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November 18, 2015

A Wanker’s Literary Reaction: The Clone Wars

So, I don’t think I’ve ever written much about Star Wars on this blog, and that’s pretty shocking when you consider how much of my brainspace the sci-fi series usually takes up.

The very first movie I ever remember seeing was The Phantom Menace (which I still contend is a really good movie, and by far the best of the prequel trilogy), and my obsession blossomed from there on. And I’m serious about that obsession: I’ve read a bunch of the extended universe novels, I’ve played all the Star Wars games I can get my hands on, and I’ve marathoned the movies three times. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you’ve actually tried to marathon them yourself, you’ll know how horrifyingly time stretches out in front of you when you’re half an hour into Attack of the Clones (A FILM IN WHICH CLONES NEVER ATTACK). I would not be exagerrating in the least if I said that I have found myself seriously tearing up over every new Star Wars trailer that’s been released in the last year. I fucking love Star Wars, and will happily take to task anyone who dares suggest otherwise.

khlxgic

And recently, I’ve started watching The Clone Wars. Well, I tried it a few years back when I first got Netflix, but soon drifted off it because my willpower is pathetic in the face of all the shitty b-movie horrors that Netflix is home to. But I’ve properly taken it on in anticipation of the release of The Force Awakens, and man, have I been missing out.

I was initially kind of put off by the fact that this was ostensibly a kids series, but seriously, don’t let that stop you from knuckling down and absorbing five seasons of this shit if you’re a real Star Wars fan. There’s no doubt in my mind that the series is better than Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith combined, which isn’t really saying much-

-but seriously, this is where all the action you wanted from those movies vanished to. The Clone Wars is basically an anthology show with all the disparate threads tying back into the story of the war between the Republic and the Imperial troops, and lavishes the viewer with new characters, plot arcs, and locations- basically, a chance to properly explore the Star Wars universe.

And there are so many things to love about this show. Firstly, the characters that made the jump from the movies- such as Yoda, Obi-Wan, Anakin and Padme- are all at the very least as good as their big screen counterparts, and often loads better. Anakin actually has all the charm and rogueishness that Hayden Christensen’s solid oak performance surgically removed from the character in the films, and his banter and companionship with Obi-Wan makes the end-up of their relationship even more poignant.And, of course, any character that you thought looked interesting wandering about in the background of a random scene in the films gets their own episode, a conceit that helps open up the universe and create a giant, sprawling ensemble that can fit around almost any story.

anakin-obi-wan-and-clone-troopers-clone-wars-obi-wan-kenobi-23780129-700-394

Ewan MacGregor as a cartoon is kind of goofy, to be fair.

The villains from the movies, most notably General Grievous and Count Dooku, get some back story that actually makes them, you know, threatening and interesting and ruthless. Anakin also gets a padawan, in the form of the wise-cracking Asohka, that stops him from descending into critically brooding territory.

And that’s another thing about the series that I love. Much as I will contend that both Amidala and Leia are fantastic characters and badass heroines in their own ways, it still stands that there are only two really significant female characters out of the six Star Wars movies. In The Clone Wars, there are more than I can count- Asohka is excellent and far more charming than her description makes her sound, and then there’s temperamental Sith warrior Asajj Ventress, not to mention a bunch of cool female Jedi side characters who get just as many awesome action sequences as their male counterparts. There’s a particular episode in season one that revolves around a showdown between two female Jedi and a female Sith, and it feels wrong that it’s staggeringly new and different.

Ashoka, hangin’ with some clones.

There really aren’t enough good things to say about this series- the animation is gorgeous, the voice acting is excellent (David Tennant won an Emmy was his work on the series), the action is thrilling, and the whole thing is basically an invitation that no Star Wars fan could turn down. What are you waiting for?

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November 12, 2015

Feminism in Time and Space, Part Two: Sexuality and Representation

I swear to God I am rubbing my hands together right now, because this is a topic I’ve wanted to get to for a long, long time: Steven Moffat’s dealings with LGBTQ representation on Doctor Who. Now, I’ve written loads before about bisexual representation (or lack of it) on TV, and it’s something I always look out for in new shows, because bisexual characters-that is, characters who identify as bisexual and aren’t reduced down to their sluttiness, greediness, or, um, lying-ness-are pretty thin on the ground. But Steven Moffat has plenty of characters that don’t fit on either end of the binary, so let’s take a look, shall we?

While this is going to be about Doctor Who for the most part, I’d like to touch on a couple of his other shows that are relevant to this discussion. The first is Coupling, a so-so sitcom following a fictionalised version of Steven Moffat meeting a fictionalised version of his wife. They have a recurring group of friends, one of whom not-Steven is dating at the start of the series- when he tries to break up with her, she tells him she’s bisexual to titillate him into staying. Her “bisexuality” is played for laughs throughout the series, and then, in the final episode, someone shows her some naked ladies, she’s utterly horrified, and her ruse is shattered.

No relevant pictures for that paragraph, but just LOOK at how early-noughties this title card is.

