaps not as hip as RS, but it is just as magical – perhaps slightly more so. It’s definitely just as weird, existing in a deliciously surreal and at times kind of disturbing universe.

So, at the end of the day, while I raucously enjoy Regular Show (and identify to a worrying degree with Pops) it’s Adventure Time that really has my heart. Keep representing and taking us on your quests, Adventure Time! I love you for it.

‘Steven Universe’: A Superhero Team We Can Believe In

‘Steven Universe’ embraces non-traditional families. Steven is a perfectly happy kid, who is raised by three women who love him. The Gems are wonderful guardians for Steven, acting as mothers, sisters, and leaders to him. Even though the Gems and Steven don’t always see eye to eye, they always try to step beyond their comfort zones for one another. The Gems may not understand the concept of video games, but if Steven wants to go to an arcade, then they’ll go. If Steven wants to throw them several birthdays for the thousands of ones they haven’t celebrated, they’ll let him dress like a clown and play party games with them, because even though they don’t understand it, it clearly means a lot to Steven.

This guest post by Megan Wright appears as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

In the past years, with all the superhero movies coming out, it’s no surprise that children’s shows would become especially interested in making TV shows to capitalize on the trend. Granted, Saturday morning cartoons have always featured some superheroes, but there have been a great deal of superhero shows coming out lately: Avengers Assemble, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.!, are just a few examples. But Steven Universe, a show that revolves around a young superhero in the making, is one of the best – and most progressive – examples on television.

Steven is a young boy who gets his superpowers from his powerful gem passed on to him from his mother, who died after giving up her gem. Since his birth, Steven has lived with his mother’s former teammates, the Crystal Gems, who raise Steven and help train him to become a Crystal Gem.

Steven Universe embraces non-traditional families. Steven is a perfectly happy kid, who is raised by three women who love him. The Gems are wonderful guardians for Steven, acting as mothers, sisters, and leaders to him. Even though the Gems and Steven don’t always see eye to eye, they always try to step beyond their comfort zones for one another. The Gems may not understand the concept of video games, but if Steven wants to go to an arcade, then they’ll go. If Steven wants to throw them several birthdays for the thousands of ones they haven’t celebrated, they’ll let him dress like a clown and play party games with them, because even though they don’t understand it, it clearly means a lot to Steven.

Steven also has a good relationship with his father, who doesn’t live with the Gems, but rather in his van. Greg Universe may not always understand the Gems and vice versa, but they get along for Steven’s sake. And even though Steven’s superpowers make Greg nervous, he’ll try to understand and help his son with them. The series makes it clear that one of the reasons Steven is such a carefree and sweet child is that he was raised in a positive environment, with four adult figures who clearly care and love him. His ideas, even if they don’t always work, are praised; his enthusiasm for everything encouraged. Even when his superpowers don’t work, the Gems always try to help him get better as a hero.

Family Portrait: The Gems (and their weapons) and Steven

Most superhero shows have mainly male superheroes as either the focus of the show, or the majority of the team. It’s interesting to see a show that revolves mainly around women with superpowers. Due to his young age, Steven’s powers are inconsistent, so most of the monsters that the Gems battle are defeated by his teammates: Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl. These characters each come equipped with their own special gems, weapons, and superpowers, making them the strength behind the superhero show.

One of the best things about the Gems is how different they are from one another, both in personality and body type. Everything about these characters differs physically: hair, weight, height, superoutfits, etc. Young girls watching this show can probably identify with Amethyst’s outfit of jeans and a shirt, Pearl’s skirt and tights, or Garnet’s shades than they can with Black Widow’s catsuit. It also passes on the message that you don’t have to look a certain way to be a superhero. For girls who constantly have to see huge breasts, skin-tight costumes, and somehow impeccably styled hair if they want to see a female superhero, this show has to be a relief.

Even better is the fact that the Gems all have their own personalities, which go much deeper than most kid shows’ characters. Pearl is orderly and the most cautious of the Gems, but it’s mainly the result of trying to protect Steven on missions. It also doesn’t take away from her abilities as a superhero – she doesn’t shy away from violence and is a master swordswoman.

Meanwhile, Amethyst is much more disorderly and has a lax personality about most things, which leads her to clash with the other Gems. This is explored in “Tiger Millionaire,” an episode where it’s discovered that Amethyst has been participating in underground wrestling in order to get out all her energy and frustration with the other Gems. By the end of the episode, Pearl and Garnet understand Amethyst’s frustration, and support her wrestling.

Garnet is the team leader, a quiet and stoic personality who commands the Gems and keeps them in line. She’s frequently seen going off on missions of her own, and she is the most powerful of the Gems. Her cool head helps keep Steven safe, and keeps Pearl and Amethyst from bickering all the time.

The Gems (from left to right): Pearl, Amethyst and Garnet — The Gems (from left to right): Pearl, Amethyst, and Garnet

The series empathizes teamwork between women rather than fighting. While Amethyst and Pearl might not always get along, the show makes it clear that they are still close teammates. In “Giant Woman,” it’s revealed that Pearl and Amethyst can form together to make Opal, a single being who is a powerful combination of their personalities, weapons, and skills. Unfortunately, because their attitudes clash most of the time, they have a hard time forming her. It’s only when they put their bickering aside that they can become Opal, which gives them an advantage in battle. Opal allows them to crush enemies that they would have been stumped by otherwise. The show empathizes that when women work together, they are more powerful.

