I'll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy

[rivkat]

What's wrong with this picture? Apologies if the cut is wonky; for some reason this embedded as a table and I'm too annoyed to figure it out.

Fringe cast photo, S2 DVDs

Thanks, Fringe S2 DVDs; I thought there was no way you could make me unhappy.

Comments

[octette]

this makes me really unhappy, too, especially since it's so freaking unexpected. ugh.

[rivkat]

I know!

[amalthia]

Is it because two white guys are in the middle? I don't know much about the show or the characters?

[rivkat]

It's because Olivia Dunham is the fucking protagonist of the show, excuse my language, and they put the white guy in the center regardless. She's the one on the left. He's the one who gets rescued a lot. By her. He's won me over, but he'd be the first one to tell you that Olivia is the leader. It's just so depressing because the show is so awesome, and Olivia is even more awesome, and yet these patterns are so ingrained that people doing publicity for the show, who obviously don't know or don't care, just fall back into the same old story.

[amalthia]

Okay that is upsetting! I didn't know the dynamics of the characters in the show and you're right looking at the cover you assume that the guy in the middle is the main character. Though in the first and only episode I saw it was Olivia who was the pov character and she pulled the other two along with her.

[aerye]

Wow. That's like a slap in the face, isn't it?

[rivkat]

Yes, exactly.

[alexseanchai]

I don't know nuffink about Fringe, but...isn't Olivia the lead?

TV Guide keeps having ads for Criminal Minds. Hotch, Gideon, and Rossi. TV Guide keeps having other ads for Criminal Minds that have those three in the center, nice and big, and the offending ad isn't in the issue for this week or next but I'm pretty sure Morgan and Reid were on either side of them, smaller, and JJ and Prentiss and Garcia were quite small on the ends. Elle wasn't there at all.

[jackandahat]

Why *would* Elle be there?

But otherwise, yeah - Criminal Minds is a really good example of them mis-handling a group. Someone has to be in the middle, but I don't see why they can't rotate.

[alexseanchai]

Why would Gideon be there? But he is. So since Gideon is there, why shouldn't Elle be?

[jackandahat]

Ohh - I misread, I didn't spot Rossi in there, so I was thinking it was an earlier point in time. Sorry about that. Huh. I've never seen one that had Rossi and Gideon in the same picture because that makes no sense. Weird, will have to keep an eye out.

[alexseanchai]

*pokes at Google* This isn't what I was thinking of but it's got the same symptoms.

Here we are. Right across the top.

[jackandahat]

The second one makes even less sense, since it has Gideon and Rossi upfront, and they're not even the leaders. (If I was arranging, I'd probably put Hotch and Morgan in centre together - since Hotch is boss, and Morgan was during season 5)

With the second, is the issue that the women are at the back? Hotch is team leader, Morgan is second, and Rossi is the senior agent, so that's about where I would have put them. (Maybe swap Morgan and Rossi). Prentiss is important but she's never officially lead the team, and she's the newest on the team, and JJ is put equal with Morgan there.

[alexseanchai]

We're playing the same game we play with the Bechdel test. A movie failing Bechdel isn't a problem, doesn't make it a bad movie, just a movie where the important players happen to be male. Nearly all the movies released in a given summer failing Bechdel, though, that is a problem. And Criminal Minds ads centering on the men isn't a problem, just means it's an ensemble show where the men happen to have more important roles (similarly, Numb3rs ads and Supernatural ads centering on the men isn't a problem, because the leads are the Eppes brothers and the Winchester brothers, respectively), but Criminal Minds, Numb3rs, and Supernatural ads centering on the men are all symptoms of the problem of all the ads centering on the men.

[jackandahat]

Ahhh - I was seeing it differently. To me, there's two different things:

1. Adverts showing men up front, for shows that have women up front.

2. Adverts showing men up front, for shows that have men up front.

I would put Criminal Minds in the second group, in the sense that I think the advert does reflect the show. Whereas what came up in the original post was #1 - where the advert is showing something that's *not* happening in the show. I'd say the first is bad advertising, the second is something different (not saying it's not problematic, though I think (until the issue with JJ) Criminal Minds was pretty good with women - just that it's different.)

[alexseanchai]

Okay, that also makes sense. I can definitely agree that a Fringe ad centering on a man instead of on Olivia is more problematic than a Criminal Minds ad centering on the men of the BAU.

Though we still have the wtf of having both Gideon and Rossi and of having Gideon but not Elle.

[jackandahat]

Oh yeah - that one definitely made me WTF. It's completely illogical.

[luminosity]

I think they're lining them up by paygrade. Just a couple of weeks ago, I read that Joe Mantegna is one of the most highly-paid actors on television. Not that I dislike Joe, but really? REALLY? and they let AJ Cook and Paget Brewster go? *seethes*

[jackandahat]

I thought they didn't let Paget go because there was too much of an outcry from fans? But yeah - I can't bring myself to watch season 6 yet. Just... might be better to leave it at 5 seasons.

