The second entry in my Lady T Recommends series is a film project based in Austin Texas called The Quiet Girl’s Guide to Violence. Are you already intrigued by the title? You should be, because this project looks really neat.

From the description on the Kickstarter site:

“The film follows Holly, a girl you would probably never notice, but she would notice you.  Holly looks like she was home schooled until she was thirty and we quickly learn that she’s seriously damaged goods.  She’s not okay, but she sort of almost starts to become okay after she encounters the man that was her childhood bully and deals with him in a fashion that her therapist (if she had a therapist) would definitely not approve of.  After that episode, she becomes more empowered in her regular life and her dealings with other seeming bullies she finds there.  But it’s a slippery slope, revenge, and when you choose violence as a means to end, well it usually doesn’t end well.  NO SPOILERS here, that’s just life.

Maybe.”

Why I’m recommending this project: The story of a quiet girl with a history of being bullied, who then learns how to stand up to her bullies, appeals to me for several different reasons. I love stories about women who learn how to embrace power, but I also love stories about people who struggle with power, who have to learn how to wield power without becoming corrupted or obsessed. The Holly character looks like she’ll struggle with these very issues in this short film.

As I said, those themes really appeal to me, but do you want to know what made me decide that I have to see this film?

“The film is set around Christmastime.”

A movie about a girl standing up to bullies is already going to interest me, but a Christmas movie about a girl standing up to bullies? I’m sold. The darkly comic tone that lies underneath this story about power makes me sold, sealed, and delivered.

The Quiet Girl’s Guide to Violence needs $7000 to be completely funded, and it currently has $5,993 pledged. There are 25 days left for the fundraising. Do you want to be one of the people who contributes to the funding of this project? Of course you do! You might receive an angry Rudolph button to put on your backpack! If you’re able, consider chipping in. The fundraiser page is here: The Quiet Girl’s Guide to Violence.

I read that, in the season finale, Barney proposed to his girlfriend Quinn (Becki Newton), but a flashforward revealed a completely predictable outcome TOTAL SHOCKER that he would eventually marry Robin instead. Also, Ted ran off with Victoria, the non-Mother love interest he had sparked with the most, as she fled her wedding. (Also, Marshall and Lily had a baby whose middle name was Waitforit, crossing the line between “funny in-joke” and “OMG so embarrassing stop it right the hell now.”)

Now, How I Met Your Mother is a television show, not a movie, but I’m talking about it as part of the Rom-Com Project because it’s using one of my least favorite romantic comedy tropes, where cheating and breaking hearts is glorified as tragically romantic on the path to true love.

Look at Robin and Barney’s relationship this season. Robin was just about to profess her True Love Feelings to Barney RIGHT when he got a fateful phone call from Nora. Then Robin tried to get over Barney while dating her therapist Kevin (gross). Then Barney and Robin slept together, and Barney broke up with Nora, but in a twist that everyone NO ONE saw coming, Robin decided to stay with Kevin because the plot required her to she wasn’t ready to be with the man she truly loved. Eventually Barney got over his heartbreak with Robin and started dating Quinn to the point where he was ready to marry her…except next season, he will eventually break up with her and marry Robin. That leaves us with one failed Robin relationship and two hearts Barney broke in the Barney/Robin relationship roadkill.

And what of Ted? Ted, who broke up with Victoria in season one after he cheated on her with Robin, and will most certainly break up with Victoria again sometime in season eight, because we all know that she’s not the Mother. In the second go-around of the Ted/Victoria relationship, Victoria is a willing participant in her own eventual heartbreak, but she still broke the heart of the guy she left at the altar in order to be with Ted.

Maybe I shouldn’t criticize the show too harshly. After all, people often have many different romantic relationships before meeting The One. But there’s a difference between beginning and ending a relationship in good faith, and dragging out a relationship that clearly isn’t working for the purpose of killing time. How I Met Your Mother has traveled down this path twice with Ted, once with Robin, and twice with Barney – and yet, we’re still supposed to root for these people to be happy.

At least in the case of Ted, we know both times that his ill-advised relationship choices are doomed from the start. When Ted cheated on Victoria and still ended up with Robin four episodes later, there was still a bittersweet aspect to their getting together because we knew that it wouldn’t last. The case is the same for Victoria now that he’s dating her for the second time. But Robin and Barney have strung other people along, and will probably continue to string people along, until they’re finally ready to be together, and the writers expect the audience to continue to cheer them on. “Who cares if they have to trample on other hearts to get there because Barney and Robin belong together!”

