Let's talk about television? Apparently?

[labellementeuse]

So,

1. oh my god, did you SEE Ronon's ass in those pants? I nearly wrote an impromptu ode to the very very very gifted costume department.

2. John's dad was not military SO THERE. \o/


Also, I actually watched SPN: Malleus Maleficarum tonight, which I did not think I was going to do, because I had to stop watching the Christmas episode when the carol singing happened and since then I'd kind of lost momentum on the show, but.

The one thing I was thinking at the end of the show was "How great to see Sam and Dean genuinely saved by someone else! How great to have it be a woman! How super-awesome to give her fantastic presence of mind and courage in a terrifying situation she was poorly prepared for! And how fucking gratuitous to fucking kill her, you assholes.

I'm sure other people have pointed this out, but the only person Sam and Dean actually saved in this episode was the guy who did wrong, i.e., the cheating cheater. His wife, who did absolutely nothing wrong? DEAD. Her attacker? DEAD. Every other character, who were, okay, not exactly honest and true, but guilty of winning craft competitions? Oh yeah, dead as doornails. Was there even a nod to the fact that this guy was a cheating asshole? Oh hell no! GAH.

I thought Ruby's storyline was pretty cool and I enjoyed the writing on this episode - Ben Edlund's episodes have been pretty snappy - but I was reading someone else talking about his prediliction for extremely gross violence against women and this episode kinda took the cake. Urgh. Let's even the playingfield and kill some men, shall we, SPN? (I mean, I know that the show is part of the horror genre. But it was just creepily obvious that out of every. single. character introduced in this episode, every. single. woman was killed and neither of the men were. I mean, I liked seeing witches! In some respects I found the coven really fun! It just would have been nice if some of them had stayed alive.)

and, by the way, Sam's willingness to kill the coven no questions asked is not exactly a little baby step away from his previous position. I repeat: craft competitions!

Comments

[dubiously.livejournal.com]

Well . . . at the time Sam wanted to kill the witches, he thought they were all responsible for the death of the first witch (cannot recall her name) and that they were also trying to kill Dean. After the demon was revealed, there's no telling what position he would have taken on should die and who should live. But we can say definitely he no longer has any remorse about killing people who are simply possessed, people who are 110% complete innocents. I wouldn't exactly call that a baby step, either.

I completely agree with your frustration that the only person who lived was the two-timing bastard. WTF? I've never noticed anything about Ben Edlund's episodes having excessive violence toward women, but that's only because I have no idea which episodes are his. I'm gonna have to look and see which they are so I be properly annoyed over it with you.

Ugh. You're right about the horror genre in general, too. Lots of T&A that gets killed off, preferably after as much cleavage as possible. I think I have a skewed perception of SPN's fanbase being mostly female, because those are the fans I see and interact with. But in reality, I'm sure the network is desperate to keep as many of their male viewers as possible. Sucks that this is the way they go about it, though.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I forgot about that, but reflecting - it still seems kind of hasty. I mean, in the scene where Sam's ditched Dean to go threaten the ladies, he's clearly been thinking enough about the group dynamic to deduce that one of the coven is the demon. Now, he had extra information to do that, but not about the coven - he had the potential to actually consider whether the coven was necessarily all evil or not. But then maybe he would have gone into that hunting down the women prior to Ruby showing up?

I concur about the innocents thing, although the trouble with that is the boys are kind of screwed if they can't shoot a demon every now and then. I would like to see a few more exorcisms, though.

re: Ben Edlund: IMDB says he did Bad Day at Black Rock, Nightshifter, Simon Says, Hollywood Babylon. Nightshifter and Simon Says really stick out for me as episodes with a distinctively sexualised violence towards women, although I suppose 3/5 isn't so bad. [also, he wrote the Angel episode "Smile Time." Hee.]

But in reality, I'm sure the network is desperate to keep as many of their male viewers as possible. Sucks that this is the way they go about it, though.

I find it so skeevy that sexualised violence towards women (and torture porn like The Hostel and its ilk) is becoming so present in the culture. "Hmm, we need more male viewers. Better get some T&A. Oh, and while they're taking off their clothes and wandering around in skimpy negligees and creepily changing their top to something lacy and smexy, let's kill them!" Yecch.