Television and the Gendered Narratives

Many times in television and movies, women characters exist not so much for their own edification but to facilitate the journey of the male character. It is unfortunate, but women characters are often less than fully formed. Many times, the men are the active, and the women are the reactive. In many situations, men know best; and all of these things are problems. I bring this up to answer this query:

So what's your opinion of House, M.D.? Cuddy, Cameron and Hadley (better known as Thirteen)all seem to be positive role models in terms of their professional careers, at least.

I love House, mostly the first 3 seasons. I haven't seen a lot of this current season, because everyone else in my house has given up on the guy and there are only two televisions - and I never get to use them singularly by product of being the one person in the house without a constant partner (there are some benefits to be a twin or married in the television acquisition department). House is well written; House is witty, and interesting, and doesn't try to make its characters saints or even sympathetic. Gregory House is an atheist - though as much as I love that I do wonder if characters like House are part of the PR problem, since House is also a bit of a dick. But that doesn't mean House is problem free; it has never been problem free. Cuddy may be in charge in theory, but that doesn't stop her from being, at times, as well constructed as a piece of tissue paper - or House from insulting her sexual history, her dress sense, her intelligence, and her life in general before almost always getting his way. It doesn't stop Cuddy from messing up the cases she does become involved in, like when her handyman fell off her roof. This isn't an issue unique to House, as my one of my favorite writers ever, Aaron Sorkin, has the same propensity for making men the smarter sex, and women the hapless creatures who need men's guidance:

Men Are from Mars — and Smarter: At least that’s the world according to Sorkin. A favorite plot device was to have one character explain a complicated political issue to another. It almost always was a Smart Man explaining to an Ignorant Woman: Sam explaining the census to CJ (who gushed about how smart he is); Josh explaining many, many things to Donna.

The same sort of instance has apparently reared its ugly head on House, in a more blatant and, for my money, stems from an even more privileged perspective:

The biggest issue with this whole plot development is just how much of who Hadley is and how she develops is based on a man and how he manipulates her. She made the choice not to disclose her sexuality in the workplace but the straight male had no problem with declaring that she was bisexual. Forget about her agency to choose how and to who her sexuality should become known, all that we need is a smart man to figure everyone out. When she goes on her “self-destruct” mission it is Foreman who partly comes to the rescue. He offers her placement in a drug treatment study and admonishes her on giving up. When he feels she is not participating in the study to his liking he breaks into her home and checks up on her medication. When she is having trouble dealing with a more advanced patient who brings back painful memories of her mother he forces her to deal with the situation. Finally, when the fact that she has a terminal disease makes her less willing to be in a relationship, he arranges for her to “see” how well one patient is doing on the treatment.

 That doesn't make it any less problematic for House, but it does make it more of a systemic failure than a House failure. And it doesn't stop me from watching and enjoying the show on its own merits. In many ways, House and many of the male characters are complex and are three-dimensional. The women are categorically less interesting; it feels like the writers don't know how to write women - which is a problem that Bryan Fuller also said he has, and thus writes women with guy names (like Chuck) in order to connect to the character more easily. I should mention that I was highly offended and almost gave up on Pushing Daisies and Bryan Fuller - and only didn't because I was at a screening of the show with a friend. And while I'm happy I didn't, because I love Pushing Daisies, I'm still disgruntled at that comment.

House is problematic in the way above, but also for the reason articulated by MaggieElizabeth, a poster at Television Without Pity:

Ninety percent of the time, the woman gets to be the normal one.
Sure, she's competent, she's tough, and she's strong -- but she's ordinary, and all the while she's surrounded by weird and unpredictable male characters with funny, charismatic personalities.

House is the eccentric; he's the genius, he's the mastermind, he's the guy who does not conform to society's standards and doesn't have to because he's so damn brilliant. Cuddy may have been the youngest Chief of Medicine around, but she is still nothing special when compared to Gregory House. This isn't House's problem, not really. I'm not advocating a world in which men are always the normal ones and women get to be the weird, charismatic unpredictable ones. Just like the problem with a movie isn't that it in particular can't pass the Bechdel Test, but that most don't. The problem isn't that Star Wars in particular doesn't have two women discussing something other than men; the problem is that a significant portion of the films made don't. The problem isn't that House is a surly misanthrope genius, but that there are a bevy of male characters in House's shoes and very few women. The problem with the genius man or the man with incredible gifts is that there is no counterbalance. The Pie Maker on Pushing Daisies with his power to wake the dead; Chuck from Chuck having the incredible ability to see and remember hundreds of data-encrypted pictures; House; Walter Bishop; the guy on The Mentalist; the guy on Lie to Me; the guy on The Eleventh Hour; the guy on Journeyman. The women who are on these shows are sometimes capable, sometimes not, but almost always ordinary as well.

