Anita Sarkeesian is at it again, having just posted another, a little more reasonable, but not without it's faults, video about the character signifiers and how they let you know when a male character has been pallet swapped to be female (Really in the most basic way I can sum it up).
Sadly when arguing her cause, it's just as easy to knock the legs of credibility out from under any Anita Sarkeesian's Damsels in Distress videos by analyzing the little throwaway footnotes that she needlessly injects into her videos for even a few seconds, then it is to sift through her 5 minutes of info dumping, 15 minutes of putting names to her videogame video clip hall of fame.
During Damsels Part 3, to support her stance against videogames with points of positive female tropes in other media (but without actually taking the time to analyze what she finds positive about them), she briefly mentions the TV shows Charmed and Sabrina The Teenage Witch, as well as the pop group known as The Spice Girls, specifically noting them to have existed in the, "girl power," period of the late 90s, early 2000s.
However, actually having been a fan of the two shows, and having tortured myself with at least watching the movie based on the music group, I can actually say with some certainty I couldn't provide in part one, that I'm pretty sure she's skewing the context of these shows to suit her needs. These 3 things she cites as being positive representation of female tropes are actually saturated with negative ones that she's, unsurprisingly as it may be, overlooking. But they're just like mentioning the domestic violence statistics in the last part -they're so bad, that it's really impossible to overlook them.
The real problem is, having gone through a few drafts of this post, there are so many tropes that go against the grain of her cause, for each one of these, that I might just end up drowning anyone who reads past this point in a sea of info dumping, while trying to give you all the most information I can about them. I can try to stick to just the important ones, but.. Even that's going to be hard to keep to a minimum. So, I'm having to break this up into a few different parts.
(I also want to note that, while she marks these things as positives, I looked at Anita's YouTube page and I don't think *any* of her full videos are actually about these or why they're positive at all --If I thought any of them had been, I'd have watched them as research for this post. Hard to fact check against what may not be there.)
Charmed
Basic Premise: 3 sisters (and later one half sister) find out that they're the most powerful witches ever, in a long line of witches, and fight demons/warlocks/baddies, after one of them reads a family heirloom found in their dead grandmothers attic.
Crimes against humanity: Oh lord so many to count. I hardly know where to start.
Sister trope 1; The Constant Mother: Piper, the middle (later, oldest) sister, is the mother of the group. No matter what she's looking after someone and if she's not taking care of the kids she has over the course of the series, it's her husband (when he's around) or her sisters. This puts her through constant stress and basically corners her throughout the show. At one point, to seemingly stress the point of how explosive her role has made her, she's given the power to make pretty much everything she can see explode, by the writers.
The idea of a mother is a strong one, definitely a good one. Empowering. But one that has to consistently clean up *everyone's* messes, acting akin to a slave to their needs, and has pretty much no time for herself, isn't exactly the most positive by today's standard how women shouldn't take crap from anyone else. No women wants to felt like shes been put in a corner: isn't that the whole point to Ms. Sarkeesian's videos?
Sister trope 2; The Troubled: One sister dies early in the series, because of in-fighting on set (supposedly) pushed the actress out. That sister was considered the tough one of the show. However the sister -the half-sister- that they're given (or find...) to balance out the shows on-going "power of three" prophecy, was a little less then tough. Actually, she always felt little more like "Girl, Interrupted".
Paige, the youngest of the sisters, was adopted by a family after being the illegitimate child the sisters mother and her "While Lighter" (Angel). When the only family she knew died, she blamed herself for their death -which she hasn't been able to drop. When she meets her real sisters and finds out about her real mother and father, she's unable to handle this too. When she finds out she's a witch herself, and has powers of both a witch AND an angel, because of her genetics, she's unable to handle this also..
Her trope really isn't empowering in any way. Through most of the series, she's unable to handle most of the things thrown at her and keeps trying to quit. She tries to push her sisters away initially, and chooses not to live with them in their ancestral home for a while, even though it's probably safer for everyone that she be there, because she rejects them for being everything she also is (well, except the illegitimate child part, only she owns that one). Ultimately, because the show needed it, she had to give in and fall in line, only sort of resolving any of these issues while other issues became too important. Not all that empowering, if you ask me.
