osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2013-09-15 08:19 am
osprey_archer) wrote2013-09-15 08:19 am
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The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries
As I watched the pilot episode of The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries, articles that I’ve read about Sherlock floated through my mind. Specifically, the articles where people argue that the audience would roundly reject a female character as snarky, immune to social convention, and borderline sociopathic as Sherlock.
As it turns out, we have a case study, because lo! Mrs. Bradley is immensely snarky, immune to social convention, and borderline sociopathic to boot. “I don't care for the countryside,” she comments, wandering around the estate of a country house that she’s visiting. “To me, it's a soggy sort of place where animals and birds wander about uncooked.”
That’s the snark. The immunity to social convention kicks off in the first few minutes of the show, when Mrs. Bradley shows up late to her ex-husband’s funeral, tosses cigars on his grave, and comments to her son that his father was very dull and she divorced him in order to avoid being bored to death. “Marriage is one of those things it's best to get over and done with early in life,” she says. “Like chickenpox.”
Mrs. Bradley and her son don’t like each other very much. She thinks he, like his father, is terminally dull. On an American show, this on its own might be enough to prove borderline sociopathy, but - I’ve noticed this on other British shows, though to a lesser extent - here it’s not presented as particularly a problem.
Indeed, if anything, it’s a badge of awesomeness. Her son’s wife comments, “My husband's mother marches to the beat of a different drum.”
The son, grimly: “My mother has an entire orchestra of her own.”
But fear not, I have better proof of borderline sociopathy! Mrs. Bradley goes to a country house, where, naturally - this is the 1920s; what always happens in 1920s country houses? - there’s a murder. Mrs. Bradley enlists her chauffeur’s aid in trying to figure out how the murderer managed to drown the victim in a bathtub.
This involves grabbing him by the ankles and dragging his head underwater, then explaining the method of the crime to the air as he thrashes around, trying (not very successfully) not to drown. Well, but she had to see him thrash to make sure it made the right pattern of splash marks! And she lets him up before he actually drowns.
Okay, the almost-drowning made me twitchy, but otherwise I loved Mrs. Bradley. And if the Netflix reviews are anything to go by, most other viewers agree. It’s as if there were a show about the Dowager Countess of Grantham solving crimes.
So maybe the Sherlock articles were unduly pessimistic, after all. Or maybe there’s just not much overlap between people who watch The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries and the fandom audience the Sherlock articles were written for.
As it turns out, we have a case study, because lo! Mrs. Bradley is immensely snarky, immune to social convention, and borderline sociopathic to boot. “I don't care for the countryside,” she comments, wandering around the estate of a country house that she’s visiting. “To me, it's a soggy sort of place where animals and birds wander about uncooked.”
That’s the snark. The immunity to social convention kicks off in the first few minutes of the show, when Mrs. Bradley shows up late to her ex-husband’s funeral, tosses cigars on his grave, and comments to her son that his father was very dull and she divorced him in order to avoid being bored to death. “Marriage is one of those things it's best to get over and done with early in life,” she says. “Like chickenpox.”
Mrs. Bradley and her son don’t like each other very much. She thinks he, like his father, is terminally dull. On an American show, this on its own might be enough to prove borderline sociopathy, but - I’ve noticed this on other British shows, though to a lesser extent - here it’s not presented as particularly a problem.
Indeed, if anything, it’s a badge of awesomeness. Her son’s wife comments, “My husband's mother marches to the beat of a different drum.”
The son, grimly: “My mother has an entire orchestra of her own.”
But fear not, I have better proof of borderline sociopathy! Mrs. Bradley goes to a country house, where, naturally - this is the 1920s; what always happens in 1920s country houses? - there’s a murder. Mrs. Bradley enlists her chauffeur’s aid in trying to figure out how the murderer managed to drown the victim in a bathtub.
This involves grabbing him by the ankles and dragging his head underwater, then explaining the method of the crime to the air as he thrashes around, trying (not very successfully) not to drown. Well, but she had to see him thrash to make sure it made the right pattern of splash marks! And she lets him up before he actually drowns.
Okay, the almost-drowning made me twitchy, but otherwise I loved Mrs. Bradley. And if the Netflix reviews are anything to go by, most other viewers agree. It’s as if there were a show about the Dowager Countess of Grantham solving crimes.
So maybe the Sherlock articles were unduly pessimistic, after all. Or maybe there’s just not much overlap between people who watch The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries and the fandom audience the Sherlock articles were written for.
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/thumbs directionally confused
Or maybe there’s just not much overlap between people who watch The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries and the fandom audience the Sherlock articles were written for.
