Forbidden Writing, or Rizzoli & Isles Pt. 2
Having only written about 490 words yesterday, there is no way I should be writing here this morning. As someone who can follow every rule, but the one she set for herself — well, it’s probably pretty predictable that I would be writing here this morning.
Having vented a little of my general frustration with Rizzoli & Isles, I can actually be a little more articulate about what it is that bothers me about the show. Rizzoli & Isles is a textbook example of embedded feminism being used to mask enlightened sexism. Last year, Susan J. Douglas’s book Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done was published, and if it is not on your reading list already, put it there. Douglas defined embedded feminism as “the way in which women’s achievements, or their desire for achievement, are simply a part of the cultural landscape” (9). Embedded feminism is partly achieved through the representational parity numbers game. The networks can say, “Look at all the women doctors, lawyers, cops, etc. on tv, clearly women can be anything they want now.” Networks can claim that airing shows with strong women in professional careers some how makes up for the blatant misogyny in a show like Two and a Half Men, or the only slighly more subtle misogyny in Big Bang Theory. If you are, like me, a little crime show obsessed, Dr. Kimberly DeTardo-Bora’s 2009 article in Women & Criminal Justice, “Criminal Justice ‘Hollywood Style’: How Women in Criminal Justice Professions Are Depicted in Prime-Time Crime Dramas,” is a fascinating read. The short summary is that women are over-represented compared to their actual presence in the criminal justice field. It is of course more complicated than that – the article is a fascinating read.
Taking its name from the two lead women, Rizzoli & Isles clearly establishes a kind of embedded feminism; it also establishes a “look how far we’ve come” ethos by subtly calling Cagney & Lacey to mind. I’d love to do a stronger comparison between the two shows, but I don’t have many clear memeories of Cagney & Lacey, and haven’t seen an episode since I was nine. Both titular characters are strong women, and have achieved success in their careers, and really that is about it for feminism in Rizzoli & Isles.
A constant companion to embedded feminism, enlightened sexism is “[the insistence] that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism – indeed, full equality has allegedly been achieved—so now it’s okay, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women” (9). This explains why we are supposed to laugh when Rizzoli is tricked into a dress and a date by her mother. Her inability to conform to accepted modes of femininity, while clearly embodying those forms, is constant fodder for humor in the show. Nothing is funnier than trying to get Rizzoli in a dress, but … damn, if doesn’t she fill out a dress perfectly.
But what about Dr. Isles she is amazing at her job, and manages to do it all in style with perfect hair, fashionable clothes, and always, always in killer heels. I’d have to go through episodes again, but I’m pretty sure we’ve never seen Dr. Isles (even mid-autopsy) in scrubs. I’m pretty sure I don’t have to explain the absurdity of that. Even if I’m wrong about the scrubs, the bigger issue is that despite the fact that she is clearly smart, and feminine, she can’t keep a date because she only looks feminine. She drives men away because she cannot hide her intelligence.
At their very core, these two characters, who are supposed to embody at least one feminist goal (having a career), are played for laughs for all the ways they do not conform to cultural stereotypes about women. Yet, because it is couched in humor, and we’re supposedly smarter than buying into the stereotypes, if we find the show’s treatment of its titular characters offensive, it is because we don’t know how to take a joke.
Disappointment – Rizzoli & Isles
As an incentive to keep myself from giving up on my dissertation today I promised myself that if I wrote 1000 dissertation words, I’d reward myself by writing a review of TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles. All the books say never to reward yourself by taking a day off writing, they don’t say anything about rewarding yourself by more writing. Yes, it does sound a little sick when I say it out loud.
