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Why all the hate?
Intersting post on i09:
Why do we hate so many female characters?
All of that plus... fandom can be really sexist sometimes.
Why do we hate so many female characters?
Postman,
Reading the recent online complaints about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., one of the biggest issues with the series is one I with which greatly agree: Skye adds nothing to the show. This seems to be an ongoing problem with series of the last few years. There's Chloe on SGU, Laurel Lance on Arrow (weirdly her sister Sara and Sara's sidekick Sin are much better characters after just four episodes), or Gwen on Torchwood. They're not like Skyler White or Andrea on The Walking Dead, who are fully fleshed out characters hated for their bad decision making.
These characters are unlikeable because of a combination of poor character development and weak acting. The writers seem bored with them too, giving them stories that are disconnected from the events. The classic example for me is SGU where Chloe, while being stuck on a derelict spaceship on the other side of the universe, is worried that all her friends back home are phony bitches. Or Laurel's drinking problem. Or everything about Skye.
So what gives? I get that society has historically written women as damsels or objects meant to be rescued by the dashing hero, but the days of Season 1 Counselor Troi have passed us by. For every Major Kira or Sarah Connor there seems to be two Charlie Mathesons. Is this a gender thing, or general, poor character writing? What would you recommend to TV showrunners about giving us women characters we can care about?
There are a ton of reasons why people find certain female characters problematic. You've already hit upon two of them, which is to say poor writing and poor acting. Skye in Agents of SHIELD is a prime example of this; she doesn't really have any defining characteristics, she's completely unconvincing as a brilliant hacker, and yet somehow the team is bringing her along everywhere and she's the audience's surrogate. It's a recipe for annoyance, if not disaster. But to be fair, all the characters on Agents of SHIELD are equally poorly written — Melinda May gets away with it for being mysterious and badass, while we have a long history with Agent Coulson, but imagine Coulson's "Tahiti" mystery applied to, say Ward and think how much of a shit you would not give.
Another problem is when storytellers create female characters to be love interests and nothing else — meaning they're one-dimensional (and completely boring if their on-screen relationship isn't clicking). This is Laurel Lance's problem on Arrow. She was fine as Oliver's object of affection, while she was dating his best friend, but in season two they had to cool off the relationship. This made sense storytelling-wise, but left Laurel with nothing to do. Now, I actually liked her drinking storyline, because 1) it gave her a dimension beyond her relationship with Ollie, and 2) it seemed to be to be a very reasonable response to all the horrible shit she'd so recently been through. But compare that to Felicity and Black Canary and Ollie' mom and the Huntress and even Thea, and all the interesting facets those women have beyond their relationships with male characters.
But sometimes the problem is the fans, who are often unwilling to give female characters slack that they seemingly give to male characters. This seems to me to be a pretty recent phenomenon, and it's kind of disturbing. Skyler White from Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones' Sansa Stark are the two most prominent examples of this. These characters are largely hated, despite being well-written and well-acted and three-dimensional, and as far as I can determine they're hated because of these reasons
For instance, people seem to hate Skyler in Breaking Bad because she was "a bitch" to Walt in the beginning, then became a hypocrite for reaping the benefits of Walt's meth operation while disapproving of it (I'm only midway through season 2, so I'm using this excellent Esquire article for help here). First of all, Skyler was nagging Walt 1) when her husband was constantly and obviously hiding things from her, and 2) when she discovered her husband was running an illegal meth operation. As for the latter, why is Skyler spending Walt's meth money a bigger issue than Walt running a goddamn methlab in the first place? It seems to me that the problem people have with Skyler is that people see Walt as the protagonist, and somehow think that makes him a hero, and thus Walt's irritation with Skyler becomes the audience's, despite the fact that Walt is a goddamn monster.
Sansa is hated even more, and it just boggles me. This is a girl who was fed stories of beautiful princesses and brave knights all her life, gets told she's going to marry the prince of the whole damn country, and then had her beliefs and her entire life slowly, methodically destroyed. Who wouldn't be upset by that? What teenager wouldn't be devastated by this, male or female? People compare Sansa to Arya, who seemingly holds up "better" than Sansa, but the amount of danger Arya is in never comes close to Sansa's. Arya was never beaten in front of the court by the knights she had always been told protect people. Arya is trying survive on the run, but Sansa is the most vulnerable pawn in the Game of Thrones, which is way more dangerous than serving Tywin Lannister wine at night. I understand all of Sansa's anguish, and that she's still holding it together, playing the game and even just surviving at this point only shows her immense strength.
