Riot Women sums up everything wrong with the BBC

[IwantToRetire]

Riot Women, by Sally Wainwright, is not the first drama to challenge traditional gender roles in the name of female empowerment, but it really seems to hate men. The six-part series is ostensibly about how five menopausal women come together to make music and inspire each other to rise above the difficulties they face. But another way of seeing it is that it is six hours of prime-time television in which every male character is portrayed as (at best) hopelessly ineffectual and dishonest or (at worst) a psychopathic murderer and rapist, with not much in between.

what it does tell us is that, five years after being appointed as Director General, Tim Davie’s BBC is still, fundamentally, a place that sees such dramas as suitable for mainstream viewing, and that the ideas it promotes are essentially incontestable and inoffensive. Wainwright’s world view is indistinguishable from the BBC’s because they originate from the same set of values.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/riot-women-sums-up-everything-wrong-with-the-bbc/ and at https://archive.is/iEEB9

I wasn't going to watch it on principle because it appears that the only reason women could ever possibly be musicians is to wang on about their reproductive system in a novelty band. The trans musician is the least of my concerns - when your original drummer (or whatever) has dropped out at the last minute, you'd take a Pit Bull Terrier or rabid gibbon as long as it could play.

Was there a female sound engineer at all? Any random female drummer in about five different bands because it's really difficult to get a reliable one, especially one with their own van and they're all booked up for months in advance? No bassist in another band getting pissed off with the assumption that she's a WAG rather than holding down the backline with the drummer? Nobody enduring a lecture from a random about how she should listen to what is on the original recording and try to be more like that when she wrote and recorded the fucking track in the first place? Nobody rolling their eyes at the novelty 'We're GIRLS' group showing up and being treated as though they're the only women who have ever stepped on a stage after the age of 24? No pain in the arse shoegazing band taking so long to set up that they've only got time for a quick linecheck?

I've not watched it, so no idea if his characterisations are accurate.

I will say that I have no issue with tv or film that is centred on one sex, or even only includes one sex.

I don't really like it when the members of the opposite sex are all shits or pathetic. That's whether it's men or women. It's just a sign of bad writing, imo.

Right wing media never misses on opportunity to give the BBC a good kicking. Whether deserved or not.

Shame! But I suppose the teacher was intimidated by the aggressive boys. There’s a lesson from life.

Ugh! And that was real life. So yes: pot, kettle.

If they had stuck the Thelma and Louise Harvey Keitel character, too balance, in that would be a bit weak and obvious. I actually thought the son was ok, him being a bit screwed up was understandable. A lot of it was about women’s invisibility and not that I’m excusing men, they are subject to same ideology with this - i.e conditioned not to notice older women. The land lady’s boyfriend was a benign character, Beth’s student who she chatted to in music shop was quite sweet (when Beth wasn’t invisible anymore), I’m not sure what to say about “Jack the Rimmer” if I’m honest but wasn’t evil . And sponge bob the dealer was harmless (notwithstanding he was a coke dealer!) And of course, then there were some total stinkers - Gavin, the cop, the bloke that used to be The Doctor… In terms of a feminist reading, my problem with it was the restoration of the patriarchal order when Kitty’s dad came up with the names of the rapists . I hope season two isn’t going to be him and Kitty hunting them down but I fear it is because he (Jonathan Pryce) is a big name and must be due a bigger role? Other than all that, I liked it very much because it was spirited and I had forgotten how much I love Hole/Courtney. I also want those doc martens and an animal print coat .

I think what this male writer fails to grasp is that those who are not part of the dominante group experience life differently.

Nobody objected when there was a very good series of tv plays about living life in London as part of the Afro Carribean community. ie it showed that apart from showing actually them being the target of overt racism, it showed how these lived experiences influenced how they experienced or reacted.

Many (most) of the women in Riot Women were heterosexual. And so on one level showed that they certainly dont hate men. But on the other hand all had shared negative experiences of men in their personal and work life, which meant when together they could share and support each other.

And just because it was about women challenging the stereotypes they felt trapped in, it doesn't mean it turns them into saints.

So strange to be so critical of this series when so many centre on men who when with other men are shown to be sexist bigots, and patronising towards women, and revelling in "masculine" targets.

That was why I said up thread how could anyone, other than a man, think this series was an example of what is wrong with the BBC.

When it was nothing like 99% of BBC output.

What a weird take on it. Most of the female characters were pretty flawed too. Didn’t make it any less enjoyable to watch (which is the point of entertainment last time I checked!)

I thought it was great.
I thought the focus would be on the band alone, and was surprised at the horrific treatment of the young police officer and the violence from Kitty's boyfriend - and of course her horrendous experience as a child. It was a lot darker - and yet warming in terms of the female anger expressed - than I expected.
Which was great.

I haven't read the article, but those of you slagging off the Spectator have pretty short memories.
They have consistently supported GC issues when other outlets have pretended nothing was happening. Especially ? Kirkup (I can't remember his 1st name) who wrote some very impressive articles.

I'm put off when a friend told me that the Menapause is treated as some kind of pathological event.

I tried to like this show as I loved Happy Valley and most of Last Tango but I thought it was terrible, full of cliches and stereotypes and the acting was woeful, I hate when you can “see” the acting and you definitely could in this production.

Yes, absolutely, the Spectator has published lots of woman-friendly and rather scathing articles.

No comment from me on Riot Women as I haven't seen it. Someone said there's a trans woman in it singing about menopause - is that true, because it puts me right off giving it the time of day.

By this goofy logic, if the The Völkischer Beobachter supported GC issues they too shouldn't have been slagged off?

No prizes for guessing why GC issues are associated with the far right…

Agree, so sick of this “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” bizarro logic on here. Tired of reading “at least (insert name of right wing racist , homophobic, misogynistic cunt) knows what a woman is” 🙄

Loved it. Agree that not all men were shits. Gerry was ok.

Yup, it just exposes them as faux feminists getting into bed with dyed in the wool misogynists. They can't have it both ways.

Scorpion hitching a ride on the back of a frog vibes?

Morning Star is firmly supportive of gender critical views

I didn’t mind Miranda. There was no storyline there, just ‘we need someone to stand in and Miranda knows the words because she heard them all rehearsing a hundred times’.

There was no ‘oh, isn’t Miranda stunning and brave’.

No prizes for guessing why GC issues are associated with the far right
My god, i thought this had been done to death already …

No they just send out the bots, because this attempt to slur and create a false link never works.

Because everyone know the real issue is not why some right wing paper or writer support gender critical views, but why the so called left and liberals are terrified to publicly support the reality that sex is biological.

The best response is dont feed the trolls. It just gives them oxygen to go huff and puff I will blow your house down.

And contributes to their dillusion they are making valid points.

Spectator - wasn't that one of the first, or maybe the first to get GC and support?

Exactly. I didn’t know how to word it.

WTF?

No one owes any source of information / news / journalism ANY loyalty whatsoever.

We should all be engaging our critical thinking skills whenever we read anything, and reading a wide range of sources if we don't want to be on the receiving end of misinformation/ propaganda / taken for mugs.

James Kirkup at the Spectator has been GC from early on, along with Helen Joyce at the Economist, Helen Lewis at the New Statesman, Suszanne Moore and Hadley Freeman at the Guardian and Janice Turner at the Times.

With all of the above, there has been “balancing” pushback against women’s rights by other columnists. Left-leaning ones do it with TWAW, right-leaning by calling for women to be economically dependent.