On Sun, 25 Mar 2001 07:20:45 +1000 Kathryn Andersen kat@foobox.net writes:
On Sat, Mar 24, 2001 at 08:59:54AM -0800, Mistral wrote:
Neil Faulkner wrote:
But to reiterate the question I put at Redemption: Surely there
are worse
things than two characters having gay sex?
Just a guess, but ISTM that if there are two actions that one sees
as
wrong, then it is less disturbing to see one that is clearly
presented
as wrong (massacre) than something that one believes is wrong
being
presented as desirable (slash).
IOW, the bad guys get to be bad; it's a convention of fiction.
What she said. Who does it.
Ditto. Who does it and whether the story presents it as ethical (in some cases, _how_ it's presented - stories that are clearly playing lip service to something being bad while going all out to be exploitive [but I've mentioned my problem with Victorian-Gothic before]).
If characters I respect and like are made by the author to do something very wrong, and it is treated as something right, then I hate what the author has done to the characters. It's character assassination at the least. (*)
Right, it would be like watching Avon kill Blake and then having all the characters pat him on the back for it.
I am really annoyed with the creators of the Buffyverse for making
Willow a lesbian.
And the _way_ they did it. One season, Willow was very conservative sexually - finding out her vampire double was bi disturbed her considerably. Besides that, there was also her religion (her personal discomfort with 'Merry Christmas' and her concern for how her dad would react if he found a cross in her room both brought it up). These should have been issues even if she had come to the same decision. But then, when the writers had the _Jewish_ girl arguing hereditary/racial guilt (and punishment) made sense in the Thanksgiving episode, I knew they just didn't care.
OTOH, when Avon shoots Blake, I may not like it, but I _believe_ it.
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----- Original Message ----- From: Ellynne G. rilliara@juno.com
If characters I respect and like are made by the author to do something very wrong, and it is treated as something right, then I hate what the author has done to the characters. It's character assassination at the least. (*)
Actually, that's close to my own feelings about slash, but with a slight difference. I don't consider homo- or bisexuality morally or biologically wrong (and I don't want to get into a debate about it; I respect that some people do, so please respect that I feel otherwise), but it just seems so... *out of character* for some of the people involved.
Right, it would be like watching Avon kill Blake and then having all the characters pat him on the back for it.
OTOH, that could be equally shocking. When Kathryn brought up Ultraviolence I was surprised, because while Ultraviolence is presented as a good thing in A Clockwork Orange, the universe of ACO is so horrible that I wouldn't accept anything its members glorified as a good thing for me personally. A bit like how a friend of mine was recently making a good case for the rehabilitation of "Power"-- the message is sexist, but the way the message is presented is so abhorrent that it makes sexism abhorrent to the viewer too.
I am really annoyed with the creators of the Buffyverse for making
Willow a lesbian.
And the _way_ they did it. One season, Willow was very conservative sexually - finding out her vampire double was bi disturbed her considerably.
I didn't have a problem with it myself, and in some ways that was why-- I know several gay people who, when they first became aware of their sexuality, were troubled by it and as a result swung to the other extreme-- either becoming very heterosexually active or becoming very morally upright, as a panic reaction (remember, too, that the vampire Willow *was* Willow-- and a big red flag that Willow wasn't all straight). That aside, too, there
are many people who were firmly convinced that they were straight/gay-- until they meet someone of the same/opposite sex whom they really like and are forced to rethink their priorities. From what I saw, this was how it happened with Willow-- she implies in Series 4 that she thought she was straight until she met Tara, and also she is so nervous about her feelings for Tara that she doesn't tell anyone, even Buffy, about her until very late in the day.
Besides that, there was also her religion (her personal
discomfort with 'Merry Christmas' and her concern for how her dad would react if he found a cross in her room both brought it up). These should have been issues even if she had come to the same decision. But then, when the writers had the _Jewish_ girl arguing hereditary/racial guilt (and punishment) made sense in the Thanksgiving episode, I knew they just didn't care.
