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TV v. Film: The Kick-Ass Women of TV

Guest poster Shelly had far too much to say about the women of BSG to limit it to a blurb in another post. Here, then, are some of the reasons the women of BSG are worth talking about.

On Tuesday, Marcia posted about the lack of strong female characters in movies, especially compared to the abundance of strong women on television. She listed a few women as an example: “Buffy, Scully, Bones, Betty Suarez, Roslin and Starbuck,” and later Xena. Did anybody else notice how many of those women were in science fiction shows? Poor science fiction has a similar image problem to that of television: it’s thought of as a waste of time, and many don’t see art in the genre.

Science fiction is a wonderland for strong female characters. Setting a story in the future, or on another planet, gives a creator of science fiction the license to ignore contemporary gender roles. The two strongest cinematic women I can think of are both from sci-fi films: Ellen Ripley from the Aliens franchise, and Sarah Connor from Terminator 2 (I specify 2 because she’s a wimp in Terminator). Ripley is possibly the most well drawn female action hero ever to be seen in a movie (at least one that didn’t originate as a television show, with all of the history of a TV series, like Serenity)—she is tough as nails (without caring about breaking them), she’s fiercely smart, and she’s in a position of power that isn’t “Mother.” Granted, it’s not like there are many other female action heroes with which to compare Ripley, but she’s pretty fantastic.

Ripley also goes back for the cat. Some may see this as a feminine weakness, but for me it is a note of grace brought to the typical action hero role. Going back for the cat is a crucial part of Ripley’s character, one layer that is uniquely female.

As great as Ripley was, when it comes to character, television still does it way better. There are plenty of awesome female characters on television these days (or in the recent past, when 75% of them were created by Joss Whedon), and one of the best examples is Battlestar Galactica.

BSG treats gender as if it informs but never defines a character. In BSG, women are aggressive soldiers, icy presidents, and violent revolutionaries at the same time they are caring mothers, manipulative seductresses, and neglected wives. They also use the same bathrooms as the men. I am often surprised when the show messes with my own gender expectations—like when I look back at how I thought Roslin was trying to save the fleet after the Cylons first attacked out of pure compassion when really, she was playing a numbers game, and saving the human race came far above saving individuals in her estimation.

It’s obvious from day one that the women of BSG never exist as a pure object of conflict between two men, a simple moral compass, or in any other way as secondary to the men of the cast. Let’s look at how the BSG women bring their ovaries to the roles without ever becoming caricatures of what it means to be a woman. In other words, how do they “save the cat”?

Boomer/Athena/Eights
The Eights come closest in the series to having a fatal flaw that is stereotypically feminine: They base most of their behavior in their emotions, specifically in their love for individuals. Athena proves herself to be a little higher minded than that when she tries to commit herself to duty and honor above all else, but even then she ends up shooting Natalie when she’s afraid of having her child stolen. She betrays duty, her superior officers, and potentially the human race, all because her worry for her daughter overrides everything else. Athena also left her birth race and served in the human military purely out of love for Helo rather than any strong conviction about the rightness of either side. It seems likely that Boomer sided against the rest of the Eights due to love for Cavil as much as her sense of isolation in the fleet (because she initially thought she was human). I’m not going to argue whether this love of the individual above all else is good or bad, but it does seem like a particularly feminine trait for someone who is also a soldier.

Because I tend to set up cage-matches in my head, I have to ask: Who would win in a fight between an Eight and Ripley? I’m afraid that Ripley would kick an Eight’s ass, unless Ripley happened to threaten the Eight’s baby or boyfriend.

Caprica Six/Natalie/Other Sixes
At first, it seems like the Sixes aren’t too far off from the Eights in their basic motivation. Caprica Six, especially, seems obsessed with her love for Baltar. It turns out that the Sixes are driven more by social concerns than anything else, which you can see as early as the pilot, when Caprica Six snaps a baby’s neck, with tears in her eyes, just before the coming nuclear holocaust. She already understands the wrongness of the Cylons’ plan, and it doesn’t take long before she’s spreading the word among her race and trying to find common ground with the humans. This switch—from a focus on love to a larger focus—is one of the ways the Sixes mess with our gender expectations. This is not to say that fomenting social dissent is a particularly gendered activity, but the way we were misguided as to her basic nature at first says something about the Six’s overt sexuality and our assumptions about a woman who looks like that. These are assumptions that the BSG creators seem to share, given how Gina (the first truly revolutionary Six) and Natalie (the leader of one side of the Cylon civil war) are transformed into comparatively modest brunettes.

