Woman on Top: Feminism and Subversion of Themes, Roles, Gaze in STARZ’ Outlander Episode 101

[graphic: STARZ via IMDB.com]

Outlander’s overwhelmingly female fanbase has been waiting more than 20 years for the adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s eponymous first bestseller. The author turned down a number of opportunities for the book to be realized as a movie, but it was Ron D. Moore’s treatment as a cable TV series that got the nod.

Since the series was announced over a year ago, fans expressed concern as to whether the series would adequately reflect the rich history of two war-shattered periods — the aftermath of World War II, and the ramp-up to Scotland’s 1745 Jacobite uprising. The book had been pigeon-holed as a romance when first published, though it crosses historical, sci-fi, fantasy, and romance genres. Would the series fully realize the breadth of these fiction categories?

But readers also worried about the preservation of the book’s strong female protagonist, Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser, and the feminist themes she represents. Feminists point out that the series is helmed by a man, and only one of four directors are female. Could the show tell Claire’s story with so much testosterone on board, and not revert to a male-centric swashbuckler?

Dinna fash, as the Scots might say — not to worry. The first episode demonstrates in subtle but deep detail that this is not the usual fare. We are definitely “outland” of traditional cable series.

Let’s take a fine-toothed comb to this first hour of programming, giving it the deep analysis this long-awaited adaptation merits. It bore the additional burden of establishing canon for viewers not familiar with the book, while adding new reinforcing content to replace the level of detail only the text could provide.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD — LOTS OF THEM.

It’s important to remember as viewers we don’t know how much of these details were created consciously or unconsciously. But we can analyze them for what they may say to us at both levels. Details are listed here by the minute:second they appear in Episode 101.

Caitriona Balfe’s name appears first in the cast listed during the title sequence. Modified as the theme for the series, the lyrics to the traditional Skye song, have been changed from 'lad' in reference to Bonnie Prince Charlie, to 'lass' in reference to Claire.

The hour opens with Claire in voice over, looking at a shot of Glen Coe, Scotland — the beauty of which transcends conflict and is beyond time in appearance. Like the book, this story is told from Claire’s perspective — hence her voice first and the lack of a gendered gaze. By way of her voice it’s implied her thoughts are more important than her appearance.

Loving "Bad Jane": Pride and Prejudice and the Too-Good Sister/Daughter/Mother

"Got a light, big boy?"
[Based on C.E. Brock's Bingley and Sandy from Grease]

The Derbyshire Writers' Guild Tea Room features a rather intense thread examining the rationale behind "bad Jane" characters in Pride and Prejudice fan fiction.

That so many writers and readers alike enjoy a "bad Jane" does not surprise me, nor does the dynamic discussion about Jane's relative merits. This hints at a key reason why Austen's Pride and Prejudice remains her most popular and successful novel — the underlying archetypes speak deeply to us, and they communicate successfully. The real mystery is how a single woman could write out a comprehensive ancient mythos using so many archetypes in sync and with such clarity that most readers don't see them yet enjoy the story they tell.

It's important to understand that P&P is not about a single character. It's an ensemble, a system that works well, each of its different components serving a critical purpose.

The novel itself mirrors a portion of the women's mythos — the story we tell each other about what being an adult woman requires, how to become one successfully as we move from maiden to wife/mother. P&P is a women's bildungsroman, in other words.

While most readers follow the Elizabeth-and-Darcy storyline most closely, the other components tell us very deep things about womanhood in an economy of words.

The five daughters are not independent; they are each of them an extension of the uber-mother, telling us what is successful as mother and daughter alike. Each daughter represents a specific model of emerging womanhood, from which we are to learn.

1) Jane — The too-good sister/daughter/mother — In which we see complete investment of the mother and minor investment of the father; this child has learned complete control over herself.

2) Elizabeth — The good-enough sister/daughter/mother — Exemplifies more paternal investment and a more hands-off approach on the part of the mother.

3) Mary — The intellectual abandoned sister/daughter/mother — Parents utterly fail this child, who strives to replace the knowledge and wisdom of parents but without any guidance.

