“Please, stop talking”: A Masterpost.
gallifreyanconsultingdetective:
do action movies know they can have more than one female character
Someone should make an action movie with all girls except for one guy and have no explanation or mention of it in the movie and then pay all of the actors to act surprised like they’d never noticed when they get the inevitable storm of questions.
This one male must have a shower scene, be saved by the protagonist at least once, and fall in love with a lead female.
I don’t know if some of you have been to these live reads at LACMA, where a classic film is read live on stage by actors who just sit and read the script. We did one recently of American Pie, but we reversed the gender roles. All the women played men; all the men played women. And it was so fascinating to be a part of this because, as the women took on these central roles — they had all the good lines, they had all the good laughs, all the great moments — the men who joined us to sit on stage started squirming rather uncomfortably and got really bored because they weren’t used to being the supporting cast.
It was fascinating to feel their discomfort [and] to discuss it with them afterward, when they said, “It’s boring to play the girl role!” And I said, “Yeah. Yeah. You think? Welcome to our world!
Olivia Wilde crushing it when she talks about women in Hollywood. (via wildroses-peonies)
It’s interesting. Also, it’s got such a huge female following. The original [Sir Arthur Conan Doyle] stories had a huge female following, which I’d never forgotten, and that’s because the Victorian ladies liked the way Sherlock looked. (Laughs.) So I thought, use this massively exciting, rather handsome man who could see right through your heart and have no interest … of course, he’s going to be a sex god! I think we pitched that character right. I think our female fanbase all believe that they’ll be the one to melt that glacier. They’re all wrong, nothing will melt that glacier.
The Hollywood Reporter Interviews Steven Moffat, 1/1/2014
I’m sorry, the answer you have provided does not compute. Could you mean:
“young women love a thrilling detective show as much as men do”
or
“young women enjoy the (explicitly homoerotic and) incredibly dynamic friendship of a person and his best friend, and how it grows over time”
or
“young women appreciate the visual and mental stimulation of good television programming”
You can also try “young women are not limited exclusively to liking things because they find someone physically appealing,” “young women as a whole do not want to be the one to ‘fix’ an emotionally unavailable sociopathic man, and it is damaging to assume that having those qualities makes someone a ‘sex god’,” or “young women do not imagine themselves with Sherlock, moron, do you even know your fanbase, every square inch of it is covered in Johnlock because women appreciate the interplay between those two characters, not everyone is a goddamned Mary Sue like you, god damn it.”
Please try again.
(via thewolf3)
tbh i think there’s a fair amount of projection going on here. i suspect that steven moffat is actually describing HIS OWN attitude towards female characters, in that his favourite type of female character is one that he’s attracted to. which is why he churns out so many formulaic perky/sexy/feisty ladies for doctor who and sherlock: his one criteria for “appealing female character” is “i think men [like me] would want to bone her”. i mean, he’s literally stated that he only became truly enthusiastic about hiring karen gillan for amy pond when he realised that she was tall and beautiful rather than “dumpy”.
steven moffat assumes that ~all of womankind~ are the same way about male characters as he is about women, so OF COURSE it makes sense that if a male character is popular with female viewers, it must be thanks to a bunch of “attractive” traits that he’s basically just pulled out of his ass to answer interview questions like this. i mean, my god. most “”women”” do not watch sherlock because they think sherlock is a “sex god” who they want to ~tame, they watch it because it’s an entertaining show, the john/sherlock relationship is compelling, and it’s fucking SHERLOCK HOLMES. also, the above commenter is totally right about johnlock. the lack of mary sue fanfic in sherlock fandom speaks for itself. female fans are not projecting themselves into a romance with sherlock — they are interested in THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SHERLOCK AND JOHN, be it romantic or platonic.
(via hellotailor)
everything that really needs to be said about this fucking horrific quote has already been said by the people above basically, but oh my GOD
my first reaction was just not to understand how he can possibly go through life interacting with women and not realize that they are you know, people, but that second bit of commentary sheds a new light. maybe it’s more that he just expects women to care about the same things in men that he cares about in women. it’s like he’s projecting his own priorities when it comes to women onto all men, and then assuming that the mirror/equivalent priorities also apply to all women. that’s some next level narcissism, isn’t it?
not only is there no significant portion of the female sherlock fandom focusing on the idea of themselves with sherlock (as pointed out, the almost total lack of sherlock/reader fanfiction is EXPLICIT testament to that), there actually IS something that the majority of the female sherlock fandom is focusing their attention on, which is obviously the elephant in the room here. it’s like moffat WANTED or EXPECTED this to be what enticed and captivated women about his show, and when it turned out to be the gay relationship he created but won’t admit to, he just decided to ignore reality and pretend that his prediction had occurred.
and can we talk about the fact that moffat says this shit as he himself is in the process of holding a narrative blowtorch to the glacier that is sherlock’s heart right in front of our eyes?
(via graceebooks)
Female Reading of the Male Gaze, and Sherlock
Why the dismissal of women’s readings of Sherlock bothers me so much
Male showrunners and actors: They’re just friends. Why are you reading sex into this?
Female fans: They obviously want each other.
Male showrunners and actors: No they don’t. You’re hysterical and oversexualized and deluded.
Female fans: No we’re not. It’s OBVIOUS they desire each other.
Male showrunners and actors: NO THEY—
Female fans: YES THEY—
[ad infinitum]
Film and television are visual mediums. The text comes from what we see, not just the script, and definitely not extra-text commentary. Sherlock especially is a strikingly visual story that is all about looking.
