nenya_kanadka (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nenya_kanadka) wrote2017-05-10 12:12 am
nenya_kanadka) wrote2017-05-10 12:12 am
Entry tags:
Constance Peterson Defense Squad
Rewatched Spellbound last night. I really think it's going to become one of those movies that goes in the queue to be watched again every year or two. Peck is so pretty and Bergman is so determined!
It's really her movie, too, in the sense that she's the main protagonist and it's all told from her point of view. And pretty much from the moment she opens her mouth in the first scene where her male coworker is trying to get her to soften up to his romantic advances and she's like "Lol, no," I just really like Dr. Constance Peterson. (He tells her she's too cold and cerebral, and she asks if he's buttering her up; he says her "lack of emotion" is "fatal for her as a woman" and a doctor, and she says yes, yes, she's heard that from any number of amorous psychiatrists who toootally want to make her a better doctor. :D)
And she's the one who takes action to find out what's wrong with Ballantyne and try to get him some psychological help before the police lock him in the slammer. She's the one trying to figure out WTF is going on (while Gregory Peck is intermittently collapsing, staring off into space, being grouchy as fuck, or looking attractively dishevelled). And she doesn't give up. Not just because Peck is hot (though she certainly thinks so) but because she believes in his innocence and she isn't satisfied with the explanations she's getting. And then they get a happy ending, entirely due to her efforts, and Peck swoons a little less but still canonically "madly adores" her and thinks she's "brilliant."
So, I like her. She's cool. Bergman is hot. She gets the hot woobie. Very nice.
But then of course I run across someone being Wrong On The Internet about her. Okay, maybe Wrong In A Book? I was googling around to see if anyone had any opinions on Peck's more slashy roles, and came across some essay in a book on Google Books1. Some kind of "queering the text" analysis of Hitchcock movies. And oh boy, are they wrong!
I mean, for starters, they have somehow (???) decided that the villain is queer. I know there is a tradition of queer villains. But in this case, Dr. Murchison is preeeettty much 100% hetero-patriarchal? Male boss of a staff made up of all men (except Constance). They're all pretty sexist towards her. Everyone's into Freud. Murders his replacement because he doesn't want to retire. I didn't scroll back far enough in the essay to figure out exactly why they concluded he was queer-coded, but I think it's because he murdered a man. (Completely offscreen, too, so there isn't even a slashy death scene.) That seems insufficient evidence to me.
So because the villain is queer-coded, it's bad to treat him as a villain, and Constance's crowning moment of awesome at the end of the movie is "reaffirming normativity" and it's soooo sad that she and he can't talk to each other like friends any more! It's clearly an example of straight women and queer men being at odds! (I think there was something in there about "straight women symbolizing the hetero-patriarchy," but that might have been in the bit about some other Hitchcock movie Bergman was in.) And so she sucks, or something. It's not like the villain is a bad guy because he murdered someone and happily pinned it on an innocent party or anything! It's not a victory when a woman quietly and with no nonsense figures out what he did, tells him to his face, and keeps him talking until she can get away!
So they're wrong about that. Murchison is a hetero villain. And a jerk. This queer doesn't want him. Ugh.
They do seem to have noticed the whole thing where the gender roles are swapped: Constance takes all the action and makes all the decision and pushes for a resolution, and her coworker/boyfriend/patient is the swooning amnesiac who says things like, "I love you, but I'm not worthy of love." Yes! Good! I like that about this movie, and I like that this essay picked up on that (hard not to notice, really). But then they're like, "He says he feels like 'nothing' at one point [bc amnesia, no memories of his past, etc], and because Shakespeare used 'nothing' to mean 'vagina' and because he's in the helpless acted-upon role, that makes him feminine!" Which, no. I realize this may be a fine distinction (though I've shouted about it many many times in het F/m kink circles), but there's a difference between a man being given a role that is usually given to women, and a man being a woman/feminine/not manly.
