TV musings w/ GIMLORE outrage

[thehefner]

There seems to be a pattern in my life, where it seems that every time I try to introduce someone to a TV show I love with an episode that happens to be on air, it's almost always a bad episode, thus ensuring that they will never see the show again. Anyone else have this?

For example, thanks to the pilot episode, my brother absolutely refuses to ever, ever watch FUTURAMA, or even think it could possibly be watchable, much less brilliant. And as of a half hour ago, the same can be said with my mother and SCRUBS. SCRUBS, for god's sake! One weak episode with the characters all acting like dicks without any of the usual brilliant jokes, and she's so totally turned off that I doubt she'll ever give it another chance.

I just hope the case won't be the same when kali921 starts watching her first ever episodes of the Dini-Timm-verse superhero cartoons, starting all the way with BATMAN through JLU. If she even gets through the first few. I'm hoping she'll start with "Almost Got 'Im." I blew her mind just telling her some of the voice talent.



So confession time, I love GILMORE GIRLS. God help me. I think it's so wittty and banter-y and neurotic, like a girly version of SEINFELD. I am the biggest pussy ever.

However, for the first time ever, I saw an episode that deeply, deeply turned me off. It's the one where Sookie gives birth. Anyone see this? She gives birth and tells her husband he's getting a vasectomy. At first you're thinking, "Oh, ha-ha, she's just lashing out, it's funny," but then you realize, oh, she's serious. She already scheduled his vasectomy for him without telling him and brought the nurse in to take him away! And he goes, "Ohh, okay, fine."

Um... ok, if this was a case where the guy said to the woman, "You are getting your tubes tied. No, seriously, I've already signed you up. No discussion. It's quick, don't worry. Bye." uh, wouldn't there be, like, a HUGE outcry of sexism? Is it wrong of me that I think this is deeply fucking offensive?

The whole episode, for that matter, reeked of anti-male sentiment, from little things in the banter to Rory's petty and self-righteous jealousy toward Logan (or whoever the rich boy is, I don't watch it enough). And while I feel like even complaining about this opens me up to cries of sexism, I'm honestly really fucking offended because this is a beloved show and if something like this can go unnoticed or unremarked upon, what's that say about the general mindsets of the people who watch this show?

Which I'm still going to do, by the way. I still love GILMORE GIRLS, damn my balls, but this is definitely gonna bother me for some time to come.

Comments

[icewolf010.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty darn disturbing.

The good news is, in real life, given patient consent laws, there's no way the snippage could actually take place.

I'm just getting into GG (working my way through Season 1 DVD). And while I love Rory, I often want to smack Lorelei.

[little-dinosaur.livejournal.com]

According to a disturbing number of my professors, sexism only works one way, so they'll get away with it and no one (at least no one with a newspaper job and an audience) will notice. Sorry, I'm still grumbly about a class I had today (an art history class, not even philosophy or gender studies or any of that business) during which it was decided that no man could ever understand what it "truly" felt like to be victimized, sexually or not. They were open to the possibility that gay men might (because of course they're "honourary women" or some such crazyness), but no straight men. Like, ever.
I kind of left after that.
I will add that that's pretty creepy. I'm kind of offended, and I don't even watch that show.
(It's too girly. Ha. No, that's not really why.)

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Oh god, that's utterly horrible. That is outright disturbing that people can think that way. It's things like that which give feminists a bad name. So much to the point that I just consider myself a "humanist" outright.

God, I need to write that into a story somewhere. Although there's probably no way to do it without being considered sexist by somebody.

GG is... well, were you the one who brought up Joss Whedon's tendency to write everyone like a 14-year-old girl? GG is pretty much exactly like that, only replace vampires and spaceships with neuroses and coffee. Yet I rather enjoy it far more than Joss' most of the time.

In the end, when it comes to banter I'm still a Shane Black man all the way. KISS KISS BANG BANG, woo!

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Very good to know. Still, the fact that it was handled like this with virtually no outcry that I could google? Deeply unsettling.

I am frankly amazed that I don't want to smack either of them more sometimes. Curse the (usual) banter-y goodness.

[icewolf010.livejournal.com]

I'm about to get all scholarly on you. Grab your pillow. You've been warned.

One of the ways writers produce comedy is to counteract the audience's expectations. It's the reason cross-dressing is funny in Shakespeare. You have these young women dressing and acting as men, which, as it was highly unusual for the time, was considered just HI-larious. (Can you tell I once wrote a graduate paper on this using Viola, Beatrice, and Helena [of All's Well That Ends Well] as my examples?) Same goes for women beating up men. The juxtaposition of the gender roles was just so unusual that it was considered "funny."

Fast forward a few hundred years. Writers are still making us laugh by turning our expectations on their heads. A cranky, crippled healer is one of the most popular shows on television today. And, unfortunately, we're not quite at a point yet where it's no longer unusual for a woman to be as physically powerful as a man. So when one (Sookie) achieves a physical goal through craft and guile, the usual socialized response is to think it's funny. The fact that that goal involves a sexual organ--the seat of her husband's masculinity, no less--just piles on the laughs.

Come to think of it, feminist activists should have been screaming their heads off. Rather handling the situation like a woman in a fair and equal relationship, Sookie reaches for the stereotypical female weapons of trickery and manipulation. The problem being that political correctness is rarely funny.

Basically, this is groundling humor. Stick it to the man, and stick it to him where it hurts, and have the sticker be the last person you expect: his wife.

[gnort.livejournal.com]

As bad as that is (and it is very bad) I'm more bothered by the fact that the guy just said ok and went along with it. I'd have gotten pissed off and stormed out of the room. No guy gets talked into a vasectomy that easily, it's a long difficult process to get a man to agree to that. Hell some of us have trouble bringing our dogs in to get neutered because our empathy level is so high we can't stand inflicting that on another creature. I don't easily get offended but I'm with you on this one.

[dame-ratcliffe.livejournal.com]

Dr. Cox and Jordan had a whole vasectomy thing on Scrubs too...

Gilmore might be going down this season without the creator on board...makes me sad

[wendywoowho.livejournal.com]

Hate that episode. HATE. IT. Everyone acts out of character.

[spacechild.livejournal.com]

its kind of like what Peter David said about "my super exgirlfriend".. if a girl beats her ex-boyfriend around and harasses him, its comedy. if its a guy doing it to a girl, its a whole different genre.

and i'll be wedgie-ing you later for watching gilmnore girls, ya big nancy.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Hey, watch it, pally, that last sentence made me think that it was Guy Bender commenting on my LJ again. ;)

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Very glad to know I'm not the only one.

[spacechild.livejournal.com]

oooooooh. low.

guys are allowed, even required, to give each other crap for being such total women like that. its called accountability, sheryl.

;)

but i totally agree with your point made here. it IS sexist.

[kali921.livejournal.com]

Dear Sensei,

I am going to watch the episodes in the order that you TELL me to watch them.

Good enough? ;-)

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Why, I would be honored. Honestly, the best order is chronological, but some epsiodes are of course better than others. So to save you time and energy, I'll point you towards the best of the best, in my opinon. Just lemme know!