In a recent thread on Digital Spy, there's a valid discussion raging about the character of Bianca, whom several commentators think is - to quote them - "vile" (the most common adjective used to describe this character.)
I am inclined to agree, and I am a woman.
I'm also inclined to agree that the six most unlikeable characters on the programme at the moment are women:-
(In no particular order):-
This observation would be laughable, if it weren't so pathetic. I'm nothing less than an advocate for gender equality, having grown up and come of age on the cusp of real feminism,but this is preposterous. I'm the first to "scapegoat" the women she mentions and more, because they deserve it. There's been an overzealousness in the EastEnders' writing room during recent years to dumb down and weaken the man at the expense of the woman; but the women they present us are nothing less than weak, pathetic creatures, themselves.
Kat is the textbook abuse victim who became the abuser, physically and emotionally abusing a husband who's done nothing but love her. Coronation Street gave us the brilliantly-penned Kirsty Soames, who redeemed herself in the end of her storyline by coming clean and confessing what she'd done to Tyrone. She'll be tried and imprisoned, but maybe she'll receive psychological help in dealing with her demons.
On the other hand, EastEnders' viewers are asked to laugh at Alfie's abuse and now, after gratuitous infidelity the reason for which we've yet to be told, we're asked to view "poor Kat" not only as a victim, but as a heroine. Yet when someone like Max Branning gratuitously cheats on a partner, he's the villain of the piece.
Tanya is an amoral hypocrite, a marriage-wrecker before she hit twenty, selfish to the hilt, not above committing murder if it helps her case, materialistic, and the most abysmal mother going. She is also a drunk, whose very emotional and material existence is dependent upon a man. Remove a man from her horizon and she hits the bottle.
This version of Sharon flits from man to man, prostituting herself to cop a roof over her head and a home for her son. She's a neurotic pill-popper. We're asked to believe that a woman who always took responsibility for her mistakes and rose above any sort of abuse has spent the last six years dipping in and out of promiscuity in the eternal grief for a fey, effete pretty boy who looked more like her son than her lover and who, in reality, was her legal brother.
Whitney, like Kat, is the eternal victim, using her past sexual abuse as an excuse for inappropriate behaviour and refusing to accept responsibility for any of her actions. She's another who has to have a man in her life in order to validate her existence.
Lauren is the epitome of selfish, self-centred, lazy, entitled youth. She is all about herself and no one else. She considers herself an adult, yet she insists that her parent support her financially. She treats her imperfect father like a piece of shit, but knows who holds the purse strings when she needs money.
As for Bianca, she was the precursor of the loud, obnoxious, shouting woman whom, somehow, the writing room at EastEnders thinks represents "strength, " a view which took firm hold of the writers' minds with the arrival of Stacey Slater, who shouted, screamed, screeched, cried, bullied and demolished her way around the Square. It helped that she had a conflated sense of entitlement and a firm belief that any and everything she did and its ensuing consequences were "nuffink ter do wiv'er." Nothing was ever Stacey's fault, even murder; and she didn't deserve any sort of punishment for her deeds because either Max made her do it (Stax), Bradley took money from Max (her affair with the appalling Callum Monks), she was bipolar (everything else), Archie was mean to Danielle (his murder), Lily needed her (the reason why she shouldn't be prosecuted for murder), and she was simply entitled (to Max and Ryan - other women's husbands - or to Bradley, because he was a dependable bloke who never tired of picking up the pieces of her latest trail of emotional destruction.
All of the above characters are insults to the likes of Angie Watts, Kathy Beale, Peggy Mitchell and Pat Evans, women who held their own - flawed, but strong.
The only vestige left of a strong woman in today's EastEnders is Janine, who is capable of holding her own because she's had to do so all her life, who's wary of trusting anyone because she's been let down so many times, who actually suffers from relationships with truly weak men (Ryan, Michael) and who, unlike the other screaming banshees mentioned above, rarely raises her voice. (Yes, I know Sharon doesn't as well, but Sharon's breathless whisper is meant to entice a man; we see traces of the old Sharon when she confronts Phil Mitchell as his equal, but those moments are few and far between).
Even today, there's always the danger of reverting to pre-Kirkwood Janine who was regularly depicted as an evil pantomime character, and I'm not above thinking this lot will regress her to that state yet.
The commentator Salome would do well in her self-promotion of feminism to remember that the Biblical character whose name she's taken was someone who wasn't above using sex and sexuality (a half-naked dance in front of her aroused step-father) in order to procure the head of a prophet - another woman who needed a man to achieve her goal.
She'd be well at home in Walford today.
I am inclined to agree, and I am a woman.
I'm also inclined to agree that the six most unlikeable characters on the programme at the moment are women:-
(In no particular order):-
- Kat
- Tanya
- Bianca
- Lauren
- Whitney
- Sharon
This is yet another shortcoming of today's pale version of EastEnders - the lack of valid, strong female characters. None of the above can be considered strong. Sure, Sharon and Kat were in their previous stints on the show, but during Sharon's second coming (the insipid Shannis years), she showed signs of morphing into a precursor of Ronnie as the Tragedy Queen.
The rest don't even come within a shout of strength. They are weak, entitled, self-victimising wraiths depended on men or booze or both in order to validate themselves.
