Much media consumption, and some thoughts on good and bad characters

[jlh]

So while I was running about the past week I consumed a lot of media.

VM: If you haven't read the Rob Thomas interview at TWoP, what are you waiting for? The spoilers are seriously minor and the info is fantastic.

I saw The Painted Veil and Dreamgirls this week. The Painted Veil was fine, though there wasn't enough story to support this big movie. Performances were excellent, scenery gorgeous, costumes fabulous, and the score just won a Golden Globe. But I left the theater feeling kind of eh. Dreamgirls, on the other hand, gets an enthusiastic recommendation—see it now! Everyone was great, but Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson were particularly amazing. It was also new to see a huge movie with an all-black cast. In accepting the Golden Globe for best comedy or musical film, the producer said that the reason the show, which was on Broadway twenty years ago, went so long before being on film was that it was waiting for that particular cast and I have to agree with him. How wonderful that we have so many gifted black actors and actresses and they are working regularly.

I don't have much to say about the Globes. I watched them last night and found myself zipping through a lot of speeches. I love that Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry are so BFF. I cried at America Ferrera's speech, too. I adore Ugly Betty so I was so excited that they won and loved how they were up on stage screaming and Salma Hayek was crying. And of course I was pleased at the Dreamgirls wins.

Speaking of Ugly Betty, OMG this week was awesome! I was totally fooled! All this time I also thought that the woman Wil was secretly working with was the dead editor and lover of Daniel's father Fey, not the dead brother Alex who got a sex change!!! And also OMG Rebecca Romijn, and also how much you want to bet that within ten minutes Daniel will be unknowingly hitting on his brother!

Okay, I've watched this week's Top Chef about five times, once with ali_wildgoose, and as I mentioned last week I've also been watching some back episodes, and every time I see something again, I get less sympathetic to Marcel. Hopefully no one reading this is on the boards at TWoP, which I have felt were way out of control long before now, and in fact got shut down for three days because the mod was so annoyed. I'm not making excuses here for the disturbing incident where Cliff basically assaulted Marcel in any way. I'm also not making excuses for Ilan, Sam and Elia not doing anything about it.

But I am saying that we do not all behave heroically in every situation—in fact, a recent Veronica Mars was about that very subject. Sometimes we succumb to peer pressure. Sometimes we make an unwise decision. Hopefully we learn from them.

What I'm more amazed about is Marcel's complete inability to learn from the situation that he's been put in. He's alienated the entire cast, even Elia at this point, and he has not sat down to think about why, just chalked it up to jealousy. It makes me sad, actually, because I don't think this will be the kind of moment for personal growth that Stephen had from last season. (I was really irritated by Stephen, and Stephen was a LOT more talented that Marcel—he won a pile of quickfires and was often in the top three, while Marcel only won one quickfire.) Even at the judges' table Marcel couldn't shut his mouth or read the room. During Gail's lecture of the other chefs is NOT a time to say, "Yeah!" Wow, talk about socially tone deaf. Yet the inability to play well with others is the sin that online fans will not only forgive you for, but LOVE you for, which might say something about online fans that I don't really like to think about.

Ali and I were talking about this incident and the TWoP boards and a comment that Rob Thomas makes in his interview about his time as the showrunner on Dawson's Creek. In one episode the football captain lies to everyone that Joey had sex with him, and Rob Thomas felt that Joey should really stick it to the guy, but the producers said it would make Joey too unlikable. Ali commented that if the good guy does something a little wrong, folks are all over them, but if a character is set up as a bad guy, they'll make millions of excuses for him. I find that interesting, this black and white way of viewing characters, and it's all over not only reality TV boards (because let's face it, reality "characters" are really just people, with both good and bad moments) but also HP fandom.

I find that kind of attitude baffling. One thing I dearly loved about Six Feet Under and Sex in the City is that they let their characters fuck up, let them spend many episodes being downright assholes. It's a luxury of an ensemble show, that you can have one character be really annoying for weeks and not have the whole show be annoying. When David was having his extended meltdown, Nate and Brenda and even Claire were pretty functional, and by the time Nate was being a jerk, David was back on an even keel. Same for the four ladies of Sex in the City. Rob Thomas also allows for Veronica Mars to be a total idiot sometimes, to let her judging get in the way of her judgement, especially in "Of Vice and Men." Never mind allowing Keith to fall down—he's lonely, he's attracted to this married woman, he's in a car crash, he says fuck it and sleeps with her. I'm not sure I can really blame him as much as Veronica needs to. Interesting that we want her to forgive Logan his faults because he's already been set up as a really flawed character, a reformed bad boy who just needs to be loved. But I wonder if the boards were as sympathetic to Keith, given that he has been set up as such a paragon of virtue, especially by Veronica. Yet the show seems to be saying, and I agree, that Veronica needs to give them both a break.