In a Ripley/Six showdown, who would win? The Six, sort of. She would’ve set up a bomb beforehand, but she’d also sacrifice herself to take Ripley out.

President Roslin
Roslin is the trickiest female on BSG, as far as her gender goes. She starts out with the label of “little schoolteacher” (she’s the Secretary of Education who is suddenly promoted to President) and immediately saves the lives of thousands by insisting that they flee rather than fight. As I mentioned earlier, we expect a “little schoolteacher” to do something like that out of compassion, rather than practicality, but she fools us. President Airlock is ruthless, and she and Adama switch roles as time goes on, until Adama is the one letting people he loves (such as Starbuck) get away with things they perhaps shouldn’t, while Roslin would shoot Starbuck just to make sure they all stay safe. She is almost the opposite of the Eights in that she’s lost her affection for the individual in order, she thinks, to keep the human race alive.

Ripley and Roslin wouldn’t fight. They’d have tea, and it would end with Ripley joining Roslin’s side. Winner: the President.

Kara “Starbuck” Thrace
When we first see the exquisitely hot Kara Thrace, she’s chomping on a cigar, drinking liquor, and playing cards with other soldiers. She ends up in a fight with her XO and is thrown into the brig. If you had the presence of mind to think about it—I didn’t, I was too busy being awed—you might’ve thought that Starbuck was just a male character with boobs.

Kara’s femininity shows up in her history, when she lets Zak Adama get his pilot’s license even though he failed his flight test, a display of tenderness that I can’t imagine seeing in the current-day Starbuck. She’s also a highly sexualized character—a typical way to weaken a woman on television or in movies by pandering to male fantasies—but she’s sexual in a very dominant, dismissive way, which turns our expectations around.

Who would win if Starbuck and Ripley got in a fight? Starbuck—while she’s got a feminine side, she would never go back for a cat.

Shelly obsesses over science fiction in Durham, NC, where she lives with her partner and their, uh, several cats.

More Great TV Women: Battlestar Galactica

The brevity and economy of film is one of its assets. Although, if you ask me, movies are getting way too long these days. (But you didn’t. So nevermind.) It’s a delicate and thoughtful process to trim out what isn’t necessary in a film to create the most powerful piece of art possible. Ask TiFaux Kyle — he’s famous for this stuff. I won’t go on this tangent because I don’t know exactly what I’m talking about.

But what I’m getting at is this — in a movie you’ve got two hours to make your point. And, generally, you hit or you miss and the characters work or they don’t. However, the nature of television means that not only do you have more time to develop relationships with characters, but they have more potential to develop and grow.

Think of Jim and Pam on The Office — the will-they-won’t they tension on that show could never have built up and paid off if you’d only known about them for two hours. Not only did you have dozens of episodes to build upon, but you had the weeks in between to analyze and speculate about how things would pan out.

Furthermore, the plotlines have the potential to be richer. While the miniseries of Battlestar Galactica laid a great foundation, the series has taken the potential of the concept and run with it. The depth of the mythologies of TV series is something that is distinct to the medium — whether it’s knowing all about Gaius Baltar and his misdeeds or knowing why Meredith Grey has become the basketcase she is today.
Heck, think about packing all the twists and turns of Lost into a feature film (or a book for that matter).

TV v. Film: The Benefits of Time

It took me a long time to admit that I liked television better than film. Film, you see, is an art form. Film is Fellini and Hitchcock and Scorsese; television is David E. Kelly and Jay Leno and Jerry Springer. Film is respectable, but those who watch television should feel shame for wasting their days.

I’m over that now, and not just because I decided to live my life with absolutely no sense of shame (though that helps). I’m a television blogger, I’ve taught media studies, and I’m about to start a masters degree in television studies. I’ve thought about this stuff, and there’s a fair amount to think about. I keep coming back to one clear, objective fact: television does lots of things much, much better than film.

