Day: June 17, 2006

Finally, An End To Single-Sex Televisions

jfpbookworm

I recently saw a commercial for the Sony Bravia which billed itself as “The World’s First Television for Men and Women.”

At first, I thought they were advertising something like this, but after checking out the web site it turns out that it’s just a marketing campaign for a high-end HDTV.

I’m trying to figure out what the advertisers were thinking this one. I’ve narrowed it down to the following possibilities:

  • They noticed that purchasers of HDTVs were disproportionately male, and saw women as an untapped market; however, they were worried that a women-centered ad campaign would lose more male buyers.
  • They’re looking to provide the stereotypical man with justifications to his stereotypical partner for the purchasing decision.

Given the blatant sexism of the advertisement, I’m leaning toward the latter.

The headings for the reasons “why men like it” and “why women like it” are identical: “Amazing HD Picture”, “Wider Viewing Angles”, “Broader Color Gamut”, and “Slim Design.” However, the ad copy below has some important differences. Under the first heading, the explanations for men and women read, respectively (emphasis added):

With its lightning-fast response time, the BRAVIA LCD TV displays an HD picture that never lags. That means no more ghosting around your favorite running back. Its new S-PVA panels divide pixels into more segments that have an incredibly fast 8-millisecond response time that increases its refresh rate, making your favorite car chases even more exciting. Plus, the picture automatically adjusts to ambient light conditions so you get the same quality any way you watch it.

The BRAVIA LCD TV automatically adjusts to ambient light conditions. So whether the lights have been dimmed to watch your favorite cable show with the girls or turned off completely while you trick your beloved into watching a beautiful love story, the BRAVIA LCD TV consistently gives you the amazing HD detail you desire.

The “Mars” and “Venus” programming choices are the most obvious examples; I’m guessing her favorite cable show isn’t Doctor Who or Battlestar Galactica here. (Actually, I think the last love story my girlfriend and I watched with the lights out was Re-Animator.) But the idea that women need/want to “trick” their (presumably male) beloveds into watching love stories is just plain insulting, as is the treatment of dramas (again, emphasis added):

So, the next time you escape the daily grind by sitting down to your favorite prime-time drama, even if what you’re watching doesn’t reflect real life, at least you know your television’s color will.

Silly women, watching dramas that don’t reflect real life. Not like men, who watch car chases.

The sexism in this ad goes beyond the gendering of programming, though. The “for men” copy actually tells you far more about the TV than the “for women” copy – we get specific data about the response time, while the copy “for women” doesn’t even mention response time or refresh rate. I don’t know if the writers were just lazy and couldn’t think of a gendered reason for women to want these features. After all, if “chick flicks” are just people talking and don’t have explosions or special effects, why would women care about refresh rates? And “8 milliseconds” sounds suspiciously like math.

In fact, a lot of the reasons “why women like it” have nothing to do with actually watching TV:

Why does the couch always have to be in the middle of the room? With the BRAVIA LCD TV it doesn’t have to be. Its 178° viewing angle gives you 178° of space to design. So rearrange the living room any way you want. You’ll still get an outstanding picture no matter where you sit.

It’s called the Living Room, not the TV Room. And the designers of the BRAVIA LCD TV haven’t forgotten that. With its slim design and stylish look, the BRAVIA LCD TV only steals your eye when it’s on. If only the same could be said for his football lamp.

Yep, that’s right. Sony expects women to plunk down several thousand dollars for a high-end HDTV in order to not watch it.

I hear the lines at Best Buy and Circuit City are around the block.

Strangers in Paradise and "Man-Hating"

jfpbookworm

So my latest infatuation is Terry Moore’s comic Strangers In Paradise, which I discovered through the immensely fun Scans Daily Livejournal community. It’s well-drawn and well-characterized, and is erasing that reluctance to check out indie comics that the hipper-than-thou movie adaptation of Ghost World instilled.

What struck me, though, was a letter to Mr. Moore printed in the second issue of the first run, which asked:

I do have some criticism about the writing… is it me or do you hold a dim view of males?

[Spoilers for the first issue of Strangers in Paradise follow.]

