Not only does this kind of stereotyping delegitimize Black women’s feelings, but it functions as a racist and misogynistic social policing tactic that pressures black women to self-censor their opinions, feelings and needs, or else be written off as a “type.” In fictional representations, the Angry Black Woman labeling and policing limits the types of black women we see in film, literature, comics, television, and other media.
This guest post by Corinne Gaston previously appeared at the Ms. blog and is cross-posted with permission.
After the weeks of hype and speculation leading up to the premiere, How to Get Away with Murderhas been the show to watch on Thursday nights. Viola Davis stars as Annalise Keating, a law school professor and criminal defense attorney, whom you can tell from the get-go is not a person to be crossed.
She expects 100 percent from her students when she walks into Middleton Law School’s Criminal Law 101–or, as she likes to call the class, How to Get Away with Murder. Their first assignment? Come up with a defense for the attempted murder case she is working on. The only catch is that not one of the dozens upon dozens of students can repeat another student’s idea. She takes these students under her wing but she does not mother them; after all, the business of defending criminals is a hard one.
While many have praised Davis’ characterization of Keating, others, such as The New York Times critic Alessandra Stanley, boxed-in Keating as an “Angry Black Woman” before a single episode of the show had even aired. Keating was portrayed as “strong” and confident in the show’s trailer, which was enough for some folks to write her off. But in the pilot we see her actual character, and from the second she steps in front of the camera she is a force to be reckoned with. Keating’s gaze is unflinching and penetrating, her voice unwavering and, I must admit, I found her character to be menacing. But that does not obscure her creativity, brilliance and charisma. She openly expresses anger, dissatisfaction, sexuality and high expectations, and it should go without saying that stereotyping her would be a huge misstep.
Given the relative lack of diversity on television, particularly with show leads, characters like Davis’ Keating already have the limited representation of Black women in television (and film) working against them—it leads to extra pressure to “represent” or act as “spokespeople” for Black women, even if that is an unfair expectation. But then the double whammy comes in the form of racial biases. If you’re a Black woman actor and your character is too sexual? Jezebel. Cares too much for others? Mammy. Loud or expressive? Ratchet. Reveals any emotion that can be linked to displeasure OR (and here’s the kicker) personal standards? Angry Black Woman.
Not only does this kind of stereotyping delegitimize Black women’s feelings, but it functions as a racist and misogynistic social policing tactic that pressures black women to self-censor their opinions, feelings and needs, or else be written off as a “type.” In fictional representations, the Angry Black Woman labeling and policing limits the types of black women we see in film, literature, comics, television, and other media.
Despite the public criticisms that are sure to arise over Davis’ character—that she is too tough or aggressive—I am personally thankful that her character exists and that Davis plays Keating the way she does. It’s not often you see a Black woman character exude so much fearsome, respected power and confidence and not be portrayed as an over-the-top Sapphire stereotype, like many of the women in Tyler Perry’s movies. She is a hard, dynamic, and mysterious person. However, she does have her moment of vulnerability when one of her students finds her crying over the state of her strained marriage–because, of course, she’s human.
Oftentimes it feels like writers, producers and directors are afraid to show truly complex depictions of Black women for fear that audiences will not accept them. Which is funny, because white men are given huge amounts of freedom to depict complex, questionable and even immoral protagonists. Beyond that, these white male characters are often praised, loved and lionized—all without being written off as Angry White Men (even when they are very, very angry). Characters like Walter White from Breaking Bad and Dexter Morgan from Dexter, for example,amassed huge fan followings, even though one is a meth kingpin and the other is a straight-up murderer.
White male television characters can be crime bosses, murderers, meth manufacturers, drug dealers, drug users and thieves and be lauded, while in real life some of those identities (such as drug user and thief) have been used to dehumanize Black individuals and argue away their murders. Clearly there’s a racial representation issue that goes deeper than television, but as it stands, Black women actors should have the freedom to play as complex and troubling characters as white men and have their acting expertise applauded.
The first episode of How to Get Away with Murder laid the groundwork for twisting story lines to come: murder, affairs and, of course, more murder. If the plot line follows the path I think it will, the second murder, supposedly committed by four of Keating’s students, will be discovered, the four will go to trial and Keating will end up either defending or prosecuting her very own students. The show has the flexibility to go in many directions and so does Annalise Keating, who doesn’t tolerate the word “failure” in her personal dictionary, but will be forced to reckon with her own secrets.
At this point, I don’t know much of who she is, to which side her complex character skews in terms of general morals, or even if I’m rooting for her yet in the storyline. What I am rooting for, however, is her existence.
Corinne Gaston is an editorial intern at Ms. Follow her on Twitter @elysehamsa or go to her personal blog.
I do believe that Lynch and Frost meant to use BOB as “the evil that men do” and as a means to understand family violence and abuse, but they jump around the issue so much that it only reflects uncertainty. The show’s inability to hold evil men responsible for their actions is too reminiscent of our own society. As soon as we answer “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” the show does its best to rebury the ugly truth that we so struggled to uncover. After that it fully commits to understanding the mythos behind it. This is troubling to me.
This guest post by Rhianna Shaheen appears as part of our theme week on Demon and Spirit Possession.
(MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!)
I have a Twin Peaks problem. I love Twin Peaks (1990-1991). In college, I was so obsessed with the show that I animated a Saul Bass-inspired titles sequence and wrote a spec script for my screenwriting class. However, as I became a better feminist, I awoke from my stupor of admiration for the show. I began to question the dead girl trope and ask myself, what is so funny about the sexual abuse and torture of an adolescent girl? I’ll admit I was thrilled about its announced return in 2016, but I wonder if a continued story will do more harm than good. Will the show continue to pull the demonic possession card when it comes to violence against women?
In the TV series, Special Agent Dale Cooper first encounters the evil spirit BOB in a dream. However, no one seems to see BOB in real life except for Sarah Palmer, who becomes increasingly unstable and otherworldly after her daughter’s murder. Much of this is due to her terrifying visions of BOB as well as her husband’s recent, strange antics. When Maddy Ferguson, Laura’s lookalike cousin, comes to support the Palmer family she sees similar visions of BOB in the house.
In the hunt for Laura Palmer’s killer, the local Sheriff’s Department is absolutely useless. As soon as Agent Cooper turns them on to Tibetan method and Dream Logic, all serious detective work goes out the door. It also doesn’t help that the town chooses to project this crisis outside of “decent” society. According to Sheriff Truman:
“There’s a sort of evil out there. Something very, very strange in these old woods. Call it what you want. A darkness, a presence. It takes many forms but…it’s been out there for as long as anyone can remember and we’ve always been here to fight it.”
But this old evil is within the town as well as outside of it. The show’s “quirky allure” tricks viewers into believing that Twin Peaks is different. That some places remain untouched by patriarchal evil. When we discover that it was Leland Palmer we are shocked. Leland’s mirrored reflection of BOB exposes the threat as one within the confines of the domestic space. It is patriarchy passing itself off as the loving and benign father of the nuclear family.
But what is even more shocking is that an entire community allows this to happen. In the prequel film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) we follow Laura Palmer through the final seven days of her life. Unlike the series, Laura has a voice here. We get to see her walking, talking, and acting like a teenager. When pages from her secret diary go missing she confides in her friend Harold that “[BOB] has been having [her] since [she] was 12” and “wants to be [her], or he’ll kill [her].” Harold does not believe her. It’s an extremely painful scene, because not only do we know she will die, but we know that many real-life victims of childhood abuse are often not believed either.
Days before her death, Laura finally discovers that it is her father. At dinner, Leland torments his daughter’s dirty hands and questions her about her “lovers.” Leland then pinches his daughter’s cheek. The sheer look of horror on Laura’s face is heartbreaking as she looks into the eyes of her abuser. Her mother, Sarah All-I-Can-Do-Is-Scream Palmer, tells her husband to stop, saying, “She doesn’t like that.” He replies, “How do you know what she likes?” It’s absolutely chilling, but even then the mother remains ignorant. How can everyone be so clueless?
Now this brings us to the question: Who’s at fault for Laura Palmer’s murder? Was it poor Leland or the demon that possessed him?
Moments before his death, Leland confesses his guilt to Agent Cooper:
“Oh God! Laura! I killed her. Oh my God, I killed my daughter. I didn’t know. Forgive me. Oh God. I was just a boy. I saw him in my dream. He said he wanted to play. He opened me and I invited him and he came inside me.”
With fire sprinkler water pouring over him, Leland seems cleansed of his sins. Lynch paints a pretty sympathetic portrait of Leland. He is cursed and tormented rather than murderous and abusive. He is blameless for his actions. Leland gets to go “into the light” while Laura is condemned to the purgatory of the Black Lodge.
“We are instructed regarding how to situate our sympathies and experience our sense of justice. But this is just another clever use of the simplistic formula by which lascivious misogyny is presented in loving detail, […] scapegoating offenders whose punishment casts off the guilt that belongs to an entire culture ethos. And that ethos, both pornographic and thanatopic, not only goes free. It gets validated.”
Things become even more fucked up after Leland’s funeral where people remember him as a victim. Agent Cooper gives Mrs. Palmer some words of comfort:
“Sarah. I think it might help to teII you what happened just before LeIand died. It’s hard to realize here [points to her head] and here [points to her heart] what has transpired. Your husband went so far as to drug you to keep his actions secret. But before he died, LeIand confronted the horror of what he had done to Laura and agonized over the pain he had caused you. LeIand died at peace.”
I’m sorry, but death does not absolve you. Horrible people die and somehow we’re supposed to forget the history of horrible things they have done? We all die. This does not erase our actions, even if you’re a white cis male.
For a minute, let’s forget that BOB is a thing (ESPECIALLY when you consider that most of the town has no knowledge of these spirits and how their worlds work). These people are celebrating the memory of Leland Palmer after (I assume) finding out that he murdered and raped his own daughter (along with Maddy Ferguson and Teresa Banks). Excuse me, is anyone else bothered by how much denial these people are in?
Like many fans, I turned a blind eye, preferring to seek refuge in the myth of Killer BOB and the Black Lodge rather than identify the clear signs of abuse in front of me. As Cooper says: “Harry, is it easier to believe a man would rape and murder his own daughter? Any more comforting?”
While I no longer indulge the BOB theory, I do read BOB as patriarchal oppression. Its truth is one that women (Laura, Maddy, Sarah) see and know too well. Cooper only solves the mystery when he FINALLY believes and listens to a woman. Laura Palmer must whisper in his ear, “My father killed me” for him to finally understand.
“While he may ultimately let Leland off the hook by claiming he was “possessed” by the paranormal “Bob” the show’s resident evil force, the fact remains that the women of Twin Peaks and of the United States are in more danger from their fathers, husbands and lovers than from maniacal strangers.”
I do believe that Lynch and Frost meant to use BOB as “the evil that men do” and as a means to understand family violence and abuse, but they jump around the issue so much that it only reflects uncertainty. The show’s inability to hold evil men responsible for their actions is too reminiscent of our own society. As soon as we answer “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” the show does its best to rebury the ugly truth that we so struggled to uncover. After that it fully commits to understanding the mythos behind it. This is troubling to me. As one of the most influential shows on television, Twin Peaks created a narrative formula that will forever shape the way this country looks at rape and child abuse. It’s important that as viewers we constantly question this, even if it is disguised as harmless, intellectual programming.
