Alright. Caught episodes 7 and 8 of American Horror story a couple of days ago, and taken together I’m actually really annoyed with the way the story is going. My reasons are split up into a couple of posts, just because the rant about one particular issue was getting a bit long.
Note that Tate is an exception to the tendency discussed below.
I hadn’t realized how much the haunts were being presented as stereotypically feminine until the whole thing with Tate being some kind of devoted breeder came up. There’s Moira, sure; there’s Chad; Nora and Hayden who are both all about the overwhelming desire for a baby, and are willing to gaslight[1] Vivien to get it; moving into ones whose names I can’t remember, there’s Chad’s lover, the two nurses, one of the women from the home invasion, and the man from the home invasion.
Okay. Chad. Let’s discuss Chad. If there’s a character who wants a perfect home, is obsessed with a man who used to be their devoted partner but who’s now out sleeping around, wants to be loved, and at the crux of a huge fight screams “Why are you doing this? I wanted to have a baby with you!” I think it is not unreasonable to say the character is being presented as a stereotypical female, and that that stereotype is an old and unfair one.
So, for the haunts–the named ones, the ones that do something–you’ve got three characters obsessed with having a baby (two who spend a lot of time focusing on their lovely homes, one who’s a shrieking jilted harridan), one who looks like an incredibly desirable woman either to anyone who’s male or anyone who’s interested in women[2], and a cheating bastard who hardly shows up except to show what Chad’s going through because he’s off chasing men. Every single one of them is focused on and reacting to and needing and defined by what a man did or can do for them, and it’s really annoying. It’s a step up from “girls that have sex get stabbed a lot and die screaming, but only after you get to see them un(der)dressed,” but that step up is only in terms of complexity, not in clue.
And then there’s Tate. But that’s another issue.
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[1] Is the past tense of this “gaslighted” or “gaslit”? I wouldn’t wonder except that it’s a verb based on the play Gas Light, and I’m not sure if the title should be modified.
[2] I am actually rather curious about which it is.