Dragon ([info]ryuutchi) wrote,
@ 2008-05-16 10:35:00
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Current mood: aggravated
Entry tags:feminism, rant, suckiness, supernatural

I suppose I should...
Right, Supernatural. Last episode of the season.


Yeah, you saw that right.

See, the thing is I want to like the show. The boys are attractive. As a general rule the plots are interesting. But...

I keep asking myself "how many more skanky race and gender issues does this show need to have before I just give up?"

I'm still not sure, but when, at then end of a dramatic episode, where the main character ends up in hell with a meathook through his shoulder, I feel vindicated because he was a complete douchebag hypocrite to a woman who was going to hell (and he made rape jokes at her), and then engaged in slutshaming another woman in the finale?

Yeah.

It was a good episode. Very dramatic. Not too many narm moments. Too much Bobby, but honestly, for the most part any Bobby is too much for me. (Is it too much to hope that his disappearance means he's dead? Plz?) For the most part structured well. Some genuine creepy moments.

OTOH, mythology failure begins to get on my nerves after a while. If you want us to believe you do the research at least pretend to use some of it. Someone early in the season mentioned that Lilith is a "psychosexual demon" Yeah, would you stop it with the little kid thing? I know little kids are creepy, but Lilith is a full-grown demon, y'all.

And this is all ignoring the total failure of the main characters to grow or change or have any sort of emotional continuity in any meaningful way. (Yes, I remember Mystery Spot. Where is that coldness from Mystery Spot in the finale? Rottenfish and Bree over on JF pointed out too that Bela wouldn't have made the guys look half so dumb if they'd learned from their first experience with her. And also, why don't the boys ever seem to think about characters they've left behind or touched-- like Cassie or Ellen or Jo or Missouri.) They're supremely self-centered, but I'm supposed to like them. And... I kind of don't right now. Quite the opposite, in fact. The end of the season made me gleeful.

And I think that may mean I really need to take a break. From the show, from fandom. All of it.

Well, except from [info]cunnilingusfic. They're doing a "Eat Bela Out Challenge". I'm okay with that. Also, I will break this intended fast if someone writes Sam/Lilith.

ETA: ... well, that was a little more bitter than I was expecting.

ETA2: I should note this mostly means I'm taking almost all of the comms off my flist. I'm probably not gonna defriend anyone unless this drives me into a depressive funk.


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[info]ryuutchi
2008-05-16 07:17 pm UTC (link)
It isn't okay for me because I feel like you DON'T respect what I'm watching. When I say "this is bothering me" you all but call me oversensitive. When I find an episode really fun and engaging, you call it cheesy. If you're allowed to be bothered when there's something creepy on-screen, why can't I can't I be bothered when Dean says something that makes my skin crawl? I mean, the eyeball ice cream scoop doesn't creep ME out, but I respect your right to be creeped out by it. Dean essentially threatening to rape a woman who was abused as a child make ME creeped out. And also makes me think that the guy doing the threatening is a gigantic douchebag. But when I say it, I get shot down.

And to pick up from last night, yes. Calling a woman a "slut" is misogynist, whether or not he calls all women that. Because it's a misogynist insult. People don't use it for men. They use it for women-- especially women who are "above their place" to cut them down to size. That's the way Dean was using it, and it made me flinch when he said it. Don't try and make me feel uncomfortable for be kind of upset about it.

At any rate. I wasn't laughing at you at the end. There's was just something amazingly cheesy about the meathook. And the way he was screaming. It was just... over the top, IMO. And I have no proble with someone calling Bela a bitch. It's the "don't flatter yourself"s and the "you should have asked for help"s (how about NO, Dean, you raging hypocrite?). The "bitch"es just made me roll my eyes and think that Dean can't deal with being one-upped-- especially not by a woman. (Of course, if he'd learned from the first two times they'd met... But, right. No emotional or mental continuity.)

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[info]tiferet
2008-05-16 07:57 pm UTC (link)
I don't know what to say. I disagree with you. I am never going to agree with you. I still like you. I don't think you're "oversensitive", but I don't agree with you that those things mean what you think they mean in that context and I don't see the point of continuing to discuss this matter because it just makes both of us angrier.

Are you seriously comparing this to the ice cream scoop issue? I thought it was creepy, you didn't. Of course you don't criticise me for thinking that it's creepy. You don't think it's a moral issue. You accept that I'm watching from a different place and move on. You can't seem to do that with this.

I don't think you're a terrible person because you like cheesy shit. But I do sometimes get the feeling you think there's something wrong with me because I don't agree with you about Dean, because you keep pushing me about it instead of just accepting that I don't agree with you. I mean, I really don't sit around thinking, "how can I get her to stop liking cheesy shit, how can I improve her tastes?"

I don't want you to feel uncomfortable for being upset about things. I just want you to stop demanding that I feel the same way. Upon occasion I have agreed with you that certain wording was unfortunate, but I still like the character.

Also? The conversations would go easier if we didn't have to have them at full length when I'm actually trying to watch the show. Do you realise you actually tried to read someone else's spoilery LJ entry out loud to us before the show was even over and NOT during a commercial break?