4) Kitty — The incurious abandoned sister/daughter/mother — Again, parents utterly fail this child, but she cannot even see her way to replace missing knowledge and wisdom.

5) Lydia — The animalistic sister/daughter/mother — Father fails grossly, while mother identifies too closely with this child, indulging all the animal urges without restraint.

Each of these models have varying degrees of attachment to their parents. These variations teach us something about the role of parents in their daughters' lives and their respective likely outcomes.

We've seen these models before. They appear again and again in fairy and folk tales, once told by mothers and grandmothers to their daughters in front of the hearth. They were unconscious guides to help guide pre-literate people.

Romance This: Women's So-Called Liberation and Romance Literature Genre

[photo: Reading on the 4 Train, by
Jens Schott Knudsen (pamhule) via Flickr]

It’s ridiculous that women's satisfaction with their state of liberation can be called into question based on a choice of literature genre.

How can any rational human even assume today’s women are liberated when subject to

• Criticism — Women can't choose reading material freely without criticism of their personal lives or their gender’s condition;
• Demeaned — Their reading material's quality is deprecated, treated as not-literature with scare quotes and non-literature description (“guilty pleasures”);
• Denied information autonomy — Women's reading privacy is violated as if women are not entitled to acquire any information they desire for any personal reason;
• Privacy violated — Physical personal space in a public commons can be freely breached to satisfy any man's curiosity without pushback.

Women’s selection of romance literature is marginalized, in spite of the fact that today’s content categorized under this genre is little different from that deemed LITERATURE! — the big caps, award-winning men-bestowed curriculum-worthy literature like Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing or Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, or Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady.

Women and romance literature are denigrated in spite of the fact romance literature is a thriving business proposition, first as published and then as adapted into other media. Just ask Nicholas Sparks how things are hanging these days.

But we women who are the preponderance of romance lit readers don’t need some whiny op-ed to question our liberation and our satisfaction, let alone a poorly researched, self-selected, unaware answer, or subsequent suggestions about reading material alternatives. We put up with more than enough crap already.

We women continue to lack equity in politics holding 20% or less of seats in Congress [pdf]. When we do get elected to office, we can't even say the word “vagina” while discussing reproductive policy in one state house without being ejected.

We lack equity in business' upper management, in spite of the fact that more than 50% of college students each year are female, and more women support families as heads of household.

Our culture expects to see we women as taking less space due to our under-representation in film and TV roles. We women are too infrequently behind the camera as well.

The science and technology that impacts our lives is too rarely designed and made by women; our research is commonly ignored.

Given these existing conditions at a minimum, it’s no wonder at all why we seek a particular genre of literature when we’re not working. We simply want to be entertained — Calgon, take us away! In this respect, the impetus and outcome are little different than the urge to watch sports, and business journalists aren’t criticizing anyone’s enjoyment of that relatively empty pursuit.

As bestselling romance author Susan Elizabeth Phillips put it, "Romance books are the only books you can read where the woman always wins, and that's very powerful to women," a point hard to argue with after a long day slogging it out for 77 cents to every man's dollar in wages.

It might be that the male-borne criticism takes unconscious issue with another less obvious attribute in romance literature:

“Romances are, in fact, subversive literature: They encourage women to be dissatisfied with inequality, and to set higher expectations for themselves, and they show them ways to achieve those expectations, largely by taming men and, in a way, usurping their power. Romances are arguably the only art form of any kind that portrays women as equal partners with men.” (Source: Dave Pollard, How to Save the World)

We can’t have 51% of the population seeking out literature that undermines the male-dominated status quo, now, can we?

Let’s recap: Some guy with a 20-plus year career  in business journalism got paid to write an evergreen opinion piece to fill out a thin holiday schedule. He questioned women's satisfaction with their liberation, based on his ability to invade some unsuspecting woman's personal space to determine what she was reading.

To him I say this: Take a number and get in line behind all the other absurd inequities women have to put up with every damned day, buddy — then fuck off and stay out of our books.

Count yourself lucky we’re reading and not overthrowing your world and its comfortable illusions.

Diversity on Demand: Challenges to LGBT and Other Minority Entertainment Content

During @BitchFlick’s Tuesday chat about racism and racist stereotypes in Hollywood, @Jamiejhagen asked about LGBT rom-coms.

