well behaved women

Meeting the Beast: Ginger Snaps and Feminist Werewolves

What annoys me about movies like this is that they conflate the bestial and sexual in us with what is most damaging and dangerous. That isn’t right or accurate or fair. Never mind the negative press that gives to wild animals, the negative press it gives to women is enough. It’s not that our bestial side cannot destroy us, it’s that those tropes are so often used against women attempting to grow up that employing them even in the service of a structurally sound tale is morally problematic, and calls the ethical underpinnings of the entire tale into question. In these tales, no alternative is presented beyond "don’t be sexual, don’t do these forbidden things," and because these forbidden things are not, in themselves, harmful, this 'lesson' is something that we are culturally going to have to stop reinforcing, or we are at least going to have to examine how we reinforce it, and who truly needs it enforced.

That is--ultimately--the real reason I never saw it, and am more and more frustrated with supernatural movies starring girls in any way. Just stop it, okay? I really want us to be claw our way past the eternal 'female sexuality/power is dangerous and evil and we must hammer this home with a thousand ham handed metaphors.'


In other news--the second-to-last Fringe episode was so fucking satisfying. I don't even have the words. Like, normally we're very quiet watcher in our house but there were some shouts of triumph. I mean, when I saw who picked up the phone I hoped it would happen, but I didn't really expect it to. And it did! &hearts &hearts &hearts Fringe!

...Olivia needs a hug. And is a badass.

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