Sister trope 3 (times 2); Over Sexed and Baby Starved: The third sister, the middle one, may just be the most problematic sister in terms of tropes then any of the others. Phoebe is the "sexy" sister, everything about her from front to back has something to do with her needing companionship -which has her end up married to a demon, who's basically using her most of the time.
Not only does that happen throughout the series, but somewhere along the way in the series the actress that plays Phoebe, Alyssa Milano, seems to have gotten plastic surgery (or something, there is a huge change in her physical appearance) and begins to flaunt it through her characters wardrobe. Not exactly the best role model for girls, as I'm pretty sure the over sexulization and objectification of women is one of Anita's biggest no-noes. But I guess its okay, if its okay with the women who do it? You'd never guess by how much feminists rage on about fashion magazines -I guess everyone in those are just slaves..
Not only does that happen throughout the series, but somewhere along the way in the series the actress that plays Phoebe, Alyssa Milano, seems to have gotten plastic surgery (or something, there is a huge change in her physical appearance) and begins to flaunt it through her characters wardrobe. Not exactly the best role model for girls, as I'm pretty sure the over sexulization and objectification of women is one of Anita's biggest no-noes. But I guess its okay, if its okay with the women who do it? You'd never guess by how much feminists rage on about fashion magazines -I guess everyone in those are just slaves..
Beyond this, Phoebe also seems to be obsessed with having a baby through most of Charmed, which could answer why most of her characterization is centered on needing companionship. She has prophetic dreams about having a baby, gets disappointed when those dreams don't come true when they're supposed to (because -I figure- the writers dropped the ball and picked it back up too late). She marries a half-demon and carries its baby, which she refers to later, in a sarcastic way, as "Lucifer" because its been taken over by a faceless evil, but has the baby taken from her and the story pretty much gets dropped. She later marries a guy simply because she thought the prophecy of her having a child was with him, and when she finds out she isn't pregnant *the first time* she annuls their marriage and tells him they need to "take it slow"... Then she marries a cupid and has 3 daughters with him, because, why not? I'm not really sure if I need to go into how this sort of thing would be a dangerous trope for women these days.
But Phoebe also leads into the biggest overarching problem all the girls have through the entire series: Men.
But Phoebe also leads into the biggest overarching problem all the girls have through the entire series: Men.
Nearly *all* of their enemies are men (it's pretty alarming) but that they're also so much that a lot of the sisters problems outside of evil fighting are attached to men as well, as if a woman couldn't *possibly* live without a man by their side, or causing them trouble, in some way.
I touched on Phoebe's part in this, but Piper's entire story, in between the few cracks that her mothering trope allows her, revolves around her angel husband who she shouldn't be married to (by some angel law) and then, later, how he's basically an absentee everything (Father, Husband, Provider..). And instead of throwing her hands in the air and saying "damn it all, damn it all to hell" (which would be fairly easy to actually do in this show, mind you), she keeps going and going and going with it, even becomes a "Goddess" because she finds the lack of feeling it brings was better then living with the pain of not having her husband around. So connected she needs to be to him, that feeling nothing feels better when he's not around -a wonderful message.
Piper and Phoebe's experience with men also shine light on something else that bothers me about how they're portrayed along side men: It doesn't seem like they're allowed to be any sort of happy, unless there's some sort of prophecy in place to arrange their marriages (or child births) for them.
Piper marrying the "White Lighter" Leo, in spite of the fact that it was forbade, and then having two children, one of which has to come back from the future to stop the other from becoming the worlds worst evil, paints Piper further into the corner of "this woman can't catch a break," even under prophecy, she can't simply be happy. I even seem to remember that there was some uncertainty to if her first son could be stopped, because she wasn't sure she was even able to have the second.
Phoebe on the other hand, I had mentioned earlier in her specific trope: She lets prophecy dictate her actions so much, that she becomes deeply disappointed (and depressed) when it doesn't come to pass when she feels it should; but instead of damning it all and moving on to attempt to be happy with what was in front of her that already was making her happy, she slams the breaks hard and hits the reset button so prophecy can play out instead of trying to fulfill her own needs.
I can't help but think that both those things don't shine a negative light on how these shows decided to treat their female leads. Cultures and movements are trying to move away from the idea of arranged marriages, and current sentiments seem to be very animately trying to convince people that fate is a nice idea, but shouldn't govern your life. But this show (and in a way Sabrina as well) seem to be trying to tell girls, "Hey, just wait around, don't try to be proactive, because you may miss your one true, predetermined, love or one chance for children (who may abandon you to do his "duties" or children who may not come till some sort of magical intervention happens)." That's not positive at all.