There are multiple barriers to increasing the number of LGBT rom-coms in video/film. The problems are shared with other minority groups who also want to see themselves represented more accurately and more frequently. Here are some of the most obvious challenges:

1)  Not enough writers who break through to traditional outlets;

2)  Not enough producers who are willing to seek, advocate, promote non-traditional content;

3)  Traditional industry outlets locked into chasing white/male/18-24 demographic;

4)  Insufficiency of ready funding mechanisms.

The first three barriers are quantified in studies like that published by USC-Annenberg’s study on gender inequality in films from 2007-2012; while the study focuses on women in film, other minority groups generally have less representation than women in the same media.

The fourth barrier is in flux; Kickstarter and other crowd- or micro-funding systems are emergent and changing the way programming is funding. The audience commits to the programming it wants upfront, bypassing investor funding compensated by ticket sales and/or advertising/merchandising revenue. Example: Funding for new programming under the once-defunct Veronica Mars series was recently obtained within 48 hours through Kickstarter.

Refinery29.com and the fall of western women's civilization spawned by Twilight -- Not

There've been a rash of opinion pieces all over the internet bashing the Twilight saga. Some make effective points; most don't, like the latest at Refinery29.com. It reads like a piece one might pull out of their butt to make a managing editor happy by driving up traffic through angered readers. (Believe me, I'm quite familiar with this kind of crap as a former managing editor--been there, applauded it.)
This particular piece was so thin and inflammatory that it deserved a comment. Here's what I posted:
__________
Bottomline, Neha Gandhi argues this kind of modern myth is bad for US culture, right? We can ignore the fact that other cultures have built entire religions and ethical foundations on similar archetypes, yes?
We should just ignore the fact that billions (yes, with a B) of Indians, Nepalese and other near-Asian peoples over the past 2000+ years have enjoyed the epic Ramayana, whose god Rama and demigod/avatar Hanuman share characteristics similar to Edward Cullen and other male members of his family. Here's Jambavantha (a supporting character in the Ramayana) reminding Hanuman of his powers:

You are as powerful as the wind;
You are intelligent, illustrious & an inventor.
There is nothing in this world that’s too difficult for you;
Whenever stuck, you are the one who can help.

Yeah, the super-intelligent, incredibly strong, psychic immortal Edward, right there -- virtually another avatar of Rama/Hanuman.
And what of Sita, Rama's wife? An "abandoned child" or "orphan child" archetype, she's not unlike Bella in that they share rather thin parental oversight. She's supposed to model all that is the epitome of virtuous femininity as a model wife, although under threat from outside forces she cannot control (like kidnapping by god Ravana).
The Ramayana isn't the only mythic epic with parallels in the Twilight saga. One could make the case that many of our familiar fairy tales, Disney-fied for our modern western consumption, offer very similar archetypal models. But nobody's pointing out that Snow White--who lives unmothered and selflessly for seven little men while waiting for a prince to rescue her from evil--offers a similarly "bad" and eerily similar model of femininity as Bella does in the Twilight saga.'
Heck, no, let's not dig too deep there at the risk of pissing off Disney's lawyers, or hurting access to the actors, director and production companies behind the impending Snow White and the Huntsman.
Myths have been critical to the formation of human culture including its ethos since humans could tell stories. We've survived these many incarnations of the same archetypal models of masculinity and femininity for thousands of years. Yet this op-ed proposes young American women are suddenly going to emulate crappy models of femininity because of one author's myth-like books? Yeah. I don't get it. Weakly argued.
[Comment originally posted at: http://www.refinery29.com/twilight-breaking-dawn-bella-swan-role-model#commen...]

Say it out loud: it's a crime, it's violence

There's an interesting essay being passed around right now. It's interesting for two reasons. It points out that crimes are regularly committed against women and girls with far greater frequency than numbers reported by law enforcement, and that the crimes and their victims are minimized, swept under the carpet by the label used for these crimes.

