Anyone else's TV pleasure ruined by feminism?

I love both Miranda and Fleabag and I think PWB was deliberately subverting the formula of the former to create something fresh. Everyone draws to some extent on what's gone before, even if it's a reaction to it.

The spousal age Gap in films always jumps out at me. I saw a graphic on Instagram recently, that showed the ages of Jennifer Lawrence and all of her film love interests, over her career. Apart from the hunger games, there were very large age gaps. Fairly standard in Hollywood, I expect.

I hate how in every gritty contemporary drama there is a strip joint to signify the dodgy place where the dodgy people hang out, along with lingering shots of female bodies. Totally unnecessary excuse to objectify and a cliche to boot.

And yy to university challenge and its all male panels. Can you imagine if there were two all female teams on last night? It would have been headline fucking news.

Also agree with others who are sad at the male dominance of GBBO now. I like Matt Lucas and Noel Fielding well enough, but it's a crying shame that the show has gone that way since the Mel and Sue days.

Feminism ruined children's books for me: all those endless male characters with the odd token girlie.

And if you say anything you get, 'But BOYS must be encouraged to read! They don't read enough!' As if girls' psyches just don't matter.

It enraged me when my DC were small and it enrages me now.

Apart from Prue. Who is not a man.

I get infuriated when people write off all comedy by women as 'the same'. It happens on here sadly - whole threads claiming that Miranda and Fleabag are basically the same as they have a main female character who breaks the fourth wall. As if anyone is talking about all the many, many programmes centred on men as 'all the same'.

I have a staggeringly low tolerance for most popular culture, as an incredibly unhumorous feminist. And was also muttering about the all-male GBBO judging panel.

I agree OP.

I can't even listen to classical music!!
White male privilidge music- really grates on me.

Yes. No time to write at the moment but I have been thinking the exact same recently OP. I sit through films, thinking, did a man or a woman write / direct this bullshit.... no prizes for guessing....

When I was a kid I loved ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’. I recently gave an outline of the plot to DH who increasingly thought I was taking the piss - “so the brothers decide to go into town and abduct the girls they fancy, whilst singing a jolly song about gang rape...”

sorry, that post should read that in pics on the internet Robert Bilott's wife (Sarah Barlage) looks around the same age as him

I've found my crowd! Since finding feminism I know only read books by women and mostly only watch shows and movies directed by women and/or with strong and well rounded female leads. Womens prize for fiction is good. TV shows like Insecure, Girls, The L Word, Fleabag, I may destroy you, the marvellous Mrs Maisel. The good wife and Mad Men also good (not sure if those two are directed by women but they have interesting female characters). Anyone got any other recommendations?

Also....is anyone else appalled by how many iterations of the 'happy hooker' TV shows there are on Netflix right now?!

This isn't as serious as many points made here but one that absolutely drives me mad for some reason - which is - age gaps between partners. Nothing wrong with age gaps, of course, but it's every single thing i seem to watch. recently watched Dark Waters - great film but Mark Ruffalo was born in 1965 and his 'wife' Anne Hathaway 1982. obviously they're based on real people so don't know what age the real wife is but from pics on the she looks around the same age as her hubbie. it's come to the point now that i can't not notice what a gulf there is in ages - on average there's at least a 12-15 age gap between male actors and their partners. but sometimes even more! We were appalled at Trump's assertion that 35 is 'checkout' time for women. But it seems film/tv makers seem to feel the same! it's harmful not just from the invisibility point of view, but also, think of all that acting talent that is lost - female actors beyond a certain age are just discarded.

Agree about the 80/90s. I loved that era and think fondly of the time before smartphones etc but the blatant misogyny was rife. And yet at the same time girls like me were essentially being told the fight was won, we had equality, now I could off into the world on an even footing. It's taken until my mid-30s for some slow, hard lessons on feminism to be learned.

