Why with the Kate Hate?
May. 23rd, 2005 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxI can barely believe it. I actually made a somewhat analytical fannish post about something other than the Whedonverse or Farscape.
This morning I found myself responding to a topic on Lost_Tv regarding the Kate backlash. It was too long for a reply so I ended up posting an entirely new thread. Anyway thought I'd repost in my LJ:
I don't hate Kate, but I don't love her either. I think it's a legitimate question why many people are reacting negatively to her but I don't think that reaction is about her being 'a conflicted soul.' I'm a sucker for 'a conflicted soul,' for someone who did bad and can't quite figure out what is good. (Name a sci-fi anti-hero and I've probably loved that character).
My issues with Kate are not so much the character herself as some of the decisions made for the character by the writers.
I think throughout the beginning of the season, Kate was written a bit too much as the universal object of desire. Jack wanted her. Sawyer wanted her. Sayid sort of wanted her. Even Charlie flirted with her in the beginning. If there was a man within a 100 yards, he wanted her which was just... excessive. That's not a problem with Kate per se, but in the way the writers chose to set-up her situation.
Also in writing her situation, there was a discussion on one list I'm on that part of the problem was the writers' decision to withold her motives to maintain the mystery surrounding her. They did this to some degree with all the characters, and yet there is a significant difference with her (and Shannon for that matter. Hmm... maybe the show just needs more female writers). Anyway, in Kate's (and Shannon's for that matter) case, we didn't (and still really don't) know what makes Kate tick. The flashbacks for other characters have been pretty clear on that subject. We know Jack is fueled by his Daddy issues and being the child of an alcoholic, becoming every bit as controlling as the father he loved/loathed. We know that Sawyer is fueled by his parents' murder/suicide and what the con-man did with them, becoming the monster he hated. We know that Sayid fell for a childhood friend and this inspired him to leave the Republican Guard. We have Locke's paralysis, his foster childhood, and his father 'playing him,' so we know why he wants to believe in the island so badly...and how he sort of 'played' Boone in a not so different way as his father 'played' him (albeit no where near as intentionally as Locke had been played). In other words, their flashbacks have been used to both flesh out the characters and to provide emotional insight into what makes them tick. Kate's, upon closer examination, really haven't been as revealing. We know why Sawyer turned to crime... we still don't know why Kate did. We know what childhood damage Jack has that fuels his controlling tendencies. We still have no clue why Kate did all the things she did (and the ex-boyfriend's death was a result, not a cause. We still don't know the cause was for her life of crime). Kate's flashbacks really haven't illuminated who she is so much as simply show us what she has done (which in general haven't been sympathetic actions -- trembling lip and teary eyes aside). Until we know what drove her to be this way, what's the emotional core (and truth) of the character, it's far more difficult to empathize with her choices and actions.
And, finally, this issue isn't a general one but more of just a pet peeve of my own. While Kate does possess some Mary Sue-ish qualities (the girl is apparently good at EVERYTHING and all men love her), my main issue has been the "bad girl with heart of gold" {tm} cliche. Every time we're shown her doing somthing B.A.D. they also try to make it "but not really. She was falsely accused so she's really relatively innocent." (And we don't know whether or not she was falsely accused. We still don't know what she did, why she did it, or if she's being honest in claiming that since she's lied so often. What we do know is that she has played innocent while we're shown various crimes of which she was culpable... but says "I was falsely accused" (of the crime three cimes earlier...) We're seemingly being told that she's done bad thing but she's a good girl deep down which...I like darkness in my favorite characters to actually be -- you know -- dark.
To give another example, I freaking LOVE Farscape's Officer Aeryn Sun and one of my favorite episodes was the one where she revealed that she betrayed an ex-lover and got him executed... for a promotion. This was a very bad thing. There were no excuses for it. Aeryn makes no excuse for it. It isn't watered down by trying to say "but she was a good person, really." (My favorite line was another character saying ironically [somewhat paraphrased due to a faulty memory]: "What? You thought Aeryn was out picking [rose] buds while only the 'really bad' Peacekeepers did the terrible things?") Point being that Aeryn's crimes were actual crimes. She had done something terrible...out of selfishness. She hadn't been better than the people they villainized... and she knew it, and openly admitted it. She could become a good person, but they didn't try to say that as she did those things in the past that she had been a good person while doing it (or that she was just misunderstood). She didn't protest "But I had reasons" or try to say she was falsely accused. She had been what she had been, but as horrible as that was. I respected the character for flat out saying (paraphrased) "Yes, that was me. I did that. There's no mistake. No extenuating circumstances. It's not a misunderstanding. I have no excuse, and I can never take it back. All I can do is try to learn from it and then become someone else." That's a very different reaction than "Okay, I've been exposed. But I wasn't really guilty because I was falsely accused and there were extenuating circumstances"... which is more or less what Kate does most of the time.
