even my reading material is annoying me today

[rivendellrose]

I need five minutes alone with (almost) every male sci-fi/fantasy genre writer in creation, consecutively. And a really big stick to threaten them with, and whap the biggest offenders over the head.

Seriously, guys - it's not that hard to write female characters as something other than the thing that occasionally shows up, wears not-very-much, and gives the guys something to rescue. I adore a lot of male writers... even ones who are guilty of this. But I'm getting really damned sick of it. And you know, it's worse with the writers/series that I like, because it upsets me more. If I don't like the series or the writer, it at least doesn't make me feel quite so badly when they screw this shit up.

James Alan Gardner is exempt. I honestly can't think of anyone else who is, at the moment. Edit China Mieville doesn't need to be lectured or smacked, either. Nor does Terry Pratchett, I don't think (although he's not quite on par with the previous 2). Everybody else... could use some work.

Comments

[cirakaite.livejournal.com]

Uhmm . . . Neil Gaiman is okay with his kids stuff? (I honestly can't remember a stand-out female char in his adult books, although I'll probably remember one and kick myself later.) And there was always Honor Harrington, although that's a bit dated now.

Otherwise, I tend to look to female f/sf authors. Some of them are doing awesome things with women, in every aspect of the genre. The sad thing is, the habit of the woman being there to be rescued is far from just a genre trait . . .

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

His kids stuff is good, you're right. Which just makes it more distressing that the female characters in his adult books fall right in line with the usual, IMHO. :P

I'll have to look into Honor Harrington - never read any of his stuff.

I do, too, generally, but... you know.

Oh, China Mieville's not bad, either. He can be exempt.

[cirakaite.livejournal.com]

David Weber writes the HH books . . . they're quite traditional navy-in-space sf, but I always liked them, and Honor was one of the first female protags I ever found in sf.

(You know? It never even occured to me that China Mieville might be male? *headdesk* Partly because I liked the way the women were written.)

Oh, and GRRMartin writes some awesome women. Definitely product-of-their-times in the way they go about things using sex, poison, and scheming, but they act in their own right rather than just reacting to what other people do, which is one of my main quibbles with the way men write women. And there's a couple of women in his books which break with convention even more - knights and sword-fighting, and all that.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I thought he was a woman, too! But when I first read one of his stories, I was so "OMG, that was awesome!" that I flipped back to the bio to see what else he had, and... guy! Totally blew my mind, because, you know... he writes women. And he does it in a way that not only makes me not want to strangle him, but in fact makes me want to hug him.

Hmm. One of these days I'll have to give Martin a try, I suppose - a bunch of people I know really like him, but I've never gotten around to reading any of his stuff.

[cirakaite.livejournal.com]

I love him, but I suspect it's very much a love-it-or-hate-it style of writing. Very epic, very political (VERY political), very much linked to historical politic-ing, and lots and lots of words. All of which I love, although now that he's writing the screen play for ASoIF on HBO, we may never get the next book in the series . . .

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I don't mind epic or wordy (LotR nerd), but political... meh. I tend to get bored of political writing pretty quick, honestly. Ah well. Might still give it a try someday when I've run out of things I'm enthused to read.

[becksbooks.livejournal.com]

I second the David Weber recommendation, especially if you're looking for good space-opera. He's one of my all-time favorite authors and writes really good characters...lots of strong females, without making them unfeminine.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I haven't read a good space opera in a long time, I might have to look him up. Thanks!

[stormkpr.livejournal.com]

Amen.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

It's just so frustrating. And, if you'll forgive the stereotype, it's really been toasting my cookies ever since I got into a comic-book based fandom. The same stuff happens all over, but it does seem to be almost as common in comics as it is in, say, movies. Which always seem like the worst culprits, IMHO.

[stormkpr.livejournal.com]

I totally hear you. Me, I think I'm the only X-men fan who hates comics. I can't stand the sexism in there. So I get my X-men fix either via the animated series or the movies.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

So far, my only real comic fandom is Hellboy. There, we have the movies and the comics, both of which take totally different tactics on a lot of stuff. Now, for all I love Guillermo Del Toro, being good at writing empowering stuff for women is not one of his strong suits - he tends to fall right in with all the usual cliches and stereotypes. So I was thrilled when I got to the comics and realized that, hey, there's a whole additional female character who I hadn't known existed before! And she's an awesome sarcastic folklorist! And Liz isn't just Hellboy's romantic interest in the comics, either!

