How to Tell Stories

[handful_ofdust]

Lawks-a-mercy! Actual practical standards set for Gender Equity in [Narrative--TV shows primarily, but it can certainly be transposed], here (http://ivanolix.livejournal.com/199285.html?format=light). Said standards could probably also be cross-purposed to deal with representation of any non-default character types, or even several different ones at once.

Otherwise, yuki-onna's been hosting an interesting post about meta/deconstruction. Which are concepts I actually have problems with, mainly because I'm not academic, so the language/jargon defeats me: Why's it gotta be so stiff?, as the fool in Venia's Travels complains. Then I dig a bit deeper, and realize that in fact I'm often playing with the same things that make up this quote-quote "genre"...unreliable POV and narration, for example, reading between the lines and playing with lacunae, all techniques which arguably form the backbone of literary horror.

(I also totally agree with her observation that unless you establish at the outset this is a parallel universe with no horror culture, there's really no excuse anymore for having characters who can't parse the whole Hey, whoa, the DEAD are coming back to LIFE, maybe that means these things are those things known as zombies. How do we deal with zombies? Yeah, let's do that, shall we? equation. See also vampires, werewolves, any other sort of cross-culturally understood monster; personally, I've never understood why people insist on telling the cops Oh fuck, there's a vampire in town!, as opposed to just saying Oh fuck, there's a guy who THINKS he's a vampire in town! One gets you help, the other gets you kicked to the curb--I sure know which one I'd choose.)

Okay...back to the war. 1,000/2,000 words, here I come.

Comments

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I like ivanolix's standards! It's kind of like an expanded Bechdel Test, as she sort of says. It's funny, because one of my favorite current shows, Sons of Anarchy, is a totally macho machofest where the male characters define the female characters in terms of whose "old lady" they are and they run a freakin' porn business on the side, and yet the female characters that do exist are extremely instrumental and of-all-types, and their "sisterhood" led by a revered, slightly crazy matriarch is one of the most interesting parts of the show. They're hooked to the club by their relationships with men, but what lets them survive in the club is their relationships with women. I mean, I would say it passes Point 7.

The problem with ivanolix's post, I think - and I think you can see this in the comments - is how people are choosing to interpret "mired in stereotype." I mean, some of the shows the commenters are proudly announcing to have passed (Law & Order SVU?)... I am laughing silently. That and there's no basic quality of writing standard in there. I know that's not what it's for, but that's still going to be my biggest determining factor in deciding what to watch.

I also sometimes take issue with Point 6-related things. I mean, I'm aware of women-in-refrigerators etc., but I worry that this sort of mentality leads to "female [or minority, or gay] characters cannot die." Of course, if they're the only ones that die that's different, but I was totally okay with Dee's end in BSG, for example.

Wow sorry clearly I feel like rambling

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Heh, yeah, SoA. Essentially the reason I keep getting linked to pics of Katey Sagal every time I Google myself.;)

And yes, I agree with you on your other two points as well: A) I seriously don't care how "female-friendly" some stuff is--if I give it a look and think it's shit, I'm going with the less "female-friendly" thing that isn't shit, thank you very much, and B) people die. It's called drama. Sometimes those people are chicks, or gay, or not white, etc. And sometimes they should be the opposite, because if they're never the default characters, then you're obviously stuck in Miami Vice tragic-fuck-of-the-week territory (except worse, because at least back then, the black, Latino and combo characters could actually get some, too!).

Dee's end on BSG startled me, but it worked damn well, within context. It showed how bad things had gotten. And it worked because she seemed like someone who'd never go down that route, too. I don't see it as a betrayal.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I actually have a character named Gemma who's named after her (it was before I "met" you! But the character is awesome, don't worry!).

LOL, yeah, exactly. I mean, one of the comments pointed out that hey, Grey's Anatomy, full of female characters, and utterly crappy. What do you mean by "at least back then, the black, Latino and combo characters could actually get some, too!" - do you think that doesn't happen anymore? That could well be, I just haven't really noticed. And probably don't watch enough scripted TV to be able to tell.

