quote:Originally posted by Destineer: In that case, I agree with you about the double standard. I'd probably be more in favor of "lowering" the standards for female characters rather than "raising" the ones for men. At least in fiction that's pitched at adults.
I agree completely.
As do I.
The problem is that many are unable to see an imperfect female character that's otherwise well-written or acted, that's very compelling, as anything but an assault on women. There's this prevailing notion that all portrayals of women need to be perfect or they're misogynistic.
And the thing is, perfect characters, male or female, are often kind of boring. Flawed characters, I mean these days even outright EVIL characters are far more interesting and compelling, but if you start giving women negative traits, it's woman bashing. Sometimes it's gratuitous and damaging, but when it's well done, it shouldn't be knocked. I think we've gone too far in the censorship realm.
The good news is, these wannabe censors haven't had much success in actually changing the face of entertainment to match their moralistic vision.
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quote:Originally posted by Teshi: Curiously, I would say that all these shows have reasonably good potrayals of men as well, although a man would probably have to speak to that.
Nah, we don't have any special insights by virtue if our dangly bits.
What is a "good" portrayal is a lot more about one's philosophy about fiction (and one's morality, in some cases) than it is about their genitals.
I don't think for a second that the only important differences between the genders are if they stand up or sit down to pee.
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I'll bet it's more important to the sitters then standers ...I mean I CAN sit down to pee.
I've always felt bad that girls can't write their name in the snow, so I am developing line of stencils.
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quote:Originally posted by Teshi: Curiously, I would say that all these shows have reasonably good potrayals of men as well, although a man would probably have to speak to that.
Nah, we don't have any special insights by virtue if our dangly bits.
What is a "good" portrayal is a lot more about one's philosophy about fiction (and one's morality, in some cases) than it is about their genitals. [/QUOTE]
Portrayals of people in general can be positive or negative. It is artistically perfectly valid to portray a (random choice here) black lesbian as evil, for example. What is shallow is using her black feminine lesbianism as a shorthand for un-likability; basically thinking that it helps the audience to get that this person is bad, and thinking the audience will accept this person as being bad, because of who they are, and not because of how specifically they are portrayed.
On the flip-side, it is equally cynical to subvert the same implicit expectations by simply making the black lesbian the good guy; if all you do is just thumb your noise at the audience by making the person "good" despite qualities you already expect people to automatically hold against the person. Basically, the problem is sloppy and lazy writing: writers who don't start with the character as a person, but with the character as an image, and then work backwards in a half-assed attempt to justify the actual more cynical motivation for choosing a particular image.
This is why I loved The Wire so much. The characters were people. You had the gay black anti-hero, the lesbian black good guy, the white bureaucrat villain, sure. But they were people who happened to be these things, and these qualities had a real effect on their lives- in a way that shaped them as people. Their moral virtues were at the forefront. And then you had white villains, white heros, black villains and black heros to boot. Nobody was perfect, and nobody stooped to either pander to stereotype, or to "cleverly" subvert stereotypes by being what they weren't "supposed" to be. Gangbangers say profound things sometimes- you don't need an education to be insightful. And an education doesn't guarantee that you ever will be, as evidenced by some of the more educated characters who really weren't deep a people. So gang members were allowed to say things you might not expect without it being a gimmick, and upper-class black and white folks were allowed to say coarse things without it being some sort of moral failing on their part. They're were just people reacting to their situations. You didn't tune into the show just because Omar or Slim Charles were "well spoken" black men who were "charming," but because they were well spoken and charming people who did horrible things because of the lives they led. That's interesting- that doesn't make you feel guilty for liking them- or if you feel guilty, it's not because you feel stupid for being tricked into it.
Ultimately my issue with the portrayal of men in media, as with women, is in lazy writing. Writing that winks at the audience and panders to our lowest expectations of people, and is so enslaved to this gimmick, that it can't help winking at us even when it *doesn't* do this. As if failing for a moment to treat the audience like buffoons is deserving of credit for cleverness- when really they're just saying: "we know you're an idiot, we're just treating you like an adult for laughs."
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We do actually have insight essentially for virtue of our dangly bits. It's the whole argument about viewing a world through a lens, with differential quantities of privilege based on minority/majority factors.
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Uh, I didn't mean, "because you're men you have better judgement". I meant that "you are likely to be more sensitive to what makes an accurate potrayal of a man."
Similarly, I would expect women to be marginally better at picking up on problematic aspects of the portrayal of a woman because they are more sensitive (through personal experiences) of how women interact and, more importantly, are interacted with.
Obviously this would depend on the woman or man involved, so this is a broad generalisation.