...And then I realized that every time we see either of them, it's pretty much so that the guys will have someone to rescue.

And then we got another female character! And I liked her, too!

...Same thing.

So yeah. Love the series. Love the characters. Love the art.

Really would like five minutes alone with the writer(s) so that I can smack some sense in to them. :P

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

I'm going to highly recommend Charles Stross on this count. I've read three entirely different books of his with strong women as protagonists (Halting State, Accelerando, and The Family Trade), and they all do an excellent job of just being people. Their female aspects aren't neglected by any means, but they're nothing like the cobbled-together piles of stereotypes that so many badly-written women seem to be.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Huh, I'll keep an eye out for him.

they're nothing like the cobbled-together piles of stereotypes that so many badly-written women seem to be.

That's it exactly. God, I just get so sick of female characters being a poorly-cobbled pile of stereotypes!

[vega-ofthe-lyre.livejournal.com]

The discussion about Neil Gaiman's female characters is an interesting one for me; someone mentioned offhandedly the misogynyfail in his books and I was all, "whoa, wait," and then I was all, "wait, no, you're RIGHT." I think I've been so very fascinated by his mythologies and the EPICNESS of the stories he tells that I've been kind of blinded to the very, very stereotypical things he does with his female characters. (And his male characters, honestly.) It's a disappointing revelation for me, but I suppose an important one to have.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Oh, Neil. Don't get me wrong, I really do love the guy and his writing. He's brilliant. And his children's books, as someone else pointed out, are really quite good with gender (see: Coraline). But for crying out loud, as soon as you get into his adult stuff it's like "hold on, wait... you know girls don't automatically become boring stereotypes the instant we grow up, RIGHT?"

Except I'm not sure he does. *Sigh* It's very frustrating.

[miss-arel.livejournal.com]

I just want to know when James Alan Gardner's next book is coming out. That's what I ask the universe nearly every day. With my heart.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hate to be one of Those Fans, but... I WANT MORE, DAMN IT!!!

Last time I checked (about a month ago), he had nothing new coming up on his website. DX

[niwatorimegami.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of Laurence Yep, and I think his female characters in the Dragon of the Lost Sea series are fully developed and interesting characters in their own right, as well as several being important protagonists. I highly recommend them!

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

You know, I think I read the first of those a really long time ago... I'll have to dig it up again and start over. Thanks for the rec!

[nightsinger.livejournal.com]

For classic sci-fi, I really do have to take the authors' characters in the context in which the authors lived. Yes, this is my flimsy defense for Heinlein's women. For a man born in 1907, his women tended to be remarkably strong, self-sufficient, intelligent, and active, especially as he got older. Obviously, they do have some disappointingly stereotypical failings, but he did do a good job with them for his era. (It's when people forget that context that they tend to have more issue with his women, imx.)

For a more modern context, I have to admit I'm reading a lot more fantasy than sci-fi. Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn trilogy and the new WoT books) does a decent job with his women, but I'm going to have to think about this and get back to you, I think.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

You're right that the historical guys (anybody pre-1980) have an excuse, and I don't ding them for it. Mind you, it still makes me less likely to read their stuff - Heinlein's not all that bad, but a few of the other classics make me feel like women just don't exist in their world, and that upsets me and makes me unwilling to read their stuff. I have a lot of trouble with Lovecraft, in that sense, as one example.

And honestly, I know there are guys who do well, and that's great. But it annoys me to no end that I get frustrated and feel alienated by things that I otherwise like because they can't seem to figure out how to write female characters who actually do things.

[nightsinger.livejournal.com]

Understandable -- women who are either entirely absent or else fungible with blow-up dolls are, simply put, uninteresting, unengaging, and frequently infuriating. I do my best to avoid that, too, but it's a lot harder than it should be.

Lately I've been on a somewhat lackadaisical quest to find young adult novels with strong female main characters; it's depressing that the Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce in 1983, and Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia C Wrede, 1990) are still nearly the only ones I can really come up with, and they're just not as commonly known. The majority of the popular young adult/children series are about young boys and their adventures, frequently with a supporting (albeit awesome!) female sidekick character, qqv Harry Potter (Hermione) & Percy Jackson (Annabeth).

I was reading something the other day, about how it would be very nice to change the common perception that the male is the "real" main character and the female is the "alternate" one. The specific context was game-design, not books, but a lot of the same principles apply.

