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Post by gliquey on Sept 8, 2015 11:52:13 GMT -5
Goes hand-in-hand with the 'men in dresses are funny!' trope. Oh, god. I won't rant about this in this thread because it's too off-topic, but I absolutely hate that trope and always have. A vaguely related topic is Count Olaf in TMM and his female disguise - correct me if I'm wrong, because there's always the chance I've missed something, but one of the things I love about that book is that no-one mocks Olaf for being dressed as a woman. No-one comments on the fact that there's a man wearing a dress in the entire book, whereas I would expect a lot of other media (even children's television does it) to start making jokes at the expense of the man wearing female clothing. Even when it's not explicitly made fun of, cross-dressing in fiction usually occurs when there's humour involved, and one of the things I love about at TMM is that there is, at least the way I read it, absolutely no suggestion that a man wearing female clothing is wrong or unusual. |
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Post by Liam R. Findlay on Sept 8, 2015 12:59:42 GMT -5
From the beginning, I've never quite agreed with Helquist's or the movie's portrayals of the character, because they do imply that they're androgynous, rather than following no conventions at all. I feel that Handler's intention was to make them seem inhuman in that they don't have any familiar features; they're just a huge, threatening creature with no empathy or humanity. When I drew them for my #VariousFanDrawings project, I drew them as I imagined them in the book- a giant body (save the theatre makeup) i.imgur.com/DwZyLQ3.jpgBut in my project, I avoided mentioning the gender and just called them 'The Overweight Accomplice' because I do think that it's a touchy area. I have gained most of my education on gender identities from interacting with people on the internet and reading about relevant issues- without that, I'd admittedly probably be quite oblivious to inadvertently offending people with an uninformed handling of the subject. Beyond the internet, I don't know any transgender people or anybody who especially subverts expected gender conventions. So I'm guessing Handler was in a similar, uninformed mind frame before 1999, when The Wide Window was published, the internet wasn't much of a thing and gender identities weren't really discussed in the media. I agree with Dante that over time, he probably became aware of the problems with this character, used them as a frighteningly large creature once more (avoiding mentioning gender) and then killed them off to have done with it. I believe that he cares about such topics- he is passionate about having active female characters, suggests support of homosexuality in The Beatrice Letters, doesn't seem to mock men appearing feminine in the series and generally seems to care about equality. Presently in time, when people are much more aware of gender issues, I'm confident that Netflix will handle the matter with much consideration and I'm quite sure that Handler himself is aware of its relevance. It'd be interesting to hear him talk about this in an interview- perhaps it's something for the next Q&A opportunity! |
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Post by penne on Sept 8, 2015 13:57:03 GMT -5
this thread is surreal
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Post by Dante on Sept 8, 2015 14:14:41 GMT -5
I feel like Olaf's Shirley disguise is a lot like his Coach Genghis disguise, in which he wears a turban for ostensibly religious reasons, and not only does nobody question it but the Baudelaires are treated as at fault for doing so - and the same goes for Gunther's accent, actually. It seems to me that Olaf is quietly exploiting our social standards in a way that's actually quite toxic, because if we heard the Baudelaires' accusations in real life then they would be extremely uncomforatble to handle; using sexism and racism as shields for his own wickedness is one of those ways in which Olaf goes the extra mile in nastiness as a villain. I'm not quite sure how far this applies to Shirley, though, as it actually strikes me as highly conservative that nobody is willing to consider the idea that a man might wear women's clothing - but I think this is mainly to facilitate Olaf not even having to bother to disguise his monobrow, which is genuinely very funny. ...Thinking more about the monobrow thing, it suddenly occurs to me that, to the adult characters, Olaf is "the man with the monobrow and a tattoo of an eye on his ankle," in the same way as the troupe members are all broken up into distinguishing features and don't bother hiding their faces half the time. There's a strange absence of facial recognition, although I think that's mostly because it's funnier that way. Can we change this thread and discuss about gender/sexual identity in ASOUE here? I can relate TCC with that. It's your thread, so sure! All you have to do is edit your opening post and change the subject line. |
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Post by Hermes on Sept 8, 2015 14:43:07 GMT -5
Pevalwen: As I mentioned earlier, it's Sunny saying 'Orlando' which I think makes things really problematic. If it weren't for that, we wouldn't have to read 'neither like a man nor a woman ' as 'of ambiguous gender'; we could just read it as 'doubtfully human'. (A tree, for instance, is neither like a man nor a woman.) But Orlando, the Virginia Woolf character, is certainly a person of ambiguous gender, so that seems to show that Handler is seeing it that way.
