So, we've been watching the HEROES DVD this weekend

[xiphias]

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.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Unfortunately, for a lot of fans of Heroes, this is their first exposure to the "women in refrigerators" trope, so it's still new and novel.

(The show does pick up, especially towards the end of the season, so I's recommend finishing it after you've had a chance to let it settle a bit.)

whoops.

[arib.livejournal.com]

This was me, sorry I didn't log in.

Re: whoops.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Um... how can this be anyone over the age of five's first exposure?

Re: whoops.

[arib.livejournal.com]

People who never grew up reading comic books, or had limited exposure to the genre (Superfriends didn't have any character development at all, much less the "woman in fridge" concept.

Re: whoops.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

But it's not limited to comics. It shows up in action movies, TV dramas, soap operas -- I'm sure if I thought about it, I could think of examples in ballet and opera.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I watched two episodes of heroes and realized it was Not For Me, because it bored the pants off me.

Except Hiro and Ando, who I would watch for hours. But unfortunately there is all this other crap around their bits.

(Sort of like NCIS. I would watch David McCallum, Pauley Perrette, and Sean Murray mug for the camera all day. Unfortunately, there's all this crap around their bits....)

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

It comes from some comic, I forget which one, in which some hero's girlfriend was killed and stuffed in his fridge.

Green Lantern. When Kyle Rayner became the new GL, the villain Major Force killed his girlfriend Alexandra DeWitt in this gruesome manner. I can probably track down references if you need them.

yah, I know the feeling

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

"Heroes" is a show of veryuneven quality.

It seems to have a lot of devoted followers who seem not to have noticed how wretchedly awful the show can be. (I know some people who are actually angry that "Heroes" hasn't gotten any Hugo nominations, whereas I think it's a fun watch but nowhere near the quality of Babylon 5, Buffy, or the new Doctor Who. Those shows are by no means perfect but they both shoot higher and hit more often than "Heroes".) The entire Jessica/Nikki/Micah/D.L. plotline has been poorly written and poorly acted. I am completely tired of Peter doing his "all emotion, zero thought" emo routine. ("No, I'm not going to be sensible now! I'm going to go all emotional instead! And put us all in danger! Because it's so very important! Right now! With extra exclamation points!!!") Sometimes (especially with Isaac and Peter) I like to call out the obvious line of dialogue just before it actually gets spoken. (Isaac to Simone: "I'll do anything for you!" Me: "Find Peter!" Simone "Then find Peter.") Most aggravating of all, many characters just act flat-out stupid, way too often. Creating a TV show is such a collective effort and so deadline-intensive that I tend to give TV shows more slack for errors and inconsistencies and lapses in quality, but there's a limit.

On the other hand, "Heroes" does have some nifty plotting and a lot of characters I do care about (probably because they're better-written and/or better-acted) like Hiro, Claire, Mr. Bennet, Nathan, Matt (he's rather dense, but he's supposed to be dense :-), Claude, and Eden [*snif*].

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

In my case, that sort of inanity really put a damper on my enjoyment, but not so much that i stopped watching it. However, I don't feel so strongly that I'd try to change your opinion.

Re: yah, I know the feeling

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I'll be surprised if Heroes doesn't end up on the ballot in Long Form next year; the general consesus appears to be that the season is basically a really long miniseries, and no one episodes stands alone well enough to be nominated in short form.

Personally, I think it's one of the best shows I've seen on TV -- though, honestly, the bar is set fairly low there. But it's certainly not flawless; I hated Niki/HJessica for most of the season; she got a little better ib the last two or three episodes, but she's still my least favorite character, by a lot. And some other characters do stupid things, sometimes stupid enough to feel out of character to me. But overall, it hooked me early, and more throughly than any other show ever has. I was also very impressed by the online support NBC is giving the show.

It's likely that the flaws are more apparent when viewed in such concentrated doses, too. Do go back and read the graphic novels on NBC.com -- they really add backstory and fill in some gaps,

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Regular tv and movies and gotten to the point where I can even call out dialog before it happens, much less plot. Anymore, I just watch stuff for how well they do something. New/original is hard to find.

[fibro-witch.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem might be that you watched a large group of them with no rest. Also that several people on your friends list talked about Heroes during the season and may have given you greater expectations of the show.

I find Heroes, and Lost just new enough to keep my interest. While other fan faves like House or CSI bore the shit out of me.

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

When it first came on everybody told me I should try and watch Heroes, that it looked like something I'd really enjoy. I think I got less than ten minutes into it and this character who is supposed to be this very advanced scientist is spewing that "humans only use ten percent of their brain" garbage. And that was it for me. I could give a crap if your average person believes that to be true (though it was debunked long ago), but would a little fact checking for a character who is supposed to be a scientist have killed them?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I was able to give that one a pass -- with an effort -- because I decided that this is a fictional world, and, in their fictional world, humans only used 10% of their brain, and the Human Genome Project was done entirely differently than it was in our world.

And that science worked differently in general.

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

Certainly at other times I have had a higher threshhold for that kind of thing. It's part of the reason I hadn't mentioned it before when everyone was gushing about the show; if other people were able to enjoy it, I didn't want to sound like I was criticizing them for doing so. I will and have bitched at people for bitching about historical accuracy in fiction. But in this particular case, no. I couldn't even go back to watching it after they brought Christopher Eccleston on. Which for me is saying something.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

So, I was thinking about this. And, mind you, I really think the Women in Refrigerators trope is not only pernicious, but, worse, is shoddy writing, is as boring as you've explained. And I thought Heroes was lovely but severely uneven, and doesn't deserve Hugo nominations as Dr. Snark mentioned some people think it does. And I have friends who stopped watching the show mid-season for exactly the reasons you've described here, and I had to justify to myself how I could disagree with them on it and still consider myself a feminist. Simone was fridged, and that really angered me. Claire being almost raped made me roll my eyes, for the reasons you relate --- I was much more intrigued by her relationship with her friend, and her dad. But Eden... I thought she had a good death, because her death was the culmination of her journey away from selfishness. It was about her, not a man in her life, even though part of its fallout was Mohinder's reaction. Nikki/Jessica took a very long time to grow on me, but I admit to loving the fact that her biracial son was a technomage. I guess... there was so much in Heroes that I loved that I just mocked what I didn't.