It's enough to make me want to write an immensely-popular YA series with a girl main character. ... Now, having the ability to do so is a separate matter.

For reasons I consider obvious, I do not classify the Twilight books as having a female main character that anyone should ever consider a desirable role model, either for themselves or for anyone else. Yes, it's popular; no, it's not advancing the idea of a real female main character.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

For reasons I consider obvious, I do not classify the Twilight books as having a female main character that anyone should ever consider a desirable role model

*Snerk*

Moving right along from that.

Oh, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles. How that series tricked me into believing that for the rest of my life it would be that easy to find awesome female characters who were interesting and worthwhile and fun. ♥ I so deeply love those books. Morwen is still totally my hero. I was a bit older when I read the Song of the Lioness quartet, so they didn't worm quite so deeply into my head, but I did love them as well.

The thing about children's and YA lit is that someone came up with the idea a long time ago that it was okay to only write kids/YA stuff with male characters in the spotlight, because the girls would read it anyway, whereas boys won't read things that have a girl as a main character. And woe, for the boys don't get into reading because girls control that and we need our boys to read, so we must coddle them to the exclusion of girls and girls will be okay all on their own.

...I really hate that argument, and it is, in fact, one of my litmus test for whether or not I can stand to be around a guy - if he brings up the whole "wah, education is girl-oriented and boys are oppressed and I can't help being worthless because girls out-compete me" argument, then he is not worth being around. I'm sorry, but if you can't stand the competition of half the human race, that's just your fucking problem. It is not acceptable to not pay attention to girls or to hold them back or not write books that encourage them just because boys then have their ickle feelings hurt because they don't have 100% of the advantage. Fuck that shit. Boys have 95% of the literary canon that's ever been written, and pretty much everything that was written before 1970. I think they can fucking cope.

If I ever have a son, he's getting Pippi Longstocking and the Enchanted Forest Chronicles and everything else I can find with a girl in it read to him right along with Tom Sawyer and Harry Potter and all that, because it'll be good for him. And he'll damn well learn to like it, because if I hear the words "I don't want to read that because it's about GIRLS" come out of his mouth, there will be dire consequences.

...*Coughs* Buttons. I haz them. Sorry.

[joellehart.livejournal.com]

miss_arel's icon reminded me... Miyazaki writes wonderful female characters in his comics and movies.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Ohhh, good point! I actually wasn't aware he did comics - I'll have to see about looking those up.

[joellehart.livejournal.com]

He hasn't done as many comics as movies, but the Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind movie was made while he was partway through publishing it as a manga (the icon I used is from the manga). The Nausicaa movie is good, but the manga is much better: that tidy resolution at the end of the film falls at the end of the second volume, and for the next five volumes the story gets more sophisticated and engaging. I highly recommend it -- and it's likely available in many libraries, at least, I read it for the first time by borrowing it from the local library.

Let's see, comics... "Bone" by Jeff Smith has good strong female characters. Male characters do greatly outnumber the female, but the three female characters outshine the male. For example, the male protagonist is totally lovesick over the female protagonist, but she never notices, because she has important things to worry about. ^_^

The icon I'm using now is from an anime series called Revolutionary Girl Utena. The anime is hard to get because it's out of print since like 2003, but there's also a manga version that's only five volumes and is still sold (also a movie and movie-based manga, but they probably won't make a whole lot of sense without the others). It's a trippy, metaphor-laden deconstruction of the Prince in Shining Armor trope: a young girl is saved by a Prince, and when she grows to be a woman her goal is to become a Prince herself.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

And because it just occurred to me that, hey, you might actually get sucked into reading it just like I did - the book that spawned this rant was, in fact, Hellboy: The Ice Wolves. Beware. Stick with the "Odd Jobs" series of short stories if you're going for non-comic Hellboy material; some of the stories in those are very worthwhile, IMHO, but my one experience with the novels... ha, I wish I'd bought another issue of BPRD instead.

...Although it would probably have Liz or Kate getting rescued again, and would still have launched the same bitch-fest. :P

[joellehart.livejournal.com]

Your rant made me think about the comic, actually. I had been all excited at the large number of strong female characters in the Wild Hunt... but on second thought, they all either need to be rescued, or are solely concerned with promoting their son, or something like that, don't they?