Also, is it normal to have four people in a group of five friends experience a broken engagement at one point or another? Ted was left at the altar, Barney and Quinn are going to break up, and Marshall and Lily broke up. (Yes, they got back together, but it was still emotionally trying for both characters, so I’m counting it as part of the broken hearts club.) Next season, is Robin going to enter an engagement only to call it off, just so she’ll fit in with her highly dysfunctional friends?

Whatever happens, I’m not sure I’ll be watching. This show has had so many false starts and disappointing endings, with so many temporary love interests for the main characters. I have no problem with temporary love interests as long as they’re entertaining, but few of them, with the exceptions of Victoria and Stella (at least early on) were worth watching. Wake me when The Mother shows up.

This comment came from a user who identified hirself asnorquia:

“You forgot point 3: you’re not funny. So much for dispelling the ‘humorless feminist’ stereotype. Feminism has evidently run its course; just look at the myopic nonsense that was the ‘SlutWalk’. When you’re left playing word games and struggling over semantics you know the movement has run out of steam (as though addressing the problems encountered by one sex wasd synonymous with the broader cause of cause of ‘sexual equality’).

Moreover, stop preaching about ‘diversity’ – how can you extol its virtues when you have barely any experience of it? Frankly, Sex and the City is quite realistic on that point; we keep to our own. Of course, you’re not going to publish this because you can’t deal with criticism. Stalinist.”

norquia is incorrect about the assumption that I play too many word games (I prefer Angry Birds), but everything else is clearly spot-on. In fact, the comment gave me the inspiration I needed for a brand-new blog name.

From now on, I, Lady T, am The Satirical Stalinist. I will write about comedy, media, and literature until 2017 as part of my Five-Year Plan. Any comments posted that challenge me or my revolution will be subject to a Great Purge of all comments.

The rest of you had better watch yourselves, is all I’m saying.

EPISODE: “Surprise”
INCIDENT: Statutory rape
PERPETRATOR: Angel
VICTIM: Buffy

The specifics: Buffy and Angel escaped from the Judge, Drusilla, and Spike. They fled to Angel’s apartment and he looked at her wound. Angel finally told Buffy that he loved her, she told him she loved him back, and they began kissing. He suggested that they stop, she told him to keep kissing her. They fell into bed and had sex. For Buffy, it was her first time.

The mind of the perpetrator: Angel was in love with Buffy. He felt hesitant about sleeping with her, perhaps because she was underage, perhaps because he knew it would be her first time, perhaps because he knew their relationship was a bad idea to begin with, but in the end, he protested very little before having sex with her.

The victim’s perspective: Buffy was in love with Angel, and on the night of her birthday, Angel was almost taken away from her twice. First, Jenny Calendar intervened and arranged for Angel to help disperse the body parts of the Judge across the world. Second, the Judge almost killed her and Angel. Earlier in the day, Buffy talked with Willow about the possibility of sleeping with Angel, saying she was ready to have sex with him. By the end of the day, she did, and she was the one who initiated sex.

What does this episode say about misogyny and rape culture?

Legally, Buffy and Angel’s first time having sex would definitely be counted as statutory rape. They slept together on her seventeenth birthday and he was two hundred years old.

On the other hand, sex between Buffy and Angel would technically count as necrophilia, since Buffy is having sex with someone who is dead.

Even though Buffy and Angel sleeping together is wrong from a legal perspective, I have a hard time categorizing this incident as rape. Defining it as rape would rob Buffy of her agency in making that choice to sleep with Angel. She knew exactly what she was doing in the heat of the moment. She wasn’t under the influence of anything, she wasn’t hesitating for a second, and she wanted it to happen. She wasn’t thinking about the long-term implications or potential consequences about having sex with Angel, but if every act of spontaneous sex was considered rape, well…I don’t know how to finish that sentence.

Hence, I don’t consider this a violation of consent, despite acknowledging that this would legally be considered statutory rape.

At the same time, Buffy is barely seventeen and Angel is two hundred and forty. Angel having sex with Buffy at her age and her level of experience is…well, it’s a little gross. Don’t mistake me; I get caught up in the sweeping romance of the moment, I feel moved when they profess their love for each other, and Angel is probably more emotionally honest with Buffy here than he is during most of their relationship: “I love you. I try not to, but I can’t stop.” I also give Angel a bit of a pass because they slept together right after they almost died, and were still in danger from the vampires and demon that tried to kill them. (“Exception for impeding death situation,” as Xander would say.)