Again, though, people change, and their priorities, views and even moral beliefs change. My own religious beliefs, politics and attitudes to human sexuality are different now to when I was twenty-one--and very different to what they were at fifteen. Why shouldn't Willow change similarly, especially as she goes to college, meets other witches and sees the world? Watching back over the Buffy stories, one of the things I like is the way that there's room for the characters to grow and change. I think the creators *do* care-- that's why they allow their characters to develop.
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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On 25 Mar 2001 as I do recall, Fiona Moore wrote:
OTOH, that could be equally shocking. When Kathryn brought up Ultraviolence I was surprised, because while Ultraviolence is presented as a good thing in A Clockwork Orange, the universe of ACO is so horrible that I wouldn't accept anything its members glorified as a good thing for me personally. A bit like how a friend of mine was recently making a good case for the rehabilitation of "Power"-- the message is sexist, but the way the message is presented is so abhorrent that it makes sexism abhorrent to the viewer too.
Making a massive effort to drag this list away from its recent obsession with genital activities:
When I first watched "Power", there was a moment about halfway through when everything suddenly seemed to make sense and I thought I realised what the author had planned: when Jarvik fights Tarrant, defeats him thoroughly (by judicious application of brain-power, if I remember correctly; at any rate it looked like a fair fight) and then Dayna challenges him in her turn and is obviously winning. After all, Dayna is the athletic and aggressive one whom you'd expect to be in better training for unarmed combat -- and it's a logical conclusion. Jarvik spends the whole episode dismissing the entire female sex, as Fiona mentions above, so doesn't take Dayna's abilities seriously -- and thus she is the only one who can defeat him.
Then in the blink of an eye Dayna is suddenly the one who is flat on the ground and being held down, and Jarvik's worldview is restored just in time for him to be menaced by a Kairopean and call for teleport to get the pair of them up to the Liberator as the plot requires. I was sitting there mentally shrieking at the author for overlooking a golden opportunity! The daft thing is that none of this is necessary.
The episode would have worked perfectly well -- and made Jarvik a more sympathetic character, in my view -- if Dayna had been allowed to finish the fight, defeat Jarvik and be the one forcing her opponent into submission when they were forced to teleport up; whereupon, under the guns of the troopers on guard in the teleport section, the victor would abruptly have become the prisoner, and the rest of the episode would have proceeded as before. But in this case Jarvik's attempt to save Dayna would have been motivated (and this could easily have been made explicit if desired) by respect for an honourable enemy, which I would read as perfectly in character, rather than by what appears to be knee-jerk protective instinct for a fragile female.
I feel that this one small change would have made a totally disproportionate improvement in what is otherwise not at all a bad episode, bringing an enjoyable irony to a cliche'd situation; and Jarvik might actually have gained thereby, becoming more fallible and hence more sympathetic to the audience.
(Apologies if this has been brought up before; it seems so obvious....)
Harriet Bazley wrote:
When I first watched "Power",
You mean "Harvest of Kairos," of course. But one Ben Steed script is pretty much the same as another, eh? :)
Then in the blink of an eye Dayna is suddenly the one who is flat on the ground and being held down, and Jarvik's worldview is restored just in time for him to be menaced by a Kairopean and call for teleport to get the pair of them up to the Liberator as the plot requires.
Yeah, this scene annoys the *heck* out of me. Well, all of HoK annoys the heck out of me, really, but the fight inevitably makes me want to start yelling "Kick his ass, Dayna!" And she inevitably fails, anyway. Sigh.
Harriet Bazley & Betty talking about HoK:
Then in the blink of an eye Dayna is suddenly the one who is flat on the ground and being held down, and Jarvik's worldview is restored just in time for him to be menaced by a Kairopean and call for teleport to get the pair of them up to the Liberator as the plot requires.
Yeah, this scene annoys the *heck* out of me. Well, all of HoK annoys the heck out of me, really, but the fight inevitably makes me want to start yelling "Kick his ass, Dayna!" And she inevitably fails, anyway.