Rhianna Shaheen is a recent graduate from Bryn Mawr College with a BA in Fine Arts and Minor in Film Studies and Art History. Check her out on twitter!
The premise of ‘The Good Wife’ brilliantly sets up and challenges particular gender roles and expectations. Julianna Margulies plays the lead character, Alicia Florrick. Given Margulies’ age – she was 43 when the show began – and popular culture’s continual privileging of youth, particularly with reference to women, this is an achievement in itself. Alicia’s married to Peter Florrick (Chris Noth, who’s no stranger to playing “bad boy” partners after his role of Mr Big on ‘Sex and the City’), who has just been jailed following a string of political and sexual scandals. The pilot sees Alicia dutifully standing by her husband, remaining silent as he apologises for his indiscretions, before the show cuts to several months later as Alicia returns to work as a defence attorney following 13 years as a stay-at-home mom.
The Good Wife centralizes the conventionally marginalized wife figure
Warning: Contains MAJOR spoilers!
Like many other fans of the hugely popular political and legal drama, The Good Wife, a few months ago, I sat down to watch the latest episode, “Dramatics, Your Honor,” only to be rudely awakened from the state of pure escapism which the show pleasantly induces. Although often clever, complex, and compelling, the show is also a somewhat ridiculous yet highly entertaining romp, with a taste for outlandish storylines and theatrical, scheming characters. In other words, I do not watch the show to get a reflection of or even a reflection on Real Life. Real Life sucks, and The Good Wife allows me, and others I assume, to escape life’s often mundane, tedious, and sometimes downright brutal existence. However, in this episode, Will Gardener (Josh Charles), one of the main characters who also serves as the love interest to the leading character, Alicia Florrick, dies. Taking this extremely personally – how could the writers do this to me? – I took to Twitter to find answers. Here, I came across this letter written by the creators and executive producers of the show. In it, they wrote a rather jarring sentence: “The Good Wife, at its heart, is the ‘Education of Alicia Florrick.’” As I reflected on this statement, I began to wonder to what extent Alicia Florrick needed to learn something and, more worryingly, to what extent this need to learn is highly gendered.
The premise of The Good Wife brilliantly sets up and challenges particular gender roles and expectations. Julianna Margulies plays the lead character, Alicia Florrick. Given Margulies’ age – she was 43 when the show began – and popular culture’s continual privileging of youth, particularly with reference to women, this is an achievement in itself. Alicia’s married to Peter Florrick (Chris Noth, who’s no stranger to playing “bad boy” partners after his role of Mr Big on Sex and the City), who has just been jailed following a string of political and sexual scandals. The pilot sees Alicia dutifully standing by her husband, remaining silent as he apologises for his indiscretions, before the show cuts to several months later as Alicia returns to work as a defence attorney following 13 years as a stay-at-home mom. Through this premise, The Good Wife centralises the conventionally side-lined figure of the wife by giving her a voice and an identity beyond this primary label of “the good wife.” Alicia not only embodies a complex and multifaceted identity as a lawyer, but also as a mother, sister, daughter, friend, and lover. The show also complicates the label of “the good wife” itself. For every character who praises Alicia for standing by her husband, another lambasts her for sticking with him, claiming she fails both herself and women everywhere. The show makes apparent that a woman’s “choice” – for how much autonomy did Alicia really have in this situation? – is intensely scrutinised and criticised. The show then follows Alicia’s struggle with the complexities and obstacles of her identity as she attempts to navigate marriage, motherhood, and the workplace, as well as her increasing sexual attraction for Will, her boss and one of the named partners at the firm where she works.
Alicia navigates the many aspects of her identity including mother, wife, and lawyer
With a set-up that continually explores and challenges the traditional idea of what is meant for a woman to be “good,” I was puzzled by the idea that Alicia needs an education. As television enters a golden age with shows particularly examining the moral complexities of their lead characters, I wondered whether the need to educate rather than explore Alicia’s character is specifically gendered. As Bitch Flicks examined last year, women are critically neglected from this exploration in two ways. Firstly, women’s contribution is neglected from the critical consensus and canonisation of the television revolution. The title alone from Brett Martin’s book, Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad, makes clear the absence of female-driven television shows within the consideration of this revolution. In The New Yorker, Emily Nassbaum criticises the degradation of “female” and “feminine” culture within the canonisation of television, and proclaims Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City as “the unacknowledged first female anti-hero on television.”
This, then, leads me onto my second point. The privilege of exploring a morally ambiguous character is primarily afforded to white, cis-gender, heterosexual, able-bodied men. Female characters, as well as other oppressed groups, in contrast, are refused this privilege. Not only are there fewer critically acclaimed female-driven shows than male-driven shows, and even fewer with Black or queer-identifying leading women. But when there are shows which attempt to explore complex female characters, they face a much harsher moral and critical assessment. For example, whereas the greed, selfishness and pure pigheadedness of Tony Soprano from The Soprano’s and Walter White in Breaking Bad are continually held up as an exploration of character, earning them a cult status within popular culture, Hannah Horvath from Girls is positively reviled (see here, here and here). Although Hannah’s characteristics are less extreme that Tony and Walter’s, she also shares a tendency to be narcissistic, self-absorbed and, at times, unlikeable. Whereas male characters are entitled to be bad, female characters, it seem, must always be good.
Male television characters can be bad……whereas a female character must always be good
Ensuring women remain “good” ensures they also remain passive, docile, and unthreatening. As Carol Dyhouse demonstrates in her book, Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women, the lives of young women in comparison to the lives of young men has been plagued with social anxiety and moral panic from the nineteenth century. However, the more I thought about Alicia’s education in The Good Wife, the more I realised that her education is not about being good; it’s about being bad.
Near the end of season one, Alicia makes her first difficult and morally ambiguous decision. As the recession hits, the partners at her law firm, Lockhart & Gardener, must decide which first year associate to lay off, Alicia or Cary Agos (Matt Czuchry). In order to save her job, Alicia pulls in a favour with her husband’s campaign manager, Eli Gold (Alan Cumming), asking him to switch legal representation to her firm, enabling her to bring in top lucrative clients. Not only does Alicia unfairly exploit her advantages, advantages to which Cary simply cannot live up, in order to ensure she secures her positions at the firm. She also uses Peter for her own career prospects, much in the same way that he uses her – Eli continually makes it apparent that Peter’s resurrected career as the States Attorney and, later, as the Governor of Illinois depends on Alicia’s support. Her education in complicating, if not rejecting, her “good” label comes to a head at the end of season four when she accepts Cary’s invitation to start their own firm, pinching Lockhart & Gardner’s top clients along the way.
After Will discovers Alicia’s plans at the beginning of season five, he tells her, “You’re awful, and you don’t even know how awful you are.” As Alicia’s complicated love interest in the show – although at times they engage in brief sexual encounters, Alicia is not “bad” enough to involve herself in a full-blown illicit affair, even if her relationship with Peter is strained at best – Will’s words are highly charged. Nevertheless, there’s some truth to them. Alicia’s come a long way from the relatively meek and unsure character of the pilot. As Joshua Rothman claims, “Everyone, including Alicia, thinks that she’s a victim—but, in fact, she’s a predator, all the more dangerous for being stealthy.” With season six currently airing, the show remains committed to this education. As Alicia considers running for States Attorney, the definition of “good” and “bad” become redefined. The latest episode, “Oppo Research” demonstrates the way in which, within the landscape of politics, what’s defined as “good” and “bad” becomes, simultaneously, much more black and white, and much more tenuous – it all depends on outward appearance and surface. As (politically defined) unpleasant aspects of Alicia’s life are made apparent – although, interestingly, they relate to Alicia’s family members rather than Alicia herself – the show reveals that even good girls have skeletons in their closets.
Cary Agos goes from colleague to rival to partner, Cary Agos motivates Alicia to be bad
Without wanting to be prescriptive or wishing the integrity of Alicia’s character away, a significant part of me wants Alicia to fuck up. And I mean, really fuck up. I think this is why I became so invested in the relationship between Will and Alicia, and why I was so saddened by the death of Will. I wanted Alicia to ditch her “Saint Alicia” label and embrace being bad. But the success of female-led shows is not in swapping one side of a dichotomy for another. It’s about embracing a nuanced portrayal of women in television and wider popular culture. The Good Wife succeeds in presenting a character who, despite her best efforts, remains flawed. In this way, Alicia Florrick can finally shed “the good” label for good.
Sarah Smyth is a staff writer at Bitch Flicks who recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.
‘Glee’ was set in Lima, and then it was set in Lima and New York, and then it was set in New York, and now, for its final, thirteen-episode season, it’s moving back to Lima. The most important thing, though, is that it’s finally going to end.
Glee was set in Lima, and then it was set in Lima and New York, and then it was set in New York, and now, for its final, 13-episode season, it’s moving back to Lima. The most important thing, though, is that it’s finally going to end.
Even their street sign’s a little bit off
Glee has been on for five seasons, and there was no point during that time when it knew when it was trying to be. Originally conceived of as a cynical indie film, the TV show version of Gleebecame a mishmash of voices, depending on who was writing each episode, and it swung from satire to saccharine, comedy to drama, genuine insight to whatever the hell “Shooting Star” was supposed to be on a regular basis.
Glee has never known what it’s trying to be, but the question really got called at the end of season three, when most of the main characters were due to graduate high school. At that point, somebody had to decide: is Glee a show about a high school glee club, or is it a show about particular characters, whom we can follow after they step outside high school?
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the answer was still “I don’t know.”
The next one and a half seasons were split between the fictional high school, stationed in Lima, and a fictional performing arts school in New York, where most of the graduating characters happened to go. The New York plot line (eventually) featured three of the characters who had anchored the show during the first three seasons – heterosexual diva Rachel Berry, martyred gay man Kurt, and razor-tongued lesbian Santana.
In a slightly aged-up version of Fame, the characters lived and worked in New York, while Rachel and Kurt attended the fictional arts school, and they dealt with young-adult problems, like how to make long-distance relationships work, how to choose between competing opportunities, and how to deal with setbacks and disappointment. Adam Lambert was also there, for some reason.
Back in Lima, the B-team was still going to high school, and high school was full of new characters… who not-so-cleverly stepped in to fill the exact same roles as the old characters who’d left. Only, they had less distinct personalities, because no one is going to own the role of “The New Rachel” the way Lea Michele owns Rachel, and no one is going to be the new Kurt.
Part of Glee’ssuccess came from its original casting decisions. The role of Rachel was written with Lea Michele in mind, and Kurt was created for Chris Colfer, after he auditioned for another part. Naya Rivera and Heather Morris (Santana and her on-again-off-again girlfriend, Brittany) were originally cast in small roles that got bigger once it became clear that their delivery was turning the characters into fan favorites. None of the characters added late in the series – except, arguably, Kurt’s boyfriend, Blaine – have made such a strong impression.
It’s understandable that the producers would want to keep Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, and some of their other rapidly aging stars. The problem is that Glee was never framed as a story about particular people; it was framed as a story about the high school experience.
