I was reading the reasoning behind why you chose Quinn as Catherine Parr for your Glee Presents: Six the Musical gifset and you said she has a brand of white feminism. Why do you think so? 🤔
Oh man that's kind of a big topic that definitely deserves more of an answer than I'm able to give right now, but if I save this ask for later I'll just end up never getting to it. So I hope you don't mind me giving a sort of half-answer with the potential of further elaboration in the future.
To be fair, in my mind I conflate Quinn's brand of pop feminism with more specifically white feminism a lot. But what I mean is that Six's well-intentioned but ultimately kind of flat message conveyed in Parr's song reminded me of how Quinn gets "woke" after getting pregnant. You know, the "boys objectify us all the time" and "women earn less than men" sort of thing. And to be clear, those are correct statements. The Glee guys objectify the girls all the time. The show does too, in fact. And women do statistically earn less for the same work. But these are the sort of "water is wet" generic statements that teen shows attempting some sort of feminism would say in 2010 without actually exploring patriarchal issues in any sort of depth.
The way I see it, Quinn became Glee's spokesperson for feminist phrases that often aimed to do one of two things. A) genuinely try to highlight an issue or B) poke fun at pop feminism and use the rich white girl who always ends up centering her life around men to do it. The problem with A), like in The Power of Madonna, is that Glee doesn't even get close to saying anything useful about issues it highlights and solves sexism with the boys singing What It Feels Like For a Girl. Okay? Now, that isn't on Quinn, but when she's so often the mouthpiece for meaningless buzzwords and generic statements of the kind of #girlbossery that 2010 took seriously but we make fun of now, it's hard not to associate it with her. And in the case of B), such as her wild Gloria Steinem spiel in I Do, well it just feels disingenuous for a number of reasons, and this is the part we probs don't have the capacity to get into today.
But what I'm trying to say is that Quinn was given so many of these #girlbossery lines and, when I rewatched season 1, I realized just how many of them also reeked of what we'd now recognize as white feminism. And far be from me to downplay Quinn's trauma and struggles, but she just ain't the girl for intersectionality with her WASPy background and distinctly feminism 101 approach to things. Maybe this is more of a vibe I get from her, and to be clear I blame the writers entirely, but I've talked to others who got this same vibe from her statements. I think any sort of feminism Glee attempts is also white feminism, though, so again I'm not blaming Queen Bee Quinn the ch. It's just the vibe that she'd point out the wage gap, something that doesn't actually affect them in high school, but ignore racist made at the expense of Santinacedes. I also get the vibes that, in-universe, even her feminism 101 only comes post-pregnancy when she experiences just some of the discrimination women like Mercedes have always faced. I mean, I love Quinncedes do not get me wrong. And this whole post feels like I'm dragging Quinn when I'm not lol. But they explicitly make the parallel of being black and pregnant in Quinncedes scenes and it's like, girl.
It's a Man's Man's Man's World, basically. Watch that performance. That's what I mean. And like I say it's sort of intentional on the writer's part but it's also sort of just how Glee operates when it comes to gender dynamics and (the lack of) intersectionality.
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GUYS my girlfriend MADE this for me for christmas!! with her own two hands!! she even wired the chevrons to light up and i’m so impressed and happy and just wanted to share it with the world
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I feel like many people have a fundamental misconception of what unreliable narrator means. It's simply a narrative vehicle not a character flaw or a sign that the character is a bad person. There are also many different types of unreliable narrators in fiction. Being an unreliable narrator doesn't necessarily mean that the character is 'wrong', it definitely doesn't mean that they're wrong about everything even if some aspects in their story are inaccurate, and only some unreliable narrators actively and consciously lie. Stories that have unreliable narrators also tend to deal with perception and memory and they often don't even have one objective truth, just different versions. It reflects real life where we know human memory is highly unreliable and vague and people can interpret same events very differently
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Rewatching Adventure Time, I can't help but think so much Princess Bubblegum discourse would be non-existent if people actually watched the show to completion instead of randomly hyperfocusing on some of PB's bad deeds.
There's a very bizarre and commonly held belief that Princess Bubblegum did terrible things and got away with it, that nobody held her accountable. When the show makes a point, repeatedly, that Princess Bubblegum is well meaning but deeply flawed, and to some characters, straight up evil.
I see fans point to "The Cooler" a lot as proof that PB is an irredeemable character, and while it is her worst act in the entire show.... I think people forgot that that was the point. Near the end of the episode she stops spying on people in Ooo because it was an invasion of privacy. In another episode she's called out for exploiting some aliens and lets them go. She feels ashamed that her own people are terrified of her. She loses her entire kingdom, and realizes she needs to get her shit together.
I'm pretty critical of shows that are way too lenient on flawed female characters but Princess Bubblegum isn't one of them. She's awesome, and heavily misunderstood.
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