Two other female characters I know of who were so hated were The Walking Dead's Lori and Andrea. Now, I'd say Lori was written terribly, because I can't imagine that any decent writer would intentionally make a character that unlikeable and inconsistent. Andrea just turned really preachy. But these characters are loathed with a passion that the male characters just don't get, and I'm as guilty of that as anybody. And now I wonder why I was so passionate about hating them, along with so many other people, because Dale, Shane and even Rick were also pretty annoying, but no one hated them like they did Lori and Andrea. (In retrospect, I think Lori's turn in season three as a woman who knew she fucked up badly was pretty good, but I understand it was too little, too late for most viewers after her previous shenanigans.) It actually makes me a bit uncomfortable now.
So there are problems behind the scenes, in the scenes, and out in the audience. Writers should always refer to the Bechdel test, to make sure that their female characters are more than their romantic relationships. Audiences should try to step back and make sure they're cutting female characters the same slack as male characters. And actors… take acting lessons, or something, I guess.
All of that plus... fandom can be really sexist sometimes.
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Buffy. Girlfriend takes so much shit from every direction. I'm just sayin'....
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Yeah, but I don't know, does Buffy still count as "recent"? The list goes on. Kate on Lost, Maggie on NE, etc. Hardly exclusive to post-2K10 shows.
Intra-fandom dynamics have always been a puzzle, though. I never understood why people loved Chris and hated Tony, for example. Fandoms are rife with misogyny, but I don't know if it's always so simple. And of course a lot of fandom is reactionary.
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Yeah, I suppose you're right. I guess it's just denial on my part about how old the show now is. :( It doesn't feel old, whereas with Sopranos, Northern Exposure have this distant feel to them.
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Northern Exposure - pure 90s. I still ♥ it.
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I don't think it is. I've noticed several people in fandom who I would consider "strong women" who angrily hate on "strong" female characters for being - angry and bitchy. I think there's an element of the shadow self at play: we dislike things in characters (or other people) that remind us too much of the things we dislike in ourselves or don't wish to admit to.
But that's just one possible part of the puzzle.
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And... Maggie from NE? Am I reading that correctly as "Maggie from Northern Exposure"? Why in the hell would anyone hate Maggie from Northern Exposure? Yeah, she could be quippy and argumentative, but --bejeebus -- SO WAS JOEL! And, truthfully, she was infinitely better suited to long-term co-habiting with Chris. At least they were both happy and fulfilled living in Cicely.
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She annoyed every now and then, but that happens with almost any character.
Same. It's not that I was a fan of hers; I can totally see why someone might dislike her. I can understand why someone might dislike any character. To me this is a trait of a character actually being developed. But the hate was just over the top.
As for Maggie, I don't know. I remember her getting a ton of hate on newsgroups, a lot of it shipper stuff. I could see why M/J would be interesting--the snarky banter was fun and I do think Turner and Morrow had chemistry--but they were completely incompatible even after Joel loosened up.
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I do think Turner and Morrow had chemistry--but they were completely incompatible even after Joel loosened up.
This.
They had good chemistry. The characters bounced off one another well. They were fun. But these two were not suited to any sort of "happily ever after" because the sort of life that would make each of them happy wasn't the same life.
Maggie was happy in Cicely. She was happy being a bush pilot. That was the life she chose and the one that she wanted.
Joel loosened up and learned to appreciate Cicely... but he was never going to be happy in the long term there. It just wasn't the life he really, deep-down wanted.
I was a-okay with their separating on good terms.
And I was okay with her ending up with Chris. Sure, it was convenient in their being the good-looking singles of similar bracket in the tiny rural town. But then, like Maggie, Chris was happy in Cicely. He was fulfilled in Cicely. He didn't want to go anywhere else. That was the life he wanted, and I could see how the two of them could make a legitimate go at long term success.
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Boy, talk about two characters who were in no way suited to one another. Yeesh. (Aidan was an infinitely better person than Big. He didn't fit with Carrie at all, but he was an infinitely better person than the guy she wound up with.
Still, SATC's Big and Carrie sort of deserved one another. {I wouldn't really have said even that until the second movie. Big was a big ol' douche throughout and there were many things Carrie never should have forgiven him for. But then, she became such a ridiculous cartoon in the second movie that... yeah, they kind of deserved each other.})
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^THIS!!!
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Uh, because she's transparently ignorant, doesn't care that she is, and speaks in word salad, that's why!
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I've watched maybe five episodes. I loathed Tony from the get-go. Loathed. Hence the only having watched five episodes.
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Well, yeah. Tony is completely hate-worthy. But Chris doesn't have too much in his corner, either, yet one is loved and the other loathed by large parts of the fandom. The conundrum of why one character is liked and the other hated even though they both do horrible things isn't necessarily gender-specific. Adriana-Carmella, same thing.
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Chris is probably my favorite character from NE. That's another show I liked just about everyone. Except maybe Maurice and Shelly. Maurice's abrasiveness could get trying after awhile and Shelly 'cause I don't know. The actress, I guess. The character just never worked for me.
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