Sheldon reading.
I am a fan of this show-THE BIG BANG THEORY, but I must say the writers don't write for women well. This week they had an actress from THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES on--Summer Something-- and they couldn't come up with good lines for her. They had the same problem last year with their sole female cast member, Penny. And then they figured it out. Just write her lines as if she were another male--just not a geeky one. Problem solved. Except now they have Sara Gilbert and they write her lines as if she were another male geek--not a woman at all. The writers work best when they write for Howard's Mom, she just screams from downstairs.
Now maybe there is a female writer on this show but if so, she's another Sara Gilbert type. In a way, though the writing reflects the characters. Maybe writing good lines for females is better left to English majors.
Is it me or are female characters more difficult to write and is it because writing staffs are so heavily male? Witness the plethora of male-female crime teams. The women on them are interchangeable--taking after Scully on X-files. What's a woman to do unless she's on Desperate Housewives?
Is it me or are female characters more difficult to write and is it because writing staffs are so heavily male? Witness the plethora of male-female crime teams. The women on them are interchangeable--taking after Scully on X-files. What's a woman to do unless she's on Desperate Housewives?
25 comments:
I have the same problem with the women on 24: wooden dialog and cliches abound. Of course, the dialog for the male actors won't win any prizes, either. It's clear that the production money for 24 goes for explosions and fire fights, not for competent writers.
Haven't seen The Big Bang, but I've noticed on other shows, especially crime shows, that the women are always "bitchy". And like you said they tend to act like men, but while the men are in three piece suits, the ladies have their breasts hanging out.
I also wonder if they're trying to be so PC in their dialogue that they've lost sight of how women really talk.
"The Big Bang Theory" isn't a female-centered show, so I don't know that there'd be much for female characters to do in any given episode, but "Big Bang" creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady have written for female-centered shows like "Roseanne", "Grace Under Fire", "Cybill", and "The Gilmore Girls". What did you think of the female characters on those shows?
Thanks for the insight, Gerald. Okay Roseanne (and Jackie) were very masculine. Cybil and the character played by Christine Baranski, pretty butch too despite the wardrobe.
Grace, I think she was a man actually. Or maybe it was just her voice.
So The Gilmore Girls was the exception. And if the actresses there weren't so feminine, I wonder if the lines would have come out of their mouths seeming masculine. Like on Roseanne with her daughters.
24-yes, all the women seem pretty mannish-especially the President's wife a few year's back and now the President.
Sandra-the women are bitchy, and anal. The men are intuitive, free-thinking, perky.
One thing I should add, I liked these shows except for Grace. Roseanne was one of the best-written shows in the history of TV, IMHO. But the most womanly character on the show was Dan.
I think, in part, Patti, that you seem to have a very restricted view of what acting like a woman is.
While no one in drama acts like a human being actually does, of course...they act like characters, with greater or lesser verimilitude.
The men don't act like men...the women don't act like women. The people are much snappier and more contantly active, obviously...
Given that, I think the highly stylized characters on LIFE are distinguishable, for an example.
Then there's the contention that it's tough to portray convincing women characters because women were so rarely the focus of fiction and drama, with the sterling exceptions of Jane Austen and relatively few others.
We've made some progress, but if you think the characters Cybil and Jackie were mannish (because they were bold to the point of overbearing at times?), I've known a lot of female men whom they could be patterned after.
I think that TV characters are stereotypes. There are few feminine women (or girly if you want) in most forms of media because that's often considered an insult to women. In fact, just about any portrayal of women can be considered negative by someone... too butch, too girly, too tough, too weak, too whatever. Someone will be upset, no matter what.
It seems to me that male characters are all over the board because no one really minds offense male characters. (Take the recurring theme of idiot husband. You'd be lynched if you wrote an idiot wife character.)
But I don't watch TV much anymore. ;-)
But why dies does every crime show that has come on in the last few years pair a bitchy, uptight, by-the-rules woman with a loosey-goosey, free-thinking man? (BONES, THE MENTALIST, LIE TO ME, etc.) Why is this a compelling pairing?
Actually this dates back to REMINGTON STEELE now that I'm thinking about it.
LIFE isn't like that. I'm not sure that even defines L&OL: SVU...and that seems a bit of a stretch for BONES. Maybe every other series, in the sense of about half of them?
