Young and Full of Fluff

I finally finished watching West Wing, and maybe I will write a big thinky post about it, because I have Opinions. But--what I want to say is--I want to grow up to be CJ Cregg.

I was talking with a coworker about how fans interact with media (we work at a publisher, this is totally normal office conversation). She had asserted it strictly as self-insertion. I argued that (as I read somewhere in lj-land years ago) that may be mostly true for men, who have abundant main characters ripe for self-insertion (Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, James Bond), for women, because of the lack of such ready made heroes, our interaction with media is a lot more complicated.

Then I finished West Wing and realized that sometimes it can be that simple, even for a woman fan with fewer targets. CJ Cregg is awesome. I want to be her.

Also, to everyone who told me to stop watching after Sorkin left cause the show went to shit--I think you are WRONG WRONG WRONG. The show lost focus, definitely, and the first half of season five they had no idea what direction they were going. But this is what I will fight you on: the show stopped being sexist. Sorkin left, and I stopped being annoyed at women only being secrataries or love interests and at how CJ was always punished for her romances when no one else was. Cause after Sorkin left? There are a GODDAMN LOT of women in main roles. There are entire plotlines that are JUST WOMEN TALKING TO EACH OTHER about NATIONAL SECURITY. Every sub group of characters had at least one, if not more, powerful woman in it. There are still some problems, I'm just saying. I will talk strong women in important roles over clever dialogue ANY DAY. I say good riddance to Sorkin.

Curse Netflix streaming! If you stream on your computer, it starts up the next episode after you finish one without you having to do anything. This is a way of saying my long weekend was mostly swallowed by West Wing. I was doing stuff at the same time but--I watched a lot of West Wing.

I had been warned about Sorkin's problematic portrayal of women, and boy howdy. In particular, it is the sexism of a writer who thinks he is not being sexist.

- All of the assistants are women, with the exception of the personal assistant to the president. In the first season, the president's PA gets a storyline. None of the other assistants do. What they do is henpeck their bosses. They direct their love lives, criticize and control their eating habits, and otherwise act like fifties housewives. When they have conversation for themselves, it is inevitably about how many calories are in a muffin or about makeup or shows or celebrities. The two most prominent are Donna, Josh's assistant, and Margo (Marge?), Leo's. Both are used as comic relief. As in, they burst in on their bosses when they are thinking weighty, manly things, and tell awful jokes or admit they brought down the entire building's email system, or whine about what present the boss is getting them.

I have been told Donna has more of an arc, but so far, these character exist to point out how unprofessional they are compared to their bosses. And the fact that they are all women and their bosses are all men? I do not say this lightly, but Mad Men does a less sexist portrayal of a secretarial pool, if only because it's aware that it's being sexist.

- In maybe the fourth episode, President Bartlet gives a speech--a speech so important it's in the title of the episode, "These women"--standing at a social event and remarking to two other guys about how incredible "these women" are. Here's a hint. If you have a male character talk about how incredible his women are? He is automatically being a patronizing asshole. I'm sure Sorkin was giving himself a pat on the back, saying look! I wrote strong female characters! Only he took the knees out from that argument by having the men stand around and admire how good a job they've done letting women work with them.