So they're wrong about that. It matters to me that Constance is a woman in an active role and Ballantyne is a man in a passive role. It doesn't make him a girl. That's the whole point, at least to this bisexual who likes her women active and her men to leave her a bit of room to exist.
Then they seem to go full-on into the Freudian implications of the Salvador Dali dream sequence ("People argue over whether the weird wheel-shape in the dream is a penis or a vagina. I think it's both--no, wait! I think it's an anus and it means Murchison is offering Ballantyne gay sex!") and how Ballantyne keeps staring at Constance's knife while she eats, not because he's thinking of murder weapons and freaking out that he'll hurt her, but because it's "phallic" and he totally wants the dick, and oh btw he totally looks upset while they're skiing because he wishes she was Edwardes (not because, again, he's terrified he'll hurt her). Something something a razor is phallic and a glass of milk is yonic (except when it stands for semen). The essay says that this is one of those cases where the woman is just a stand-in for the tensions between men who can't admit up-front that they actually desire each other.
And I mean. That's totally a thing, sure. I can think of lots of movies where the het is pastede on, yo, and only half-succeeds in papering over the obvious slashy vibes. In Gregory Peck movies alone you've got, in decreasing order of slashiness, Guns of Navarone2 (three slash ships and counting, canon het ship occurs in two scenes, one of which involves the woman congratulating Peck on his choice in Anthony Quinn asboyfriend partner), The World In His Arms (Peck and Quinn again, foe-yay off the charts, epic chase to save canon het love interest turns into dick-measuring contest between the guys), and Gentleman's Agreement (where Mucca and I are convinced Phil and Dave have been banging since high school, and will probably end up in some kind of poly quad with their wives).
So when they talk about desire between men being mediated through the canon het love interest, I know what they mean. But Spellbound? Spellbound??
Spellbound, the movie that's 90% increasingly entangled emotional scenes between the canon het pair. Spellbound, the movie where they're both incredibly focused on each other, and when it's not about the romance it's about her poking around the inside of his brain. Spellbound, the one where he faints into her boobs at least three times, and has to be talked down from just snogging her a lot instead of doing therapy. Spellbound, the movie where the chemistry between the leads was so intense that they ended up fucking IRL. And not in a hatesex way either. Spellbound, where the female lead loves her career and wishes all these sexist, middle-aged jerks around her would quit perving on her--but then gets the hots for a gorgeous young Gregory Peck in full pillow-lip mode, who literally swoons for her? Spellbound, where they pretend to be fake-married three separate times, and the first thing Gregory Peck does when he's got his memory back is to propose to her for real? That Spellbound?
So they're wrong about that too. There is at least one character I can read as queer in Spellbound (see below), but the canon het is pretty damn intrinsic to the story, and not in the slightest some kind of fakeout to hide secret queer content.
(The actual queer bit, and something I love: Constance's mentor Professor Brulov's lovely little turn of phrase that "Any husband of yours is a husband of mine." Now that is pretty gay. He says it twice, too--the first time, it could be just a slip of the tongue, but the second time, he's had time to realize how gay it sounds, and he says it anyway. It's actually the last real dialogue in the film. Brulov is also a bachelor getting along in years. Him, I could happily read as queer. And unlike the handwringing in the essay about straight women enforcing heteronormativity against queer male characters and how this tragically destroys friendships, Peterson and Brulov are still BFFs at the end of the tale. If anything, his occasional sexist remarks to her--something all the male characters do in this movie--would support a thesis that even gay men aren't always on board with feminism. Because, like I said, this is Constance's movie.)
It all starts to remind me of fans who decide that a female character has gotten in the way of their slash ship, so she must be a huge raging bitch (and that plant in the corner proves their faves are doing it). Or people who see an advertisement that features a beautiful, sexualized, perhaps vulnerable man, and go, "Oh wow! That's really homoerotic!" without stopping to think that, wait, straight and bi women just might have some interest in male beauty. Halfway through reading this thing, I said to myself, "Good lord. Some people just REALLY can't handle women being in charge." Women can't be assertive or take the lead role, especially not in a het relationship! No, there has to be some other explanation. He's gay. She's analien agent of patriarchy. (I never did figure out why that was supposedly the case here.) Something. Anything, to prove a woman can't be the knight in shining armor.
