DirtyBadWrong!
Jan. 28th, 2005 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedeadlyhookI wish I could think of some occasion to refer to the title of one of my latest pieces of spam mail, FiLLherTunnelTight, because it's just so darn fun-nee, but I guess just coming out and saying it is the best I can do. And oh, TeeVee in the background playing that Clint Eastwood/Shirley Maclaine movie Two Mules for Sister Sara, and the Clint character just piped up with "well, that's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick," which also happens to be one of my dad's signature sayings. Haw. He's got a variant, too, that something is "better than a kick in the foot," which for some reason strikes me as even more hilarious.
Still working on the next chappy of my William story - as I get closer to the end of things, I inevitably tend to slow down due to extreme pickiness, and I think this one has maybe two chapters left to it. I feel some shame over not doing a better job of contributing to the surreal little exercise of Rabbit Hole Day (I'd planned a nice little Buffy dream sequence for "Does It Have to Mean Something?" that unfortunately didn't come together in time), but it's so unusual for me to post seven chapters of something in four days that I'll give myself a pass there.
And now, just because it has to be done. (Beware of extreme airing of ISSUES.)
First off, it didn't exactly escape my notice that this episode aired on the same day that Katie Couric of the Today show kicks off her series on a journalistic exploration of teen sex. A quick check of The WB's website for the show confirms the connection - a very helpful link to www.teenpregnancy.org has a front-page boost for the episode in question as part of a national campaign between "The WB, People magazine, and NBC" to help parents talk to their kids about sex. And so we get the January 26 episode of Smallville, titled "Unsafe."
Is "Unsafe" about teen sex? Boy howdy, is it. What conclusions does it draw? Um, look at the title. Now ponder on the fact that one of the two writing credits on this episode goes to Steven S. DeKnight, the fellow we Buffy fans have to thank for penning "Seeing Red," and whose career arc seems to be shaping up to be go-to guy for making young adults absolutely terrified of their own sexuality.
Am I being a bit unfair here to poor DeKnight, who I'd otherwise call a very talented writer? Let's take a look. (Spoilers, most definitely.) The episode revolves around a character introduced last season - Alicia, a teleporting Meteor Freak who Toys and I had dubbed SwimFanGirl on her first appearance because she immediately became obsessed with Clark and started stalking him in the kind of obsessive way only Lana usually gets subjected to. (Then she got all you-can't-have-him-he's-mine with Lana, which also got our cheers, because it was funny.) In short, SwimFanGirl and Clark hit it off pretty well, got pretty sexy with each other, and we kinda liked her... and then she had to go to the insane asylum because of the whole going-after-Lana thing, durn it. Did I mention that Clark used his powers in front of her, so she knows his "secret"? Okay, then.
So anyway, SwimFanGirl comes back, apparently All Better Now. She and Clark sort of pick up again where they left off - it's all very cute and sweet, and they make a pretty nice couple. But since this episode is about the dangers of Teen!Sex, things... go... horribly wrong.
Now, in the middle of all this, we also get the story of Lana and her new ParisBoyriend, who is so boring I can't even remember his name, and in a situation sorta-kinda like the one with Willow and Oz, way back when, Lana wants ParisBoyfriend to be her "first." Because, as this episode tells us, despite all the months frolicking in Paris and Sexy!Naked!Lana! taking hot showers from the season premiere, Lana is still a virgin. So are, as we find out in short order, both SwimFanGirl and Clark (!). Yes, Clark, who spent an entire summer being DarkClark in Metropolis while juiced up on Red Kryptonite. Apparently, even with all that club-hopping, and no matter how many times by now we've seen his bare chest, Clark got no trim, even during his stint as a motorcycle-riding bad boy. Yeah, that's totally likely.
So actually, the only non-virgin in this scenario is, in fact, Chloe - yes, Chloe, who apparently can be portrayed as a big ol' slut because she's an original character for the TV series. Chloe got busy while interning at the Daily Planet with a guy named "Jimmy" who wore a bow tie. So unless I'm reading the tea leaves wrong, we're being told that Chloe gave up her cherry to Jimmy Olsen, the future "Superman's friend" with the watch that goes "zee zee zee zee." And regretted it. How's that for a romantic memory?
