Double standards

My last blog entry on role models made me think of double standards, especially in the US (if only because I happen to reside in the US, and am more familiar with everyday life here than elsewhere).

Here is another double standard for you – related, I think, to the double standard that allows Jerry Brookheimer to make TV in which I am subjected to a grisly murder (with lots of food colouring and Karo syrup) in the first three seconds before I can even reach the remote to shut the TV off – but in which it is offensive to women to have a plucky female character tied to the buzzsaw.

Some of you may be familiar with Philip Pullman’s sort-of children’s book series called His Dark Materials. The first book of the three was published in the UK as Northern Lights and in the US as The Golden Compass (also the title of the movie they made of it). The books are a little controversial because the author is a self-avowed atheist, and the books are seen as anti-religion in general and anti-Catholic in particular. I have my problems with some aspects of the books – having read the first one – not because he is anti-religion, more because his hostility to organized religion is so adolescent, so fundamentally trivial for all the gussying up.

But I digress. Small parts of the last book in the series were censored in the US because of references to the central character’s (a girl on the edge of puberty) emerging sexuality. Now, before we go all gangbusters on an anti-censorship rant, let’s admit that free speech has some limit, even if the right is very broad. We don’t want graphic porn in the hands of little kids, for example (well, I don’t).

But Pullman is hardly porn. So even though I really disagree with this particular example of censorship, it’s on the lack of merit of this case, rather than a general (and empty) platitude of “censorship is wrong.”

Now at the same time, this being close to Hallowe’en, one can go to any mall in my area and find specialty seasonal stores selling costumes and props for Hallowe’en for kiddies and grownups. Have you seen what they make for little kids these days? I don’t mean 18 yr olds, or even 13 year olds. I mean have you seen what they are selling for 6 year olds? Let’s just say things that in my view are highly age-inappropriate. Stuff with the same creepy tinge as the sort of outfits you’d find in very disturbing JonBenet kiddie beauty pageants.

So let me get this straight: it’s OK to dress up my first grader like a whore from the Emerald City of Oz, but it’s not ok to let my adolescent daughter read something true and accurate about her first sexual feelings. Right. And I am weird for liking damsels in distress?

Role Models

One of the hoariest reasons for the decline in DiD scenarios in mainstream media is that the role is inconsistent with female empowerment, out of touch with today’s societal roles, etc.

This is bunk. Women are still treated badly in today’s media. The only change is that they are treated far more brutally than they would in a classic serial – that’s Hollywood “realism” for you. Apparently it’s better for women in movies and TV to be horrifically murdered than imperiled and saved. Right.

Frankly, I have not had time for TV for years – and I find most of it unwatchable. It’s gruesome for the most part. And it’s not any “faster” than before. It’s actually slower – but more visually kinetic, which is something else entirely. I can process it visuals just fine –it’s not that I am an old slow geezer, and besides, I can, if needed, play video games as fast as anyone. But TV is so often just motionless vibration – and it makes me seasick to watch.

Back to roles. Women still have drastically truncated opportunities in mainstream media. How else do we explain the rise of a Megan Fox? Sure, she’s “hot” – but what exactly does she do? Even La Fox has pointed out that Michael Bay films are not exactly about the craft…..

No, girls still get killed, raped, tied up, drowned, tortured. They are either whores, or arm candy, or “bitches,” and they disappear at 35, only to reappear as wise/benevolent grandmas at, oh, 45. Yes, there is a parallel trend of Meryl Streeps et al who are making a go of it longer than other women – but in action films? Tentpole productions? TV? Forget it. How is this better than the damsel in distress as the centre of attention?

Why then is a DiD role condemned as limiting? If you look at early serials, the women were very independent and capable. Pearl White – I’ll say it – was a proto-feminist in Perils of Pauline, doing things women of the time could usually only dream about. Tell me Lois Lane is not a full, juicy character -- unless portrayed by a humourless bad-school feminist like Margot Kidder. (I am not trying to start a political debate about feminism, I am making a point about Kidder’s treatment of a great role.) The political correctness kills the character, and when you’ve turned a living, breathing character into a poster for any ideology, you’ve disenfranchised not just women, but the human spirit as a whole.

No, I think the problem with old-time DiD scenes is their escapist feel at a time of a cultural fetish of “realism” and authenticity. Even preposterous series like Lost still need to be grounded in a visual and metaphorical language of signs that are easily digestible for a docile public – visual soma. What keeps us from DiD is not the (non-existent) insult to women. It’s that it’s too hard for modern audiences to understand a female action character on TV who isn’t a cartoon.

Someone who needs the treatment...

...maybe just treatment. But no, "the treatment" would do her a lot of good. Tightly trussed up, gagged, and in an old melodramatic trap.

For those of you lucky enough to live outside the zone of US cultural imperialism (a true empire of idiocy) the photo above is a non-fake one of Kim Kardashian, whose slender claim to fame (she's the daughter of part of OJ Simpson's defence team -- er, the first one) has been parlayed into a baffling omniprescence. Since she's not much good at anything other than filling out a jumpsuit, I say we give her her own ""Perils of Kim" TV series.

Sorry for the long absence. RL has been very hectic. I hope I am around to blog more, but can't promise it near term.