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I'd been wondering how long it would take for Uhura to be called Mary Sue. Bingo. Fandom, you're nothing if not predictable. *thumbs up* /sarcasm.

Ah, I wonder if my forever-WIP meta post about perception of female characters in fandom is ever gonna see the light of day. Although the other day when I was rollerblading, I did write what felt like a pretty complete essay in my head, and I jotted the essential parts down soon as I got back... so it probably wouldn't take more than a few hours now to actually write the bloody thing. It's just... this whole topic annoys and frustrates me so much that I can't bring myself to dwell on it for any length of time.

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What? How does that accusation work? She doesn't even do that much in the movie. I mean, if anything I wanted her to play a bigger role in the plot, that's not what you think of a "Mary Sue". I guess a female character just has to be there to be considered as taking up too much room by some people. WTF?

Well, she's competent, she's got mad skillz, she's stunningly hot, and she gets the guy. That's plenty for a female character to be called Mary Sue. Logic is not required. (Guys are, of course, allowed to be competent, hot, and get the girl.)

Of course, female characters who don't have mad skillz but are just people like you and me are called too weak and flawed. When reactions vary between 'too sexy', 'too mediocre', and 'too awesome', you wonder what the 'acceptabel' woman character looks like. So far I've come to the conclusion she doesn't exist. Lose-lose scenario. (Keller of course was at the same time called too flawed and a Mary Sue, which is just extra-special.)

Also, a woman shouldn't hook up with another character in canon, I hear, because that makes her just a plot device, to mess with the slash pairing. Which is interesting, because the way I see it, it's only the viewer and her subjective perception that turns that character into a plot device.

I mean, if anything I wanted her to play a bigger role in the plot

I was actually really pleased with the role she got in the movie; I'd seen a few comments beforehand and assumed her role to be much smaller than it turned out to be. I think for a supporting character her role was quite satisfying. And I'm intrigued by the Spock/Uhura relationship. That hit me out of nowhere; I've never ever shipped Spock with anyone. (Not even with myself, when I was mary-suing myself into the Trekverse in my teen years. ;)

Anyway, even when I left the theater I had no doubt that some fen would pick apart the movie to find flaws with her character.

(I don't plan on getting involved in Trek fandom, bwt... just reading some fic, but I don't really feel fannish about it. I'm staying in SGA. :)

Edited 2009-05-16 13:29 (UTC)

As far as TOS pairings go I've always been fond of Spock/McCoy in the little TOS slash I've read, mostly because I never liked the TOS Kirk that much, but Spock/Uhura won me over in the new movie.

[newscaper here]

"When reactions vary between 'too sexy', 'too mediocre', and 'too awesome', you wonder what the 'acceptabel' woman character looks like."

To [some, many?] female fans? My guess?
'Better than me on all fronts -- even unrealistically to a point (nothing wrong with aspiring) -- but not so much as to be totally intimidating.'

Going further (to far?), my totally frank, not-very-sensitive thought on the the appeal of Brennan Bones to geeky fan girls is that a) 'I can relate because she's socially awkward like me, but b) it hasn't stopped her from being wildy successful on multiple professional fronts, nor c)from being beautiful (non-blonde too!), nor stopped her from having the hot guy.'

IOW, 75% delusion :)

All of the bashing of make geeks living in their mom's basements has already been done :p

Going further (to far?), my totally frank, not-very-sensitive thought on the the appeal of Brennan Bones to geeky fan girls is that a) 'I can relate because she's socially awkward like me, but b) it hasn't stopped her from being wildy successful on multiple professional fronts, nor c)from being beautiful (non-blonde too!), nor stopped her from having the hot guy.'

What's wrong with identifying with a successful geek?

I'm not sure I agree here though because, hm, I don't know if you were around at the beginning of season one: there was a lot of Brennan bashing going on. It took fandom a few months to warm up to her and her eccentricities. In the beginning, I'd say people watched for Boreanaz. Brennan was particularly criticized for her social awkwardness and her perceived 'coldness'. (Whereas I thought it came across clearly that the character has a lot of warmth and emotion, just doesn't necessarily express it like most people.)

Her social awkwardness definitely makes her interesting to me. Though I don't buy into the prejudice that most fangirls (or fanboys) are socially awkward. You're not socially awkward just because you pursue a hobby. One major appeal about the character is that she's smart. Smart people are sexy. Probably the main reason I lost interest in Booth - I started watching because of the hotness of DB but when they started to portray his character as a baboon, I very quickly lost interest. /sidenote

To [some, many?] female fans? My guess?
'Better than me on all fronts -- even unrealistically to a point (nothing wrong with aspiring) -- but not so much as to be totally intimidating.'

Mm. I haven't properly ordered my thoughts on this yet. Maybe if one wrote down the (short) list of female characters that are widely liked, see what they have in common.

(By the way, just for the record, I don't at all think that the double standards of sexism are problem just of female fans. This just happens to be a predominantly female space, that's why I'm focusing on that.)

Oh, man--that surprises and saddens me. It's Uhura. Some people got no respect.

Do stay in SGA, please. *g*

I'm saddened but not surprised. Apparently people are a really predictable species. ;) You should see the kind of stuff that's going on in SPN fandom... eek, is all I'm saying.

Do stay in SGA, please. *g*

Heh, no worries. I'm not going anywhere. I just rewatched Trek today because the German dubbing was *atrocious* and someone was munching popcorn in my ear for the entire first hour on the first watch. This time, English dialogue and no *crrp crrp crrp*.