Buffy: a show that survived the transition to college
Shows that start out in high school typically have a rocky transition once the characters graduate. The ones that manage it best are the ones that are focused on particular people who happen to be in high school, rather than high schools who happen to have people in them.
Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, for example, followed its main character from high school to college, and then from college to normal adulthood. The series was never about Sunnydale High – it was about the girl who killed vampires there. Similarly, Veronica Mars managed a slightly less graceful, but still pretty good transition to college, since the series was more about Veronica being a private detective than it was about Neptune High.
The way that Glee was framed and presented, during its first three seasons, it was mostly a show about high school. Rachel Berry was the lead character, but the focus of the show was the high school glee club and its power to transform the lives of students (by literally making them good singers as soon as they stepped inside the choir room, without any practice or training – I digress). The point of the show was that there were multiple journeys of personal discovery, and they were all united by the glee club.
Fame 2.0, in New York, was arguably a better show than Glee, but it wasn’t Glee, and, as we cut back and forth between the two shows, for one and a half seasons, it eventually became clear that someone was going to have to make a choice about which show to pour production resources into.
Someone chose New York.
The last half (or thereabout) of season five dumped the high school story line completely and moved everyone interesting – mostly characters who were introduced during the first three seasons – to New York on a permanent basis. The only strong character who didn’t move there was Coach Sylvester, played by Jane Lynch, but she came by to visit when she wasn’t hosting Hollywood Game Night. It was the right decision in terms of making a show that was good, but it was the wrong decision in terms of making a show that was Glee.
And, now the show is moving back to Lima for its final season. And its characters are now people who keep hanging around their old high school after they’ve already graduated.
These kids are, like, 30 right now
The boldest, riskiest decision that Glee could have made two years ago would have been to dump its existing characters and try to create the same magic with an incoming cast. But that’s not the world we live in.
Instead, Glee has become a hybrid of High School Choir Show, and The Rachel Berry Show, with Rachel (who is still the series’ most recognizable character) tethered to her high school for the rest of her life, in order that the series may exist. In season six, she’ll return to McKinley High – along with lots of her friends – as the new coach of the glee club. It’s sort of like when Buffy became a “counselor” at her high school, during the last and worst season, just so the action could take place on site.
Rachel’s story – which mirrors the story of many of the characters on Glee – was that she wasn’t pretty, and she wasn’t popular, and people threw ice in her face, but she knew, deep down in her heart, that she could be somebody special. That all she had to do was believe in herself, and keep pushing, and trust that one day she’d get the brass ring. Unfortunately for her, Glee loved her so much that the show clipped her wings to stop her from flying away.
Her story is now (spoilers say) that she “failed” in chasing her dreams, and has become a music teacher, like the series’ other failed dreamer, Mr. Shue. If Rachel wanted to be a teacher because she loved it, that would be different, but her only consistent motivation, over the past five years, has been wanting to be a star – something that the show has alternately criticized and rewarded her for at different times.
The truth is that Glee has always been partly The Story of Rachel, and the stakes have always been partly about whether or not she can triumph, despite having been unpopular when she was sixteen. At heart, it’s an underdog story, where (rightly or wrongly) she is the principle underdog, and we’re led to believe that her suffering will be redeemed because she turns out to be special.
The fact that Rachel now, literally, cannot leave high schoolbehind just reinforces one of the most troubling messages Glee has produced – that the person you are at 16 is the person you have to be, always. That you’d better embrace that person and sing a song about her, because any kind of change or growth is inauthentic.
An essential part of growing up is letting go, and learning to leave the past, whether good or bad, behind. It’s a tragedy if Rachel stays trapped in high school, either because it was the best time in her life (like Mr. Shue), or because it always haunts her as the worst.
The only hope I have for season six is that it somehow involves letting Rachel go free. After hate-watching this thing for five years, though, I’m also just glad it will end.
The final season of Glee is set to air in 2015.
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.
I don’t know if the writers portray this type of friendship and steer away from many of the harmful female friend tropes on purpose, or if it’s just because there’s no way to fit them in with all the other crazy shit that’s going on, but the strong and positive friendship these girls share is one of the reasons I enjoy ‘Pretty Little Liars.’
This guest post by Victor Kirksey-Brown appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.
I don’t know where to start, because I don’t totally understand Pretty Little Liars. This show blows my mind in both good ways and horrible ways. And the show isn’t over, so I can’t say for sure how the themes and lessons will ultimately play out.
The show, based on a book series of the same name, centers around four girls: Emily, Spencer, Hanna, and Aria. After the disappearance and assumed death of their friend and ring leader Alison DiLaurentis they have a falling out, but are reunited a year later when they start receiving threats from an anonymous someone who goes by “A.”
And then shit goes crazy. “A” has done so much shit to these teenage girls and I don’t understand any of it, but I digress.
When the show starts out, they’re all estranged and I wouldn’t really classify them as friends. Aria is just moving back to Rosewood (the fictional town where the show takes place) after a year of traveling in Europe with her family, Spencer is heavily focused on school and extracurriculars, Emily is dealing with figuring out her sexual identity as well as maintaining her top ranking on the swim team, and in the absence of Alison, Hanna is the new “Queen Bee” of Rosewood High.
So they’re all in different places, but are forced to rely on each other and come back together because of “A” and her?…his?..their? goons. “A” is constantly pitting the four girls against each other, trying to use their secrets and desires to exploit them and break them apart. “A” exploits Emily, promising her secret of being a lesbian will remain so if she does what “A” wants. “A” does the same to Aria with her relationship with her teacher Ezra (by the way my feelings on their relationship are pretty well summed up by Gaayathri Nair here.) “A” also does this to Hanna when her mom is stealing money from her work, and multiple times with Spencer because of her family’s many secrets. However, “A” always either then forces them to divulge their secrets or, more often, the girls find that they must trust in each other to make any progress.
Eventually the girls learn that keeping secrets from each other is counterproductive, especially when people are crashing cars into your house, blowing up houses, hitting you with cars, filling your mom’s car with bees, basically TRYING TO KILL YOU 24/7. Albeit it took until season 5 for that to really sink in.
No matter what happens, they’re forced to fully trust each other. When other relationships come in between the core four–like when Spencer’s boyfriend Toby was working with “A” because “A” had information on his mother’s death that he badly wanted and Spencer found out but kept it secret–the group is mad when they find out, but ultimately understanding and compassionate. They accept Spencer back and eventually Toby, because they’ve all been in the same place. They’ve all been pressured by “A” to do things they regret and instead of pushing each other away, they try and understand and stay together.
Because EVERYONE is a suspect, the suspects are often each other’s loved ones and this causes tension with the group. But again, because it happens to all of them, they all give each other the opportunity to prove their loved one isn’t really involved (though they usually are). And if it is discovered said person is involved, everyone in the group knows that they owe it to each other to allow the group to pursue said loved one to find answers.
Also, they never really fight over boys. (And on a side note it’s actually kind of amazing how long lasting the relationships in this show are given it’s a teen drama, even if they are highly problematic.) Whenever a boy or love interest comes between them it’s because one of them is hiding something from the rest of them to protect the love interest. They don’t get into “cat-fights” with each other over guys, they don’t gossip behind each other’s backs, they don’t get jealous of one another, they do sometimes judge each other, but eventually realize that they all have faults and again they need to trust each other. When they fight with each other it’s because they’re genuinely concerned for each other, like when Spencer gets addicted to Adderall or this season when Hanna has a drinking problem, or it’s because someone has been hiding crucial information from the others, information that could mean life or death.
Ultimately, this teaches the audience what every drama, especially teen drama, I think deep down wants to teach but never fully does: that you have to be vulnerable with your friends, and lying, even when you’re doing it because you think you’re helping, only ends up hurting in the long run. It also teaches that you shouldn’t let boys or gossip come between you and your friends, and if it does, communicate with them and confront it. This is something that is normal in teen dramas, but on Pretty Little Liars the importance of trusting and relying on each other is emphasized because they’re dealing with HEAVY shit. People are constantly harassing them and trying to kill them. The girls don’t have time to dwell on petty things, they’re always trying to figure out who’s trying to hurt them and why. In fact, the times they do dwell on petty things it’s pretty distracting, I have to remind myself that these are high school girls and they have a right to concern themselves with things the average high school girl thinks about.
Another thing is they never slut shame each other, a common thing that will come between female friends in teen dramas. When the group finds out about Aria dating their English teacher Ezra, they’re concerned because of the age difference, but they never attack Aria. They’re eventually very supportive of Aria and Ezra’s relationship. I personally hate Ezra with a deep passion to the point where I yell “Fuck you” whenever he’s on screen, but think it’s amazing that Emily, Hanna, and Spencer are so understanding about it all. And when Emily comes out to them all, again, they’re all very supportive and none of them treat her any differently than they had before.
I mean, even when Alison DiLaurentis is found to be alive and has had a hand in putting them through all the shit they go through, they try to help her and protect her, and they have no reason to even like her. Throughout the show we’re shown flashbacks of their interactions with Alison and they are all of her being horrible and manipulative. But they see that Alison has been through a lot and is maybe in the same boat as they are, so they take her back in. They’re not completely trusting of her, but the point is they give her a chance.
This show is constantly breaking my mind because I have no idea why anything that is happening is happening and it’s all horrible, and there are a lot of problematic relationships and situations, but also there are a lot of progressive things. All of them equally rely on each other and get themselves out of trouble, they’re usually the ones who have to protect their boyfriends and family members, and they aren’t afraid to confront their enemies. Their parents are pretty open minded; Emily’s mother was unsupportive at first about Emily coming out, but then became very loving and understanding. Even Aria’s parents became understanding of her relationship with Ezra to the point of him being invited to family functions. And as I’ve shown you, the girls’ friendship is very progressive.
I don’t know if the writers portray this type of friendship and steer away from many of the harmful female friend tropes on purpose, or if it’s just because there’s no way to fit them in with all the other crazy shit that’s going on, but the strong and positive friendship these girls share is one of the reasons I enjoy Pretty Little Liars. Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t a slew of negative things about the show, or that I even know what my feelings for this show are, it’s constantly doing really progressive things for teen dramas while also doing regressive things, like having every person of color (aside from Emily) ending up being villainous and killed or just killed. I’m just saying that I love teen dramas and I think it’s awesome to see a female led teen drama with strong friendships.
Oh, and another way this show fosters friendships is that you should not watch it alone; you definitely need watching buddies. I don’t know how teenagers can watch this show. I’m 22 and I can’t even fathom it half the time, but I definitely wouldn’t make it through without my friends Laura and Elisha. So if you plan on checking it out, find someone who’ll plunge into the deep end with you.
The girls of Beacon Hills, especially Allison and Lydia, are loyal, dedicated friends. They help each other out and they encourage each other. They stand up for each other. They’re best friends with all the complexities that relationship implies. There are better, or at least more consistent, examples in media to turn to, but the perfect moments of female friendship in ‘Teen Wolf’ mean a lot to me.
This guest post by Andrea Taylor appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.
