More of Ian’s Gargoyles!
Monday, March 30th, 2015 09:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amarie24Trigger Warnings: Gun violence, patriarchy
This is a comment on Ian’s post on episode Avalon: Part Three.
So, um…wow. This episode really is a hot mess. It’s been quite a few years, but damn, you really highlight the mess of this third part of Avalon.
Some things that you said that especially stand out to me and I’m gonna make a wall of text on them:
…
…
Unfortunately, this isn’t really going to be a wall of text, but! Still something to say here!
This is a question of portraying women and accepted methods of resistance and violence from them. This is a question that can be applied to the original time that this Gargoyles episode aired, in 1995, and in this modern-day 2015.
That is, “real women” have a deep, unavoidable maternal instinct that causes them to “step up in the right ways” to protect their children. Let’s call this Mother Bear Syndrome.
Real women are, while at rest, not going to be combative and are usually being damsels in distress. Bonus points if they’re damsels purely because of their own silly, reckless, uninformed feminine wiles. But when it comes to their children being endangered (and, of course, they do have and want children), then they must engage in ways to protect them that validate that Mother Bear Syndrome.
This is where the masculine-coded involvement of guns comes in. It’s the double-whammy of requiring Mother Bear Syndrome, but also doing it in a patriarchy-approved way via using guns. Now, there’s the argument that it’s only really in the West (especially in America) where guns are coded as masculine and, therefore, acceptable methods of aggression and/or retaliation and not much elsewhere. But Gargoyles and these scenes weren’t created in a vacuum and, therefore, I think the context of guns sticks here.
So Katherine pretty much just did a patriarchy-approved stunt here: initiated Mother Bear Syndrome in a way that’s seen as valid (by guns).
Yep, yep.
And these instances where the series treats female characters horribly in regards to action and firearms isn’t necessarily anything new. I remember vividly, for example, where Elisa was Partially Fridged In A Coma because Broadway was playing with her gun and he accidentally fired a shot that hit her in the spine (?). And all of this to teach a lesson about gun control/safety.
Like they couldn’t have found just about any other way to teach that lesson? It was a majorly painful, disappointing time in the series for me, which I otherwise love. Ugh.
Gargoyles. Why?
This is a comment on Ian’s post on episode Avalon: Part Three.
So, um…wow. This episode really is a hot mess. It’s been quite a few years, but damn, you really highlight the mess of this third part of Avalon.
Some things that you said that especially stand out to me and I’m gonna make a wall of text on them:
…Demona, meanwhile, follows up on her poor showing in “High Noon” by doing exactly the same thing she did there, and ditching her gun at the first sight of Elisa. Elisa, for her part, is back to being hopeless with a gun, as the last bullet in her clip is spent on what looks to be a warning shot. Just what about Demona makes a warning shot a good idea? In the end, though, there is nothing to make me go “wow” about this fight.
And while I’m on the subject, let me just note just how much I hate the resolution to the Demona battle, specifically, the sickeningly smug and contrived “nobody harms my eggs” line, complete with blatant mugging for the camera. I can understand why the writers want to give Princess Katharine a badass moment, but everything about the way this particular moment is staged feels wrong.
…
First, it’s important to note how this moment serves to undermine several of the points “Deadly Force” made about guns.
…
It is also important to note how the writers apparently felt that Katharine needed a badass moment in the first place, and how that apparently meant that she needed to shoot at someone with a gun: in the end, it feels like a one step forward, one step back deal. Yes, it’s important to show women as being awesome, and doing by showing them winning fights still has value in 1995, particularly since we’re dealing with an older woman. And yet, the fact that this masculine-coded activity is what gets highlighted when they want to argue for her awesomeness, and not, say, her willingness to defy Constantine, or her by all indications bang-up job at the much harder–and feminine-coded–task of raising both an entire brood of gargoyles and Tom, makes this whole exercise somewhat disappointing. It suggests that, whatever successes the writers may have had with characters like Elisa, their conception of a strong female character is still largely tied to their ability to fight.
On a more murky note, this is the first of two times Gargoyles will show a mother who had previously been shown as helpless in the face of a more powerful threat suddenly developing a one-time burst of kickassery when her children are placed in danger. While I’m not sure how I feel about it, the parallel is interesting enough that I’m left wanting to analyze how Gargoyles deals with motherhood.
Unfortunately, this isn’t really going to be a wall of text, but! Still something to say here!
This is a question of portraying women and accepted methods of resistance and violence from them. This is a question that can be applied to the original time that this Gargoyles episode aired, in 1995, and in this modern-day 2015.