And then, of course, there’s A Scandal in Belgravia, the Sherlock adaptation of the superb Conan Doyle story A Scandal in Bohemia. In the original tale, Irene Adler becomes the only person to outsmart Sherlock and gets away scott-free. In this version, she’s a dominatrix who spends a good chunk of her screentime naked, and she identifies as a lesbian. Despite that, however- despite the fact she says she’s only attracted to women- ~~Steven Moffat’s self-insert~~ Sherlock is just so sexy and charming and clever that she falls in love with him and gives the whole game away. How they managed to write a story more regressive than one penned over a hundred years ago is beyond me, but there it is. Not to mention the hi-larious running joke of people assuming Sherlock and Watson are a couple, which Watson must quickly and vehemently deny lest those strangers think he likes men, rue the day.

So, you know, the problems I’m talking about here are not limited to Doctor Who. Far from it. But let’s get into the nitty-gritty of representation in the series.

Bring back Donna 2K15

Firstly, Steven Moffat has confirmed that both the Doctor and River Song are “happily bi”, which is cool, and I’m pleased to hear someone actually use the term for once (even if he did follow that up by saying that bisexuals didn’t need representation because they were having “FAR TOO MUCH FUN” and were to “BUSY!!” to watch TV, but let’s skim by that for now). But the fact is that, watching the show, the references he points to as proving their bisexuality- such as an offhand comment from River about fancying everyone in the crew except one, and her making reference to kissing Cleopatra- are always kind of…brushed over? Sure, the Doctor kisses men once or twice during the series, but it’s never as much more than a joke. Neither River nor the Doctor actually find themselves seriously attracted to a person of the same sex without it being breezed past with a barely-audible “No homo though” every time it comes up. Steven Moffat had to confirm their sexuality outside the show, which proves that what he’s doing inside the show is, at the very most, leaving people confused (but I’m sure they’ll make their mind up when they just meet the right episode and settle down, huh?).

And let’s talk about Clara, who has, on a couple of occasions made reference to being attracted to women. The first time, she’s Oswyn, and comments on her crush on a girl, only to quickly dismiss it as a phase; earlier this season, she spoke about Jane Austen being a “fantastic kisser” (right, sure, give Shakespeare his own episode but relegate Austen down to off-screen kissy-kissy faces). Some people have deduced from this that Clara bisexual, and they’re welcome to this interpretation, but to me it feels like a gross kind of pandering- sure, we’ll mention these things, but we’ll never talk about them again, see how the impacted Clara, let alone actually get an episode dedicated to them. Amy flirts with another version of herself, but it’s mostly shown to be a massive turn-on for her male partner Rory. Again, it’s there, but it feels more like a punchline that an actual attempt at representation.

To be fair, I’m bisexual and I’m SUPER into myself so maybe this is accurate.

I’d be doing a disservice if I didn’t make mention of Madame Vastra and Jenny, an openly lesbian couple who join the Doctor on some of his adventures. Broadly, this is obviously good news, as having a long-term loving gay relationship on a show like Doctor Who is excellent for representation. But then again, let’s not forget that the show paints them as generally bickering, with Vastra’s straying eye and Jenny’s still-servant status. And, of course, the fact that the show had Jenny forcibly kissed by the Doctor (who knew she was both gay and in a relationship) before she shared an on-screen smooch with her partner. So, sexual assault comes before lesbian kisses. Good to know where the hierarchy is.

Look, I tried to find a picture of their first kiss but the search just returned a lot of fanart porn and frankly I’m just not up to sifting through it today.

Look, in some ways, I really appreciate that the show is trying to depict non-binary sexuality, and I think they have succeeded before. Even though Captain Jack Harkness (who appeared for the first time in a Moffat episode, but was created by Russel T Davies) kind of fits the hyper-slutty mould for bisexual characters on TV, he’s probably one of my favourite non-binary characters ever because he’s funny and brave and a bit of a sleaze (I worship at his altar in this review of Torchwood, if anyone cares). But since then, the show has treated non-binary characters like a novelty, who’s straightness is the only aspect of their sexuality worth exploring or even seriously discussing. And, considering we’ve got the whole of time and space to explore, I’d happily chop in another Dalek episode for one that actually took a look at the wide range of sexualities Moffat promises us are on his show.

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November 12, 2015

What We Want from the TV Star Trek Reboot

No, not THAT Star Trek reboot.

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November 8, 2015

Doctor Who: Talky and Repetitive, Dour Instalment Struggles

I spent a long time trying to put my finger on the correct word to sum up this episode- over-written? Pointed? Conducted with all the subtlety of a beating with a rusty spade? But the word I’m going with is laboured, because that’s what this episode was. Not necessarily awful, but The Zygon Inversion (which DIDN’T involve ant Zygons getting turned inside out by killer gas, boo!) felt as if it had a whole lot of episode to fill with a scant amount of plot.

The Doctor attempts to maintain the ceasefire between the Zygons and the humans as a the leader of the revolutionary Zygons, who also happens to be in Clara’s body, does everything s/he can to start a war. In order to do this, s/he needs to get hold of Osgood’s box-whoops, no the Osgood box, which will determine the fate of the earthbound Zygons. And in between those plot points, there’s lots and lots of….talking.