A lot of people hate Season 4 but that's actually when I really got into the series (and watched new episodes as they came out) and that episode - "Sometimes a Great Notion," I believe, is truly one of the best. I use the FerretBrain approach to assessing suffering - does everybody suffer, both defaults and non-defaults? Then you're good to go.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

"If everybody suffers, then you're good to go" is a pretty awesome standard, actually. I believe I embrace that standard.;)

And what I meant about Miami Vice was that although it had the problems of its time, it also allowed every character to be sexual. Edward James Olmos got some. The Latina and black female detectives got some. The funny white sidekick guy detective got some. Of course our heroes were fetishized, but one wasn't fetishized to the exclusion of the other--they had tragic, sexy relationships with other people, as well as a verge-of-tragic, verge-of-sexy relationship with each other. Hell, there was a PLOT in Season One about a fellow cop being outed as gay, and this was back in, what--1983? When just admitting there were gay people was a huge deal, let alone that they had he right to do their jobs and not get harassed for it. Even he got the tragic sexy treatment, as I recall.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

And these days, yes, I often feel that people are represented, but made sexless saints of. For every complicated, sexy, odd character of color and non-default sexuality like Kalinda on The Good Wife, there's a thousand happy-dappy Wills and Jacks, or people who one assumes have HAD sex or might be HAVING sex, but thank God, you don't actually have to hear about it/watch it. One thing I like about SVU, shit as it's become, is that they don't dare make Ice-T sexless. He has a complicated background, an ex-wife with serious issues, a gay son, and seems to be living in some sort of hetero life-mate relationship with Richard Belzer. He's allowed to be at least as effed up as everybody else, and that's saying something.;)

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Fin and Munch are the best things SVU has going right now. By like, light-years. I especially love that they are usually right. I spend most episodes going "Goddamn you, listen to Munch!" and the episode where Fin told Elliott that he was a rat bastard is my favorite for that reason only.

He's allowed to be at least as effed up as everybody else, and that's saying something.

Yes, this is very important. Of course it's especially ironic given that hey, if you're living as a minority-anything in a system run by people who are not like you, the chance that your background/personal life isn't fucked up is especially small!

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but you're not supposed to admit that!;)

Sometimes TV's version of race relations reminds me of The Cosby Show, where middle-class black people were somehow able to spend their whole lives virtually never having to interact with white people at all (let alone obnoxious/problematic white people). It was this weird fantasy of segregation made happy, which maybe explains why Apartheid-era white South Africans apparently loved that show a lot.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The think about not recognizing what a werewolf is was something that rushthatspeaks commented on in a recent review. But how do you establish an alternate universe that's identical with this one, but without [fill in blank]? Can you, really?

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Well, a fairly good recent version of this trope is the BBC's Sherlock update, which clearly takes place in a universe without A) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and B) anyone else who's tried to be a consulting detective in Britain previous to the 21st century. You spend a bout a minute going: What, seriously? WEren't people discussing this sort of scientific detection methodology back in the 1800s?, but then you stop, because well, obviously not. And that's why everyone who meets him thinks Sherlock Holmes is a sociopath (or a psychopath).

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I suppose in a way it's just a variant of suspension of disbelief. I don't know why sometimes it's hard to actually do it. What made you buy in to the Sherlock update?

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Sheer charisma of the leads, mainly. Plus good/fun writing--I know a lot of people don't like Stephen Moffatt, and indeed the second and third episodes had their dicey aspects, but I do.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

There was a suggestion at SFContario that episode 2 may have been recycled from an earlier, unproduced script. Having thought it over, it seems to me that *if* the Sax Rohmer elements hadn't been laid on so thick I could have assumed an underlying train of writer's logic:
'OK, so American gangsters have become a total cliche since Doyle's time - should we make this about Russian gangsters or Chinese gangsters?'
'Well, seems to me someone raised by Chinese gangsters would have a much easier time reinventing herself as a normal person than someone raised by the Russian mob.'

But, as the actual episode goes - that crossbows-and-counterweights deathtrap is straight out of a 1940s serial - I mean it actually is the contraption an uncredited Philip Ahn got strapped into in Drums of Fu Manchu.*

*He didn't tell Fu where the scroll was hidden, and he was rescued in time. I think Dwight Frye may have been in that same episode.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Yeah, let's all just take Ep. 2 as basically filler with a couple of cute moments. Recycled Fu Manchu...that about says it.;)