Come again?
Jul. 27th, 2007 03:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakYou know, maybe it's just a coincidence, due to Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows being released/getting published with none too long a time span between them. But I noticed a disturbing phenomenon. No, not in the film and in the book. In the reaction of some fans. And it's starting not just to irritate me but freak me out.
It's the new definition of motherhood as a fate worse than death that seems to be en vogue. Seriously. Back before AWE got released,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
artaxastra wrote a kick ass post, "The Return of the Queen", in response to the reaction one spoiler got, to wit: "If Elizabeth has a baby she might as well be dead." As it turned out, this reaction multiplied once the film actually hit the screen, though thankfully not on a universal level. The fact that in a clip shown after the credits, Elizabeth Swann is shown with a child at her side ten years later, watching the Flying Dutchman with Will Turner reappear in it, was subject to endless wank. (And no, I'm not talking about the "does it count that the scriptwriters say Will is released from the curse after those ten years?" debate.) You could read post after post claiming Elizabeth's entire development as a character through three movies was negated by the fact she has a child, that from becoming not just a Pirate but the Pirate King she was reduced to "a housewife". Now the thought that Elizabeth gave up sailing through the decade between the last pre-credit scene and the post-credit clip never even occured to me, especially because the kid was there. She didn't have just herself to support, but a child. How would she do that? She can't claim her heritage from her father, because there's a death warrant on her head, and though Becket is dead, the warrant was actually issued for something she had done - helping a pirate escape - , and that's not counting her subsequent actions to which there were plenty of witnesses. And Will certainly won't be sending his salary from the Flying Dutchman any time soon. So I had no doubt that Elizabeth continued as a pirate, with the island as her base of operations, which makes sense, because it's the big pirate meeting place, and where she was elected king. That she did this while also raising a child? Made me love her all the more.
The idea that having a child "weakens" her as a character, that this makes her less Elizabeth instead of more so - I really can't understand this. I even find it faintly offensive. But not as offensive as some of the stuff I've read following the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
First, you get complaints about Molly Weasley finishing off Bellatrix Lestrange, either because "this was supposed to be Neville's kill" or because Molly the mother and housewife defeating Bellatrix the Death Eater is supposedly unfeministic. Now, the Neville argument I don't agree with (Neville going "you tortured my parents, prepare to die" on Bellatrix might sound cool in theory, but see, one of the great things about Neville is that he's in this fight for the world at large, and when he kills Nagini, he does that for everyone, not for personal revenge), but it's absolutely a point one can raise, I have no problem with it. But I fail to see Bellatrix as even remotely feminist. She's an impressive villain... who outdoes Peter Pettigrew in bootlicking Voldemort and shows absolutely NO self respect in her complete subjugation to him. Meanwhile, through seven books, is there any doubt who rules the Weasley clan? Not Arthur, that's for sure. You can dislike Molly, if you like - she certainly has flaws (she jumps far too quickly to conclusions, see her reaction to Rita Skeeter's article about Hermione in book 4, or her reaction to Fleur in HBP, for example) - but how one can deny someone who managed to to raise seven children and keep even those complete anarchists, Fred and George, in line (when Hermione wants to stop the twins from using first years as experimental subjects, she threatens to tell their mother; not their father, their mother; and it works!) is a strong person beats me. What's more, Molly in Order of the Phoenix is shown to be one of the members of the original Order. She has fighting experience from the last war. Molly going after Bellatrix and defeating her? Was a splendid scene and I still feel like cheering when rereading it. So you can imagine how I feel about complaints that "Molly the baby machine" should not have either fought or won against Bellatrix.
Just a little less enraged than about posts that say the epilogue "reduces Hermione to another Weasley broodmare" or "shows Hermione and Ginny as baby machines". I don't care whether you like, dislike or hate the epilogue; whether it sank your ship, whether you feel you either wanted to know far more about the trio than that 19 years later, they're still around, still friends and have children, or didn't want to know anything at all. It's not even that two children in 19 years for Hermione and Ron and three children in nineteen years for Harry and Ginny (with the age of the oldest showing they waited at least six to eight years after the rest of the book) really do not qualify for imagery drawn from mechanical mass production. No, it's again, as with Elizabeth, the assumption that having a child - or in this case, children, plural, somewhow ruins a female character, makes her a lesser being, less interesting, that I find deeply offensive.
