Unconscious Sexism For The Fail
Aug. 2nd, 2009 12:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaSo, last night after the movie, had an interesting conversation with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cheshirebast about which characters we identify with. I have a "Venkman" patch on my uniform, but that's because it's brown. I don't identify with movie!Peter at all, and in point of fact think he needs a good kick in the ass most of the time - but the moments when he pulls out the heroism are pretty redemptive. I find cartoon!Peter more tolerable, but I still want to kick him in the butt about half the time, and I find him hard to relate to. For the movie characters I identify in roughly equal measures with Egon and Janine, to a much lesser degree with Ray, and to a very, very small amount with Louis and Winston. (I probably identify less with Dana than I do with Peter, to be honest.)
I forgot how the conversation got there, but it came up that Cheshirebast found Ray rather annoying. I expressed surprise, although there are a couple of places where I do want to slap him a bit. Then I realized that if the character were Rachel Stantz - if she were genderswapped without changing any other aspects of the character - I would probably be a lot less tolerant of her diztiness. I don't think I'd actually dislike her, still - she's smart, and an engineer/occultist, and delivering Aykroyd's dialogue, which would still count for a lot - but I would be a lot less inclined to forgive her for the bonehead move in the library and for not being worried about Venkman being slimed. I'd also be less inclined to forgive Venkman for manipulating her all over the place. And I'd probably ship Rachel with Peter anyway.
Internalized gender-roles and sexism for the fail on my part. :-/
We also realized that Patricia Venkman would be unlikley to be presented to the audience as a sympathetic character at all, and even less so a quarter-century ago. Peter (or, more accurately, the Bill Murray Antihero Character, of whom Venkman is a specialization) is only barely tolerable as a guy; he's That Guy Who Gets Away With Crap By Being Funny And Cute. The specific crap that a girl can get away with by being funny and cute is a non-overlapping set. Enid Spengler, on the other hand, doesn't change very much, and neither does Wanda Zeddemore.
Also, if exchanging two sentences counts as a conversation, GB might have a technical pass on the Bechdel test. I think it still probably doesn't, since Peter interrupts Janine and Dana before they do more than the basic "yes, can I help you?" sorts of stuff, but they do interact and it's not about him yet. (It is, in fact, about Zuul, who I think is also female.)
Anyway, to make up for my own sex-and-gender!fail, have a totally aweseome fanvid:
cheshirebast about which characters we identify with. I have a "Venkman" patch on my uniform, but that's because it's brown. I don't identify with movie!Peter at all, and in point of fact think he needs a good kick in the ass most of the time - but the moments when he pulls out the heroism are pretty redemptive. I find cartoon!Peter more tolerable, but I still want to kick him in the butt about half the time, and I find him hard to relate to. For the movie characters I identify in roughly equal measures with Egon and Janine, to a much lesser degree with Ray, and to a very, very small amount with Louis and Winston. (I probably identify less with Dana than I do with Peter, to be honest.)I forgot how the conversation got there, but it came up that Cheshirebast found Ray rather annoying. I expressed surprise, although there are a couple of places where I do want to slap him a bit. Then I realized that if the character were Rachel Stantz - if she were genderswapped without changing any other aspects of the character - I would probably be a lot less tolerant of her diztiness. I don't think I'd actually dislike her, still - she's smart, and an engineer/occultist, and delivering Aykroyd's dialogue, which would still count for a lot - but I would be a lot less inclined to forgive her for the bonehead move in the library and for not being worried about Venkman being slimed. I'd also be less inclined to forgive Venkman for manipulating her all over the place. And I'd probably ship Rachel with Peter anyway.
Internalized gender-roles and sexism for the fail on my part. :-/
We also realized that Patricia Venkman would be unlikley to be presented to the audience as a sympathetic character at all, and even less so a quarter-century ago. Peter (or, more accurately, the Bill Murray Antihero Character, of whom Venkman is a specialization) is only barely tolerable as a guy; he's That Guy Who Gets Away With Crap By Being Funny And Cute. The specific crap that a girl can get away with by being funny and cute is a non-overlapping set. Enid Spengler, on the other hand, doesn't change very much, and neither does Wanda Zeddemore.
Also, if exchanging two sentences counts as a conversation, GB might have a technical pass on the Bechdel test. I think it still probably doesn't, since Peter interrupts Janine and Dana before they do more than the basic "yes, can I help you?" sorts of stuff, but they do interact and it's not about him yet. (It is, in fact, about Zuul, who I think is also female.)
Anyway, to make up for my own sex-and-gender!fail, have a totally aweseome fanvid:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-08-05 07:35 pm (UTC)And I wasn't fond of Peter until the RGB episode with the nice little old lady that reminded Peter of his mother. That just made me go "awwww" and now, I love the guy. Well, cartoon!Peter anyway. I love Bill Murray, but movie!Peter is, well, just like you said.
By the way, I decided to friend you. Yeah, I friended your fic journal, and now I'm friending your journal journal. *lol* I'm in that kind of mood, I guess?
no subject
Date: 2009-08-06 10:46 am (UTC)I hate to say it, but cartoon!Peter is a more complex character than movie!Peter. Partly that's because the number of writers has ballooned (although movie!Peter really had three authors anyway), but I suspect partly that's also because they couldn't have him be too big a dick in a children's show. Charlie Venkman also explains a lot.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-06 02:17 pm (UTC)Yeah, I suppose the cartoon also had the benefit of more opportunities to flesh out the characters, where the movie was limited to that two-hour timeframe while getting in the jokes that makes it such a classic comedy and moving the plot along that made it a great watch. Not a whole lot of time to get into the characters and their motives, especially when there are four of them (5-7 if you include Janine, Louis, and/or Dana). And especially in the case of Peter, we're able to see more than his womanizer side, and his sarcastic and cynical side, even if the second movie shows that he has a lot of heart (mostly with Oscar--"You should have been mine" really spoke volumes to me about his character).