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zakeno
Catastrophic Captain
"yikes"
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Post by zakeno on Sept 8, 2015 15:20:09 GMT -5
Well Handler wrote the character as 'the person who looks neither like a man nor a woman' so it's hardly the allusion to Orlando that makes them problematic. They're problematic for a whole slew of reasons, which I think we've discussed into the ground. I think I'm not crazy about the 'Shirley' disguise either since even though it feels okay in the context of the book itself, villains disguising themselves as women is another trope I'm not crazy about. That happens a lot too, and tends to put 'man in a dress' in a villainous or humorous light in media, especially children's media (it still happens, too- I hated it in The Boxtrolls as well). Anyway- Can we change this thread and discuss about gender/sexual identity in ASOUE here? I can relate TCC with that. Yes yes let's do that, that sounds like a much better and less exhaustingly repetitive topic. I'm feeling a little exhausted from discussing this character because it really feels clear to me, as a nonbinary transgender person who has trans friends who feel the same, that they are problematic and that might as well be the end of the discussion. Anyway, as Handler as said, he tried to write characters openly enough that anyone could see themselves in them- which I think translates to gender/sexual identity just as easily as race. I like that Sir/Charles were written a bit like a couple, but since it felt so vague I actually never realized that they could be read that way until noticing on forums. So I'm always open to hearing about more that people might think fit outside the cisgender or straight category! |
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Post by Esmé's meme is meh on Sept 18, 2015 15:26:14 GMT -5
Okay I'm back. Sorry it took me so long to comment.
Some weeks ago I was talking with a friend about TCC and something he said and I found really interesting is how the freaks can actually relate to the LGBT community. They think they're weirdos and that they can't lead a normal life and that people's gonna reject them for who they are when they're actually common people. The way Esmé treats them and the encouraging dialogues of Violet kinda reinforce this. I'd like to expand on this but my friend is going to do it way better than me, you just have to wait until he finish the books and register here (he's on TGG already)
Continuing with the cross-dressing thing, Olaf actually pretends to be a woman in TE too, and what's even creepier, a pregnant one (being the Medusoid Mycelium her baby).
Klaus kind of cross-dressed too in THH when he pretends to be a nurse, and what's interesting about it is that he actually fools everyone. The question is, excluding the Baudelaires, no one else noticed Olaf was actually a man when he pretended to be Shirley?
Carmelita Spats also takes part of this gender game, when in TPP she claims "I'm not an adorable little girl! [...] I'm a ballplaying cowboy superhero soldier pirate!". I like this depiction of Carmelita a lot actually.
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Post by gliquey on Sept 18, 2015 16:18:13 GMT -5
Carmelita Spats also takes part of this gender game, when in TPP she claims "I'm not an adorable little girl! [...] I'm a ballplaying cowboy superhero soldier pirate!". I like this depiction of Carmelita a lot actually. I think around that point in TPP (possibly in an earlier novel), Esme calls Carmelita a tomboy, and Snicket describes the term as insulting. It is an insulting and completely unnecessary word and I'm really glad Snicket said that. |
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Post by Dante on Sept 18, 2015 16:35:22 GMT -5
Carmelita Spats also takes part of this gender game, when in TPP she claims "I'm not an adorable little girl! [...] I'm a ballplaying cowboy superhero soldier pirate!". I like this depiction of Carmelita a lot actually. I think around that point in TPP (possibly in an earlier novel), Esme calls Carmelita a tomboy, and Snicket describes the term as insulting. It is an insulting and completely unnecessary word and I'm really glad Snicket said that. Page 84: "...using an insulting term inflicted on girls whose behavior some people find unusual." |
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