[rivkat]

Yes, she is in fact the lead. It's not close. It's not an ensemble show. The show knows this. What makes me so mad is how the people doing publicity for the show are so stuck in their assumptions that they have to put a white guy in front no matter what the show is actually like.

[sorrel]

Walter Bishop deserves to be in the center, fair enough. But it should be Olivia next to him, not Peter. And as you said, I think Peter would be the first to agree. Sigh.

[rivkat]

The one thing I'm pretty certain about is that Olivia should be at the center of that V formation! The show knows this; it's just enraging that the people doing publicity don't know or care when knowing or caring would mean putting a woman front and center.

[sorrel]

Well it's sort of two people at the center, which is why I said Walter was right to be there- but yeah, I'm definitely not arguing, it's kind of fail all around. What concerns me is that this means that either the publicity people know the show and decided to sideline the main character in the photoshoot, or they have people doing publicity that know nothing whatsoever about the show. One is malice and one is stupidity, but both options are worrying.

[abbylee]

Yeah, they're doing the same fucking thing with The Good Wife.

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm242648832/tt1442462

It looks almost okay in poster format - Alicia's in the middle, with Peter and Will on either side of her. But I first saw it being used in a magazine, where it is more clearly that Peter takes up one page of the ad, and then Alicia and Will are on the other. I know Chris Noth is a big name and a big draw for the show, but... fuck, are you kidding me? I don't think he's even a regular, and he gets a full page of the ad to himself?

Also, relatedly, I <3 Charlie, I love him, but on the S2 DVDs, shouldn't Astrid get more of a focus?

And, to continue ranting, I flipped out when I saw Castle's DVD cover. Nathan Fillion is absolutely the lead. But, uh, Beckett's pretty damn important and I couldn't love the show without her. Look at the first season's cover - http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2846526976/tt1219024 - and compare her placement in the second season - http://www.imdb.com/media/rm565087488/tt1219024

Why, why, why can't they market all these kick ass women for us?

[rivkat]

The Good Wife? Where the show names the protagonist in the title? I wish I could say I'm surprised.

[jcalanthe]

Unbelievable! I'm relieved to hear they haven't changed it so Olivia's no longer the lead, cuz that sure looks like it's now Pacey's Adventures along the Fringe. I mean, I like his character too, but he's so clearly not the lead...

[rivkat]

Pacey really has grown on me, even if he'll always be Pacey to me. But no way is he the lead.

[giandujakiss]

On the bright side, I can add it to my post on the subject?

[rivkat]

I'm now actually thinking that this is the same thing that Joanna Russ talks about in How To Suppress Women's Writing: if you never acknowledge it's been done before, then every time it happens it's new and surprising and there's no history for the woman to draw on.

[ide_cyan]

Apt quote, from Russ's What Are We Fighting For?, pages 1 and 2:

Many feminists have suspected that women's achievements in general and previous feminist movements in particular have been edited out of official history, but only in Spender's book have I found that suspicion substantiated by an accumulation of evidence (more than eighty cases) that didn't allow me to say, "Oh, sure, we all know that," but instead, "Omigod, I didn't know it was that bad."

(Note: the book's title is Women of Ideas: What Men Have Done to Them, the author's full name is Dale Spender. It's from 1982 and I think Russ was only aware of it after HTSWW was published, in 83. They were probably written concurrently, and as it happens are complementary works: Russ lists excuses and methods, ideological forms of suppression, Spender covers specific campaigns of suppression against women; alas I don't have a copy of Spender's handy & it's been a while since I had it on inter-library loan.)

[musesfool]

Aw, man, that shit ain't right!

[rivkat]

aerye said it best above: it was like being slapped in the face, when I thought I was safe.

Awesome icon!

[flesh]

I don't understand. It's Olivia's show. Olivia is the lead protagonist. I haven't watched season two yet but I'm pretty sure I remember her being the person of action in season one. It's a really weird choice for the design.

[rivkat]

Oh, it remains Olivia's show! It's so depressing because even though the show knows this, it's a demonstration of how hard it is for people not directly involved to notice/acknowledge a female protagonist; whoever was responsible for design didn't think they had to care about a female lead.

[giandujakiss]

Well, to be fair, it's hard to tell. I mean, she's fully dressed and everything - so how was anyone supposed to know she's important?

[cofax7]

Oh, for the love of the dear sweet jebuslug. ::facepalm::

[rivkat]

Yep.

[ide_cyan]

Rage!

[rivkat]

Indeed!

[rheanna]

She's the lead, dammit. Man, that's annoying.

[rivkat]

It sure is! The show gets it right; why not the promotional materials?

[azurelunatic]

Oh argh. Even though it would break their fucking lineup-by-height. D:

[rivkat]

They could have made her bigger! As giandujakiss pointed out in her survey, they do that for white guys who are the leaders all the time.

[brownbetty]

Oh, man.

I mean, okay, S2 is the one with Peter's character arc gaining prominence… but not to the point where he's the fucking lead.

[tehomet]

FFS. I don't even watch Fringe and I know that's wrong.