Women in fantasy

[A. E. Lowan]

To an extent, I agree with aelowan. Maybe we, women, should 'vote with our dollars' (or in this case, our ad revenue/ratings). But the creators are not changing their shows just because we're watching them.

That's the thing. Creators won't change their shows because we're watching them. Why should they? We watch, because the thinking is "It's better than nothing," and they get their ad revenue. If the people who complained about the roles of women and minorities on TV voted with their dollars, things would change. Look at what it's done for the LGBT community. You have any idea how many years and how much money we've poured into changing popular culture? I remember the cries of triumph in my apartment building the year Philadelphia took Best Picture. I was 19 years-old. Change takes time, and money. Lots and lots and lots of money. And enough people standing up together and saying "that's enough."

And I mean both men and women. We need to stop trying to prove one is better than the other, and celebrate our differences. Isn't that the beautiful thing about having 2 sexes, anyway?

 

[saellys]

I never said it was. I said the attitude exists. And if you want any progress to be made, the wall has to come down. For you to say that my statements are irrational and baseless is at best close-minded and at worst condescending.

Did you not read Ophiucha's post earlier? She seems to get it.

Oh, believe me, I "get it". I know the attitude exists. I said earlier that I've encountered it. I've made it very, very clear that I want progress.

The argument you described is irrational and baseless once the person who actually believes it encounters any form of education. Feel free to explain how we are supposed to make any walls come down if someone insists, after being presented with the arguments, on clinging to a fear of a hypothetical future matriarchy that has absolutely no connection to the reality of the goal.

I'm here to open eyes and educate people as best I can; I'm not going to bother having a discussion with someone who keeps insisting that I want to see a male face under a jackboot. It's not true, and arguing that point is a waste of my time.

 

[Jabrosky]

To be sure, sometimes it is hard to know exactly how to represent women and minorities in the media without upsetting someone. People do not always agree on what counts as offensive.

For example, I once saw "feminist" ads for women's lingerie protesting rape culture, and they used as their mascot an overweight African-American woman. Immediately my racism detector went off because there is a deeply rooted history of representing black women in the media as physically unattractive and sexually undesirable (the so-called "Mammy" archetype). When I pointed this out, one of these "feminists" got angry at me and ranted about the media idealization of thinness for women. Apparently the ads' creators wanted to be "body positive" with their choice of an overweight mascot, but why did she have to be black?

But then, as an artist I've received flack from "feminists" for drawing leaner, physically attractive black women in skimpy lingerie, which in their view is offensive racial fetishization. This leads us to the following dilemma:

* Fat black woman in lingerie = body-positive despite the obvious Mammy connotations

* Thin and beautiful black woman in lingerie = racial fetishization

What I mean to get at is that no matter how you represent an oppressed group, someone is going to find something offensive about it.

 

[Mindfire]

Oh, believe me, I "get it". I know the attitude exists. I said earlier that I've encountered it. I've made it very, very clear that I want progress.

The argument you described is irrational and baseless once the person who actually believes it encounters any form of education. Feel free to explain how we are supposed to make any walls come down if someone insists, after being presented with the arguments, on clinging to a fear of a hypothetical future matriarchy that has absolutely no connection to the reality of the goal.

I'm here to open eyes and educate people as best I can; I'm not going to bother having a discussion with someone who keeps insisting that I want to see a male face under a jackboot. It's not true, and arguing that point is a waste of my time.

Some portion of the population will always be idiots. The rest of us should be invested in discussions like this one, which is in itself a marker of progress. Further progress depends on the willingness of both sides of the conflict to adapt. Realistically, you can't expect one side to concede everything. Both sides need to meet halfway. As for what concessions feminists might need to make, I would suggest abandoning or ostracizing the more "radical" or extremist sects of the movement. Those fringe groups, while small, amount to most of your bad press. Eschewing the word feminism altogether may be a step in the right direction. As for the anxious male side of the equation, I think some empathy and open-mindedness is in order, as well as a willingness to cut down on the cleavage if only in the name of keeping the peace. We need to move out of the combative phase and into the cooperative phase.

