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So, we've been watching the HEROES DVD this weekend
Obviously, there are going to be spoilers here. So here's a cut-tag.
So, we've just, over the past two days, watched sixteen episodes of HEROES. And we've been having a great time.
We just finished watching episode sixteen, "Unexpected", and I am no longer particularly interested in continuing to watch.
I'm not UPSET or offended, or anything -- it just suddenly hit the point where I'm bored by it.
HEROES has many of the ideas and cool things about comic books in it -- but it also has the thing which most annoys me about them, and the final scene of "Unexpected" pushed that over the line to the point where I no longer particularly care about them, or the story, or the characters.
Women in refrigerators.
You ever hear that phrase? It's a term referring to how women are used and characterized in popular media, especially, but far from exclusively, in comics. It comes from some comic, I forget which one, in which some hero's girlfriend was killed and stuffed in his fridge.
The point is that women in comics, if they're heroes, are motivated by either being raped, or protecting their children. while men are motivated by the rape or death of their women.
Bits of these things have been showing up throughout the show -- the QB of the football team attempted to rape Claire, the high school cheerleader from Texas, and then accidentally killed her and hid the body (but she got better). So, the next day, when he found out that she WASN'T dead (anymore) she got a ride from him, and drove the car into a wall (she has healing powers -- he, um, doesn't. . . ) That didn't really bother me particularly -- it was totally an overdone trope, but, whatever -- I like the character of Claire, and I liked how she went about getting revenge.
But the character of Nikki/Jessica bothers me. Jessica is the evil twin in the split personality, and has super-strength. Nikki is the good twin, which is why she's an Internet cam-whore. And they're motivated entirely by trying to take care of her son. That's her motivation.
Again, I can deal with that, more or less, if the characters are good enough, which they more-or-less are, even if the trope is SO done a billion times before that it's dead boring.
The first bit which was really bugging me was the death of Eden, the sweet young girl with the persuasion superpower, who had started out as a criminal but had turned her life around, who decided that it was too dangerous to let the superpowered psycho-killer live, so decided to kill him.
And got killed for her trouble. Again, that was a reasonable outcome to the scene, but it's also a totally overdone and predictable end for that character type.
But, in the last scene of episode 16, they just went enough down the totally familiar, boring path that I no longer care about the show. Isaac had dated Simone for two years, and he still loves her. Then she started dating Peter. Peter shows up at Isaac's studio (he's the psychic painter), and, Isaac, for what seems like perfectly reasonable reasons at the time, decides to shoot Peter. So Peter's invisible and going around the studio, and Isaac is shooting, and. . . do I even have to say it?
You all KNOW what's coming, don't you?
Of course you do. Simone walks in the door, and is shot, and is sitting there dying on the ground cradled in the arms of her two boyfriends, who are looking at each other with a look of horror on their faces.
Oooh. Big shock. Oh, what a surprise. How could we EVER have foreseen this coming.
Just like every other time in every other form of media where anything remotely similar happened.
And I just don't care any more. Big whoop. If they're going to go THAT boring, THAT stereotypical, and THAT shallow with their portrayals of women, why should I bother watching? Sure, there are other plot lines going on, which ARE interesting, but I don't want to have to bother being bored by watching yet another example of exactly the same old thing, when I could be doing more interesting things, like playing Minesweeper.
Remember this, any of you out there who are writing superhero comics, as I'm sure half of you are. The problem with the whole Women in Refrigerator set of tropes isn't really that it's offensive.
It's that it's boring. And it's so boring that it makes everything else around it boring.
So, we've just, over the past two days, watched sixteen episodes of HEROES. And we've been having a great time.
We just finished watching episode sixteen, "Unexpected", and I am no longer particularly interested in continuing to watch.
I'm not UPSET or offended, or anything -- it just suddenly hit the point where I'm bored by it.
HEROES has many of the ideas and cool things about comic books in it -- but it also has the thing which most annoys me about them, and the final scene of "Unexpected" pushed that over the line to the point where I no longer particularly care about them, or the story, or the characters.
Women in refrigerators.
You ever hear that phrase? It's a term referring to how women are used and characterized in popular media, especially, but far from exclusively, in comics. It comes from some comic, I forget which one, in which some hero's girlfriend was killed and stuffed in his fridge.
The point is that women in comics, if they're heroes, are motivated by either being raped, or protecting their children. while men are motivated by the rape or death of their women.
Bits of these things have been showing up throughout the show -- the QB of the football team attempted to rape Claire, the high school cheerleader from Texas, and then accidentally killed her and hid the body (but she got better). So, the next day, when he found out that she WASN'T dead (anymore) she got a ride from him, and drove the car into a wall (she has healing powers -- he, um, doesn't. . . ) That didn't really bother me particularly -- it was totally an overdone trope, but, whatever -- I like the character of Claire, and I liked how she went about getting revenge.
But the character of Nikki/Jessica bothers me. Jessica is the evil twin in the split personality, and has super-strength. Nikki is the good twin, which is why she's an Internet cam-whore. And they're motivated entirely by trying to take care of her son. That's her motivation.
Again, I can deal with that, more or less, if the characters are good enough, which they more-or-less are, even if the trope is SO done a billion times before that it's dead boring.
The first bit which was really bugging me was the death of Eden, the sweet young girl with the persuasion superpower, who had started out as a criminal but had turned her life around, who decided that it was too dangerous to let the superpowered psycho-killer live, so decided to kill him.
And got killed for her trouble. Again, that was a reasonable outcome to the scene, but it's also a totally overdone and predictable end for that character type.
But, in the last scene of episode 16, they just went enough down the totally familiar, boring path that I no longer care about the show. Isaac had dated Simone for two years, and he still loves her. Then she started dating Peter. Peter shows up at Isaac's studio (he's the psychic painter), and, Isaac, for what seems like perfectly reasonable reasons at the time, decides to shoot Peter. So Peter's invisible and going around the studio, and Isaac is shooting, and. . . do I even have to say it?
You all KNOW what's coming, don't you?
Of course you do. Simone walks in the door, and is shot, and is sitting there dying on the ground cradled in the arms of her two boyfriends, who are looking at each other with a look of horror on their faces.
Oooh. Big shock. Oh, what a surprise. How could we EVER have foreseen this coming.
Just like every other time in every other form of media where anything remotely similar happened.
And I just don't care any more. Big whoop. If they're going to go THAT boring, THAT stereotypical, and THAT shallow with their portrayals of women, why should I bother watching? Sure, there are other plot lines going on, which ARE interesting, but I don't want to have to bother being bored by watching yet another example of exactly the same old thing, when I could be doing more interesting things, like playing Minesweeper.
Remember this, any of you out there who are writing superhero comics, as I'm sure half of you are. The problem with the whole Women in Refrigerator set of tropes isn't really that it's offensive.
It's that it's boring. And it's so boring that it makes everything else around it boring.