Now, I’m assuming that these letters were published in the original printing of the second issue, which means that they’re responding only to the first issue. In that issue, we’re introduced to the following male characters:

Freddie: The boyfriend of Francine, one of the lead characters of the comic. At the beginning of the issue, they are fighting because Francine doesn’t want to have sex with him. She then catches him cheating on her, at which point he breaks up with her. Francine suffers a nervous breakdown, and injures herself crashing her car.

David: An art student who meets Katchoo, the other lead character of the comic, and goes out for coffee with her. When Francine crashes her car, it’s David who pulls her out of the wreck.

…And that’s it. Two men. One good, one bad. When the two are Batman and the Joker, nobody takes this as a statement on masculinity, but add women to the mix and suddenly a less than flattering portrayal becomes man-hating. (I do have a few issues with how being skinny, attractive and independently wealthy get mixed up with each other and with being “good,” but that’s a rant for another time and place.)

Now I’m still making my way through later issues, so I’m not yet sure what the overall portrayal of men in Strangers in Paradise is. But honestly, Terry Moore’s opinions on gender are not the point of such a letter, nor is actual “man-hating” the point of any of the accusations that get levelled. I’m convinced that the main reason such accusations are phrased as “hating men” – rather than making a more specific response – is to reframe. Instead of being about the comic itself and the behaviors described therein, the discussion is shifted to Mr. Moore’s own opinions and men as gestalt. It’s not so different from the pre-emptive defense that’s meant to make the respondent forgo criticism. The effect this has is to dismiss the criticism by applying it to “males” in general rather than a specific behavior; we can no longer see the tree for the rest of the forest that’s sprouted up around it.

Terry Moore’s discussion of the letter:

Basically I told him I don’t have a dim view of males, or of women. I do have a very dim view of the games we play with each other and so does Katchoo.

I’m not quite sure what to make of this: most charitably, it reads as “I don’t hate men; I hate the patriarchy”; but it has hints of “Women do it too” – i.e., of accepting the reframing. Freddie’s entitlement-minded behavior in the first issue is a very specific form of harm that deserves more criticism than simply being lumped in with “games” like waiting a day before calling a romantic interest back.

Still, the comic itself has a compelling story – I do like romances, even if I try to make sure I don’t take them too seriously – and I enjoy the art style, so unless something comes up that makes me want to throw the book across the room (I’m looking at you, George R.R. Martin), I’m going to stick with it.

Just One Month…

tekanji

I want one month in the feminist blogsphere in which none of us attack each other because someone engages in an activity that we personally don’t like. I want one month in which feminists who have differing views on porn, BDSM, and other sexual practices can come together and have a civil conversation that examines the patriarchy’s role in all this instead of flinging shit at each other. I want one month in which we don’t privilege one set of oppression over another, but rather realize that the dynamics of oppression creates a complex and interconnecting web that needs to be tackled both as a whole as well as one thread at a time. I want one month in which the need to be the sole arbiter of Truth is less important than creating a community in which we listen to each other and realize that every person takes a different path to happiness. I want one month for us to celebrate our differences instead of using them to divide us.

For one month. Just one. Fucking. Month. I want us to blame the patriarchy instead of blaming women.

Why isn’t that possible?

This Gives a Whole New Meaning to 'Freudian Slip'

tekanji
The Almighty Penis... I mean Dagger
Penis Envy

And people said I was crazy when I talked about “girl power” being not much more than male appropriation of female power. Howard Chaykin’s illustrations of Red Sonja take this to an extreme by giving her a penis dildo strategically placed dagger.

She still has the chainmail bikini to give fanservice to the boys, but Red Sonja has always been a strong (both physically and mentally) character and this illustration makes me wonder if the idea of a woman holding that much power herself was so threatening to Chaykin’s subconscious that he ended up giving her a consolation penis. No one’s accusing him of deliberately doing this (because, well, how would we know either way unless he came out and said something?), but come on. Can you honestly say that you saw this picture and didn’t go, “Whoa, she has a penis!”?

Via Dance of the Puppets.

The ups and downs of gender in the CG movie Ark

tekanji

So, I finally got around to watching the movie Ark today. The first half hour or so got me really excited. The rest… well, let’s just say that the movie could have benefitted from an education regarding Women in Refrigerators.