I'm queer. I'm also a woman who really appreciates active female protagonists. I also enjoy a good dose of beautiful man occasionally, and if he's a little vulnerable along with his gorgeous broad shoulders and deep brown eyes and delicious ruffle-able hair, all the better. (I might, too, have a carefully-nursed pet peeve about how alpha male heroes are so much more common than dominant women and their pretty boy-toys in het romance.) I'm a m-slasher and a fem-slasher as long as the day is long. But it really gets my goat when people take a female hero I love and pretend all the awesome things about her don't exist.
Dr. Constance Peterson: brilliant, determined, gets the hot boy. And badly-conceived meta can go fuck off.
_________________________
(1) I've lost the link now, but I think it was for something called "Intimate Violence." I'm not opposed to queer theory generally, but just as I sometimes disagree with queer fandom meta, I had huge issues with this particular iteration of queer theory. It really felt like they were trying to force the facts to fit the thesis ("someone in this movie is queer and being oppressed by a straight woman, I just know it!") rather than the reverse.
(2) Even the 18-year-old son of Mucca's assistant lightkeeper feels that Guns of Navarone is pretty damn gay.
It's really her movie, too, in the sense that she's the main protagonist and it's all told from her point of view. And pretty much from the moment she opens her mouth in the first scene where her male coworker is trying to get her to soften up to his romantic advances and she's like "Lol, no," I just really like Dr. Constance Peterson. (He tells her she's too cold and cerebral, and she asks if he's buttering her up; he says her "lack of emotion" is "fatal for her as a woman" and a doctor, and she says yes, yes, she's heard that from any number of amorous psychiatrists who toootally want to make her a better doctor. :D)
And she's the one who takes action to find out what's wrong with Ballantyne and try to get him some psychological help before the police lock him in the slammer. She's the one trying to figure out WTF is going on (while Gregory Peck is intermittently collapsing, staring off into space, being grouchy as fuck, or looking attractively dishevelled). And she doesn't give up. Not just because Peck is hot (though she certainly thinks so) but because she believes in his innocence and she isn't satisfied with the explanations she's getting. And then they get a happy ending, entirely due to her efforts, and Peck swoons a little less but still canonically "madly adores" her and thinks she's "brilliant."
So, I like her. She's cool. Bergman is hot. She gets the hot woobie. Very nice.
But then of course I run across someone being Wrong On The Internet about her. Okay, maybe Wrong In A Book? I was googling around to see if anyone had any opinions on Peck's more slashy roles, and came across some essay in a book on Google Books1. Some kind of "queering the text" analysis of Hitchcock movies. And oh boy, are they wrong!
I mean, for starters, they have somehow (???) decided that the villain is queer. I know there is a tradition of queer villains. But in this case, Dr. Murchison is preeeettty much 100% hetero-patriarchal? Male boss of a staff made up of all men (except Constance). They're all pretty sexist towards her. Everyone's into Freud. Murders his replacement because he doesn't want to retire. I didn't scroll back far enough in the essay to figure out exactly why they concluded he was queer-coded, but I think it's because he murdered a man. (Completely offscreen, too, so there isn't even a slashy death scene.) That seems insufficient evidence to me.
So because the villain is queer-coded, it's bad to treat him as a villain, and Constance's crowning moment of awesome at the end of the movie is "reaffirming normativity" and it's soooo sad that she and he can't talk to each other like friends any more! It's clearly an example of straight women and queer men being at odds! (I think there was something in there about "straight women symbolizing the hetero-patriarchy," but that might have been in the bit about some other Hitchcock movie Bergman was in.) And so she sucks, or something. It's not like the villain is a bad guy because he murdered someone and happily pinned it on an innocent party or anything! It's not a victory when a woman quietly and with no nonsense figures out what he did, tells him to his face, and keeps him talking until she can get away!
