hermionesviolin: image of Caleb from Buffy with text "none are righteous" (none are righteous)
[personal profile] hermionesviolin
Early on, I was feeling annoyed that Rachel's only role seemed to be the love interest for Harvey and Bruce, and I was primed for this largely because of the criticisms I'd seen of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, so I was surprised that I hadn't sensed any backlash against The Dark Knight (I hadn't sought out spoilers, but my sense was that everyone thought it was A+++).

I was thinking later about the idea that Harvey turned bad because of the death of Rachel, and how people had talked about Dr. Horrible using the death of the loved woman as an origin story for a villain rather than a hero, but gee here was Dark Knight doing the same thing.

Date: 2008-08-03 01:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] paper-crystals.livejournal.com
I think this is because Joss Whedon is known for doing things with strong female leads and Christopher Nolen is generally known for doing neo-film noir often without many strong female leads. (Sans Insomnia) This was part of the reason why I was annoyed about the backlash against Dr. Horrible for that reason is because I think Joss Whedon took a path in terms of writing which he doesn't very often which is to do more female-as-victim type things wheras his entire body of work is more than that and then other directors who never or rarely have strong female leads don't get even half of the criticism that Whedon gets. Plus, Penny was a much more outgoing character than Rachel. She had causes that she cared about and she went out and tried to help people. Rachel didn't have that as much.

Date: 2008-08-03 01:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hermionesviolin.livejournal.com
While I don't think other media folk should be excused from criticism just because we don't expect much from them, I think that since Joss explicitly and emphatically posits himself as a feminist, he invites criticism because people often see his work and think, "feminism? ur doin it wrong."

And one could argue that Joss does the female-as-victim thing more often than one would like -- Fred's identity, for example, is often tied up in being a victim (first Pylea, then Illyria) and/or a love interest (the Wes-Gunn-Fred love triangle).

Date: 2008-08-03 06:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] escritoireazul.livejournal.com
I've seen some people early on, right after TDK was released, who looked like they were complaining about the same issues in both, but I hadn't watched the movie yet, so I couldn't read them at the time, and apparently I didn't save the links.

I, personally, hated it in both, and the treatment of women was what I disliked the most about TDK. (Which I expected, but still made me mad.)

Profile

hermionesviolin: an image of Alyson Hannigan (who plays Willow Rosenberg) with animated text "you think you know / what you are / what's to come / you haven't even / BEGUN" (Default)
Elizabeth (the delinquent, ecumenical)

June 2025

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22 232425262728
29 30     

Style Credit

Page generated Jul. 19th, 2025 01:34 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios