#annekhen

[sleepynegress]

On YOU and Black Women Characters, Karen, Sherry, and Marienne...and a little bit of Peach (who is a mixed-race Filipina).

Okay so, that meta... Seeing how Marienne has been handled in the most recent season (among other, IMO, improvements character-wise), while also being all-too-typically handwaved and/or ignored by fandom....I got the urge to write some meta... Because I feel like the difference between how Karen and Peach were written in the first season, vs. Sherry and Marienne in the third, exemplifies typical pitfalls TV and streaming media too often fall into when it codes it's side female black/brown-skinned characters and ways they can avoid it. BTW, one big change this past season is that Penn Badgley is now a producer. And if you've ever heard the man speak on this show and character, among other things... You'll know he makes an effort to be aware of social causes and ways he can personally improve things for marginalized folks. He's a real mensch, when it comes to that. He's been vocal about correcting fans who unironically stan Joe as a romantic ideal... Because yeah, that dude is ALL redflags, stalking, and excuses for his serial killing. Yeah, the voice is nice, and it's fun to watch all of that play-out, but one can stan an anti-hero/villianous charismatic character while understanding that ish isn't something to *actually* want IRL. People. Just to reiterate. JOE IS ONE OF THOSE CHARACTERS for which you stay far away from people w/ those tendencies, in IRL. So... w/ that preface, I think it's incredibly interesting and thoughtful how Marienne and Sherry were handled, as black women supporting characters. ...While Peach and Karen in season one? Yeesh... (cut because it's loooong yall)

Yall remember Karen?? She was thirsty for Joe, unabashedly so.

But the reality was that she was just a convient placeholder, a tool to make Beck jealous. So, the double-edged stereotype was that she was both undesirable and the sexual aggressor *sigh*. ... Thankfully, the one good thing about the writing choices for her was that she peeped that Joe was crazy and she listened to the little voice and got out ALIVE. I hated that she was invisible to him as an actual living breathing attractive woman though, except to be used. Again, this is a typical and stereotypical construct for black women side characters.

HOWEVER. Season three actually corrected that, by explicitly showing Joe as the problem there... And not Karen, or any other WOC's desirability (as is all too typical a message media tends to send out for drop-dead gorgeous black/brown women side characters in yt media). You see, Joe is a snobby yt man who has been running away from his poor-orphan-grown-up-in-the-system roots. His "education" from an abusive bookseller (yikes) and genuine love and breadth of knowledge of books, he thinks, elevates him above certain people, -plebes, in his mind. But oddly, at the same damn time, he looks down his nose at wealthy people for being handed what he sees as something he worked -and was worked over (all that trauma and abuse) for. And all the issues he has (which is NO excuse BTW), stem from his Oedipal complex. The root cause being his "failure" to protect the mother figures in his life, when he was a boy. One rejected him after the trauma of child-Joe having to shoot/kill someone to spare her more harm/abuse, and the other died (in his mind) because he *failed* to act violently to protect her from fatal abuse. Thus, his stalking behaviour, obsession, and feelings of ownship over women he fixates on. He can both "protect" them and keep them from abandoning him, by acting (often violently) for them, on their behalf (w/o their knowledge or consent), to keep them (with him) safe. So every woman he has looked at as "The One" (until Marienne, but I'm getting to that) has been a yt woman who needs saving, just like the nurse and his mom. All were in toxic relationships with other men, in some way shape or form, relationships he could twist in his mind as someone he could white knight her away from... From Beck's narcisisst two-timing boyfriend, to Love's unhealthy co-dependency on her brother, to Natalie's distant relationship w/ her workaholic husband. The difference between them and Marienne though, is Joe was already stalker-fantastizing about them from the first look. Marienne, however, was written as purposely invisible to him, in a expansion (and fix! IMO) for why he *also* didn't see Karen.