I haven't read any of the novels, but I have heard that Odd Jobs are the ones to read. I'm a little curious about Anastasia, though.

Just before Golden Army came out, like May 2008 I think, Bitch magazine had a little blurb about it -- it was something like they were listing movies coming out that summer that they were excited about. They said that Liz had the potential to be a strong character, and something like Hellboy's quasi-racial-identity issues were also feminist (I didn't fully follow their logic then either). I was hoping they'd have something to say later, at least about the weird way the movie dealt with abortion, but I checked the website and didn't see anything (I don't get that magazine myself, saw it at a friend's house).

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

It all got tied up in there, yeah - the comics, the books, and half the genre stuff that's out there in general. And yes, as pleased as I was to see Alice again... she's just like Kate and Liz. I love her, she's a very fun character, but she has absolutely no purpose other than to give HB something to rescue.

I'm curious about Anastasia, too, but from what I've heard of how the relationship ended I have no hope of it being anything but frustrating. A classic "he leaves to save her from (insert trait about him)" situation, apparently, which... is classic, is typical Hellboy, but is still a bit annoying (isn't it her choice, too?).

I can't remember which one it's in (probably the 3rd, "Oddest"?), but China Mieville's story, called "A Room of One's Own," is the one time I can think of anywhere in the Hellboy-verse that both Liz and Kate feature in a story, have important roles to play, and generally are allowed to be awesome even while the story still focuses on Hellboy.

Awww, Bitch on Golden Army? I'll have to dig through my back-issues and find that - especially since it was prior to the movie and so won't rub my nose in everything that makes my teeth grind about it. It's one of my favorite movies (seriously, I am such a dork), and it's beautiful and fun and I genuinely adored it, but... holy crap, talk about problematic portrayal of female characters. I adore Liz and Nuala both, but they both make me want to shake them in that movie. Bitch (as often is the case) is right - Liz does have the potential to be a strong character. So, in her twisted and fucked up way, did Nuala. Neither of them were allowed to.

Bless him, but I'm relieved that when they finally get around to doing the movie of The Hobbit, at least there Guillermo won't have any female characters to screw up. I love the guy, but his gender politics fricking suck.

[joellehart.livejournal.com]

The thing in Bitch was really only about two sentences, but it had a photo of Liz accompanying it. It had to have been the May or June 2008 issue.

BPRD started out rather egregious (Liz getting rescued while NAKED, kidding me?), but when the conflict between her and Daimio started I thought she grew a lot stronger as a character. She might play a pivotal role later in Hellboy (or she might just be getting played by some evil force in the present, it's ambiguous) -- I've seen a spoiler from the latest issue of BPRD, I can direct you where to see it yourself if you want. I've only read up through The Black Flame myself, so I don't know what happens in-between.

On del Toro -- I thought he did a good job with the female characters in some of his other movies. The girl lead in Pan's Labyrinth was brave and resourceful, and the revolutionary women held their own as I remember like the one with the knife (it has been a few years, though). The girl in Chronos was pretty bad-ass for being less than ten, although the wife in that movie was pretty much a non-character. In The Devil's Backbone, the two women got screwed over by male characters, but they were still capable people and sympathetic characters.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Liz getting rescued while NAKED, kidding me?

In a desperate attempt to not feel badly for liking that issue in general, I have rationalized that - the thing was using her for her fire-power, right, so the clothes must have burned. But yes. I was torn between laughing and screaming when I got to that part. As far as BPRD in general, I've only read... let's see. "The Hollow Earth," "The Soul of Venice," and "Garden of Souls" (trades for each). Oh, and "1946," which is no help because it doesn't fit anywhere. Unfortunately, while I love the characters and generally like the stories, I have a knee-jerk hatred for Guy Davis' art style that I'm still struggling to overcome. Also, the books are oddly hard to find in my area (weird, since Seattle is usually an awesome city for comics), so whenever I get over my feelings enough to actually buy one, I have to buy whatever the store happens to have.

My complaint about Pan's Labyrinth (I haven't seen the others yet!) basically comes down to what Ophelia and Nuala have in common - saving the world (or whatever)... by killing themselves. I can't speak to the others, obviously, but I have some issues with the answer to a woman being a victim being... that everything is okay because she killed herself to defeat the bad guy. Not going to do her a hell of a lot of good, is it?

