With as much snipping for length as I thought possible while retaining context and attempting to avoid misrepresenting either party.
"Penberriss Wendy S." wrote:
The point is, he doesn't learn it. He still wants the power of being leader without having to consider the consequences, and once he achieves this, he shows no signs of wanting to let go. He is not daunted by the experience of responsibility, and in fact on several occasions, contray to what you suggest above, shows a total lack of concern for the people he encounters or for that matter for the crew he is supposed to be leading. Sounds like he learned a lot from the Meegat experience.
That is, of course, your interpretation of Avon; mine is very different. I do not see him as wanting the position of leader (rather, merely wanting _not_ to be a follower) - in part because of the awareness of the responsibilities of leadership which he was forced by this experience to confront. Which is not _necessarily_ a point in his favour - I think mostly he doesn't want the bother of it.
is Avon, _not_ Meegat, that the episode mocks.
Avon may be mocked, but Meegat is objectified.
Your use of the term is meaningless. None of the characters treat her as an object; and the author gives her far more dimension than he gives the male savages. I don't hear any of the men on the lyst yelling 'savage males - male bashing!' (They probably wouldn't dare.)
[1] Jenna as damsel in distress - I honestly don't see this one.
Well to be honest, it wasn't me that raised the "Jenna is captured" issue.
True, you didn't raise it; however, you did agree that it was 'as bad', and besides, my comments weren't directed solely to you.
Personally I think it's a bit tedious that it had to be Jenna that is captured,and then rescued, by the men, but then you needed something for Blake to get really upset about, and Jenna was seen to be more than just a friend to Blake.
Okay, here we come to an example of the real problem with this whole discussion. There is _no_ objective, factual material in the show that indicates that Jenna and Blake were more than friends. That is your interpretation of the material, which others do not necessarily share. In fact, your entire argument rests on _your interpretation_ of the material - which is okay! - except that you seem to want to present it as fact, while denying others the right to interpret the available material in another way. If you want to argue fact versus interpretation, you have to be able to draw the distinction in your _own_ argument, not just other people's.
For example, Freudian interpretation is not inherent fact; for that matter, IIUC, Freud has fallen well out of favour in the professional psych community. A rocket does not _equal_ a phallus. Symbols can sometimes illustrate reality; they do not ever define it. That is a shade of difference I think you are missing.
Seriously, I think Blake's 7 in general treated women pretty well, and gave us some memorable female charaters. That however still doesn't excuse this episode, in the same way that it doesn't excuse Power.
I don't think that Deliverance needs an excuse. As I've pointed out, I think it's perfectly reasonable to have a weaker female character and a stronger male character 25% of the time - it doesn't happen in B7 nearly that often. I simply don't feel offended or threatened by occasional non-heroic portrayals of women. If you do, that's your prerogative, but please don't insist that the rest of us must.
I also think it's pretty absurd to complain about Meegat, when third/fourth series Servalan is IMO the most blatantly misogynistic portrayal of a female I have ever seen in an SF series regular. She is (IMHO) an evil, sadistic, overly sexualized, emasculating bitch-queen whose sanity is questionable - a classic expression of male fantasies/fears; and to see intelligent women embracing her as a strong, admirable portrayal of womanhood - well, it's odd, to say the least.
[2] The rocket is rocket-shaped - well, duh. And barring wings, so are airplanes and birds. If basic aerodynamics are sexist, take it up with the universe. On top of that, two words: stock footage.
Well, duh, it's only a bloody rocket because the author bloody specifies it as such. Stock footage has nothing to do with it, they could have used model work, you know. I think a point's being missed here. OK, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but given that what we have here isn't just a spaceship taking off, it's a man firing off his rocket in order to provide a woman with children... I think I'd better stop there :-).
See my above comment re Freud. A cigar is almost always just a cigar. And don't be disingenuous; stock footage was cheaper than model work, which would have been a concern, particularly in the first season.
[3] Meegat is female - well, if one wants to see entrusting a vitally important job - the saving of an entire race - to a woman as misogynist, then I guess there's no way to prevent one from seeing what one wishes to.
But the job isn't entrusted to her, it's entrusted to *Avon*!
No, Avon's job isn't possible without Meegat; she's the one entrusted with relaying the wishes of her people to the rocket-launcher - whether that were Avon, Jenna, or someone else. This isn't a case of Avon marginalizing Meegat, or Terry Nation marginalizing Meegat; it's a case of _you_ marginalizing Meegat.
There's also no indication that all of those who
held the position were female.
Beside the point. The point is, the author made that particular character female.
25% rule. Nation could have flipped a coin, for all you know. It is just as sexist to insist that all female characters be strong/admirable/whatever-you-like, as to insist that none of them be.
