Feminist NY times writer is trying to tell us how to enjoy entertainment. If you cheer for the bad guy (who just happen to be men) or enjoy action, you're "watching wrong."

automatedresponse · 2013-09-18T17:34:07+00:00

It's bad enough trying to control the content of media, but trying to control other people's interpretation and enjoyment of media is a whole new level of Orwell.

Wawoowoo · 2013-09-18T18:49:21+00:00

"Bad Fans" vs. "Good Fans"? Jesus christ bananas. We have to pick sides now? For a television show? Fuck this, I'm out.

2013-09-18T19:46:19+00:00

It took her an hour to figure out that phone call? Seriously?

Too stupid, don't care.

RainyRat · 2013-09-18T20:09:37+00:00

It took her an hour to figure that out? Really?

It's also no wonder people hate Skyler. The very beginning of the show had walt asking her to "climb down out of [his] ass". That's the context she is always drawn in. She is just as selfish as Walt, but nowhere near as good as he is. And yet, in the end, he still does what he can to protect his family. I need to watch the whole thing from the beginning again. I think everyone does. Theres a lot of context that gets lost if you haven't seen the origins in a few years.

moodyone · 2013-09-19T00:56:32+00:00

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2013-09-18T18:14:35+00:00

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MasterCronus · 2013-09-18T22:16:34+00:00

I always wonder which of these authors actually believe this stuff and which are just using us to get attention.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/01/16

moodyone · 2013-09-19T01:24:52+00:00

Interesting. I am a woman and a feminist. I started watching BB a couple months ago and am now all caught up, but having marathoned it recently rather than letting it unfold gradually over 5 years I think gives me a different perspective.

I hated Skyler from the beginning, because I thought she was a poorly done, annoying character. In the first few seasons in particular, she's really shown as nothing but a whiny nag. Granted that she doesn't know what Walt's up to in the first two seasons, she seems like a bitch for begrudging her dying husband a few hours to himself (even though he happens to be cooking meth rather than going for walks in that time). There's nothing particularly interesting about her (but tons that is annoying) until she gets involved with crime (which is true of Walt, also, except of course he gets involved in the first episode). I did begin to like her a lot more some time in season 3, when her character started being more complex and unpredictable. I think I decided I didn't totally hate her anymore around the time she slept with her boss--that is, actually did something besides whine and complain; did something not related to her husband or family that gave her her own plot line.

However, when I say I didn't like her, I mean that I didn't like the way she was written--she and Marie are two-dimensional harpies who serve as minor plot foils for the more important male characters, at least in the earlier episodes. She is meant to be annoying, both to Walt and to the viewer. Unlike Walt, she wasn't a convincing enough character, I felt, to "dislike" as one dislikes a well-drawn villain.

On the other hand, Walt is a totally loathsome character, and that becomes obvious as the show's arc unfolds. I never "liked" Walt, either, in the sense that I never found his character likeable; but I liked him as a character. He's a great villain whose complex evolution from mere douche to supervillain showcases how TV can accomplish what movies, in their brevity, cannot. Skyler's a dull and forgettable, lazy stock character (who happens to conform to assloads of lazy, sexist stereotypes about women), at least for two seasons. He's fucking Iago, but she's no Lady MacBeth--she's the boring servant character who has to exit before Iago can deliver a cool soliloquy about murder, or whatever. So, yes, of course no one is going to like her much.

Viewers can dislike Skyler for different reasons, but there's a fundamental difference between "Skyler's character is boring, annoying, and two-dimensional, her plot lines are all dull and the actress has a whiny voice" and "OMG Skyler's such a stupid bitch she should just let Walt do his awesome thing and quit being a bitch!" One can even take it to the next level, and say “Skyler is constructed to be as annoying to the viewer as she is to Walt, but for different reasons. This is interesting and requires further analysis.” Some seem to have missed the point that Walt is a villain and view Skyler as thwarting Walt's rightful ambitions, or something. They missed where Walt’s lost his epic battle with denial and go along with his shit about how he’s just protecting his family, even as he’s endangering them.

Substitute Don and Betty for Walt and Skyler above, and you have how I felt about Mad Men: Betty was an annoying character (though better done than Skyler, I think), yes. The stupid bitch who ruins everything for awesome Don? No.

The author isn't saying not to enjoy action or root for the bad guys. She's saying there are fans who miss the more complicated things the writers are trying to accomplish and just want "more whackings," "more action," etc., thereby annoying other fans and the writers, who put more thought into their work than 'bad fans' ways of appreciating it give them credit for. In discussing good and bad fans, the author seems to be talking not about her own judgment as to how media should be enjoyed, but about what TV writers hope viewers will get out of their shows and how they might incorporate their frustration with viewers who insist on missing the intended points into the shows themselves. Of course we can relate to “bad guys” (particularly when they are the protagonists). But evil protagonists give artists the opportunity to challenge viewers: a skilled artist forces us to see their perspective before (hopefully) we step away in horror. Remember that bit in Schindler’s List, where the Nazi is about to sniper-kill a Jewish inmate whom he believes has been slacking, but in fact the guy has been working hard? It’s haunting precisely because Spielberg forces us to feel, for a split second, that what’s about to happen is unjust because the guy wasn’t lazy rather than because genocide = bad.

The author uses feminism in her examples, but it doesn’t appear to be essential to her basic argument that bad fans annoy other fans and TV writers with their inability to engage except superficially with the material. I don’t know if I buy the author’s example about the “face girl” on Sex and the City, but I remember a different episode of that show in which a silly, awkward, fresh-faced young girl who idolized Carrie showed up and wanted to follow her around and bask in her awesomeness. I wouldn’t find it a stretch that this character was meant to lampoon the show’s casual fans who missed the intended point of “nuanced exploration of dating, sex, same-sex friendships, and other things among women of a particular class in a particular place and time” and just got “YAYYYY manhattan cosmos prada shoes big dicks one-shoulder dresses with flowers on them YAYY!” out of it.

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