Doctor Who: A Feminist Defence Of Steven Moffat:
feliciadayismypatronus:
rachelkiley:
This is so important.
I’m so freaking tired of people claiming Steven Moffat is a “sexist asshole” for the way characters like Amy Pond and River Song have been written. Is he a sexist asshole? Maybe, I don’t know him, and I’m willing to bet you don’t either. But looking JUST at his writing, at his shows…look again.
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I did not read the article, but based on the summary, I disagree.
Yes, most of my problems with him are problems with his writing. His characters are shit, but frankly everything else is shit too. He’s more interested in the intricate, detailed, plot mysteries, but he’s terrible at writing them, leaves unexplained plotholes and doesn’t answer anything (and I know that he doesn’t HAVE to answer everything, but there are some things that deserve some answers and leaving them out is just lazy writing). And honestly, I’ve stopped getting emotional about anything he writes because I’ve stopped caring. You can only kill characters and bring them back to life so many times before death loses its meaning.
But besides my problems with his writing, he is also sexist. He uses the same “perfect” Mary-Sue female character ideas over and over again, and he wants his female characters to have beauty over everything else. I mostly have Amy and River to go off of here because I haven’t seen Sherlock and I’m surprisingly liking Clara so far (she is a bit of a Mary-Sue, but Moffat hasn’t totally ruined her character yet). There are also a few interviews where he talks about Doctor Who or his characters and makes very sexist comments (I’m not thinking of any examples right now, but I know I’ve read/seen some and you can look them up if you’re really that interested)
I know that no writer is perfect, I sure as hell am not, but I’m just tired of people praising Moffat’s amazing stories and characters and female representation when they’re not even good.
If you don’t read the article, your argument is kind of invalid?
I wouldn’t classify any of his characters as “Mary Sue”s. Care to elaborate? Yeah, sure, they’re pretty. It’s TV. The dudes are pretty, too. More often than not, the main characters on all TV shows are attractive. That’s a different discussion entirely, but for now, there’s a difference between having characters that are attractive, or even really, really attractive, vs having characters that exist primarily to be sexually objectified by other characters/the audience. And the latter is simply not true of any main characters on DW.
I’ve seen tumblr posts that take quotes from his interviews and use them to claim sexism (some friends and I were discussing this post in particular from different standpoints a few days ago). Some of them, yes, are thoughtless and somewhat offensive. It sucks. I hope he learns to think before he speaks if he didn’t mean those things or that he changes/has changed his outlook if he did mean them (and some that specifically come to mind are quite old, from the “Coupling” era). At the same time, many that are often cited are taken completely out of context if you actually read the interviews they come from.
Regardless, this article specifically states that it’s interested in whether his writing comes across as sexist. As am I. And I just don’t see any valid arguments that his writing is consistently sexist. I’ve read many. They don’t hold. A friend of mine aptly described them all as “simple.” “Amy’s life revolves around two guys — that’s sexist.” “River is a love interest for The Doctor — that’s sexist.” Simple. Base. Flawed as all hell arguments (discussed further in the article above).
Yes, there is a heavy emphasis on settling down and getting married and having babies in a lot of his stories, both with Doctor Who characters and Coupling (the two shows of his I’ve seen). But that’s not just about female characters — the male characters want and pursue and are partially defined by that, too. And that’s the key: partially defined. Look, I have no interest in stories where people get married and pop out kids, lord knows, but it is a part of life and society and as long as characters have other things that define them, other interests, other people in their lives — they’re probably well-rounded (which is not to say good or well-written) characters. I’m not going to list all the things about Amy and River that prove that they are defined by more than just family and marriage and their male counterparts because the article does that.
I don’t care if you like Moffat’s writing. Personally, I enjoy it while knowing the characters probably aren’t going to live up to what I want them to be (a girl everyone thought was crazy her whole life because she was waiting for an “imaginary” friend? I would have WAY rather seen the ramifications of that than a lot of the stuff we got with Amy) and I know that a lot of the “emotional” bits of his shows are going to be shallow manipulation of our feelings that doesn’t really seem earned when you look back on it. I enjoy it, and it’s fun, and I cry, and I love it while I’m in it, and I love trying to figure out where things are gonna go, but I know for the most part it’s not brilliant or anything life-changing. I don’t see Moffat’s name on something and immediately go “OMG IT’S GONNA BE AMAZING” or think people who don’t like him have bad taste. He is what he is, you like his stuff or you don’t. No big deal.
