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Tag Archive for Elementary

Now about the Ladies….

February 4, 2014 People, Writing Comments Off on Now about the Ladies….

I hear a lot of flack online about strong female or minority leads, in particular, most of the postings seem to be about how this IP or that IP should have had a female, or a lead with darker skin (or why DIDN’T it have this kind of lead when it COULD HAVE).

But I don’t hear much about the current examples of these kinds of characters.  Maybe because it turns into cherry-picking (a show might have one good example, but fail dramatically in other areas).  Maybe it’s just a genre thing (it seems to happen more in genre shows than “mainstream”), but when I review the TV shows I am watching right now, I am seeing some remarkable things.  The kinds of things that ought be thrown out as counter examples.  The kinds of things that, in my personal opinion, ought to be shown as examples of what brings in the money every time someone brings up the line that “strong women don’t sell” or “but our target audience isn’t Latino”.

Sleepy Hollow:

Lets take Sleepy Hollow as a recent example.  We have a hit genre show.  A show that, by all accounts should have failed out of the starting gate because “Zombie Washington” is just too far out there.

This show started with only one white lead in it.  Our entire core cast, the female lead (who has become the focus of the story at this point) and the two primary supporting characters are all black (I can’t speak to the actor’s personal ethnicities, I’m trying to speak to the the characters they portray).  Drill down to the next rank and we have the two unrequited love interests, one of whom presents as Latino/Hispanic the other of whom presents as Chinese.  We have John Noble who has become a regular now (and apparently the new Big Bad) to tip the balance back again, but that is a recent development and I’d argue you can’t really call him a “lead” just yet.

Is it perfect?  No, but it is probably the most mixed-race/gender cast for a show that I have ever seen in primetime.  And it is working.  It is working REALLY WELL for the moment.

White Collar:

Yes, heavily whitewashed, no arguments there, but DIANA.  1. A strong, competent female.  2. Openly lesbian AND working for the FBI 3. Single mother AND 4. NOT WHITE.  All of these things come into play for her character without them turning into “Hi we’re so progressive” showcase pieces for a single episode and then dropping them.  She is an awesome, complete character, not just a token “insert minority of choice here”.  Is her character’s life as hard as it would probably be IRL?  No, but if you’re going to call the show on that bit, you can turn that lens on *every* character and show that to be the case.

Elementary:

I’ll be honest, I’m an old-school Sherlock Holmes fan, and I wasn’t AT ALL down with the idea of a female Watson. Then I watched through the first season.  What they’ve done with Joan Watson is fascinating because they have created a strong, female character, but managed to keep some of the foibles many women face, rather than making her a man in a dress.  She was previously a surgeon, but outside of things that require her medical expertise, she shows clear signs of “impostor syndrome” which is a reveal that we don’t see as much when someone is trying to paint a woman as “strong”.

 

 

 

 

 

Irene Adler and the Unattainable Male

February 2, 2013 Uncategorized Comments Off on Irene Adler and the Unattainable Male

That’s a THING, right?  The stereotypical “unattainable” male protagonist in film and television.  We see it in literary works all the time, but the broader discussion online seems to center around more recent developments in media-centric storytelling, rather than in the written tradition.  I think it could easily be argued that the more modern re-visitations of Sherlock Holmes ought to fit neatly into this category.

A great many of the arguments I have been hearing of late seem to center around Irene Adler.  In the three more prominent Holmes reboots, she is seen as; a sociopathic dominatrix (who needs to be rescued at the end), a pickpocket and con artist (who may or may not be dead, but whom also needed to be rescued) and a Plot Device (since she was murdered before the show opens and is, instead, used as a driving force rather than a character).

And, while I have seen a great many analyses of how the original Irene Adler was a much more powerful female than any of her modern variants, I find that nobody has brought up what I feel is one of the more interesting aspects of the entire story (especially considering the time-period it was written in/for).

There is, in “A Scandal in Bohemia” possibly one of the neatest bits of role-reversal ever.  The idea that Sherlock Holmes, the quintessential “unattainable male” has fallen into the exact same trap.  He has, in his own turn, fallen for the unattainable female.

Outside of the fact that she feels the need to evade her stalker, Miss Adler has very little interest in Holmes.  In fact, she is far more interested in her own situation than in directly interacting with Holmes on any real level.  Instead we are left with Watson’s observations that to Holmes, she is always “The Woman”, which, combined with the fact that she is mentioned in future stories, though always in passing, suggests that she has continued to retain his attention, something we don’t see from many other subjects save Moriarty.