Kate was there, and she was…pretty fine, I guess.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good talky episode of Who as much of the next person (the sublime Boom Town springs immediately to mind). But, well, I think the Robot Devil can put it better than I ever could-

Over and over again, Peter Harness and Steven Moffat (co-credited as writing this script) seemed too busy jumping to the next forced joke or clunky moral plot point to have anyone express anything without having to have it underlined a thousand times by someone else. And, like The Woman Who Lived a few weeks back, everything seemed curiously repetitive, especially the climactic scene between Kate, Zygella and the Doctor. The Doctor’s giant, dramatic speech-which felt like it went on for at least 75% of the episode- wavered between Peter Capaldi managing to just pull it back into watchable, and repeating the same point over and over and over and over again to the point of brain-implosion. A point which barely even stands anymore, since the events of Day of the Doctor (I get why he was keen to stop the war from happening, but is it really fair to invoke the “I CARRY AROUND THE SCREAMS OF A MILLION PEOPLE I MURDERED” when you, um, didn’t actually murder them?).

THE THRILLING CLIMAX

Add to that a handful of annoying plotholes-if Kate could shoot the Zygon dead, why didn’t the armed U.N.I.T soldiers do that last episode? If there are only 20 million Zygons on Earth and they can be easily killed with firearms, the war really isn’t going to pose that much of a problem, is it? If the Doctor has had to diffuse situations like this one before, as implied by the “last fifteen times” line, why don’t they just remove the Zygons from Earth? And the biggest one of all: why the fucking Christ would U.N.I.T agree to settle Zygons on Earth after they TRIED TO TAKE IT OVER?- and this script was pretty awful, especially compared to last week’s tight, exciting thriller. It just didn’t have much to work with, with most of the plot being dealt with (and swiftly forgotten) last episode.

There were a couple of good scenes, that said- I’m coming round to Osgood(s) in a big way, as Ingrid Oliver managed to balance the charm and quirk with the sense of duty really nicely and was just generally really watchable. The other set of doubles in the episode- the two Claras- were not quite as good, despite a very cool scene where Evil!Clara tries to figure out the location of the Osgood box and the two of them have a bit of a mental joust. I really didn’t care for Jenna Coleman in this episode, who looked for a lot of the runtime as if she was phoning it in with one foot out the door, which is a shame but fits pretty well with the patchy nature of the writing for her character(s) since the start of this season.

One thing that did strike me about this episode, and this series by extension, is the problems they seem to have balancing fun with serious. The Zygon Inversion had a lot of stuff to say about the pointlessness of war (with a weirdly out-of-place reference to the Glorious Revolution, for what it’s worth), but the only way it could get it’s point across was through repetition ad finitum and Peter Capaldi doing that awful game show voice. The show has shown over and over again that it can balance rollicking fun with serious moral points (David Tennant’s first proper episode New Earth springs to mind), but the last couple of seasons have lurched awkwardly between stilted jokes and overly serious moralilty without taking the time to fit the two together. There hasn’t been a really outrightly fun episode this season- Under the Lake had it’s moments, as did The Woman Who Lived, but both revolved around heavy central ideas-and I feel like the show is starting to get a little bogged down in it’s seriousness. That all said, next week is a found footage episode with Reese Shearsmith in it, and therefore was created expressly for me!

AND the Zygons still look like demon Mr Blobbys. I’ll have you yet, Moffar.

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November 7, 2015

Please Let Me Enjoy Football in Peace

I really, really, really like football. I have done as long as I can remember. So many memories from my teen years revolve around the sport-whether getting up at ungodly hours of the morning to watch Match of the Day (I had a mug that played the theme song and everything! It broke after about two weeks and I would occasionally wake up to the jaunty refrain echoing off the walls of the house as it malfunctioned), playing in my school’s team (I was defence, because it’s impossible to get anything past my ego), or heading down to the pub to watch the World Cup with my usually uninterested friends caught up in the excitement of the tournament, it’s always been part of my life. I’m sure there are a bunch of people rolling their eyes right now because, yes, football is pointless and stupid and everyone is overpaid and at the end of the day it essentially means nothing. But it entertains me, and I like pottering around on a Saturday afternoon listening to whatever matches BBC have deemed acceptable to broadcast this week.

But in the last couple of months or so, I’ve had the growing feeling that I’m not….welcome in the football world. I’m not the first to say this, and I won’t be the last, but sometimes I just want to enjoy my football in peace. And by that, I mean without having to justify or prove my interest in it.

I put off writing this article for ages and ages, because there are surely far more important things to concern myself with than whether or not some bloke at the pub thinks I’m only there because I’m trying to impress my boyfriend. But then, twice in two days at university this week, a couple of my tutors made offhand comments about women not being interested in sports. And that’s certainly not the most offensive assumption that I’ve heard about my gender, but it’s still sexism and is still worth talking about, especially when it’s so alright to crack wise about it even in apparently neutral positions of authority.

I could easily list a hundred instances where someone has challenged my interest in football, but you’ve heard them all before: chatting to a guy in the smoking area during half-time and having him ask what team my boyfriend supported, and being surprised when I replied “the same team as me”; having a bloke demand to know the scores of the last three matches my team played in to “prove” I followed the sport; being told, through jokes and quips and outright statements, that women who like sports are an anomaly who are either faking it to impress a guy or unable to possibly comprehend the passion that “real” fans (read: men) have for it. I spoke to my boyfriend-who is just as big an anorak about football as I am- if he’d had similar responses when he’d mentioned his love of the sport, and the answer was a firm no.