The rest of the article is cut for massive spoilers that will ruin your ability to ever watch this movie if you read them. That being said, if you have already seen the movie or never intend to see it, please read on.

I. The Good

First there was Jallak. The movie opens with him doing the whole “protect the children” spiel when his commander and another fellow soldier want to shut down hibernation pods because the kids in them are Cevean. This gave me a warm fuzzy because usually the role of protector is relegated to women because it allows them to transgress the boundaries into the public/aggresive sphere without compromising their femininity. Them showing a man as having paternal instincts, to me at least, stood out.

Then there is the one kid who wakes up after Jallak takes a stand, Amarinth. She is adopted as his daughter. It skips to 16 years later (making her 18) and she is shown generating an electric current. Cool. The viewer already knows that she’s related somehow to the legendary priestess, Amiel, who built the Ark — the machine that is to help the races leave their dying planet.

And then… then the movie pops out three more surprises: the ruler of the Storrions (the militant race that has enslaved the Ceveans) is a woman, their lead scientist is a woman, and Jallak’s second in command (he’s the commander of the army at this point) is a woman. I mean, not one but three stereotype breaking women? There’s so much potential there I almost wet my pants.

The Empress is shown as a woman torn between her people/duty and saving her own skin. Although she is complicit in the slavery and war-like behaviour of her nation, she takes a strong stand against the nobility who want to build smaller ships and leave before the planet collapses. She also has a clearly evil adviser named Baramanda (he’s a total Sephiroth type).

We don’t get to see much of Piriel, but it’s made very clear that she’s Jallak’s second in command in the army. The doctor is introduced as the Storrians “leading scientist,” and even though the first scene she gets is of her failing, the viewer knows it’s because her task is impossible rather than because she isn’t smart enough.

Early on Amarinth’s love interest, Rogan, is introduced. He is a rebel Cevan who tries to assasinate Jallak to prevent the Storrions from obtaining data on the whereabouts of the body of Amiel. He gets some cool fighting scenes, then his gun craps out on him and he surrenders.

Amarinth gets exactly one cool scene: after all hell breaks loose, she uses her techno powers to power the escape vehicle for her and Rogan. All of her screaming and freaking out about the situation is mitigated by the way that she and Rogan talk about how she “saved him” and stuff.

Oh, and did I mention that all of the women have plausible proportions? None of them have huge boobs. All of the costumes are beautiful and skintight, but it’s not in a way that causes you to focus on their bodies to the exclusion of the rest of them. My only gripe in this area is that the leading men got more variety in their body shapes and age markers than the women did. In fact, for a long while I had a hard time telling the doctor and Piriel apart because they’re both short-haired blondes. Only one visibly old woman appeared in the movie (excepting random people in the street), but she just had a cameo. Jallak was clearly a distinguished gentleman of some years, and even Baramanda is clearly older than Rogan.

II. The Bad

The first 30 minutes sets up so many awesome possibilities, but things start going downhill from there. It all starts with Jallak being caught as a traitor when Baramanda calls him out on the incident with the kids in the first scene where he got Amarinth from. He gets arrested and Baramanda goes to get Amarinth because they now know that her blood will make the Ark run. I’m sitting around witing for her to bust out with her cool techno powers, but no. Not even a little bit. After her screaming and struggling ineffectually with her captor — who is a machine — Rogan comes to save her. And gets a cool fighting scene while he does so. Amarinth sits back and does nothing.

Then she wants to save her father and says that she’ll do it her way. Cool, right? Except her way involves her giving herself up to Baramanda with no actual assurance that anyone will be safe. You’d think she’d try to bust out her cool machine powers to stop the machine that’s about to kill her dad. But, no, she walks into the middle of the square and says, “Here I am, take me.” Great plan there. Great plan.

Rogan and Jallak join forces after Baramanda double-crosses Amarinth (and puts her to sleep, of course, which shelves her so that the boys can take centre stage). They get some wicked cool fight scenes. Remember Piriel, that female commander I mentioned? Yeah, no one else does, either. She got one scene telling Jallak how he had disappointed her and how he was on his own, and then she doesn’t show up again until after all the action has gone down. But her arm was shot when the rioting began! Wow!