At any rate, we get a Touching Talk between Lana and Chloe, where Chloe encourages Lana to wait until she's ready, but of course Lana wants to go ahead and do it anyway, and so she arranges her candlelit love nest and presents herself to ParisBoyfriend wearing an oversize men's shirt - ooh, sex-ay! But ParisBoyfriend - and for the sake of argument, I'm going to omit going into the creep factor involved with him being a coach at her high school, because both characters are technically "over 18" - delivers a Very Special Speech of a sort that one never hears outside the pocket universe of TV, and turns Lana down in the midst of unbuttoning her blouse. Crisis resolved. Lana stays pure.
Meanwhile, back with Clark and SwimFanGirl, things are gettin' serious. But instead of just bumping uglies in Clark's barn loft to get their relationship rolling, SwimFanGirl, for reasons not terribly well explained, decides to give Clark a necklace of Red Kryptonite beads to turn him into eeevil DarkClark again. Then Clark promptly takes the crown for Squarest Evil Character Ever by a large margin over even the saintliest incarnations of Spike by proposing marriage before getting down to the humpty dance! So the happy couple teleports to Vegas, get hitched in a wedding chapel, and proceed to bridal suite for lots of pretty writhing between bare-chested Clark and lingerie-clad SwimFanGirl.
All this, of course, is leading up to the horrible train wreck that is to come - at some point in all these gyrations, the necklace comes off, and Clark is horrified. He's been "drugged"! (He literally says this.) Yes, Red Kryptonite = Super Roofies. SwimFanGirl whines that she just wanted to make sure he would stay with her. Blah blah blah preach preach preach and this is where sluttiness gets you, boys and girls. Better just to keep it zipped. And just in case you didn't catch onto the abstinence message, birth control is never mentioned once in the episode. Because you're not supposed to be having sex anyway, so why would you need to know? QED.
We get an intolerably shrill speech from Ma Kent about how Clark let down the team and disappointed everyone by running away to Vegas to get married (hey kids, don't be like Britney Spears!) and to wrap it all up, an actual post-episode PSA from Chloe to tell you where to go to get more information about teen sex. Yes, the one character portrayed as not a virgin and regretting it urges you to find out more about why you shouldn't do it. The end.
Now, character-wise, there really isn't much to say here - Clark's overbearing moral posture has by now gotten pretty tiring much in the same way Buffy's did, and the episode really goes for the guilt, informing us in so many words that SwimFanGirl, even though she ends up taking a bullet for Clark just to protect his secret (and he's invulnerable!), is dirtybadwrong and absolves Clark of guilt via Red Kryptonite. It made me even more disgusted with Clark than usual because of course the woman is to blame for tempting Adam with the Apple, yakkety yak. No one really comes off well here, and there's a whole buffet of guilt flavors to go around. Girls can feel shamed by their own hormones turning them into hot-panted hootchies, while guys can contemplate the testicle-shriveling option of being that guy that the girl remembers later with regret, e.g., bow-tie-wearing Jimmy. Unless, of course, you're the victim of near sex crime, like Clark, and thus blameless. Cue the sound of my teeth grinding.
I'm not going to get into the issue of teen pregnancy and teen sex, which was what this episode was designed to confront. Obviously, both of those are important issues. But color me cynical, but is the best way to address them involve hijacking characters from a show that normally revels in titillating its audience with Tom Welling's bare chest and episodes like "Kryp-Tuck" in which we see lots of bare teen skin in sexy shower action? One guilt trip does not a coherent argument make, and I've become a little bit oversensitive to unsubtle attempts to manipulate the audience in this way, especially when it comes to preaching at me about morals.
Sex is bad. Haven't you heard?
Still working on the next chappy of my William story - as I get closer to the end of things, I inevitably tend to slow down due to extreme pickiness, and I think this one has maybe two chapters left to it. I feel some shame over not doing a better job of contributing to the surreal little exercise of Rabbit Hole Day (I'd planned a nice little Buffy dream sequence for "Does It Have to Mean Something?" that unfortunately didn't come together in time), but it's so unusual for me to post seven chapters of something in four days that I'll give myself a pass there.