My hypothesis on this is that good, accurate characters appear together-- men and women are portrayed accurately when effort is put in to the characters as a whole. However, I think certain genres in television and certain tropes mean that between poorly thought out tv shows, sometimes women get the short end of the stick, and sometimes (as in some sitcoms) men do.
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I'll bet it's more important to the sitters then standers ...I mean I CAN sit down to pee.
I've always felt bad that girls can't write their name in the snow, so I am developing line of stencils.
Dude. Women can totally stand up to pee, it's just you have to have some instruction from a woman who knows how in order to make it work. (Girl Scout camping trips FTW)
Also, what they said about viewing the world through a lens. It's why, say, white writers try to be very careful when writing non-white characters (or avoid doing it entirely), because, when it comes down to it, we can imagine what it's like to be someone else, but we can't really know.
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quote:Originally posted by Olivet 2.0: Also, what they said about viewing the world through a lens. It's why, say, white writers try to be very careful when writing non-white characters (or avoid doing it entirely), because, when it comes down to it, we can imagine what it's like to be someone else, but we can't really know.
Yeah, I think that reluctance is foolish.
You're already creating an imaginary person who has (presumably) a different upbringing and life than your own.
I'm not denying that some of our experiences and attitudes are shaped by our gender and race due to the culture we live in. But there are so, so, so many other factors as well that aren't treated with nearly as much care or, as you said, reluctance.
Hell, if a writer can imagine what it's like to be an alien or a person living in the Dark Ages, how in God's name could it be harder to imagine what it's like to be a woman, or a black man? It seems pretty absurd to me.
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quote: Hell, if a writer can imagine what it's like to be an alien or a person living in the Dark Ages...
That's actually a heck of an "if," as to the best of my knowledge no aliens or medieval peasants have been consulted about the accuracy of their portrayals in fiction.
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quote:Hell, if a writer can imagine what it's like to be an alien or a person living in the Dark Ages, how in God's name could it be harder to imagine what it's like to be a woman, or a black man? It seems pretty absurd to me.
There aren't many writers who can credibly write about what it would've been like to be a peasant from Europe about a thousand years ago, much less *aliens* (although as the total unknown, they're easier to fake). And when successful, *if* successful, it's nearly a given that the author didn't just sit at home snacking on peanuts trying to imagine what life was like as a serf-chances are they either read contemporary accounts, or read authors who did.
As for other factors not being treated with as much reluctance...well, put simply mistakes aren't going to be spotted as easily for those narrower (but still important) elements, and there's less baggage involved.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote: Hell, if a writer can imagine what it's like to be an alien or a person living in the Dark Ages...
That's actually a heck of an "if," as to the best of my knowledge no aliens or medieval peasants have been consulted about the accuracy of their portrayals in fiction.
Hah, fair enough!
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Hell, if a writer can imagine what it's like to be an alien or a person living in the Dark Ages, how in God's name could it be harder to imagine what it's like to be a woman, or a black man? It seems pretty absurd to me.
There aren't many writers who can credibly write about what it would've been like to be a peasant from Europe about a thousand years ago, much less *aliens* (although as the total unknown, they're easier to fake). And when successful, *if* successful, it's nearly a given that the author didn't just sit at home snacking on peanuts trying to imagine what life was like as a serf-chances are they either read contemporary accounts, or read authors who did.
As for other factors not being treated with as much reluctance...well, put simply mistakes aren't going to be spotted as easily for those narrower (but still important) elements, and there's less baggage involved.
Yeah, the baggage is the main point, I think, and I suppose there's some merit there.
Anyway, I'm not saying that a writer trying to write from the perspective of someone of another race or gender shouldn't try to do research. Of course they should. But I also think it's worth bearing in mind that there are many factors (not just aliens and medieval peasants) that are likely to have an even bigger impact.
Do writers have the same trepidation writing about a different economic background than their own? I suspect a white writer that grew up in Manhattan and went to Harvard would have an easier time writing from the perspective of a black Manhattanite who went to Harvard than he would, say, a white guy who grew up in rural Alabama.
How about professions? There are lots of (in)famous examples of total screwups in various fictional depictions of professions.
And to a certain extent, yeah, lots of writers do stick closer to what they know. But from what I've seen, there are some cases of stepping out of their comfort zone that are more acceptable than others. Probably just goes back to baggage, as you said Rakeesh.
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My point is particularly about the research-what kind of research? If it's of the sort 'read accounts of people who lived it', or books written by those who did, well your complaint seems a bit invalid if the way writers who place themselves into another gender or racial role effectively is to carefully study those roles as described by the people who live them.
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medieval peasants and aliens, additionally, do not face the real issue of having portrayals of them enforce a maligning social image, which has the very real effect of impacting their socialization and life opportunities
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