It's like the Chocolate War, only not
Jul. 12th, 2010 12:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficSo I've been Netflixing Popular lately (basically, Glee - Musical Numbers - Hamlet 2 - Jane Lynch, but the femslash starts at the title card and doesn't let up, so props) and I don't know how they did it, but they managed to make me side with an unrepentant homophobic bully that isn't played by Walt Goggins. And not in an "oh, her little sister has cancer" sort of way. In a "sure, Venom is bad, but he's not as bad as this group of 90s villains he's fighting" way. They did a sexual harassment episode and if the premise of the episode is that it's hellish to spend time being lectured about sexual harassment... why would you make an episode devoted to lecturing the audience about sexual harassment?
I mean, not to defend Nicole, but she at least gets that the entire thing is an arbitrary, sadistic witchhunt. This is the problem with welding comedic sociopathy to real-world morals, but apparently, the school system prescribes a literal, humiliating boot camp to people who are A. physically incapable of completing it (yeah, I know it's played for laughs that the fat kid can't climb a rope, but IRL, the military has weight requirements that have to be met before joining because people in that condition actually can't complete an obstacle course no matter how much you yell at them?), B. first offenders, and C. people simply accused of sexual harassment without any real proof, I guess going by the honor system that no one will simply rat on each other to get them into trouble. IN HIGH SCHOOL. Which is exactly what happens. This isn't presented as a fallacy on the part of the wise blind school principal, who has a disability and thus cannot be wrong about anything. (I'm not kidding, I think she's literally married to Toots from Clone High. Fandom Secret!) It turns out that they too have had the cruelty to... be female and have a sexuality? Skip down to D if you're curious.
Also, the EXACT SAME punishment is prescribed to A. boys who make unintentionally offensive comments to women, B. women who use a spycam to look at boys in the shower, C. women who use hate speech and commit prolonged bullying campaigns against effeminate males, and D. women who compliment the appearance of magazine models in the presence of men. Yes, a zero-tolerance policy, the hallmark of any rational, fair school system.
And I'm sure the feminists in the audience appreciate being represented by a literally shrill harridan.
And this of course speaks to my larger problem with Ryan Murphy's work, which is that he generally tends to grab the veneer of setting shows in the "real world", deliberately at odds with glossy, Disney Channel type fare... and then he includes the exact same morals you would find in an episode of Even Stevens. At least with Glee, the dissonance is the point, that they're trying to live in High School Musical despite being in Ohio. With Popular, they literally pause an episode to point out that it'd be cliche for the good-hearted but unpopular kid to become class president and follow it up with the Libby winning, then a few episodes later they spend forty-two minutes on how looks aren't everything, as if this is an earth-shattering blow to the fashion industry and not something Tiny Toons would do a show about.
Tl;dr - If you feel that strongly about sexual harassment, perhaps the conclusion to a season-long arc about a serial rapist should be "and then he's captured and punished" instead of "and then he gets away to continue his wicked ways because having cosmetic surgery done is a worse sin than rape."
I mean, not to defend Nicole, but she at least gets that the entire thing is an arbitrary, sadistic witchhunt. This is the problem with welding comedic sociopathy to real-world morals, but apparently, the school system prescribes a literal, humiliating boot camp to people who are A. physically incapable of completing it (yeah, I know it's played for laughs that the fat kid can't climb a rope, but IRL, the military has weight requirements that have to be met before joining because people in that condition actually can't complete an obstacle course no matter how much you yell at them?), B. first offenders, and C. people simply accused of sexual harassment without any real proof, I guess going by the honor system that no one will simply rat on each other to get them into trouble. IN HIGH SCHOOL. Which is exactly what happens. This isn't presented as a fallacy on the part of the wise blind school principal, who has a disability and thus cannot be wrong about anything. (I'm not kidding, I think she's literally married to Toots from Clone High. Fandom Secret!) It turns out that they too have had the cruelty to... be female and have a sexuality? Skip down to D if you're curious.
Also, the EXACT SAME punishment is prescribed to A. boys who make unintentionally offensive comments to women, B. women who use a spycam to look at boys in the shower, C. women who use hate speech and commit prolonged bullying campaigns against effeminate males, and D. women who compliment the appearance of magazine models in the presence of men. Yes, a zero-tolerance policy, the hallmark of any rational, fair school system.
And I'm sure the feminists in the audience appreciate being represented by a literally shrill harridan.
And this of course speaks to my larger problem with Ryan Murphy's work, which is that he generally tends to grab the veneer of setting shows in the "real world", deliberately at odds with glossy, Disney Channel type fare... and then he includes the exact same morals you would find in an episode of Even Stevens. At least with Glee, the dissonance is the point, that they're trying to live in High School Musical despite being in Ohio. With Popular, they literally pause an episode to point out that it'd be cliche for the good-hearted but unpopular kid to become class president and follow it up with the Libby winning, then a few episodes later they spend forty-two minutes on how looks aren't everything, as if this is an earth-shattering blow to the fashion industry and not something Tiny Toons would do a show about.
Tl;dr - If you feel that strongly about sexual harassment, perhaps the conclusion to a season-long arc about a serial rapist should be "and then he's captured and punished" instead of "and then he gets away to continue his wicked ways because having cosmetic surgery done is a worse sin than rape."
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 11:34 am (UTC)Jane Lynch is about the only thing I like about Glee.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-12 12:42 pm (UTC)