Thursday, December 19, 2013

Veronica Mars again...

Just a quick reminder, there's another liveblog for the new MLP episode this Saturday at 2:00 p.m. EST. We'll be meeting up at http://webchat.freenode.net/ in the channel ##rabbitcube. Last time had some technical difficulties, so this time we are waiting later in the day so we can use prerecorded versions of the episode.

Content Warning: Rape and Rape Culture

So, was there a major change in writers at the beginning of Season 3 or something? I've only watched the first half of the season, but it's suddenly gotten all anti-second wave. Which is... deeply weird? We have all these young early-2000s college students acting like a caricature of 1970s college students, treated narratively as the main villains while the actual rapist--and, more dammingly, the actual victims--are barely acknowledged by the story. Part of what made the first season so powerful is that Veronica got to tell the story of her own rape, to own it and define it for herself, but then the very end of second season snatched that away, and followed it up with this ugly mess of a storyline where the fake rape victim (because somebody would willingly invite on themselves the nightmare of community scorn, police questioning, and ostracism that our society imposes on rape victims) gets more screen time than the actual rape victim, and the college "greek" system (which genuinely is an enormous facilitator of rape culture on college campuses, along with the existence of college police departments answerable to the college rather than the larger community) is unfairly maligned and innocent.

I really hope the second half of the season picks up. It looks like the main plot for it is a maybe-suicide probably-murder, so that's promising.

1 comment:

  1. Right there with you. I even like the second season, but the third season is just... awful.

    I don't understand what changed... my pet theory is that the network realized the show was flagging in viewers and wanted to make it "not as feminist" in order to avoid scaring off viewers. It's the only explanation I can think of for why the show would suddenly pull a "Don't worry, we're not like those feminists, see? Both sides of the issue!" move like this.

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