Current mood:	aggravated
Entry tags:	feminism, squee, things that make me angry, tv watching

...but.
I'm probably last on the boat with this, but you are all dead to me if you do not go and watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. After all: supervillain musical starring Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris and written by Joss Whedon. The last time I saw that much awesome in one sentence was when I read that Richard Dawkins married Lalla Ward after meeting her at Douglas Adams' birthday party, and even that is trumped by supervillain musical.

But.

One of my long-standing problems with Joss Whedon is the fact that he is a feminist and dedicated to promoting feminism in his works, and at the same time manages to fail in some very important and disappointing ways. That doesn't make his work any less brilliant, or his activism less important, it's just - disappointing.

And with this, he isn't even trying.



So there are only three main characters in this. One of them is a girl. There's actually a pretty even gender ratio among the walk-on characters, i.e., everyone else, so I'll hand Joss that.

But the main female lead? Her job is to:

- be sweet, beautiful, kind to small animals, etcetera
- sing about life and love and stuff
- have no agency whatsoever
- be adored from afar by the antihero
- be dated, boasted about as a sex object, and publicly humiliated by the...er, hero.
- die tragically in order to emotionally effect the antihero.

Think of her, if you will, as Tara from Buffy, only if Tara had zero agency and gayness and coolness.

Please tell me I do not have to explain to you the ways in which this is so cliched it kills me, and this in a story which is otherwise trying to undermine, examine, and overturn superhero cliches. But THE GIRL STILL GETS FRIDGED.

I'm just - JOSS. FOR GOD'S SAKE, THINK FOR THREE SECONDS ABOUT YOUR PLOTS.

Otherwise - you know, hilarious! Brilliant! There was a horse! It rocked!

But the girl. gets. fridged.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.