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fishpatrolWhenever I read shoujo manga, I have this irritating, but mostly involuntary, habit of comparing myself with the female protagonist. The problem is when the character acts in such a way that I start thinking: omg, I would never in a million years do that, what is wrong with you, woman -- I have to remind myself to stop waving my fist at the computer screen because it makes me look like a lunatic. There's something about shoujo that repels me yet attracts me at the same time (though with many titles, it's mostly, *repelrepelrepel*).
I was reading Lovely Complex yesterday (I went through all of the scanlated manga in one go -- I had an awful headache afterwards XD;) -- it was a really fun and cute manga. The issues I had with it were the same as the issues I have with most other shoujo titles: at first the main character acts against the traditional female role (in the case of LoveCom, Risa is taller than most girls, she's loud and generally unfeminine in terms of her actions), but when she realizes she's in love, she immediately reverts to tradition (again, with LoveCom, Risa starts mooning after the guy, she cries all the time, she wishes she were "cute and quiet").
One of the things that particularly irks me is the prevelant idea of "the girl must always be taken care of simply because she's a girl". She might need taking care of if she's been socialized to be dependent and passive -- but if she's capable and independent, why enforce this outdated notion? In LoveCom, it is expected by all of the characters that Risa cannot act as the "protector" in a relationship -- she must be protected by a man (even if he is half her size). And don't get me started on that beach episode in Ouran!
Incidentally, I also came upon this scenario in a BL manga one time -- the girl was a side character and also the love rival of the seme character -- she was in some martial arts club and she exerted dominance in her behaviour towards the uke character. If she were cast as a male character in this manga, she would be the "seme who needs to find his own uke because the main-character!uke has been taken already". But in this case, simply because she was female, a scene had to be shown where the uke rescues her, and lets her know that she can't possibly protect him, and instead, she needs to be protected because she's a girl. It was a pretty good manga (it was interesting to see the uke and seme cast in semi-non-traditional roles), but that scene really irked me.
So back to LoveCom -- I was able to overlook the stereotypical male/female behaviour (and how it was advocated) for the most part because, y'know, it's in every manga -- and I really did enjoy the manga because it was so damned cute (I want more chapters now!). Then I watched the live-action. I'm quite glad I started off with the manga first because I'm sure I wouldn't have given it a chance if I'd watched the live-action first. Risa was just so much more pitiful in it -- I couldn't muster up any sympathy towards her at all. She started off in the whole traditional female role and just stayed in it. Manga!Risa could hold her own most of the time -- if you push her down, she'll bounce right back up (unless you push her too hard). Live-action!Risa? If you even poked her, she'd fall and stay there.
Female characters in shounen manga always play the supporting role -- they're the managers, the cheerleaders, the ones who make those silly headband things, but never the one to take center stage (unless, of course, they had the help of a male character). But even in shoujo, I find that this is still the case. The female characters usually start off pretty cool (and y'know, all kick-ass-like), but by the end, they're just another cut-out doll. When it comes to their true love, they'll be willing to face the world, but when it comes to anything else, they become the damsel in distress.
The nice thing about BL manga is that I don't feel compelled to project myself into any character (eep, does that mean my gender identity and gender schema is too strong?). In real life, I am hardly a "relationshippy" person, but I really do enjoy reading about romantic relationships (don't judge me for it! everyone has weaknesses! X3).
BL manga sort of solves this problem of inconsistency: there is no girl for me to go, "your stereotypically feminine behaviour bothers me greatly!" Of course, all of the above comments can be applied to the uke character of BL manga, but my brain has a handy tendency to overlook it (it goes something along the lines of, "it doesn't count if it's a guy, so hush and just let me enjoy the pretty!" of course, that doesn't stop thoughts such as, "uke-boy, you should be glad that there's a computer screen between you and me or I'd punch you for your wishy-washy behaviour!"). But anyway, the discussion of BL manga can be saved for another day.
Thisrant highly intellectual discussion was brought to you by LoveCom and that essay I had to write for my Gender Roles/Behaviour class (which was highly interesting, but thankfully over) which was on the depiction of female characters in Harlequins and chick-lit.
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Some other random things I have been thinking about include the following (they cannot be considered to be fullrants intellectual discussions because I have run out of gas. Need to work on that stamina, Meemo.)
-If there's one thing that all those sociology classes have pounded into my head it is the notion that just about everything is socially constructed. If such is the case, human nature is neither fundamentally good nor evil because these are socially constructed concepts and the meanings of such terms are thus susceptible to the change of time and space.
-On the subject of human nature...it occurs in predictable ways at times. In a given situation, not everyone will act in the same way, but the same pattern of interaction will occur each time. There are several recent incidents (confined to my little corner of Livejournal) that come to mind. Let's take that anonymous (a.k.a. "honesty") PoT meme thing for example. I don't remember how many times variations of that have cropped up, but if you look at the comments from each one of them, they're really along the same vein. Fics, characters, people...anything bash-able gets bashed. I think this illustrates a certain side of human nature: when the opportunity to vent without the risk of having one's identity revealed arises, many people will take that opportunity. I'm a big advocate of the yin-yang concept (y'know, a bit of light in every darkness, and all that). In this case, in every group of ass-kickers there will be ass-lickers. You can probably come up with a list of categories that you'd place each commenter in these honesty memes, and this list would be consistent for every meme. In other words, it's just one big cycle (that can rival the Energizer Bunny in its "goes on and on"-ness).
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Okay, my fuel meter is pointing to empty now. *ran out of coherence* Perhaps it's time to get off my soap-box and rejuvenate through sleeping.
