Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Day 41 of Feminist Joys: Criticizing Stories We Love

I'm on vacation in Goa right now, and writing this from my hotel room. (So in case I miss a day or two, don't be alarmed. I'll try not to, though..)

The Guy and I have been watching Desperate Housewives on TV here at the hotel. I'd watched a bit of it back when we used to have a TV. I had always found the ads promoting the show quite foul and was then surprised at how much nicer the show actually was. I'm not interested in following the story through the seasons, but some of the episodes highlight interesting issues, even though it's all over-the-top dramatic ("It's on fast forward," the Guy commented as characters got engaged and got married, got suspected for cancer and started treatment while dealing with tons of other drama, all in an episode or two), well, in spite of that, I love that the show centers women's perspectives and the men are mostly pretty props. 

Most of the media that we love isn't perfect. With the internet, feminist stories are easier to find, but growing up we all read stuff that wasn't that great in retrospect but captured our imaginations anyway. But while we love them, we wish they were better. We can scrutinize them and wish they could be fixed, or even try to fix them.

Ana Mardoll has an amazing set of deconstruction series. I especially love her ongoing series on Narnia -- I loved the Narnia books as a kid and was surprised at how bad they were when I tried to revisit them as a grownup.  These posts on Ross (of Friends) are great too. There's also this Hunger Games series, but that's more unabashedly fan homage, because this series is so good. 



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