Anyone else's TV pleasure ruined by feminism?

[QuentinWinters]

I was trying to watch "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix yesterday.
It wasjust full of self congratulatory men, either really amazed that their big brains had come up with a difficult ethical question, or really proud they had monetised Facebook, or namedropping the ceo of twitter.
I got so bored of men wanging on I had to turn it off.
I don't know if it was just a really bad programme or if feminism has ruined me!

@MillieEpple

i have to admit i am generally finding most films are either about the relationship between groups of men and their achievements or where women are basically victims of rape or murder as their function of the plot. I dont know if its partly I watch one film like that and then prime/netflix keep pushing similar films on me?

Yes, it does often appear that most Hollywood films that are greenlit are essentially this. And if you don't find women being raped and/or brutalised amenable as an all-purpose plot point which allows the film makers to unleash havoc in the name of revenge, it in fact rules out huge chunks of Hollywood film and tv.

I am turning off panel shows and comedy shows if there are too few women. It is so depressing to look at a programme with eg 1 woman and 5 men on the panel. And why has GBBO now got 3 male presenters and one woman, obviously no funny / entertaining woman out there.

I'm exactly the same.
Every film has a bloody male main character, and a beautiful, slim, sexy sidekick. They never get the main roles, and when they do there is always something wrong with them, either perceived as irrational, crazy, boring.
All the sex scenes show almost all the women's body but never even the mans behind.
Stripclubs and lap dancing just standard,
It's really hard to enjoy any tv/films because all I can see is the glaring obvious sexism and misogyny.

I've just watched The Fall and I absolutely love how Gillian Anderson's character constantly points out the misogyny of the narrative around the victims, how the male police officers act and sees right through the grandiose claims the murderer makes.

Similar to the Cormoran Strike books actually in taking the usual tropes and subtly holding them up to the light to reveal the misogyny even in seemingly minor things.

I was watching Mindhunter last night and it was the serial killer that inspired silence of the lambs. Very interesting indeed. I think my viewing was enhanced.

@testing987654321

Bizarrely I find I can watch films from the 50s a lot easier than a lot of modern ones. I'd rather watch an old unashamedly sexist film than a modern one which has one "strong" female character who just happens to have a sex scene.

Absolutely! Casablanca remains my all-time favourite film and what you say about modern-day sex scenes with "strong" female characters -- yuck!

I agree about the 1950s films being better, or even up to the 1980s. At least the way women are really treated in the world is shown. No wonder there are so many young women now who are not centering women in feminism. Once they start to have children and/or age in appearance they might realise there is still a battle to fight.

@Sleepingdogs12

I am turning off panel shows and comedy shows if there are too few women. It is so depressing to look at a programme with eg 1 woman and 5 men on the panel. And why has GBBO now got 3 male presenters and one woman, obviously no funny / entertaining woman out there.

Of late I've been checking descriptions of films before watching them, to make sure that women are centred, women's stories are being told. I'm sick and tired of stories about men.

It's the same with novels. I'm really glad that in a resurgence of WW2 war novels, it's mostly women writers writing about female war heroines. They might not be flying Spitfires (though some are) but they are doing dangerous work as spies, or else just holding the world together back home while bombs are dropping all around them, and staying strong. That's heroism too, and there are some damn good stories. War isn't only about men. I wish they'd film some of those novels.

The comics writer Gail Simone has written on the disturbing number of 'women in refrigerators' in comics and its true for so much TV as well. The term is for when a women's trauma (death, rape etc) exists purely to motivate men and the refrigerator reference comes from where one hero found the body of his girlfriend.

My DP and I do a lot of binge-watching tv and the latest offering was Game Of Thrones. I think possibly every single episode has involved me pausing it to have a rant about the total misogyny that is rampant in it. I honestly think it will age very badly.

Dead to me is fantastic but then I love Christina Applegate.

I actually liked The Social Dilemma” . I completely see your point with the self congratulatory men though.

However, it was made in a way that it explained how polarisation of opinions were enforced by social media and how addictive is was in a very simple way. I watched it with my 11 year old and used it as an argument as to why I don’t think she should have social media yet. I can recommend it for that purpose. “The Great Hack” is another good film about social media, but less suitable for children and pre-teens.

@weaselwords

I know what you mean. American Beauty didn’t annoy me half so much when I watched it the first time. Second time I saw it for the pile of woman hating wank it is. Silence of the Lambs I get much more now the scales have dropped from my eyes. Very clever portrayal of the male gaze.

I watched American Beauty recently, having not seen it since I was a teenager and it wound me up so much. That idiot should have just moved out and divorced his wife if he was so desperate to fuck teenagers and smoke weed all day. But instead, he becomes a sad old cocklodger and she's portrayed as a nagging shrew for having standards and not wanting to live like a slob.

The 90s were terrible for movies where privileged white guys destroy their lives out of boredom.