So they're wrong about that. Murchison is a hetero villain. And a jerk. This queer doesn't want him. Ugh.
They do seem to have noticed the whole thing where the gender roles are swapped: Constance takes all the action and makes all the decision and pushes for a resolution, and her coworker/boyfriend/patient is the swooning amnesiac who says things like, "I love you, but I'm not worthy of love." Yes! Good! I like that about this movie, and I like that this essay picked up on that (hard not to notice, really). But then they're like, "He says he feels like 'nothing' at one point [bc amnesia, no memories of his past, etc], and because Shakespeare used 'nothing' to mean 'vagina' and because he's in the helpless acted-upon role, that makes him feminine!" Which, no. I realize this may be a fine distinction (though I've shouted about it many many times in het F/m kink circles), but there's a difference between a man being given a role that is usually given to women, and a man being a woman/feminine/not manly.
So they're wrong about that. It matters to me that Constance is a woman in an active role and Ballantyne is a man in a passive role. It doesn't make him a girl. That's the whole point, at least to this bisexual who likes her women active and her men to leave her a bit of room to exist.
Then they seem to go full-on into the Freudian implications of the Salvador Dali dream sequence ("People argue over whether the weird wheel-shape in the dream is a penis or a vagina. I think it's both--no, wait! I think it's an anus and it means Murchison is offering Ballantyne gay sex!") and how Ballantyne keeps staring at Constance's knife while she eats, not because he's thinking of murder weapons and freaking out that he'll hurt her, but because it's "phallic" and he totally wants the dick, and oh btw he totally looks upset while they're skiing because he wishes she was Edwardes (not because, again, he's terrified he'll hurt her). Something something a razor is phallic and a glass of milk is yonic (except when it stands for semen). The essay says that this is one of those cases where the woman is just a stand-in for the tensions between men who can't admit up-front that they actually desire each other.
And I mean. That's totally a thing, sure. I can think of lots of movies where the het is pastede on, yo, and only half-succeeds in papering over the obvious slashy vibes. In Gregory Peck movies alone you've got, in decreasing order of slashiness, Guns of Navarone2 (three slash ships and counting, canon het ship occurs in two scenes, one of which involves the woman congratulating Peck on his choice in Anthony Quinn as
So when they talk about desire between men being mediated through the canon het love interest, I know what they mean. But Spellbound? Spellbound??
Spellbound, the movie that's 90% increasingly entangled emotional scenes between the canon het pair. Spellbound, the movie where they're both incredibly focused on each other, and when it's not about the romance it's about her poking around the inside of his brain. Spellbound, the one where he faints into her boobs at least three times, and has to be talked down from just snogging her a lot instead of doing therapy. Spellbound, the movie where the chemistry between the leads was so intense that they ended up fucking IRL. And not in a hatesex way either. Spellbound, where the female lead loves her career and wishes all these sexist, middle-aged jerks around her would quit perving on her--but then gets the hots for a gorgeous young Gregory Peck in full pillow-lip mode, who literally swoons for her? Spellbound, where they pretend to be fake-married three separate times, and the first thing Gregory Peck does when he's got his memory back is to propose to her for real? That Spellbound?
So they're wrong about that too. There is at least one character I can read as queer in Spellbound (see below), but the canon het is pretty damn intrinsic to the story, and not in the slightest some kind of fakeout to hide secret queer content.
(The actual queer bit, and something I love: Constance's mentor Professor Brulov's lovely little turn of phrase that "Any husband of yours is a husband of mine." Now that is pretty gay. He says it twice, too--the first time, it could be just a slip of the tongue, but the second time, he's had time to realize how gay it sounds, and he says it anyway. It's actually the last real dialogue in the film. Brulov is also a bachelor getting along in years. Him, I could happily read as queer. And unlike the handwringing in the essay about straight women enforcing heteronormativity against queer male characters and how this tragically destroys friendships, Peterson and Brulov are still BFFs at the end of the tale. If anything, his occasional sexist remarks to her--something all the male characters do in this movie--would support a thesis that even gay men aren't always on board with feminism. Because, like I said, this is Constance's movie.)