 

[Mindfire]

What I mean to get at is that no matter how you represent an oppressed group, someone is going to find something offensive about it.

This is true. No matter what happens someone will always be offended. But that doesn't make these dilemmas impossible, just really, really hard.

 

[Devor]

. . . . and the female audience is incidental.

To an extent, I agree with aelowan. Maybe we, women, should 'vote with our dollars' (or in this case, our ad revenue/ratings). But the creators are not changing their shows just because we're watching them.

It's still not true that shows don't target women. Maybe you're mentioning some of the very-few exceptions, but shows target women deliberately. The "dumb dad" trope we were just discussing is the perfect example for everything we were just talking about. The "dumb dad" is almost essential in sitcoms because they're considered non-threatening male authority figures to female viewers. A strong male parent turns away too much of the female audience. You can ask the execs; that's what they'll tell you.

Again, market research is a science, and the execs know what they're doing when they pick their shows. You design the product for the audience, that's the basic rule of marketing.

Also, while women play more "video games," they do not play anywhere near as many console video games. Women respond in surveys that what they want out of a video game is very different from what men want, and it has nothing to do with colors, imagery and the gender of the protagonists. Women respond that they want to play video games to help them relax, while men want games that are exciting to them. Just having a console appeals to active gaming - the audience is already built to be male, so the games are built around that audience.

 

[Feo Takahari]

The risk of supporting minority representation is that sometimes the artist doesn't actually deserve the support. Tyler Perry has steadily offended more and more people, but there are still a lot of people who watch him just because he makes movies for the black community.

 

[Devor]

That's the thing. Creators won't change their shows because we're watching them. Why should they? We watch, because the thinking is "It's better than nothing," and they get their ad revenue. If the people who complained about the roles of women and minorities on TV voted with their dollars, things would change.

I think part of the confusion is that, well, some of the issues people complain about have nothing to do with why they watch the show and the way they're being included in the target market. If I listed five ways a show might gain or lose female viewers, my list - having studied marketing in NYC - might be very different than yours, being a woman. It's far more subtle than you might expect. Shows target women a lot, even if they still give you something to complain about.

 

[Mindfire]

The risk of supporting minority representation is that sometimes the artist doesn't actually deserve the support. Tyler Perry has steadily offended more and more people, but there are still a lot of people who watch him just because he makes movies for the black community.

Speaking as a black person, Tyler Perry can shove it.

 

[Ophiucha]

I might grant you that, perhaps, execs think that these things will appeal to women and toss them in (though again, they are not the target audience; they are an audience who gets a token character and a nod). But they are not the target audience, that is obvious, and their choices are... questionable. I don't know many women who like the 'dumb dad' trope, to stick with this example. He's not attractive, he's not likeable; some women might get a laugh out of 'haha men are dumb', but I don't think it is enough to make a trope. Why would I want to see a woman having to deal with a manchild who gets away with everything and never faces any consequences? If I wanted a non-threatening male character, I'd write a feminist husband who took his wife's last name played by Ryan Gosling. Now that'd draw in a few ladies. These adult manchilds are just an extra burden for the wife characters, and while some women might sympathize (and I pity them), that's not appealing.

Also, looking at the specific shows on that link you posted earlier, I can't help but notice that the two big examples of 'dumb dad' characters are two of the only shows with more male viewers than female viewers.

Simpsons 0.67
Family Guy 0.68

But I mean, I just don't understand how you can argue that execs will always market to the largest audience, always, when they clearly and blatantly don't? Like, remove gender from this for a second. I mean, here's a 2011 stat chart for video games. The average gamer is in their late 30s, average buyer in their early 40s. Games that are played most often are puzzle/game show/trivia/board games, but those are not the games with the most marketing or the biggest budgets. People are playing more games on mobile devices, but companies like EA still focus their efforts on console gaming - sure, they'll toss out a few Facebook and iPhone games, they'll take the money, but they don't focus on it. They have their target demographic, and they don't try to change that.

More women are gaming, more women are watching TV, and that's great. Execs love that. But it's going to take a while before they really compensate for it, and if you're to be believed, it's going to take a while before they really understand what women actually want from their shows/games/books/whatever.

