Dynasty Week!

Apparently it was Dynasty week on tv. Both FlashForward and Ugly Betty featured girl-fights in ponds. Only the second one was going for campy, but the first one still made me laugh a lot. Also, it was more evil in a threat to national security.

Ugly Betty also wins my love because while gay teens are having a moment, they are also having a kind of eunuch moment what with Eric from Gossip Girl being the castrated queer, and Marshall from US of Tara becoming sexually active…. with a lady. Gross.

Justin stands alone, as far as I can tell, as a teen gay in an actual sexual relationship with another gay teen. I love it! They dance and kiss! Where people can see them! Cuteness!

This is what I’ll miss about Ugly Betty. It has been very progressive— with a huge cast of color, a relatively awesome handing of a trans character, and gay people across the spectrum as “just like us straights!” and building their own versions of what love means, which doesn’t always follow the hetero monogamous version of love.

In some sort of glorious last hurrah it’s become amazing again. Earlier this season I wouldn’t have thought I’d care that it was going, but it’s clear that the writers still have some oomph in them. So the only question remaining is… why didn’t they pull it out sooner?

The only big quibble I have is that they seem to be forcing a Daniel and Betty love storyline into the end, when it seems from so many seasons, that they’re better of as friends. Yes, it’s true! Straight mixed gender couples can be friends! Breaking boozetube news! Anyway, I hope that when Hilda was chatting about love and Daniel shot a significant look at Betty it was a look of friendship! And I hope that when Daniel and Betty were dancing and talking about how right everything felt they were talking about friendship! I don’t ask a lot of things but please, please show, you’re so good at breaking stereotypes, please don’t be the one millionth show to deny what I know is true– men and women can have very fulfilling friendships, and love may not be their ultimate expression.

How Not to Apologize for a Raping

Oh man. Blake Carrington and Krystle. Last season Blake raped Krystle because he was mad at her for taking birth control, but she forgave him after he gave her some sparkly jewelry and flowers. She has lately returned to his bed because she feels super sorry for him after he “accidentally” killed his son’s gay lover.

Blake: That night that I forced you, the night that I… wanted you to have my child… that was even a bigger mistake than you thought. The last reward that I need is another child. And you were quite right to be angry with me.

“That time I wanted you to have my child” is the greatest vague euphemism for rape I have ever heard. I’ve been thinking a lot about rape on tv shows. This is one of the most realistic scenarios I’ve seen yet. Television rapists nowadays tend to be very different from real life rapists. In a post about Law and Order: SVU, Melissa McEwan notes that if the show reflected reality, it would be pretty boring:

The problem with L&O:SVU is ultimately this: If it reflected the reality of sexual assault, it would be a “boring” show. Woman gets raped; it’s her boyfriend. Woman gets raped; it’s her male lab partner. Girl gets raped; it’s her stepdad. Woman gets raped; it’s her male date. Girl gets raped; it’s her male teacher. Girl gets raped; it’s her dad. Woman gets raped; it’s her male boss. Woman gets raped; it’s a guy she met at a bar. Woman gets raped; it’s her male coworker. Boy gets raped; it’s his male scout leader. Girl gets raped; it’s her male soccer coach. Woman gets raped; it’s her ex-boyfriend…

We’d have to go on a long way like that before we got to a female assaulter or a false accusation. It would even be awhile before we got to a stranger rape on the street (or in Central Park, ahem); women are three times more likely to be raped by someone they know than a stranger, and nine times more likely to be raped in their home, the home of someone they know, or anywhere else than being raped on the street.

Fantastical, larger than life shows like Law and Order: SVU or Nip/Tuck or even Beverly Hills: 90210* have long acted as if violent stranger rape is the only kind of rape that exists or is worth talking about, particularly because it’s very easy to identify as rape, and it doesn’t lead anyone to any uncomfortable places. If one out of four women is raped in her life (which I’m sure is a conservative estimate given how often rape goes unreported) not only do you probably know a rapist, you have probably dated one, are friends with one, or are related to one. And no one likes to think about that.

So we’re good at not identifying rape. Last year on Mad Men, in one of the saddest, hardest to watch scenes I think I’ve ever seen on television, Joan is raped by her fiance. In his recap for TWOP, Couch Baron initially called this a “borderline rape.” Similarly, a recent discussion about Weeds on Shakesville revealed that even among very media-savvy feminists it’s hard to identify rape for what is, and instead recontextualize it as “a bad date” or “rough sex.”