It all starts to remind me of fans who decide that a female character has gotten in the way of their slash ship, so she must be a huge raging bitch (and that plant in the corner proves their faves are doing it). Or people who see an advertisement that features a beautiful, sexualized, perhaps vulnerable man, and go, "Oh wow! That's really homoerotic!" without stopping to think that, wait, straight and bi women just might have some interest in male beauty. Halfway through reading this thing, I said to myself, "Good lord. Some people just REALLY can't handle women being in charge." Women can't be assertive or take the lead role, especially not in a het relationship! No, there has to be some other explanation. He's gay. She's an
I'm queer. I'm also a woman who really appreciates active female protagonists. I also enjoy a good dose of beautiful man occasionally, and if he's a little vulnerable along with his gorgeous broad shoulders and deep brown eyes and delicious ruffle-able hair, all the better. (I might, too, have a carefully-nursed pet peeve about how alpha male heroes are so much more common than dominant women and their pretty boy-toys in het romance.) I'm a m-slasher and a fem-slasher as long as the day is long. But it really gets my goat when people take a female hero I love and pretend all the awesome things about her don't exist.
Dr. Constance Peterson: brilliant, determined, gets the hot boy. And badly-conceived meta can go fuck off.
_________________________
(1) I've lost the link now, but I think it was for something called "Intimate Violence." I'm not opposed to queer theory generally, but just as I sometimes disagree with queer fandom meta, I had huge issues with this particular iteration of queer theory. It really felt like they were trying to force the facts to fit the thesis ("someone in this movie is queer and being oppressed by a straight woman, I just know it!") rather than the reverse.
(2) Even the 18-year-old son of Mucca's assistant lightkeeper feels that Guns of Navarone is pretty damn gay.
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Passive = feminine = gay is NOT my favourite trope. God forbid any het relationship have different power dynamics.
I was wondering if they thought Murcherson was maybe camping a bit? He was slightly over-refined. Which I think just makes him evil and European, not evil and gay. And like he straight up murdered a dude for his job, and was going to cheerfully let an innocent dude hang for it.
The fact that Peck couldn't ski at all is the funniest thing I've ever heard. And my main objection to that bullshit plot is still WHY IS THERE A 400' CLIFF IN THE MIDDLE OF A SKI HILL!?!?
Also there are FOUR slash ships in Navarone: Keith/Andrea, Keith/Ray, Keith/Miller and Miller/Ray. And they weren't even saving Marina in World in His Arms. They'd fucked off to go sealing, so it was just a slashy boat race, no women involved except Louise the Seal. Marina was saved incidentally. (Though I still ship Kirk/McCoy more there, than the foeyay ship.)
Louise the Seal says wtf co this round of queering the text.
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And it's ev.ry.where. "Submissive men should always crossdress and suck cock in order to show true submissiveness to their Goddess Mistress!" is no more helpful than "He's queer so he's not *really* a man" or "He's not super butch so obviously he likes the D" -- and that's true even if being a feminine gay bottom is a good thing in and of itself (which it is). I feel like it's one thing to recognize when those tropes are being used in a work, and another to add them in where they don't even exist, and I think this meta was doing more of the latter. "He's femme and queer" is different from "he's femme and *therefore* he must be queer," especially if the 'femininity' amounts to being vulnerable and attractive while a woman runs the show. Also F/m is both not the patriarchal default AND not queer (unless they're both bi I guess).
All that said, I'm not above describing John Ballantyne as a pretty pretty princess occasionally. But I'm not writing serious queer meta!