Piper and Phoebe's experience with men also shine light on something else that bothers me about how they're portrayed along side men: It doesn't seem like they're allowed to be any sort of happy, unless there's some sort of prophecy in place to arrange their marriages (or child births) for them.
Piper marrying the "White Lighter" Leo, in spite of the fact that it was forbade, and then having two children, one of which has to come back from the future to stop the other from becoming the worlds worst evil, paints Piper further into the corner of "this woman can't catch a break," even under prophecy, she can't simply be happy. I even seem to remember that there was some uncertainty to if her first son could be stopped, because she wasn't sure she was even able to have the second.
Phoebe on the other hand, I had mentioned earlier in her specific trope: She lets prophecy dictate her actions so much, that she becomes deeply disappointed (and depressed) when it doesn't come to pass when she feels it should; but instead of damning it all and moving on to attempt to be happy with what was in front of her that already was making her happy, she slams the breaks hard and hits the reset button so prophecy can play out instead of trying to fulfill her own needs.
I can't help but think that both those things don't shine a negative light on how these shows decided to treat their female leads. Cultures and movements are trying to move away from the idea of arranged marriages, and current sentiments seem to be very animately trying to convince people that fate is a nice idea, but shouldn't govern your life. But this show (and in a way Sabrina as well) seem to be trying to tell girls, "Hey, just wait around, don't try to be proactive, because you may miss your one true, predetermined, love or one chance for children (who may abandon you to do his "duties" or children who may not come till some sort of magical intervention happens)." That's not positive at all.
Paige... I actually had to look it up because I didn't commit a lot of her parts of the show to memory, but she had a *ton* of love interests and boyfriends.. I'm not really sure how I went about not pegging her as the one who needed companionship more then Phoebe seemed to. But anyway, the one man related story of hers that I did remember most was her being in love with a "magic addict," which played out more or less like any other abusive relationship involving an addiction, made worse by the fact that she's magic, and he was basically using her to get close to a fix. Nothing like making you (supposedly) strong female lead into a proxy for substance and domestic abuse.
There is also one thing about this I want to note. Anita, in the video I link at the top, mentions a quote that Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani said in 2010, that I really think she takes out of context. But the context itself (that he's talking about his thoughts while making the game in the 80's, and how that was a very different time, in a very different place -Japan- and taking them to mean he thought this things in 2010, so far removed from when his game was created, seems grossly wrong), doesn't matter. What matter's here is the statement itself, in the interview with Wired Magazine, where he says:
"Around the time that we launched Pac-Man, video arcades were filled with games where you shoot aliens. It seemed very dark. It was for men, it wasn’t fashionable at all. When women would go out, they’d go out in a group of friends or with a boyfriend as a couple. And I realized that if women and couples were going to come to game centers, they had to be cheerful places.
When you think about things women like, you think about fashion, or fortune-telling, or food or dating boyfriends. So I decided to theme the game around “eating” — after eating dinner, women like to have dessert."
But aside from this being a sentiment that he specifically says was 80's minded (and can be assumed Japanese -yes, it is a different culture...), he's saying that women liked fashion, fortune telling or food or dating... So how exactly is Charmed different, being 20 years removed from Pac-Man's release, and cited as a positive female outlook? The blow by blow is this:
Piper runs nightclub but drops out of that to pursue becoming a chef/caterer, ultimately opening her own restaurant. So not only does she take care of everyone like a mother, as mentioned earlier, but she's the shows cook, doing it constantly through the series. If you find Piper anywhere int he series, it's probably the kitchen. And she likes it, it's her passion. It = food.
Fortune Telling = Supernatural in most every case... And what are witches? Yep. Supernatural. That was the big hook/theme to the series, that set it apart from all the other dramas -but it wasn't meant to draw men (or in my case, teenage boys -even though I love anything Sci-fi Fantasy, so it did speak to me in that way) into watching, it was meant specifically for female viewers... Oh, and it's being remade...
Catch a look at those pictures of the women above. Fashionable (maybe), right? Ever catch a look at the show and see any thing they're wearing? Hell, Phoebe tries to be the embodiment of fashion on the show, if you can call most of what she wears through the series cloths. The things she wears a lot of the time wouldn't be enough to release Dobby the House Elf from servitude.