But it disturbs me how Angel is initially attracted to Buffy because of her seeming innocence, much like he was initially attracted to Drusilla for hers. Even if one version of Angel has a soul and the other doesn’t, “innocent and young” seems to be his type. And that makes me view Angel as a creeping creeper who creeps. It’s no wonder my favorite Angel relationship is his long-term affair with Darla (whom I’m convinced Angel loved far more than he ever loved stupid Buffy, anyway).

I also went by the moniker Lady T instead of using my real name because Lady T is a childhood nickname given to me by my awesome and hilarious aunts, and what better way to honor a history of funny, fabulous women than to use the nickname as my blog name?

Still, I’ve always had a problem with using The Funny Feminist as a blog name. First of all, it doesn’t describe my entire purpose. The blog focus has expanded since I started writing it in November 2010. Comedy is still the primary focus, but I write a lot about genre shows and drama as well.

Secondly, I still feel wrong about calling myself The Funny Feminist, as though I’m the only feminist blogger out there who’s funny. At first, I thought the blog title was subversive, challenging the stereotype of feminists having no sense of humor. And I still think there’s a subversive aspect to that title. But I still hate the The. I hate the implication, even the unintentional one, that I’m the only feminist blogger with a good sense of humor.

That’s why I’m thinking about a new name for the blog. Right now I’m thinking about something like Lady T’s Ladybusiness, putting my blogger name in the title and showing that I’m writing about feminist issues. That title doesn’t emphasize the comedy or media aspect of my blogging, though. So I’m willing to think it over and take suggestions about how to update this blog name. Anyone have any thoughts?

But I’m not the only one who has big dreams about making a dent in the artistic world and offering my perspective to others. Sometimes people need a little more help to have their voices heard. That’s why I’ve decided to add a weekly feature to the blog called Lady T Recommends, in which I promote a project that needs funding.

The first entry in Lady T Recommends is Haberdasher Theater’s upcoming production of The Wizard of Oz. Here is the link to the Kickstarter page: Help Haberdasher Theatre Present The Wizard of Oz. This production is a modernized take on L. Frank Baum’s classic story that brings an older Dorothy to Noho as she navigates the unforgiving world of New York City:

“Directed by Hollie Elizabeth Klem, this posh metropolitan spin on the cult-classic lands the Kansas born-and-bred Dorothy (Tami Soligan)—a girl with a heart of gold, an artistic spirit too big for her Midwestern ranch, and not much patience for rules—right smack in the middle of Noho, a place that’s surely “no place like home!”

On her cosmopolitan journey, Dorothy navigates much more than the city-that-never-sleeps on her quest to find the Wizard (Matthew Giroveanu), the guy who must know the secret to “making it” here—or anywhere! From Eastside to West, she encounters mother monster witches with shotguns and wood allergies (Christen Madrazo, Taylor Zito, and Jennifer Michaels); an OCD-ridden lioness in need of some serious Prozac (Nicole J. Lippey); an emotionally damaged tin man who still can’t commit (Brian Ogston); and the starving artist, hippy-dippy, scarecrow type your mom prays you never bring back to the ranch (Jeff Foley).”

Why I’m recommending this project: The Wizard of Oz is my favorite movie and I love watching modernized updates on timeless classics. This sounds like an amusing, clever take on the story that can capture the dark side of the land of Oz without ignoring the whimsy, magic, and humor of Baum’s world. New York can also use another take on The Wizard of Oz other than Wicked, and I don’t mean that as a disparaging comment on the popular musical, but that show is super expensive, and Oz fans who don’t want to sell a kidney to get a dose of Dorothy should be able to see this production instead. Finally, I have seen some of Haberdasher Theatre’s previous shows, and I find them to be an innovative, risk-taking company that tries new things and presents new ideas.

Haberdasher Theatre currently has $375 pledged, and they need $2000 by Friday, June 8th. If you are willing and able to spare a little cash, I highly recommend donating to this production. If it goes up, I’ll see it and review it to let you all know how it goes.

In most television shows I’ve watched, I haven’t cared very much for love triangles. They’re often dragged out far too long and far past the point of viewer interest (Jack/Kate/Sawyer on LOST), or they involve resurrecting a years-old relationship when the characters have clearly moved on to new people (Angel/Buffy/Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer), or they’re thrown in to stall time (Ted/Robin/Barney on How I Met Your Mother, Quinn/Finn/Rachel AND Finn/Rachel/Jesse on Glee), or one person is so clearly a better choice than the other that the viewer starts to lose respect for the character caught in the middle (Pacey/Joey/Dawson on Dawson’s Creek).