Just for the record: I don't have children. Considering I'm 38, chances are I won't have any in the future, either. But terms like "brood mare" or "baby machine" still hit me on a very personal level; I find them misogynistic, and the fact they seem to be used by other women (one can never be sure about gender on the internet, of course) makes me downright sick.
If you're saying you don't want every story about a female character to include a child: I get that. I love childless female characters as well as those who do have offspring, and I do want my characters to have the option, too. But if you call female characters with children deragatory names, you're not being feminist, you're being sexist. And you're making me disregard whatever other criticism you have about the text you're complaining about, no matter how valid it might be, because I'm too busy raging and clicking the hell away from your post.
It's the new definition of motherhood as a fate worse than death that seems to be en vogue. Seriously. Back before AWE got released,
artaxastra wrote a kick ass post, "The Return of the Queen", in response to the reaction one spoiler got, to wit: "If Elizabeth has a baby she might as well be dead." As it turned out, this reaction multiplied once the film actually hit the screen, though thankfully not on a universal level. The fact that in a clip shown after the credits, Elizabeth Swann is shown with a child at her side ten years later, watching the Flying Dutchman with Will Turner reappear in it, was subject to endless wank. (And no, I'm not talking about the "does it count that the scriptwriters say Will is released from the curse after those ten years?" debate.) You could read post after post claiming Elizabeth's entire development as a character through three movies was negated by the fact she has a child, that from becoming not just a Pirate but the Pirate King she was reduced to "a housewife". Now the thought that Elizabeth gave up sailing through the decade between the last pre-credit scene and the post-credit clip never even occured to me, especially because the kid was there. She didn't have just herself to support, but a child. How would she do that? She can't claim her heritage from her father, because there's a death warrant on her head, and though Becket is dead, the warrant was actually issued for something she had done - helping a pirate escape - , and that's not counting her subsequent actions to which there were plenty of witnesses. And Will certainly won't be sending his salary from the Flying Dutchman any time soon. So I had no doubt that Elizabeth continued as a pirate, with the island as her base of operations, which makes sense, because it's the big pirate meeting place, and where she was elected king. That she did this while also raising a child? Made me love her all the more. The idea that having a child "weakens" her as a character, that this makes her less Elizabeth instead of more so - I really can't understand this. I even find it faintly offensive. But not as offensive as some of the stuff I've read following the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
First, you get complaints about Molly Weasley finishing off Bellatrix Lestrange, either because "this was supposed to be Neville's kill" or because Molly the mother and housewife defeating Bellatrix the Death Eater is supposedly unfeministic. Now, the Neville argument I don't agree with (Neville going "you tortured my parents, prepare to die" on Bellatrix might sound cool in theory, but see, one of the great things about Neville is that he's in this fight for the world at large, and when he kills Nagini, he does that for everyone, not for personal revenge), but it's absolutely a point one can raise, I have no problem with it. But I fail to see Bellatrix as even remotely feminist. She's an impressive villain... who outdoes Peter Pettigrew in bootlicking Voldemort and shows absolutely NO self respect in her complete subjugation to him. Meanwhile, through seven books, is there any doubt who rules the Weasley clan? Not Arthur, that's for sure. You can dislike Molly, if you like - she certainly has flaws (she jumps far too quickly to conclusions, see her reaction to Rita Skeeter's article about Hermione in book 4, or her reaction to Fleur in HBP, for example) - but how one can deny someone who managed to to raise seven children and keep even those complete anarchists, Fred and George, in line (when Hermione wants to stop the twins from using first years as experimental subjects, she threatens to tell their mother; not their father, their mother; and it works!) is a strong person beats me. What's more, Molly in Order of the Phoenix is shown to be one of the members of the original Order. She has fighting experience from the last war. Molly going after Bellatrix and defeating her? Was a splendid scene and I still feel like cheering when rereading it. So you can imagine how I feel about complaints that "Molly the baby machine" should not have either fought or won against Bellatrix.