I did wonder a little if they thought Murchison was camp. To me he was playing "More refined than thou" as a class/power thing. Sleek, replete, above your petty concerns, so powerful he only has to click his fingers and make things happen. Smug. Someone with those exact mannerisms would probably read a lot more camp to me in 2015 than he did in 1945, fwiw, but he didn't strike me as anything but seriously full of himself.
there are FOUR slash ships in Navarone: Keith/Andrea, Keith/Ray, Keith/Miller and Miller/Ray
Okay, that's Gregory Peck/Anthony Quinn, Peck/David Niven's Boyfriend, Peck/Niven, and Niven/His Boyfriend? Hmm you're right! I think I must have just been counting the ships Peck was in, because Niven/bf is one of the two big ones at the start of the film, and is why Niven is so pissed at Mallory for lying to Ray.
Andrea/Resistance Lady would have been great (I liked her), but completely overshadowed by the gay. ❤ That is not a heterosexual movie.
He was from California! From that gossipy rag of a book the other night:
Book also claims Bergman was a skiing noob too, though this article from 1941 seems to disagree:
Actress Ingrid Bergman plays in the snow
I feel like they were racing each other for Sitka, which is where the countess had been dragged off too? Though maybe Clark had given up on her at that point, assuming she'd unilaterally fucked off into the night, and only runs into the whole Russian group when the bad guy interrupts his makeout session/fight with Anthony Quinn below decks. (Talk about sublimating erotic urges into violence, man!)
You should write that Boston Man/first mate fic. It would be amazing.
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Ugh. I really can't stand a certain strain of queer theory (often but not always by gay men), that's just on this "gay men = superior" strain, especially when it seems to have a slight undertone of "Because we don't have to deal with girl cooties like straight men do, ew." Reminds me of the Homophiles from the '50s.
I'm not sure who I'd ship them with if they were both bi. I guess they could run into the Gentlemen's Agreement crowd. Maybe Phil covers the story, and Anne and Constance hang out to talk about silly hats.
Yeah, if Murchison was dropping any hairpins, they were really figging small ones. It certainly didn't ping my rather sensitive campdar until I was rewatching with that in mind.
John Ballantyne is SUCH a pretty princess though. I spent a lot of time staring at his hair.
I think if you want to establish a het ship, you have to have more than one conversation and two significant glances. However, I don't make movies, so what do I know? She was a guy in the book, and Andrea, Miller and Keith went off together, incidentally.
No, Marina (apparently) dumped him, he drank all their money, then he bet Tony Quinn his boat that he could beat him to the seal hunting grounds. Which caused the homoerotic boat race. (I just resubbed this, is how I remember.)
I SHOULD! I know one person who would read it.
(This lay out, I seem to be very bad at replying to the post instead of the comment.)
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Basically. :D
And yeah, whether it's gay men or Tumblr kids, there is a variety of "yay gay men" that gets pretty misogynistic right quick. There's a difference between "I don't want to date women" and "Ewwwwwgross" and not everyone stays to one side of that line, sad to say.
(Who were the Homophiles?)
She was a guy in the book, and Andrea, Miller and Keith went off together, incidentally.
Wait, so they literally pastede on a het ship for the movie? Amazing. I guess SOMEbody in production went "This is kinda gay with all the cigarette sharing and manly confidences and swearing of vengeance, huh."
In conclusion, the answer to "Gregory Peck homoeroticism" is "Just add Tony Quinn."
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Het is soooooooooooooooo pasted on. I did like including the women though, as the book had none.
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I love Ingrid Bergman, so how come I haven’t seen this one? Now I have to- it sounds like a very interesting movie.
Now I can’t comment on the interpretation as I haven’t seen it, but it reminds me of how wildly different one can see things. I remember reading “A Game of You” in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and crying heaps over Wanda dying, as she was so kind and unselfish and didn’t deserved to die. I read it as a tragedy, and what makes a tragedy tragic is the death of those who least deserved it. But then I read a very angry essay which claimed as Wanda is transexual, it was all about transphobia, and her dying was only because being outside the norm she was also expendable. But I think this said more about the essay writer, than the actual story, because in my eyes Wanda was definitely not expendable, she was the emotional anchor in the story. But I agree that very often the non-normatives in media are the ones who are killed off. Even so it doesn’t mean it is always like this.