As a fan of Tess Gerritsen’s books, when I learned TNT was giving Gerritsen’s central characters a show of their own, I was excited, and set my dvr accordingly. Then, I set about waiting to see who had been cast in the titular roles. Don’t ask, it never really occurs to me that I could, you know, use the internet to find out stuff like that in advance. It was obvious from the first commercials I saw that whatever TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles was going to be, it wasn’t going to be too much like the books. For about 7 books I’d imagined Rizzoli, as she is described, with a mop of unruly dark curls, and as good looking, but in a unconventional way; Dr. Isles was, as she is often described, the queen of the dead, a little goth, with red lipstick and straight black hair cut in a bob with straight bangs – which is, as it turns out, how Ms. Gerritsen looks (well, not exactly goth, but you get the idea). While there was never any doubt in my mind these women would be beautiful in their own ways, um … Angie Harmon and Sasha Anderson were not exactly the faces that lept into my mind as I read these books.
To paraphrase Mr. Gump, casting is as casting does. It was silly to have any hopes that these women might be cast differently. This is a review of the show not the books, so this is the last comparison I will make between the two. One of the most compelling aspects of these characters as written are their insecurities, and Jane Rizzoli’s insecurities are tied to her place in a male profession, and what she sees as her inability to meet feminine standards of beauty; it is impossible to make those insecurities play when the woman playing Rizzoli is Angie Harmon.
Like I said, although I’d initially hoped for something a little different, this review isn’t about comparing the television show to the books. The characters, stories, and tone of each is distinct enough that a real comparison is impossible. The books are detective fiction, pure and simple. The television show walks the genre lines between serious police procedural and comedy. It is almost as if the producers really wanted an hour long comedy, and knew stretching a sit com that long would grow tedious, so they decided to incorporate a police procedural to bump up the story. I’ve never seen an episode, so I could be wrong, but Rizzoli & Isles makes me think it is like a female Nash Bridges.
It might surprise you, but the light nature of the show is not really what bothers me. A lot of police procedurals err in the opposite way, taking themselves too seriously. What bothers me about Rizzoli & Isles is that the light tone is achieved at the expense of the title characters. At every turn the show undermines the power of two strong women working together, and becoming friends by making every second conversation between the two about getting, or having, a relationship, every third conversation about the case – as if their jobs are an afterthought, and the remaining conversations about clothes and shoes. There has to be some sort of heterosexual romance for at least one of the women in nearly every episode because the writers are working overtime to ensure that it is clear Rizzoli & Isles are not lesbians. (Well, except for those episodes where they pretend to be lesbians – you know, for laughs.) As a viewer it is impossible to take either Rizzoli or Isles seriously because at every turn we are reminded that Rizzoli can’t get a man because she is not feminine enough, and that despite looking like a fashion plate Isles can’t function socially because she is just too smart.
I keep watching, hoping, for that moment when instead of going for the obvious – undermining women stereotype or joke, the writers will surprise me.
Slogging Through …
Well, it is the point of no return. I have to, absolutely, no room for error, must defend my dissertation in May.
All of that would mean that I have to you know, write my dissertation. The writing is … going, and I guess that is good enough. My momentum was really getting into swing, but then December hit. Suddenly, I couldn’t avoid having lunch with colleagues, and so my lunch time writing fell apart. On top of that, for various reasons, I have had to drive into work a little more often than normal, which means my bus writing has also been spotty.
Unbelievably there is a silver lining to all of this! The Cajun Princess, and Tech Oracle also plan to defend in May, so we are all in this boat together. The plan is to use this time to keep each other going.
To get back on the writing horse my plan has been to write lightly this weekend, which I’ve done, with the knowledge that starting tomorrow there is no looking back. I’ve two days left at work and then I am out until January 2nd. The plan is to write my fingers into bloody little stumps in that time. No goals about the number of pages, or chapters, just to write until I can’t write anymore. When I set goals that have to do with word counts/page numbers, or the like it’s too easy for me to feel derailed. As in, “Well, I’m never going to make 15 pages, so why bother at all?!” The other thing is I know that when I get back to work in January I’ll be busy for at least a month, and more like 6 weeks. I need to have enough done that getting busy at work won’t stop my progress.