 

[Jabrosky]

I think the reason father figures are depicted as dumb in many shows is because they are the stars. They're supposed to be the ones who make us laugh. The female characters are by consequence less interesting even if they seem more intelligent.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I think the reason father figures are depicted as dumb in many shows is because they are the stars. They're supposed to be the ones who make us laugh. The female characters are by consequence less interesting even if they seem more intelligent.

I dunno... I feel it's the safer choice to make if a character needs to play the dunce role. The "Dumb Dad" trope will offend some men for certain. However, you're dealing with a group which has been largely advantaged in society for a long time. Maybe its easier for men to shrug off? I'm a part if that group...white males between 25 & 50. This trope only bothers me because it's overplayed & tiresome not because I'm offended.

I'm not sure I'd feel the same if I identified with a group that's been the object of modern discrimination. My gut tells me it'd be different.

 

[saellys]

Some portion of the population will always be idiots. The rest of us should be invested in discussions like this one, which is in itself a marker of progress. Further progress depends on the willingness of both sides of the conflict to adapt. Realistically, you can't expect one side to concede everything. Both sides need to meet halfway. As for what concessions feminists might need to make, I would suggest abandoning or ostracizing the more "radical" or extremist sects of the movement. Those fringe groups, while small, amount to most of your bad press. Eschewing the word feminism altogether may be a step in the right direction. As for the anxious male side of the equation, I think some empathy and open-mindedness is in order, as well as a willingness to cut down on the cleavage if only in the name of keeping the peace. We need to move out of the combative phase and into the cooperative phase.

Here's that muddying of the waters I was talking about. Instead of moving this conversation forward, I am going to waste five minutes on a post that reassures a hypothetical you that I'm not out to usher in a female super race, because just saying I'm not out to usher in a female super race apparently isn't enough, and God forbid that a hypothetical you just assume I'm not a misandrist, the same way I assume you're not a misogynist. But at least the next time this comes up, I can just direct a non-hypothetical whomever to this post.

Feminists do (constantly, in the course of discussions like this) abandon the extremist sects of the movement. The word feminism isn't going away because, unlike "egalitarianism" or any of the other options I've heard, it implies that there's a problem that affects one gender more than the other. Cleavage is irrelevant and no one's business.

So, when I'm in the middle of a discussion and I reiterate all these things for the umpteenth time and I still hear "I don't want men to get treated like women are getting treated now," which happens on the regular, how exactly am I supposed to handhold and mollycoddle my fearful hypothetically-oppressed male counterpart into reality? At what point, after how much time, do I get to throw up my hands and leave this dude for someone else? When does it cease being my sole responsibility to pry off someone else's death grip on their tired old prejudices, all while being labeled something I'm not and getting told I'm doing it all wrong and that "meeting halfway" in the pursuit of my cause requires renaming my cause so it's less uncomfortable for men? This is supposed to make men uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable every day of my life.

 

[Ophiucha]

I kind of wonder where that trope (the dumb dad) really did came from, now. Anybody here happen to be an expert on the history of sitcoms?

 

[Mindfire]

Here's that muddying of the waters I was talking about. Instead of moving this conversation forward, I am going to waste five minutes on a post that reassures a hypothetical you that I'm not out to usher in a female super race, because just saying I'm not out to usher in a female super race apparently isn't enough, and God forbid that a hypothetical you just assume I'm not a misandrist, the same way I assume you're not a misogynist. But at least the next time this comes up, I can just direct a non-hypothetical whomever to this post.

Feminists do (constantly, in the course of discussions like this) abandoning the extremist sects of the movement. The word feminism isn't going away because, unlike "egalitarianism" or any of the other options I've heard, it implies that there's a problem that affects one gender more than the other. Cleavage is irrelevant and no one's business.