But there’s nothing I don’t love about the triangle on The Vampire Diaries. I love that Elena has unique, different, constantly evolving relationships with Stefan and Damon. I love that, after three years, her inability to choose between the two brothers feels realistic and true to character, not simply a stalling tactic. I love that Stefan and Damon love her both in spite of and because of the fact that she looks exactly like Katherine. I love that Nina Dobrev, Paul Wesley, and Ian Somerhalder manage to create completely different kinds of chemistry whether they’re playing Stefan and Elena, Stefan and Katherine, Damon and Katherine, Damon and Elena, Flashback!Stefan and Damon, and Present!Stefan and Damon. I love that Stefan and Damon take turns playing the roles of the good brother and bad brother, further complicating Elena’s feelings and their relationship with each other. I love that the relationship between Stefan and Damon is as important, if not more important, than their feelings for Elena, and that they know deep down that they would be completely lost without each other, but are too messed up and stubborn to admit it. I love that this fan-made music video exists:

I love so many things about this complicated, messed-up triangle on The Vampire Diaries, and the articles about tonight’s season finale all indicated that Elena would finally choose between the Salvatore brothers – not once and for all, but for now. Even as a Stefan/Elena fan, I was preparing myself for her to (temporarily) choose Damon. I thought that Elena, missing stability and normalcy and aching for a time where her life was simpler, would choose the brother who had become her support system for the past season, whom she could rely on when Stefan was unpredictable and struggling with addiction.

Instead, Elena chose Stefan.

I should be satisfied with this result. Even though I can’t get enough of this never-ending triangle, I’ve always preferred Elena/Stefan to Elena/Damon, for obvious reasons; if I’m going to choose between a brother who says, “I’ll step back and encourage Elena to make her own decisions, regardless of whether or not I agree with her” and a brother who says, “I MUST PROTECT ELENA AT ALL COSTS especially because her ideas are sometimes stupid!,” I’m going with the brother who supports Elena’s choices. And yet, the end of this episode left me feeling unsettled and wary about the future of the Stefan/Elena/Damon triangle.

That unsettling feeling is largely due to the retcon of Damon having met Elena before Stefan did.

According to the season finale, Damon met Elena on that fateful night that killed her parents and almost killed her. He initially mistook her for Katherine, had a conversation with her, informed her that she was looking for a “love that would consume her,” and then compelled her to forget said conversation. A few hours later, Elena’s parents died and Stefan rescued Elena.

Earlier in the episode, Elena told Matt that she feels like Damon “consumes her” whenever she’s with him. When she talked to Damon on the phone, she told him that she was choosing Stefan, and that “maybe if I had met you first, things would be different.”

Then Elena was in a second car crash and suffered a hemorrhage because she insisted that Stefan rescue Matt before rescuing her. Meredith gave her vampire blood to save her life, and now Elena is awake, and will spend the first episode of season four in transition before becoming a vampire.

Elena becoming a vampire has very many implications for her character and for The Vampire Diaries as a whole, but for the purpose of this post, I want to focus on just one implication: the fact that she will now remember meeting Damon before she met Stefan.

And I don’t know how I feel about that.

First of all, I’m not sure how to interpret the writers’ intentions. I don’t know if we’re supposed to look at this retroactive continuity as foreshadowing or tragedy. Is this revelation about the first meeting of Damon and Elena meant to be a sign of a future true love relationship between the two? Or is it meant to be a sign of the ongoing tragedy that is the life of Damon Salvatore, where every woman he loves will always prefer his brother? Or will the result fall somewhere in between those two ideas?

Secondly, and more importantly, I have serious issues with the idea that Elena finds herself “consumed” by Damon. I have problems with the idea of “consuming” love in general – that overwhelming passion beyond the point of reason is a romantic ideal, or that becoming completely absorbed in another person is a sign of true love.

I have problems with that idea because I think it’s unhealthy; the last thing we should strive for is a Bella/Edward situation where they’re obsessed with each other to the point of neglecting themselves as individuals. But I also have problems with the “consuming love” idea because “consuming love” isn’t what I witnessed between Elena and Damon this past season.

What I saw transpire between Elena and Damon wasn’t a consuming passionate love – if anything, they both were consumed with thoughts of bringing Stefan back to the side of good. No, what I saw between Elena and Damon was a foundation of friendship and support. Elena, having lost five parental figures and the first man she truly loved, sought comfort in her first love’s brother, who proved to be reliable and supportive when she badly needed him. She didn’t fall for Damon because he was the bad boy who tempted her with consuming love. She fell for him because he was her friend.