I’m a feminist and a superhero fan, and sometimes those two loves conflict. I adore superhero comics, movies, and television shows, but I still have to acknowledge they have their problems. Most women are dressed in skin-tight outfits or barely any clothes at all, women are still in the minority numbers on teams, and there still hasn’t been a movie released yet that has a female as the main superhero.

What Steven Universe gives me is a show that offers a distinctively different take on female superheroes – they’re the most powerful beings on the show, they wear outfits that actually look useful for fighting crime in, and the show allows them to show their inner personalities as well as kick ass. I’m so excited that there’s a show out there like this for young girls: one that reinforces positive cooperation between women, that allows their female characters to have each have their own body types and personalities, and lets them see strong females that don’t apologize for their power.

Megan Wright is a TV reviewer for Gotta Watch It. This is her second time as a guest writer for Bitch Flicks.

‘Adventure Time’: Why Lumpy Space Princess is Important

LSP’s character design can barely be called feminine in the ways that we as a society code things feminine. This is especially true if you compare her to other female characters on ‘Adventure Time’ such as Flame Princess and Princess Bubblegum. Her gender markers are the fact that her name is Lumpy Space Princess, the fact that she is pink, and that her speech takes on the patterns and vernacular of a valley girl although her actual voice is low and not immediately parse-able as feminine. The other main gender marker of LSP is the fact that she is into traditionally feminine things such as shopping and make up.

Written by Gaayathri Nair as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

Thanks to my friend Kaz whose thoughts added much to this post.

Adventure Time has long been admired by feminists and for good reason. On its face, the show is just another buddy comedy type cartoon with its lead protagonists–Jake the dog and Finn the human–two dudes who go on adventures together that are often bizarre and hilarious. However, that description denies the complexity of the show, which deals with themes as diverse as depression, trauma, temporary disability, bullying, dating, relationships, and so much more. The show has many interesting and diverse female characters. One of the most interesting characters on the show is Lumpy Space Princess, commonly known as LSP.

LSP’s character design can barely be called feminine in the ways that we as a society code things feminine. This is especially true if you compare her to other female characters on Adventure Time such as Flame Princess and Princess Bubblegum. Her gender markers are the fact that her name is Lumpy Space Princess, the fact that she is pink, and that her speech takes on the patterns and vernacular of a valley girl although her actual voice is low and not immediately parse-able as feminine. The other main gender marker of LSP is the fact that she is into traditionally feminine things such as shopping and makeup.

One of her defining characteristics is that LSP is completely unapologetic, often rude, and sometimes vulgar. LSP seems to personify all the negative things we are supposed to believe about women in that she is shallow, vain, not interested in serious things like actually ruling her kingdom, and boy crazy. On top of all that she does this without having any of the things we are supposed to think of as “womanly virtues” like being kind, or gentle, or compassionate. In a traditional fairy tale or even in more contemporary narratives, LSP would automatically be coded as a villain. She ticks all the boxes – she is confident, obsessed with her appearance, and not very nice.

However in Adventure Time, LSP is not a villain, she is a friend of Finn and Jake. Sometimes they don’t really get her but that’s cool, people can be different from each other and still be friends. She sometimes manages to help them out but often screws things up because she is really selfish and also not very self-aware. For this reason, LSP is a pretty polarizing character in the fandom. People seem to either love her or hate her and to be fair her self-centeredness does lead her to do some awful things. For example in a recent episode Finn decided he wanted to try and cope with his depression over losing his arm by trying to “make out” with lots of people. One of these people is LSP but she is unsatisfied with Finn’s definition of “making out,” which is a chaste kiss on the lips and she forcibly pulls Finn into a deeper kiss when he explicitly told her he didn’t want to. The show doesn’t really process this; it seems to further cement Finn’s depression and make him question whether “making out” is the best way for Finn to cope with not really being able to feel things. It would have been better had the show found a way for Finn to communicate to LSP that her behavior was not acceptable even though they are friends, but it makes sense for that not to happen because Finn was conflicted about his own behavior and just generally numb about what is going on in his life.

I find interesting, however, that LSP often attracts so much vitriol as the male version of her character, a male person who is self- absorbed, confident, brash and horrible to the people around him is often a very celebrated trope. Think about characters like House or Sherlock—of course these characters have an additional quality as they are imbued with the traditionally masculine virtue of being brilliant or incredibly talented/gifted.

LSP gets no such pass because she is not brilliant, she is just vain and annoying and a lot of the hate she gets boils down to “she thinks she’s so awesome but she’s not.” Even if she was brilliant at something in the way that Princess Bubblegum is, I don’t think she would be embraced in the same way a male character with her disposition would. Look at Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada; despite being imbued with pretty much all of the same qualities as the male characters I discussed earlier she is automatically coded as villainous. While we begin to understand more about her as the movie progresses, she never really loses that shadow of villainy.

I think the existence of LSP is an great thing. To have an unlikeable female character who is not immediately cast as a villain is so rare but I sometimes worry that the joke is meant to be exactly what a lot of people think about LSP, that she thinks she’s so great when it is clear to us as the viewers that she is not actually. I want the joke to be LSP is as exactly as awesome as she thinks she is, but she needs to learn how to learn how to be a better friend and respect other people’s boundaries. That is something that I find much more compelling–everyone needs to learn things as we grow up and LSP is no exception. This doesn’t mean her personality needs to change completely; she just needs to learn how to be more considerate. I hope the writers choose to go in this direction rather making LSP a two-dimensional joke.

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.