That is, “real women” have a deep, unavoidable maternal instinct that causes them to “step up in the right ways” to protect their children. Let’s call this Mother Bear Syndrome.
Real women are, while at rest, not going to be combative and are usually being damsels in distress. Bonus points if they’re damsels purely because of their own silly, reckless, uninformed feminine wiles. But when it comes to their children being endangered (and, of course, they do have and want children), then they must engage in ways to protect them that validate that Mother Bear Syndrome.
This is where the masculine-coded involvement of guns comes in. It’s the double-whammy of requiring Mother Bear Syndrome, but also doing it in a patriarchy-approved way via using guns. Now, there’s the argument that it’s only really in the West (especially in America) where guns are coded as masculine and, therefore, acceptable methods of aggression and/or retaliation and not much elsewhere. But Gargoyles and these scenes weren’t created in a vacuum and, therefore, I think the context of guns sticks here.
So Katherine pretty much just did a patriarchy-approved stunt here: initiated Mother Bear Syndrome in a way that’s seen as valid (by guns).
Yep, yep.
And these instances where the series treats female characters horribly in regards to action and firearms isn’t necessarily anything new. I remember vividly, for example, where Elisa was Partially Fridged In A Coma because Broadway was playing with her gun and he accidentally fired a shot that hit her in the spine (?). And all of this to teach a lesson about gun control/safety.
Like they couldn’t have found just about any other way to teach that lesson? It was a majorly painful, disappointing time in the series for me, which I otherwise love. Ugh.
Gargoyles. Why?
no subject
Date: 2015-04-02 08:03 pm (UTC)I'd never seen Elisa's shooting in "Deadly Force" described in fridging terms, nor had I ever really thought about it that way. I mean, the episode is about Elisa in a way fridging narratives usually aren't: we meet her family, her boss, and her personal archnemesis, and the whole endeavor changes Elisa's story in was both subtle and not. And yet, it's not like Broadway and Elisa's situations are in any way equivalent; the gargoyle, notably, does not need to get shot in order to learn his lesson; only the black, native woman is put through that, in order for her to learn a lesson which she only "needed" to learn because the writers made it so. So yeah, disappointing. Not especially surprising, given that these were the writers who, at the time, figured they only needed a single female, and evil, gargoyle, but still, disappointing.
(I'll admit, though, that I'm not sure I could have done better than "Deadly Force", had I the writers' resources and a mandate to do a gun safety story.)
And it goes to what is sort of becoming my working thesis as I go through these episodes: Gargoyles may be better than most shows at the time when it came to representation, and yet "better" isn't necessarily "good" (see also: season 2 Sleepy Hollow). Gargoyles thankfully, gets better at being better as it goes along, but even so, those good intentions don't always translate into writing that actually works.
no subject
Date: 2015-04-03 02:17 pm (UTC)But that IS just me and, again, I recognize that it was pretty difficult to do.
...I understand that everything just went DOWN HILL for Sleepy Hollow after season 2? And a lot of racist fans were doing everything they could to diminish/exclude Abbie and put Katrina (who, uhh...isn't nearly as interesting???) at the forefront...
no subject
Date: 2015-04-03 06:54 pm (UTC)It's also notable that Elisa doesn't even get the opportunity to be properly angry at being shot; she's just super-okay with it and ready to accept (undue?) responsibility for the event, which adds to the feeling you mention about the lesson being more important than the character. Not only that, it's a detail that's also consistent with what I've mentioned before about the show's need to have their marginalized characters insist on being the better persons.
As for Sleepy Hollow, yeah did go downhill in season 2. When I say it's "better", I mean purely in relation to the existing media landscape, not in relation to its season 1 self. Season 1 is better than many other shows at diversity, and has the benefit of being good. Season 2 is still better than many other shows at diversity, but isn't actually good. Sorry for being unclear.
(And to tie it up to Gargoyles, I'd really like to know which, if any, of the Sleepy Hollow writers were fans of the cartoon. I mean, consider the two premises: men out of time wake up in modern day New York--thanks in part to shenanigans by their red-haired sorcerer wives--where they pair up, and fall in love with African American policewomen. There's coincidence, and there is this.)
no subject
Date: 2015-04-03 11:04 pm (UTC)Ahh, I get what you're saying about Sleepy Hollow now. And no, my apologies for misunderstanding!
...Coincidence...actually, I'm getting straight-up deja vu...ohh, that's good, Ian. That's good catching right there. Hawt damn. @__@