Teen Wolf may not seem the most likely show to find a celebration of female friendship, but one of my favourite pairs of TV best friends resided in Beacon Hills, the fictional town where Teen Wolf is set. This show has many issues, particularly with representation, but the friendship between Lydia (Holland Roden) and Allison (Crystal Reed)kept me hooked, and I was always hanging on for more scenes with these badass BFFs.
Lydia is introduced as the classic “rich bitch” who befriends shy, new girl Allison, seemingly with the ulterior motive that all popular girls have: keeping one’s (potential) enemies closer.
But Allison and Lydia become true best friends through the course of the show. Their friendship develops from something out of necessity to a deep bond; the climax of their friendship is Allison giving her life in the fight to save Lydia from the Nogitsune. Due to the format of Teen Wolf – several main characters and multiple plots – Lydia and Allison didn’t spend as much time onscreen together as I would have liked (OK, I would have watched a spinoff all about Allison and Lydia). But their moments together are some of the best. Their relationship with each other, and the ones with other girls, are just as important as the relationships they have with boys.
Allison and Lydia, not long after they first meet.
Allison’s sweetness complements Lydia’s sarcasm; both girls are strong-willed but are still able to be vulnerable. They can’t do it all alone, and that’s OK. (Teamwork and friendship are prominent themes in the show, overall.)
Lydia’s motives for befriending Allison may have been more strategic than altruistic, but if you look beneath the surface she is a character in need of love, support, and friendship, just as Allison needed a friend when she didn’t know anyone. They supported each other from the outset. Allison encouraged Lydia not to act dumb for her boyfriend, Jackson (although Lydia was never that great at acting dumb, anyway), easily seeing through Lydia’s front. There are a lot of moments like this that I love but I’ll highlight just a few.
Allison provides moral support for an anxious Lydia returning to school.
At the beginning of season two, after Lydia has gone missing from hospital, Allison tells Scott (Tyler Posey) and Stiles (Dylan O’Brien) she is going with them to find Lydia for the simple reason that “she is my best friend.” Her delivery puts emphasis on the importance of “best friend” and makes it clear that she isn’t making a request. When Lydia is found and returns to school, Allison is with her for moral support. As they often do, they stand shoulder to shoulder, neither one in front of the other.
Physical signs of affection can be important in television friendships.
In season three, Lydia tries to help Allison find her archery skills again after the consequences of some magic saw three of the main characters losing their defining skills/characteristics. Lydia’s strategies may not help, but the scene is another illustration of her love for her best friend. Later in the season, Allison accompanies Lydia to confront Peter (Ian Bohen). As they leave, they are holding hands. I love little details that show physical affection between friends and the comfort they can offer. It makes a TV friendship seem more real.
Lydia encourages Allison to keep trying when she loses her faith in her archery skills.
Lydia and Allison may bond mostly through supernatural encounters, but they still have time to do “normal” teenager stuff we’d see in other shows: they go shopping, have sleepovers and, yes, talk about boys. It does get old when girls talk about boys, but I feel that talking about romance and sex (if you’re interested in either) with your friends is an important part of being a teenager.
Doing “regular” teenage things: Lydia helps Allison pick out clothes and paint colours.
I was disappointed when, in season one, Lydia makes out with Scott, motivated by jealousy over Jackson’s (Colton Haynes) attentions toward Allison. However, I like that it didn’t ruin Allison and Lydia’s friendship. Another show may have Allison forgive only Scott, but Allison forgives both of them. She doesn’t do it straight away, though. Lydia offers to buy Allison a dress by way of apology. Allison says “as far as apologies go this is more than what I was expecting … but not as much as I’m going to ask.” She tells Lydia to go to the formal with Stiles. This jumping-through-hoops kind of apology bothers me yet it is obvious Lydia regrets what she has done. And Allison isn’t really mean-spirited. There is a lot to unpack here – more than I can in this piece – but that it happens early on, and that there is no more tension as a result of boys is, at least, something.
Lydia feels her own betrayal when she realises that Allison, as well as the rest of the gang, have been keeping secrets from her (you know, werewolves and whatnot). These betrayals are just as important as other moments in the development of their friendship. People don’t always have to forgive those who hurt them, but I think it’s important to see flawed characters who make mistakes. It’s also important that characters find the capacity to forgive each other when their friendship is more important than their mistakes, so long as they are acknowledged.
These are complex young women; they subvert (some) media stereotypes (but of course are still heterosexual cis-women).
Lydia appears to be the stereotypical rich bitch but she’s better described as a “bratty intellectual girl” who is a lot more complex than she first appears. In an interview, actress Holland Roden said that she asked creator Jeff Davis if Lydia could “the smartest girl in school” because she was frustrated at the overwhelming portrayal of “cool, popular” girls as not being academically intelligent.
Allison is the badass babe who can shoot a bow and arrow, but when she’s introduced she’s shy and uncertain; she’s the typical new girl. Her vulnerability doesn’t disappear, and the balance of this side with her physical prowess serves to create a character with depth.
This trend of subverting stereotypes follows through to many other characters. Kira (Arden Cho), although also a fighter, is not just an Allison clone as seen in her clumsiness and awkwardness. Malia (Shelley Henig), having been in coyote form for many years, is learning to be human. Her lack of instinctive nurturing is a refreshing depiction of a girl who’s not meant to be the bitchy girl everyone loves to hate.
They’re all flawed but none of these things make them horrible people and it’s refreshing to see interesting, imperfect girls. But they are still conventionally attractive, heterosexual cis-women, and Teen Wolf has a long way to go in terms of representation.
It’s important to note that there is little in the way of friendship between the older women of Beacon Hills, whereas the men, at least, have one or two examples, which is disappointing. Going back to the younger girls, there are some nice moments between Lydia and Kira and Kira and Malia in season four but, overall, nothing like what Lydia and Allison had. In a panel at Melbourne’s Creatures of the Night Convention, actress Holland Roden explained that Lydia puts up walls around herself. She’s not an unkind person, but it takes her a while to warm up to new people, and, after Allison’s death, she tends to be distanced from the other characters, especially Malia.
Presenting a united front, once again.
The girls of Beacon Hills, especially Allison and Lydia, are loyal, dedicated friends. They help each other out and they encourage each other. They stand up for each other. They’re best friends with all the complexities that relationship implies. There are better, or at least more consistent, examples in media to turn to, but the perfect moments of female friendship in Teen Wolf mean a lot to me.
I hope that in future seasons Lydia’s walls are able to come down again as I would love to see Lydia, Kira, and Malia as awesome BFFs giving hell to the baddies of Beacon Hills. I’m sure it’s just what Allison would have wanted.
Andrea Taylor lives in South Australia. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Art History, which is currently gathering dust somewhere in her house. Her passions include all things kitsch, trashy TV, pizza, and she basically just loves movies. She blogs about clothes and stuff on Andi B. Goode and you can follow her on twitter (and most social media) @andibgoode.
In her bestselling collection ‘Bad Feminist,’ Roxane Gay starts the listicle entitled “How to Be Friends with Another Woman” with this as the very first item: “Abandon the cultural myth that all female friendships must be bitchy, toxic, or competitive. This myth is like heels and purses—pretty but designed to SLOW women down.”
This guest post by Jessica Freeman-Slade appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.
In her bestselling collection Bad Feminist,Roxane Gay starts the listicle entitled “How to Be Friends with Another Woman” with this as the very first item: “Abandon the cultural myth that all female friendships must be bitchy, toxic, or competitive. This myth is like heels and purses—pretty but designed to SLOW women down.”
Pretty Little Liars,a show on ABC Family that just wrapped its fifth season, looks on the surface to be all about the things that slow female friendships down, especially in high school—the fabulous heels, the purses, the toxicity of secret-keeping and back-stabbing. (For a long time I assumed it was Gossip Girl in suburbia, all about teenagers behaving badly and looking great while doing it.) Yet upon closer inspection, it presents itself as the most radical show about women, and specifically female friendship, on television, a treatise on what might happen when four friends refuse to become mean girls, and choose something to embark on something far more difficult: genuine support of each other. That might explain why the show is the most Tweeted-about series of all time (yes, surpassing Scandal, with 11.7 million Tweets sent during its season 2 finale in 2013), and why it’s proven to be much more than just a pretty teenage drama.
Based upon the YA series by Sara Shepard,PLL takes place in the fictional town of Rosewood, Pennsylvania, where queen bee Alison (Sasha Pieterse) has been missing for almost a year, and her formerly tight clique has broken up as they enter their junior year of high school. Star swimmer Emily (Shay Mitchell), who once nursed a deeply closeted crush on Alison, is just starting to assert her sexuality and independence. Straight-A student Spencer (Troian Bellisario) is tiptoeing around her uber-competitive sister Melissa (Torrey DeVitto). The fashionista Hanna (Ashley Benson) spends most of her time shoplifting and looking the other way while her single mother cleans up her messes. And artistic Aria (Lucy Hale) has just returned from a year abroad with her family, and immediately falls for Ezra (Ian Harding), a cute guy who—tada!—turns out to be her English teacher. These characters seem like archetypes (jock, Type-A, ditz, flower child) with very little beyond typical teenage drama to concern them. But then Alison’s dead body is discovered, and the girls start receiving texts from a mysterious “A” who seems to know all their unflattering secrets, lies, and desires, and worst, the details that could easily nail them for a terrible crime. But rather than turn away from each other, the girls immediately come back together, breaking those archetypes open and forming an alliance to uncover their texting tormentor and bring Alison’s killer to justice. As its millions of rabidly texting fans would attest, Pretty Little Liars has become the rare teen-oriented show that embraces all types of girls, the importance of supporting your friends and how they choose to be happy, and most importantly, how to fight against a bully who keeps you down.
Initially it seems that the villain is the mysterious “A,” whose threats scare the girls into silence or keep them at a distance from what makes them happy. (One of the gentler A threats is in Season 1, when A steals photographs of Emily kissing her new girlfriend and threatens to reveal them to her family.) But the real spectre of terror over the entire series is Alison: the glamorous, manipulative, power-hungry, and freakishly intelligent teenage girl who can bend anybody to her will.
In life, Alison bullied and teased her so-called friends and kept them from showing their own strengths. Hanna in particular withered under her rule, as Alison called her “Hefty Hanna” until she became bulimic. And even after death, the secrets that Alison had kept for the girls serve as A’s material for ripping their lives apart—to reveal Aria’s relationship with Ezra as well as her father’s (Chad Lowe) infidelity, to expose Spencer’s plagiarism of an award-winning essay, and to send Hanna’s mother to jail for stealing money as they’re on the verge of foreclosure. The villainy at the core of PLL is Alison’s undue influence, the one cool girl who rules over other girls and takes away their power.
But instead of becoming more like their tormentor, Pretty Little Liars gives its characters the choice of telling the truth, trusting each other, and taking on the consequences of their mistakes rather than lying their way out of them. Aria confronts her father about the infidelity, and Spencer withdraws her essay from the competition and disappoints her family in the process. Emily comes out of the closet, despite her fears—and her friends are genuinely happy and supportive of her. And to earn back the balance of her mother’s stolen money, on A’s orders Hanna consumes a dozen cupcakes, triggering a flashback to her days of binge eating. Yet when A texts her to do what Alison taught her, to “get rid of it,” Hanna refuses to go down the same old road. Instead of becoming more like Alison, the girls decide to become more like themselves, the selves that they know to be powerful and beautiful, inside and out.