Speaking of the rioting, that’s when we see the last of the Empress. But, I mean, she was clearly evil for asking her nobles to go ahead with the plans when it seemed like the whole finding Amiel’s body thing was a bust. Some pissant rebel shoots her in the head while she’s being all, “I’d never abandon you, my loyal subjects!” Her anti-climactic ending was assured by then, however, because Baramanda had been stealing the limelight with his blood-sucking bug power and obsession with Amarinth.

So, Amarinth has been out cold this whole time and Baramanda starts sucking her blood to steal her techno powers and get all the glory for himself. The doctor starts arguing with him, secure in her knowledge that he wouldn’t dare do anything to her because she’s the only one who knows how to run the Ark. Except for her assistant. Who apparently is in love with her. Gag me.

Just like Amarinth, the doctor gets taken down by Baramanda because her armour of moral outrage just didn’t cut it for protection. She’s actually shot, and killed. Her last line? She tells assistant-boy, “Just shut up and hold me.” No joke.

So, anyway, Baramanda continues sucking Amarinth’s “life force”. The boys bust in, but only manage to take out Baramanda’s guards before he gets his bugs back in her. At this point his blood triggers Amiel’s body to sort of wake up and shoot green things through him before disappearing. She also activates the Ark with all that stuff.

Baramanda is down for the count, and the boys rush to try to help Amarinth (still unconscious) while the assistant holds the body of the doctor. Piriel joins up at some point, sporting that wound I mentioned earlier, and the boys plus her take Amarinth to the escape pods. She decides to sacrifice herself to stay with Jallak try to shut down the Ark. Rogan and Amarinth (kicking and screaming like the helpless little girl she is) get sent to the location of the second ark.

You should know what comes next: Amarinth is told that she is to sacrifice herself to power the ark, of course! Women who get too powerful can’t be left to survive, you see. And she has to do it because Baramanda (remember him?) has joined with the other ark and is coming to kill everyone like the one-dimensional psychopath he is. She gets to have one kiss with Rogan and then she merges with her Ark for what has to be the most painful mech battle I have ever witnessed. And I saw Iczer-One, mind you.

Here’s the only real fighting scene that Amarinth gets in the entire movie. And it consists of her being knocked over and stepped on until she gets lucky and grabs the residential sector off of Baramanda’s back. Giving her father and Piriel a chance to sacrifice themselves by shutting down the core. And by that I mean that Jallak has been hacking the code to shut it off while Piriel stood around looking pretty and asking him if he was done yet.

Rogan lives at the end to give this long speech about how Amarinth taught the two races so much about living together and made The Big Sacrifice.

III. Let’s recap

All the women introduced are dead with most of them not having done anything worth note.

Amarinth, the lead female, has had to sacrifice herself because her Phoenix-class powers are too awesome to let her live (forgive the comic book reference, but it’s the same paradigm being used).

Piriel, who presumably has military experience, was never given a scene in which she could kick ass, but Jallak and Rogan were given several painfully long Matrix-esque fighting scenes. And, don’t forget that after her brave speech where stays behind with Jallak, she does squat except for die along with him.

The Empress, who should have been a driving force, is nothing more than a plot device used to introduce Baramanda, who is a one-dimensional Sephiroth clone. She also dies in a completely unbelievable manner. Honestly, even if there hasn’t been a riot in her entire lifetime (which is highly doubtful), at the first sign of trouble she would have been taken to a secure location — or, most realistically, the machine she was riding in would have snapped up a shield. Having her stand up and be like, “LOOK AT ME, I AM AN IDEAL TARGET!” just makes her, and her guards, look stupid and incompetent. Which flies in the face of the previous times we’ve seen her.

The doctor’s expertise on running the Ark comes to naught, and she’s killed because… well, I’m not exactly sure why they killed her. Maybe because she could have stopped Baramanda from fucking things up so badly?

Ultimately, I’m disappointed that the movie started off with so much potential to do something different but instead decided to fall back on tired old cliches with a tired old ending and a big ‘ol heaping of misogyny. In some ways I think it’s worse than if it had been honest about its intentions from the beginning, because then I wouldn’t have gotten excited and I would have been able to enjoy it for the carbon-copy cliche that it really was.