But using the label repeatedly reinforces its legitimacy -- that's where the essay goes astray. While the author is a victim herself and is clearly still coming to terms with the crime committed against her, she is locked in the loop forced on her by a culture committing a second crime against her. (Sadly, she even blames herself for crimes against others, even though she may have been but a minor at the time.)

The crime is the denial by our culture that at least one violent act took place against her and others like her deserving our action.

We need to teach our children -- yes, boys, too, as both potential victims and parents/loved ones of victims -- the legal terms for violent criminal acts, and teach them to  use them to effect appropriate action.

If someone touches you against your will, without permission and with intent to threaten or harm, it's battery.

if someone threatens to touch you against your will, without your permission and with intent to harm, it's assault.

If someone forces a sexual act on you against  your will, without permission, it's rape (if intercourse) or sexual assault and quite possibly battery as well.

If someone has a sexual act with a minor, even with the minor's permission, it's rape.

If someone enters your home without permission, especially with force, it's trespassing.

Call it what it is, use the words. Don't give the assailant's and/or rapist's denial any more legitimacy by calling it "not [anything]."

It's particularly important that a community of women who are so very fond of words understand that not only their dreams and aspirations deserve to be enshrined properly in words written and spoken. 

Their nightmares deserve to be called out for what they are, recognized on sight as the monsters they are -- violent acts. 

Tell the truth as it is: these are crimes.

And say it out loud.

[See the work of George Lakoff on framing for a more complete understanding of the nature in which words are used to manipulate behavior.]

Brewing: the sisters are doing it for themselves

I'm still meditating and cogitating over a thesis regarding a quiet revolution in women's emergence. I still can't quite wrap myself around what I want to say and quite possibly have now gathered too much research to make a coherent point.

That said, my thesis' summary could boil down to this:

The sisters are doing it for themselves.

Women are no longer waiting for some prince, either as an individual or as a collective or as some other entity, to address their needs. They are taking matters into their own hands.

No enough romance in your life? Sister, write your own and share it with others.

No enough hot sex in your life? Sister, write about your deepest desires no matter how kinky and share it because you know you are not alone in wanting this. Sex with the men or women who aren't ordinarily in your reach, sex with strangers, sex with multiple partners -- have it all, and safely here in the world of fiction.

Finally, is the man in your life an uncooperative ass? Sister, write about a figurative paper doll of a man you can bend and twist into all the things you want -- and while you're at it, bend him over the couch so another gorgeous well-hung paper doll of a man gives it to him up the backside. Take that, asshole, figuratively speaking.

We are taking care of ourselves and building what we want and need for each other, here in the online world of self-published fiction.

Watch out when we take the next step and fully realize what it is we want.

Brewing: thoughts on paradigmatic shifts in women's emergence

My mental wattage has been preoccupied by some consulting work this week. What little wattage I have left has been kicking around some nebulous thesis about a quiet revolution in women's emergence. I think we are face with a sea change not unlike that between the 1950s and 1960s when birth control and women's rights under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 dramatically changed women's roles in our western society.

But I can't quite get a handle on what it is I want to say, no doubt for the lack of adequate wattage. I'll just throw these bits out and let them brew for now; perhaps a bit of steeping out in the open will help coalesce my under-powered thinking.

Francis Fukuyama touched on the failure of the impetus behind the 1960s women's movement to fully realize all that women needed to be true equals to male counterparts during the pendulum-like swing of society's expectations liberalizing women's rights. See his work The Great Disruption. While I'm unhappy with the direction that Fukuyama's politics took in the late 1990s/early 2000s, I think  he still makes highly valid points about the swing of movements and opposing reactions.

Article, Look God, No Hands in the most recent issue of Utne Reader hints at an opposing reaction to changes in women's sexuality. One would think that women's masturbatory self-care would be approved by Christian fundamentalists as an alternative to sex out of wedlock, but no -- apparently all sex is supposed to be procreative.

I'm trying to hunt down a news article from an Indian news paper that I'd tripped over last week. The article discusses researchers findings with regard to women's appreciation of same-sex smut. It's the first time I've seen mention of a study of this nature, suggesting there is a trend at work here -- a swing of the pendulum, if you will.

If you see something I might find interesting and relevant to this nebulous thesis, feel free to drop me a comment.