Repellent misogynistic drivel on which the film and TV industries are founded. Watched Honour on ITV last night. Depressing and infuriating in content but explicit in illustrating the slovenly misogyny which contributed so much to Banaz Mahmod's suffering and death. Very moving.

I actually liked The Social Dilemma” blush. I completely see your point with the self congratulatory men though.

Yes, the beginning is terrible, with all those smug men going on about how THEY know the secret and the rest of society (us) are just mugs being manipulated.
I liked the part in the middle where they show how addictive smartphones etc are to kids. I think children growing up without knowing a time before internet are in grave danger.
My daughter and her husband (early 30s) are really on to it, though. They have both quit Facebook and were never on other platforms and try not to use their phones in the presence of their daughter, 2 years. She's kept off devices as much as possible, they're even going to give up TV. My son (35) has also quit SM. The three of them claim that I'm the one who is most addicted to devices!
However I am far more on MN that Facebook.

"I am turning off panel shows and comedy shows if there are too few women. It is so depressing to look at a programme with eg 1 woman and 5 men on the panel. And why has GBBO now got 3 male presenters and one woman, obviously no funny / entertaining woman out there."

Same -- like others on this board, I just stop watching or read the description and say, "meh, not for me". I don't even do it in a very conscious way, I just find it boring if women are completely absent or one-dimensional, or depressing if violence against women is gratuitous or shot in that creepy, 'lingering' way. Much the same as many men do when they see that a film or show is centered around women - so I don't feel bad about it. I can appreciate a film like 1917, which is essentially men only, and which I watched the other day, but I watch such films sparingly and on the basis of very good reviews.

Cultural content will only get better if we don't just lap up whatever gets produced.

One of my favourite TV pastimes is pointing out whenever the male lead is actually a controlling narcissist when what they’re trying to portray is a loving relationship.

I agree but wouldn't use the word "ruined", as if to imply feminism is at fault. It's difficult to unsee the misogyny once you see it though.

One of my particular bug bears is in thrillers or "gritty" TV series where theres always the compliant strippers or prostitutes or abused girlfriends who are just there as props and are treated as complete non people.

Not quite the same but I recently watched Teenage Bounty Hunters on Netflix about non-identical twins in a Christian, gun-loving environment who accidentally end up working as bounty hunters. (It's not as stupid as it sounds.) A main theme of the show is the girls coming to terms with their sexual identities in a deeply Christian environment. And how they marry the relationship they have with their god and their sexual desires and how that works in an environment more judgemental than we're used to.

And then there is an episode where they are bounty hunting a woman who works as a stripper. The two girls are in stripclub and they overwhelming reaction is admiration of the proud strippers owning their femininity. And this, immediate libfem reaction, is not remotely consistent with who these girls would be. It's a complete and utter anachronism which is clearly nothing more that Jenji Kohan or one of her writers showing what amazing 'cool girls' they are about sex work. The characters, as they had been written up to this point, would have almost certainly been angry at the men in the club.

Re. comedy and panel shows it really gets on my pip. I've always enjoyed QI but there's rarely more than one woman on it. I love Richard Osman's House of Games anyway, but the fact that they always have 2 male and 2 female contestants is a big plus for me.

I like to think its not ruined TV as made me see how much BS there is

one of my many pet hates are the 'romance' plots which basically consists of a bloke behaving like an utter twat to everyone becaue a woman was once mean to him and the only way he can be saved is by the woman who he's spent several episodes being an utter cock too realising that its her job to 'fix' him
bonus fuck off points if on the way the woman has rejected the lovely non messed up respectful guy for the 'bad boy in need of help'

Not necessarily feminism as such.

Just life experience.

A lot of stuff just got less relevant. It has got harder to suspend disbelief - it is like you can see the workings through it and they don't add up.

Oh, for me it’s the opposite, I am dead tired of shows/stories with classic male characters being rewritten to make the male lead stupid and useless while introducing a never existed strong female lead that runs rings around all the men in the show/story. Enola Holmes movie on Netflix is a recent example.

All I want is a balance- strong male and female leads in their own shows and with equally strong supporting characters of opposite sex. The Alienist is a good show in that regard.

@CranberriesChoccyAgain

I agree but wouldn't use the word "ruined", as if to imply feminism is at fault. It's difficult to unsee the misogyny once you see it though.

Yes. Misogyny and sexism ruins films for me.

Social Dilemna was ok. It had 3 men speakers and 2 women speakers. It’s a career field where it’s usually 9 men for each 1 woman. So they did make an effort. It would be similar in my mind to a midwifery documentary having majority female midwives talking. It’s not the producers fault that there is a gender gap in an industry.

I got the same undertones from The Social Network. Men were bizniz men, talking tech** and stress, with women were there but in minor cameos and often more emotional/theoretical discussion topics.