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Angry angels
Oct. 15th, 2014 02:43 pmDay Six: Favorite female-driven show
Orphan Black and Pretty Little Liars
I'm cheating today, because I honestly couldn't decide between the two. I think I like both for their emphatic, relentless, female-driven character. They are both unapologetically shows about women's stories, and they portray all kinds of relationships between all kinds of women and girls (although both shows could stand to be a bit less white). Each show abounds with mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, female antagonists, romantic relationships between women and so on. There are male characters, but they are very much secondary or tertiary, and neither show is particularly concerned with telling their stories, except insofar as they affect the stories of the girls and women. Female characters' stories drive the plots in both shows, and both celebrate these characters' stories.
I think the appeal of both shows to me lies in the unflinching way they look at how society tries to control, claim and shape women. In Orphan Black, the clones' bodies and lives are literally not their own, while in Pretty Little Liars everyone from shadowy bullies behind a computer screen to the local police and the girls' own fathers tries to lay claim to the girls' lives, attribute motivations to them, and manipulate them into something more manageable. And in the face of these repeated assertions that these girls and women are not their own, both shows depict their female characters as fighting back, taking up space, shouting their truth and their stories from the rooftops, believing and supporting one another, and trying to reclaim their lives for themselves. In both shows, women and girls' lives and anger and stories matter.
( The other days )
Orphan Black and Pretty Little Liars
I'm cheating today, because I honestly couldn't decide between the two. I think I like both for their emphatic, relentless, female-driven character. They are both unapologetically shows about women's stories, and they portray all kinds of relationships between all kinds of women and girls (although both shows could stand to be a bit less white). Each show abounds with mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, female antagonists, romantic relationships between women and so on. There are male characters, but they are very much secondary or tertiary, and neither show is particularly concerned with telling their stories, except insofar as they affect the stories of the girls and women. Female characters' stories drive the plots in both shows, and both celebrate these characters' stories.
I think the appeal of both shows to me lies in the unflinching way they look at how society tries to control, claim and shape women. In Orphan Black, the clones' bodies and lives are literally not their own, while in Pretty Little Liars everyone from shadowy bullies behind a computer screen to the local police and the girls' own fathers tries to lay claim to the girls' lives, attribute motivations to them, and manipulate them into something more manageable. And in the face of these repeated assertions that these girls and women are not their own, both shows depict their female characters as fighting back, taking up space, shouting their truth and their stories from the rooftops, believing and supporting one another, and trying to reclaim their lives for themselves. In both shows, women and girls' lives and anger and stories matter.
( The other days )