Let’s revisit that #1 rule of female friendship from Roxane Gay—too often we ascribe a kind of inherent toxicity to female friendship, to the way women negotiate power dynamics and competition amongst themselves, as though there was a finite amount of beauty, intelligence, and influence in the room. The perpetuation of “girl-on-girl” crime doesn’t have as much to do with actual criminality or offense (when a cheating boyfriend is caught, why do we blame the other woman?), as it does with the notion that only one girl can win at any given moment. Yet in embracing the differences of the four Liars, the show allows a kind of multiplicity in its portraits of good girls who are not goodie two-shoes, and what winning in a community of women can look like. These girls kick butt together, and they do it with strengths drawn directly from their personalities, without the supernatural powers or exceptionally strong kickboxing or archery skills that we expect from other heroines of pop culture. For Emily, it’s her disarming honesty and candor that allows people to trust and open up to her.
Aria is small but fierce, and her wisdom beyond her years empowers her to make decisions that she can stand by.
Hanna is loyal to the core, and because she herself had been an outsider, she refuses to tolerate deceit from the people around her.
And for Spencer, in a constantly evolving and Emmy-worth performance by Bellisario, it’s her supreme intelligence and drive makes her the perfect troop leader, galvanizing her friends to stop settling for misery and start exposing the threats around them.
To be sure, the show has plenty of faults: the various relationship between teenage girls and some much-older love interests gives me plenty of heebie-jeebies, as do the increasingly improbable plot twists and the immaculate wardrobe, hair, and makeup choices on display at all times. (When, in all that mystery solving and running around in the woods, do they have enough time to pick out such cute outfits?) And, if you agree with A.O. Scott’s recent handwringing over the “death of adulthood” in contemporary media, you might wonder why so much of this positive friendship conversation has to be about teenagers rather than grown women. But these girls are exactly at the age where major decisions about character are made—when you move from childhood into adulthood, you stop absorbing information from your role models and start making your own choices. And the choice—to be a mean girl, and rule over everyone else, or to be a kind girl and to form meaningful relationships—is at the very center of Pretty Little Liars.
Most importantly, the stakes for these friendships are truly, massively high. These girls are literally saving each other FROM DEATH—breaking each other out of cages, chasing down bad guys, and fighting back against people who would like to silence them. While the plotting of the show may be highly tongue-in-cheek in treating death-defying an extracurricular activity, you have to admire how high the stakes have been placed. Without having each other’s backs, without their friendships, these girls would be dead—friendship is not only a positive choice, it is a lifesaving choice. And that is a pretty darn heroic proposition, especially for teenage girls.
Jessica Freeman-Sladeis a cookbook editor at Random House, and has written reviews for The Rumpus, The Millions, The TK Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Specter Magazine, among others. She lives in Morningside Heights, NY.
‘Masters of Sex’ is not a great show. It’s awkward and safe and seems to think that we’re impressed by watching people masturbate. But it’s also this really strange, kind-of cool story all about the masculine ideal and a time traveler who tries to break the cycle of self-hatred that supports it.
Masters of Sex is not a great show. It’s awkward and safe and seems to think that we’re impressed by watching people masturbate. But it’s also this really strange, kind-of cool story all about the masculine ideal and a time traveler who tries to break the cycle of self-hatred that supports it.
Bill, Virginia, and the terror of human emotion
Masters of Sex, if you haven’t been watching or hate-watching it,is a fictionalized account of the work done by of real-life sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson in the late 1950s. Officially, the series is about the study they conducted and the breakthroughs they made in our understanding of human sexuality. Unofficially, it’s a love story, too.
We know from history that the real Masters and Johnson eventually married, and the tension in Masters of Sex isn’t about whether they’ll get together. The tension in Masters of Sex is about whether Virginia can rescue Bill from his sense of self-hatred by freeing him from 1950s gender norms. She is the hero, and that is her quest; if she succeeds – and we think she’ll succeed – her reward will be his love.
Most of what we’ve learned about Bill, so far, has been in service of explaining Virginia’s quest to save him. He’s smart and sensitive and, basically, a good, well-meaning person, but he has a tragic backstory involving an abusive father, and an internalized sense of shame around his own emotions. With his wife – he’s married when he meets Virginia – he acts out the gender roles he’s learned. That is, he treats her kindly, but like something that’s foreign to him; a creature from another planet that he can’t quite understand. He doesn’t feel that he can talk to her about his troubles; he thinks that she depends on him to be a stable presence. He would like her to admire him, and thinks that he would damage their relationship by revealing his true self.
The reality, of course – and this is dramatized well by Masters of Sex – is that Bill’s wife would like nothing more than to be emotionally intimate with him – to know what he’s thinking and feeling, to have a sense that they’re on the same team. Unfortunately, her own ideas about gender are just as antiquated as Bill’s, and she is, in fact, alarmed when he shows signs of strong emotion. She also treats him like something foreign and unintelligible, hiding her own feelings, and acting like he’s more of a guest in their house than someone who actually lives there.
Virginia, just as stereotypes would have it, is the mistress that Bill can be his true self with. It’s a little bit because he looks down on her, a little bit because he respects her, and a lot because Virginia is a time traveler from 2014.
As the character the audience is most invited to identify with, Virginia is the mouthpiece for most of our beliefs. Masters of Sex is awfully proud of itself for telling us things like “the clitoris exists,” but its target audience is people who already know all this stuff. Specifically, the target audience seems to be women like Virginia – smart, single, independent, self-supporting, sex-positive women with liberal values and a soft spot in their hearts for closed-off men. Virginia is us, wearing a dress from the 1950s, and we get to vicariously rescue the 1950s, and Bill, from the backwards social taboos of the time.
It’s a story-telling strategy that’s sometimes extremely annoying, and other times strangely effective.
Virginia, with Lillian, who overcame Being a Woman to also become A Doctor, and then get killed by being a woman, because she has cervical cancer
On the annoying front, Masters of Sex doesn’t usually challenge us. Despite the fact that it’s supposedly about two people who had radical ideas for their time, the show’s pretty safe by today’s standards. It takes the bold stance, for example, that gay people shouldn’t try to turn themselves straight with electroshock therapy. And that women can have careers outside the home. And that people can have sex for recreational purposes. And that you shouldn’t be a dick to someone just because they’re black.
None of these are radical ideas by today’s standards, and we’re invited to look backwards at the 1950s with a sense of satisfaction about how much things have changed. At least so far, there’s very little attempt to examine racism, sexism, or homophobia from an angle that would highlight ongoing problems today. It’s all done retrospectively, like, “Can you believe what people were like?!?” And we share Virginia’s bewilderment and exasperation. She’s essentially A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court with a social rather than technological advantage. If we identify with her, we might enjoy the sense of feeling forward-looking and superior, but we don’t learn very much about ourselves.
Masters and Johnson’s actual research, as presented by the show, isn’t exactly a bag of surprises, either. We watch all of the characters freak out over discoveries like, “women can have multiple orgasms” and “people curl their toes during sex.” Were you aware that not everyone who has sex does so in the missionary position? Or that sometimes they think about something other than the person they’re having sex with? If so, you won’t learn anything new, here.
In some ways, this backward-looking orientation is most frustrating when the show is just barely unable to address information that’s actually useful today. There is, for example, a really topical B-plot about cervical cancer that can’t communicate the most important fact we now know about cervical cancer – that it’s caused by HPV, and that there are vaccines for that. The bitter irony of leading the audience to think about cervical cancer each week, without telling them the one thing they might need to know, is almost too much to take. Instead of learning something that might be of actual use, the audience is invited to feel good about the fact that pap smears are now a common practice.
We’re generally invited, through the benefit of hindsight, to see 1950s America as misguided and conservative, and to see Virginia as a hero who’s fighting a noble battle to achieve the future. We know that, in most cases, history is on her side, and we see that she faithfully represents our values. Somehow, she hasn’t internalized any of the bullshit in her culture. That makes her annoying, sometimes, but it’s also what makes her the perfect champion for Bill – she stands outside of everything that makes him hate himself, and offers the perspective that only a (highly improbable) outsider can give.
Bill and Virginia engage in a little after-sex metaphor-making
The root of Bill’s self-hatred is the masculine ideal. The cornerstone of any really excellent/terrible patriarchy, the masculine ideal is the notion that there is only one really desirable Way for a person to Be. Women are automatically excluded from being that Way, but so are most men. In the USA, and cultures like it, the masculine ideal of the 1950s required things like: heterosexuality; skill in physical combat;
avoiding the outward display of any emotion except, perhaps, anger; and courage in the face of physical danger. Trying to meet the requirements of that ideal – trying to be a “real man” and win approval from one’s peers – could lead to aggression, misogyny, homophobia, and the construction of a private emotional prison where normal feelings like sadness, embarrassment, grief, loneliness, uncertainty, and fear could fester until they got twisted.
The 1950s – the era that present-day conservatives harken back to when they talk about the good old days – is really a peak in the backlash against equal rights for people who weren’t straight, white men. It was a doubling down on rigid ideas that we now understand can hurt everyone – even the straight, white men who supposedly benefit from them.
Virginia, as a time traveler with values from the future, can give Bill something that nobody else – including his well-meaning wife – can deliver. She can give him a space where it’s safe to let go of all of the things he’s been taught about who he should be, and find out who he is underneath. It’s like Idina Menzel on that mountain.
“Fight,” the series’ best and most critically lauded episode so far, is nothing but a really heavy-handed treatise on this point. Bill and Virginia meet to have sex in a hotel, and a hugely symbolic boxing match on television leads Bill to confess, for the first time out loud, that his father used to beat him as a child and that his only form of protest was to take it “like a man” by not allowing himself to reveal how much it hurt him.
Virginia, who is horrified by this, tells Bill that she won’t raise her son to think that that’s the way to be a man.
The episode uses boxing as a metaphor for several other things, but the point it eventually drives at is that the ability to be vulnerable in front of other people is a strength. This is an idea that’s decidedly 2014, where we’re starting to understand the cost that comes from raising people to suppress their feelings, and shifting to a greater emphasis on mental and emotional health.
The idea that a woman can “save” a man by teaching him to talk about his feelings has become a cliché in the genre, but it’s one that makes sense in this setting. Virginia is the spokesperson for a future where feminists have already largely succeeded in challenging the masculine ideal – where everyone has benefited from discovering that there is more than one right Way to Be. Bill’s anguish and emotional isolation are a reminder of why no one should want to go back to the so-called golden era where men were “real men.”
The informative part of the series – “this is how anatomy works!” – isn’t telling us anything new, and the social values it promotes aren’t very challenging, but, if there’s something relevant buried deep within Masters of Sex, it’s the pointed view it takes of masculinity. It shows us how rigid notions of gender hurt everyone, not just specifically women, and highlights not just the distance we’ve traveled, but why it’s important to go there.
The series’ discussion of gender is the rare instance where its visionary characters have a vision that extends into our future. One where we stop feeling nostalgic for the 50s, and look forward to what we’ll become when we’ve let that all go.