In my version of this episode (aka PowerPuff), the implications of my favorite moment in the script are fully played out. Just as Jarvik says "...but you're a woman," she knees him in the balls. In the revised script, she follows through with a drop-kick, teleports back herself, sorts out the occupying force (I'm not sure if she kills Servalan though--there are still several episodes to go) and then they can use the Time Squad docking maneuver to get the antique spacecraft thingie onto the Liberator. (BTW in canon it seems to be about as easy to find a discarded spacecraft as an empty Coke can on Earth C21.)
They never say what it is that Avon sees when he looks at the Sopron, do they? I rather suspect that, since you see something you need to see that's rather better...it's Blake. So, Brian the Spider and all, this might be an essential episode in the arc.
-(Y)
Re slash-eating penguins & mint-eating polar bears: I was going to bring in the furry burrowing den-dwellers...but then I realized badgers, we don't need no steenking badgers.
----- Original Message ----- From: Harriet Bazley harriet@bazley.freeuk.com
Making a massive effort to drag this list away from its recent obsession with genital activities:
And yet you're doing this by talking about a Ben Steed story :)?
When I first watched "Power",
Actually, that's "Harvest of Kairos" --but fair enough, let's discuss that one then. IMO that one's more watchable than Power anyway.
there was a moment about halfway through when everything suddenly seemed to make sense and I thought I realised what the author had planned: when Jarvik fights Tarrant, defeats him thoroughly (by judicious application of brain-power, if I remember correctly; at any rate it looked like a fair fight) and then Dayna challenges him in her turn and is obviously winning. After all, Dayna
<rest of a very good argument snipped>
One might ask the question though of what if it *had* been Tarrant on the ground when the Pantomime Ant showed up? Quite conceivably, Jarvik might have saved him too, in which case it would have had a "saving an honourable enemy" reading.
However, I think perhaps that, like the case my friend was making for Power, Jarvik's actions have to be taken in the context of the character. Jarvik is a sexist. He is also perfectly smug within that worldview, and nothing occurs to change it for him. But in the end, Jarvik is defeated-- meanwhile Avon, who has been thinking outside the box with regard to the Sopron rock all episode, comes up with the means of salvation for the crew, via the lunar lander.
It's also, perhaps, worth noting that Servalan has the upper hand throughout-- when he carries her off, if she had felt herself to be in danger, he would have been a steaming corpse and her personal guard would be drawing a bonus. Likewise, *she* is the one who initiates sex, and who offers him the job of Supreme Commander. The fact that he thinks *he* is the one with the upper hand only serves to highlight the rigidity of his thinking and make his ultimate defeat all the more appropriate.
Or, to go at it from the perspective of Greek tragedy: at the point at which Dayna fights Jarvik, he is in a state of Hubris. Everything is going his way: Servalan has not only taken his advice and offered him a job, she has shared his bed; he has gotten the Liberator. For him to be defeated at this point, particularly in a worldview-shattering way, would run counter to the position he is in at this point in the story.
Shortly thereafter, however, Jarvik moves into the Nemesis position. Avon and Tarrant pull the stunt with the lunar lander and the Sopron and gain the upper hand vis-a-vis the Liberator; Servalan ceases playing along with Jarvik and reasserts control over the situation. Servalan may have lost the Liberator, but she is still President; Jarvik has been reduced from near-total power to nothing. Appropriately enough, this reduction takes place at the hands of a powerful woman (it might have been more appropriate if it had been Dayna, from a justice-being-done point of view, but still Dayna is giving a better account of herself at the end of the story than Jarvik is).
It can also be argued that Jarvik has failed ultimately because, while he understands how Tarrant (a man) thinks, he has failed to understand how Servalan (a woman) thinks and strategises-- if he had, he would have been able to convince her that Tarrant was bluffing, instead of trying to gain the upper hand by blustering at her and demanding control, which seemingly only served to get her back up. Jarvik is therefore done in more as a result of his sexist viewpoint than anything else.
So yes, I think there's a case to be made for the rehabilitation of "Harvest of Kairos" vis-a-vis sexism, as well.
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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