And I've already gone into the sisters and men.. No need to do that again.
So there isn't anything really wrong with what Iwatani said about his decades old game, except for the fact that Anita lopped off the first half of the comment and broke the context of the entire statement.
There is also one thing about this I want to note. Anita, in the video I link at the top, mentions a quote that Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani said in 2010, that I really think she takes out of context. But the context itself (that he's talking about his thoughts while making the game in the 80's, and how that was a very different time, in a very different place -Japan- and taking them to mean he thought this things in 2010, so far removed from when his game was created, seems grossly wrong), doesn't matter. What matter's here is the statement itself, in the interview with Wired Magazine, where he says:
"Around the time that we launched Pac-Man, video arcades were filled with games where you shoot aliens. It seemed very dark. It was for men, it wasn’t fashionable at all. When women would go out, they’d go out in a group of friends or with a boyfriend as a couple. And I realized that if women and couples were going to come to game centers, they had to be cheerful places.
When you think about things women like, you think about fashion, or fortune-telling, or food or dating boyfriends. So I decided to theme the game around “eating” — after eating dinner, women like to have dessert."
But aside from this being a sentiment that he specifically says was 80's minded (and can be assumed Japanese -yes, it is a different culture...), he's saying that women liked fashion, fortune telling or food or dating... So how exactly is Charmed different, being 20 years removed from Pac-Man's release, and cited as a positive female outlook? The blow by blow is this:
Piper runs nightclub but drops out of that to pursue becoming a chef/caterer, ultimately opening her own restaurant. So not only does she take care of everyone like a mother, as mentioned earlier, but she's the shows cook, doing it constantly through the series. If you find Piper anywhere int he series, it's probably the kitchen. And she likes it, it's her passion. It = food.
Fortune Telling = Supernatural in most every case... And what are witches? Yep. Supernatural. That was the big hook/theme to the series, that set it apart from all the other dramas -but it wasn't meant to draw men (or in my case, teenage boys -even though I love anything Sci-fi Fantasy, so it did speak to me in that way) into watching, it was meant specifically for female viewers... Oh, and it's being remade...
Catch a look at those pictures of the women above. Fashionable (maybe), right? Ever catch a look at the show and see any thing they're wearing? Hell, Phoebe tries to be the embodiment of fashion on the show, if you can call most of what she wears through the series cloths. The things she wears a lot of the time wouldn't be enough to release Dobby the House Elf from servitude.
And I've already gone into the sisters and men.. No need to do that again.
So there isn't anything really wrong with what Iwatani said about his decades old game, except for the fact that Anita lopped off the first half of the comment and broke the context of the entire statement.
There is one last thing, though. The article name asks the question: Which girl is the Witch girl? And that kind of also connects to the next one, which will be about Sabrina The Teenage Witch. If you read that far you'll notice an odd, obvious, trend. One I'll tackle in earnest when I talk about Sabrina.
The most important thing to come away with here, and something I wish I were easily able to say by the end of part one before I got caught up in all the frustration her skewing facts made me feel, is that these things are all just entertainment. No matter who you are your not watching Charmed for the deep storylines or searching for the intricate meanings of life -your watching that shit to see some demons get their asses handed to them. If your watching Sabrina your probably a teenager girl who's looking for a Boy Meets World alternative, or a boy with a bashful crush on Melissa Joan Hart (Verdict: guilty), not searching out how you should live your life.
Outside current events shows, like news broadcasts, where we should be taking some things seriously, we take entertainment a little *too* seriously, and that maybe where we need to stop ourselves and take a breath. Some of the things we come away with from it, like both sides in the fight Anita's brought to light, just cause far more complications then they help, and I think we can all agree that stopping videogames won't help women's privates from being mutilated in countries that really don't give a shit about videogames. Videogames are a first world thing, and a lot of what Ms. Sarkeesian talks about, what most of the more vocal feminists talk about, are very much first world problems. Besides, we're talking about things that may or may not feature a talking cat.. How serious can we really take them?
Next up: The show with the actual talking cat!
Next up: The show with the actual talking cat!
(P.S. I'm very serious when I say I didn't go out of my way to look for pictures that made the ladies of Charmed look sexy --Those were actual promotional pictures from/for the show. I don't know how that fits into any feminist agenda as a positiveat all .)
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