There's a difference between redeeming a character for past crimes and trying to say she's "good" even as she commits them (even as we don't know why she commits them). Exacerbating the problem is that the writers show this while simultaneously leaving her seemingly still quite positive on her relative rightness in the island hierarchy (with only the occasional "but I want to runaway from it" to ameliorate her hypocrisy. )
As an example, we have better understanding of what motivates Sawyer to do what he does and are LESS asked to excuse his actions than we are of Kate. And NO ONE on the island excuses his actions... leaving the audience to do so. I forget who, but there was some actor who said that they had discovered that there was far less drama and emotional impact to be found in a character crying than in seeing a character try NOT to cry...thereby allowing the audience to cry for them. Similarly, it's easier to forgive a character when characters on screen are NOT forgiving. A paradox, I know. But I guess as a viewer, I'm contrary.
With Kate, there's a three pronged problem.
One, we should at this point know what has driven Kate to commit this series of crimes (other than retrieving an airplane). Two, less undercutting of her crimes with the heavy handed "but she wasn't really bad when she did those things, there are extenuating circumstances that you don't know" nudges by the writers. Three, less of her being the female Mary Sue of the show (this seems to have been lessening).
And don't get me wrong. I don't hate Kate. I just don't think the writing has serviced the character as well as they have other characters on the show.
A few more thoughts I had in response to a few of the responses to the original post:
Re: Kate Hate being "cheerleader envy
To a certain degree this is an issue. Though it's somewhat difficult to say so as there are sexist connotations to dismiss backlash against a character purely as sexual jealousy. (For either sex, actually. It's as easy to say that women are jealous of Kate's sexual attraction as it is for women to say that some men don't like Sawyer because of sexual jealousy. While that may be an element in the reactions, I don't think it can be reduced to just that.)
However, to be fair, there is an element in characters where the audience reacts based on something as petty as sexual jealousy. It's a real reaction that audience members do have. Men do become a bit defensive at fangirl sqees of "nekkid Sawyer!" or "Sayid is pretty!", and there can be a reaction against those characters because Sawyer evokes some of the same feelings for some as that "bad boy" in high school that all the girls drooled over. I suppose, the same may be true of Kate. There can be that feeling of "why does every guy want HER?!" So, yeah, I would say it's fair to say that that feeling factors into some people's negative feedback on the character of Kate and it's valid to say so. That's sort of what I meant in the first paragraph or so about how the writers didn't particularly service the character well in the initial episodes by having every guy seemingly want her. If you're trying to evade having a backlash against her, it would have been perhaps more wise to limit it to Jack and Sawyer wanting her and avoiding piling on with the Sayid, Charlie... (to their credit the writers did move Sayid and Charlier out of it).
But if strategizing how to launch a female character that men love and women want to be, then it was an avoidable pitfal (at least in retrospect).
Still, while sexual jealousy is probably a factor in the Kate controversy and the Sawyer controversy, I doubt that it's all about sexual jealousy.
Re: Cheerleader Envy... again
I think it's a bit dismissive to say that issues with the way a character is written are just about sexual envy. (As dismissive as it would be to say that the only reason someone likes a character is simply sexual lust.) It ignores a whole host of other reasons to react to a character. It's a generalization that, while it may be true in certain instances, may not be true in other instances.
And really, 2/3 of the cast is extremely attractive, so it's really not a case of it being about physical beauty.
Reactions to a character vary by person. And it is just that -- a reaction, a response to stimuli. Presented with certain things on screen a lot of people react in a certain way... why? That's what being debated and it probably isn't as simple as just one thing or just about the gender of the viewer.
While part of a rejection of Kate may be a gender bias to her being written as a film noir femme fatale (aka "cheerleader envy"), that reaction may not be at all gender related. It may be the natural reaction to the hallmarks of a film noir femme fetale... and archetype who almost inevitably turned out to be the villain in film noir. Or it may be a reaction to a character who hasn't been developed as well as one would hope given the amount of airtime expended on her story. I tend to think they've had enough airtime to have time to to show us more about why she has done these things. It's a flaw in the writing that they've yet to get around to that.
