Browncoats unite

Hi guys!

This was originally your post for last Friday (Sept. 13), but I've moved it to this week (Friday Sept. 20) to give you some more reading under your belt to help you get at it.

Try not to get hung up on the phrase “feminist lens” and instead, focus on these readings and on your experience of the show.

READINGS

First: These articles from humor site Cracked.com about Joss Whedon’s female characters

1) Read this whole thing

2) ONLY READ NUMBER FOUR OF THIS! (reading other numbers will cause MASSIVE SPOILERS for Firefly.)

Second: This speech from Whedon about the writing of female characters (you can watch the video or read the transcript below).

           

We’ve been reading They Say, I Say and, as your blog expectations showed, you guys are interested in opinionated, controversial posts, so this is a great opportunity for you to put both of those backgrounds into a post.

What I’d like you to do is look at what Whedon and Cracked (They say), figure out whose opinion you most agree with (and it can be a little bit of both) and make an argument for your point of view (I say). In other words, weigh in on the debate about Whedon and his female characters. I think it will be hard to take a hard line agreeing with either, so take some time to develop your own point of view about the debate. I've seen just about everything Whedon's done, read a ton of hoity-toity scholarship and still think there's validity in both Cracked and Whedon's speech. 

Some other ideas that might help you, but are not required:

-Can you give specific examples from Firefly?

-Can you make comparisons to other shows or texts?

-Are there reasons for you to trust either Cracked or Whedon more? What are their motives for writing? 

-Can you find other sources around the blogosphere or Internet to help you out?

-Can you draw on the reading/class discussions from Wednesday?

Also, remember to keep the PRIORS guidelines in mind.

YOUR HOMEWORK FOR MONDAY:
Please watch episode 1, season 1 of How I Met Your Mother. We've been talking a lot about how we define "underground," but we haven't much talked about the mainstream.