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They Just Don't Get It
May. 21st, 2008 09:28 pmPart of my job is keeping up with media/advertising trade publications like Advertising Age and Brandweek. This week's issues were all full of the news from last week's upfronts here in NYC (upfronts are the big events where the networks reveal their Fall schedules, in case you don't know).
One thing that shocked me (other than Dawn Ostroff appearing as a triplicate hologram at the CW's upfront at Lincoln Center) was the repeated reference to the CW as "targeting women." Apparently, women have been the network's focus all along.
Up until now, I've thought that CW shows like Supernatural were adding awful female characters like Bela because they wanted to reel in more male viewers. But it's starting to dawn on me that these lame-ass female characters were added...for us.
It's pretty well-known that boys and men aren't interested in stories about women, or even by women. That's why J.K. Rowling was advised to publish the Potter novels under her initials only -- the fear was that boys wouldn't read a story written by a woman. This is sad, but I think it's also true.
The opposite is true for women. Sure, we're interested in stories by and about women. But we won't write off stories by and about men. On the contrary -- we're more than willing to embrace them.
That's why I said in my "Misogyny" post that "two guys and their car" was a good enough formula for me. I don't need women in this story to feel connected to it. There's room in this world for stories about women. There's also room for stories about men. I mentioned that I've been reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy lately, and his novels take place in an almost exclusively male world. Women are peripheral ciphers in McCarthy's fiction. Maybe I'm a slave to the patriarchy, but this doesn't bother me. I'm there for the story -- I don't need to identify with a sister double-X chromosome in order to be immersed in the story.
I don't think that network executives get this. If it's true, as the trades report, that the CW wants to be the network of young women, then those characters of Ruby and Bela were added because the powers-that-be over at the CW thought the show was too male. It wasn't done to attract male viewers (as I thought) but to attract female ones.
Wow. That's just...wow. All those execs making all that money and it sounds like not one of them does their homework. Wow.
One thing that shocked me (other than Dawn Ostroff appearing as a triplicate hologram at the CW's upfront at Lincoln Center) was the repeated reference to the CW as "targeting women." Apparently, women have been the network's focus all along.
Up until now, I've thought that CW shows like Supernatural were adding awful female characters like Bela because they wanted to reel in more male viewers. But it's starting to dawn on me that these lame-ass female characters were added...for us.
It's pretty well-known that boys and men aren't interested in stories about women, or even by women. That's why J.K. Rowling was advised to publish the Potter novels under her initials only -- the fear was that boys wouldn't read a story written by a woman. This is sad, but I think it's also true.
The opposite is true for women. Sure, we're interested in stories by and about women. But we won't write off stories by and about men. On the contrary -- we're more than willing to embrace them.
That's why I said in my "Misogyny" post that "two guys and their car" was a good enough formula for me. I don't need women in this story to feel connected to it. There's room in this world for stories about women. There's also room for stories about men. I mentioned that I've been reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy lately, and his novels take place in an almost exclusively male world. Women are peripheral ciphers in McCarthy's fiction. Maybe I'm a slave to the patriarchy, but this doesn't bother me. I'm there for the story -- I don't need to identify with a sister double-X chromosome in order to be immersed in the story.
I don't think that network executives get this. If it's true, as the trades report, that the CW wants to be the network of young women, then those characters of Ruby and Bela were added because the powers-that-be over at the CW thought the show was too male. It wasn't done to attract male viewers (as I thought) but to attract female ones.
Wow. That's just...wow. All those execs making all that money and it sounds like not one of them does their homework. Wow.