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Awesome Females
Apr. 25th, 2009 05:34 pmSo I’ve been thinking a bunch about characters lately (clearly now that I don't have schoolwork to occupy my brain I have to analyze something else) and what makes me like one more than another. I think what I like best in a character is the same thing I like best in stories, which makes sense because I’ll love almost any story if I love the characters enough. I like stereotypes that don’t quite fit. That’s my favourite. And I think that even more than that I like the dumb jock who isn’t. So Daniel Brady from Shadow Unit, Colby Granger from Numb3rs, Tony DiNozzo from NCIS, Dean Winchester from Supernatural, and even to a certain extent Arthur from Merlin. This is probably why I like TV so much actually, since most of the good shows that last take stereotypes and then make them more interesting. I have no problem with this because I like it.
But most of my favourites are all men, I realise. So I got to thinking about why. Part of it is that there are usually way more men than women in the shows I watch. I like SciFi and Cop shows the best so that makes sense because there are more men than women in the military and the police. But even the women they do have just aren’t as interesting most of the time. Sometimes they’re just there to be pretty, sometimes they’re around to be love interests (which is almost invariably lame), and sometimes they’re there to be the strong female character who can do everything and do everything well because women are clearly as good as men at all these things (also remarkably lame). And I understand where the writers are coming from, because people (and not just women) have been sidelined so much in television until recently. A lot of new shows have over-arching storylines and character development and that is awesome. But women are hard because people are hard, and I think a lot of TV writers are more comfortable writing men than women – I’m more comfortable writing men than women.
Anyway, instead of going on and on about gender!fail and depressing everyone - not in the least myself because I’m not sure I approve of all this binary gender business anyway – I decided to make a list (with reasons) of some of my favourite female characters in TV. Here is a celebration of doing things right.
( Awesomeness - warning Long )
But most of my favourites are all men, I realise. So I got to thinking about why. Part of it is that there are usually way more men than women in the shows I watch. I like SciFi and Cop shows the best so that makes sense because there are more men than women in the military and the police. But even the women they do have just aren’t as interesting most of the time. Sometimes they’re just there to be pretty, sometimes they’re around to be love interests (which is almost invariably lame), and sometimes they’re there to be the strong female character who can do everything and do everything well because women are clearly as good as men at all these things (also remarkably lame). And I understand where the writers are coming from, because people (and not just women) have been sidelined so much in television until recently. A lot of new shows have over-arching storylines and character development and that is awesome. But women are hard because people are hard, and I think a lot of TV writers are more comfortable writing men than women – I’m more comfortable writing men than women.
Anyway, instead of going on and on about gender!fail and depressing everyone - not in the least myself because I’m not sure I approve of all this binary gender business anyway – I decided to make a list (with reasons) of some of my favourite female characters in TV. Here is a celebration of doing things right.
( Awesomeness - warning Long )
