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Warning: may contain profound misogyny

Ever feel like someone else watched a completely different show than you did?

First Cracked listed Firefly‘s River Tam in its rundown of the “Randall Munroe — which I thought was sort of ridiculous, partly because I don’t agree with it, and partly because I don’t think River was an attempt at feminism. I’m not convinced that every female character has to be.

And then they linked to that LJ post as some kind of proof or approbation of their theory…

When I read that “beyond a shadow of a doubt” Joss Whedon obviously abuses his own wife, the essay went from being just an extremely flawed reading of Firefly to being downright insulting. I waded through just enough of her current blog to see that she considers Whedon “a profound misogynist,” and men in general to be, at best,”superfluous creatures.” (At worst, we’re violent misogynist bastards not to be trusted around anyone else.)

That’s when I realized that we had, in fact, seen two very different shows, and we were never going to agree on something like this.

A couple of weeks ago, Mary Ann took some of the Firefly (and Torchwood) characters to task for being racial stereotypes. And while I didn’t really agree with her on that, I could definitely see her point. As a middle-class American white guy, I’ll admit my persepctive may be different, and I may not be as sensitive to these things as I could be.

I don’t think Joss Whedon, Russell T. Davies, or anyone else should get a free pass. When they do wrong — or could do better — they should be called on it. But, at the same time, I don’t think every time a person of color displays a character flaw that that’s racism, or that every time a female character shows some sign of weakness it’s because the writer is a profound misogynist. Sometimes it’s actually just good writing. People are often flawed; people are sometimes weak. If all we have are predictably flawed and weak characters, then we have a problem. And if all of those characters are women and/or non-white, then the root of that problem could very well be racism and/or misogyny, and that needs to be fixed.

I don’t think Whedon is a perfect feminist, by any means, but I do think he’s more a part of the solution than the problem.

More various

  • Oh good. At least Sarah Palin understands where Russia is. I guess McCain is implying he could have picked a running mate who doesn’t. We really dodged a bullet there, huh? At this point, I think he’d have been better off with Michael Palin. Lord knows he’s traveled abroad a lot.
  • Although I do sort of want “Alaska is right next to Russia.” on a t-shirt.
  • The New York Times on the Coen Brothers formula:

    Typically, a slightly down-on-his luck protagonist driven by a single motivating belief (“The Dude abides,” “I’m a writer”) gets involved in a low-level criminal plot involving kidnapping or extortion, setting off a chain reaction of complications and reversals. And more often than not, somebody gets shot in the face.

    Seems pretty accurate to me.

  • Wow. Sioux City must be otherwise really boring. In all fairness, I have never actually eaten at an Olive Garden myself, so maybe it’s worth all the hoopla. I hear they have good free bread and salad. [via]
  • Got allergies? Maybe what you need is a hookworm infection! [via]
  • Movie quiz: Can you recognize movie posters from a single letter? I’m reminded of an episode, I think of 20/20, years ago, in which they showed children an alphabet made up of letters from brand product logos. Most of those were frighteningly easy to recognize. None of the kids had any trouble, as I recall. Here, though, I only got 10 out of 46. So maybe there’s some small hope left for humanity. [via]
  • Just how much of a bad man was J.M. Barrie? Possibly quite very. [via]
  • I’m starting to think bad makeup and receding hair might be something like a motif in later Nicholas Cage movies…
  • Weight Watchers as roleplaying game? Hmm. [via]
  • Need to find a public restroom near you? Look no further. Well, unless it doesn’t work. I honestly haven’t tested the results near me. (And if I’m in Manhattan and really desperate, there’s always the Internets Celebrities to guide me.) [via]