It could be that in some ways the women on LOST tend to be written in a less internally motivated way than the male characters. Male characters tend to be written from some idea of their internal motivation as if the writers place themselves in the male characters shoes for a moment. And yet many of the women feel as though they are written as the male idea a woman via observations of the way certain women behave ... but they haven't given us indications of the woman's INTERNAL movitavions for their behavior. We still don't know WHY Kate and Shannon behave the way they do. Whatever our reactions (positive or negative) to Jack, Locke, and Sawyer, we have a pretty good idea of WHY they've done things, what it is in their past and childhoods made them grow to be the men that they are today. With Kate (and Shannon) we're left with just the actions without the psychological underpinnings. This isn't a reflection of the "character" but of the way the character has been staged in the context of the show.
It would be nice to know WHY Kate has done these things. It would make it far easier to have concrete reasons for liking or disliking her, other than "I like her and think she's attractive." Or "People dislike her because she's attractive." By this point in the season, we should understand WHO she is in a more complete way than just knowing WHAT she has done. Unfortunately we're left primarily with nothing but "what."
At any rate, there are people who have reacted negatively to the character of Kate (and there are people who have reacted negatively to Sawyer and to Jack). But I don't think it can be boiled down to just one thing like jealousy. That one explanation may be true for one person but the next person may have an entirely different reason.
Re: Unintentional Sexism
As I was writing it, it sort of struck me that across the board the characterization of female characters on the show has been weaker than the male characterization. (Weaker in the sense of less well rounded not that the women are weak.) As I pointed out, we know little of what actually motivates Kate. The same goes for Shannon. We really have little idea of why she became the person she was. On the other hand, Sun and Claire are both a bit too purely good and nurturing. Not that that's a bad thing, but it seems that the psyches of the female characters haven't been delved into in the same complexity and contradictory ways as the male characters. We have less as to why they do what they do with the female characters and more an image of "good girl" or "bad girl with heart of gold." Now, I don't think this is intentional. And I don't think it's particularly obvious because it wasn't until I started the Kate post that I really started to think about it. BUt I tend to think that the writers are more prone to see things from a male POV and thus we have stronger male POV episodes than female POV episodes and (unfortunately for Kate) as she has had the bulk of the female flashbacks, it's most obvious in her case. Not because hers is the worst case so much as her's is the most obvious with the most episodes to notice.
This morning I found myself responding to a topic on Lost_Tv regarding the Kate backlash. It was too long for a reply so I ended up posting an entirely new thread. Anyway thought I'd repost in my LJ:
I don't hate Kate, but I don't love her either. I think it's a legitimate question why many people are reacting negatively to her but I don't think that reaction is about her being 'a conflicted soul.' I'm a sucker for 'a conflicted soul,' for someone who did bad and can't quite figure out what is good. (Name a sci-fi anti-hero and I've probably loved that character).
My issues with Kate are not so much the character herself as some of the decisions made for the character by the writers.
I think throughout the beginning of the season, Kate was written a bit too much as the universal object of desire. Jack wanted her. Sawyer wanted her. Sayid sort of wanted her. Even Charlie flirted with her in the beginning. If there was a man within a 100 yards, he wanted her which was just... excessive. That's not a problem with Kate per se, but in the way the writers chose to set-up her situation.
Also in writing her situation, there was a discussion on one list I'm on that part of the problem was the writers' decision to withold her motives to maintain the mystery surrounding her. They did this to some degree with all the characters, and yet there is a significant difference with her (and Shannon for that matter. Hmm... maybe the show just needs more female writers). Anyway, in Kate's (and Shannon's for that matter) case, we didn't (and still really don't) know what makes Kate tick. The flashbacks for other characters have been pretty clear on that subject. We know Jack is fueled by his Daddy issues and being the child of an alcoholic, becoming every bit as controlling as the father he loved/loathed. We know that Sawyer is fueled by his parents' murder/suicide and what the con-man did with them, becoming the monster he hated. We know that Sayid fell for a childhood friend and this inspired him to leave the Republican Guard. We have Locke's paralysis, his foster childhood, and his father 'playing him,' so we know why he wants to believe in the island so badly...and how he sort of 'played' Boone in a not so different way as his father 'played' him (albeit no where near as intentionally as Locke had been played). In other words, their flashbacks have been used to both flesh out the characters and to provide emotional insight into what makes them tick. Kate's, upon closer examination, really haven't been as revealing. We know why Sawyer turned to crime... we still don't know why Kate did. We know what childhood damage Jack has that fuels his controlling tendencies. We still have no clue why Kate did all the things she did (and the ex-boyfriend's death was a result, not a cause. We still don't know the cause was for her life of crime). Kate's flashbacks really haven't illuminated who she is so much as simply show us what she has done (which in general haven't been sympathetic actions -- trembling lip and teary eyes aside). Until we know what drove her to be this way, what's the emotional core (and truth) of the character, it's far more difficult to empathize with her choices and actions.