And that is, of course, not to mention the actually game itself- fans making sexist jokes about the inclusion of women in the Fifa 16 game, Manchester United fans screaming abuse at a female doctor earlier this year, Andy Grey and Richard Keys joking about how a senior lineswoman would need to offside rule explained to her, etc, etc, ad finitum. Women are not welcomed to the sport the way men are, and that’s just stupid.

I’m sure there are a few football fans reading this and thinking “I don’t care/am happy to see anyone get into football, regardless of gender!”. And you’re golden- this isn’t aimed at you. But, to all those people who hear that a woman likes or is involved with football and feel the need to interrogate her or get her to justify her interest, stop. Stop it. Stop it forever. We’re starting to sea the tide turn-very slowly- on women involved in football, whether that’s on the pitch or in the stands, and every time you demand a woman prove her love for the sport based on whatever arbitrary standards you’ve come up with, you’re pushing in the wrong direction. All I want is to be able to enjoy the sport I love in peace. And if one more person tries, unasked, to explain to offside rule to me, I won’t be responsible for my actions.

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October 26, 2015

Doctor Who: Tenuous Alliance Reduces Domesticated Interstellar Scoundrels

So, yeah, this review is up a couple of days late. Not because I was dreading the episode or anything (if the current run of one part of every two-hander being great is to be considered a pattern, I actually had something to look forward to), but because I kept finding better things to do like watching The Clone Wars (DID YOU SEE THE NEW STAR WARS TRAILER? HNNNNG) and drinking beer and browsing through another host of adulatory new reviews. But I finally dragged myself on to iPlayer today, and got around to watching The Woman Who Lived, the second part of the story started in last week’s The Girl Who Died.

Now, by no means am I taking back anything I said in last week’s review, even though apparently the entire critical world disagreed with me (as well as a bunch of people on Twitter). And this week’s episode certainly wasn’t brilliant. But, in comparison, I didn’t mind The Woman Who Lived half as much as it’s predecessor.

The Doctor- sans Clara for all but the last two minutes of the episode- bumps into Ashildr as they’re both tracking an alien artifact. The once-idealistic Ahildr has rechristened herself as the cold, distant Lady Me, and she relates the story of her 800-year life to the Doctor as they blunder through a bunch of silly medieval subplots.

I say this a lot, it seems, but the tone was all over the place in this episode. The difference between this week’s episode and last week’s episode, however, was that some of the scenes actually worked. Some of the emotional notes they hit-such as Ashildr explaining the source of her new name- were strong, and yes, the humour all came off like a sub-par Blackadder episode (You know that joke about the woman highwayman doing a really convincing male voice in third season of Blackadder? I don’t know if this episode was homaging that or straight-up ripping it off, but it was there alright), but the fact that it was loose and didn’t take itself too seriously eked a few laughs out of me.

Eyebrows on fleek. For medieval Britain, that is.

I think Maisie Williams makes a lot more sense in this incarnation, too- I was blown away by her performance or anything, but she had the difficult task of playing a character who was actually meant to be on the Doctor’s level and she pulled it off. The naif of last week is long gone, and I hope they keep it that way. There was also a line in there about her being sick of people assuming she just wanted a husband, which is ironic as Steven Moffat have said that all women want exactly that. I’ll take this as an apology (speaking of Steven Moffat and his questionable ideas about women, I’m writing a four-part mini blog series about feminism in Moffat’s era of Doctor Who. Check it out!).

(and I don’t know where to put this, but I was under the impression that Ashildr, when the Doctor turned her immortal was a child- hence The Girl Who Lived, etc. In this episode she’s shown to have had children and be receptive to the romantic interests of grown men. Now, the episode went to great lengths to show how intellectually evolved Ashildr was and obviously she has actually been around for hundreds of years, so it wasn’t skeevy in that sense, but rather seeing blokes demanding kisses from somebody we were only last week meant to see as an innocent child kind of ooked me out a bit. There’s a reason Edward from Twilight wasn’t twelve, you know?)

And, in another round of Doctor Who Recaps Bingo, the Doctor was without Clara for this episode and man, was he good. Capaldi worked well having a new kind of energy to bounce off of, and sure, I could have done without yet another cringey scene of him playing the guitar, but it was overall a good episode for the Doctor. I think not having to cram in pointless Clara scenes just to give Jenna Coleman something to do really helped them flesh out their world a bit, too, and I liked that.

But this episode was ridiculous. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the big villains:

The women on the far right and far left sum up my reactions exactly.

It’s fucking ridiculous, and don’t you dare try to tell me otherwise. And their plan? To open a gate to the underworld and unleash it’s minions on Earth. Maybe I’ve been playing too much Age of Mythology recently (NO SUCH THING) but that sounds strangely close to the plot of a shitty video game. Also, the episode seemed to revel in underlining the major beats for each scene- seriously, take a shot for every time Ashildr jauntily declares “This is MY robbery!” in the first scene, or every time she tells the Doctor “You made me!” or every time he explains why she can’t be her companion, or…yeah, you get it. Even the emotional scenes in this episode were big and goofy, but I’m much more willing to give the show a bit of leeway if it’s tongue is clearly in it’s cheek. I want to stress that this episode wasn’t a classic or anything, but it was almost just a relief to see the show steady itself after last week’s sad swanny whistle.