But you know why people are so able to criticize Moffat’s female characters in Doctor Who? Because most of the important characters he writes are female. Do you know how important that is? Yes, it’s part of the Doctor Who tradition that most of the companions are female. But a lot of the memorable guest stars Moffat has written have been female, too. Sally Sparrow! Reinette! Nancy from The Empty Child! Sure, some or a lot of their plots include male lovers or children, as do Amy’s and River’s, but not all. They all have other things going on. They all have more to them than just those “traditional” roles female characters are often defined by. And I will begrudgingly admit that it’s important to have female characters represented in media who DO have kids, who ARE very focused on romance, but who also are complete and whole people beyond that. More often, we have a disconnect — the female characters who reject traditional female roles or those who play into and are defined by them. This merging is a necessary and important step for the representation of female characters in media. And so Moffat is interested in writing romance and mother-figure stuff. So what? I tend to mostly write stuff about sibling relationships and loyalty and characters who don’t know how to form connections with other people. Every writer has their stories and character-types they’re drawn to. As long as the characters are fleshed out and not simply stereotypes or plot devices, that’s okay.
I’m not trying to say that because Moffat writes female characters, and because he writes female characters that, IMO, are somewhat well-rounded (again, that’s not to say they are consistently or well written), he is above reproach. I’m not saying we shouldn’t look at where characters or plots fall apart and discuss how we think they could have been done better. I’m not saying he needs to be praised for actually writing female characters.
But when you think that a character is a “Mary Sue” and immediately cry “sexist!” or see that Amy Pond and River use their sexuality to get their way sometimes and scream “Moffat hates women!” or when you see a post defending him and his female characters and reblog it with “fuck you moffat” (without even reading it!), that’s where we have a problem.
I wish we lived in a world where every male writer included numerous female characters who serve more purpose in a story than just to be the “love interest” or to balance out an all male line up. God I wish we did. And I hope we do some day. But the fact of the matter is, right now, we don’t. Plain and simple. Moffat is writing these women, he is giving them internal lives and motivations and goals beyond just getting a boyfriend/husband or having babies or being sex objects, he is clearly trying to make them well-rounded and compelling and unique characters, regardless of his potential limitations as a writer in doing so, and while that in and of itself doesn’t deserve applause, it does at the very least deserve refraining from acting like he’s the scum of the earth if — in your opinion — he doesn’t always get it right. Sexism is a highly charged topic, especially on freaking tumblr with social justice blogs that jump on everything for their “cause,” but yelling at people and acting like they’re purposely trying to be sexist jerks and write shitty female characters and treat women like shit because they don’t write a character the way YOU THINK IS FEMINIST ENOUGH, doesn’t do ANYBODY any good. At best, it detracts from critiquing and calling out films and shows that inarguably don’t even make an attempt to develop their female characters (see: everything Michael Bay ever makes, to start), and at worst, it makes male writers even less likely to even TRY writing good female characters. If you’re crucified for getting it “wrong,” what’s the point of even putting forth the effort? (Not my opinion, but it’s easy to fall into that when it very much seems like you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.)
Moreover, it’s easy for those of us who are frustrated with the lack of diverse and prominent representation of female characters in media to judge female characters more harshly. We’re way less critical of male characters, writing any weird or off-putting things off as the character just being poorly written, or boring, or not something we’re into, or ignoring it all together. With female characters, we pick pick pick everything apart until it’s impossible to tell what’s “feminist” or “sexist” (I like this post I reblogged about that earlier today).
Don’t get me wrong — we need feminism. We need a critical eye on how and if women are written into stories. But we also need to accept that there isn’t an “absolute” version of how a character should be written to be considered “not sexist.” We need to understand that sometimes, the way we’d like to see a female character portrayed doesn’t line up with the story the writer created — and, again, as long as they’re well rounded and not defined entirely by their relationship to male characters, that’s okay! We need to understand that if crafting a character to withstand criticism against sexism interferes with the story, then that isn’t how the character should be written. We need to understand that sometimes female characters suck because they’re just poorly written, and not because the writer is some evil or ignorant dude trying to act like women aren’t people and exist only to complement the men in the story. Possibly more than anything, we need to understand that jumping on a writer and trying to rip them apart for not doing it “right” is not the appropriate, decent, or efficient way to encourage the change we would like and need to see. Putting people on the defensive, especially people who weren’t actively trying to do something “evil” or whatever, isn’t helpful. And yes, I am 100% saying this from my own experience. There is a difference between constructive criticism and attacking a writer. Writing is difficult and fragile shit, and you learn to brush off people who hate everything you do because you know you can’t please everyone. When criticism turns into personal attacks, as it so often does with Moffat, that goes into the “haters” category, because no one is going to listen to someone whose general attitude towards you is very blatantly and seemingly irreversibly “fuck you.”
Pretend I said something interesting and compelling to close this out. I’m tired. Just read the article.