Note that I am only through 2x23.
I'm not watching in a particularly fannish way (I found all the fic, mind, but that's just what I do) but since this lj/dw has pretty much devolved down to what's at the forefront of my brain during any given moment, who wants to hear what I think about the oh-silly-nerds sitcom?
It has to be said that between the year of identity politics in fandom (I mean that in a merely descriptive way, not negatively) and my general media-feminist upbringing, I really can't not assess shows on an ideological level going in. And to some degree my worries about the premise (lovelorn nerd Nice Guys all over conventionally attractive neighbor girl with whom he has nothing in common) were borne out, but 1) it's not as bad as it could be 2) that stopped being a central focus of the show pretty quick, though I wish someone would tell the laugh track that. The dichotomy between "nerds" and "girls" is pretty absolute; on the girl-nerd side there's Lesley Winkle and - well - no, there's just Lesley Winkle. I'm obsessed with Lesley Winkle, don't get me wrong, and if the show's premise is that the bar for entry to the category of true nerd is a physics professorship, well, I just spent some time googling and it looks like the national average for percent of physics faculty who are women is about 12%. I'm counting up the full-time faculty in physics who have actually talked onscreen, and depending on whether or not I count the head of the department Lesley Winkle is either 16% or 14% of faculty-with-lines, which is pretty generous female representation and also depressing.
The lack of representation of girl geeks in other genres besides professional physics nerdery is of course annoying - I've never been in a comic book store where I was the only woman. As far as nerd mating venues, honestly, Leonard is written as intelligent, articulate, and sympathetic - if anyone can meet women through his WoW guild, it's Leonard. I have some thoughts here about how fandom is gender-segregated that I won't get into. But I'm not sure the writers are aware of the parallel set of pocky-chomping manga fans, for instance, who would be on the other, pinker side of that comic books store, even if none of them would necessarily speak to Leonard & co. The show is just so obsessed with Nerd Taxonomy (not only are they physics nerds, but they're live-action and animation fandom nerds! They're gaming nerds! They're classics nerds! They're linguistics nerds! They basically play XKCD-topic bingo?) that I would love to see some evidence that they know about the various cultures and subcultures of ladynerds, and I see no evidence.
I am sure somewhere out there parts of the show's fandom have devolved into Penny-bashing. It's true that to me, compared to a character who can recite the entire list of characters from Babylon 5 she just doesn't have much personality. It's not her fault; I think the writing was treating her as the audience observer going in, and then possibly it became clear that everyone identified with Leonard or Sheldon instead - I certainly do, honestly. I find people like Sheldon far less mystifying than I find, say, a conventionally hot, perky girl who goes to the gym and throws parties, in her own home, on purpose. Still, the fact that the only recurring female character is flatly mystifying kind of bothers me. We're people, not ciphers. I am happy that the show addressed the fact that she and Leonard might honestly like each other, but they have very little in common besides a sincere effort to bridge the culture gap between them. For a show whose entire premise started as Nice Guy-ism (she only dates jerks! She should date meeeee! Because she's hot and we have nothing at all in common! I guess?) it's actually stayed pretty clear of the infuriating.
Also, did anyone else notice that Doctor Stephanie was actually kind of - and I mean this in a Kate Harding way - a fat girl? Who was hot, and whose body size went completely unmentioned? I mean, I'm sure it was tv fat (or plus-sized model fat) and she weighs one-twenty-eight at most and all of it in an hourglass, but I'm used to the rigorous body policing of, say, How I Met Your Mother, or the devoutly undernourished female aesthetic of Friends. It doesn't entirely make up for Howard's constant references to low-self-esteem fat girls, but I can only police the shows I watch so rigorously before I get tired. So I'll take it.
I don't like Howard, of course - I do not give the smallest of rat's asses about his tiny feelings, I don't care how hard he's trying - and Koothrappali leaves me kind of cold, mainly because he's so clearly a backup character whose entire character development seems to be directly diagrammable to nerdy (scared of women!) or Indian (let's make some jokes about Indian parents now, I guess.) I mean, he's endearing and the actor is super-pretty. Leonard has rapidly bridged over into being the audience-friendly narrator and thus, in that audience-flattering way, acts as the moral center, so that's kind of dull but necessary.
Sheldon is pretty much the nerd love of my heart right now, in a whole I-can-talk-like-him-for-hours-without-noticing sort of way. (Ask![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
phnelt about the mayonnaise conversation, oh wait, no one's actually gotten this far down in my massive tv-watching screed.) It's a little funny how much mileage I am going to get out of the phrase "nonoptional social convention"; it does sum up beautifully the things that are so mystifying about, you know, those pesky other people who are everywhere. And of course since I'm a straight-type ladynerd and most characters that I identify with are male, identification is always confusable with attraction: yes, let's admit it, there's something kind of fascinating about Sheldon's sexuality or lack of such. I am really amazed that the fic that exists about him is so devoutly PG, honestly. This is a good reminder of why it's kind of sensible that I'm dating an emotionally-literate extrovert; among other things, if I wasn't, my fascination with misanthropes would probably get me into extremely uncommunicative trouble.
Yes, this is a massive wall of typing for a fairly silly and lightweight show (look, do you know how excited I am that someone in tv-land has seen Babylon 5? We're one Farscape reference away from true love here) but I am using writing this entry to put off driving across the state in the rain. Which I need to do now. Have a nice Friday, everyone.