[4] Meegat can't launch the rocket - her entire race can't launch the rocket, so construing this as sexist is _ludicrous_.
Fair enough. But, the point is, the author has set up a scenario where all the men in her society are inadequate, so she has to wait for some stranger to come along and fire off her rocket for her.
If Meegat and the men in her society are equally unable to perform this action, the situation cannot reasonably be perceived as sexist, but at best societist (for lack of a better word). You are perceiving it as sexist because you _want_ to.
Again, too, remember that this is all what the *author* is saying. Meegat's society doesn't exist outside of his mind, and other people's later rationalisations have nothing to do with it.
But that would include your rationalizations. You can no more read Terry Nation's mind than anybody else can. Quite apart from that, you appear to be blurring the lines between Deliverance-/Nation-/Avon- is misogynistic. Those may indeed be interrelated, but they are not the same, you know.
Go have a face-to-face conversation with God, and see if you do as well. [Honesty forces me to point out that it's Vila and Gan who bring up the idea of God; Meegat never suggests such a thing.]
Hang on, if Meegat never suggests such a thing, how come *you're* assuming she thinks he's God?
I'm not; it's mentioned in the last scene by Cally and Avon. And a correction; it's Gan who brings it up, then Avon later, in response to a comment from Vila. See, I had double-checked it and still made a mistake.
[7] She picked Avon - perceptive of her. How long would you have to be in a room with those three to decide which was the dominant male? Not long, I'll wager.
And so she naturally has to prostrate herself in front of the dominant male? Sounds like you're recognising that there's a sexual(/sexist?) element to all this, even while you're denying it.
:) Sorry, but that's just a reference to 'Sand', for my own amusement. As several people have pointed out, this is a religious dynamic, not a sexual one.
And the final scene makes it quite clear that Meegat's incorrect impressions were cleared up before they left.
Erm, which scene was this then?
As I said, the last one:
CALLY: Did she really think you were a god? AVON: For a while.
Which IMO clearly implies _not permanently_.
[10] Avon didn't take Meegat and/or her people to safety on another planet - there is no indication that Meegat and her people (who presumably include both genders, so again this doesn't carry any inherent misogyny) wanted or asked to go. Meegat's people wanted the rocket launched; they _got what they asked for_.
But we *don't* know how her people felt. All we deal with is one bloody character. Let's say aliens come to this planet and the first political figure they make contact with, who they then take as spokesperson for the entire species, is the Pope. He's not going to be representing *my* feelings, for a start.
An absurd comparison. Meegat was chosen to represent her hundred-or-so people to the strangers from the stars. That was what she was waiting to do. The Pope has not been chosen to represent the several billion inhabitants of Earth to alien visitors.
Quite apart from that, if a political spokesperson has to represent the feelings or opinions of everyone for whom he speaks, you've just thrown democracy right out the window - along with pretty much every other form of government.
As for Blake, he never even met her. How do you know that, had Blake been in that situation, he wouldn't have extended the offer?
<sigh> Here you go assuming your inferences as fact again. We don't know that Blake didn't meet her, that Avon didn't invite Meegat to go with them, that Blake didn't deliver an impassioned speech to the entire race, and the scavengers as well, pleading with tears in his eyes and a tremulous voice, begging them to let Liberator carry them away. There is no information either way, and your interpretation that they weren't asked is no more inherently valid than another fan's interpretation that they were. If you want to be convincing, you need to present some _evidence_ from within the series, either episodic or character-centric, that supports your interpretation. So far, you're making baseless claims - do you really not see the difference? The fact that I have never seen an intelligent member of an alien race does not prove that there is no intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
Anyway, without all these complex and elaborate rationalisations, the story stands: A woman needs a man to fire off her rocket and fertilise her race. A man comes along, fulfils this need, then smegs off, leaving her on a radiation-soaked planet without even asking if she, or anyone else she knows for that matter, wants his number. And then he has the gall to go on about the responsibility of leadership afterwards. Really sensitive, Avon.
No, that's an interpretation of the story. The facts of the story are closer to this: a technologically collapsed race needs a member of a technologically advanced race to launch a rocket which their ancestors built and seeded. A rather self-important (male) member of a technologically advanced race comes along and agrees to push the buttons when asked by a (female) member of the technologically collapsed race. No information is given about what happened to any of the members of the technologically collapsed race afterwards. (And even with my sincere effort to be factual, the above undoubtedly contains some interpretative bias; that's the nature of the observation.)
Avon does NOT go on about the responsibility of leadership afterward. That is MY interpretation of the subtext of the final scene.
Surely, Wendy, you can't be as surprised as you seem to imply that not everybody agrees 100% with you about this? Why ask for opinions, then? Anyway, this has been interesting, and I hope you don't think I mean to be getting at you, because I don't.
Mistral