Posts Tagged 'guest post'
Amanda Bowers is a psychotherapist and aspiring writer of young adult fiction. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and dog-child, Ruby. When not writing, she enjoys flash-mobbing, dream interpretation, and coloring on her walls.
 As if watching Dexter isn’t enough with its colorful setting in bright, multi-cultural Miami and its dark musical motifs and darker characters. As if it isn’t enough to find yourself instantly intrigued by the idea of rooting for a serial killer, and as the series unfolds, to find yourself consistently rooting for this character and enjoying the intricate way that the writers and actor Michael C. Hall bring the many layers of Dexter’s past and present to light. As if it isn’t enough to have original plot lines and award-winning guest stars such as John Lithgow, the writers of Dexter still find time to create and firmly support the development of character Debra Morgan, Dexter’s police detective little sister as played by Jennifer Carpenter.
Hardly anyone could introduce Deb’s character better than Dexter himself. After listening to a voicemail she left him in the first episode, he tells us, “That’s my foul-mouthed foster sister, Debra. She has a big heart but won’t let anyone see it. She’s the only person in the world who loves me. I think that’s nice. I don’t have feelings about anything. But if I could have feelings at all, I’d have them for Deb.” This dialogue says as much about Dexter as it does Deb and the ever-important role she plays in his life and on the show.
When you first meet Debra Morgan, or Deb as she’s most often called, she’s scantily clad while working an undercover prostitution sting and desperately wanting to get in on the action of being a homicide police detective. It would be easy enough to dismiss her character as someone who has mismatched her true talents and her career aspirations given her hooker attire, modelesque beauty, and her constant need to check out her hunches with Dexter rather than trust her gut. And then when she proves herself more than competent as an officer and rises to the rank of homicide detective for the Miami Metro Police Department, it would have been easy enough for the writers to pigeon-hole Deb as “one of the guys,” a hard-nosed, explicative-dropping ball-breaker. But instead, they have consistently chosen to write Deb as a multi-faceted character – so much so, that by the fourth season she is easily one of the strongest characters (and actors!) on the show.
In a throwback to what Joss Whedon got right about his female-empowering character Buffy Summers on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, what I most appreciate about Deb is that she is physically strong while also being emotionally vulnerable. Yet just like in real life, the reverse is also sometimes true – Deb is capable of portraying great psychological strength while struggling with her lack of physical prowess in comparison to other characters trying to [fill in the blank with malicious details here] . . . yes, she’s a favorite target for suspense and drama on the show.
When her colleagues are exhausted and out of ideas, Deb’s intellect and determination help the department find their next lead on a difficult case. When everyone else realizes she might be making a big mistake, Deb plunges ahead, more willing to be wrong than to be invisible or pretend she doesn’t feel something when she does. When faced with complicated ethical choices, Deb carefully weighs her loyalty and her integrity, usually unwilling to sacrifice either while figuring out a compromise that still let’s her sleep at night. And when Dexter is out of line, Deb doesn’t hesitate to reel him in: “I love you, bro, but sometimes you’re a fucking ‘tard.”
Deb is intense and unwavering, yet as highlighted above, she still knows how to take and make a joke. Although at first her foul mouth seems like a bit of a caricature, Jennifer Carpenter owns that aspect of Deb’s character so much that it’s not only one of those familiar things you can count on when you cozy up to your TV on Sunday night, but Deb also serves out happy helpings of much-needed comic relief! In one of her quintessential Deb moments, she delivers the following line after Dex anxiously confides to her that his girlfriend Rita is pregnant: “A baby? A mother-fucking, rolly-poly, chubby-cheeked shit machine? Are you kidding me?” And she delivers this line with a joyous, big-toothed grin. As an audience, we all have permission now to be happy for Dexter. Deb has that kind of power.