Similarly, Gossip Girl opened with Chuck Bass attempting to rape Jenny Humphrey on the roof at a party, when he is interrupted by her brother, at the time, this was clearly understood as rape, and Chuck, in fact apologized for it to Jenny midway through last season. But as the show progressed Chuck became something of a fan favorite, especially in his relationship with Blair. So the next time Chuck raped someone, even though he had been widely understood to already be a rapist, Chuck and Blair fans (of which I am one, actually, Chair forever!) found it difficult to call a rape a rape. During a blackout, Chuck takes advantage of the darkness to pretend to be Blair’s boyfriend and have sex with her while she thought he was someone else. When confronted, Blair said that she knew it was Chuck all along. But the rape victim’s state of mind isn’t what determines whether something is or isn’t rape. Chuck intended to mislead her as to his identity in order to have sex with her, presuming she would not consent if she knew the truth. Attempting to shortcut someone’s ability to consent IS rape.

There’s a very similar scene on Nip/Tuck, actually, in which Christian believes that Liz, his friend who is a lesbian (I point this out, because it is very clear that they have no prior sexual history which could confuse the matter, AND he has a big reason to believe she wouldn’t consent– she doesn’t like dudes), is asleep, and he begins to have sex with her. Of course it turns out later, she likes it. Very few of my tv watching companions understand this to be a rape scene. But Christian waited until she was asleep in order to have sex with her, assuming she would not consent. Attempting to shortcut someone’s ability to consent IS rape.

Veronica Mars has the best and the worst depictions of rape on tv. The first season did something amazing and subtle. We find out, first episode, that Veronica was raped, she doesn’t know by whom at a party where she was drugged. One of the season’s big mysteries is who raped her. It’s nice to see a rape survivor who is completely proactive about solving the case, who doesn’t turn it over to someone else to save her. What she learns is that she was drugged by accident, when a drink spiked for someone else was handed to her, and that her drugged ex-boyfriend, with whom she was still in love joined her in what he thought was consensual, but secret sex. It was an upsetting, deeply conflicting solution to the seasons mystery. Without a pervasive rape culture, Veronica never would have been raped. If no one thought it was acceptable to drug a woman’s drink to get her to have sex, she wouldn’t have been in that position in the first place. But the person who had sex with her in no way intended to rape her, and was also drugged against his will. Both Veronica and Duncan, in this scenario, were victims of rape culture, which was a powerful, profound, and very complex situation for a tv show to take on.

Of course, the second season fucks it all up and ruins the awesome completely. Because it turns out that Duncan was not the only person to have sex with Veronica that night. Cassidy “Beaver” Casablancas secretly master-minded the whole thing and raped Veronica. In the season finale, there is a suggestion that he raped Veronica’s friend Mac, which is denied in the third season. (He takes her clothes, and when she’s found she cries, “He took everything.” Which I thought meant he raped her, but it turned out I was wrong. I know, first time for everything.) And the third season opened with ANOTHER rapist, who rapes Mac’s roommate Parker, and later nearly rapes Veronica. It was incredibly sad to have such a subtle, feminist show morph into procedural levels of sensationalism. I mean, seriously, Two out of three protagonists were raped with the third only narrowly escaping? Our plucky heroine is nearly raped twice? What is the purpose of that? Veronica was an amazing heroine. I would have loved her even without the writers putting her virtue in jeopardy every six seconds. (And at this point, I’d ever prefer if Veronica were nearly the victim of multiple murders, so great is my distaste for depictions of rape for edginess. Newsflash, by definition, nothing that happens to a quarter of all women is edgy.)

I suppose my concern, at the end of the day, is that these rapes are made so sexy and titillating that rape takes on the shape of being a crime about sex, rather than a crime about power, and it’s confusing. In Dynasty, Krystle forgives Blake, but they both call it rape. On General Hospital, Laura marries Luke. But they still called it rape. But 20 years later it’s hard for people who write about tv and committed feminists to consistently identify rape as what it is. We know from advertising how persuasive a medium tv is. I feel it’s a distinct possibility that the relentless sensationalizing of rape and its divorce from reality have affected our judgment negatively and profoundly.

*In the first season Kelly tells her friends at a sleepover that her first time was rape, and she was raped by a friend from school, but this instance is overshadowed by the 9 million strangers who stalk and rape or attempt to rape Kelly over the run of the show.