One problem with trying to use the audiences of different shows for a comparison is that someone curious can't-- not without being sorely short of ethics, anyway-- force a random slice of the population to watch X and Y show. All the audiences are both self-selected and strongly influenced by how the show is marketed. I'd expect shows that are honest about their unusual characters to have fewer but more positive reviews.
Also, fandom has many mechanisms to introduce us to women-centered shows neglected by more mainstream channels/advertising, and we're very good at categorizing which kinds of canons we're reccing. I... think I could more comfortably say someone in LJ/DW-based fandom has rejected a character type like Mrs. Bradley than I could for a random guy on the street, because random guy is more likely to have never run across a character like her before. Rejection first requires attempted exposure. Woe for all the snarky, socially do-not-give-fucks, borderline sociopathic women unloved because they haven't been met ;___;
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Actually, rereading the post, I think I spent most of it circling around my point without ever actually getting there: I think the Sherlock articles bothered me because they argued, basically, that the fact that many (note, not nearly all) slash fans just do not care for female characters is just a reflection of issues that society as a whole has with female characters.
And society clearly does have some issues with female characters...but
at the same time, society had enough Mrs. Bradley fans, despite her general questionableness as a human being, to pay for 66 books of her. Slash fandom doesn't merely reflect society's issues with women; it magnifies them.
Given how unforgiving fandom can be about problematic issues in shows and books and things, this kind of "Well, there are no female characters like Sherlock because no one would like them anyway!" seems like a weird refusal of responsibility.
I may be remembering the Sherlock articles through the lens of my own crabbiness. I've just seen too many people say that they would write about female characters, except there are no interesting female characters anywhere. Or that they totally want write female characters, but they just can't; because never even trying is clearly the way to learn how to do something.
...aaaaand, that was an essay. Sorry about that.
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There's probably lots and lots and LOTS of different reasons why people write slash. One thing I've thought is that for female heterosexual cis writers, it lets them explore relationships and sex and emotions without there being any implications for themselves--it's like it can be undiluted and more intense maybe? You write slash--what do you think?
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I mean, it's okay to write or not write something just because that's what you want to do. That's really all the justification anyone needs for doing anything that isn't harmful to others. And often trying to justify it beyond that just ends with digging oneself into a hole.
As for myself. There definitely is something appealing about exploring relationships etc. without committing to anything. I mean obviously writing about something in a story isn't any kind of commitment, but it often feels more directly applicable when I'm writing about female characters.
And partly for that reason, often I feel more protective of female characters. It's easier to put a male character through the mill.
(That being said, I think some of my best work - the Cottia stories, or Eponine, or for that matter Ammeri and Erenyay - focuses on girls who have been through the mill.)
On a more mercenary level, there's also the issue of audience. Especially when I started writing fic, when I was 19, I wanted an audience and slash was where the audience was at. Outside of exchanges, I find that slash stories get a ton more hits than anything else.
(To defend the ragged shreds of my artistic integrity, I never wrote stories I didn't like; I just focused on the story ideas that I knew would get hits.
There was an Owen/Gwen fic I wrote and didn't post for years, because I knew there was no audience and at that point it would have crushed my soul to post it to the deafening silence.)
...The odd thing is that in fic exchanges, even exchanges that aren't specifically focused on female characters (Yuletide, for instance), I've found that female-centered stories do very well.
So clearly there is an appetite for these stories, but lots of people don't go looking outside of exchanges, maybe partly because of the perception - which is often born out by reality - that the stories just aren't being written. Because people don't look for them, outside of exchanges. It's a vicious cycle.
...possibly I should write this up in a post.
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I don't think there's ANYTHING WRONG AT ALL with writing what people want to read (provided, as you say, that it's also something you feel okay writing). Having an audience **matters**. I don't know why--well, okay, that's silly; I do know why; let me try again--I think it's silly that people attribute more integrity or what-have-you to writing without regard for audience. Art is performative! Writing without regard for your audience is selfish! Unless, of course, your art (taking art in the larger sense, meaning writing, art, music, etc.) is purely for yourself ... in which case some might still say it's selfish, but I'd say no, we all need private things we do to make us healthy beings.
It's very interesting what you say about exchanges and about how things with female characters do well in exchanges. I think you could well be right: somehow in the public consciousness fic may be more associated with slash and so people don't look for the other stuff when they're reading fic. But in exchanges they're looking for stories they've genuinely always wanted--somehow this doesn't count as fic in the usual sense--and a lot of times these may have to do with female characters.
Anyway, very interesting; thanks!
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(Although Phryne Fisher has both twenties clothes and the milk of human kindness, so it's possible to have everything at once.)