Any woman with any sense of self-preservation spends her whole life learning to read the male gaze. The reason is not because women are constantly checking to make sure they are desirable (as many men like to think); the reason is because women have to. The consequences for not noticing when a male gaze equals “desire” are very dangerous, and so obvious I don’t even have to explain them. Any woman who walks through a parking lot at night, who has to spend her days avoiding a co-worker who sexually harrasses her but not enough to make it worth it to fight back, who deals with members of the public service who laugh at her when she is being threatened (I am thinking of that woman in San Francisco who tried to get a BART bus driver to call the police when a man was threatening to rape her and got ignored)—any woman who LIVES ON THIS PLANET has to learn to be aware of the male gaze and interpret it for signs of arousal and/or danger from a young age. This is SO MUCH BIGGER than “women want romance” or “women want love” or any of that ignorant shorthand for “women aren’t reading this show correctly.” It is definitely bigger than Sherlock.
If a man stood right in my personal space and stared into my eyes I would know how to interpret that. If a man licked his lips while staring at my face I would know how to interpret that. If a man belitted and chased off my romantic partners I would know how to interpret that. If a man asked me to reach into his jacket and pull out his phone I would damn well know how to interpret that. Any time I have tried to brush aside suspicions under these circumstances, I was proved right that I should have trusted my instincts, and I wound up in dangerous situations (luckily, nothing terrible resulted thanks to being able to escape, but the danger was real). If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but at least I don’t get locked in a basement in Cleveland for a decade. Women have to err on the side of caution. People are right when they say the sexual tension moments in Sherlock are brief, but that doesn’t matter: if you’re a woman you have to take even the briefest flashes into account. There is a reason we call these moments “eyefucking.”
Sherlock is all about the power of sight, of the gaze, specifically the male gaze. (There’s a whole article in that, but I’ll resist.)
We get Sherlock POV when he interprets a scene, with those subtitles and graphics; we get John POV for everything else (that’s my reading, anyway; Watson is the narrator of the Sherlock Holmes tales, after all). There are only a few establishing shots/omniscient narrator scenes that aren’t from John or Sherlock’s POV, e.g. the victims at the beginning of ASIP, or Moriarty texting in front of Big Ben in ASIB or in a cell in THOB. We briefly see Irene’s POV as she looks at pictures of Sherlock (in that beautiful sequence where they look at pictures of each other), but that’s about it. (I’ve never been certain whether that dream sequence of Irene interpreting the “bed scene” was from her POV or Sherlock’s or both.) I have hopes we’ll see Molly’s POV in TEH but of course I haven’t seen it yet.
The denial of the male showrunners of Sherlock and the firm disagreement of the female fans just proves to me that even in the 21st century, men and women live in different worlds.
5 men: There’s no sexual tension.
Thousands of women: Yes there is.
5 men: Clearly you’re wrong!
I don’t need this ship to be canon, it’s not the differing opinions that bothers me. The writers are free to write whatever they want and I’m on board. I just want some acknowledgement—from the world at large—that women’s perspective on human interactions is just as valid as men’s and doesn’t come from wishful thinking. Quite the opposite.
Bottom bit bolded, because THIS. Fucking THIS, a thousand times THIS. It cannot be said strongly or loudly or often enough: we get so, so fucking tired of being told that we’re delusional, when everything – everything – is telling a different story than the ones TPTB think they’re telling.
Women are forever being told we’re imagining it all – from PMS to actual hostility and danger to narrative romance, and everything in-between. Women are always ’imagining things’, and men are always there to set us straight. Well, fuck that.
Are you telling me
that they canceled young justice
because more girls watched it than boys?
wait. WHAT?!?!
I hate this so much
“How the Media Failed Women in 2013,” courtesy of Miss Representation. This is mind-boggling and you must watch it right now.
(Source: http://gaywrites.org/)
Where were my women who were forced to learn that with great power comes great responsibility? Where were my awkward school girls who were just trying to graduate high school when they found they didn’t need their glasses anymore, but could lift a school bus one-handed? Where were the funny best buddies? It’s not as though we can all be Lara Croft. Yet for a long time, she was all we had: if you were a woman, you had your place, on one end of the spectrum or the other. Why, I still ask every single time the movie is on TV, is it Kick-Ass and not Hit Girl?
Then the recent Marvel films arrived. Pepper Potts came along in her business-wear and skyscraper Louboutins and was unstoppable in her rise to CEO of Stark Industries. Black Widow slunk onto the scene and showed us that we don’t need to choose between sexy and dangerous. Jane Foster, the astrophysicist genius, still blushed when confronted with Thor’s overwhelming good looks, just the way the rest of us would, while Darcy Lewis was as concerned about her iPod as she was about the faceless government organisation behind its theft.
Maria Hill reached the very top of the male-dominated SHIELD organisation, Sif is a fully-fledged goddess of war, and Peggy Carter was a sharp-shooting, red lipstick-wearing female officer at the frontline of WW2. These aren’t the cardboard cut-out women of action movies gone by. They’re more than the girlfriends or relatives or unobtainable dream girls, more than pawns for a hero’s man-pain. They’re definitely more than a gorgeous yet robot-like tomb raider with a penchant for dressing in clothes that are so often inappropriate for the weather.
They’re you, me. The boss you want to be someday, the academic your friend aspires to. The student who just wants to listen to music and have fun. The women who can do battle, run Fortune 500 companies, wield tasers and drive questionably. Girls who can show fear but fight against the bad guys anyway, who flirt just for fun. The brainwashed Russian superspy assassin. (OK, so maybe not that last one. Then again, we do all have that one friend we wonder about.)