Deb’s fiercely loyal to her family, but not at the expense of being devoted to her job. She’s an incredibly intuitive detective, yet still vulnerable to letting her personal feelings get in the way of solving a case. She weeps her heart out in one scene and kicks ass in the next and it doesn’t feel at all unrealistic. It’s no short order to portray all of the seemingly contradictory facets of Debra Morgan’s character. But award-winning actress Jennifer Carpenter more than rises to the occasion, turning Deb into a fleshed out person loved by her fictional character companions and TV-viewing audience alike. The writers and Jennifer obviously understand that real people are always walking contradictions. As such, she has become one of the most vital female characters brought to the TV screen in recent years (and there’s been tough competition from ground-breaking shows such as Battlestar Gallactica and Mad Men). Debra Morgan refuses to fit nicely in any of the oft-prescribed stereotypes written for women, and in doing so she inspires her viewing audience with her bold, crass, intelligent maneuvers while also being relatable as someone who gets her heart broken, makes mistakes, and (falsely) feels as if she’s “fucked up” beyond redemption.
Perhaps most importantly, Deb serves as Dexter’s foil and someone he consistently leans on to keep him planted in humanity. Where Dexter is calculated, Deb is impulsive. Where Dex is logical and seemingly incapable of expressing human emotion, Deb is spewing emotion all over the place in tears, f-bombs, and lusty encounters. Where Dex doesn’t trust anyone other than Deb, Deb lets people into her life and her heart over and over again, even when that decision is unwise. However, as a crackerjack, brother-sister, blood spatter analyst and homicide detective team, Dex and Deb do have one thing in common: they are both cunningly good at nabbing the bad guy by the end of the season.
Kati Corlew is pursuing a PhD in Cultural Community Psychology at the University of Hawai`i at Manoa. Her research interests include social and environmental justice, poverty, and discrimination. Prophetic aliens from the planet Narn are of natural interest to her.
When Dustin put the call out for guest writers to do character portraits, I didn’t even have to think two seconds before deciding mine would be on G’Kar from Babylon 5. If you’re unfamiliar with the show, Babylon 5 is both the best and the worst scifi serial there ever was. The show takes off to a bumpy start with a feature length pilot that falls victim to some of the worst dialogue of all time. The acting isn’t much better. In fact, some of it is much worse. But for those who are contemplating watching the series for the first time (Dustin, I’m looking at you), I would highly encourage you to suffer through this first episode (and hell, the first season) (and hell, probably even the season after that) with good graces and possibly alcohol. Because…
The series as a whole is like a series of really engaging novels! The series as a whole is witty and thought-provoking with enthralling storylines, amazing arcs of character development, and provocative satires and commentary on our human experience, particularly our raging political battles, rebellions, revolutions and subversions. The series as a whole builds upon itself, including upon that rough beginning, to create an epic journey for the characters and viewers alike.
And plus… there’s G’Kar. G’Kar is a shining spot of awesome during the early WTF phase of the show—and then he just keeps getting better.
Two things you must know about the show in order to appreciate G’Kar:
1) Babylon 5 is the UN in space. Interplanetary wars have reached their critical mass, and so humans (America), along with a small number of other advanced civilizations (Europe) band together to create a diplomatic space station to figure out a way to peace. They had to do this a few times because Babylons 1-4 blew up or got disappeared.
2) G’Kar is the ambassador for the planet Narn (Africa), which prior to the show had been subjugated and devastated by the Centauri Republic (the British Empire). Narn has been freed now that their homeworld is bleak and barren and mined of all resources; and the Centauri Republic is in decline. The Narn blame the Centauri for ruining their planet, and the Centauri blame the Narn for their declining empire because the whole Narn fiasco was so expensive and didn’t further their glory at all. Got it? Narn + Centauri = No Love.
