So . . . SVU goes on yet another male bashing tirade.
Case in point. The really bland DA chooses to hide something - *she* chooses - and then says it was so she wouldn't *emasculate* - notice, they could just as easily have chosen a neutral term, like humiliate - her wormy husband. So, he's to blame for *her* decision.
Let's turn that around.
If he had been the DA and his wife had done something wrong - and he chooses to do something illegal and further chooses to characterize his decision in a way that is sexist toward his wife, as though she is to blame - we not only would be justifiably outraged at *him*, we'd also say the decision was solely his to own.
This is what viewers mean when they are offended by something that rather than simply tell a story, instead subjects them to an editorial disguised as one. There's nothing wrong with telling a story about a woman wronged by a man, but when the deck is stacked this cheesily, it's clumsy and amateurish.
Drama - even bad melodrama like SVU - doesn't come from stacking the deck so obviously. It comes from conflict, including creating conflict in the audience about what's happening in the story (and not how bad the writing is).
If they're on their feet and clapping at the TV while saying, "You go, girl!" that's not conflict. That's propaganda.
Real conflict is a wife struggling over doing her job and hurting her husband. It doesn't make her husband a two-bit creep so she can pontificate to him while he worms his way around. It doesn't make her spout of trite dialogue written as though for a Cosmopolitan article. And it makes her take ownership of her own decisions and not gaslight them onto someone else.
The end is like science fiction. Remember when characters used to do things within the realm of probability? That's all off the table now, where characters are written like they're in soap opera.
Just bad, bad television.
Case in point. The really bland DA chooses to hide something - *she* chooses - and then says it was so she wouldn't *emasculate* - notice, they could just as easily have chosen a neutral term, like humiliate - her wormy husband. So, he's to blame for *her* decision.
Let's turn that around.
If he had been the DA and his wife had done something wrong - and he chooses to do something illegal and further chooses to characterize his decision in a way that is sexist toward his wife, as though she is to blame - we not only would be justifiably outraged at *him*, we'd also say the decision was solely his to own.
This is what viewers mean when they are offended by something that rather than simply tell a story, instead subjects them to an editorial disguised as one. There's nothing wrong with telling a story about a woman wronged by a man, but when the deck is stacked this cheesily, it's clumsy and amateurish.
Drama - even bad melodrama like SVU - doesn't come from stacking the deck so obviously. It comes from conflict, including creating conflict in the audience about what's happening in the story (and not how bad the writing is).
If they're on their feet and clapping at the TV while saying, "You go, girl!" that's not conflict. That's propaganda.
Real conflict is a wife struggling over doing her job and hurting her husband. It doesn't make her husband a two-bit creep so she can pontificate to him while he worms his way around. It doesn't make her spout of trite dialogue written as though for a Cosmopolitan article. And it makes her take ownership of her own decisions and not gaslight them onto someone else.
The end is like science fiction. Remember when characters used to do things within the realm of probability? That's all off the table now, where characters are written like they're in soap opera.
Just bad, bad television.