And now, just because it has to be done. (Beware of extreme airing of ISSUES.)
First off, it didn't exactly escape my notice that this episode aired on the same day that Katie Couric of the Today show kicks off her series on a journalistic exploration of teen sex. A quick check of The WB's website for the show confirms the connection - a very helpful link to www.teenpregnancy.org has a front-page boost for the episode in question as part of a national campaign between "The WB, People magazine, and NBC" to help parents talk to their kids about sex. And so we get the January 26 episode of Smallville, titled "Unsafe."
Is "Unsafe" about teen sex? Boy howdy, is it. What conclusions does it draw? Um, look at the title. Now ponder on the fact that one of the two writing credits on this episode goes to Steven S. DeKnight, the fellow we Buffy fans have to thank for penning "Seeing Red," and whose career arc seems to be shaping up to be go-to guy for making young adults absolutely terrified of their own sexuality.
Am I being a bit unfair here to poor DeKnight, who I'd otherwise call a very talented writer? Let's take a look. (Spoilers, most definitely.) The episode revolves around a character introduced last season - Alicia, a teleporting Meteor Freak who Toys and I had dubbed SwimFanGirl on her first appearance because she immediately became obsessed with Clark and started stalking him in the kind of obsessive way only Lana usually gets subjected to. (Then she got all you-can't-have-him-he's-mine with Lana, which also got our cheers, because it was funny.) In short, SwimFanGirl and Clark hit it off pretty well, got pretty sexy with each other, and we kinda liked her... and then she had to go to the insane asylum because of the whole going-after-Lana thing, durn it. Did I mention that Clark used his powers in front of her, so she knows his "secret"? Okay, then.
So anyway, SwimFanGirl comes back, apparently All Better Now. She and Clark sort of pick up again where they left off - it's all very cute and sweet, and they make a pretty nice couple. But since this episode is about the dangers of Teen!Sex, things... go... horribly wrong.
Now, in the middle of all this, we also get the story of Lana and her new ParisBoyriend, who is so boring I can't even remember his name, and in a situation sorta-kinda like the one with Willow and Oz, way back when, Lana wants ParisBoyfriend to be her "first." Because, as this episode tells us, despite all the months frolicking in Paris and Sexy!Naked!Lana! taking hot showers from the season premiere, Lana is still a virgin. So are, as we find out in short order, both SwimFanGirl and Clark (!). Yes, Clark, who spent an entire summer being DarkClark in Metropolis while juiced up on Red Kryptonite. Apparently, even with all that club-hopping, and no matter how many times by now we've seen his bare chest, Clark got no trim, even during his stint as a motorcycle-riding bad boy. Yeah, that's totally likely.
So actually, the only non-virgin in this scenario is, in fact, Chloe - yes, Chloe, who apparently can be portrayed as a big ol' slut because she's an original character for the TV series. Chloe got busy while interning at the Daily Planet with a guy named "Jimmy" who wore a bow tie. So unless I'm reading the tea leaves wrong, we're being told that Chloe gave up her cherry to Jimmy Olsen, the future "Superman's friend" with the watch that goes "zee zee zee zee." And regretted it. How's that for a romantic memory?
At any rate, we get a Touching Talk between Lana and Chloe, where Chloe encourages Lana to wait until she's ready, but of course Lana wants to go ahead and do it anyway, and so she arranges her candlelit love nest and presents herself to ParisBoyfriend wearing an oversize men's shirt - ooh, sex-ay! But ParisBoyfriend - and for the sake of argument, I'm going to omit going into the creep factor involved with him being a coach at her high school, because both characters are technically "over 18" - delivers a Very Special Speech of a sort that one never hears outside the pocket universe of TV, and turns Lana down in the midst of unbuttoning her blouse. Crisis resolved. Lana stays pure.