Narn ambassador G’Kar and Centauri ambassador Londo Milari are mirror characters. Of course they hate each other, given their planets’ history, and they strike off on two very different paths, but they’re basically the same person on two different journeys. They both mourn for the past glory or beauty of their homeworld; both their jobs on B5 are to scheme the other planets into helping them back to the former glory or beauty; and neither of them believes this is possible. Both G’Kar and Londo believe that their whole purpose on Babylon 5 is a fool’s errand which they must nonetheless strive to fulfill, and so they pay lip service to their ambassadorial duties, they drink and carouse and generally live the lives of ne’er-do-wells, and they take great joy in their highly amusing mutual hatred. (These two make the early episodes entertaining even without alcohol.)
G’Kar begins the show as a disillusioned, apathetic caricature of who he thinks he should be. He rails against the injustice done his world in a close approximation of sincerity, knowing that all his screaming will never be truly heard and all his efforts will never amount to anything. In a bit of extraordinarily impressive acting for someone who is covered with foam alien-face make-up, G’Kar’s resignation and despair bleed through the exaggerated outrage that he has become too numb to actually feel.
The turning point for his character takes place with heartbreakingly poor timing. G’Kar and Londo come to terms, of sorts, and G’Kar, for the first time since Narn’s subjugation, has hope. He believes that his efforts at B5 just might do something after all. This turning point is short lived, because Londo has also just experienced a turning point. Londo has learned the hard way that the road to hell is paved with slightly shady, questionable and self-serving intentions. A series of minor choices, all made in one grouchy fit or another, have culminated in Londo (kinda accidentally) spearheading the re-conquering of Narn. Genocide and internment camps ensue. Londo has no choice but to continue down this terrible path.
His mirror G’Kar continues down another. With his people enslaved and his hope smashed to pieces, G’Kar does the only thing a reasonable person would do: he takes a bunch of alien PCP and goes to kill Londo. Lucky for him, he is stopped and thrown in jail. As with other people traveling down G’Kar’s path (Mandela), jail transforms G’Kar. In the solitude of his rage and betrayal and despair, G’Kar in a way rediscovers, but in a way truly discovers for the first time, the source of his spiritual belief and the way in which he can free his people even in the midst of their slavery. He comes to understand the true nature of human – alien interactions, even the darkest elements. He transcends the scheming politics of his position, and seeks instead a much higher purpose.
He begins writing and speaking so as to free the minds and the spirits of his people. He campaigns endlessly, puts his life in danger, and trades his pride for the freedom of his planet. From his beginnings as an ambassador of uncertain repute he becomes the moral compass, the grounded extremist, the spiritual guide, and the truth-speaker of the series, all the while remaining the same G’Kar in wit and personality that we knew from the start.
G’Kar also says my favorite line of the whole series. I made a t-shirt out of it, even. At one point, he confronts Londo about his role in the genocide. Londo tells him there was nothing he could have done because at that point, no Centauri would have paid attention if he had tried to stop it. G’Kar screams, “It doesn’t matter if they don’t even listen. You have an obligation to speak.”
And he is heard.
Londo, his greatest enemy and his mirror opposite has heard him. All of the Narn have heard him. Other, unaffected, civilizations have heard him. And I heard him. Because his is a language that speaks to the heart.
So, yes, it’s true, I have a bit of an inter-species crush on G’Kar. I maintain that this is not creepy, although I don’t exactly have any good arguments to back up that assertion. G’Kar’s plotline in B5 weaves throughout much greater (and other minor) plotlines, many of which are equally compelling—some perhaps more so for their intricacy and scope. But G’Kar’s story is the one that engaged me from the beginning, carried my interest through the early quagmire of rough dialogue and bad acting, and finally captured my heart with the tragic beauty of his journey to true freedom.
And other stuff on the show is good too, so check it out. Possibly with alcohol.
Here’s another guest spotlight, this time from Leslie Anderson. Leslie is a graduate student at the University of Ohio and an aspiring poet. She is a self proclaimed video game, comic book, Star Wars, Star Trek nerd. She also enjoys coffee and hats.
