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here, have a brief essay.
Jan. 22nd, 2011 02:33 amSo I've been watching Pretty Little Liars, as I foresaw happening, and man is that show ever filled with things. It has some excellent elements, but uh, a lot of shit it does really bugs! The way it treats Aria and Ezra, for example: rife with yikes. I also have some reservations about the way they're presenting Spencer's whole deal with her family, and I've had a fair number of issues with Hanna's storylines, but shit really went off the rails with the last episode.
In Monday's episode, the significant focus of attention was on Hanna's bulimia and the way the mysterious villain of the show manipulating that fact in order to torment her. While it's a well-done storyline and all of that, I found it an intensely difficult one to watch due to my own personal history. The thing is, though, that's not exactly a foreign feeling, because I watch a lot of teen dramas.
I go back and forth frequently about how I feel about the fictional portrayal of eating disorders. The treatment given by Gossip Girl to Blair and by Skins to Cassie, for example, were for the most part considerate and true to life (and as an extension of that, incredibly painful), but it verges on cliche. It's not difficult to think of another dozen fictional characters suffering from eating disorders of various kinds, but how many of those aren't wealthy white girls? It seems a lot of times like the preferred method writers have for adding depth to and sympathy for characters of significant privilege, with the male version being an abusive father. It's used as shorthand a lot of times (Pink's video for "Stupid Girls", Gus van Sant's Elephant), at which point it becomes a question of when we all decided this was the way we were going to code for "destructive and unhappy inner life of a (white and privileged) teenage girl".
Hypothetically it's better than brushing the whole culture under the rug, but at what point does the pendulum swing too far in the other direction? It may be my story, but that doesn't mean I want to see it reflected in every story, because I want better for both the fictional girls involved and the real girls watching the show.
In Monday's episode, the significant focus of attention was on Hanna's bulimia and the way the mysterious villain of the show manipulating that fact in order to torment her. While it's a well-done storyline and all of that, I found it an intensely difficult one to watch due to my own personal history. The thing is, though, that's not exactly a foreign feeling, because I watch a lot of teen dramas.
I go back and forth frequently about how I feel about the fictional portrayal of eating disorders. The treatment given by Gossip Girl to Blair and by Skins to Cassie, for example, were for the most part considerate and true to life (and as an extension of that, incredibly painful), but it verges on cliche. It's not difficult to think of another dozen fictional characters suffering from eating disorders of various kinds, but how many of those aren't wealthy white girls? It seems a lot of times like the preferred method writers have for adding depth to and sympathy for characters of significant privilege, with the male version being an abusive father. It's used as shorthand a lot of times (Pink's video for "Stupid Girls", Gus van Sant's Elephant), at which point it becomes a question of when we all decided this was the way we were going to code for "destructive and unhappy inner life of a (white and privileged) teenage girl".
Hypothetically it's better than brushing the whole culture under the rug, but at what point does the pendulum swing too far in the other direction? It may be my story, but that doesn't mean I want to see it reflected in every story, because I want better for both the fictional girls involved and the real girls watching the show.