Through Rose’s monologue in “Heart of Darkness” and Elena’s conversation with Matt in “The Departed,” I’m meant to believe that Stefan’s love is pure and Damon’s love is challenging, that Elena loves Stefan because he made her believe in life, and she has feelings for Damon because she feels “consumed” by him. But the story I watched for the past three years was much more complicated. In the story I watched, Stefan and Damon were assigned the “pure love” and “challenging love” roles in the very beginning, but constantly traded roles whenever Damon showed his good side and Stefan revealed more of his unsavory past. The more we learned about Damon and Stefan, the more the lines blurred between the “good brother” and “bad brother.”

I’m not sure what the writers intend for the love triangle in season four, but I hope they continue to explore the complications in the Stefan/Elena/Damon story instead of placing the brothers in the “pure love” and “consuming love” boxes. Limiting Stefan and Damon to their original roles would un-complicate this twisted, beautiful triangle, and do a disservice to both men and to Elena.

Of course, if this show were not on the WB and aiming for a teen audience, Elena wouldn’t have to choose between the Salvatores at all, and she’d be able to commit to both brothers in a polyamorous relationship. But because this is the WB, I suspect that Elena will have to choose. I can only hope that the choice will eventually involve Katherine coming back to make everything more complicated, because the biggest flaw in season three was too little Katherine Pierce.

Maybe the writers have a point with this “love that consumes you” theory, because I certainly feel consumed by my love for The Vampire Diaries.

That said, I have a bone to pick with him that I meant to pick awhile ago. Watching Firefly for the first time in years reminded me of one of my least favorite qualities of Whedon’s writing: the use of the girl geek archetype.

Like many writers, Whedon uses and re-uses some of the same stock character archetypes in many of his projects. There’s always a dorky funny average guy (Xander on Buffy, Doyle in the first season of Angel, Wash on Firefly), a creepier version of the dorky funny average guy (Andrew on Buffy, Topher on Dollhouse), and the snarky truth-telling character who makes fun of everyone else (Cordelia/Anya/Spike on Buffy, Jayne on Firefly). One of my least favorite archetypes Whedon likes to reuse is the Girl Geek. The Girl Geek can be seen in the forms of Willow Rosenberg on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fred Burkle on Angel, and Kaylee Frye on Firefly.

Whedon’s version of the Girl Geek has several distinguishing characteristics. The Girl Geek is usually a genius who shows particular aptitude in one specific area, usually without having any formal training. Willow shows excellent computer hacking skills as early as “The Harvest,” even though no one knows where she learned these skills, and she shows similar aptitude for witchcraft, quickly shooting past Tara’s level of power even though Tara has been practicing for much longer. Fred, meanwhile, is a genius physicist; unlike Willow, she is shown to have studied physics for several years at the university level before reaching her “genius” state. However, later on Angel, her physics concentration became less important as she turned into the go-to science smartypants – “We have a problem that might possibly be somewhat related to science? Let’s ask Fred!” Finally, Kaylee is a genius mechanic who also doesn’t have any formal training; machines just “speak to her.”

Another defining characteristic of the Whedon Girl Geek is a quality of wide-eyed girly innocence. Willow is the shy, quiet member of the Scooby Gang who, despite being academically gifted and occasionally coming up with brilliant plans to save the day, doesn’t understand a lot of grown-up ideas – she’s sixteen before she understands what The Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself” is really about. The same cannot quite be said for Fred and Kaylee, as the audience is first introduced to them as adult women than as teenage girls, and both are more sexually mature than Willow was in the first half of Buffy, but they both have that quality of assuming innocence and good intentions from everyone they meet. (Kaylee also has an appreciation for frilly dresses that make her look like a cupcake.)

The final defining characteristic of the Whedon Girl Geek is the “sweetheart” nature of the character. The Girl Geek is usually the most beloved one of the group. Willow’s three love interests (Oz, Tara, and Kennedy) almost worshiped her, they were so in awe of her, and Giles referred to her as “truly the best of all of us” when they thought she was dead. Fred was initially viewed to be off-putting until she became the adored one of the group and both Wesley and Gunn fell in love with her. Kaylee never had the worshipful devotion of a love interest (as her crush Simon always seemed more interested in his own sister than he was in her), but she was still the darling of the Serenity crew – even Jayne had a soft spot for her.

