Feminism and Firefly

[curgoth]

I've got three posts related to feminism brewing in my head. This is the first.

Presented, without commentary, three links to feminist readings of Joss Whedon's work.

(This one has been posted all over) A Radical Feminist reading.

A response by a sex-worker

A less negative feminist reading of Whedon's work

Comments

Randmon comments.

[olletho.livejournal.com]

In regards to the first article.... she has problems with a woman calling a man sir in a military context? WHY?!? I notice she did not denounce all military contexts as being automatically bad and failed to recognize the setting of Serenity itself as military (which I think it clearly is). The second post answered a lot of the more insane parts re sex workers better then I could have.

Rant on: literary critizism 101, of course the situation and characters aren't prefect, if they were perfect there would be no character development, friction or oh yeah, plot and entertainment. Remember plot and entertainment?

All fiction (and most history) is about only two things. Only two. What we want and what we fear (and just you try to get sex and violence out of that mix). Technically you can have a work of fiction about only one of those two (but I have never seen one) but frankly they would be boring as hell. Interestingly enough it seems possible to talk about what is desireable without impling what is feared but I can't think of even splatter horrors or Polish dystopias where discussion of what is feared doesn't imply what is desired.

So why are people looking for Utopias in fiction? Any sort of Utopia? At best the reaction from the masses will be 'yeah that's nice but the bit over there where the friction is is really more interesting', and at worst you'll find yourself in a befuddled wistfull minority as most people just dismiss it as unbelievable and move their attention to something they can at least dream to hope of being attainable.

Bah, so yeah being angry that a fictional universe isn't perfect is just dumb.

[tormenta.livejournal.com]

Argh. That first woman needs some training in film studies critism. The constant conflation of...

a) characters being sexist = show being inherently sexist
b) characters being sexist = director being inherently sexist
c) actors saying sexist things = director AND show being inherently sexist

made me wanna cry.

And the statement at the end about mixed race relationships being inherently abusive struck me as, um, racist as hell.