Compelling because the male of the duo is rebelling against The Man, while the female of the duo is The Voice of Reason? Certainly that was the Scully/Mulder dynamic, and the REMINGTON STEELE. Meanwhile, the despicable MOONLIGHTING, which did fall into that dynamic intentionally and enthusiastically, was by admission of everyone involved THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. Except that Shakespeare had a sense of irony of what he was about.
On the other hand you have crime shows like The Shield and the Wire where there really is a range in the female role....
one thing that is missing from this discussion is the role of the networks and production companies who in order to protect their investment so often distort and compromise the vision of writers and creators.
You have to remember Hollywood dynamics, too...yet another Boy's Club, so that 55yo men characters of course cavort regularly with 22yo women ones and Daddy issues and Mommy issues (such as a woman as Boundary Setter, and maybe bitchy about it) are likely to come to the fore.
But why dies does every crime show that has come on in the last few years pair a bitchy, uptight, by-the-rules woman with a loosey-goosey, free-thinking man? (BONES, THE MENTALIST, LIE TO ME, etc.) Why is this a compelling pairing?
Actually this dates back to REMINGTON STEELE now that I'm thinking about it.
'Cause chicks dig those bad boys.
*ducks and runs*
I don't know how true to life it is, but the lead characters on BONES are nicely balanced. Brennan is uptight about the scientific method and lacks people skills. Booth operates better outside the lab, but he's uptight when it comes to the law and religious beliefs while Brennan is comfortable with her sexuality and holds to no religion.
Brennan's friend Angela, the forensic artist, is also comfortable with her sexuality and more spontaneous than Brennan.
My husband always claims that too-that women like the bad boys. I think young woman do (oh, I remember Jerry Lazarra in 10th grade who stole cars for us to ride in) but since then, bad boys have lost their charm-except as villains and these guys aren't villains.
Did you see the premiere of Castle the other night? The male writer character was "loosey-goosey" while the female cop was the hidebound stereotype.
And do young women like bad boys because of adolescent rule-testing, because they want to test their power in Taming that Beast, because they want to break out of social restriction themselves but instead do so by proxy, because rule-breakers seem like they might be sociobiolgically potential leaders or otherwise "alpha" males, or some other set of criteria, or some mix of some or all of these?
Also, we more or less good boys can be pretty dull and irritable. But we end up in jail less.
(Of course, in the bad old days, the Male was always the Voice of Reason, the Female the Intuitive and Preferably the Scatterbrained One...Hello Lucy/Gracie Allen/June Cleaver and her cohort/up through about the time of THE ROCKFORD FILES...perhaps the producers with mommy issues are still of the mind that they are Flipping that dynamic, as well as noting how well X-FILES and such did.)
I highly recommend the film Searching for Debra Winger which deals directly with the issues of women, the roles that they are offered and the male power structure in Hollywood.
Love that movie IREN and was so glad to see her in Rachel Getting Married.
I guess it comes down to this- between the issue of mostly male writing staffs and the demands of the producers, female characters will never get to be fully realized. Not that male characters do either. BIG BANG is so intelligently written in most aspects that I think their inability to do much with women just stands out. One show, perhaps cancelled, that avoided these stereotypes was WORST WEEK-where everyone was treated to good lines and their own personality.
Yeah, WORST WEEK (US version) was cancelled. I only saw the episode in which the new son in law couldn't tell the kitchen from the bathroom in the dark and hilarity ensued, a situation I found unconvincing in the extreme, so I didn't pursue it...I take the other episodes were better...I'll give it a look, maybe, in On Demand.
It made me laugh, especially the first half-dozen and certainly more than RULES OF ENGAGEMENT despite my liking for Patrick Warburton.
Patti, Summer Glau is the actress from Terminator. She also played the doctor's crazy genius sister on FIREFLY and the movie SERENITY.
I think Todd makes a good point about Hollywood still being a big Boy's Club, much more than publishing. Personally, I loved GRACE UNDER FIRE & CYBILL (didn't watch Roseanne or Gilmore Girls). Yes, the women could be bitchy, but they were strong, too. And funny. And give the writers credit for addressing the issue of menopause, which hadn't been mentioned often on TV prior to that. (I still laugh when I think about Cybill pouring a glass of water down the front of her blouse. Many a day I'd wished I could do that!)
Don't know why the female characters on BIG BANG THEORY aren't well-written. My husband doesn't like it, so we don't watch. Have fun in Vegas.
I'll try, Linda.
I like BBT because they are not afraid to say the word "science." And to talk about it. If I had grown up in that world, I may not have shied away from any course that used math.
Not seen this yet - Will look out for it
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