More SGA...
Jul. 6th, 2009 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficI'm sorry for all the spamming on SGA, but I'm just watching this stuff now, and fandom finished discussing this stuff last fall. And I need to vent!
I just watched "Brain Storm," and now I'm trying to figure out why I dislike Keller so much, especially since I know certain (male) friends of mine love her. She's got two strikes against her coming in: she replaced Beckett, who was killed in an asinine way, and she's introduced as a romantic interest for one half of my OTP. So I know it's easy to dismiss my dislike as oh, silly slasher, getting upset when the male leads don’t get together, but that's not it. SG1 won me over to Vala by the end, and by rights I should have disliked her for her interest in Daniel.
I think for Keller it comes down to this: She is defined by her desirability to men. She is shown initially as being wimpy, homesick, and scared, which didn't win her any points with me from the start. I mean, I know we make jokes about Atlantis being second string, but how did this person get to be head of medicine at an intergalactic station?
As the show progressed, she grew a backbone, yes. But the only interpersonal interactions we see her have, with a few exceptions, are with Rodney and Ronon, two guys interested in her. Why don't we see her developing a friendship with Teyla? Or Carter? Or John, even? Or anyone who isn't trying to get into her pants? She became that character, the one introduced in the middle of a series' run, who everyone wants to sleep with.
(In a truly amusing bit of the behind-the-scenes stuff, Martin Gero said that he thinks the show is "too heterosexual" (oh, honey—have you seen your show?), so they wanted to introduce a lesbian. Who would also have the hots for Keller. He correctly concluded, though, that this would be absurd, to have everyone, male and female, hitting on Keller all the time. I would also like to point out how not surprised I am that he wanted a side of girl-on-girl action to go with his blow-up doll girlfriend character. YOUR ID IS SHOWING.)
She's not a Mary Sue, though. A Mary Sue is an author insertion. In this case, the Mary Sue is Rodney, a character Gero openly admits he sees as himself. But she is wish fulfillment. She's a nerd's bimbo. She acts like Rodney's fantasy, come to life, and I have a hard time looking at their relationship outside of those terms. She just doesn't feel like an actual person to me, who actually sees something in Rodney; she feels like an idealized girlfriend who exists (literally) to be his perfect girlfriend. And in that way, I don't see what Rodney is seeing in her, either. Watch "Brain Storm"—Keller is making all the moves. Rodney's just aquiescing.
The fact that from her introduction there has been anvilicious foreshadowing that she is Rodney's ONE TRUE LOVE does not help.
The love triangle seems to exist solely so that Keller will chose Rodney over a Ronon. It's not an organic development. Everything about Keller's interactions with both Rodney and Ronon rings false to me. Ronon is just a stand-in for all the jocks in Martin Gero's past who got the girl, so that this fantasy girl can not only choose Rodney, but make him "win" over the jocks. This is not only a disservice to Keller, but to Ronon, whose interactions with Rodney this season are all about Keller, rather than being about the years of history between them. He's turned into a dumb brute for the benefit of this storyline. "Brain Storm" has even more of this—Rodney explicitly says he wants Keller to go so he can show up his peers. She exists to bolster his self-esteem, and that's it.
I think they could sell me on a romance between Rodney and somebody. But instead they forced a soap opera style drama on me and a character who exists solely to further the artificial conflict. So I just really don't like her. And I promise it's not because I'm a slasher.
ETA: Just got to a scene in "Infected" where Keller is telling Rodney how intimidated she is by his awesomeness. Of course she says this. This is what the writer would like to think all good girlfriends should say. *gag me, gag me, gag me*
I just watched "Brain Storm," and now I'm trying to figure out why I dislike Keller so much, especially since I know certain (male) friends of mine love her. She's got two strikes against her coming in: she replaced Beckett, who was killed in an asinine way, and she's introduced as a romantic interest for one half of my OTP. So I know it's easy to dismiss my dislike as oh, silly slasher, getting upset when the male leads don’t get together, but that's not it. SG1 won me over to Vala by the end, and by rights I should have disliked her for her interest in Daniel.