Bianca is a different kettle of fish, however. She was the original gobby mare, shouting the odds around the Square without any sort of consideration of others. She was the only person who mattered. When she lost her infamous temper, anything in her way got destroyed. When she was called up, she opened her foul gob further and cried.
Believe me, there's only one iconic redhead in television history who could do an open-mouthed weep. She wasn't Bianca, and she did it for comedy:-
(Google "Lucille Ball", Luddites).
However, there's always someone who crawls out of the woodwork, who thinks to shame people making valid points with some textbook feminism, which she thinks makes her sound intelligent. I give you the appropriately-named Digital Spy commentator Salome who opines self-righteously:-
I find the gratuitous scapegoating of female characters really vile. After Kat and Tanya, Bianca is next in line with the predictable conflation of actress and character.
Maybe you should ask yourself why a fictional character is such a threat to you. Because she doesn't fit your expectations of perfect femininity? Too loud, too aggressive, too poor, too unhappy? What a terrible crime.
This observation would be laughable, if it weren't so pathetic. I'm nothing less than an advocate for gender equality, having grown up and come of age on the cusp of real feminism,but this is preposterous. I'm the first to "scapegoat" the women she mentions and more, because they deserve it. There's been an overzealousness in the EastEnders' writing room during recent years to dumb down and weaken the man at the expense of the woman; but the women they present us are nothing less than weak, pathetic creatures, themselves.
Kat is the textbook abuse victim who became the abuser, physically and emotionally abusing a husband who's done nothing but love her. Coronation Street gave us the brilliantly-penned Kirsty Soames, who redeemed herself in the end of her storyline by coming clean and confessing what she'd done to Tyrone. She'll be tried and imprisoned, but maybe she'll receive psychological help in dealing with her demons.
On the other hand, EastEnders' viewers are asked to laugh at Alfie's abuse and now, after gratuitous infidelity the reason for which we've yet to be told, we're asked to view "poor Kat" not only as a victim, but as a heroine. Yet when someone like Max Branning gratuitously cheats on a partner, he's the villain of the piece.
Tanya is an amoral hypocrite, a marriage-wrecker before she hit twenty, selfish to the hilt, not above committing murder if it helps her case, materialistic, and the most abysmal mother going. She is also a drunk, whose very emotional and material existence is dependent upon a man. Remove a man from her horizon and she hits the bottle.
This version of Sharon flits from man to man, prostituting herself to cop a roof over her head and a home for her son. She's a neurotic pill-popper. We're asked to believe that a woman who always took responsibility for her mistakes and rose above any sort of abuse has spent the last six years dipping in and out of promiscuity in the eternal grief for a fey, effete pretty boy who looked more like her son than her lover and who, in reality, was her legal brother.
Whitney, like Kat, is the eternal victim, using her past sexual abuse as an excuse for inappropriate behaviour and refusing to accept responsibility for any of her actions. She's another who has to have a man in her life in order to validate her existence.
Lauren is the epitome of selfish, self-centred, lazy, entitled youth. She is all about herself and no one else. She considers herself an adult, yet she insists that her parent support her financially. She treats her imperfect father like a piece of shit, but knows who holds the purse strings when she needs money.
As for Bianca, she was the precursor of the loud, obnoxious, shouting woman whom, somehow, the writing room at EastEnders thinks represents "strength, " a view which took firm hold of the writers' minds with the arrival of Stacey Slater, who shouted, screamed, screeched, cried, bullied and demolished her way around the Square. It helped that she had a conflated sense of entitlement and a firm belief that any and everything she did and its ensuing consequences were "nuffink ter do wiv'er." Nothing was ever Stacey's fault, even murder; and she didn't deserve any sort of punishment for her deeds because either Max made her do it (Stax), Bradley took money from Max (her affair with the appalling Callum Monks), she was bipolar (everything else), Archie was mean to Danielle (his murder), Lily needed her (the reason why she shouldn't be prosecuted for murder), and she was simply entitled (to Max and Ryan - other women's husbands - or to Bradley, because he was a dependable bloke who never tired of picking up the pieces of her latest trail of emotional destruction.
All of the above characters are insults to the likes of Angie Watts, Kathy Beale, Peggy Mitchell and Pat Evans, women who held their own - flawed, but strong.
The only vestige left of a strong woman in today's EastEnders is Janine, who is capable of holding her own because she's had to do so all her life, who's wary of trusting anyone because she's been let down so many times, who actually suffers from relationships with truly weak men (Ryan, Michael) and who, unlike the other screaming banshees mentioned above, rarely raises her voice. (Yes, I know Sharon doesn't as well, but Sharon's breathless whisper is meant to entice a man; we see traces of the old Sharon when she confronts Phil Mitchell as his equal, but those moments are few and far between).
Even today, there's always the danger of reverting to pre-Kirkwood Janine who was regularly depicted as an evil pantomime character, and I'm not above thinking this lot will regress her to that state yet.
The commentator Salome would do well in her self-promotion of feminism to remember that the Biblical character whose name she's taken was someone who wasn't above using sex and sexuality (a half-naked dance in front of her aroused step-father) in order to procure the head of a prophet - another woman who needed a man to achieve her goal.
She'd be well at home in Walford today.
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