And, finally, this issue isn't a general one but more of just a pet peeve of my own. While Kate does possess some Mary Sue-ish qualities (the girl is apparently good at EVERYTHING and all men love her), my main issue has been the "bad girl with heart of gold" {tm} cliche. Every time we're shown her doing somthing B.A.D. they also try to make it "but not really. She was falsely accused so she's really relatively innocent." (And we don't know whether or not she was falsely accused. We still don't know what she did, why she did it, or if she's being honest in claiming that since she's lied so often. What we do know is that she has played innocent while we're shown various crimes of which she was culpable... but says "I was falsely accused" (of the crime three cimes earlier...) We're seemingly being told that she's done bad thing but she's a good girl deep down which...I like darkness in my favorite characters to actually be -- you know -- dark.
To give another example, I freaking LOVE Farscape's Officer Aeryn Sun and one of my favorite episodes was the one where she revealed that she betrayed an ex-lover and got him executed... for a promotion. This was a very bad thing. There were no excuses for it. Aeryn makes no excuse for it. It isn't watered down by trying to say "but she was a good person, really." (My favorite line was another character saying ironically [somewhat paraphrased due to a faulty memory]: "What? You thought Aeryn was out picking [rose] buds while only the 'really bad' Peacekeepers did the terrible things?") Point being that Aeryn's crimes were actual crimes. She had done something terrible...out of selfishness. She hadn't been better than the people they villainized... and she knew it, and openly admitted it. She could become a good person, but they didn't try to say that as she did those things in the past that she had been a good person while doing it (or that she was just misunderstood). She didn't protest "But I had reasons" or try to say she was falsely accused. She had been what she had been, but as horrible as that was. I respected the character for flat out saying (paraphrased) "Yes, that was me. I did that. There's no mistake. No extenuating circumstances. It's not a misunderstanding. I have no excuse, and I can never take it back. All I can do is try to learn from it and then become someone else." That's a very different reaction than "Okay, I've been exposed. But I wasn't really guilty because I was falsely accused and there were extenuating circumstances"... which is more or less what Kate does most of the time.
There's a difference between redeeming a character for past crimes and trying to say she's "good" even as she commits them (even as we don't know why she commits them). Exacerbating the problem is that the writers show this while simultaneously leaving her seemingly still quite positive on her relative rightness in the island hierarchy (with only the occasional "but I want to runaway from it" to ameliorate her hypocrisy. )
As an example, we have better understanding of what motivates Sawyer to do what he does and are LESS asked to excuse his actions than we are of Kate. And NO ONE on the island excuses his actions... leaving the audience to do so. I forget who, but there was some actor who said that they had discovered that there was far less drama and emotional impact to be found in a character crying than in seeing a character try NOT to cry...thereby allowing the audience to cry for them. Similarly, it's easier to forgive a character when characters on screen are NOT forgiving. A paradox, I know. But I guess as a viewer, I'm contrary.
With Kate, there's a three pronged problem.
One, we should at this point know what has driven Kate to commit this series of crimes (other than retrieving an airplane). Two, less undercutting of her crimes with the heavy handed "but she wasn't really bad when she did those things, there are extenuating circumstances that you don't know" nudges by the writers. Three, less of her being the female Mary Sue of the show (this seems to have been lessening).
And don't get me wrong. I don't hate Kate. I just don't think the writing has serviced the character as well as they have other characters on the show.
A few more thoughts I had in response to a few of the responses to the original post:
Re: Kate Hate being "cheerleader envy
To a certain degree this is an issue. Though it's somewhat difficult to say so as there are sexist connotations to dismiss backlash against a character purely as sexual jealousy. (For either sex, actually. It's as easy to say that women are jealous of Kate's sexual attraction as it is for women to say that some men don't like Sawyer because of sexual jealousy. While that may be an element in the reactions, I don't think it can be reduced to just that.)