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.
‘OITNB’ does not always blame the id. It also wonders whether larger societal forces are culpable too. Take, for instance, adorable Lorna (Yael Stone) a modern day zeitgeist for Bridezillas. As a compulsive shopper, she’s a victim of the consumer industrial complex that taught her happiness and fulfillment can be bought. When a cute man rejects her after one date, she realizes she can’t buy or scam her way into love so it triggers a fatal attraction in her. Pornstache’s adopted patriarchal mindset that women are merely pleasure objects leaves him jobless, in jail, and alone. Officer Healey’s misogyny leads him to procure a “traditional” wife via mail order, only to discover that true companionship can’t be bought or found through biased gender roles.
Orange Is The New Black’s second season reveals more about the lives and crimes of its supporting characters. What lies at the heart of season two is not the misdeeds these women committed that account for their imprisonment, but the relationships surrounding them and their personal desires that ultimately contributed to it.
This is a recurring theme in Jenji Kohan’s work. Consider Kohan’s first breakthrough female character, Nancy Botwin in Weeds. Botwin, a dependent housewife, turns to drug dealing once she realizes her lifestyle choice left her financially destitute. Kohan, like many women before her – Simone de Beauvoir to Betty Friedan, iterates that the real crime is the one where women believe relationships are a means to an end.
The Atlantic’s Megan Garber argues that traditional Rom-Coms are a dying Hollywood genre because they don’t include contemporary online dating. I respectfully disagree; OITNB is arguably a new age Rom-Com (plus drama) that still operates on dial-up (Wi-Fi is too fancy for that prison). It merely takes the genre’s traditional trite heterosexual storylines, the romantic city backdrops, and the saccharine plots and puts them into solitary confinement. It then throws away the key.
OITNB reinvigorates this genre by exploring more dynamic and diverse relationships: platonic and romantic, internal and external. Unlike in Rom-Coms, sex is not a driving force in OITNB. It’s merely a perk and even then can lead to complications like Officer Bennett (Matt McGorry) and Dayanara’s (Dascha Polanco) pregnancy. And the show breaks new ground in this obsolete genre with its almost all-female cast. Rom-Coms want viewers to believe that problems will resolve themselves within a relationship; Kohan’s version suggests that’s where they start.
Piper (Taylor Shilling) lies at the heart of this theory. Season two reveals how much her relationship with Alex (Laura Prepon) has negatively impacted her life. However, Piper is not committing crimes in the name of her passion for Alex. In fact, we learn her poor decision-making stems from her relationship with her parents, their habit of obscuring the truth, and her father’s infidelity. Piper’s story makes a compelling argument that one’s nurturing is more influential over personal nature. Maria Ruiz (Jessica Pimental) supports this idea by begging her taciturn boyfriend to talk to their daughter so she grows into a well-adjusted child.
To what purpose Piper is driven to commit these crimes has yet to be revealed, but the question highlights OITNB’s most interesting angle on the new age Rom-Com genre – desire. Season two unveils that the characters’ relationships are merely conduits to attain more intangible, inherent passions like – power, safety, belonging, fortune, favor, excitement, loyalty, relevance, etc.
A bloody Piper on OITNB
This is most evident with Season two newcomer, Vee (Lorraine Toussaint), who, rather than quietly ride her jail time out, is driven by a passion for power and sets out to take Red’s. She’s highly aware of her psychological needs… and others’, which is how she manages to manipulate several women into doing her bidding. She plays off these characters’ needs for family, connection and approval, like Taystee’s (Danielle Brooks), who despite her book smarts, turns to drug dealing in the pursuit of motherly love. Viewers quickly learn that one can only be as healthy and wise as the company one keeps.
That also includes the relationship people have with themselves. In OITNB’s subtle exploration of nature versus nurture, viewers are also shown a compelling argument that personal nature also influences decision-making. As nature drives needs, a person can easily become his or her own worst enemy. Take for instance formerly pro-choice Pennsatucky (Taryn Manning), who, eager for affection from an inattentive boyfriend, quickly switches sides when she realizes how to earn the esteem of the pro-lifers. She’s willing to permanently win their worship by taking the life of a clinic doctor. Sister Ingalls (Beth Fowler) continues to protest despite ones from the Catholic Church, because who is she without her activist conviction more so than without Jesus? Miss Rosa’s (Barbara Rosenblat) boyfriend introduced her to bank robbing, but it was after her first heist that she realized she had a knack for it.
OITNB does not always blame the id. It also wonders whether larger societal forces are culpable too. Take, for instance, adorable Lorna (Yael Stone) a modern day zeitgeist for Bridezillas. As a compulsive shopper, she’s a victim of the consumer industrial complex that taught her happiness and fulfillment can be bought. When a cute man rejects her after one date, she realizes she can’t buy or scam her way into love so it triggers a fatal attraction in her. Pornstache’s adopted patriarchal mindset that women are merely pleasure objects leaves him jobless, in jail, and alone. Officer Healey’s misogyny leads him to procure a “traditional” wife via mail order, only to discover that true companionship can’t be bought or found through biased gender roles.
Lorna and Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” in OITNB
None of these characters is committing crimes in the name of passion per se, but their unrequited desires are usually leading them toward a perpetual cycle of bad decisions, which, for most, result in crimes. With such skewed risk and reward results, viewers have to wonder if they’re aware of what drives their poor decisions.
The prison setting provides good insight into this. Stripped of life’s comforts, the prisoners are faced with meeting the basics of Maslow’s hierarchy. Meals and a roof are nominally provided, but their social and psychological needs remain elusive. It’s not that people in love do stupid things (though that can happen), but people are willing to assume certain risks if it means earning, winning, or attaining whatever it is that they are seeking. Whether the individual characters know these desires does not ensure their survival or success, which is perfectly captured in Vee’s final scene. Soso (Kimiko Glen) sums up the importance of well-rounded relationships: “We should be leaning on each other, finding support in our fellow prisoners. So we’re not isolated…. I need a friend.”
Viewers learn that community is necessary to survive inside prison, but more importantly outside too. Matriarch Red (Kate Mulgrew), who has struggled the most with family, power, and support, appears to be reaching this important arch. This becomes evident as she gathers with her estranged prison family to break bread and offer an olive branch. Her benevolence and selflessness is rubbing off on her family too, such as when Nicky seeks help with her sobriety, who then offers Lorna the recognition of love she’s always desired (even if it’s platonic). Red mirrors the sentiment Kohan is not so subtly reaching at – that failure is inevitable if we let unhealthy relationships and desires define us. Like jail, they can easily hold people back.
Kohan’s spin on female media dives much deeper into characters and relationships than the now-suffering traditional Rom-Com genre. Rom-Coms’ superficiality is its biggest crime, which ultimately led to its lack of popularity and box-office support. OITNB is a compelling game-changer by highlighting the true nature and depth of women’s desire and making their relationships secondary.
However, it’s important to bring up The Atlantic’s controversial article by Noah Berlatsky, “Orange Is the New Black’s Irresponsible Portrayal of Men,”who accuses OITNB from his seat of male privilege that “the problem is that the ways in which OITNB focuses on women rather than men seem to be linked to stereotypically gendered ideas about who can be a victim and who can’t.” It seems that OITNB has also shaken up the crime and punishment genre.
First, he couldn’t be more off the mark about people being overly generous in their sympathy toward female victims of violent crime. If he were right, rape on US campuses wouldn’t be such an egregious current event. His lack of sympathy for victims sounds eerily like victim blaming, but I digress. Secondly, neither OITNB, nor this article, is suggesting these women are victims of their own unfulfilled desires; many take pride in their crimes! The show is merely trying to get to the psychological root of the misdeeds and decisions and if the prisoners can learn from them.
What makes OITNB such compelling entertainment is the same substance that Berlatsky criticizes. The show redefines an entertainment genre and the traditional characterization of women and prisoners. Based on Berlatsky’s argument, for example, there wouldn’t be any dynamic movies featuring female CEOs because 95.2 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions are filled by men and they’ve only ever been portrayed as Gordon Gekkos. So in Bertlatsky’s, world men deserve better portrayals first. That’s the thing he misunderstands about OITNB‘s psychoanalysis of desire–if we don’t understand what drives us, we run the risk of using our male privilege to ostracize and enrage minorities. ¿Comprende, Bertlatsky?
Media’s crime is portraying women or prisoners with limited scope and vapid storylines. Kohan’s desire to shake up two very stagnant media genres has left many feeling blindly robbed of a genre they once controlled, but for others it’s filling an empty gulf in entertainment. Season two begins to unravel the mysteries surrounding the inmates’ incarceration. It offers an intimate peek into how the nature of relationships is ultimately driven by personal desires. OITNB is honest in admitting that healthy, trustworthy, selfless, and supportive relationships are as elusive for everyone as that freedom all the inmates desire. But the real culprit is that passion, which without understanding, can get anyone in trouble in the first place.
Katrina Majkut (My’ kit) is the founder of www.TheFeministBride.com. It hopes to inspire a new generation of newlyweds who want unique and egalitarian wedding ideas to fit their modern lifestyles. It aims to empower couples to walk down the aisle as equals. As a writer, lecturer, and research-based artist, Majkut is dedicated to understanding and exploring social narratives and civil issues in Western marriage and wedding culture. She is represented by Carol Mann Agency in New York City. Please follow The Feminist Bride on Twitter @FeministBride and on Facebook.
Shots of Lisa emphasize her youth, her beauty, the perkiness of her breasts, and the roundness of her ass. Unlike Maggie, she is very sensual and perhaps the opposite of nurturing. She is openly mocking toward Marty and refuses to cater to him emotionally. Marty seems to see Lisa as a necessary evil; she allows him to deal with all the pain and degradation he sees in his job. At one point Marty says in a voiceover sequence says: “You gotta take your release where you find it, or where it finds you. I mean, in the end it’s for the good of the family”–implying that having Lisa in his life allows him to get out his “animal” urges, allowing him to be able to be a good husband and father to his family when he gets home.
As often happens when you live on an island in the South Pacific, I was late to the party with True Detective. Despite the fact that at its core it’s a show about two white dudes trying to save a bunch of ladies who are already dead, I found the show to be quite captivating because of the relationship that grows between the two anti-hero leads: Marty, played by Woody Harrelson and Rust, played masterfully by Mathew McConaughey. Unfortunately the depth afforded the two leads is not replicated for any female characters on the show. These are largely made up of sex workers who Rust and Marty come across in their investigations. There have been many analyses of the show’s portrayal of sex workers so I won’t delve into that. However I do want to talk about how the two female characters, who are perhaps most central to the show, personify a Madonna-Whore dichotomy. These are Maggie, played by Michelle Monaghan, who portrays Marty’s long-suffering wife and Lisa, played by Alexandra Daddario, who is his much younger mistress.
It is pretty easy to see how Maggie is the classic Madonna. She is portrayed as feminine and virtuous, taking care of Marty, raising his children, looking after their home, etc. At the beginning of the season she is essentially sexless. Her initial interactions with Rust are not really flirtatious but simply an extension of her maternal role. She expresses caring and concern over his mental health and shares in his sorrow over the death of his child. She nurtures him and he appreciates her for it. We don’t really know anything about Maggie outside of her relationship to Marty; everything about her seems to be subsumed into caring for him and their children.