There are no promises about what will happen in this space over the next few weeks. Sometimes when I write like this my posting actually increases, because I need an outlet. Other times I just need to walk away from all writing for a while.
Injuste!
At one point, early in the afternoon on Thanksgiving the DH let the dogs outside, and notice that the back gate was open. Weird. We don’t use that gate very often; however, just last week, after my re-potting frenzy, I went through that gate to put the potting soil on the back porch. Maybe I didn’t latch it. He shut it, we moved on with our lives.
Yesterday I wanted to give the front yard one last mow. Wild chives grow in our lawns here, and while the grass has stopped growing the front yard has little random tufts of chives growing out of it. You can probably see where this is going. Someone stole our lawn mower … on Thanksgiving.
Apparently, the universe will kick you when you are down.
Happy Thanksgiving
It’s always hard for me to talk about all the things I’m thankful for; I’m never really able to get it right, so it all sounds a little over-done, and trite, to me. This is year is going to be no exception to that rule. What I mean and what I feel won’t really be captured, but I think there is a value in trying anyway.
Even in the minimal amount of time I’ve put into creating this space, I’m pretty sure it’s been obvious that this has been yet another in a series of remarkably trying years. Oddly enough, what I am most thankful this year has been the struggle this year has been. If only because it meant making a decision and getting out of the stasis we were in, I am so glad we moved. All that had happened afterward, the house, the yard, the DH’s struggle to find a job, has sucked; it’s broken me down further than I thought possible, yet at the same time it feels like forward movement. I guess I’m just a glass half-full kind of person because I feel like that’s something.
For a long time it felt like we were stuck, and we just kept getting hammered by stuff. We are still getting hammered, but at least the scenery has changed a little — and, I feel like moving targets are a little harder to hit. That is, however, probably just my nomadic genes talking, and I am really not trying to tempt fate.
Anyway there have been fruits to this struggle, it almost did the DH and I in, but I think we’ve finally learned from it all, and started relying on each other a little more, and in healthier ways. So, here’s to the struggle.
Writing Updates …
Someday I will write about something other than writing, I promise. Unfortunately, I don’t anticipate that day happening with any regularity any time soon.
Recognizing my need for some help getting my butt in the seat and actually writing, I decided to build writing into my schedule. Not wanting to overwhelm myself, I started with just one week at a time, and I built into the schedule the writing I was already doing. Since I was already writing on the bus, and I knew there was no way I’d be getting up any earlier than 6:00am, the next time I could work writing into my schedule was at lunch. So, I started putting my lunch/writing on my schedule at work. Initially, I was going to work at the library, which would have the added benefit of getting me to walk across campus another couple of times during the day. The reality is that it’s getting to be winter, which around here means rainy and cold – walking across campus is not necessarily going to motivate me to get writing. Just outside of my office there are several cubicles used from math/science tutoring, so now I just check the tutoring schedule to see which one is open, and I take the little netbook in a cubicle and write for an hour. Surprisingly, I really love it. I don’t waste time getting anywhere, and it still feels like a ‘new’ space, and since it is a cubicle I can really focus.
At the start, I’d also put some evening writing time in the schedule, from 7pm – 9pm. Yeah, um, that didn’t work. My brain is pretty much drained by that time, and I want some time to spend with the DH. Sure, we might spend all that time sitting on the couch playing Scrabble on my phone, but it’s still together time. Ok, and sometimes, when the stars align, we have sex. The point is that no good writing happens, not even shitty first draft writing. Not keeping the appointment was diminishing the success I felt at writing everyday in other situations, so I took it off the schedule.
So, this is what my writing schedule looks like. Early morning bus time, an hour at lunch, and full mornings on the weekends. This might not help me meet the crazy goals I’ve set for myself, but, most importantly, I think it is a sustainable schedule. (I’m silly like this, so I made sure the appointments show up in my calendar as a color I like.) Time for my weekend writing to start.