There were a few wonderful years where my brother and I were attending the same school and were also both old enough to communicate on concepts of mutual interest. Pokemon, for instance, or how stupid gym class was. It was, in fact, very stupid. Mostly these were TV shows, or video games. There is one show we still discuss; the one which found us poised at the bus door like sprinters, our house keys already in our hands, our eyes on the tiny, red, digital clock above the steering wheel. Sometimes we would blunder through the door to find our father was already watching. This was the short and ultimately doomed Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, an early and foolhardy attempt at a fully computer animated show.
The series follows the same group as the novels and the movie, but it’s hardly the same story or even the same characters. The show has a more wide-eyed, awed view of war and camaraderie, possibly because it is told entirely from the awed, wide-eyed videographer, Higgens. The ‘hard lessons’ are still there, but they avoid the grit and gore of the original, focusing instead on a humanistic stoicism in the face of tragedy. Story lines of each episode are almost identical, which means it was my first, elementary interaction with character driven story arch.
And we loved those characters. I could have written about any of them, Razak, Higgens, Rico…. But, specifically, both my brother and I attached our hopes and dreams to Isabel Flores, also called Dizzy. In the movies Dizzy is used primarily as a foil to Carmen, Rico’s love interest. In the series as well as the movie, Carmen is a graceful, traditionally beautiful woman. She is intelligent, cold, professional, tactful, and exists mainly so Rico can grin stupidly when people mention her name. Dizzy, on the other hand, is a Trooper. She is ragged and tough, trained in practical skills. She is enthusiastically open about feelings and opinions, regardless of their affect, often to the frustration of those around her.
Her influence on me was manifold. I bought dog tags. I found lieutenant’s bars at a garage sale and wore them on my shoulder. It wasn’t the military occupation that impressed me, it was the gusto. Dizzy possessed none of the traditional worries of a female character, or even specifically a female character in a military position. She was the best shot in the group. She was equal in strength, speed, and bravery. Her relationship phobias were not based on her ability to have a relationship, given her less than traditionally feminine role. It was a simple frustration that Rico wasn’t responding the way she would like.
I was fascinated by this attitude, the brash fearlessness. Sitting in class in uniform skirt and knee socks, I did not feel like Dizzy Flores. I felt like Carmen in training. But I wanted to feel like Dizzy. I wanted to. I wanted to walk into the classroom in fatigues and demand who had something to say about it. No one? That’s what I thought. I wanted to be a basketball star and ride a motorcycle and shoot a target at 200 feet. Actually, I wanted none of those things, but I wanted to feel I could have them if I did. And I could, so long as I could get out of that bus fast enough, I could.
Since I’ve become rather busy with school, I’ve decided to let other writers handle some Character Spotlights. This will also give us some insights into characters that I haven’t necessarily spent much time considering. This first one is by my sister, Jill Meredith Collins Sinnott, a talented feminist writer who’s been published in Off Our Backs. –Dustin L.
Character Spotlight: Jessica Rabbit
by Jill Meredith Collins Sinnott
Visitors to this blog are doubtlessly familiar with female sexuality as expressed through animation, which for years took the form of Betty Boop. However, in 1988, Betty made an appearance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, wherein she briefly shared screen time with another, more colorful, far bustier female: Jessica Rabbit, the title character’s wife.
Betty Boop seems to realize and accept that she’s being upstaged. She works as a cigarette girl at the Ink and Paint Club during Jessica’s performance, and calmly picks up Eddie Valiant’s jaw when he drops it after seeing Jessica for the first time.
I don’t think Betty needs to worry too much. Betty Boop may be past her prime, but her curves will always be appreciated for being both hot and realistic. Every woman I know appreciates the fact that broad hips and meaty thighs were once considered glamourous, even without a tiny waist between them.
