![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tropiaveraSo, I'm watching something like eight shows that are currently on the air that fall into one of two spectrums: generally-enjoy-to-looooooooove or generally-dislike-to-genuine-dislike, except for the total outlier, Pretty Little Liars, which gives me such a plethora of emotion, I can't even. It's a network show featuring a teenage lesbian as a protagonist, which happens exactly never, and she's not tragically single! There are tons of regularly appearing female characters who are the driving actors for the plot! What could be wrong?
There are approximately zero relationships on this show that don't feature SUPER FUCKED UP power dynamics, my god. Emily's parents seem to have a loving and healthy relationship, but that's not really a regular feature since he's been stationed in Texas for military service for all but three episodes out of eighteen aired.* Spencer has parents who are in a functional relationship, presumably, except that we never see them. And then there's…NO WAIT THAT'S IT. Let's look at the rest:
Hanna's parents: Dad bailed, leaving her mother in financial straits.
Aria's parents: Her mother kicked her dad out of the house after finding out that he (a college professor) was sleeping with one of his students.
Emily: actual girlfriend Maya MIA; currently involved in some homophobic bullying cum romantic overtones with Paige. Let's call that "somewhat shady" on the power scale.
Hanna: lately involved with an essentially homeless fellow student she's secretly keeping in her basement. Problematic.
Aria: sleeping with her English teacher Ezra, and the show thinks it's super romantic, DID I MENTION SHE'S SIXTEEN AND HE'S HER ENGLISH TEACHER, but they're ~in love~ (apparently) so IT'S COOL, SUPER ROMANTIC NORMAL HIGH SCHOOL STUFF when you have to go out of town in order to go on a date because if anyone sees you he'll get arrested.
And then we have Spencer, jesus take the wheel. Okay. Spencer and two of her older sister Melissa's boyfriends have kissed-to-made-out. One of them her sister broke up with, though she blamed Spencer (and their parents kind of did too) despite the fact that Spencer was approximately 16 and this guy was like mid-20s, right. The other guy is Ian, who Spencer had a crush on and some level of made out with prior to the show starting. This is also described by Melissa as Spencer trying to steal her sister's boyfriend away, oh and did I mention Ian is her field hockey coach, and that Melissa shotgun married Ian and now he's super emotionally controlling and Melissa is pregnant and they live in the guest house oh my god it's like a horror movie, AND THAT ISN'T EVEN ALL OF IT
Because Ian was ALSO sleeping with Alison (when she was like fifteen) before she was killed, and it's been pretty heavily implied there was something sexually shady going on with him and Jenna, ANOTHER TEENAGE GIRL, before he got involved with Alison, and yet he's only portrayed as a threat in the show (via the fact that Spencer is visibly freaked out every time Ian appears) because he might have killed Alison, NOT BECAUSE HE'S CLEARLY A SERIAL STATUTORY RAPIST, and every time Spencer tries to talk to Melissa about HOW HER HUSBAND IS CLEARLY A NIGHTMARE Melissa shuts down and won't acknowledge it and tells Spencer that she's not going to let Spencer "ruin another relationship".
The gross poisoned cherry on that particular cancerous sundae is, of course, Ian's recent assertion that Alison was a stalker, and the fact that the Liars are beginning to side with him against Alison might have assaulted some girl at a party in order to get closer to Ian, except that OH MY FUCKING GOD HE WAS STILL TWENTY-TWO AND SHE WAS STILL FIFTEEN AND SO WAS JENNA. If they're writing this about a coyly manipulative teenager and some poor hapless adult seduced by her, I am actually going to explode because ABC Family will have decided with very little fanfare to stage an adaptation of Lolita.
That's obviously the worst offense here, but it just adds up to the sexual power dynamics all being incredibly fucked up and creating this nightmarish picture of teenage sexuality. If this were a more cynical (or, frankly, smarter) show, I would think it was being done as an intentional commentary, but it's not, so it's just nightmarish. ABC FAMILY, GO TO YOUR ROOM AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE DONE.
* There's also an interesting side discussion here that K and I have had, and that![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
rawles.livejournal.com brought up as well, which is whether the Fields are being coded as white. I haven't read the books and can't comment on how it's done there, but it's particularly interesting with relation to the family's conservativism and military service.
There are approximately zero relationships on this show that don't feature SUPER FUCKED UP power dynamics, my god. Emily's parents seem to have a loving and healthy relationship, but that's not really a regular feature since he's been stationed in Texas for military service for all but three episodes out of eighteen aired.* Spencer has parents who are in a functional relationship, presumably, except that we never see them. And then there's…NO WAIT THAT'S IT. Let's look at the rest:
Hanna's parents: Dad bailed, leaving her mother in financial straits.
Aria's parents: Her mother kicked her dad out of the house after finding out that he (a college professor) was sleeping with one of his students.