Film may win in the cinematography or A-list actor category. It owns the special effects battle, hands down. I’ll even give it soundtracks and editing. Really, it should win all these, since it has the budget to do so. The one place, however, where film is consistently beaten to a bloody pulp by television is in the character category. When it comes to creating rich, believable, complex characters, television is the playground bully kicking sand in the scrawny face of film.

Some of the reasons for this are obvious. Television has more time to build and develop characters, to reveal their quirks and contradictions. It allows them to change over time, just as (gasp) real people do. Though film characters can and do change, these changes are usually based on external events that cause the hero to react and adapt. In television, characters may react to outside influences, but they’re just as likely to develop in relation to their community. They grow because of relationships, their environment or sometimes because they just get older. Film is based on the hero’s journey, in which characters must become something grand and, well, heroic in two hours’ time. Television needs to create characters we relate to so that we keep tuning in week after week. Heroes are all well and good, but as someone who’s far more likely to spend a day mastering the hammer on in Guitar Hero than in saving the empire, I’ll take TV any time. Film is escapism. Television, I believe. (This is not an absolute, of course; I have yet to find a single thing worth believing on One Tree Hill, but I’ll still escape there once a week.)

Even more than that, television offers something film doesn’t seem to bother with: female characters that don’t suck. Women in films don’t have a whole lot to do, you see. They get to be the love interest for the man, of course. Sometimes they get to be the source of conflict between a couple of men. If they’re really lucky, they might get to be the moral compass for some misguided man who will eventually see the light and become, of course, the hero. Women are almost exclusively relegated to secondary roles, complete with secondary character development. Some excellent actresses will do their best work with what they’re given, but at the end of the day, they are little more than catalysts for the men.

If you think I’m exaggerating, have a look at the top films for 2007 and 2008. In 2007, the top ten films all feature male leads. Spiderman 3, which claims the top spot, could be the annoyingly overproduced poster child for my point. Mary Jane is the love interest that men fight over, and she frequently looks at Peter Parker with disappointment in her eyes, letting him know that he’s on the wrong moral path. Of course, despite all this moral superiority, all she really does in the film is serve as villain bait. Also, she screams. A lot.

In fact, in 2007, the first film with a female lead is Juno – all the way down at #15. With Enchanted at #20, that gives us two – count ‘em, TWO — films in the top 20 with interesting female leads. In 2008, Sex & the City made it into the top ten, at least. Still, I’m not ready to have a big old dance party about that, when Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Indiana Jones, Hancock and Kung Fu Panda all claim the top spots.

(And, please, please don’t argue that people just don’t want to see women in lead roles, as that will make me very grumpy. Give me a Hollywood film with a female lead that’s as well scripted and directed as The Dark Knight, rather than, say, Elektra, and then we’ll talk.)

Television has given us Buffy, Scully, Bones, Betty Suarez, Roslin and Starbuck. Hell, it gave us Xena, for which I will always love it. Even in male-dominated shows, the female is given more to do than stare at the man adoringly and/or with reproach in her eyes. Burn Notice may belong to Jeffrey Donovan, but Gabrielle Anwar’s ass-kicking Fiona can certainly hold her own. Lost may often be about the battle between Jack, Locke and Ben, but Sun and Kate are given plenty of meaty things to do. The man’s world of Mad Men gave us Peggy, one of the more complex women currently on television. Even in television’s version of the hero’s journey, a show subtly called Heroes, the gender balance is fairly even, as is the allocation of interesting powers.

It’s not just women that get the short stick in films. If you’re not Will Smith, black actors don’t make out that well, either, unless they want to play the Sassy Sidekick or the Mystical Black Person (a close cousin to the Female Moral Compass). Gays, of course, are all but invisible in the top 20, unless you count 300 (which you probably should, all things considered). Basically, if you want to watch male heroes save the day, film is the medium for you. For everyone else, it’s television.

So, film creates the same damn hero over and over again, while television gives us fully developed roles that represent wide swathes of the population. Which one is art, again?

TV v. Film: We’ve Got Character

Watching television is a social experience. I’m serious.