Just a little less enraged than about posts that say the epilogue "reduces Hermione to another Weasley broodmare" or "shows Hermione and Ginny as baby machines". I don't care whether you like, dislike or hate the epilogue; whether it sank your ship, whether you feel you either wanted to know far more about the trio than that 19 years later, they're still around, still friends and have children, or didn't want to know anything at all. It's not even that two children in 19 years for Hermione and Ron and three children in nineteen years for Harry and Ginny (with the age of the oldest showing they waited at least six to eight years after the rest of the book) really do not qualify for imagery drawn from mechanical mass production. No, it's again, as with Elizabeth, the assumption that having a child - or in this case, children, plural, somewhow ruins a female character, makes her a lesser being, less interesting, that I find deeply offensive.
Just for the record: I don't have children. Considering I'm 38, chances are I won't have any in the future, either. But terms like "brood mare" or "baby machine" still hit me on a very personal level; I find them misogynistic, and the fact they seem to be used by other women (one can never be sure about gender on the internet, of course) makes me downright sick.
If you're saying you don't want every story about a female character to include a child: I get that. I love childless female characters as well as those who do have offspring, and I do want my characters to have the option, too. But if you call female characters with children deragatory names, you're not being feminist, you're being sexist. And you're making me disregard whatever other criticism you have about the text you're complaining about, no matter how valid it might be, because I'm too busy raging and clicking the hell away from your post.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 01:13 pm (UTC)I also can't help thinking that at least in case of the Weasleys, a good helping of social snobbery is involved, which equates poverty and a large number of children with low lives. In that vein, Molly beating the aristocratic and childless Bellatrix is of course doubly offensive, as she is just rabble.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 01:22 pm (UTC)It might be in some cases; I'm a bit reminded of Joe Quesada vetoing Peter Parker having children because that would "age" Peter beyond any possible identification by teenage readers. However, as you say, that doesn't acount for posters whose lj info at least claims they're not teenagers anymore...
I also can't help thinking that at least in case of the Weasleys, a good helping of social snobbery is involved, which equates poverty and a large number of children with low lives. In that vein, Molly beating the aristocratic and childless Bellatrix is of course doubly offensive, as she is just rabble.
I suspect that is the case, though of course nobody would admit to such a prejudice and would pretend that wasn't their reason. But I do remember watching one of the film versions (CoS I think) and hearing people behind me saying how Molly was a "asoziale Zimtzicke", which...
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 02:19 pm (UTC)Ugh. Reizend.
Going briefly back to the gender issue, I do think the idea that women who have children are worth less is somehow an inversion of the idea that women are only worth something when they have them, but it only ends up strengthening the position that women are only then complete persons when they stripe away all feminine aspects and become like men. Now I neither have, nor do I particularly want children, but I don't think that makes me in any way "superior." It just keeps my economical situation from getting worse.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 01:48 pm (UTC)Like I said: you ain't seen nothing yet. *g* This is just the tip of the iceberg. *facepalm*
I kept wondering if those fans are incredibly young, and don't like it when characters get distanced from them by suddenly having children themselves and becoming by definition "adults."
I know nothing about the PotC fandom, but in the case of the HP fandom I'd say it's much uglier than that. The main two factors appear to be: (a) Hermione and Ginny having children gets in the way of the grumbling fans' desired ship, and (b) they have severely skewed ideas of what constitutes feminism.
I am not kidding when I say that the same people who are screaming bloody murder at Hermione and Ginny having kids have written, reviewed, and raved about fics in which Hermione settles down with Harry and raises 15 little Potters. It's just insane.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 02:02 pm (UTC)I ... guess I'll stay in my peaceful little world where people are sane and try to use discussions to enlighten themselves.
(b) they have severely skewed ideas of what constitutes feminism.
And it's not even as if you couldn't discuss JKR's gender politics on reasonable grounds, as I am sure there is material without end. But calling someone with children a "baby machine" and using it as an insult against the character does betray your own prejudice more than providing any form of critique against the author's ideas, as has been said above.
The main two factors appear to be: (a) Hermione and Ginny having children gets in the way of the grumbling fans' desired ship
To that I can only say: "You don't like your favourite book series canon anymore? Welcome, children, to the shiny world of fan fiction, where you can change what you disliked at your heart's desire!" (Of course, I suspect that's not what most people want at all - they merely want to be right, and for that they need to be verified by JKR.)