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One last note though: in the case of both rants (I will admit it! They were simply rants and not much else ;__;), I cannot stop myself from reading shoujo manga or stop myself from skimming those damn honesty memes (sometimes I agree with the hate -- it's just another weakness, don't judge me!) -- the same way that I can't stop my teeth from grinding from seeing traditional gender roles in all its glory and feeling disgust at some people's behaviour. Maybe it's analogous to car crashes -- in all reason, they're awful things, but as a spectacle, they're quite spectacular.
I was reading Lovely Complex yesterday (I went through all of the scanlated manga in one go -- I had an awful headache afterwards XD;) -- it was a really fun and cute manga. The issues I had with it were the same as the issues I have with most other shoujo titles: at first the main character acts against the traditional female role (in the case of LoveCom, Risa is taller than most girls, she's loud and generally unfeminine in terms of her actions), but when she realizes she's in love, she immediately reverts to tradition (again, with LoveCom, Risa starts mooning after the guy, she cries all the time, she wishes she were "cute and quiet").
One of the things that particularly irks me is the prevelant idea of "the girl must always be taken care of simply because she's a girl". She might need taking care of if she's been socialized to be dependent and passive -- but if she's capable and independent, why enforce this outdated notion? In LoveCom, it is expected by all of the characters that Risa cannot act as the "protector" in a relationship -- she must be protected by a man (even if he is half her size). And don't get me started on that beach episode in Ouran!
Incidentally, I also came upon this scenario in a BL manga one time -- the girl was a side character and also the love rival of the seme character -- she was in some martial arts club and she exerted dominance in her behaviour towards the uke character. If she were cast as a male character in this manga, she would be the "seme who needs to find his own uke because the main-character!uke has been taken already". But in this case, simply because she was female, a scene had to be shown where the uke rescues her, and lets her know that she can't possibly protect him, and instead, she needs to be protected because she's a girl. It was a pretty good manga (it was interesting to see the uke and seme cast in semi-non-traditional roles), but that scene really irked me.
So back to LoveCom -- I was able to overlook the stereotypical male/female behaviour (and how it was advocated) for the most part because, y'know, it's in every manga -- and I really did enjoy the manga because it was so damned cute (I want more chapters now!). Then I watched the live-action. I'm quite glad I started off with the manga first because I'm sure I wouldn't have given it a chance if I'd watched the live-action first. Risa was just so much more pitiful in it -- I couldn't muster up any sympathy towards her at all. She started off in the whole traditional female role and just stayed in it. Manga!Risa could hold her own most of the time -- if you push her down, she'll bounce right back up (unless you push her too hard). Live-action!Risa? If you even poked her, she'd fall and stay there.
Female characters in shounen manga always play the supporting role -- they're the managers, the cheerleaders, the ones who make those silly headband things, but never the one to take center stage (unless, of course, they had the help of a male character). But even in shoujo, I find that this is still the case. The female characters usually start off pretty cool (and y'know, all kick-ass-like), but by the end, they're just another cut-out doll. When it comes to their true love, they'll be willing to face the world, but when it comes to anything else, they become the damsel in distress.
The nice thing about BL manga is that I don't feel compelled to project myself into any character (eep, does that mean my gender identity and gender schema is too strong?). In real life, I am hardly a "relationshippy" person, but I really do enjoy reading about romantic relationships (don't judge me for it! everyone has weaknesses! X3).
BL manga sort of solves this problem of inconsistency: there is no girl for me to go, "your stereotypically feminine behaviour bothers me greatly!" Of course, all of the above comments can be applied to the uke character of BL manga, but my brain has a handy tendency to overlook it (it goes something along the lines of, "it doesn't count if it's a guy, so hush and just let me enjoy the pretty!" of course, that doesn't stop thoughts such as, "uke-boy, you should be glad that there's a computer screen between you and me or I'd punch you for your wishy-washy behaviour!"). But anyway, the discussion of BL manga can be saved for another day.
This
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Some other random things I have been thinking about include the following (they cannot be considered to be full
-If there's one thing that all those sociology classes have pounded into my head it is the notion that just about everything is socially constructed. If such is the case, human nature is neither fundamentally good nor evil because these are socially constructed concepts and the meanings of such terms are thus susceptible to the change of time and space.
-On the subject of human nature...it occurs in predictable ways at times. In a given situation, not everyone will act in the same way, but the same pattern of interaction will occur each time. There are several recent incidents (confined to my little corner of Livejournal) that come to mind. Let's take that anonymous (a.k.a. "honesty") PoT meme thing for example. I don't remember how many times variations of that have cropped up, but if you look at the comments from each one of them, they're really along the same vein. Fics, characters, people...anything bash-able gets bashed. I think this illustrates a certain side of human nature: when the opportunity to vent without the risk of having one's identity revealed arises, many people will take that opportunity. I'm a big advocate of the yin-yang concept (y'know, a bit of light in every darkness, and all that). In this case, in every group of ass-kickers there will be ass-lickers. You can probably come up with a list of categories that you'd place each commenter in these honesty memes, and this list would be consistent for every meme. In other words, it's just one big cycle (that can rival the Energizer Bunny in its "goes on and on"-ness).
--
Okay, my fuel meter is pointing to empty now. *ran out of coherence* Perhaps it's time to get off my soap-box and rejuvenate through sleeping.
--
One last note though: in the case of both rants (I will admit it! They were simply rants and not much else ;__;), I cannot stop myself from reading shoujo manga or stop myself from skimming those damn honesty memes (sometimes I agree with the hate -- it's just another weakness, don't judge me!) -- the same way that I can't stop my teeth from grinding from seeing traditional gender roles in all its glory and feeling disgust at some people's behaviour. Maybe it's analogous to car crashes -- in all reason, they're awful things, but as a spectacle, they're quite spectacular.