If I can say one good thing about this episode, it’s that it’s warmed me to the idea of Maisie Williams returning, which she almost definitely will in the near future (calling it: Minister of War mentioned in Under the Lake). I didn’t think she was groundbreakingly amazing in this episode, and she’s yet another recurring female character who the Doctor has connected with as a child before leaving her to wait for him the rest of her life (Amy Pond, Clara Oswald, Reinette de Pompadour, River Song, to an extent), but I like the idea of a sort of morally ambiguous character who understands the Doctor’s plight better than most people he spends time with.

But are you explaining away Osgood’s return next week with “TWINS”? I’ll have you yet, Moffat.

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October 24, 2015

Inhumanity, Bisexuality, and American Horror Story: Hotel

So, I wrote about the season premiere of American Horror Story: Hotel a couple of weeks ago. And I stand by everything I said in that review– it’s tasteless, pointless, and plain horrible. That said, I couldn’t help but enjoy the last couple of weeks- after a wobbly third and fourth season (come on, fight me), it seems that they’re finally re-stabilising their balance in how to tell a coherent, season-long story. Also, Evan Peters plays a Vincent Price-esque serial killer and Angela Basset is a B-movie star from the seventies. It’s a hoot, and while I’m still sort of braced at the start of every episode for something that will undermine the good work they’ve done so far, I’ll take what I can get. Oh, spoilers, by the way.

But oh, when did a Ryan Murphy show ever get off that easily in this blog? One of the things that I did notice about this season, and something that crops up across all kinds of TV all the freakin’ time, is the problematic way they frame bisexuality and especially non-hereto sexual activity. So, let’s take a look at all the plots so far that have involved bisexuality in some form or another:

In the first episode, the Countess and Donovan invite another couple to their bed, where they then brutally murder them and drink their blood.
The Countess and Ramona Royale are shown to be in a relationship, one that ends with the Countess shooting Ramona’s new (male, for what it’s worth) lover dead. It’s also interesting to note here that, despite the fact that the Countess and Ramona were together for years, Ramona describes her relationship with her new man (who’s only shown in two scenes, one of which he is dead for much of) as much more significant and passionate.
Tristan (in a relationship with a woman at the time) seduces Will Drake with the express purpose of murdering him.
Tristan picks up a gay guy on Tinder, and apparently seems to enjoy making out with him, then murders him.

I think it would be missing a big ol’ point in AHS to ignore the fact that sex is bad for everyone on this show. I think there’s maybe one (?) fully consummated, consensual bit of love-making in the series five-year run and that ends with her being abducted by aliens (man, season two was crazy). And the straight sex (nor indeed the straight characters) in this season hasn’t exactly been a glowing bastion against which I will measure all my sexual encounters-it’s been unfulfilling, creepy, or just plain depressing. But when the first three episodes of your show feature four characters whose non-mono-sexuality connects directly to their inhuman and murderous natures, there’s a bit of a problem there.

And we’re what, four episodes in? Maybe I wouldn’t have my ears quite so pricked for this particular trope, but it seems like it’s been everywhere in the last few years. The tacit connection drawn between being interested in more than one gender and being in some way inhuman or, at the very least, deeply unpleasant, appears in a whole bunch of shows- off the top of my head, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (where the vampires are almost all bisexual, but the lead cast members CAN’T EVEN CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY OF IT), True Blood (same again), the murderous and immortal Dorian Grey in Penny Dreadful, Lee Garner in Mad Men, Crowley in Supernatural, Frank Underwood in House of Cards, June Stahl in Sons of Anarchy, the female HG Wells in Warehouse 13….oh, and that’s not forgetting Ryan Murphy’s own inimitable addition to the genre, were the only long-running bisexual characters in his show Nip/Tuck were incestuous siblings, one of whom was the murderer/rapist Carver.

I’m glad for bisexual representation on TV (doubly so when they actually call it bisexuality, but that’s another story), but there comes a point when show after show after show after show depicts bisexuality as something that goes hand-in-hand with a depraved, often downright evil nature, when I feel like I have a right to object. Christ, the vampires = bisexual trope is so pervasive that I sometimes wonder if I’m actually a bloodsucking minion of the undead (on a side note, while I can appreciate the metaphor for gay rights in the vampires in True Blood, when you think about it even a little bit it’s hilariously badly conceived and offensive). I’m not demanding that everyone who shows bisexual proclivities HAS TO be a bastion of all that’s good and pure in the world, just that they’re not always vampires (or otherwise evil).

Sure, any person who identifies with any sexuality can be evil or good or anywhere in between, but when the depictions of bisexual people so often seem to equate an interest in both genders with a callous, cold, or otherwise inhumane nature, it gets a bit…on the nose. We get it, you think we’re all off having drunken, dimly-lit sex orgies that you’re not invited to and you’re jealous- but don’t take it out on our TV representations.