And clearly, Joss Whedon has a soft spot for the Girl Geek archetype. I lost count of the number of times he gushed over Willow and Kaylee in the commentaries for Buffy and Firefly, and Amy Acker has joined the special club of Actors Whedon Likes to Cast A Lot. (This club also includes Nathan Fillion, Fran Kranz, Carlos Jacott, and Felicia Day, among others.) Unlike Whedon, though, I don’t care too much for this archetype. As much as I love seeing intelligent, academically gifted girls represented on television, but the combination of the three traits in Whedon’s Girl Geek – the naturally brilliant mind, the girlish innocence, the beloved status in the group – really gets under my skin.

First, the “naturally gifted” characteristic irks me because there’s a hint of the Exceptional Woman trope in there. The Whedon Girl Geek is either intuitively brilliant and needs no training, or she’s a genius. It’s not enough for her to simply be smart. She has to be The Smartest.

Second, the “girlish innocent” characteristic stinks of male fantasy to me in some ways, like Willow and Fred and Kaylee exist for the guys who are interested in smart women – as long as those smart women balance that intelligence with a dose of cutesy behavior. Smart women with assertive personalities are too threatening.

Third, the “universally beloved” characteristic annoys me because I want to see more women respected, not adored. Plus, this “universally beloved” trait is used to develop the storyline of a male character – Kaylee was less important as her own character than as a figure of cheery goodness on the ship, and Fred was shoved into the fridge to further develop Wesley and provide pain to all the other male characters on the show. (This was especially egregious after the fridging of Lilah and Cordelia earlier in the show’s run.)

Of the three Girl Geeks, Willow is by far the best character (even if she annoys the crap out of me, and even though I think Amy Acker is the best actress of the three Girl Geek performers). I appreciate Willow more than Fred or Kaylee because she has the most development in service for her own storyline, as opposed to a largely symbolic development or development in service to a male character. I also think Willow is aware of her beloved status and willing to exploit it to get what she wants, or rely on her perception of herself as “very seldom naughty” to excuse her bad behavior. There’s a strong current of passive-aggressive tendencies underlying her innocent exterior and a fair amount of resentment and rage, culminating in a character who I often find infuriating, but rarely boring and never one-dimensional. Fred and Kaylee, on the other hand, come across to me as a collection of ideal traits that a male writer really wants to see in a woman, and not so much as fully-formed characters in their own right.

Again, I love Joss Whedon’s work and I admire his writing and feminist sensibilities, but having watched Buffy and Firefly and Angel several times, I’m not in love with his Girl Geek characters, and I’m glad he’s not relying on that archetype as much in his later works.

I loved The Cabin in the Woods and there are so many things I want to say about this movie, but for now I’m going to write about the interesting commentary on gender roles that was in the story.

WARNING: If you have any intention of seeing The Cabin in the Woods, do not read the rest of this post. Spoilers ahead like you wouldn’t even believe.
The Cabin in the Woods is more of commentary on horror films than a horror film in of itself, and the commentary comes to a head with the final scene, as the two survivors of the zombie attack confront the Director (played by Sigourney Weaver). She reveals that the five college students were selected to be killed as part of a ritual sacrifice to a group of ancient gods. Each student was meant to represent a different archetype: the Whore (Jules, played by Anna Hutchison), the Fool (Marty, played by Fran Kranz), the Athlete (Curt, played by Chris Hemsworth), the Scholar (Holden, played by Jesse Williams), and the Virgin (Dana, played by Kristen Connolly).

Fans and critics have argued over the significance of the ancient gods and what they’re supposed to represent. I think the ancient gods are a metaphor for humanity’s deepest, darkest desires – the ugly side of human beings. This is why the final two survivors sit back and let the world end, instead of Dana killing Marty or Marty killing himself. As they say, if sacrificing people is the key to humanity’s survival, then maybe humanity doesn’t deserve to be saved. (I also think Joss really, really wanted to write at least one story where the world actually ends – there are only so many times that Buffy, Angel, Mal, or Echo can prevent the apocalypse before the writer gets bored.)

With that interpretation in mind, I started thinking about the five college students in The Cabin in the Woods and how their roles are defined by gender. The two women, Jules and Dana, are defined as The Whore and The Virgin – two opposite ends of the spectrum whose deaths are meant to serve as bookends for the others. The order of deaths is irrelevant except in the case of the women. Jules, as the corrupted Whore, has to die first, and Dana, the Virgin, has to die last, if she dies at all. As Hadley (Bradley Whitford) says, “The virgin death is optional as long as it’s last.” The female characters are defined only by their sexuality – nothing else about them really matters.