The couch potato stereotype involves pot bellies, Cheetos, bed sores and awkward social interactions. As a TV blogger (a two-fer of descriptors that carry negative connotations), I have to accept that some of these things may apply to me (I’ll leave it to you to guess which ones), but I’d also like to establish the fact that television has the capacity to serve as a social experience better than movies ever could.

Let’s start here: I’ve never understood the idea of going out to the movies in the company of people you haven’t seen for a while or on a first date (where you should spend the entire time asking each other how many siblings you have while you nervously sip lattes). Seeing a movie on the big screen is pretty much a solitary experience and, counter to the popular notion, is probably best experienced when one is feeling antisocial. You’re in a dark room, not facing your friends, and you’re teleported to a completely foreign setting with characters you don’t know. There’s no social interaction except for the moment where you leave the theater and discuss the movie before you go get burritos (or, well, at least that’s the way it goes with my friends).

There should be less shame associated with going to the movies solo.

(Before I get started praising the television, I’ll just put it out there that I’m not trying to say that watching television is the best way to interact with friends. However, television is more conducive to healthy socialization than a solitary movie experience. I’m not saying that people should watch more television in order to solve any social problems. I’m just saying that the tube has been given a bad reputation as a vortex for laziness, antisocial behavior and all things awful. All of these tendencies do exist, but it’s the people who watch it who are responsible for their own social lives.)

While people frequently watch television by themselves (of course), television shows are much more conducive to social interaction in a variety of ways. I’ll talk about what I think are the two biggies.

You watch television at home, within your comfort zone. It’s a pressure-free environment and, in a group, you can pay as much or little attention it as possible. Whereas movie theaters run trailers asking you to not talk during movies, in the comfort of your own home you can heckle the screen as much as you want, guffaw if you feel like it, or hit pause on the TiFaux so you can blend more margaritas.

It’s a quiet indignity that television suffers that people are more cavalier in talking over the action, but it does make the medium a bigger experience.

The second reason that television is a social experience is because there’s a higher likelihood that people will have at least some concept of the shows their peers and acquaintances keep up with, thus providing them with a basis for conversation. Movies come and go in the blink of an eye and, unless you’re talking about franchises, there’s no continuity. Since television shows last longer, there’s a stronger chance you’ve heard of them.

Keeping up with television shows is a way for unlike people to establish common ground. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve been stuck with and the only thing we’ve had to talk about is Project Runway (speaking of — how dreamy is Keith.  Rowr.) With television, you’ve instantly got a common backstory.

I wouldn’t worry that talk of television is ‘dumbing down’ the discourse between strangers. If television went away, first dates wouldn’t be replaced by talk of Descartes and the human condition.  Furthermore, television is less emotionally charged than politics or religion (although I can understand people having strong feelings about the Blayne “girlicious” issue)

To sum up — television may not get a lot of respect from a lot of folks, but it is a pretty decent (if counterintuitive) way for people to stay in touch with each other.

PS — And for the contingent who will inevitably shout “Why don’t you go outside! Meet people!  Join a club!,” all I have to say is this: right now you are reading a blog about television. On the internet. Alone.

Physician, heal thyself.

Television v. Film, Part 1

But then something happened this morning that was very much not fun. It was, in fact, anti-fun. At 8:00, gigantic mug of coffee firmly in hand, I happily clicked over to the Dr. Horrible site, pressed play and waited to be astounded by the Whedon wonderfulness. Instead, I got a message from Hulu, firmly rebuffing my attempts to view the first act. Apparently, only US viewers can watch it.

So much for the grand global launch, huh? My first thought (because I only think of you, my lovely readers) was, “Oh, hell. I have posted erroneous information! I am a terrible, awful, no good, very bad blogger!” Then, I read this announcement on the Dr. Horrible blog:

Many fans around the world have been disappointed to discover the feared message “not available outside the USA” but rest assured the problem is being addressed and we’ll report back as soon as we’re aware of the details.

Never fear, Doctor Horrible will save the day…..err……ahh….. Captain Hammer will save the day? …. well, rest assured, someone will!

The team behind Dr Horrible are really sorry about the problems and want to assure you that they really are working hard to get it all sorted out. The best news is, it’s worth the wait!