Still, you're right - he's pretty good compared to a lot of writers out there. And I still love his stuff, so it's obviously not a huge issue. Just one of those niggling things that drives me crazy whenever I allow myself to think about it.

[joellehart.livejournal.com]

Ah, good point with the self-sacrifice. Although, taking into account del Toro's strong Catholic influences, I would suggest he's viewing it through a Christian worldview, where self-sacrifice to save the world is seen as a triumph rather than a defeat, not associated with weakness or worthlessness or a derogatory view of "femininity" but the opposite... but given your profile info I don't want to open a whole new can of worms talking about religion, ^_^``` just want to suggest that fate for Ophelia isn't linked to her being female and doesn't diminish her power as an agent.

Come to think of it, probably a similar issue in Devil's Backbone... but then, a lot of people die in that movie, I just found out today that two characters that survive Devil's Backbone get killed in a cameo in Pan's Labyrinth... but it's an excellent movie, I highly recommend it.

Analysis is fun... do we get to deconstruct the Hellboy comics' treatment of race next? XD

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

but given your profile info I don't want to open a whole new can of worms talking about religion, ^_^```

In all seriousness, I don't mind. I'm open about being mostly atheist because I think it's important, in the same way I'm open about having a pagan background and leanings - I want people to know because it affects my life, and I talk about it here, and I don't want anyone to be OMG SHOCKED! when it comes up. But I have a lot of friends who believe different things, and as long as there's an understanding that I won't try to change them and they won't try to change me, it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I try not to argue, but I do very much enjoy discussion, and I like to hear about what other people think and believe.

Anyway, I didn't mean that it's worthless at all - self-sacrifice is kind of the ultimate in heroism. It doesn't get any bigger than that, and I totally respect that as an artistic choice. It's just that when it becomes a pattern in a writer's work, I start to feel like it's being portrayed as the only response for women who are in abusive situations, or a woman's only way to save the world. It's sort of like... okay, this is random, but sort of related. You know how in a ton of movies and stuff, women die to save their kids? I'm all for that - I think the whole trope of parental love and how strong that is and how fierce it makes people is really awesome, I genuinely do. And I appreciate it especially because historically it's been held out as one of the heights of female virtue. ...But it kind of annoys me, because it's sort of a literary short-hand, you know? Like a quick-and-easy way to up the ante in your book/movie/whatever - instant angst, just add dead mother. I'd like to see a woman/girl save the world and live just once, you know? Like the men usually do. :P

Which, now that I think of it, is why Ophelia's friend, the cook, I forget her name, but I was utterly thrilled by the fact that she'd lived to the end of Pan's Labyrinth, because the I'd been sure from the beginning that she would die. But she lived! And it was wonderful. Sorry, I just had to say something good about that movie, because I do love it, and I've been ragging on it pretty badly there for a bit.

...Wait, there's race in Hellboy comics. :P

And now that I've got the flippant answer out of the way... My feeling (admittedly with only a little thought on the matter) is that we've got a bad case of "magical minority people." Every time someone of a "minority" race/ethnicity shows up, it seems like they're a shaman or a villain or a spirit or something. The guy who acted as Hellboy's spirit-guide type thing while he was in Africa, the Japanese ghost-heads that he ran into... Daimio, too, since he's got the whole Jaguar thing going (and apparently his grandmother was a war criminal?), and the Gentleman or whatever they're calling him - the guy Liz keeps having visions of - and the monks in her special little temple back in "Hollow Earth." I can't think of any others... although I'd like to think I'm missing a few, because seriously? That's just kind of lame.

[joellehart.livejournal.com]

Cool. Thank you. It was late at night and I had this flash of worry thinking that if I wrote, "It makes sense in the context of Christianity", then I would be setting myself up for a response like, "But that's caused the problem!"... but I honestly should have known better than that. I'm Christian (United Methodist to be precise), of a progressive stripe, so I'm down with feminism and gay rights and social justice and conservation... I want to be a person who listens, and learn about the way the world is (and hopefully not act like too much of an ass, which is admittedly something I haven't always done successfully)...

You make a very good point... especially when you clarify that it's about patterns rather than any one specific character. I'm kind of hard-pressed to think of a woman who saves the world and lives..

... you know what popped into my head? The Secret of NIMH, because the heroine saves the day through courage allowing her to channel mystical power, and lives... and then I remembered, she isn't even given a NAME, she's called "Mrs. Johnathan Brisby" throughout the movie... how utterly depressing.