So, when I'm in the middle of a discussion and I reiterate all these things for the umpteenth time and I still hear "I don't want men to get treated like women are getting treated now," which happens on the regular, how exactly am I supposed to handhold and mollycoddle my fearful hypothetically-oppressed male counterpart into reality? At what point, after how much time, do I get to throw up my hands and leave this dude for someone else? When does it cease being my sole responsibility to pry off someone else's death grip on their tired old prejudices, all while being labeled something I'm not and getting told I'm doing it all wrong and that "meeting halfway" in the pursuit of my cause requires renaming my cause so it's less uncomfortable for men? This is supposed to make men uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable every day of my life.

The cleavage remark was a humorous way of addressing the uncomfortable fact that is the male proclivity to oversexualize female characters. No need to be harsh. Incidentally, your post is a prime example of the attitude I mentioned earlier. And people will always misunderstand your views. What do you lose by explaining them? If they choose to be willfully ignorant that's on them, but at least you tried right? And I never said this was your sole responsibility. There are two sides to the conversation you'll remember.

Another problem with this issue is that while there are plenty of reasonable people on both sides of the issue, it's the radicals who always seem to be the loudest. Gotta do something about that.

 

[Mindfire]

I kind of wonder where that trope (the dumb dad) really did came from, now. Anybody here happen to be an expert on the history of sitcoms?

According to TV Tropes, it started out as a subversion of the "master of the house", wise and in-charge father archetype that was common in the 50s.

 

[Devor]

I might grant you that, perhaps, execs think that these things will appeal to women and toss them in (though again, they are not the target audience; they are an audience who gets a token character and a nod). But they are not the target audience, that is obvious, and their choices are... questionable. I don't know many women who like the 'dumb dad' trope, to stick with this example. He's not attractive, he's not likeable; some women might get a laugh out of 'haha men are dumb', but I don't think it is enough to make a trope.

Three things:

The dad is the least appealing character to women in that kind of sitcom, and the weak dumb dad subverts the aspects of the character which turn women off. It becomes necessary.

Plenty of "dumb dads" do appeal to women, but not remotely in the way you're thinking of. Once you take the edge off the character, many women start to see the dumb dad as the ideal husband, depending on other aspects of how he is portrayed.

And again, Market Research is a science. It's not about what execs think. It's what the research informs them. And I'm pretty serious about that. Everybody pictures the "focus group" of ten people chatting in a room, but the reality is that shows are tested on hundreds of viewers while still being piloted, that extensive demographic data is available for who watches what, that there's layers upon layers of data mining.

Someone working for one of the big four networks can tell you not only how many women like the dumb dad, but how many of which groups of women like them and why. And even those groups of women will be established through a process called K-Means Clustering, which links common patterns of behavior from raw data.

Also, looking at the specific shows on that link you posted earlier, I can't help but notice that the two big examples of 'dumb dad' characters are two of the only shows with more male viewers than female viewers.

Well, Simpsons and Family Guy aren't really the best examples. Among other things, they aren't the conventional sitcom so much as they are mocking the conventional sitcom, so they play very differently.

But I mean, I just don't understand how you can argue that execs will always market to the largest audience, always, when they clearly and blatantly don't?

Like, remove gender from this for a second. I mean, here's a 2011 stat chart for video games. The average gamer is in their late 30s, average buyer in their early 40s. Games that are played most often are puzzle/game show/trivia/board games, but those are not the games with the most marketing or the biggest budgets. People are playing more games on mobile devices, but companies like EA still focus their efforts on console gaming - sure, they'll toss out a few Facebook and iPhone games, they'll take the money, but they don't focus on it. They have their target demographic, and they don't try to change that.

There's a lot going on in the gaming industry which makes it very different from the television industry. Video games require a massive built in infrastructure, and many games sell based on the reputation of the company. Games also need a financial investment from their customers.

All of that makes a big difference. What you're seeing about people playing platform games, for instance, is people specifically buying Nintendo's platform games. It's not true that any well-marketed platform game will jump to the top of the list. Even platform games built for the Wii, by companies other than Nintendo, have flopped. Even those that have gotten rave reviews.

That also bears out in surveys. Even though sales for platform games are high - driven by Nintendo's sales - when asked what games they're most interested, very few people will even list platform games.

Many of those sales - trivia, game show, whatever else - were also fueled by the lack of competition for a good game being sold on the low-priced Wii.