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October 19, 2015

Feminism in Time and Space, Part One: Amy, Rory, and Gender Roles

I don’t think it will come as a shock to anyone to discover that I’m a huge fan of Doctor Who. And, for a long time, I’ve been studiously avoiding reconciling my adoration (which, to be fair, is pretty swiftly waning) of the classic sci-fi series with my views on feminism and gender roles on TV. But I think it’s time.

It’s no secret that Steven Moffat is pretty sexist-Christ, every time he opens his mouth he seems to blurt out something else that alienates a big chunk of his fanbase. Aside from the complete lack of female writers and directors for the first three years of his stint as DW showrunner, he’s come out with such classic hits as “women are out there hunting for husbands” and “women are needy”, and “there’s a huge lack of respect for anything male”, and- fuck it, just read this article, it sums it up pretty nicely. And that’s infuriating for me, not just because he’s disparaging my entire gender, but because he’s the man behind a show I love. Now, it’s becoming more and more clear that the man REALLY behind the show I love(d) is Russel T Davies, but I can’t avoid the fact that, if I want to engage with Doctor Who (which I do), I have to engage with his shitty notions of gender roles, too.

So, as a companion series to my reviews of season nine of Doctor Who, I’ve decided to take a look at the representations of gender, sexuality, and especially women in Moffat’s era of Doctor Who. I was planning one giant article, but so much of his work on the show is so awful in such a myriad of different ways that I want to be able to focus on just one bit at a time. And this week, I’m starting with his first set of companions, Amy Pond and Rory Williams.

I think it’s important to look at these two as a couple and as individuals, because a lot of their characterisation centres on the adherence to and subversion of gender roles. Let’s start with Rory, a trainee nurse who’s beaten Amy down over a number of years to ackowledge his romantic feelings for her and also return them (see: every time he throws a hissy fit when she doesn’t refer to him as her boyfriend). I really love Arthur Darvill, who plays Rory, but there’s no arguing with the fact that he’s a perfect example of the Nice Guy (TM) trope in fiction. While Amy and Rory do build a solid, semi-believable relationship across the course of the series, it seems to spring mostly from Rory’s wearing-down of her defences as opposed to any mutual feelings on her part. Rory can only offer Amy a very ordinary life, while the Doctor can offer her…well, the entire universe, really. His feelings of not being good enough are understandable, but they often manifest themselves as trying to force Amy to choose between him or the Doctor, even though it’s not his desicion to make.

And she chooses him. Eventually. And that brings us on to their relationship as a couple-it’s clear that the show tried to subvert gender roles by making Amy the more adventurous and curious of the two (good), but failed by simply foisting the negative gender tropes on to the opposite sex (bad). For instance, Amy is the more aggressive of the two- she slaps Rory, throws shoes at him, and generally doesn’t treat him with much compassion, which is played off as a joke because she’s a woman and we expect the men to be….aggressive? Hitting their romantic partners? A negative trait isn’t funny just because the “wrong” gender has it. Amy is still straight-up physically hurting her husband/boyfriend to keep him in line. Flip the genders and it would be unthinkable in a Saturday night kids show.

Similarly, Rory is consistently portrayed as the more “feminine” of the two- firstly, there’s his job as a nurse, then there’s the fact that he’s referred to as “Mr Pond” after he and Amy get married, then there’s his jealousy, his insecurity, etc, etc, etc. Again, these are played off as a joke, because apparently it’s so impossible to get our heads around the idea of a man being or doing any of those things. This is a subversion of the usual manly-bloke stereotype (hello Mickey from season one), but those traits are shown to make Rory less of a man, as the show is often quick to point out through other character’s jokes about his masculinity. As opposed to, you know, just being a human who’s capable of the full range of emotions, occupations, and decisions.

It’s worth noting that one of the only times in the series’ run when he refers to Amy as “Mrs Williams” is when he comes to rescue her from her then-damselled state, all dressed up as a soldier and exhibiting traditionally masculine traits that are usually absent from his character’s development. Because only when he’s being a stereotypical dude can he really claim ownership over his wife. His wife, who has at this stage had a pregnancy forced on her and has ended up with nothing to do but sit about waiting to be saved by one of the men in her life. Because gender roles.

And that brings us to Amy. Wow, Amy. The first in a string of Moffat women who fall in love with the Doctor as children and spend their whole lives pining for him to come back (I count…what, four off the top of my head?), Amy is outwardly a traditionally spunky female sidekick- she’s smart, quick-witted, and brave. But 99% of her characterisation revolves around the two men in her life (Rory and the Doctor). Her entire arc is, notoriously, as “The Girl who Waited”- the woman who put her life on hold for a man she wouldn’t see for decades. We hear next to nothing about the life she had without the Doctor, and what little we do get almost all revolves around, you guessed it, Rory. Her character is defined by the push and pull of the…ugh…love triangle that surrounds her, not as an individual outside of the men she loves.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that she’s constantly, CONSTANTLY sexualised. Moffat said of the casting of Karen Gillan “And I thought, ‘well she’s really good. It’s just a shame she’s so wee and dumpy’…When she was about to come through to the auditions I nipped out for a minute and I saw Karen walking on the corridor towards me and I realised she was 5’11, slim and gorgeous and I thought ‘Oh, oh that’ll probably work.’”.