As an aside, I prefer Only Connect to University Challenge nowadays. There's usually a good mix of male/female, ages, backgrounds etc. Just loads of geeks of all varieties really. And presented by a woman.

@Goosefoot
Yes, marriage wasn’t for love, it was to broker alliances between families. In first Medici season the nouveau rich common wool trader marries his son to an impoverished lady with a title to get aristocratic blood ties to open doors to upper echelons of Italian society. Marriage was to ensure economic security for the family’s next generation. It wasn’t just nobility that did this- neighbouring lords and ladies marrying their sons and daughters to expand the lands of any grandchildren. It was also right down to working class. A butcher might marry his son to the daughter of a cattle farmer so he gets cheaper family discount deliveries of cows to slaughter. A miller might marry his daughter to a baker for similar reasons to have a guaranteed buyer of his flour.

@EmpressSuiko I think my main issue was in relation to the way women were often semi clad or naked and there was nothing even close in comparison with men. I read the first couple of books so I'll maybe go back and read them again though I think the series of books is a bit never ending?

The thing to me is that arranged marriages of various kinds have been pretty normal throughout history, people did not see them as beyond the pale in those times and places, and it wasn't (and still isn't) at all unheard of for them to turn out as loving marriages.

The Medici series shows this fairly well I think. Marriages were arranged, neither groom or bride had a choice or option to say no. It does show over time how the couples gain respect for each other and then in some cases, do love each other. The theme is usually about humans deciding to make the best of a life sentence with each other.

My DH, when grilled at length blush couldn't think of a woman he would idolise. Poor bloke, since neither could I...

If you want a recommendation, watch the Pieces of me documentary on Toni Morrison and swoon! Or Crip Camp on Netflix and Judy Heumann

But that aside, I cannot believe how monolithically male the culture was when I grew up in the 1980s/1990s. I've always had my 'boy shit' barometer but I still didn't get how overwhelmingly skewed it was and look back on many things that defined the cultural cannon at the time and just think they were so male - Pulp Fiction is an excellent example of this.

Yep

I used to really enjoy watching things like everyone loves Raymond and crap like that, but now they infuriate me.

We are supposed to laugh at the bumbling husband who does everything he can to get out of stuff so he can go golfing and letting his mummy do things for him. We are supposed to sympathise that Debra is a mean old had who doesn’t let Raymond do anything when actually I feel sorry for the poor woman!

Mrs Doubtfire is ruined for me too

@goosefoot
My biggest difficulty these days is that so many stories are using a historical setting of some kind to drop in a completely anachronistic story or message, with all the people, at least the good ones, being essentially woke 21st century people. I also find the new thing of taking male characters or films with male protagonists and just switching them to female characters pretty annoying. Though I think it's driven by the same impulse that gives us 6 million films about the same set of superheroes, no one wants to risk something really new.

Exactly how I feel too. I think that it’s lip service to just make a male character female. There are strong women in history, today, and characters in literature that could be basis for good films and shows.

I've just finished the first season of Battlestar Galactica after years and years of hearing that it's one of the best tv series ever made but it's hugely spoilt for me by the way the Cylon character who's involved with Gaius Baltar is portrayed.

I understand that she's seen from his perspective but it feels like every fucking episode has her draped over , having sex with , coming on to , stripping off for Gaius Balter and always always wearing some ridiculous skin tight cleavage revealing dress with plenty of shots concentrating on her" t & a"...it's so tiresome.

I don't have a problem watching programmes centered on men, and I think the writing a character to be played by a male or female and then flipping it can work really well - that was after all how the character of Ripley in Alien ended up being played by Sigourney Weaver.

@GiveMyHeadPeaceffs Game of Thrones has a lot of misogyny because it’s based off of history, it reflects how woman were treated and even still get treated in some parts of the world.

The books are worth reading though, the TV show obliterated some really strong female characters and made them utterly useless and just pretty to look at which caused a lot of upset in the fandom.