There is the odd show, most often made by Joss Whedon, that has the opposite, where the normal character in question is a guy. Buffy the Vampire Slayer's eccentric characters or characters with phenomenal powers were mostly women; Buffy herself, obviously, but also Willow and Tara and even Dawn. Xander and Giles were the normal ones. On the spin off Angel, Angel had superhuman powers, due to being a vampire; but there was also Cordelia, who had visions, and Fred - who was not only a genius but also socially awkward from years of being sequestered in a hellish alternate dimension. Wesley remained normal throughout the show's run, and Gunn - though there was some mojo in the 5th season - also remained an average guy. Firefly had River as the extraordinary one. And some shows aren't made by Joss. Bones has Temperance Brennan as the eccentric super-genius, and Seeley Booth as the every man, the intelligent guy who is still, even without virtue of being compared to Brennan, ordinary. Battlestar Galactica has Starbuck as the best pilot, and the one having prophetic visions. But these shows (most of which are off the air) don't carry enough weight to strike a proper counterbalance to the overall spectrum of shows where the opposite is true. And that is the issue with most of these problems. On their own, a show with stronger male characters, or smarter male characters, is not inherently problematic. But when most shows employ that narrative, it becomes more so.

Le Sigh

This is the show that has replaced my beloved Pushing Daisies:

Instead of quirky fun with the Pie Maker and Kristin Chenoweth and Chi McBride, there's yet another 'reality' show on the air. I'm kind of disgusted and appalled, and this post helps explain why.

They Cancelled My Frikkin' Show (Or, An Ode To The Piemaker)

"Two roads diverge in a wood, and I took the road less traveled by and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN' SHOW. I totally shoulda took the road that had all those people on it. Damn." - Joss Whedon

I think that is the best eulogy for shows that fall beyond the perimeters of normal television, and then suffer the blow of cancellation. Sure, there are plenty of shows that fall directly within those parameters and are also cancelled. But there is less heartbreak and less sorrow, because as much as a person may have liked that one Law & Order that bit the dust, there are three others still on the air, along with a wide array of CSIs and other procedural shows as well. I mourn the shows that take the road less traveled by, the shows that have some quirk, that are cutesy, that are bright and bold; those shows that qualify for the "Best Show On TV You're Not Watching" cover of TV Guide - if they even still do that any more. Many of the shows I fall in love with are in this camp; though oddly enough, not the show Joss Whedon was talking about, which was Angel: the Series and which ran for 5 seasons. That is much longer than what Sports Night got, what Firefly got, and what Pushing Daisies will ultimately get. Yes, they cancelled my frikkin' show. And more than part of the reason is because it took the road less travelled by.

The myriad of ways Pushing Daisies took the road less travelled by is really quite huge. Even with the handy narrator (who could be a dirt road all his own, especially since he was a Pooh Bear narrator and not a Desperate Housewives narrator), the show is hard to follow. The twists and turns and intricacies of the plot are numerous, and the show moves along at a breakneck pace. For those who miss one week, the secondary tension between two characters will have been completely changed, because they were adults about it and actually talked it out. The primary tension[s] of the show really rarely change between each set of characters, since they deal with the unlikely gift of being able to bring back people from the dead and the fact that particular gift along one of the people who most recently benefited from said gift are secrets kept from the majority of the cast.

Then there is the language the show uses, and the rhythm of the dialogue. Language is one of those joys in life for me. I love almost anything written well. I'm working my way (slowly but surely) through Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections right now, and I hate a majority of the characters; the thing that compels me to read is the fact that it is just so well written. The words and sentences carry the reader along, until a promise to read only a chapter is broken numerous times. The show is like that in terms of language, though it has a one up (or a 6-up) on The Corrections in that it actually has likable - even lovable - characters. I recently got the first season DVDs of Pushing Daisies, and I am torn between a need to pop in the next disk right away, and drawing out the experience in order to best savor the 22 episodes I'm ultimately going to get. There are wonderful lines like, "Now where'd I put that rat's ass I could give?" And at the end of every episode, I can remember delighting in any number of lines, but the amount of them and the speed at which they are delivered makes it infinitely difficult to remember them all.

The other road incredibly sparsely travelled is the very idea for the show. A guy who can wake the dead and who spends his days making pies of everlasting fruit. That doesn't seem like a premise that will automatically draw the crowds in, no matter how cute Lee Pace is. The premise is even more out there, I think, than cowboys in space or behind the scenes at a sports show. The joys of breaking away from the pack is that your creation is unique and stands out amongst all others. The problem with breaking away from the pack is that people do like that well travelled road. And not always for reasons one would suspect. I myself wondered if I should keep watching Pushing Daisies, not because I didn't want to enjoy its wonderment any longer but because I wanted to break up with it before the networks could make it break up with me. It is a lonely thing to become emotionally invested in a piece of entertainment and then have it leave you suddenly - and apparently on a cliffhanger (damn you, Bryan Fuller!). One of the reasons to stay with a tried and true formula is that there is no moment when you resent Knight Rider, deeply, and its fans because it has survived to live another day when your show has not. There is no moment when you deride those fans because they chose to watch a silly show about a talking car, whereas you decided to watch a show about a guy who touches dead things and makes them alive again - which could in no way be considered silly. There is no moment when you wonder why, with all of the faults and problems and stupidity (not that I've ever actually seen Knight Rider) of that other show, why did it and its relationship with its fans survive while your show - your perfect, beautiful, shiny, bright, and exquisitely costumed show - is no more.