And boy howdy, does he make the most of his “slim, gorgeous” leading lady. She’s introduced in her work clothes-her job being a kissogram, obviously, and her work clothes being a skimpy police uniform- and proceeds to hang out in teeny-tiny short skirts for the rest of the series. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a woman wearing a short skirt if she’s making the decision to do so, but, considering that the writing and directing staff was entirely male at the time, it wasn’t a woman making the decision to do so. It’s a show making the choice to have one of their main female characters constantly sexualised, both by the show and by the characters in it (the Doctor refers to her as “The Legs”, Rory peers up her skirt without her knowledge, various characters comment on her attire, etc. Fuck, the first time we see her as an adult the camera pans up her bare legs).

Women dressed up all sexy-like isn’t a problem in and of itself, but when it becomes something that she’s defined by, that’s really not great. It’s…ooky, especially because the show so clearly wants us to see Amy as a character to look up to, but fails to make much of her outside of either her looks or her relationships with the men in her life. This is a recurring theme in Moffat’s women, as we’ll take a look at later in this series. Christ, the Doctor even asks Rory’s permission before he hugs Amy, because God forbid another man touch his women, right?

Moffat described Amy Pond and her intended influence in a particularly telling way: “A generation of little girls will want to be her. And a generation of little boys will want them to be her too.” For one, I really hope there are no little girls sitting at home thinking that the best they can do is sit around waiting for a man to make their life exciting, and doubly hope that a generation of little boys aren’t expecting women to define themselves based on their relationships to them.

Because there’s so much great writing on the subject of sexism in Doctor Who across the internet, and because, I can’t possibly hit all the sexism bases with any level of coherence in a single essay, I’m going to round up every article with a few awesome links that expand on the subject of each of these essays.

This article takes a look at the problematic elements of Amy’s mystical pregnancy arc and how the show undermined her initially strong character.

This compares the casting of Freema Aygeman and Martha to the casting of Karen Gillan and Amy.

This author writes about the objectification of Amy and how it undermines her character.

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October 17, 2015

Blogerversary + Patreon News

So, last month, this blog reached it’s three-year anniversary. That’s kind of insane, considering that I started this thing just to pass the time when I was stuck in my dorm room with no-one to talk to back in first year (joke’s on them, because now I have a cat to talk to. Oh, and friends, a boyfriend, whatever) and build up some links for my portfolio. In the last year, I finished my brutal love affair with Fifty Shades of Grey, started my genuine love affair with Doctor Who recaps, and wrote a bunch of stuff on sexuality, feminism, mental health, and other topics that I never thought I would ever have had the balls to write about in public. So, firstly, a huge, mega thank-you to everyone who’s supported the blog over the last three years- all your shares and likes and comments and reads have made this worthwhile, and there’s no way I’d be doing this without you. I just hit a thousand followers a couple of weeks ago, which still boggles my mind a little bit. You’re awesome, and I’ll buy all of you a pint next time I see you.

The Cutprice Guignol has provided an awesome jumping-off point for me into the world of freelance writing, and that brings me to my next point. With my official job title being “jobbing freelance writer”, I spend most of my time writing something or other (movie reviews, album critiques, alien erotica, etc) and that takes away time I get to spend writing for the blog. As I’m not getting paid for the work I do here, I can’t really justify spending as much time on it as I’d like and I can’t always take on the cool ideas my readers pass on to me. As a poor student about to be an even poorer graduate, I’ve had to seriously think about whether or not I can financially justify spending so much time on The Cutprice Guignol.

So, to remedy that I’ve created a Patreon. For the uninitiated, a Patreon lets readers and supporters of the blog sponsor me a small amount of money per month so I can keep doin’ what I’m doin’ (and hopefully improve it, too). There are special rewards based on how much you sponsor me (including exclusive blog posts), and if I reach a certain amount of sponsorship per month I’ll be able to take on new recapping projects and generally spend more time turning this into a real website. You can check out my Patreon page here for more information, and how to donate. Notable: if the first one of my sponsorship goals is reached, I’ll be recapping the second Fifty Shades of Grey book. Do with that what you will.

To be clear, no matter how much or how little you fabulous people decide to share with me, I’ll keep writing for the blog, and I’ll keep going with my current recapping projects. Any donations I receive will go towards giving me time to get more blog posts up every month and create a better user interface for my readers. Considering that I’m basically jingling a virtual charity tin under your nose, I appreciate any and all donations more than I can express. More than that, I appreciate all the support people who’ve read this blog have given me over the years. Thank you for reading! Here’s to another three years.

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October 15, 2015

TMI: Vaginismus, Me, and Why We Need to Talk Abut Female Sexual Dysfunction

So, in August of this year, the FDA approved the “little pink pill”- basically, female Viagra. And it got me to thinking: with Viagra for dudes being so readily available and such a common, shrug-worthy part of society, the way we treat women’s sexual dysfunction is pretty embarrassing. You know how I know that? Because, for three years, I suffered from a type of Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD), and no-one seemed to have a god-damn clue what to do with me.