Jessica Rabbit, on the other hand, sports an almost comically tiny waist and a bust so large that her strapless, backless dress seems to be defying gravity. Her legs are shapely (and fully exposed by an immodestly high slit in her dress), and it seems impossible that her slender ankles and dainty feet could support everything else. In short, Jessica’s sex appeal is so over-the-top and in-your-face that it’s difficult to take it seriously. As John Grant notes in the Encyclopedia of Walt Disney’s Animated Characters, “She is more a caricature of a desirable woman than any pretence of an accurate depiction of one.” I suppose that’s why it’s so easy for me, like Betty Boop, to laugh off the male viewer’s reaction to Jessica Rabbit: not only could I not look like that if I tried, I wouldn’t really want to.
Neither, it stands to reason, does Jessica Rabbit. She tells Eddie Valiant, “You don’t know how hard it is being a woman looking the way I do.” She may use her overwhelming sensuality to her advantage (both in her occupation as a lounge singer and to get help with her husband’s legal troubles), but she’s a cartoon woman in 1947, and her resources are limited.
She may not even be flirtatious by choice–the movie makes it clear that toons answer to different laws of physics than humans do. Roger states that he can only do what is funny, so perhaps Jessica can only do what is sexy. But the restraints of their nature didn’t stop them from falling in love and remaining faithful to one another, which is really the heart of why Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of my favorite movies, and also why I feel the need to defend Jessica Rabbit.
My husband has said many times that the song “Rescue” by Eve 6 reminds him of the beginning of our relationship. This song contains the line “Like Jessica Rabbit, she collects bad habits, gets her drinks for free,” which compels me to ask what Jessica Rabbit and I could possibly have in common, other than a taste for somewhat goofy men. My husband just rolls his eyes and tells me I’m taking the song too literally, which is, of course, true. It’s that same tendency towards the literal that makes me ask, “What do they mean, Jessica Rabbit collects bad habits?”
Think about it. Jessica is established in pop culture as a woman whose reputation precedes her, but what has she ever done to warrant that reputation? In the course of the movie, the only morally questionable thing she does is pose for patty cake pictures, and we soon learn that she was blackmailed into that. She truly loves her husband, and remains fiercely loyal to him (she does hit him on the head with a frying pan at one point, but it’s for his protection).
Jessica’s signature line is “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.” It’s my opinion that the line is less of a joke than an honest statement. Her sad tone of voice makes it clear that she’s resigned herself to the hard truth that female sexuality is seen as mainstream society as “bad.” What she’s referring to, specifically, is Eddie Valiant’s assumption that she must be a slut. From the moment Eddie lays eyes on her, he assumes that she’s guilty of adultery, that a woman like her couldn’t possibly be satisfied by Roger Rabbit. He figures the marriage must be a joke to her, like it is to everyone else. But Eddie is wrong. As soon as they meet face to face, Jessica makes it clear that she loves her husband. It was out of concern for his career that she allowed herself to be blackmailed, and now that Roger’s being accused of murder, she’ll do anything to clear his name.
Ultimately, Jessica Rabbit is just one more woman being pigeonholed and stereotyped due to her appearance. Her problem is exacerbated by the fact that she is the product of someone’s drawing, giving her even less control over her appearance than the average woman. Given the fact that she wears the rather impractical evening gown throughout the entire film, I have to wonder if she’s even able to change clothes. If nothing else, it can’t be easy to find toon clothing to fit her measurements.
The husband and wife pair share little screen time, bringing dramatic effect to the final scenes, where Jessica showers her husband with kisses and compliments. They walk into the sunset together, and Jessica promises to bake Roger a carrot cake when they get home, fully rounding out her role as the perfect wife. Hope is restored among all the men in the audience, that one day the perfect woman will love them because they make her laugh.
Oddly, Kathleen Turner was uncredited for her role as the voice of Jessica Rabbit. The credits name the voice of each character who made a cameo appearance, each of the weasel henchmen, and each human bit part, but no credit appears for Jessica. Somehow, this oddity adds to her overall effect: perhaps Jessica Rabbit was never a cartoon character in a movie at all, but a force of nature, finding her own way onto the screen by sheer willpower. A woman will, after all, go to great lengths for the man she loves.
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