I know I'm not alone in liking characters with real failings, who don't always pull everything off even if they are one of the good guys, or to feeling that just because someone has a reason for acting like an asshole that isn't the same as an excuse for acting like an asshole, but it saddens and surprises me how few involved fans respond well to that.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

not the dead brother Alex who got a sex change!!!

Did I miss part of this week's show? Because I suspected that, but I have no memory of it being confirmed.

I know I'm not alone in liking characters with real failings, who don't always pull everything off even if they are one of the good guys, or to feeling that just because someone has a reason for acting like an asshole that isn't the same as an excuse for acting like an asshole, but it saddens and surprises me how few involved fans respond well to that.

Yeah, it's probably rare where people are able to like characters and not defend them. Like I was reading some L-Word boards and there was one person who was defending this character and was just clearly over-identifying with her. So it wasn't even, "Here are her reasons..." it was "But there was something else she could do because...!"

I think a lot of people are more comfortable when they feel righteous about their character always. Sex in the City I often just don't think much of any of the characters. I feel lucky and surprised when I feel like I can really root for them, and even then sometimes they annoy me by the way they behave in reaction to the situation. (And then I watch the show again anyway!)

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Well, Daniel tells Betty that Alex died in a skiing accident. And then at the end, Wil says to Rebecca Romijn something like, "It looks like that skiing accident paid off, ALEX MEADE" and I was all, !!!!


I was so hoping you'd comment here. I dunno, it sort of relieves me when people fuck up. It makes me feel a little better about myself, not in a schaudenfreude sort of way, but in a you know, we all fuck up sometimes way. I mean, I adore Seamus, but while I understand that he had more reason to believe his mother than Harry, and if you look at the scene where they fight he doesn't really turn on Harry until Harry insults his mother, I wish Seamus had been less of a doubting Thomas. And then with Harry, someone telling the truth always expects to just be believed, but if he isn't telling people what happened, how are they going to know?

So even with Snape and Draco, it's like, I can understand that they have their reasons, but I am not willing to accept all their excuses, nor all of Hermione's, nor all of Ron's, nor all of Harry's. And that's one thing I truly love about the books! I love it when Hermione's plans don't work as well as she thinks they do. (In fact, that was my very favorite thing about Alex's Snitch, when he revealed that Harry wasn't really as clever as he thought he was, but had been protected from prosecution by the Ministry of Magic. Adore!) I love it when Harry does things that maybe he oughtn't. After all, they're still kids, and that's how they learn, and I'd rather they learn that lesson in like, book 5, then fuck up in book 7, y'know?

So for me, liking a character means being able to say, well, here they might have gone too far even though I know they had their reasons. And I'll defend them from people saying, "they suck!" but not from people saying, "Gee, they kinda fucked up there." But you know me, I'm all about the not being on the extremes.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That Seamus example is great because we know he's wrong in the text--Harry isn't crazy. We also see that he's not acting out of real righteous ideas either. It's not like Seamus truly believes Harry's crazy. He just reacts defensively when Harry insults his mother. Yet you can still defend Seamus based on Harry's unreasonable reaction (he won't tell anyone what happened, and gets angry at Seamus for just reporting that people don't believe him).

What I've often seen is people "fix" the scene to favor Harry, claiming that Seamus called Harry crazy and that's what made Harry get angry at him. But really of course that's not what happens at all. And it's Seamus who has to suck it up and admit he's wrong, mostly on Harry's terms, since Harry never apologizes to him about what he said about his mother that I remember.

The HP books are full of scenes that people seem to fix or remember wrong to make it simple when one of the strengths is that things aren't usually simple. Or else people won't misremember scenes but still honestly seem to judge them in a way that's so biased they would be one of the kind of characters that drive them crazy. Then they drive themselves even more insane by being in a fandom where they're sure to meet fans of the characters they hate!