I'm saying, that despite Joe having grown up in the system, he's always been a hypocrite. He looks down on other yt people (especially if they have wealth privilege) calls out all of the excesses, while he himself *also* wasn't able to see those he unconsciously saw as beneath *his own* gaze. It was NO ACCIDENT and IMO a brilliantly rare little bit of telegraphed writing...That Joe only started to actually see Marienne as a person beyond the bossy irritant in the way of his book hobby, when he #1 heard the White Woman Syndrome definition and call-out (*lol* Joe didn't know shit about it, until Marienne and Dante told him and took his know-it-all ass down a peg) and #2 learned she spoke French... What I'm saying is Joe is diet-racist, in that yt moderate way MLK called out, i.e. "good" yt people who are unconsciously biased, ignore/prejudge the black people the see everyday, but don't think of themselves as actively racist... And the fact that she "surprised" him, in that way... Made him unconsciously feel like he had to prove he wasn't that typical yt person he tends to eviscerate in his narrations. Because, not only was she dismissed from the jump, but it turned out that she checkmarked all his hallmark stalking points, but went one or two better(!)... In that she has a similar background to himself, having grown up in the system abandoned by her mother, -which is the aspect that cemented his obsession... She is also "educated", has a daughter (which he wanted Henry to be) is a good and loving mom, and is targeted by... you guessed it, a toxic -ex, which makes him feel like the better alternative, necessary protector. So, to him... Marienne is perfect. And for me, it's so fascinating to see White Woman Syndrome, desconstructed and flipped on it's head with this storyline of Joe actively "protecting" her in his fucked up way, i.e. shivering with bug-eyed mania, as he stabbed her -ex multiple times in the chest while saying it was "for her". And that conversation between Marienne and Love??? WHEW!! I fucking LOVED THAT. Because, Love did not lie. Everything she said about Joe was absolutely correct. In fact, the reason why Joe couldn't obsess over Love anymore was because he saw in her, everything he hates about himself. And Marienne?? I loved what she had to say, calling out her own damn self for falling into self-destructive habits. She *admitted* that she had purposely ignored that little voice that told her Joe was bad news (a reason why she played up the suspicion and "tough boss" at first). IOW, Marienne is Joe's ideal self, if Joe had handled his trauma better. She's not out here killing folk. Yes, she fell into addictive substances, but she actively is doing what Joe *wishes* he could about his serial stalking and murdering, and healing herself. That is the root of his fixation... Oh! That's another thing. Joe is a sociopath and a narcissist, so he also fixates on women he sees *himself* in... He loses interest, when he sees the flaws he'd like to fix in himself. And that is why he literally burned his entire life down (including abandoning his son *smh*, mainly because he fears his taint will make the boy just like him) and went to Paris to find her. In the meantime, while I see Marienne as a bit of a correction to how Karen was shafted in the writing, I also see Sherry as a correction to how Peach was done. Peach was a typical bitchy brown girl side-character, without the benefit of nuance, beyond her crush on Beck. Meanwhile, we got to the see the nerdy rejected roots Sherry and the unhealthy coke-head roots of her soulmate husband behind the type-A "mean-girl" too many black and brown girls are simplified into in shows. I liked that. Sherry, was that way to protect both herself and her family from ever being seen as the rejected out crowd, she and her hubby used to be when they were kids. Cory's hyper-fixation on projecting a feminist hyper-masculinity was for her... And kudos to them casting a buff non-ugly partner for her.

I have heard and repeated that actual love is loving the "crust" of a person. And goodness knows, THAT was Sherry/Cary in that box. Just ALL of the most BURNT crumbly, crust pieces ever and *still* beneath that... at their very bottom, was their love. And the delicious irony of it, was that once again... Snob-head-ass Joe (and Love too, this time) got it wrong. They weren't a fake plastic love, but the real damn thing... If I'm being really-real, Love saw that too. It was the reason why she put the gun in the box w/ them. Say what you will about the weirdness of these two, but you CANNOT say they don't love each other. It was to the point that that aspect of their marriage triggered Love, when it came to her and Joe. And that... (a black woman being truly loved and having a "happy" ending) is always subversive in yt media. Also, both the actors gave... *lol* A+ partnering work, in this. I really enjoyed that messy bisexual couple. Anyway... Sorry about the length and scatterbrained aspect of this meta... but I had to write this down.

P.S. I forgot to add Delilah from season 2 as yet another WOC Joe failed to see in that way until she became useful/unavoidable and Ellie as another way he projects protecting himself (and his mom) from trauma. Ellie is a fifteen year old girl w/o parents who most definitely would have been subject to abuse, if Joe had not intervened and killed that grooming creep.