It all starts to remind me of fans who decide that a female character has gotten in the way of their slash ship, so she must be a huge raging bitch (and that plant in the corner proves their faves are doing it).
It awalys struck me as deeply misogynic- and so often it's women who says it! Along with the explanation they prefer slash because women are never given interesting characters in media.
I'm also a woman who really appreciates active female protagonists. I also enjoy a good dose of beautiful man occasionally, and if he's a little vulnerable along with his gorgeous broad shoulders and deep brown eyes and delicious ruffle-able hair, all the better.
Me too! Just about the only thing I like about outlander is that it’s the heroine who is older and the one with sexual experience and the hero is the virgin who the black-hearted villain lusts after.
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I haven't read Sandman although I think I've heard of that character at least in passing. I agree that sometimes it's really a matter of perspective. A character or a plot can really speak to one person and really upset someone else...maybe they've seen so many stories with whatever the thing is that they're just like "Oh god not again!" Fair enough. But that doesn't mean someone else can't get something out of it. (In the case of trans women, my girlfriend (not Mucca, my other lady love) is trans, and I would definitely take her opinion seriously about whether something was transphobic. But I also know that different people within a group can have different opinions on something, too! I've loved some depictions of bisexual women, for example, that other bi women have hated.)
I had a similar experience lately too where someone was like, "Ugh in Luke Cage the female dom/male sub relationship is the villains again, why is it only the villains who get to have the lady in charge?" and I was like, "....well actually, I found them much more approachable and humanized when I realized how their relationship was going, and it actually made them less one-dimensionally evil to me." So yeah.
tl;dr There's a lot of 'your mileage may vary' in this kind of thing.
Along with the explanation they prefer slash because women are never given interesting characters in media.
I kind of understand this sometimes--if the men in the story get to be people but the women in the story only get to be sexy props, it's really easy to care more about the characters who get to be people. Sometimes, I avoid the "sexy prop" female characters entirely because I can't stand having that shoved in my face. (And I do think that people should be able to ship what they want, and there's nothing wrong with women liking m/m.)
That said, the other half of what I think is that if ALL the stories you love only have interesting men and uninteresting women, you must have a pretty limited pool of stories. Because interesting female characters are out there. Usually I end up falling for the women who get cast in the roles I love (superhero! space captain! detective! doctor!) without getting dumbed down because they're female. I think it's fair to be a bit gun-shy if you keep running into female characters who are written in stupid ways, but I think that assuming all women will be written that way is unfortunate, and not always true.
Kind of like assuming that just because many queer characters are made into villains or written in homophobic ways, that all villains are therefore queer or all queer characters will be written badly. ;-)
Anyhow.
I've heard that about Outlander too and I think that's pretty cool. Never got into the series, but if anybody's going to be perved on I vastly prefer it to be pretty men. (Unless it's the female!Master and a female Doctor Who companion, I guess. But I think Missy's pretty hot. *fans self*)
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Outlander has quite a lot I find hard to swallow, and I enjoy the TV show a lot more than the books, but I like that particular aspect a lot. And if you enjoy historival dramas, you may enjoy Versailles. I adore it, even if I'm critical to some aspects of it.
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I was more after the mindset where you justify it with dismissing or villify women.
Exactly. :D
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Here just to say that although I personally bounced off Spellbound like a pile of trampolines because of the nonsense psychology, I agree with you one hundred percent on the heroism of Constance Petersen and that essay sounds like a tire fire and a half.
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And the nonsense psychology was ridiculous and eyerolly, I completely agree with you. I mostly just went LALALA and filed it under "like tropey fic where someone gets knocked on the head and gets amnesia/gets thumped again and gets their memories back" because it made about as much sense. I was totally in it for what my BFF calls the "scenic" characters.
On balance, Constance's heroism and Peck's woobie pretty outweighed the Freudian bullshit, but I can imagine many, many a movie where it would have gone the other way for me. :P