Emma Grant

Love and Sex and Faith and Fear: concerning CBS Elementary

ivyblossom:

daysofstorm:

first of all: if you hate the idea so much…nobody is going to force you to watch it a la Orange Clockwork, so calm the fuck down

second of all: Watson is a failed doctor. Yes, it’s a bit obvious what the plot is going to be but come on, in Without A Clue, Holmes is a drunk…

Yeaaahhh I haven’t seen any wankery, admittedly, so I don’t know what all “stand down” comments are about, really. But we already know they were in talks to create an American version of Sherlock, and appear to have pissed off Sue Vertue, so that wasn’t an auspicious beginning.

I haven’t read much on the genderbending side of things, so I don’t know how fandom handles a female Watson. The role of the caring, nurturing, human interface for a brilliant man to the rest of the world, and a chronicler frequently accused of romanticizing facts, is an eye-rollingly typical female role.

I hate that that’s true, I hate that you can’t (or wouldn’t want to) have a woman play these kinds of roles because it feels so tired and obvious and stereotypical, but you can get a man to play it and it feels fresh and interesting. I hate that stereotypes limit female characters in this way, while they rarely limit male characters. In our cultural narratives, men are the default human and women are a particular flavour of human not everyone can relate to. Women are always a deliberate choice, narratively. Everyone can see themselves in a man, but only women can relate to a woman, etc. etc. It’s bullshit, but it appears to be true of audiences. And thus a strong influence over the kinds of stories get to we see.

A male Watson is allowed to just be a human being, but a female Watson has something to prove. That’s annoying, but not our fault: she has something to prove because nine times out of ten they put a female character in an apron and make the emotional one, the romantic interest, the achilles heel of the near-robotic, brilliant man she plays against. Because that’s what women are for, apparently. It’s Sarah Connor all over again. It’s the one of the only roles women get to have in stories like this, no matter how many chin-ups she gets to do, or how many bullets she fires, she’s still the sexual/emotional temptation that shows the humanity in her male counterpart. Then after that, she can turn into the mother figure who’ll do anything to protect her man/child.

It’s cool when they have a man play this role, but it’s kind of trite when a woman does it. I hate that switching the pronouns alters the power of a story so much. It’s telling that it does, though: that’s how powerful our cultural narratives are, and how deeply all our stories (our cultural narratives, our pop cultural texts) are interconnected. Gender is far too powerful a force in our culture (among other things, like ideas of race and class). We need to change that. It’s not helping us to create great stories, and it’s not helping us live our lives authentically. It’s just another rigid set of rules that don’t make sense.

I’ll withhold judgement about this show, I suppose. Who knows what they’ll do with it. But the pinging we feel about a female Watson is, I think, a legit response.

THIS.

Source: daysofstorm