There sometimes seem to be fewer people who can acknowledge that sometimes they wish a character could have been better because they frankly look bad--like Seamus being a doubting Thomas or Snape or Draco being petty, vicious racists. But to really appreciate the character I feel like you have to be able to at least try to see them as not only right.

Thanks for that UB update--I must have totally missed that line!

[jlh.livejournal.com]

The HP books are full of scenes that people seem to fix or remember wrong to make it simple when one of the strengths is that things aren't usually simple. Or else people won't misremember scenes but still honestly seem to judge them in a way that's so biased they would be one of the kind of characters that drive them crazy. Then they drive themselves even more insane by being in a fandom where they're sure to meet fans of the characters they hate!

And then it gets compounded by all those "why" questions. Why would someone dislike Molly? Because they have their own Mother issues! Why would someone like Ginny? Because they have red hair and overidentify! Why would someone ship H/Hr? Because they overidentify with Hermione and want her to have the narrative prize! And it's like, you know, maybe I just think Molly is annoying, and Ginny is kind of cool, and Harry has more interesting conversations with Hermione than any other girl in the books and I like romances based on meetings of the mind, and so maybe it doesn't have anything to do with whatever I talk about to my analyst. Maybe I can disagree with you without being dismissed as insane. Do we need to be right that badly? I wonder at the way that literature is taught, I really do.

I swear, I never want anyone to ask "why" ever again.

[amyamy.livejournal.com]

I think part of it is that in real life there is this grey, good people have bad days and take it out on people who don't deserve and make bad decisions and that's life. But a lot of people, looking at TV or books or movies, they want it to be better. It's escapism, and they want things to be simpler than they are in real life, and more straight forward. They want good guys to be good and bad guys to be bad, and it takes some seriously good writing and acting to get people to accept and like it when the good guys aren't.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Well, okay, so I'll accept that on the kind of shows that even have good guys and bad guys because they have struggles like that—so like, action/procedurals/mystery/sci-fi/fantasy, sure, and melodramas like soap operas and novelas.

But if you feel that way about characters, why get involved in shows that are clearly all about the grey, like a drama, or a noir show like VM, or especially reality TV, which for all the manipulation still has real people doing real things and reacting in the moment? I think that's what drives me nuts, the trying to make heroes and villains on the part of both the producers and the fans of real people who are usually in high pressure situations and have been artificially separated from their personal support systems, who can't even kick back and watch TV or listen to music because that messes with the editing continuity, can't simply hide out from the people who annoy them because the producers want everyone interacting all the time, and yet the boards seem to want these people to not be edgy with anyone, not let their annoyance show, etc. I always want to say to them, jeez, do you think YOU could behave as well as you want them to?

[amyamy.livejournal.com]

Couldn't say for me personally, cause I never have gotten into reality shows, nor had a chance to see VM, but at a guess I'd say that yeah, they do think they could do better. And they're wrong, ninety-eight times out of a hundred, but that doesn't stop them thinking it.

It's the kind of impulse that gets one yelling at the screen for the girl in high heels not to pick up the phone in a slasher flick, or for the guy to just explain the embarrassing and questionable situation his prospective girlfriend has just caught him in during a romantic comedy. One forgets that they have all of the information and the characters don't and so they think they know better and would do things differently. And maybe that makes them feel better about the time last week when they didn't do differently and ended up fucking things up for themselves. Or maybe it's a sense of superiority to go along with their 'life should be perfect, and good is good and bad is bad' mentality.

I also think that it's not going to be the majority of the viewers who have a) your textual analysis background and b) your insight to both the medium and the people involved to be able to step back and go "Well, but look, the producers are fucking these people over, but they're still people". The majority of viewers, or at least the lowest common denominator of them, take things at face value and don't stop to think about what the guy with the camera just told them.

[scrabble.livejournal.com]

RT: By the way, here's a fun fact I don't think I've told anyone. The Moe character, before scheduling conflicts made it impossible, was supposed to be Michael Cera.

I am so the man!

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I SO thought of you when I read that!

You are so often the man where VM is concerned. If there is one sadness I'll have in not having multi-ep mysteries it will be missing the pleasure of watching you work them out.

[scrabble.livejournal.com]

I am not sure how I'll like the individual mysteries, if it in fact gets up. Frankly, the A plots of episodes are almost always my least favourite part of the episode.

[friendsofjunius.livejournal.com]

dude, you should totally be watching BSG.