However, to be fair, there is an element in characters where the audience reacts based on something as petty as sexual jealousy. It's a real reaction that audience members do have. Men do become a bit defensive at fangirl sqees of "nekkid Sawyer!" or "Sayid is pretty!", and there can be a reaction against those characters because Sawyer evokes some of the same feelings for some as that "bad boy" in high school that all the girls drooled over. I suppose, the same may be true of Kate. There can be that feeling of "why does every guy want HER?!" So, yeah, I would say it's fair to say that that feeling factors into some people's negative feedback on the character of Kate and it's valid to say so. That's sort of what I meant in the first paragraph or so about how the writers didn't particularly service the character well in the initial episodes by having every guy seemingly want her. If you're trying to evade having a backlash against her, it would have been perhaps more wise to limit it to Jack and Sawyer wanting her and avoiding piling on with the Sayid, Charlie... (to their credit the writers did move Sayid and Charlier out of it).
But if strategizing how to launch a female character that men love and women want to be, then it was an avoidable pitfal (at least in retrospect).
Still, while sexual jealousy is probably a factor in the Kate controversy and the Sawyer controversy, I doubt that it's all about sexual jealousy.
Re: Cheerleader Envy... again
I think it's a bit dismissive to say that issues with the way a character is written are just about sexual envy. (As dismissive as it would be to say that the only reason someone likes a character is simply sexual lust.) It ignores a whole host of other reasons to react to a character. It's a generalization that, while it may be true in certain instances, may not be true in other instances.
And really, 2/3 of the cast is extremely attractive, so it's really not a case of it being about physical beauty.
Reactions to a character vary by person. And it is just that -- a reaction, a response to stimuli. Presented with certain things on screen a lot of people react in a certain way... why? That's what being debated and it probably isn't as simple as just one thing or just about the gender of the viewer.
While part of a rejection of Kate may be a gender bias to her being written as a film noir femme fatale (aka "cheerleader envy"), that reaction may not be at all gender related. It may be the natural reaction to the hallmarks of a film noir femme fetale... and archetype who almost inevitably turned out to be the villain in film noir. Or it may be a reaction to a character who hasn't been developed as well as one would hope given the amount of airtime expended on her story. I tend to think they've had enough airtime to have time to to show us more about why she has done these things. It's a flaw in the writing that they've yet to get around to that.
It could be that in some ways the women on LOST tend to be written in a less internally motivated way than the male characters. Male characters tend to be written from some idea of their internal motivation as if the writers place themselves in the male characters shoes for a moment. And yet many of the women feel as though they are written as the male idea a woman via observations of the way certain women behave ... but they haven't given us indications of the woman's INTERNAL movitavions for their behavior. We still don't know WHY Kate and Shannon behave the way they do. Whatever our reactions (positive or negative) to Jack, Locke, and Sawyer, we have a pretty good idea of WHY they've done things, what it is in their past and childhoods made them grow to be the men that they are today. With Kate (and Shannon) we're left with just the actions without the psychological underpinnings. This isn't a reflection of the "character" but of the way the character has been staged in the context of the show.
It would be nice to know WHY Kate has done these things. It would make it far easier to have concrete reasons for liking or disliking her, other than "I like her and think she's attractive." Or "People dislike her because she's attractive." By this point in the season, we should understand WHO she is in a more complete way than just knowing WHAT she has done. Unfortunately we're left primarily with nothing but "what."
At any rate, there are people who have reacted negatively to the character of Kate (and there are people who have reacted negatively to Sawyer and to Jack). But I don't think it can be boiled down to just one thing like jealousy. That one explanation may be true for one person but the next person may have an entirely different reason.
Re: Unintentional Sexism
As I was writing it, it sort of struck me that across the board the characterization of female characters on the show has been weaker than the male characterization. (Weaker in the sense of less well rounded not that the women are weak.) As I pointed out, we know little of what actually motivates Kate. The same goes for Shannon. We really have little idea of why she became the person she was. On the other hand, Sun and Claire are both a bit too purely good and nurturing. Not that that's a bad thing, but it seems that the psyches of the female characters haven't been delved into in the same complexity and contradictory ways as the male characters. We have less as to why they do what they do with the female characters and more an image of "good girl" or "bad girl with heart of gold." Now, I don't think this is intentional. And I don't think it's particularly obvious because it wasn't until I started the Kate post that I really started to think about it. BUt I tend to think that the writers are more prone to see things from a male POV and thus we have stronger male POV episodes than female POV episodes and (unfortunately for Kate) as she has had the bulk of the female flashbacks, it's most obvious in her case. Not because hers is the worst case so much as her's is the most obvious with the most episodes to notice.
