From: Penberriss Wendy S. penberriss@yahoo.com
--- Neil Faulkner N.Faulkner@tesco.net wrote:
No, actually. Firstly, if it's anyone's rocket, it's hers, not his.
No, it's not hers, it's one she's looking after.
It's definitely not Avon's, though.
Anyway, even if it is hers, it obviously takes a man to push the right buttons.
It takes *someone* to push the right buttons. And since the episode seems to have been devised to get initially Blake - then later changed to Avon - to confront the responsibilities of godlike status, that someone is going to have to be a man.
Secondly, he's not providing her with children, he's sending them away (okay, okay, so he's sending them somewhere where they can live and grow and all that shit). And they are not hers anyway
If we've already agreed that the rocket is a metaphor,
Which we haven't. I'm still unconvinced. I can see how it might be taken as a metaphor, but that doesn't mean it was intended as one (consciously or otherwise).
than the children thing can be a metaphor too, can't it? Just as he doesn't *actually* have sex with her, he perpetuates her race in some other way, so he doesn't have to *actually* get her pregnant for the equation of male action --> female perpetuation of species to read.
Depends on how you read it. Perpetuation of the species is via the brood units on the rocket, not through Meegat (who is effectively placed in the position of non-contributive onlooker). If we're going to use sexual metaphors, it might be more accurate to say that she just stands there and watches Avon have one off the wrist.
She waits, virginal, dressed in diaphanous robes, for this bloke to come along and fulfil her. What part of this *isn't* a sexual metaphor?
For someone who (rightly, IMO) criticises people for inventing details unsupported by the canon, I'm not sure how you can assert that Meegat is virginal. And earlier you complained about Avon robbing her of her reason for existing, and now suddenly he is fulfilling her.
That she waits for deliverance can be attributed to Terry Nation, who wrote the script. The diaphanous robes came from the costume department. Costume designer for this episode was apparently ... Rupert Jarvis (a man). Well, well, well. We can only speculate on how different a Barbara Lane/June Hudson design might have been.
I think it's clear by now that the subliminal message of the text is so subliminal that most people haven't even noticed it before (though as Una points out, that might only make it more insidious).
I agree, and especially with Una's point-- but why *is* it that people miss out on this subliminal message? Perhaps because these messages are so accepted in our culture that we don't question them.
I would agree with that actually, which is why arguments like yours can be so valuable. However, the subliminal message here is almost certainly subliminal within the writer's mind too. Nation is not on a soapbox, he's just cranking out a script to meet the deadline. This doesn't exculpate the sexism in Deliverance, but it does clear Nation of deliberately promoting a sexist agenda (suggesting that he was doing so might well have alarmed him, FWIG he was a generally well-meaning bloke. Unfortunately we're no longer in a position to be able to ask him).
Isn't it devaluing a fairly insidious form of prejudice to dismiss it as simply "silly"?
Ridicule can actually be a pretty effective tactic. I've seen it shut up racists, sexists and homophobes.
there is this thread of "Oh, Avon is a *nice* guy really, he *really* wanted to save Meegat, he really did Meegat a favour by not being brutal to her..." Give me a break. Why must some people justify Avon's every action, and whitewash his nastier side?
I often wonder about that. And why Blake gets villified solely on his more questionable actions, with his better points being ignored.
this is unlikely. More probable is that Meegat is simply dumped - by Nation - after she has fulfilled her useful role within the story. Which might appear to support Wendy's case were it not for: the prisoners on Cygnus Alpha (male) ; the Decimas (alien) ; Avalon's rebels (all male, as far as was seen) ; and the slaves on Spaceworld (again, all male as far as we know.
Yes, but I'm not talking about those stories. I'm talking about Deliverance. You can't justify Avon's actions in one story by referring to his/the crew's action in others, some of which are aslo incidentally by completely different authors.
No, I restricted my list to episodes accredited to Nation.
I didn't say that she was abandoned *because* she was female. Just that she was abandoned in a way which strikes me as particularly misogynist.
I think it's your assertions of misogyny that I find particularly difficult to accomodate. Misogyny is a *hatred* of women. Deliverance, as a script, is dimissive of Meegat, and disrespectful to Meegat, but dismissiveness and disrespect do not amount to hatred. In fact, they suggest a lack of consideration, whereas hatred requires a hefty wodge of consideration. It takes effort to hate, more effort than Nation expended on this miserable script.
The least he could have done, is to insert a line to the effect of "So Meegat and her people decided to stay, then?" They did something similar in Children of Auron after all, quickly wrapping up what had happened to the survivors.
Which all points to Deliverance being a rushed effort, too rushed to consider the implications of its own subtext.
Neil