On Writing
Writing the dissertation has been a project in trying to figure out what works best for me as a writer. It’s not like I didn’t already have a writing process, but that process was built around fulfilling a certain number of pages for an assignment.
The dissertaion is the first project I’ve attempted that didn’t come with an assignment. Well, I suppose “write a book about a scholarly topic” is a kind of assignment. The problem with this particular kind of assignment is that if I wanted to write a book it might not be fiction, but it might not be about a scholarly topic. Okay, enough about the dissertation as a project, this post isn’t supposed to be a diatribe about graduate education.
It’s about figuring out what I need as a writer, and really coming to own that title. I might not be a writer in the way Tana French or John Connoly are writers, but I am a writer nonetheless, and I am a writer in need of a method.
Consequently a good part of the dissertation process has been trying to find a writing method that works for me. This week I’m giving scheduling a try. Instead of just knowing when I need to write and telling myself to do it. I’ve actually put it in my calendar. To make myself feel like I’ve accomplished something I’ve made some times that I’m already writing into appointments on my calendar, and then added some new ones as well. It’s an ambitious calendar, and while I don’t want to give myself an out before I start, there are some appointments I anticipate dropping already.
In addition to the calendar, I’ve set up a spread sheet to keep track of my word counts. I think that if I stick with this long enough it will work for me. My problem with word counts, however, is that they don’t really do to well for revisions, and since that is where a lot of my work is currently, I suspect I’m going to get frustrated when my word counts aren’t that good because in addition to writing that day, I deleted a lot of crap.
Kids
Last night as we sat on the couch talking about everything and nothing, the DH turned to me and asked, “If we ever have kids, would you want a girl or a boy?”
Let’s face it the chances of the DH and I ever having kids are slim, and slimmer. We’ve always adopted an, “If it happens it happens” approach to the whole situation that seems to have worked out for us. (More about how much that freaks people out another time.)
It’s not the first time we’ve pondered the question, but last night the DH asked it just after I had him read, “Men Explain Things to Me” by Rebecca Solnit. It also came right after the bus ride I’d spent reading the #mencallmethings thread on Twitter; and, the whole “Occupy a Vagina” thing on Facebook.
Since my senior year of high school, I’ve identified myself as a feminist. I’m not naive when it comes to what women face in this culture. Yet, at any other point in time I’d have answered, “I’d want a girl” without really thinking about it. Last night, however, I paused. Being a woman has never felt harder. Sure, my life is not exactly smooth sailing right now, but that’s not what I’m talking about. How women are represented in the media, and how they are treated when they speak out online or in real life. How hard this world has become to navigate if you are in any way different. Forget, do you want a boy or a girl? I don’t know how I’d raise a child in this environment. The whole world feels hostile.
Diner
In keeping with the random subject matter here, how about an ode to my diner. Well, not an actual ode, but a loving tribute. Although it’s supposed to warm up again this week, the weather here has finally turned a little chilly. I’m excited because suddenly all the dishes that just seemed to hot and heavy for summer sound just about perfect. Tonight we are finally going to return to our favorite winter stand by – TaterTot Hot Dish.
Trust me this dish is certainly nothing special, but both the DH (dear, dastardly, dimwitted -pick your adjective husband) love it. I think you had to grow up in Minnesota in the ’70s to have an appreciation for any kind of hot dish. When I was 10 and we moved from Minnesota to Washington State I realized that the rest of the U.S. calls a hotdish a casserole. The hotdish has endless forms Tuna Noodle (with or without potato chips on top), Chicken noodle, rice with sausage, my mom would even make Spam hotdish.
Tater Tot is by far the best. Brown some hamburger with onions (drain it), and pour into the bottom of a rectangular baking dish, then poor a can, or bag of frozen, corn over it. Over the corn put a can of cream of mushroom soup, and on top of everything a layer of TaterTots. Throw everything in the oven (350) for long enough to cook the TaterTots through (20-30 mn) . It is just a good warm, cold night dinner.
D5 Creation