I'm quite won over by the new characters and the brilliant AU move, enough to read some fic. But to get really fannish about something I need a level of obsession which I don't feel here. No urge to do fanart.

Beside, I just love SGA too much and I'm not multifannish by nature.

Oh fandom. *rolls eyes* She wasn't a Mary Sue in the Original Series and she isn't one in this one.

I'm boggling and unsurprised at the same time.

Well, that didn't take too long, did it?

Please, yes, write your meta post.

Well, that didn't take too long, did it?

Should've put some money on it. :P

(Then again, who in their right mind would've taken such a bet...)

Please, yes, write your meta post.

*groans*
It breaks my brain to think about this. But I got all the pieces, just have to assemble them together into something readable...

Might take a while still. ;)

Have you read http://jekesta.insanejournal.com/37329.html ?

No, haven't read it. I'd agree that nuTrek needs a lot more female characters, and I'm assuming we're going to get them in the series. If not, hell yeah I'll be one disgruntled fan. But I can see that it would've been hard to introduce new characters now, when they had to reestablish the old ones *and* the AU setting. I'd rather have one well-developed female character than a few that are half-heartedly slapped on, and I have to say, I'm really happy with the Uhura we got, and I disagree with that post pretty much completely in that regard.

I don't understand how one can say she didn't do anything. The movie was Kirk, Spock, plus supporting, and of all the supporting characters she had the most faceted role, imho. She was portrayed as an extremely capable linguist, with skills unmatched, she contributed to the plot considerably.

No, she didn't get to fight but I don't understand why 'strong woman' has become so literal. Sulu can fence. Uhura can speak all three dialects of Romulan. Both are extremely cool and useful skills.

And the thing is I've seen this attitude - criticizing female characters for lacking in skills like combat, or for being given a love interest - used to discard them, and have them turned into free-for-all bashing fodder so I've become extremely wary of it.

Ah, I have to get to work. I crossposted this to LJ, here... I wrote some of my opinions about this in my reply to arari.

(I honestly don't have a problem with the skirt uniforms because that's what they wore in TOS. So that's what she had to wear here, to establish that these are indeed the same characters.)

I don't expect Uhura to be any more to the plot than McCoy, Sulu or Chekov. She's part of the ensemble, that's cool. But I don't expect her to be used as a sexual prize to be contested by Spock and Kirk and I do expect that if you can reboot the story to destroy Vulcan, you can reboot the story to decide to actually show women as something more than tits and arse on display.

I'm sorry I'm raining on your squee. Sarah Connor Chronicles got cancelled and Dollhouse got renewed so I'm all kinds of sad today.

I'll stop.

Okay, this one thing, then I'll stop too.

But I don't expect her to be used as a sexual prize to be contested by Spock and Kirk

But see, what makes Uhura the prize to pursue? You could just as easily say Spock is the prize to be pursued by Uhura... many fans would agree that Spock is quite a catch. (Kirk isn't even part of the equation, he's flirting out of habit because he's a hound but I don't think we supposed to take his "interest" seriously for one second. They didn't play up the jealousy angle one bit, not even in that scene in the transporter room.)

Sorry about SCC. I haven't watched it by most of my flist did and everybody's pretty bummed about it.

Ha, yeah, when I went on LJ to read people's reactions after watching the movie, I kept seeing people talking about the Kirk/Uhura/Spock love triangle in the movie, or Kirk being jealous or competing with Spock over Uhura, and I was like, did we just watch the same movie?! Kirk flirted lightly with her because he's Kirk, but I never got the feeling in the movie that we were supposed to believe he was serious about it, beyond the first time she turns him down -- obviously he wouldn't have said no if she'd reciprocated his interest later on, but she clearly doesn't, and he never takes it to the level that would be creepy or stalker-ish. Meanwhile, Uhura very obviously knows what she wants, and goes out and gets it: Spock. Kirk's look at them on the transporter pad read to me as a boyish sort of "...you dawg!" kind of thing, not jealousy over either Uhura or Spock.

And I guess the thing about it that really baffles me is that Uhura was the one with agency throughout the whole thing. It wasn't even a case of two boys competing for a girl's affections, because Spock didn't even seem to know there was something to compete for, and Kirk wasn't seriously trying. Uhura made all the first moves, and it's not even as if she was trying to do some silly thing like snare Spock into marriage and give up her career or anything like that -- she made the decisions, she made the moves, she got it all (the sexy geek and the dream job) through being smart and determined and working hard and taking all the chances that came her way ... how in the world does that make her a pawn or a prize or someone to look down upon?

Kirk's look at them on the transporter pad read to me as a boyish sort of "...you dawg!" kind of thing, not jealousy over either Uhura or Spock.

Yeah, that's exactly how I read that scene.

It wasn't even a case of two boys competing for a girl's affections, because Spock didn't even seem to know there was something to compete for, and Kirk wasn't seriously trying.

*nods*

and I was like, did we just watch the same movie?!

I find myself thinking that a lot lately. ;)

Well, we all bring our own expectations to a text, which influence the way we read it, and if some fans can only see Uhura as reduced to being defined by Kirk and Spock, not as a character in her own right, then that has more to do with the viewer's particular goggles than the text, IMPHUO (in my probably highly unpopular opinion).

And it's not only slash goggles... that's one thing that baffles me. This reading comes from different corners; even non-slashers have bought into the meme that it's all about the Kirk/Spock? 'Cause I thought the movie wasn't, really. I was surprised how completely different the character dynamic was, compared to old Trek. Actually I hope they will continue to explore the different dynamic in the series to come and not quietly steer things back to the status quo as we used to know it... keep things fresh.

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