Death Note 17... very minor spoilers.
Mar. 7th, 2008 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlockIt really bugs me that the only female in this cast is an insane Bratz doll come to life. Where are all the women? This whole show is so... male. I usually don't pay attention, but it's incredibly obvious here. Everything about this is masculine, from the simple things like an all-male cast or the lone female as a negative stereotype, to the subtler things, like the way L and Kira think, and the way the author explains things. I don't believe that certain things are strictly masculine or feminine, but the show certainly fits the comon stereotypes of those labels. This show may be daring in its anti-protagonist and anti-antagonist choices and in its casual treatment of murder, but it's not nearly as subvertive as it could be. It's boys playing a boy game against boys, where the only girl gets used as a tool for the male characters' plot advancement.
I know that the cast is cops+Kira and the majority of cops are men, but female police officers do exist and they could do with having a few on this task force. If nothing else, at least to provide a different perspective in analysis. It seems a very basic distinction to make, but it's an important one if you want to have a full view of any situation. They should find themselves a female mathematician or logician, and a female psychologist too. For that matter, this whole team should have more intellectual fields represented than just criminal justice aherents.
I have another thought, too: if L were really as smart as he supposedly is, he'd have an entirely separate investigation team acting and reporting to him, completely unconnected to the police task force. He's too vulnerable and the information/scope too limited with just these people. Plus, he looks like the type to have a control group, like in any social experiment. In some ways he's using Light as a control when it comes to comparing the task force's theories, but that's a double-edged sword considering how suspect he is.
Nobody can build a mega sky-scraper in a few months. Pipe dream, and not a very good one. I hope we're supposed to believe that he bought and refitted it, not built it from the ground up. Even when you're rushing materials and financed by the best, shit like that takes 2 or more years to finish from cement slab to indoor networked security system.
I know that the cast is cops+Kira and the majority of cops are men, but female police officers do exist and they could do with having a few on this task force. If nothing else, at least to provide a different perspective in analysis. It seems a very basic distinction to make, but it's an important one if you want to have a full view of any situation. They should find themselves a female mathematician or logician, and a female psychologist too. For that matter, this whole team should have more intellectual fields represented than just criminal justice aherents.
I have another thought, too: if L were really as smart as he supposedly is, he'd have an entirely separate investigation team acting and reporting to him, completely unconnected to the police task force. He's too vulnerable and the information/scope too limited with just these people. Plus, he looks like the type to have a control group, like in any social experiment. In some ways he's using Light as a control when it comes to comparing the task force's theories, but that's a double-edged sword considering how suspect he is.
Nobody can build a mega sky-scraper in a few months. Pipe dream, and not a very good one. I hope we're supposed to believe that he bought and refitted it, not built it from the ground up. Even when you're rushing materials and financed by the best, shit like that takes 2 or more years to finish from cement slab to indoor networked security system.
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even the women don't notice...
Date: 2008-03-09 05:45 pm (UTC)You'd be surprised by how few fans talk about it at all, regardless of the gender. It's the controversial questions of morality that usually spark interesting DN discussion (and the not-so-discussion), not any of the weaknesses in the series itself. To be perfectly honest, I rarely visit any boards for DN because I'm convinced that half the fandom is CRAZY (some believe in Light's cause, orz... doesn't this sound familiar.) Still, the few times I do snoop around for anything DN-related, I always stumble upon interesting DN discussion about morality or capital punishment, never once on a discussion about how few women there are.
I have a few female friends who are huge fans of Death Note but don't think of the lack of women as a failing. I have a sneaking suspicion that they think Naomi's existence was enough to fill the Respectable Women quota when it didn't come close.
Gender-bender! Write it, write it, write it! Jumping over to Hikaru no Go, though, I had a similar thought: if one of the main characters had been female, its appeal would've been off the charts. After all, both Hikaru no GO and Death Note take place in very male-dominated settings - well, at least HnG does. Death's Note setting is much more male-dominated in literature than in reality. HnG's lack of women isn't nearly as bad as DN's, either; the ONE female Go player in HnG is very cool and plays for no one but herself, and the mothers are saintly, very underappreciated by their Go-minded sons/husbands. None of them are as wretched as the woman who shows up in the second half of Death Note. But nevertheless! I found the lack of women in Hikaru no Go very disappointing, if less malicious than in DN; even if there are infinitely more men playing professional Go, both the author AND the Go expert/consultant are female.