Our dear old friend MarkyMark (not the actor/singer) is back with more of his unique perspective on contemporary popular culture, which has apparently gotten way too friendly to the ladies. Here’s Marky:
[H]ow blatantly MATRIARCHAL TV has gotten. I was watching the NASCAR race at Loudon, NH today … when the predictable commercials and TV show promos came on. There was one show being promoted that, as far as I could tell, had all FEMALE characters; they were all women! There were no main, male characters I could see in the promo. The show was called Political Animals, and it’s on the USA Network.
Here’s an official promo picture for Political Animals.
I think Marky may need to get new glasses.
But no matter; Marky has seen all he needs to have an opinion.
When I saw the promo for it during the commercial break for my race, I was like wow, why would I even want to watch that crap? They have some old crones starring it, one of whom is Sigourney Weaver. Even when she was younger and more attractive, I couldn’t stand her; she was a bitch back in the day, and she’s a bitch now. Only now that she’s an old crone, she’s even more, er, ‘charming’ than she was back when she starred in Working Girl, circa 1989.
Um, you do realize that in Working Girl she was playing a character? A character that wasn’t supposed to be charming?
Marky begins to reminisce about the good old days, before television was taken over by the Amazonian warriors of the Matriarchy.
Back in the day, USA Network had some unique shows on; they had stuff on that no one else had, which made them worth watching. One of my favorites was Silk Stalkings, which I think originally ran on CBS, but I can’t be sure; other than sporting events, I haven’t watched network TV like CBS in ages. Another favorite show of mine on USA Network was Pacific Blue, which was about bike cops in Santa Monica, California. …
Then, over the years, USA Network changed; they no longer had the unique fare that had set them apart back in the 1990s. …
After seeing the promos for the new shows this fall, I don’t know; I don’t know that I’m missing anything by not having a TV at all. I had a TV, but I gave it to Ma because I never USED the damn thing! The things that I really want to see are available online, such as the racing. If I want to watch QUALITY TV programs, then I can go to Hulu.com; that site has the old, classic TV shows that were, unlike today’s trash, actually worth watching. I watched a couple of seasons of Adam-12 & Emergency! on that site-good, uplifting programming that showed men being men. I think I might be better off getting a bike or scooter with my extra cash. Either that, or I could start taking trips to Central & South America to meet some nice, hot women down there.
Oh, dear.
In closing, TV, from the looks of it, has gone totally matriarchal. They don’t even make a pretense of catering to men anymore-none! Since there’s nothing for me to watch on there, why get a TV, let alone a cable or satellite hookup for the damn thing?! Seriously, why bother watching it? The races are increasingly available online; sites like Hulu & Netflix carry TV shows and movies. To see things that appeal to me, I don’t need a TV. No wonder why TV and the rest of the old media are dying! Until next time…
Watching Adam-12 on your computer while muttering bitterly under your breath about the evil that is Sigourney Weaver – MGTOW activism at its finest!
“huh, there was supposed to be a strikethrough there. HTML fail, sorry.”
<del>
del</del> (idk if that’s what you meant by html fail, but if so, there’s the fix)Signed! Misandry must be stopped!
Wow, your signatories are… *sniff*… so beautiful…
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/on-tv-there-was-a-show-with-a-fat-guy-with-a-hot/signatures
I am impressed* that it got Tommy Wisesu’s signature. I mean that guy is like all famous for having the
worstbest movie made about an MRA’s struggle with them EBIL women.*not really.
I’ve signed it. Now I’ve done my part to change the world for the better.
I’m not going to reprint the entire Book of Learnin’ right now, but here’s a special media pull-out section highlighting the entertainment available on NWO’s planet:
Arts and Entertainment
The Iliad is the story of how Queen Helen of Troy ordered two armies to fight over her. It is based on a true story.
The classical Greek play The Bacchae is a celebration of the roving lesbian gang that murdered the musician Orpheus. It is based on a true story.
The musical Chicago is a polemic about how men should be shot to death. It was written by a female college student in 2010.
All horror movies are about a pretty girl being stalked and assaulted by an evil man. In the end, she kills him and walks away alive.
Prime-time TV shows have the same plot as horror movies, except that the pretty girl is assisted by an all-female investigative team, with a single man in charge. At the end of every episode, the victim sits in a one-way mirrored room, watching the chained-up man with a smug look on her face. Then one of the women from the investigative team squeezes her arm.
Shows on the Disney Channel consist of underage girls in sexy outfits hitting boys while the boys cower before them.
Journalism
Female journalists only write articles about how men are bad.
All TV newscasters are women, and they all look just like Rachel Maddow.
Suicides are never reported in the media unless it’s a gay man, in which case it’s treated as a national tragedy.
Thank you for reminding me of Owly’s take on Chicago. Had a good laugh, would laugh again 8/10.
Wait, I thought classical Greek literature was Jewish propaganda?
Can someone please direct me to the “all Rachel Maddow, all the time” TV station?
@katz:
The one in my brain is pretty Rachel-focused. 😀
Seriously. I’d watch the hell out of a 24 hour Rachel Maddow news station.