You whisper the words “vaginismus” in front of any woman who’s suffered from it, and you can see that look of haunted horror that passes across their face. Vaginismus is a condition where your vagina essentially boards itself shut, sticks up “closed for business” signs, and leaves you unable to enjoy sex without massive amounts of pain-or, in my case and in the case of many other sufferers, unable to have sex at all. Muscle spasms make it painful or impossible to get anything in there, whether it’s a tampon, an erection, or the cotton swab of a very nice lady who just wants to figure out what the fuck is going on with me. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My vaginismus made itself known when I was first dating my high school sweetheart, and what I was feeling seemed to go above and beyond the usual kind of painful-first-penetrative-sex experiences that I’d been conditioned to expect. But I didn’t think much of it until, two years later, I was still unable to get so much as a finger inside myself without crippling pain. Neither me or my then-boyfriend could figure out what was going on, and we both spent months in silence, assuming that I would just never be able to put out and that we’d just have to deal with that shit as it was. In a culture that values sex so highly, especially at the age I was at, there was no way in hell I was telling anyone else that the crunchy sound of a condom wrapper made me flinch.

I couldn’t tell you what the tipping point was, but I eventually found myself, face burning, eyes on the ground, in my school nurse’s office, explaining to her what was happening and borderline begging her for an answer to the problem. Was I frigid? Was I actually gay? Was I just broken in some profound and unfixable way? She nodded sympathetically, then referred me to another doctor, to whom I said much the same thing before being referred to another doctor to whom…yeah, you get the idea. I remember vividly how uncomfortable the people-medical professionals- I discussed this problem with became, and how keen they seemed to palm me off on someone else. It’s not even as if vaginismus is the most uncommon affliction in the world- it’s hard to pinpoint exact numbers, but somewhere in the realm of one in five hundred women suffer from it and it’s even more common amongst women 16-24, which was an age group I fell into. Yet no-one could even give me a name, and I was getting increasingly frantic, assuming that I would never have sex, never have a family, never get one of those Mooncups I’d been hearing so much about.

Eventually, I got referred to a sexual health clinic, and made an appointment. I sat in the waiting room, surrounded by glum-looking folks who looked as if they were waiting on bad news about that herpes test. I found myself confronted with the aforementioned sympathetic lady, pretty much the first who didn’t seem like she was hoping I’d stop talking about my vagina right about now. That appointment marked the first time a woman touched my nether regions, but it’s not an experience I remember fondly- naked from the waist down, trying not to cry from the pain of the cotton swab she had inside me. I cried all the way home, and prayed that this time I might get an answer.

I was visiting a friend’s house a few days later when I got a phone call from the clinic, and they spelled out the name of what they thought I had over the phone. That was it: they just told me what it was. After more than two years, I finally had something to work from, even if that was the last time I ever heard from the clinic. I was out in the wilderness again, and as I began to look up information about my dysfunction, things felt almost as bad as before. Websites recommended dilators, basically small plastic dildos of varying sizes meant to acclimatise your vagina to the intrusion of other accoutrements. Even looking at the weird, almost always pink, almost always weirdly bullet-shaped collections sold in neat packages of eBay, was enough to make me cringe with pain. I resolved that I’d just have to be really, really good at all the other sex stuff and chuck in any chance to have a fulfilling sexual relationship with a man. I clung to my boyfriend, convinced than no other man would ever want a woman who he could barely touch.

Then we split up, and I was faced with the reality of entering a dating world where the ability to have sex is usually assumed. With the leftovers of my student loan, I finally ordered those dilators from online, and spent a tense Christmas break in my childhood bedroom with lots of wine and heavy breathing as I tried to manoeuvre those bastards into me. And eventually, things started to change. Maybe it was a new partner, maybe it was the dilators, maybe it was just sheer bloody-mindedness, but I did it: I was finally able to have painless sex, hell, even to enjoy it. And that’s awesome, but it doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten what it was like to suffer from vaginismus, and wonder how other women who suffer from FSD are being treated.

It might sound like I’m pretty angry about a lot of this, and that’s precisely right. I had a pretty common medical condition whose resolution usually needs a wide variety of different approaches, sometimes including emotional and physical therapy. I never got that. I was never even offered that. Even though it’s long behind me now, you try shaking two and a half years of being convinced that you were frigid and no person who ever want to form a relationship with you because you couldn’t have sex- that shit will mess with you, and still does to this day. If I’d been a man who couldn’t get it up, there would have been myriad options to help me with what I was going through, and at least I would have known that my experiences were common and not exclusive to me. But no- we’re not teaching people about it, we’re not talking about it, and we’re leaving the scores of women who suffer from vaginismus and other sexual dysfunctions out in the cold. My experiences, luckily, are not universal for women who tried to get help, but they’re not unusual either-and, even if we have got a little pink pill to boost our libidos, we’re failing to address the myriad other sexual dysfunctions that might well cause that lack of desire to get down.

So, I want to address this last paragraph to women who are suffering or have suffered from FSD: firstly, it gets better. Even if you think you’re crazy or broken, even if no-one seems to have a clue what’s wrong with you, it can get better, and you deserve to have it taken seriously. Secondly, when you’re ready, talk about it. Talk about it with your friends, your family, write about it, write it in the sky from the engines of a light aircraft. Because every time a woman is dismissed or shut down on the subject of FSD, it blocks an opportunity to educate and hopefully normalise these strikingly common problems, making them less stigmatizing and therefore easier to seek treatment for. Because we deserve better than this.

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