Hey friends! Todd!! posted this article between Matt Zoller and Alan Sepinwall on the Twitters. It's pretty great as a whole, but I wanted to discuss this page, which gets into some interesting ideas about gender and feminism.
I disagree with the implicit ideas behind this statement:
"t’s also interesting that so many of the so-called 'quality dramas,' the dramas that are descended from Hill Street and that critics think of as recappable, are extremely male in their focus. They may or may not have strong female characters built in as well, but often they’re male focused. And more often than not they’re built around crime or violence."
I agree that there is a male focus on many of the big quality dramas. Certainly I don't think you can argue that Mad Men or Breaking Bad or similar programming are extremely male in their focus. However I don't think it is as widespread as this article seems to indicate. Buffy, Veronica Mars, Damages, and Homeland cover, essentially, the entire period of time this article is discussing. Battlestar Galactica very consciously always had a male and a female character paired of approximately equivalent rank and series importance. Adma and Roslin, Starbuck and Apollo, Helo and Sharon, Baltar and Six. While Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones and The Wire have ensemble casts so massive that calling any singular character the lead is somewhat ridiculous While I think this assertion is based on a partial truth, I think a lot of it goes down to the idea that as far as current dramas are concerned there's Mad Men and Breaking Bad and then everything else.
I also think tied up in this is the idea that crime and violence are inherently masculine traits. I think that is reductivist and dismissive. Are Buffy and Veronica Mars somehow unfeminine because they are built around crime and violence? Is Mad Man somehow less masculine because it is not about crime, but about relationships? The sub-text of this statement is that there are men's shows and there are women's shows, and men's shows are about big guns and big explosions while women's shows are about love and romance. I could not disagree more. I think one of the more interesting things is the slow evolution of the female anti-hero becoming a Tony Soprano or Walter White figure. Starting with Veronica Mars. She was always "right" in the sense that she was always on the side of the victims rather than the perpetrators (and if she was on the wrong side, it was because she was mistaken and immediately jumped to the right side). However her tactics were anything goes, ends justify the means. She was occasionally criminally complicit, and often ethically compromised. After he was Nancy Botwin on Weeds, who was an actual criminal. In the seasons of Weeds I have seen, she was buffeted by the same pressures as Walter White, just never putting her in the extreme positions he has been in, however she consistently compromised herself and endangered her family for the easy money, thrill and empire building. Patty Hewes on Damages is as much an absolute monster as anyone she fights against. A woman with utter narcissistic-sociopathy, who attempted to put a hit out on one of her employees and has no qualms about employing any dirty trick to win a case. The only thing that keeps her just a shade shy of Tony or Walter is the fact that her chosen setting is corporate law rather than criminal cartels. Finally there is Emily Thorne on Revenge, a show which is, in every single way, a traditional, late night soap opera but loads it up with violence, crime and superheroics. Its a show that takes both the concepts of feminine and masculine TV and shoves them together with a female protagonist who is clearly a rather vicious anti-hero. I think stating it is either women or male focused is an incredibly superficial statement unless you are talking marketing demographics (and we shouldn't!).
Once more I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding as to why people dislike Skyler. I absolutely agree it can express itself in a misogynistic way, but I don't think it actually originates in misogyny. For good or for ill, whether we like him or not, Walter White is the protagonist of Breaking Bad, which makes Skyler often an antagonist. In the beginning she's specifically a problem that Walt has to get around. He has to make his meth without her finding out. It reduces her to a simple dramatic plot device and makes her an uninteresting one at that. Skyler wondering where Walt spends his days is not as compelling a conflict as Hank's investigation into Heisenberg. Skyler is at her best when she is making her own moral compromises, rather than as just another obstacle for Walt to overcome. This is far, far, far more obvious with Lori on The Walking Dead. In order to create dramatic conflict, Lori would always take the exact opposite side as Rick, without any logical reason. Sometimes in direct conflict with what her position was an episode or even less before. A wife on a drama can not exist primarily as a means to introduce conflict with the protagonist without the audience disliking them.