I'm not watching in a particularly fannish way (I found all the fic, mind, but that's just what I do) but since this lj/dw has pretty much devolved down to what's at the forefront of my brain during any given moment, who wants to hear what I think about the oh-silly-nerds sitcom?
It has to be said that between the year of identity politics in fandom (I mean that in a merely descriptive way, not negatively) and my general media-feminist upbringing, I really can't not assess shows on an ideological level going in. And to some degree my worries about the premise (lovelorn nerd Nice Guys all over conventionally attractive neighbor girl with whom he has nothing in common) were borne out, but 1) it's not as bad as it could be 2) that stopped being a central focus of the show pretty quick, though I wish someone would tell the laugh track that. The dichotomy between "nerds" and "girls" is pretty absolute; on the girl-nerd side there's Lesley Winkle and - well - no, there's just Lesley Winkle. I'm obsessed with Lesley Winkle, don't get me wrong, and if the show's premise is that the bar for entry to the category of true nerd is a physics professorship, well, I just spent some time googling and it looks like the national average for percent of physics faculty who are women is about 12%. I'm counting up the full-time faculty in physics who have actually talked onscreen, and depending on whether or not I count the head of the department Lesley Winkle is either 16% or 14% of faculty-with-lines, which is pretty generous female representation and also depressing.
The lack of representation of girl geeks in other genres besides professional physics nerdery is of course annoying - I've never been in a comic book store where I was the only woman. As far as nerd mating venues, honestly, Leonard is written as intelligent, articulate, and sympathetic - if anyone can meet women through his WoW guild, it's Leonard. I have some thoughts here about how fandom is gender-segregated that I won't get into. But I'm not sure the writers are aware of the parallel set of pocky-chomping manga fans, for instance, who would be on the other, pinker side of that comic books store, even if none of them would necessarily speak to Leonard & co. The show is just so obsessed with Nerd Taxonomy (not only are they physics nerds, but they're live-action and animation fandom nerds! They're gaming nerds! They're classics nerds! They're linguistics nerds! They basically play XKCD-topic bingo?) that I would love to see some evidence that they know about the various cultures and subcultures of ladynerds, and I see no evidence.
I am sure somewhere out there parts of the show's fandom have devolved into Penny-bashing. It's true that to me, compared to a character who can recite the entire list of characters from Babylon 5 she just doesn't have much personality. It's not her fault; I think the writing was treating her as the audience observer going in, and then possibly it became clear that everyone identified with Leonard or Sheldon instead - I certainly do, honestly. I find people like Sheldon far less mystifying than I find, say, a conventionally hot, perky girl who goes to the gym and throws parties, in her own home, on purpose. Still, the fact that the only recurring female character is flatly mystifying kind of bothers me. We're people, not ciphers. I am happy that the show addressed the fact that she and Leonard might honestly like each other, but they have very little in common besides a sincere effort to bridge the culture gap between them. For a show whose entire premise started as Nice Guy-ism (she only dates jerks! She should date meeeee! Because she's hot and we have nothing at all in common! I guess?) it's actually stayed pretty clear of the infuriating.
Also, did anyone else notice that Doctor Stephanie was actually kind of - and I mean this in a Kate Harding way - a fat girl? Who was hot, and whose body size went completely unmentioned? I mean, I'm sure it was tv fat (or plus-sized model fat) and she weighs one-twenty-eight at most and all of it in an hourglass, but I'm used to the rigorous body policing of, say, How I Met Your Mother, or the devoutly undernourished female aesthetic of Friends. It doesn't entirely make up for Howard's constant references to low-self-esteem fat girls, but I can only police the shows I watch so rigorously before I get tired. So I'll take it.
I don't like Howard, of course - I do not give the smallest of rat's asses about his tiny feelings, I don't care how hard he's trying - and Koothrappali leaves me kind of cold, mainly because he's so clearly a backup character whose entire character development seems to be directly diagrammable to nerdy (scared of women!) or Indian (let's make some jokes about Indian parents now, I guess.) I mean, he's endearing and the actor is super-pretty. Leonard has rapidly bridged over into being the audience-friendly narrator and thus, in that audience-flattering way, acts as the moral center, so that's kind of dull but necessary.
Sheldon is pretty much the nerd love of my heart right now, in a whole I-can-talk-like-him-for-hours-without-noticing sort of way. (Ask
phnelt about the mayonnaise conversation, oh wait, no one's actually gotten this far down in my massive tv-watching screed.) It's a little funny how much mileage I am going to get out of the phrase "nonoptional social convention"; it does sum up beautifully the things that are so mystifying about, you know, those pesky other people who are everywhere. And of course since I'm a straight-type ladynerd and most characters that I identify with are male, identification is always confusable with attraction: yes, let's admit it, there's something kind of fascinating about Sheldon's sexuality or lack of such. I am really amazed that the fic that exists about him is so devoutly PG, honestly. This is a good reminder of why it's kind of sensible that I'm dating an emotionally-literate extrovert; among other things, if I wasn't, my fascination with misanthropes would probably get me into extremely uncommunicative trouble.Yes, this is a massive wall of typing for a fairly silly and lightweight show (look, do you know how excited I am that someone in tv-land has seen Babylon 5? We're one Farscape reference away from true love here) but I am using writing this entry to put off driving across the state in the rain. Which I need to do now. Have a nice Friday, everyone.
no subject
Actually, what I don't get is the way no one knows how to talk to him. He's not that confusing right? He just needs clear communication.