Alas, that is the trouble of taking the road less traveled by. It makes you an old and embittered television watcher far before your time.

Stop Pushing Daisies From Becoming Fertilizer

Pushing Daisies is my show for the fall; well, that and NBC's Chuck. Which is why the news from on high, that Pushing Daisies is getting beat in the ratings department by the likes of even the new Knight Rider remake, disturbs me so. I love the show's odd mix of fairy tale charm and morbid happenings; it is like Tim Burton meeting Dr. Seuss. Pushing Daisies, aside from its entirely charming title, is a show I probably never would have watched had it not been for a trip to the New York Television Festival with a good friend of mine. We saw the pilot, after spending an inordinate amount of time in a Turkish restaurant, getting turned around, developing a blister (well, that was just me), and making a break for the bathroom. All of that, the confusion, the blister, the bladder issues I will invariably have as an old woman, was worth seeing this bright, beautiful, witty, fantastic, and deadly world projected onto the big screen. From there, I was hooked.

Some back story, for those interested in potentially picking up the remote. The show is difficult to explain; a woman who writes for my local newspaper tried to, after explaining she was prematurely mourning the show's demise. It was so muddled even I, an avid viewer of the show, became a bit perplexed. So let's start with the easy part: there is a narrator. We begin almost every episode via the way-back machine, to see exactly how the characters we are following as adults came to be by seeing how they behaved/were treated as children. Ned, the Pie Maker, has by far the saddest tale - and since he is the main character, he has more of these way-back moments dedicated to him. But he, Chuck, and now Olive have all had them. Ned is, as I said, a pie maker, referenced frequently as "The Pie Maker". Which quite logically leads to the part where he makes pies and sells them at The Pie Hole, where Olive Snook works. Ned has another gift beyond being able to make delicious baked goods, and that is the ability to bring the dead back to life. He can only keep the dead alive for 60 seconds, though, or someone (or something) of comparable value (flowers for fruit, squirrels for birds, and fully grown humans for other fully grown humans) dies in that formerly dead thing's place. Once re-alived, one more touch from Ned will return them to the grave forever. Enter Chuck, otherwise known as Charlotte. She was dead, and then re-alived and kept alive by Ned, as she was his childhood sweetheart. He discovered her due to Emerson, who makes his living as a private investigator by taking on murder cases and splitting the profits with Ned in exchange for Ned's use of his dubious talent. Confused yet?

What makes the show is partially in the weird interweaving of the various characters (like, Olive takes pies to Chuck's aunts, because the aunts don't know Chuck is no longer dead and Olive doesn't know Chuck has ever truly been dead) and the strange mythology and partially in the way the show handles those weird interwoven relationships. And also, the strange quirk of language, a facet I just love. The show is a bit soap operaish, in the way that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a bit soap operaish. Pushing Daisies has star crossed lovers in Ned and Chuck, forbidden to touch ever again; but they both make the best of that and live their relationship as fully as they can under the circumstances. It is also a show where secrets (like Ned accidentally causing Chuck's father's death) come out rapidly. These characters can act stupidly; they make mistakes, and they see the world differently. But they are oddly mature in their interactions. Instead of seasons' long mysteries, the truth is willingly exposed quite often, and in an interesting way.

What I really love about the show, though, is the state of whimsy. Olive and Chuck, one wanting to be with Ned but barred due to Ned's disinterest and one wanting to be with Ned but barred due to instincts of self preservation, form a sweet friendship. Ned and Emerson have an odd friendship, as do Olive and Emerson. And while the other main characters (included here are Chuck's two aunts) are filled up to their eyeballs with quirk, Emerson is a needed character: disillusioned, caustic, and obsessed with money, he acts as the audience stand in. Even with Emerson, though, the twisted fairy tale aspect of the show is its clear selling point; a take on the question, what does happen after the Prince kisses the Princess and they ride off? What does 'happily ever after' look like in a world fractured by death and murder and mayhem? And most importantly, how can we make it sweetly funny, and also touchingly morbid? Bryan Fuller fulfills all of those to the hilt. So watch the damn show, and let Jim Dale fill you in on the happenings and the rest of the world fill you in on the charm and wonder of this forensics fairy tale.