At the same time, it's also true that Nintendo can't produce a story game worth a damn - Metro Other M, for instance, was their big recent effort. It sold well as a platformer but was panned for its storytelling. The two types of games take very different skill sets from the massive staff designing the game. Nintendo simply cannot do it.

That means that companies are heavily invested and committed to producing games of the same genre and overall brand they were producing yesterday. Major efforts to switch genres often flop.

I guess that's the simple answer. Big-time inertia. But there's other things going on. XBox and Playstation don't want to appeal to the casual gamer. They're selling $300 consoles, and casual gamers won't buy them. Selling a console is not about what games you'll buy, but what games you have to have. Those aren't platformers.

In the case of Microsoft's XBox, they have to sell $300 consoles because their long-term plan is for the XBox to replace your cable box, dvd player, and Tivo. They'll never do that selling cheaper games for casual players.

And of course, there are plenty of games being made that are platformers, trivia and the like - for the iphone. Just because EA isn't making many of them - which isn't quite true, as they've bought their way into the market by acquiring Playfish - it doesn't mean they're not being made.

 

[saellys]

Incidentally, your post is a prime example of the attitude I mentioned earlier.

My post is a detailed description of how I don't have the attitude you mentioned earlier. I can't win here.

And people will always misunderstand your views. What do you lose by explaining them?

Time. My patience and/or calm, if the conversation goes on as long as this one has and travels the same worn out roads. Potentially, an opportunity to discuss the topic with someone who might actually see things my way and help do something about it instead.

If they choose to be willfully ignorant that's on them, but at least you tried right?

Having done this again and again and again with people who choose to be willfully ignorant, I'm still trying to find the point of trying. Lately I've tried to feel out who is receptive and who isn't so I don't waste my breath or end up getting lectured about how I'm doing feminism wrong.

Another problem with this issue is that while there are plenty of reasonable people on both sides of the issue, it's the radicals who always seem to be the loudest. Gotta do something about that.

All I can do about that is speak louder, but apparently that's the wrong thing to do.

 

[Philip Overby]

No one has to "win" the discussion. Let's keep that in mind. Some people are just going to disagree and not change their stance. All you can do is present your argument and see how others respond to it.

On topic (sort of, since this isn't a discussion about fantasy anymore), I find the "dumb dad" trope to be pretty irritating as well. Most recently there was a commercial that showed a man sitting on the couch scratching, farting, and drooling as he watched TV. It's reminiscent of the old ads that used to have things like "So easy the wife can do it!" Neither are good representations. I prefer to see the pendulum somewhere in the middle myself.

Why are dumb dads presented in media and commercials now? These certainly aren't marketed towards men. Or maybe they are. I'm no expert on these things...thankfully.

 

[Mindfire]

My post is a detailed description of how I don't have the attitude you mentioned earlier. I can't win here.

Okay, full disclosure: I cheated. I subtly edited my statements to intentionally draw out a reaction from you so I could use it as an example. That was unfair and I apologize.

Time. My patience and/or calm, if the conversation goes on as long as this one has and travels the same worn out roads. Potentially, an opportunity to discuss the topic with someone who might actually see things my way and help do something about it instead.

And you're also losing an opportunity to get someone to understand your views who might not otherwise if you just wrote them off as a simpleton.

Having done this again and again and again with people who choose to be willfully ignorant, I'm still trying to find the point of trying. Lately I've tried to feel out who is receptive and who isn't so I don't waste my breath or end up getting lectured about how I'm doing feminism wrong.

Are you sure you're looking for someone receptive and not just someone who already agrees with you? And if that shot was directed at me, I was only suggesting ways to communicate your views that might be more effective from a pragmatic standpoint. Whether that's feminism right or wrong is your call I suppose.

All I can do about that is speak louder, but apparently that's the wrong thing to do.

Or we could silence the radicals. MUHAHAHAHAHA! But on a serious note. I don't think it's a matter of louder per ce. But the constructive dialogue needs to take center stage and the radicals need to be marginalized. Please note that my statements may not apply to you specifically. I'm more referring to feminism I encounter in general.