For Lisa on the other hand, her sexuality is the largest part of her character, casting her as the Whore to Maggie’s Madonna. Shots of Lisa emphasize her youth, her beauty, the perkiness of her breasts, and the roundness of her ass. Unlike Maggie, she is very sensual and perhaps the opposite of nurturing. She is openly mocking toward Marty and refuses to cater to him emotionally. Marty seems to see Lisa as a necessary evil, she allows him to deal with all the pain and degradation he sees in his job. At one point Marty says in a voice-over sequence: “You gotta take your release where you find it, or where it finds you. I mean, in the end it’s for the good of the family”–implying that having Lisa in his life allows him to get out his “animal” urges, allowing him to be able to be a good husband and father to his family when he gets home.
Rust dismisses Lisa as “crazy pussy” despite the fact that all of her behaviour seems to be quite reasonable considering the circumstances. When they end up in the same bar on their respective dates it is not Lisa who loses control, it is Marty. He is unable to keep his eyes on her and ends up approaching her to harass her. It is Marty, not Lisa, who cannot accept that she has ended the relationship, and it is most certainly Marty, not Lisa, who gets intensely jealous and completely crosses the line by going to her house and beating and threatening her new boyfriend. By any reasonable measure it is Marty not Maggie who is acting “crazy,” but Marty is a man and is entitled to a degree of autonomy and the ability to act out from time to time without facing any consequences for it. Lisa has no such luxury as a woman who has sex with a married man. This is made abundantly clear when she tries to confront him at the courthouse where she works and where Marty is testifying.
Lisa repeatedly tells Marty that he cannot disrespect her like this, that his actions will have consequences. When she confronts him at court, he treats her like a hysterical female despite the fact she has very legitimate reasons for both being furious at him and confronting him openly. It seems logical for her next move to be to tell his wife, however Marty’s reaction is one of fury and confusion. He seems deeply confused that Lisa would firstly, act with her own agency and secondly, act in a way to hurt him. Despite everything he has done to Lisa, Marty seems think that Lisa might be a whore but she is HIS whore and the fact that she would act against him is incomprehensible.
Maggie, being the long-suffering and virtuous Madonna that she is, takes Marty back eventually and he behaves himself for a time. The upshot of all of this is that in the True Detective universe women are clearly categorized – women who are valuable and worthy and women who are not. As Lisa fulfills the role of whore in his life he feels like he can treat her however he pleases. Whereas with Maggie, who is a virtuous Madonna, Marty must work hard to earn back her love and trust. This explains why Marty reacts so violently when his daughter is found in a car with two boys. He has to punish the boys for marking his daughter as a Whore and not a Madonna. The dichotomy also plays out in the final end of Maggie and Marty’s marriage. In order to ensure that the relationship will end for good, Maggie has to cast herself in the role of Whore by having sex with Rust. To her this is the only way by which Marty will not try and earn his way back into her life and her guess is correct. Once Marty realizes she has slept with Rust she is ruined to him and the relationship is finally over.
The one positive to me in all of this is the portrayal of Lisa. While Marty does his hardest to push her down and treat her like she is worthless because she sleeps with him, she constantly asserts her agency. From the very first time we see her, turning the tables on Marty and handcuffing him to the bed, right to when she tells Maggie about their affair, she is constantly challenging Marty’s assumptions about her place. This at least serves to disrupt the notion that women who fit the role of Whore are passive and subject to the whims of men. Lisa is also not disposable; she is the one who decides when the relationship should end and firmly asserts the boundary even when Marty acts in ways that are both violent and childish.
Overall, however, the show fell into lazy tropes about women and the ways in which it explored them were not particularly interesting or revolutionary. Hopefully the next season does better.
‘Softcore Porn Roulette with Vampires’ is entering its final season and, while it’s never been good, it embraced being bad with such glee that I’m a little bit sorry to see it go. With that in mind, let’s take a moment to reflect on the awkward, sometimes hilarious, sometimes unintentionally hilarious, sometimes kind of offensive journey we’ve taken with the show that was nothing but humping and gore.
Softcore Porn Roulette with Vampires is entering its final season and, while it’s never been good, it embraced being bad with such glee that I’m a little bit sorry to see it go. With that in mind, let’s take a moment to reflect on the awkward, sometimes hilarious, sometimes unintentionally hilarious, sometimes kind of offensive journey we’ve taken with the show that was nothing but humping and gore.
Trigger Warning: Discussion of rape/assault.
Jason and Eric Get it On Because True Blood is About Who You Want to Have Sex With
The Gay Stuff True Blood’s original show-runner, Alan Ball, is an openly gay man who has done very good things for the representation of LGBT people in popular culture. His previous HBO series – and maybe his greatest work – Six Feet Under, still stands tall as being one of the only shows – and one of the earliest shows – to depict a nuanced, complicated relationship between two gay men, who were multifaceted characters, on par with their heterosexual counterparts. On the whole, the gay and bisexual characters on True Blood, be they ever so shallow and underdeveloped, are on the same playing field as the shallow, underdeveloped heterosexual characters (though there’s sometimes some weirdness about physical intimacy). For the most part, nobody on the show really notices or minds if anyone else is lesbian, gay, or bisexual, which, in itself, can be seen as a positive thing. The range of male sexuality is better represented than the range of female sexuality, but, compared to its contemporaries, the show is still unusually open to the idea of depicting something other than heterosexuality on screen.
Where things get weird is when vampirism is used as an awkward metaphor for homosexuality. Vampires “come out of the coffin” by announcing themselves to humanity. They’re persecuted by religious zealots holding signs that say “God hates fangs.” Two of the series most memorable (and intentionally hilarious) villains are/were leaders of a Christian hate group called The Fellowship of the Sun that targets vampires just a real-life hate groups have sometimes targeted homosexuals – one of the villains later decides to be true to his own identity and proudly comes out as “gay vampire-American.”
Going into the final season, the vampire population is dying from a disease called Hep-V, which, despite its name, has been presented in ways that are much more analogous to HIV and to the AIDS crisis in North America (where gay and bisexual men are disproportionately likely to contract the virus). The speech that Pam gives Eric in episode three, about how there are treatments that can help him lead a normal life, and how people are working to find a cure, could be ripped from any drama about HIV.
In this context, the hatred and prejudice that some of the characters exhibit toward vampires comes across as analogous to the bigotry that’s sometimes directed at the LGBT community… except that vampires, unlike homosexuals, want kill your whole family and feast on your blood. So maybe there’s a good reason to be wary of them.
The fact that vampirism doesn’t map very neatly onto the LGBT rights movement has already been discussed in great depth, and Ball, himself, has described the vampire/LGBT analogy as “window-dressing that makes [the story] contemporary.” For the most part, vampires and other Sups on True Blood seem to be a general representation of the Other, with the (awkwardly delivered) message being that we should judge people as individuals, based on the decisions they make, personally, rather than what group we think they belong to. We’re all just people in the end, etcetera.
In principle, though, it’s really True Blood’’s shallowness, rather than any concerted attempt to argue for tolerance, that’s brought so much lesbian and gay content to the fore. The show employs a less ambitious version of Torchwood’s “everybody’s bi” philosophy where, if there’s a possibility that two actors will look hot together, nothing else – including gender – is even a concern.
Which leads me nicely to the Tara stuff.
Tara (right) Becomes a Lesbian Cage Fighter Because True Blood is About Who You Want to Have Sex With
The Tara Stuff
If there’s one character the writers don’t find hot enough, it’s Tara. I mean, yeah, she was funny in the first season, and she seemed smart, and she had all this complicated stuff going on with her alcoholic mother, but that’s not enough to earn a real plotline on this show. Ever since season two, Tara’s been shoved into one troubling situation after another, with the final insult being her off-screen death in the first five minutes of season seven.
In season two, Tara and one of the only other Black characters on the show, Eggs, are held captive and forced to serve a magical white woman while they wait for another magical white woman to free them. All season long, they’re under a spell that makes them subservient and, in one scene, they punch each other in the face for their captor’s entertainment. They never manage to turn the tables or get their own back. Once they’re free – once they are freed by someone else – a deputy wrongfully shoots and kills Eggs, and the crime is covered up by the Sheriff. Nothing ever comes of that except that the deputy feels kind of bad.
In season three, Tara’s taken prisoner by a rapist vampire in a storyline that’s alternately played as serious and comedic (WTF). At one point, she’s held captive in an old plantation house, and it appears that she kills her kidnapper and escapes. We later discover that the kidnapper survived, and ultimately has to be dispatched by the same deputy who shot Eggs. Which, I guess, is supposed to make up for shooting Eggs? Somehow?
Other awful things happen, too – one of the worst is Tara taking a bullet for her awful, often absent bestie, Sookie, and dying on the kitchen floor during the last few moments of season four – but what’s even more telling are the two attempts the writers make to reboot the character and make her more interesting.
In the first reboot, Tara (who, up until this point has been exclusively heterosexual), becomes a lesbian cage fighter with super straight hair and more fashionable clothes. We see her girlfriend (maybe) twice, cage fighting never becomes important to the story, and all she does all season (before dying) is stand around awkwardly as the hostage of another magical white woman while waiting for magical white Sookie to come save her again.
In the second reboot, the recently dispatched Tara is turned into a vampire by fan favourite Pam. She uses her new abilities to become a pole dancer, wears corsets and belly-baring tops, and starts a lesbian relationship with Pam. Then she goes back to wearing her normal clothes and meets the true death in season seven.
Both attempts to reboot the character, and make her more relevant to the show, are pretty transparent in their intentions of making Tara seem sexy. It’s also clear that being sexy is your key to having something to do on True Blood. I mean, the werewolf plotlines are probably the most unnecessary ones in the series, but they persisted for a long time, because werewolf Alcide looked good with his shirt off. It really seems like production didn’t like Tara with any of the guys they paired her with, so they started pairing her with other women. Then, they didn’t like her as a human, so they tried making her a vampire. When all of that failed, she died.
I would actually be a little bit happy for Tara at this point, if it seemed like she was going to rest in peace, but the first three episodes have suggested that she’s in some kind of tortured, ghostly state, calling for help, waiting for someone to save her, powerless to save herself – that seems more like True Blood. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the last five minutes of the series, they find a way to send her from purgatory to hell.
Eric and Sookie Defile Narnia Because True Blood is About Who You Want to Have Sex With
The “Let’s Just Give Up On Plot All Together, Now” Stuff
Every storyline on True Blood is treated as an opportunity for sex to happen. A witch comes to town and starts an orgy. Fairies show up because they want to mate with us. Scientists prepare for genocide by watching vampires get it on through one-way mirrors. Eric has amnesia so he and Sookie have sex in Narnia.