I think for Keller it comes down to this: She is defined by her desirability to men. She is shown initially as being wimpy, homesick, and scared, which didn't win her any points with me from the start. I mean, I know we make jokes about Atlantis being second string, but how did this person get to be head of medicine at an intergalactic station?
As the show progressed, she grew a backbone, yes. But the only interpersonal interactions we see her have, with a few exceptions, are with Rodney and Ronon, two guys interested in her. Why don't we see her developing a friendship with Teyla? Or Carter? Or John, even? Or anyone who isn't trying to get into her pants? She became that character, the one introduced in the middle of a series' run, who everyone wants to sleep with.
(In a truly amusing bit of the behind-the-scenes stuff, Martin Gero said that he thinks the show is "too heterosexual" (oh, honey—have you seen your show?), so they wanted to introduce a lesbian. Who would also have the hots for Keller. He correctly concluded, though, that this would be absurd, to have everyone, male and female, hitting on Keller all the time. I would also like to point out how not surprised I am that he wanted a side of girl-on-girl action to go with his blow-up doll girlfriend character. YOUR ID IS SHOWING.)
She's not a Mary Sue, though. A Mary Sue is an author insertion. In this case, the Mary Sue is Rodney, a character Gero openly admits he sees as himself. But she is wish fulfillment. She's a nerd's bimbo. She acts like Rodney's fantasy, come to life, and I have a hard time looking at their relationship outside of those terms. She just doesn't feel like an actual person to me, who actually sees something in Rodney; she feels like an idealized girlfriend who exists (literally) to be his perfect girlfriend. And in that way, I don't see what Rodney is seeing in her, either. Watch "Brain Storm"—Keller is making all the moves. Rodney's just aquiescing.
The fact that from her introduction there has been anvilicious foreshadowing that she is Rodney's ONE TRUE LOVE does not help.
The love triangle seems to exist solely so that Keller will chose Rodney over a Ronon. It's not an organic development. Everything about Keller's interactions with both Rodney and Ronon rings false to me. Ronon is just a stand-in for all the jocks in Martin Gero's past who got the girl, so that this fantasy girl can not only choose Rodney, but make him "win" over the jocks. This is not only a disservice to Keller, but to Ronon, whose interactions with Rodney this season are all about Keller, rather than being about the years of history between them. He's turned into a dumb brute for the benefit of this storyline. "Brain Storm" has even more of this—Rodney explicitly says he wants Keller to go so he can show up his peers. She exists to bolster his self-esteem, and that's it.
I think they could sell me on a romance between Rodney and somebody. But instead they forced a soap opera style drama on me and a character who exists solely to further the artificial conflict. So I just really don't like her. And I promise it's not because I'm a slasher.
ETA: Just got to a scene in "Infected" where Keller is telling Rodney how intimidated she is by his awesomeness. Of course she says this. This is what the writer would like to think all good girlfriends should say. *gag me, gag me, gag me*
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Date: 2009-07-07 12:37 am (UTC)Rodney is in a happier place because he was handed the perfect girlfriend, who loves him for all of his annoying petty behavior. He's not in a happier place because he grew as a person.
The thing is, early Rodney stories, on SG1 and in season one, he really does grow and change. He's always a whiner, but you can see that he has stopped being as self-centered as he comes off as. But on the show, they arrested his development, because they found it too much fun to keep going back to the same selfish, petty, cowardly Rodney jokes. In this, fandom has been a lot more charitable to the character, and most stories show him as having reached some sort of comfort level with being a hero and putting others before himself. But instead of allowing him to go on that natural arc--what should have been the arc for his character, given the heroic stuff he's been doing--they gave him a girlfriend and called it a day. And that just...burns me.