I don't want to spoil Walter White, but haven't you even seen the first few episodes yet? (Since you said you have watched some of the show, I'd guess you've seen the first few... hint hint.)
I have not ever watched "Homeland" or "Dexter." (I'd like the watch the latter eventually.) I do feel like some of the issues with these troubled protagonists has a lot to do with how they're written, and then I think much of that is based on their sex. I hate to make this into a feminism debate, but I will be amazed at how many people defend the men doing such wrong on these shows, while the women seem to be judged much more harshly. For exmaple, Walter White is rooted for, but people will have such disscontempt for Jackie. I won't give away details, but let's just say, Walter does much more terrible things compared to what Jackie has ever done. They have similar personality traits too.
I think women are just not as allowed to be like Jackie. It goes back to even comparing successful people; the basic adage that an assertive man is "powerful and revered," while a woman doing the same thing is often "just a bitch." This is an over-generlization, but we all are familiar with these basic attitudes, whether we agree with them or not. Even when we don't, to an extent, I know most of us have double standards. Even I find myself rooting for Walter or Gregory House (pill abusing/hooker addict doc from Fox's "House"), but I'm ringing my hands a lot with Jackie.
Even the way the women on these shows with the starring men are often viewed is poorly. Walter's wife, Skyler, in particular, has always had most people loathing her. It seems like the men "get away with murder" (uh, that doesn't really need quotes for some of these shows. ), while the women are viewed as such villians. It is a really odd thing. Jackie has done terrible things, no doubt, and also it is her attitude and selfishness that is troubling beyond her bad acts, so I do understand the hatred. Nevertheless, men have similar traits, and they get more passes. That takes me back to my above point that men tend to be allowed to have different strong traits that women tend to have less of a right to have.
I just can't help but feel their are gender issues at play that make viewers judge characters like Jackie and Walter's wife too harshly than if a man were to do similar (or much worse) things (and as I said before, I sometimes do the same). With Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, Greg House, etc., why do they get allowances made for them but women like Jackie and Skyler are such horrid bitches? I do feel the scales are tipped even though there are some good arguments to explain the actual differences with these characters' flaws and their strengths unrelated to their sex. However, the gender issues are too significant for me to ignore.
Add: Holy long post! They look so much longer on the desktop site!
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ToHelenBackAgain
9 years ago
It's true, there's a real gender dichotomy in terms of what a character can get away with.
"Good luck finding him." "Who said anything about 'him'?"
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Dollhouse_89
9 years ago
I like Jackie, and while she has made me cringe countless times I rooted for her up until season 6. It's like she got cocky because she was able to kick the pills for a year then succumbed even harder to her addiction. Kind of like having your credit limit increased, so you use your credit card a little more frivolously and end up maxing it out. But I think that this was intentional. As she gets worse she becomes less likeable. The writers seem to understand that she can't be great all of the time. They do a good job of showing her be brilliant at her job, caring, someone who looks out for underdogs, strong, smart, desperate, manipulative, dishonest and frazzled.
Katiedidd: That's how it started, but the whole show is about his metamorphosis into something much darker.
Yea the biggest fans of BrBa are the most clueless about it. They seem to think it's about an old, bald, cancer d00d in a pork pie hat being bad ass while others exist only to try to get in the way of his badassedness with their bitchery. That was not the aim of the writers. It is about a repressed man's descent into darkness. His cancer diagnosis serves as a catalyst for things that would NEVER happen. He doesn't even realize how repressed he is or what he is capable of until the story gets going. We realize it as he realizes it and becomes fueled by the power and success he gains. He has intentions on the surface that are rooted in good, but those roots get slowly pulled up. It's brilliantly written, and it's sad that while it got the recognition it deserved people still don't appreciate it for what it actually is.
Katiedidd: It goes back to even comparing successful people; the basic adage that an assertive man is "powerful and revered," while a woman doing the same thing is often "just a bitch." This is an over-generlization, but we all are familiar with these basic attitudes, whether we agree with them or not.
Naked_ToHelenBackAgain: Yeah, they had him spell it out for the viewers who still weren't getting it. A lot of viewers ignored that and carried on deliberately not getting it.
I mean the backlash against Skylar is shockingly stupid because fans can never admit he is wrong. She is a devil bitch and Walter is a poor victim even when he poisons a little boy. He is supposed to be flawed and you're supposed to question him every step of the way, but he is still perfect in the eyes of the viewers. A lot of them seem to just thoughtlessly sit back and bask in all his almighty glory. It's only fiction but it creeps me out.
And when I say "them" and "they", I am referring to every male viewer I have encountered
personally. Every. Single. One. Sorry but I had to say it lol.
/Rant over.
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goldpink23
9 years ago
After reading all of the responses,I'm now starting to think you guys are right about the female stars behavior vs male stars behavior being judged differently.
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Helena727
9 years ago
Katiedidd: Yes yes yes yes yes. Thanks for an insightful post.
Even the most enlightened of us struggle with our long-ago-implanted ideas about gender roles. One of my sisters and I have been very happy to self-identify as feminists since the mid-1970s, when she went off to college and I entered jr. high. She has been successful in what was a male-dominated field. Her husband -- big hunky hockey-playing husband -- does almost all the cooking bc he enjoys it and is much better at it than she.
Even so, in a conversation in the early 1990s, she and I admitted that we both thought it looked a little weird when we saw a couple in the car and Wife was in the driver's seat (literally). We laughed at ourselves for our response, and certainly neither of us would actually judge people for their driving decisions, but the fact is that we grew up in an era when Dad was behind the wheel -- that was our conditioning. It's not difficult to consciously move beyond what one was taught in childhood (for ex., to decide that all people are equal and to treat all people equally), but that early conditioning takes hold in the unconscious and is never fully eradicated.
Back to your thoughts on male/female divide: I think one reason why some people dislike Lena Dunham, Amy Schumer, and Sarah Silverman is that each one is very in-your-face, and not one of them has an ounce of fragility (which is very much associated with cultural expectations of femininity). And SS gets less *beep* than the other two, I think, because she's closer to a feminine ideal of beauty (face and figure) than are LD and AS.
"All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."
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lurch99-198-323833
8 years ago
Those are good points about the "gender roles" society tends to assign to people. Also in politics: if, say, Hillary Clinton were a man, she might not be any more popular, but she'd probably be more respected for her political skills (and presumably there would have been fewer comments over the years about her appearance). With "Nurse Jackie" in particular, I find that Edie Falco as an actress gives off such a strong-willed persona that it's hard to accept her in any kind of "victim" role, and to the extent we "tolerate" drug addicts, it's because we see them as "victims" of a "disease." If it were our perception that they take drugs because they "feel like it," we'd presumably just see them as evil jerks. It was when Jackie was being most "cocky" and "arrogant" that I found her most believable, and also least likeable. Now, would I feel this way if I hadn't seen Edie Falco as Carmela Soprano for eight years? Maybe; it's hard to view Jackie and not see traces of Carmela--of course most actors are at least somewhat recognizable from one role to another, in fact some thrive on that. (But by contrast when Merritt Wever was on "The Walking Dead," I didn't see any of Zoey in that character.) Coming back to the gender role issue, what Jackie shared with many men is the belief that as long as they're good at their jobs, their personal lives should be their own business. So if it's "okay" for men to feel that way, why not women? Or should everyone start regarding their personal lives as being fair game? (That seems to be the way society is headed.) The late writer George V Higgins said in an interview "I think everyone has the right to go to hell in their own fashion if the government can't stop you, and the government can't." But then what about the people around us who may care about us---what if anything is our responsibility to them? Lots of "food for thought" in this show...
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