(See, this is why you gotta read the Nausicaa manga... she's totally messianic and even self-sacrificial, and she not only survives but thrives at the end of the series... as does the warrior-queen who starts out as a villain)

Anyhow, on to race in Hellboy...

"Magical Minorities" indeed. I don't know that I'd count Daimio in the list... sure, he's a little magical, but it's the BPRD, everyone is a little magical -- the fact that he's a jerk, but very competent, gives him some weight as a character IMO (at least as far as I've read). But that doesn't diminish the list... I'll add that girl in the Philippines to it. And then there's that weird cultural appropriation in "Makoma", where Hellboy is depicted as a black man.

But what really struck me is Bud Waller, the BPRD agent who is black... appears in the beginning of Wake the Devil, and gets killed pretty much immediately.

And what's really weird is that the series -- the movies moreso than the comics -- ostensibly have a strong theme of embracing diversity, with the human/non-human tension.

Although maybe BPRD is getting a little better on diversity? Here's a recent page (dude has glasses too, yay):
http://i44.tinypic.com/2hh3ceb.jpg

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I'm Christian (United Methodist to be precise), of a progressive stripe, so I'm down with feminism and gay rights and social justice and conservation

I'd gathered as much, and I'm sooooo down with that. I really don't care what religion people are as long as they're not using their religion as an excuse for all the nutty hateful crap that goes on in the world. That I can't tolerate... but I figure anyone happy to chat about race and gender issues in a comic book isn't likely to all of a sudden be like "WOMEN SHOULD BE IN THE KITCHEN!!!" ...Which'd be a bit scary, actually, just out of the blue like that.

There definitely are examples out there, but it's kind of a tweaky little pattern that started bugging me once I noticed it, so now I get edgy when I see it. Also, I feel sadder than ever that I've never actually read or saw Secret of NIMH. I really do need to get around to that one of these days. And Nausicaa, too, sounds like! I'll see if one of my manga-collecting friends has it.

Oh boy, I'd forgotten about that little girl in the Philippines... that whole thing was just weird. And of course the mummy-woman, too, I suppose... You're right that Daimio probably doesn't quite count, I just... eh. I think I just have to get used to him. I kind of resented having some jerk of a guy pop in and take Kate's position, but maybe he'll grow on me. A big 'yes' on the cultral appropriation thing, too. It was a really awesome story, but... it did feel faintly uncomfortable, at the same time. I suppose one could say that Mignola does that with all different cultures - he's got the same kind of thing going with Russia and England and all that, but the awareness of it is a lot more uncomfortable in the Africa series.

That is the weird thing about the movies, right? It's like, okay, this whole thing is about outsiders and how we're all in this together - the demon, the fish-guy, the girl who sets fires and killed her whole block when she was eight, the homunculus, and the guy who doesn't even have a body. ...And oops, they're all white. *Headdesk* I don't know if you ever caught it, but it sort of reminds me of Firefly - ostensibly a show about a future where Chinese culture is supposed to be more or less dominant, but which, by "freak mischance" of "color-blind" casting, has absolutely no Asian people in speaking parts. Ever. My friends and I used to play "spot the Asian extra" while watching it. We never even counted more than a few in a given episode. Much as I love that show, it still makes me feel faintly "bleh" about it to think of that. (On the other hand, it did give us Zoe, the awesome gun-toting 2nd in command who's in my icon, and several other awesome female characters. So at least there was that.)

...And now I'm thinking of the "Avatar: The Last Airbender" movie and the casting FAIL of that whole thing, and I'm going to have to change the subject lest I get really angry and start ranting about how even minority directors buy into the whole "if you cast non-white actors no one will see your movie" shit, and that just... arrrrrrrgh. So angry. Anyway.

Woo! That last picture makes me very happy. ♥ (And oh, Abe - when will you learn not to go toward things like that?)

[joellehart.livejournal.com]

Secret of NIHM is pretty much a standard Don Bluth film, but I adored it as a child... and the novel it was based on, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM, was the first chapter book I ever read. It wasn't until I got to college that I realized how weird the portrayal of gender is in that movie. Mrs. Brisby is an ordinary country mouse but she confronts an owl and a cat and disables a tractor(!), she's immensely strong and brave, she saves the day... and yet, she's never given a name of her own, and everywhere she goes she's acknowledged only because of something her dead husband once did. Also, one of the other female characters in the movie is "Auntie Shrew" -- who admittedly is a shrew, but still. I can't remember if she was in the book -- I've got to re-read that myself.

