this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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gamingcirclejerk
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omg they made lemmy political
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From that very series: Walter White vs Skyler White. The public perception of both was quite disperate, considering one was a housewife and the other was a murderous, aspiring drug lord.
A lot of female characters all do he same thing; The protagonist men are getting up to shenanigans and their loved ones are telling them to stop it for the sake of love and / or responsibility. The thing is that as the audience we're entirely there for the shenanigans because that's there the action or tension takes place.
Suddenly you have a character that is telling the protagonist to refuse the call to adventure which results in delaying the excitement, it's a recipe that's makes the audience associate the character with boring parts of the show, especially in breaking bad where the relationship is depicted as an old marriage with no romance left, nobody is rooting for it.
I'm very aware of the trope. That doesn't justify the level of disdain shown in comments like the one jackoneill so eloquently shared on this very thread.
I agree, I suppose the root of what I meant was that the hatred Skyler gets is half blatant misogyny and half because she's written to be the fun police.
I remember when the TV show Arcane was coming out, there were lots of judgemental comments towards a character called Caitlin, but 3/4 of the main characters of that show are women and the others didn't see similar hate, but it was Caitlin who often made the lawful and restrainted decisions.
Although I also agree that if the character of Caitlin was a man instead, they'd have gotten much less hate.
More to the point: Hank Schraeder versus Skylar White.
I wouldn't say that's a more apt comparison since Hank got much more of a redemption arc ~~(though he admittedly wasn't "bad" to start, just insufferable)~~ than Skylar did. Walt willfully went all out in his bad choices while Skylar was mostly just left to react to his bs, but he is still viewed more favorably than she is.
Hank has much lower lows than Skylar ever did.
Hank became an outright abusive piece of shit at one point during the series, constantly verbally berating his wife until he pushed her over the edge and triggered her kleptomania.
The worst Skylar ever did was sleep with someone outside of the marriage that Walter had already destroyed.
You know, that's fair.
Have you considered that the perspective may be driven by the former being the protagonist, while the latter is not?
Considering the long, ongoing history of female characters (and real women, to be frank) being derided or dismissed for any number of "flaws" not held against their male counterparts, I don't think that generous, context-less assumption is really worth merit.
Do you have any examples?
Ummm...the majority of human history? Are you seriously expecting me to spoon-feed you a history lesson here? Just Google "Women's rights" and see where that leads you, though I have the notion you're not actually looking to learn much.
You explicitly mentioned an ongoing history of female characters treated unfairly compared to their male counterparts.
The minimum you should be able to provide is a female character and its male counterpart.
If I search on Google "women's rights" I don't find that.
Dude, I literally started the thread with an example. Regardless, I'm not here to convince you of basic historical precedent, nor am I interested in falling into the trap of you quibbling over whatever other example I could mention to dismiss any and all context like you already exhibited you will do.
But Skyler was such a bitch!
lol
But Skyler sang the cringe birthday song!
I'm not really sure what that would have to do with my point that viewers generally don't like her or outright hate her?