Oh Really? ( Wednesday Edition)

[selenak]

I know I've writtten and posted a rant about this very subject, the trivialization of the term "Nazi" in English, and now I can't find it again. Did anyone by any chance preserve it in their memories? Anyway: this post reminds me just how much I'm irked by it again. So do several of the comments. On the other hand, you learn something new every day: one of the comments brought up the Hitler-refused-to-shake-Jesse-Owens'-hand story which btw I grew up with as well and another poster replied that Owens had said: "Hitler didn't snub me – it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram." This was news to me, I googled, and it was indeed an authentic Owens quote.

Anyway, being linguistically and historically annoyed (and newly informed about a detail), I also met my quota of being annoyed by fannish habits, subsection: response to female characters before they even utter one word on screen. Re: Lucy Liu casting news, what she said. This is the very first detail making me remotely interested in Elementary, but if I come across much more "zomg! our holy slash pairing RUINED BY GENDERSWAP!" reactions, I'm tuning in for that reason alone. And hope the next Batman movie will have a surprise!female Robin which Nolan somehow managed to smuggle by the spoiler hounds, so there. (Otoh Christopher Nolan, aka the man who gave Commissioner Gordon a son as a plot point while totally ignoring the canonical niece/adopted daughter... I doubt it.) I'm also having flashbacks to Dirk Benedict making an utter ass of himself by ranting about how horrible a female Starbuck was. Incidentally, I anti-shipped Kara/Lee, but they do demonstrate effectively that making one half of a popular slash pairing female in a new tv incarnation might lead to on screen sex, it does not necessarily lead to a happy ending. Or even the conclusion that sex was a good idea. More the opposite. (Kara's Starbuck and Lee's Apollo made good friends and absolutely catastrophic lovers. Which thankfully they figured out at last.)

And while I'm at it: you know what else annoys me? The whole nudge-nudge, wink-wink approach in various so called "bromances". Sherlock and the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes actually being prime examples. Look, it may have been fun when Gore Vidal wrote his Ben Hur script like that in the 50s, but, current American Republican candidates for the presidency not withstanding, theoretically we live in more advanced times. Asexual Holmes is fine with me. Gay Holmes is fine with me. Bi Holmes is fine with me. Straight Holmes is fine with me. (Ditto for Watson.) But what is so getting old is the endless playing coy and runnig "gay! only not!" gags. Either go for main text or find another running gag, I say.

Comments

[astridv]

This is the very first detail making me remotely interested in Elementary,

Yes, me too. I could go a good while without another bromance show.

So far I've avoided the "omg there's a woman in my shiny slash fandom and now it's ruined" reactions... they're predictable and I can't take much more of that same old, same old BS.

[selenak]

Lucky you. I'm fond of this macro by Ingrid Matthews, though.

[jesuswasbatman]

I am deeply worried that making Watson a woman, in the current US TV context, will be simply used for fanservice and/or the deeply sexist and protagonist-woobifying "genius wrangler" trope.

But agree about the annoyingness of anxiously deniable homoeroticism in this day and age.

[selenak]

I'm a bit more well-inclined towards US tv right now after having marathoned Homeland (in which the difficult genius is a woman, but not a woobified one despite, um, a lot of things happening that could have led to woobifying in a lesser show - oh, and the male antagonist isn't a woobie, either, despite, see above) and Breaking Bad. But I know what you mean, and CBS isn't Showtime or HBO anyway.

Otoh: I wouldn't have watched as much as the pilot otherwise but now I will, and hopefully that will tell Joan Watson's standing in the narrative.

[pseudo_tsuga]

Yes, there was a whole to-do on tumblr about how horrible it was that they couldn't get bromance anymore! Never mind that an Asian woman Watson is more progressive by far than hints that are laughed at and debunked by the show creators. It's 2012, we should at least be able to get queer text instead of settling for longing gazes.

[lilacsigil]

Lucy Liu is terrific, bromance is not textual queerness, and I would be very pleased indeed if she had been Holmes. I am rather dubious about them casting an Asian woman in what is usually a role that's not quite so smart, a helper, a "nice" role. I used to love Cuddy on "House" until she got shoehorned into that role and it's not something I want to see again. But Lucy Liu is awesome enough for me to give it a go anyway.

[lizvogel]

I'm not usually a fan of genderswapping (in either direction) on principle, but I like Lucy Liu enough that that alone might get me to watch the show. And really, everything else imaginable has been done to Holmes canon; why not genderswap?

I'll be curious to see what effect this has on the portrayal of Watson's military background, if they even mention it.

One does hope that they won't use this as an excuse to reduce the whole Holmes-Watson relationship to constant UST. One is not optimistic, but fingers are crossed.