Still, the men don’t fare much better. Their prescribed roles are not based on how much sex they have and don’t have, but shoving them into the roles of The Athlete, The Scholar, and The Fool doesn’t give them much room to breathe, either. If you’re a woman, you can be the virgin or the whore. If you’re a man, you can be athletic or smart or funny. Complexity is not allowed.

What I find particularly interesting, though, is how the “puppeteers” (as Marty calls them) recognize that the five people they’ve selected for the sacrificed don’t easily fit into the prescribed archetypes.

Of the five, Holden is the closest to resembling his actual archetype. He’s able to calculate the distance in the gorge that Curt tries to jump on the motorcycle, and, well, he’s fairly quiet and wears glasses. He’s also ridiculously good-looking, which isn’t typical for the Scholar archetype, but other than that, he fits the role pretty well.

The same cannot be said for Curt and Jules. As Marty points out, “He’s a sociology major! When did he start pulling this alpha male bullshit?” The little we saw of Curt before the puppeteers started altering his personality was of a pretty intelligent young man who was nice to his friends. Similarly, Jules, a pre-med student, is a seemingly good friend who makes jokes with her boyfriend about anti-drug PSAs. But that won’t do – the puppeteers have to inject drugs into the air to make Curt more aggressive and alpha male, and they put cognition-lowering drugs in Jules’ hair dye to turn her into a dumb, overtly sexual blonde.

(On a side note, one of my favorite things about this movie is the moment where Jules comes onto Marty, calling him her old sweetheart, where he clarifies that they only made out one time. I completely expected a scene where Marty revealed his resentment towards the dumb whore who broke his heart and left him for the hot jock. Instead, Marty worried that this behavior was out of character for his good friends and seemed concerned for them. I really appreciated that Marty primarily saw Jules and Curt as his friends, and that once kissing Jules was such a non-issue for him.)

Then there’s Dana, the so-called virgin – even though she slept with one of her professors, a fact that is mentioned in her first scene of the film. Dana’s behavior would probably be considered more “whorish” than Jules’s, as Dana is sleeping with a teacher and Jules is having sex within a monogamous relationship. But that doesn’t matter. Dana is still the virgin and Jules still the whore, because Dana is more quiet and subdued than Jules is, and American society thinks of virgins as quiet and subdued and sweet, and whores as brash and loud and more outgoing.

Finally, we have Marty, the Fool who is the first to understand that he and his friends are the victims of a conspiracy. In addition to being the most entertaining character of the five college students – because Fran Kranz is fantastic, even if he is playing a less creepy, more stoned version of Topher Brink in Dollhouse – he’s also the least subversive. Anyone exposed to a small amount of classical literature won’t be surprised to see the Fool as the smartest character of the group, which makes me feel like the puppeteers in The Cabin in the Woods all failed their English classes in high school. Still, he’s the one who throws the wrench in the plans to save the world by sacrificing a group of humans.

None of this analysis is new, but I brought it up because I want to return to my original point of the ancient gods representing our deepest, darkest desires. The ancient gods represent the ugliest traits of humanity – not only the lust for blood, but the need to categorize people into certain roles and to keep them there. We need to see men defined by one character trait and women defined by their sexual choices, and if these particular men and women don’t fit into the roles as we’ve prescribed them, we’ll make them fit. We’ll alter their personalities so they can easily fit into the Whore, the Scholar, the Athlete, the Fool, and the Virgin. And as we can see from the other countries’ failed attempt to appease the gods – including the Japanese tradition of unleashing one monster on a group of elementary school girls – this need to categorize into the Whore/Scholar/Athlete/Fool/Virgin is a uniquely American desire. The desires created by nature and nurture clash together in an ugly mix where we want to see these people killed one by one in a prescribed order.

Yeah, I really loved this movie.

I’ll write a more in-depth perspective about Veep closer to the end of the season, but for now, I want to offer a list of possible reasons why Girls is getting criticized for racism while Veep is not, and also whyVeep has not received the same negative backlash in general. (“Possible” is the key word in that sentence – I’m offering theories, not declarations of fact.)

- Veep is in the Vice President’s Office. Girls is in Brooklyn.
The population of Washington, D.C. is very diverse, but Congress and the inner circle of Washington D.C.’s elite is not, despite many people wanting to believe that racism is done forever because we have a black president. Brooklyn, however, is only one-third white. Veep reflects the population of its setting more accurately than Girls does.