Ball – who half-jokingly names “the terrors of intimacy” as the theme of True Blood – is correct in reminding us that vampirism has often been tied up with sex. Most vampire stories involve some element of hunger, desire, and/or seduction that’s reminiscent of sex, and the act of biting someone and ingesting their blood can easily be seen as a sexual one. That doesn’t entirely explain why so many of the plotlines on True Blood sound like they could be awkward summaries for x-rated fanfic. Like:
Sookie learns that a magic, unbreakable contract promises her to the evil fairy, Warlow, for marriage. When Warlow comes to town, looking for his bride, Sookie is surprised by her attraction to him, and no one can believe what happens next.
(They experiment with bondage while they have sex in a graveyard).
Let’s be real, you guys. True Blood is not telling us something deep and meaningful about the nature of desire. It’s not exploring human sexuality in a way that teaches us something about ourselves – this is straight-up entertainment where every situation is a sexual situation, and every problem is a problem involving sex, and every plot point becomes an opportunity for the characters to have sex in a place, or a configuration, or a way that we haven’t seen yet.
Sometimes it’s uncomfortably voyeuristic – as when we have to watch real-life couple Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer go at it. Sometimes it’s WTF – as when vampire Bill has sex with vampire Lorena and twists her head 180 degrees. Sometimes it’s actually a little bit sexy, and sometimes it’s just like, “So what?”
The only time it’s really a problem – if we accept for the moment that having gratuitous sex on your show is not necessarily a problem, sex being neither dirty nor bad – the only time it’s really a problem is when the show does something like mistaking rape for sex, mistaking rape for comedy, and mistaking rape as an acceptable way to shock us as viewers before brushing it off completely. I think it’s totally fine for True Blood to fill up its time with sexual situations that mean nothing and go nowhere – the show will not go down in history as a brilliant work of art, but not everything has to. Unfortunately, I also think that throwing sexual violence in, either as an accident, or a joke, or a cheap surprise, has been more of a problem.
One of the most offensive storylines on the show takes place in season four, where Jason Stackhouse, a human character, is kidnapped by a group of hillbilly werepanthers (they’re like werewolves but they stupidly change into panthers) and then tied to a bed and raped by several of the werepanther women. It isn’t clear whether the show understands that this is a problem, and Ball and the director made some unfortunate comments at the time, to the effect that it was funny or ironic for Jason, a fairly promiscuous character, to be placed in a situation where he didn’t like having sex.
As already mentioned, there’s a lengthy plot about Tara being kidnapped by a rapist that’s alternately played for laughs and drama. Sometimes this is a traumatic experience, sometimes they’re the odd couple on vacation. The actors don’t seem to agree about which level they’re playing it on, but the tone seems muddled over all, with the writers turning the rapist into a comedy villain. After he’s dead, the show briefly acknowledges that something significant happened, by sending Tara to a support group meeting, but then the story gets shoved down the memory hole with everything else.
As a final example, in season two, there’s this horrible moment right at the end of “Release Me” where one of the Fellowship of the Sun guys tries to rape Sookie to punish her for sleeping with vampires. There is an absolutely sickening shot of her screaming into the camera while he pulls her backward, and then a new character, vampire Godric, shows up to save her. Obviously, somebody at HBO (correctly) decided that it would be too disturbing to end the episode without reassuring us that Sookie escapes, but there are better ways to convince us that Godric’s a good guy than setting up a gratuitous rape scene.
In all of these examples, the show isn’t trying to say anything about sexual violence any more than it’s trying to say something the rest of the time. However, unlike with consensual sex, or vampires turning into puddles of goo, I’m not sure it’s appropriate to treat rape as something frivolous, or as an easy way to shock the audience, leading into a cliff-hanger. That’s the flipside of telling such a shallow story – the show isn’t equipped to broach topics requiring more serious treatment, and it ruins the fun when one of those topics crops up.
I find myself in the strange position of wishing that True Blood had been less realistic, less engaged with contemporary social issues, and more of the pure escapism it was intended to be. I’m down with a show about who we want to have sex with, and True Blood is best when it doesn’t aspire to (or accidentally stumble upon) anything deeper than that.
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.
The second season of ‘Orange is the New Black’ is all about respect: how you get it, how you keep it, whether it’s something that someone can give you, or something you hold for yourself. Anchored by a standout performance by Lorraine Toussaint, this season is darker and richer than its predecessor, but still extremely fun to watch.
The second season of Orange is the New Black is all about respect: how you get it, how you keep it, whether it’s something that someone can give you, or something you hold for yourself. Anchored by a standout performance by Lorraine Toussaint, this season is darker and richer than its predecessor, but still extremely fun to watch.
Vee and Red are old friends (that means one of them has to die)
To recap: Orange is the New Black is that insanely popular Netflix series about a minimum security women’s prison. The second season went online earlier this month, and it ranks about the same as the first season, in terms of being very entertaining and slightly uneven. If there’s one reason to watch it, though, it’s for the pleasure of seeing Lorraine Toussaint knock it out of the park as this season’s new villain, Vee.
Toussaint, whom you may remember from a very long list of acting credits (I remember her from Ugly Betty), brings so much presence, intensity, and commitment to this role that she steals every scene she’s in. You can’t take your eyes off her – and that’s part of the point.
Vee, who’s introduced to us as Taystee’s foster mother, is an actual sociopath who somehow slipped into minimum security. She’s supposed to be magnetic, charismatic, and charming in a way that draws people to her despite the fact that she’s obviously going to murder them. The performance succeeds not only because it creates a memorable character, but because it allows the audience to experience the same draw — it’s clear from the start that Vee’s an awful human being, but we want more of her, all the same.
Maybe in response to criticism of the first season, or maybe just because this is a natural evolution, the second season of Orange is the New Black is less focussed on Piper (who served as the first season’s protagonist), and more focussed on the other inmates of the prison. The A-story, this time, concerns Vee’s arrival at Litchfield, and the way she lures some of the other characters into her web so that she can use them to smuggle in drugs. This puts her in conflict with Red (who normally corners the market on contraband), and creates a rift between Taystee and Poussey, who’ve been BFF this whole time.
While flashbacks have never been this show’s strong suit – they’re heavy handed, and they over-simplify complex situations by boiling them down into ten-minute narratives – this season throws roughly eight-hundred million our way, as a means of explaining the motivations of the major players in the season finale. In general, the flashbacks are not very good, but one thing they do nicely is lay the groundwork for the dynamics we see play out between Vee and the group. The flashbacks involving Taystee explain why she’s loyal to Vee – Vee may have been a lousy foster mother, but she’s the only real family Taystee has. There’s one really good scene that shows Taystee, her foster brother, R.J., and Vee, sitting down to a normal family dinner; you can tell from the expression on her face – and a nice bit of acting from Danielle Brooks – that this is one of Taystee’s best memories – a moment of real happiness in an otherwise difficult life.
The flashbacks also impress upon us that Suzanne (a.k.a. “Crazy Eyes”) feels rejected and like an outsider – something Vee immediately exploits by love bombing her in an obvious way – and that Cindy needs to prove herself as an adult. (Janae already got a flashback in season one, and we know she’s pissed off because she keeps going to solitary for no real reason.) More importantly, though, the flashbacks show us that Poussey, who seems like she was pretty rad on the outside, is an independent thinker who’s willing to fight for her relationships. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of conflict between Poussey and Vee, and the strongest emotional story line of the season is about Taystee being caught between them.
Poussey and Taystee, hanging out in the library (as cool people do)
There are several other story lines this season – Dayanara and the idiot guard who impregnated her are still trying to figure things out; Rosa, the cancer patient, is quickly getting worse; a new inmate named Soso goes on a hunger strike; Pennsatucky has new teeth – but, like the A-story, most of them revolve around respect.
Daya wants the idiot guard to come clean and take his lumps so that they don’t have to lie for the rest of their lives (so that they can respect themselves by living truthfully). The idiot guard experiments with being a hard-ass in order to win some respect from his boss and the inmates – which leads Daya to explain, in a heavy-handed way, that he doesn’t need to bully anyone; the fact that he has a choice about what he does already gives him more power than any of the inmates have.
Soso, a college-aged inmate, initially refuses to shower for unspecified reasons, though it eventually becomes clear that she feels ashamed to be naked in front of everyone else. After the guards force her to do it anyway – in a scene that’s excruciatingly uncomfortable to watch – she starts a hunger strike as a way to reclaim some of her dignity by fighting back against the system. While she attracts some followers who aren’t very serious about prison reform, she also attracts a few people with legitimate grievances. We’re invited to laugh at the protest, but it’s a way for several characters, with different motivations, to try to gain respect.
The A-story, which is about the fight for control of the contraband line – between three opposing, racially segregated camps, represented by Vee, Red, and Gloria Mendoza – is really about individual women trying to hold onto positions that give them a positive sense of self. Controlling the kitchen gives Mendoza higher status in the prison, and it lets her give cushier jobs to the other Latina women; controlling the contraband line gives Red special status, and allows her to buy herself friends; controlling other people feeds Vee’s sociopathic drive to power.
There’s a moment, late in the season, where Vee jokes that it’s stupid to kill and die over who can sell mascara in prison – but that’s not what the fight is about. It’s about holding onto a sliver of self-respect in a place where you have to lie down on the ground when you hear an alarm; it’s about having something that’s yours in a place where you are a number, and issued the same clothes as everyone else.
It’s easy to understand how it would be detrimental to someone to be on a chain gang, to be assaulted, or tied up like an animal while she gives birth – but it’s also detrimental to be treated like you’re not a person, no matter how nice the cellblock is. What Orange is the New Black shows us effectively is women trying to hold onto personhood, even in difficult times.
Vee’s playing the long game (with Suzanne and Cindy)
The first season ended with Piper beating the shit out of Pennsatucky – a meth addict who’d harassed her all season, and pushed her so far that she snapped. The second season dives farther into that same well of darkness, striking an awkward (and sometimes confusing) balance between acknowledging Litchfield as kind of a candy-ass prison, and stirring things up by releasing a predator into the mix.
There are moments that are disappointing, there are moments that are cop-outs, there are moments that are sickeningly sweet, there are moments that don’t make sense, there are moments that seem kind of creepy and slightly misogynist (see: Caputo’s ill-gotten blowjob from Assistant Warden Fig) – but, one of the things that’s always been worthwhile about this show is that most of its characters – good, bad, dull, interesting, funny, sexy, cruel, cunning, average – are played by women, and that means that we get to see something we don’t normally get to see on TV. We get to see complex stories about human nature where “human” doesn’t default out to “male.” That’s the first thing everyone says when they write about Orange is the New Black – I know – but it’s worth saying again, because it’s such an unusual thing.
Season two, if anything, is stronger than season one, since it widens its focus, and gives more of its characters a chance in the spotlight. It’s also stronger because it’s gone beyond the story of season one (being in prison is hard, and it’s not like being out of prison at all), to explore something deeper. It’s pounding the same drum of “prisoners are people,” and, for those of us who already know that, that drum can get old, but this season at least drums with style.
Orange is the New Black is not on my list of “World’s Greatest Television Shows,” but Lorraine Toussaint may be on my list of “Greatest Performers in a Television Show,” and the series is doing something important by modelling how you can have a diverse cast of characters made up of women, and how you can tell stories about our universal humanity, when the humans in question are female.
So, if you didn’t binge watch it opening weekend, it’s worth a look, just to see something different. If you did binge watch it, you already know.
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.