The Sovereign State of Michigan’s Gift to Creepdom

The Sovereign state of Michigan’s gift to Creepdom: Hi.
Claudia: Mmmhmm.
TSSMGC: Haven’t we met somewhere before? I guess you’ve never been to Detroit.
Claudia: I keep hearing a lot about it.
TSSMGC: Want to hear more? The real inside stuff? I mean about what reaaaaally goes on in Grosse Pointe?
Claudia: Not particularly.

So say we all! Detroit, as anyone from there(ish) knows, is nothing to brag to strangers about. That’s why there aren’t a lot of tv shows set there. Or movies. (Although now that we have cheap filming, more and more!) Why not try a line with better rates of success like: “Do you like my hairplugs? Realistic, right?” Or, “I just bought Hitler’s Yacht!”

Dynasty is interesting in that it’s odd to watch a movie [ed. note: uh, show. What up booze!] from before the backlash against feminism (as so nicely illustrated by Susan Faludi in 1991). This character had an argument with her husband about going back to work in which he was all: “But we have enough money!”

And she was all: “Um thanks, I still want to work, though.”

Also, marital rape is acknowledged as a thing that’s real! (Though, alas, quickly forgiven when an apology and flowers show up. Gross.) It’s so strange that so many shows seem so much less progressive now. (Like Gossip Girl suggesting Blair might ‘have Chuck’s baby’ um no. She might have had Chuck’s abortion though.)

I’m learning so much about early eighties politics though, particularly about the oil industry. Apparently the leftist position of the time was: Don’t drill abroad, drill here at home!!!

Where was Sarah Palin??

The Steven Carrington Institute for the Treatment and Study of Ffffff…. Not Going to Type That

We at the boozetube are going back in Heather Locklear time to the virgin (to our eyes) series Dynasty. What a difference a decade (and a half) makes. The show seems so olde tyme, with its orchestral wilde weste theme sound and concern with oil politics.

This series if of particular interest to me, since it premiered in the year of my birth, 1981.

First impressions: Where is Amanda Woodward? I would follow her to the ends of the earth (except maybe to TJ Hooker) so I’m jonesing for my fix of cunning, timeless blonde ambition and beauty. Fortunately for me, there’s Fallon.

Sidebar: What is up with these names? Krystle? Fallon? I guess it really was the eighties, and these people are total nouveau riches. Krystle isn’t even rich at all, but by marriage.

ANYWAY. Back to Fallon. Fallon has, and I’m not lying, gorgeous hair. Everyone else is teased to the rafters in the 80s style we would come to embrace, but Fallon has total 1970s poet hair. It’s brunette, just below her shoulders and curls at the end. SO PRETTY. It is exactly how I imagine my hair when I picture myself accepting my grammyoscarpulitzerpresidentialnomination. She’s also vicious, spiteful and SMART. In episode two she schools politician Jeff (who looks SO MUCH like Quentin the Carver from Nip/Tuck that I thought it was the same actor, at first) about oil politics, and while it’s a little republican for my taste, she is clearly the person who knows the most about the business, far more than her brother Steven.

Steven, as we learn in the first episode, is a practitioner of the love that dare not speak its name. (Don’t worry Steven, only ca20 years to LOGO!) His father does not understand and thinks it’s all about his son’s anger toward his father, saying, hilariously: “Steven, I’m about as freudian as you could hope for [people hope for that?] in a capitalist exploiter of the working classes. When I’m not busy grinding the faces of the poor I even read a little. I understand about sublimation, I understand how you could try to hide sexual dysfunction behind hostility toward a father. I am even prepared to say that I could find a little homosexual experimentation acceptable. Just as long as you didn’t bring it home with you. Don’t you see son? I’m offering you a chance to straighten yourself out!”

Steven protests that he probably can’t, and moreover doesn’t want to “straighten himself out.”

Elder Carrington: “Of course, I forgot, the APA has decided it’s no longer a disease. That’s too bad, I could have endowed an foundation. The Steven Carrington Institute for the Treatment and Study of Faggotry!”

Perhaps you haven’t actually read enough, I might suggest.

That said, he has a total cheesecake shot of his son on his desk. The lad is climbing a tree, ass perkily pointed at the camera while looking coquettishly over his shoulder. Seriously? No clue?