I have seen Firefly! A friend of mine let me watch the whole thing with him. Funny thing, depending on who you talk to, Joss Whedon is either a triumphant feminist or a pathological sexist. But I love Zoe! I don't know anything really about Avatar: the Last Airbender.

The metaphor for race in the Hellboy movies... yep, pretty explicit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAj4EvJvHsg

And did you see that other ad where Hellboy says his name is Anung un Rama, and this girl says "Latino!" I still haven't figured that one out.

(Maybe we should spark the gender/race discussion over on the hellisness comm, see if anyone else joins in... that page from BPRD I posted was a link I got from Soarer_Vision's lj.)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Awesome. I'll have to see if I can dig up a copy - I've been needing some good, light non-fiction lately.

I think a big problem with Joss is that people don't want to admit that he's in the middle. He's not perfect. Buffy and Firefly both have some pretty awesome gender stuff, and both fail pretty spectacularly on a lot of race stuff. His most recent few, Doctor Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog and Dollhouse, have both been pretty much fail, IMHO. Apparently he was trying to do some kind of wildly edgy back-handed commentary on gender with Dollhouse, but from what I've heard it fell pretty flat, and Doctor Horrible, while fun and having some really awesome bits (Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion with awesome song lyrics!), is pretty damned fail on both counts. Personally, I think Joss has probably bought a little too much into the cult of personality that's grown up around him, and maybe gotten either lazy or frustrated with the networks (who wouldn't be, I suppose). Either way, my vote goes for "good guy, does some neat stuff, really needs to be hit with a clue-by-four about a lot of things." As far as gender goes, he does genuinely try, and I have to give him props for that - most other successful male writers sure as hell don't.

Zoe is totally one of my favorite characters ever, and I adore her. That's... really all I have to say on that. ♥

Avatar. Oh boy. Okay, so, basically it was an anime-esque show put on by Nickelodeon, and I thought all my friends were crazy for getting into it a few years back, but come to find out it was actually pretty fun. Some good characters, good plot... and, significant to the current fiasco, a lot of characters of various Asian derivations. The movie was written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who made the inexplicable and horrifying decision to whitewash the whole cast except the villain... for whom he cast the adorable Dev Patel (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2353862/). You can see where this is causing problems. Racebending.com (http://www.racebending.com/v3/) was pretty much created to cover all the hubbub around the movie, though they're covering a lot of other cool race stuff regarding the Asian community now, too. I particularly like the graphic that shows the four main characters in the animated show and in the movie with "good" and "enemy" written over their heads so that you can clearly see that he's changed all the "good" characters to white and the enemy (who used to be probably the whitest character in the show) to Asian. They have a little primer on the whole mess here (http://www.racebending.com/v3/featured/the-last-airbender-primer/). What really toasts me about it is that Shyamalan's own daughter apparently really loved the original show... and it just kind of breaks my heart to know that this little girl of Indian descent is seeing her own father make a movie of her favorite show, but he's made all the characters white. That's really gotta mess with a kid.

I'd be happy to take it over there, sure! It'd be good to see the comm get some activity.

...Oh, and I finally caved and bought Plague of Frogs yesterday. I think that's the first time in BPRD that we've seen both Liz and Kate in a story where neither of them have to be rescued by the boys! Granted, Kate has to be rescued by Liz, but... that's a bit different, and we know she's not a fighter-type, anyway.

[joellehart.livejournal.com]

ZOMG.

I had kind of vaguely heard that there was some controversy over Avatar, but since I've never seen the show it didn't really sink in. But that... that is just amazing and horrible. Amazing especially from Shyamalan, he should know better! At least it's heartening to hear about the movement against it and all the effort people are putting into building awareness about it.

Um... you want me to take the thread to hellishness? Could you do it? I think you're more eloquent on the subject... and also, since I posted three times in a row in just the last month, and it's still a sleepy community, I don't want to be "that girl who keeps posting stuff." ^_^```

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's kind of a gigantic mess, but the internet response has been really cool. I just wish more of the 'normal' people who might go see the movie knew/cared about all of it, you know?

I totally can. :) I'll see what I can do to sort of... condense things into a sensible-ish sort of post, and get it up sometime this evening.