- Veep has at least one black character as part of the main cast.
So far, Selina Meyer’s executive assistant Sue (Sufe Bradshaw) doesn’t have a whole lot to do, but she’s had a few funny lines and she isn’t written as a stereotype. On Girls so far, the only people of color have existed as set dressing or to lecture Lena Dunham’s character on how selfish she’s being. And the upcoming characters we’ll see are the sexy Latina nanny and the thick-accented Jamaican nanny. No, Veep isn’t breaking new ground with race as of yet and there’s only one person of color in the main cast, but it’s still  better than Girls on the race front so far, which just makes people facepalm with race fail.

- Girls claims to be realistic. Veep is satire.
A show that has realism or naturalism as a goal is going to receive more criticism when it’s, well, not that realistic. Satire, meanwhile, is over-the-top by definition. A clear satire is not going to get slammed for being unrealistic because the audience understands that realism is not the point.

- Girls has a relatively unknown cast. Veep has Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Buster Bluth, a UCBer, and My Girl.
Dismissing all criticism of Girls to come from people who are “just jealous” of Lena Dunham’s success would be unfair and inaccurate, but I do think jealousy is one factor, at least for some people. She’s twenty-five years old (younger than I), she has famous parents, and her co-stars include the daughter of the drummer from Bad Company, the daughter of NBC anchor Brian Williams, and the daughter of David Mamet. Who do these snotty upstarts think they are, getting this gig because of nepotism when so many of us creative types have to struggle and flail blindly before maybe, maybe finding success?

Veep, on the other hand, has beloved comedy veteran Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the title role. She’s probably the only cast member of Seinfeld who is universally beloved and constantly getting good work, and who cares if she’s also the heiress to a huge fortune? She’s been kicking butt in the comedy arena for so long that no one cares if she got a head start in the game. Besides Louis-Dreyfus, Veep also stars UCBer Matt Walsh (glad he’s getting some high-profile work!), Tony Hale (I really miss Arrested Development) and Anna Chlumsky (OMG I haven’t seen her forever since My Girl and I had no idea I missed her this much!!!)

In short, Girls has famous people’s daughters who haven’t proven themselves yet, and Veep has comedy veterans and actors we really miss seeing on TV.

- Girls has a female creator.
Could Girls be getting more criticism than Veep in terms of race because Girls was created by a woman? After all, if Lena Dunham is a woman, she has a better ability to understand the needs and struggles of another underrepresented group (people of color). Armando Iannucci, though – well, he’s just a white dude, so how is he supposed to know any better? We’ll give him a pass on the race issue because he’s so privileged that he can’t possibly be expected to do better, but Lena – Lena, how dare you, as a woman, not understand the struggles of people of color. (This paragraph is sarcastic.)

- Girls has an all-female main cast.
After seeing movie after movie and TV show after TV show that fail the Bechdel test, women are craving for an amazing show that focuses on women and female friendships. Now Girls finally exists almost a decade after Sex and the Citywent off the air. Even if the show was perfect, was it ever going to live up to the expectations of something that viewers have been wanting for such a long time?

- Real-life girls under pressure.
In addition to women genuinely wanting to see more shows about female friendships, I also think women felt pressured to like and support this show BECAUSE it focused on female friendships. If a show starring a man fails, then that show fails. If a show starring a woman fails, then it means that shows about women will usually fail. (See this comic, and apply the point about math to film, television, and marketing.) Women may think, “I have to watch this show so that more shows about women will be on the air!” And feeling pressured to like something will only lead to resentment when you don’t enjoy it.

- Jerks reign supreme on Girls AND Veep, but they’re different kinds of jerks.
Audiences may feel more comfortable laughing at the Washington-insider jerks on Veep than at the spoiled whiny twenty-somethings of Girls, especially because the Veep writers don’t try so hard to make us feel sorry for the characters on their show. Many Americans are fed up with the state of United States politics and the state of the economy. Veep lets us laugh at the jerks in Washington, D.C., while Girls wants us to identify with whiny, jobless twenty-somethings who feel like it’s reasonable to ask their parents for $1100 a month.

- Veep is funnier than Girls.
Obviously, this is a completely subjective opinion, as are all opinions about humor. But I don’t think I’m the only one who laughed throughout Veep and only cracked a few smiles during Girls. When I watch Girls, I tend to think, “That was amusing,” or, “That was a clever line,” or, “I can see why others would find that funny.” I feel like I’m watching more of an exercise in comedy than an actual comedy.

Maybe the simple reason that Girls gets criticism for being white and Veep doesn’t is that people are more likely to forgive problematic aspects of shows they really enjoy, and shows that aren’t as enjoyable will feel the full brunt of the criticism.