Angry angels

[dolorosa_12]

Day Six: Favorite female-driven show

Orphan Black and Pretty Little Liars

I'm cheating today, because I honestly couldn't decide between the two. I think I like both for their emphatic, relentless, female-driven character. They are both unapologetically shows about women's stories, and they portray all kinds of relationships between all kinds of women and girls (although both shows could stand to be a bit less white). Each show abounds with mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, female antagonists, romantic relationships between women and so on. There are male characters, but they are very much secondary or tertiary, and neither show is particularly concerned with telling their stories, except insofar as they affect the stories of the girls and women. Female characters' stories drive the plots in both shows, and both celebrate these characters' stories.

I think the appeal of both shows to me lies in the unflinching way they look at how society tries to control, claim and shape women. In Orphan Black, the clones' bodies and lives are literally not their own, while in Pretty Little Liars everyone from shadowy bullies behind a computer screen to the local police and the girls' own fathers tries to lay claim to the girls' lives, attribute motivations to them, and manipulate them into something more manageable. And in the face of these repeated assertions that these girls and women are not their own, both shows depict their female characters as fighting back, taking up space, shouting their truth and their stories from the rooftops, believing and supporting one another, and trying to reclaim their lives for themselves. In both shows, women and girls' lives and anger and stories matter.


Day Seven: A female character that needs more screen time
Day Eight: Favorite female character in a comedy show
Day Nine: Favorite female character in a drama show
Day Ten: Favorite female character in a scifi/supernatural show
Day Eleven: Favorite female character in a children’s show
Day Twelve: Favorite female character in a movie
Day Thirteen: Favorite female character in a book
Day Fourteen: Favorite older female character
Day Fifteen: Favorite female character growth arc
Day Sixteen: Favorite mother character
Day Seventeen: Favorite warrior female character
Day Eighteen: Favorite non-warrior female character
Day Nineteen: Favorite non-human female character
Day Twenty: Favorite female antagonist
Day Twenty-One: Favorite female character screwed over by canon
Day Twenty-Two: Favorite female character you love but everyone else hates
Day Twenty-Three: Favorite female platonic relationship
Day Twenty-Four: Favorite female romantic relationship
Day Twenty-Five: Favorite mother/daughter and/or sister relationship
Day Twenty-Six: Favorite classical female character (from pre-20th century literature or mythology or the like)
Day Twenty-Seven: A female character you have extensive personal canon for
Day Twenty-Eight: Favorite female writer (television, books, movies, etc.)
Day Twenty-Nine: A female-centric fic rec
Day Thirty: Whatever you’d like!

Comments

[ellinou.livejournal.com]

To be fair, Orphan Black does have a black woman who gave birth to two white girls XD And there are going to be a lot more male characters next season, since they just found male clones.

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

Well, the fact that they killed off the black woman almost immediately after we met her kind of proves my point. If they'd kept her on as a character, we could've found out so much more — why she chose to be Sarah and Helena's surrogate mother, what she'd been doing in the years since their birth, and so on. As it is, she remains a cipher.

That plot twist with the male clones was something that really disappointed me. As you can see from this post, what I love about Orphan Black is how unapologetic it is about focusing on women's stories, and the fact that it is, in essence, about the experience of being a woman. Adding male clones shifts this focus considerably. At least the male clones were made for the military, since I think the military is the only area in which men are treated as being 'just bodies' in the way that women frequently are. I'll keep watching, but it wasn't an area in which I wanted the show to go.

[rokeby-venus.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen Pretty Little Liars, but I recently saw the first season of Orphan Black and thought it was fantastic. Tatiana Maslany does a fine job of inhabiting all her different characters, and I'm endlessly fascinated by the question of how we are shaped by our environment and how much of an individual's personality is truly innate. I can't wait to watch the second season.

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

Oh, if you've only seen the first season, I apologise for the spoilers in the commons on this post. I totally agree with you about Orphan Black, and particularly appreciate the different physical qualities Tatiana Maslany brings to her various characters. I hope you enjoy Season 2.