Emily: actual girlfriend Maya MIA; currently involved in some homophobic bullying cum romantic overtones with Paige. Let's call that "somewhat shady" on the power scale.
Hanna: lately involved with an essentially homeless fellow student she's secretly keeping in her basement. Problematic.
Aria: sleeping with her English teacher Ezra, and the show thinks it's super romantic, DID I MENTION SHE'S SIXTEEN AND HE'S HER ENGLISH TEACHER, but they're ~in love~ (apparently) so IT'S COOL, SUPER ROMANTIC NORMAL HIGH SCHOOL STUFF when you have to go out of town in order to go on a date because if anyone sees you he'll get arrested.
And then we have Spencer, jesus take the wheel. Okay. Spencer and two of her older sister Melissa's boyfriends have kissed-to-made-out. One of them her sister broke up with, though she blamed Spencer (and their parents kind of did too) despite the fact that Spencer was approximately 16 and this guy was like mid-20s, right. The other guy is Ian, who Spencer had a crush on and some level of made out with prior to the show starting. This is also described by Melissa as Spencer trying to steal her sister's boyfriend away, oh and did I mention Ian is her field hockey coach, and that Melissa shotgun married Ian and now he's super emotionally controlling and Melissa is pregnant and they live in the guest house oh my god it's like a horror movie, AND THAT ISN'T EVEN ALL OF IT
Because Ian was ALSO sleeping with Alison (when she was like fifteen) before she was killed, and it's been pretty heavily implied there was something sexually shady going on with him and Jenna, ANOTHER TEENAGE GIRL, before he got involved with Alison, and yet he's only portrayed as a threat in the show (via the fact that Spencer is visibly freaked out every time Ian appears) because he might have killed Alison, NOT BECAUSE HE'S CLEARLY A SERIAL STATUTORY RAPIST, and every time Spencer tries to talk to Melissa about HOW HER HUSBAND IS CLEARLY A NIGHTMARE Melissa shuts down and won't acknowledge it and tells Spencer that she's not going to let Spencer "ruin another relationship".
The gross poisoned cherry on that particular cancerous sundae is, of course, Ian's recent assertion that Alison was a stalker, and the fact that the Liars are beginning to side with him against Alison might have assaulted some girl at a party in order to get closer to Ian, except that OH MY FUCKING GOD HE WAS STILL TWENTY-TWO AND SHE WAS STILL FIFTEEN AND SO WAS JENNA. If they're writing this about a coyly manipulative teenager and some poor hapless adult seduced by her, I am actually going to explode because ABC Family will have decided with very little fanfare to stage an adaptation of Lolita.
That's obviously the worst offense here, but it just adds up to the sexual power dynamics all being incredibly fucked up and creating this nightmarish picture of teenage sexuality. If this were a more cynical (or, frankly, smarter) show, I would think it was being done as an intentional commentary, but it's not, so it's just nightmarish. ABC FAMILY, GO TO YOUR ROOM AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE DONE.
* There's also an interesting side discussion here that K and I have had, and that
rawles.livejournal.com brought up as well, which is whether the Fields are being coded as white. I haven't read the books and can't comment on how it's done there, but it's particularly interesting with relation to the family's conservativism and military service.
no subject
on 2011-02-23 05:02 am (UTC)Does the asterisk refer to something?
In other news, OH MY GAWD, OH MY GAWD. I am so glad for
no subject
on 2011-02-23 05:17 am (UTC)IT IS SUCH A GODDAMN MESS, I swear. That Emily's plot remains the 25% free of sketchy sexual dynamics honestly makes me wonder if that's just how the show creators view male-female dynamics.
no subject
on 2011-02-23 05:21 am (UTC)Horrified shudder.
no subject
on 2011-02-23 06:27 am (UTC)no subject
on 2011-02-23 07:34 am (UTC)no subject
on 2011-02-23 07:52 am (UTC)no subject
on 2011-02-23 08:56 am (UTC)no subject
on 2011-02-23 09:19 am (UTC):(
I also keep thinking if Emily weren't being coded as white, there's no way it wouldn't have come up during the bullying storyline, unless the creators are even more tone deaf than I have previously imagined them.
For reals.
no subject
on 2011-02-24 06:07 pm (UTC)Also, I'm kind of horrified to admit that I hadn't even thought about Emily's family being coded as white, which they totally are -- I was just kind of coasting on the novel delight of her being a queer girl of colour who gets to have relationships and talents and be pretty and stuff. Sigh.
no subject
on 2011-03-02 04:41 am (UTC)Right?? It would be one thing if the show featured it but also demonstrated it to be problematic, but the message of the show seems to be more that it's just society's problem, Aria and Ezra are just in love! Every week I hope he's going to get fired.
Yeah. A friend who's actually read the books informed me that the Emily character IS white there, for what that's worth.