I feel like I can't sit down and just enjoy SPN any more because I don't have to wait to get the political analysis from my flist, I'm going to get it before the show is even over. I like to actually be immersed in the world of a show while I'm watching it. I don't want to be yanked out to deal with the big issues until it's actually over. If I'm willing to make fun of the show or talk about it while it's still on (like during facers or that next to last episode) that's a sign that I'm not actually into it, either because I don't think it's good or because I haven't been allowed to get into it.

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[info]ryuutchi
2008-05-16 08:15 pm UTC (link)
My frustration comes from the fact that you think I'm trying to change you morally. I had issues with Bela's episode because I thought the writers, and by extension the characters were being really skanky. I wasn't trying to change your opinion, I was talking about what I was seeing. You're free to disagree, but you shut down all conversation.

Like the "reading a spoilery LJ entry" Which a) wasn't spoilery, b) wasn't an entry (all I read to you was the sum of the comment-- it was all of two sentences) and c) was a JOKE. But, I suppose the humor in the joke comes from the assumption that most people would see "slut" as a pretty sexist thing to say regardless of context. I wasn't trying to make a political statement, I was trying to make a joke.

I don't make statements out of thin air. I make then when something happens in the show that strikes me. Some people yelp when a creepy child walks in the room. I say "oh hey!" It's a response. I do my best to suppress it most of the time-- hell, I haven't said much of anything during the shows for the past month or so. I've tried not to because I know you don't like it. That I occasionally make a comment is not me attempting to change your mind. It's me making note of something on a TV show, because sometimes I point stuff out aloud.

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[info]tiferet
2008-05-16 08:32 pm UTC (link)
I hate to say this but what we have here is a matter of perspective. You think you don't say much because you say less than what you would say at home. I did not grow up in a household where people talk over each other all the time. I also have (as I've told you before) an auditory learning issue, which means that when you talk during the actual dialoguey parts of the show, at length (more than a yelp, entire sentences, maybe even three at once) I literally cannot hear what the actors are saying. So to me, it seems like you never shut up, especially when you also call your girlfriend and wander back and forth into the room where we're watching the show and do not lower your voice when you come into the room where the show is on. (Well, you usually do do that afterward, when we're watching something else, but if I haven't seen that something else before, it's still annoying.)

I can't invite Seanan to come over while you're there because she would completely and totally kill you. Despite the fact that Seanan is anti-Wincest and a Dean/Jo shipper, I actually can watch SPN with her more easily than with you because all I have to do to not piss her off is to not make too many comments about the subtext.

And yes, it's more annoying when it's about sexism. Not because I think you're oversensitive. But because you use more words and longer sentences and I miss more of the show. I get why you think it's gross when Dean says certain things. You don't have to explain it.

Like the "reading a spoilery LJ entry" Which a) wasn't spoilery, b) wasn't an entry (all I read to you was the sum of the comment-- it was all of two sentences) and c) was a JOKE.

Has it really escaped your attention over the last two years that I don't actually like jokes when I'm into something that is kind of heavy?

But, I suppose the humor in the joke comes from the assumption that most people would see "slut" as a pretty sexist thing to say regardless of context.

I'm kind of offended by the notion that you think I think this is an okay word to say just because I don't have a problem with someone using it in the context of demons are about to kill me, I will go to hell and be tortured eternally by them, they are currently giving me hallucinations, and you want me to co-operate with one.

In general, yes, "slut" is a pretty sexist thing to say regardless of context. But when I say "regardless of context," I mean "regardless of most contexts that are actually likely to happen in the real world".

I am willing to bet that the things which would come out of my mouth in the same situation that Dean was in would be equally shocking. They might be a different kind of shocking, but they would almost without doubt be ugly.

Edited at 2008-05-16 08:39 pm UTC

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[info]moirarogers
2008-05-16 09:40 pm UTC (link)
For the record, though...I hate it when people call the show out on its "skanky gender issues" because uhh...skank? Really? That's the word choice we want to use for that particular issue?

I am not a fan of limiting vocabulary generally speaking, but doing that sort of undercuts the point. How do we not look stupid complaining that Dean called someone a "slut" when we just called something skanky to indicate that it is totally bad?

Food for thought. :p I only call my closest friends skanks.

-Bree

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[info]ryuutchi
2008-05-16 10:01 pm UTC (link)
You have a point. Especially since Dean uses the term, IIRC, about Ruby at one point. Thanks. :/

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[info]moirarogers
2008-05-16 10:59 pm UTC (link)
Yeah. It's just one of those things. I don't get riled up about use of the word in general, but it does undermine the arguments about how Dean seems to use words that indicate sexual promiscuity as synonyms for evil.

-Bree

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[info]ryuutchi
2008-05-16 11:04 pm UTC (link)
I'm not sure where I picked it up, and I'm pretty sure I didn't use it until recently. Weirdly, this is actually the only context I use it in, too. I should probably just reconsign it to the trashbin of vocabulary.

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