I didn’t screw up. Yay! Someone else did. Boo. No, really, boo. Of all the stupid-assed mistakes to make, putting an international product on Hulu is a pretty big one. For television addicts that live in the US, Hulu is the greatest thing ever. For the rest of us, it is evil. EVIL, I say.

Hulu is quickly becoming the default way to embed video on websites and in blog posts, due to the depth of its catalog and its high quality video. I see more and more sites using it every day, and I would like to say, as courteously and politely as possible: STOP IT. Yes, Americans make up the bulk of your readership. That is true for Pop Vultures, as well, despite the fact that I live in the UK and cover a fair amount of British television. However, Hulu immediately excludes everyone not residing within those 50 states, and that just ain’t right.

Thanks to the Internet, the television market isn’t what it once was, when everyone would watch shows as they aired live in their home country. It’s an international market now, and any pretense to the contrary is just foolishness. People want to watch shows as they become available, and anyone with the technical knowledge of an eight-year-old has learned about these magical things called torrents that allow that to happen. Yes, downloading copyrighted material is wrong, but until the networks figure out that television viewers want to be a part of the international conversations about their favorite show — whether that show is Battlestar Galactica or Torchwood — and start offering all viewers equal access to the programs, it will continue. I can’t fault a single viewer that choice. If it wasn’t for my US bank account, which allows me to use the US iTunes store, I’d be doing the same damn thing. I’m not going to wait three months to watch Gossip Girl, then try to dig up old blog posts about the episode while frantically avoiding spoilers. That just doesn’t make sense. I’m well aware that the international economics of the entertainment industry are complicated, but I don’t care. They need to change, to fit the new audience and their needs.

And this is why Hulu is EVIL. It actively promotes the old model, in which those in the US can see everything first and the rest of us have to wait for it to become available online, legally or otherwise. People aren’t going to stop downloading, and it’s not because they inherently lack respect for copyrighted material. It’s because they want to watch the same things everyone else gets to see at the same time. I was able to download Act I from iTunes, but there are currently plenty of grumpy people around the world who just wanted to watch Neil Patrick Harris sing this morning, and weren’t able to do so. That’s not fun at all, not one little bit.

I’m Not Doing the Hulu Dance

Tom Waits may have recorded “Way Down in the Hole” back in 1987, but twenty years later most people only know it as the theme to The Wire, if they know it at all. And that’s a damn shame, because this is one hell of an awesome song. Each season of the show features a new version of the tune, and they all interpret it differently. The Blind Boys of Alabama brought out its lowdown, bluesy notes, perfect for the first season’s focus on Baltimore’s inner-city drug trade. In season 2, Waits himself, the poet laureate of America’s working class, set the tone for the stories of the dock workers. Each season has used the theme to set the stage for its story arc, and I’m curious to see how Steve Earle’s version will match the show’s final season.

Have a listen to the clips below, then tell me: does this season’s rendition live up to those that have come before? And which is your favorite take on the song?

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“Way Down in the Hole” With The Wire

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Kooks, Nutjobs and General Incompetents

Let’s go back a few years, to 1998. Will & Grace had just premiered to raves. It was a success, both in terms of critical response and ratings, and was widely hailed as a groundbreaking sitcom for featuring two gay characters. The mainstream show earned a huge audience, clearing the way for more gay leads in the future. Nine years later, there’s been…no, wait…I’m sure I’ll think of one…er, nope. That was it. (The aspiring drag queens of America’s Next Top Model don’t count.) Influential, yes, as seen in the slightly increased visibility of gay supporting characters, but I don’t see any towering rainbow structures being built on its groundbreaking premise.

Last year, Ugly Betty was heralded as the breakthrough, “groundbreaking” show due to its plain-Jane lead whose dowdy fashion sense, unibrow and braces made her nearly immune to objectification. We were supposed to root for the “ugly” woman. She was given a cute love interest. Clearly, representations of women on television had changed at last! From now on, we’d see more realistic portrayals of feminine beauty, right?

Ahem. Let’s take a look at the success rate in a sampling of this fall’s more prominent shows.

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Same old, same old. Is ‘groundbreaking’ television a myth?