I disagree with the implicit ideas behind this statement:
"t’s also interesting that so many of the so-called 'quality dramas,' the dramas that are descended from Hill Street and that critics think of as recappable, are extremely male in their focus. They may or may not have strong female characters built in as well, but often they’re male focused. And more often than not they’re built around crime or violence."
I agree that there is a male focus on many of the big quality dramas. Certainly I don't think you can argue that Mad Men or Breaking Bad or similar programming are extremely male in their focus. However I don't think it is as widespread as this article seems to indicate. Buffy, Veronica Mars, Damages, and Homeland cover, essentially, the entire period of time this article is discussing. Battlestar Galactica very consciously always had a male and a female character paired of approximately equivalent rank and series importance. Adma and Roslin, Starbuck and Apollo, Helo and Sharon, Baltar and Six. While Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones and The Wire have ensemble casts so massive that calling any singular character the lead is somewhat ridiculous While I think this assertion is based on a partial truth, I think a lot of it goes down to the idea that as far as current dramas are concerned there's Mad Men and Breaking Bad and then everything else.
I also think tied up in this is the idea that crime and violence are inherently masculine traits. I think that is reductivist and dismissive. Are Buffy and Veronica Mars somehow unfeminine because they are built around crime and violence? Is Mad Man somehow less masculine because it is not about crime, but about relationships? The sub-text of this statement is that there are men's shows and there are women's shows, and men's shows are about big guns and big explosions while women's shows are about love and romance. I could not disagree more. I think one of the more interesting things is the slow evolution of the female anti-hero becoming a Tony Soprano or Walter White figure. Starting with Veronica Mars. She was always "right" in the sense that she was always on the side of the victims rather than the perpetrators (and if she was on the wrong side, it was because she was mistaken and immediately jumped to the right side). However her tactics were anything goes, ends justify the means. She was occasionally criminally complicit, and often ethically compromised. After he was Nancy Botwin on Weeds, who was an actual criminal. In the seasons of Weeds I have seen, she was buffeted by the same pressures as Walter White, just never putting her in the extreme positions he has been in, however she consistently compromised herself and endangered her family for the easy money, thrill and empire building. Patty Hewes on Damages is as much an absolute monster as anyone she fights against. A woman with utter narcissistic-sociopathy, who attempted to put a hit out on one of her employees and has no qualms about employing any dirty trick to win a case. The only thing that keeps her just a shade shy of Tony or Walter is the fact that her chosen setting is corporate law rather than criminal cartels. Finally there is Emily Thorne on Revenge, a show which is, in every single way, a traditional, late night soap opera but loads it up with violence, crime and superheroics. Its a show that takes both the concepts of feminine and masculine TV and shoves them together with a female protagonist who is clearly a rather vicious anti-hero. I think stating it is either women or male focused is an incredibly superficial statement unless you are talking marketing demographics (and we shouldn't!).
Once more I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding as to why people dislike Skyler. I absolutely agree it can express itself in a misogynistic way, but I don't think it actually originates in misogyny. For good or for ill, whether we like him or not, Walter White is the protagonist of Breaking Bad, which makes Skyler often an antagonist. In the beginning she's specifically a problem that Walt has to get around. He has to make his meth without her finding out. It reduces her to a simple dramatic plot device and makes her an uninteresting one at that. Skyler wondering where Walt spends his days is not as compelling a conflict as Hank's investigation into Heisenberg. Skyler is at her best when she is making her own moral compromises, rather than as just another obstacle for Walt to overcome. This is far, far, far more obvious with Lori on The Walking Dead. In order to create dramatic conflict, Lori would always take the exact opposite side as Rick, without any logical reason. Sometimes in direct conflict with what her position was an episode or even less before. A wife on a drama can not exist primarily as a means to introduce conflict with the protagonist without the audience disliking them.