It suddenly dawned on me that one possible reason for the OMG MATRIARCHY is that Weaver is so prominently featured in the previews for that show (center space in the banner above)–she’s clearly the matriarch of the political family–and she’s “OLD”–AKA not twenty something–and OMG A WOMAN ON TV WHO IS NOT THERE FOR T&A!!!!! MATRIARCHY.
HA.
It’s wonderful to see a growing number of actors who are NOT twenty-something or trying to look it getting major roles (I’m thinking Glenn Close, Meryl Streep, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Sigourney Weaver) (still very white though, sigh).
Cheers to whoever did the Tommy Wiseau signature on the petition.
Hahaha for real. When your sex can be portrayed as a bumbling idiot, but still be the hero of the show with a hot wife and loving family, what exactly is there to complain about? You know you would never see the reverse, and if you did, there’d be legions of people against the female character.
OMG, Ithiliana, all these tv providers and companies are having obnoxious tiffs which are pissing me off. I have Dish Network and it’s pulled two of my favorite channels which are the specific reason we’re paying for the package we have, ifc and amc. I’M NOT PAYING TO NOT WATCH WALKING DEAD THIS FALL! SCREW YOU DISH NETWORK! I’m so annoyed that all these people are collectively screwing over their customers and fans.
Perhaps now he will know what it’s like to have one’s own sex/gender not properly represented, despite the fact that that they’re half of the world’s population. As a woman who has seen plenty of shows and movies with a male-majority cast with some “token females,” I have no sympathy for his bullshit.
MarkyMark seems to be unaware of the minimal criteria of the Bechdel test and how few movies actually pass it.
Is there a similar test adapted for TV series?
I hear that. My only option at this point is dropping cable completely. All of the providers are screwing over their customers in their pissing matches with the networks. I wish I could just pay the fifteen bucks a month for HBO Go. Dish is already making me miss Breaking Bad. I hear that “experts” say that AMC should be back by October for Walking Dead.
“Adam-12” and “Emergency?” Seriously? I am old enough to remember those shows and they were crappy, poorly thought out procedural type shows before there were crappy, poorly thought out procedural shows. They were entertaining in the way a field trip was to a kindergartener but that is about it.
@ Veronica
Hi!
I think the Bechdel test can be applied to most TV shows as it is, and it is kinda depressing. Even in shows that pass it in overall, with more than one significant female character, there are not so many episodes in which they are depicted talking about something that is not a man.
I have the impression that, in some shows writers are aware of the existence of the test, and are trying to shoehorn conversations between female characters. I followed Breaking Bad, and in the first season there was a very short story arc between the female lead (Skyler), and her sister. It lasted three or four episodes, and, after that, not a single episode has passed the Bechdel test.
I think with the TV version of the Bechdel test you have two layers; layer one is the episode-of-the-day, layer 2 is what you have for permanent cast.
Castle, as I said before, alternately stokes me up and breaks my heart. It does a work of deconstruction on a lot of gender tropes. Female lead, male lead. It’s good stuff.
There’s evem multiple female permanent cast! (Who rarely talk to each other except about men….yeah)
So a show with one female member in the permanent cast automatically gets the ol` stinkeye from me. (the Mentalist. Psych. (ish? female police commish is around occasionally, but is more like an occasional guest star) Even though episodes regularly break past the Bechdel test. (look, she questioned a female suspect–pass!!! Only the female suspect lasted about ten seconds) I’m sure a lot of TV shows just popped into your head)
Make sense?
@Summer
Of course you can apply the Bechdel test to TV shows, but say if you apply it to the whole series over several years they are bound to pass it. Which is why I thought it would be nice with a TV-show adaptation of the test 🙂
The movie version goes like:
1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man
The TV version could be something like:
1. It has to have at least two female main characters, not just girlfriends/wives of male main characters.
2. In meaningful roles. I.e. not just sexualised eye-candy characters in “dresses and heels”.
3. Who interact in most episodes of the series.
I think, all things being equal, that Emergency! and Adam-12 did a pretty good job of being procedural shows. I think both managed to hold up well, in part because they aren’t trying to be out of their times.
So they provide a small sense of slice of life (and Emergency! was a game changer in a lot of ways, because the paramedic/EMT system we take for granted is, in a large part, the result of that show. People in the rest of the country wanted what they saw on television).
It’s a lot harder to watch “Chico and the Man”, or “Welcome Back Kotter” or “Murder She Wrote”, than those. Things like “The Mod Sqaud” or, “Charlies Angels” or “Buck Rodgers” are almost impossible to watch anymore.
>>>I’d watch the hell out of a 24 hour Rachel Maddow news station.
“It is 3 am and this is the 64th straight hour of the Maddow 24/7 show. Tonight we have a one hour story on which brand of coffee and amphetamines we found to be most efficient, tested by yours truly. But first, some advertisement so I can catch a 5 minutes micro-nap.”
Re: applying the Bechdel test to TV — thoughts on shows that have a standard cast of 2?
I’m thinking Doctor Who here, which generally passes, but only if having his female companion talking to a one-episode female character counts — I’m not sure how to apply it to shows with a tiny regular cast, and one-episode characters being the standard. (And having a friend of a friend, a man of color, ask “why is she black?” about Martha…yeah, I think Doctor Who’s ahead of the curve [my answer was about how she ended up his companion, because wtf do you say to that?])