Meanwhile, back with Clark and SwimFanGirl, things are gettin' serious. But instead of just bumping uglies in Clark's barn loft to get their relationship rolling, SwimFanGirl, for reasons not terribly well explained, decides to give Clark a necklace of Red Kryptonite beads to turn him into eeevil DarkClark again. Then Clark promptly takes the crown for Squarest Evil Character Ever by a large margin over even the saintliest incarnations of Spike by proposing marriage before getting down to the humpty dance! So the happy couple teleports to Vegas, get hitched in a wedding chapel, and proceed to bridal suite for lots of pretty writhing between bare-chested Clark and lingerie-clad SwimFanGirl.
All this, of course, is leading up to the horrible train wreck that is to come - at some point in all these gyrations, the necklace comes off, and Clark is horrified. He's been "drugged"! (He literally says this.) Yes, Red Kryptonite = Super Roofies. SwimFanGirl whines that she just wanted to make sure he would stay with her. Blah blah blah preach preach preach and this is where sluttiness gets you, boys and girls. Better just to keep it zipped. And just in case you didn't catch onto the abstinence message, birth control is never mentioned once in the episode. Because you're not supposed to be having sex anyway, so why would you need to know? QED.
We get an intolerably shrill speech from Ma Kent about how Clark let down the team and disappointed everyone by running away to Vegas to get married (hey kids, don't be like Britney Spears!) and to wrap it all up, an actual post-episode PSA from Chloe to tell you where to go to get more information about teen sex. Yes, the one character portrayed as not a virgin and regretting it urges you to find out more about why you shouldn't do it. The end.
Now, character-wise, there really isn't much to say here - Clark's overbearing moral posture has by now gotten pretty tiring much in the same way Buffy's did, and the episode really goes for the guilt, informing us in so many words that SwimFanGirl, even though she ends up taking a bullet for Clark just to protect his secret (and he's invulnerable!), is dirtybadwrong and absolves Clark of guilt via Red Kryptonite. It made me even more disgusted with Clark than usual because of course the woman is to blame for tempting Adam with the Apple, yakkety yak. No one really comes off well here, and there's a whole buffet of guilt flavors to go around. Girls can feel shamed by their own hormones turning them into hot-panted hootchies, while guys can contemplate the testicle-shriveling option of being that guy that the girl remembers later with regret, e.g., bow-tie-wearing Jimmy. Unless, of course, you're the victim of near sex crime, like Clark, and thus blameless. Cue the sound of my teeth grinding.
I'm not going to get into the issue of teen pregnancy and teen sex, which was what this episode was designed to confront. Obviously, both of those are important issues. But color me cynical, but is the best way to address them involve hijacking characters from a show that normally revels in titillating its audience with Tom Welling's bare chest and episodes like "Kryp-Tuck" in which we see lots of bare teen skin in sexy shower action? One guilt trip does not a coherent argument make, and I've become a little bit oversensitive to unsubtle attempts to manipulate the audience in this way, especially when it comes to preaching at me about morals.
Sex is bad. Haven't you heard?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 08:43 pm (UTC)My first guess was that this approach - all abstinence, no contraception - might be an ideological mandate handed down by the planners of this whole teen pregnancy campaign, but on further research it doesn't look like it. The focus of the www.teenpregnancy.org site is mainly on delaying the age at which teenagers become sexually active, and the accompanying PDF documents make the points that kids who start early are less likely to use contraception, and that programs that address both abstinence and contraception are highly effective not just at reducing teen pregnancy, but also at putting off the start of sexual activity (thus overriding the puritan objection that talking about safe sex will only encourage the little bastards).
In other words, wherever the Smallville writers are getting this apparent anti-contraception bias, it's not from the teen pregnancy campaign they're supposedly supporting. I think we have to put the blame for this one squarely on the writers, which as you note gives us a whole other perspective on the infamous "Seeing Red." Personally, I'm taking DeKnight off the Christmas card list this year...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 11:03 pm (UTC)That was my guess too. Disheartening to find out instead that no, it's just a conscious decision to lay off all the blame on writers who feel like blaming the teens themselves for having desire, and more to the point, the female teens for enticing the virtuous men.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 11:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 11:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-29 12:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-29 12:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-29 08:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 09:09 pm (UTC)And, best show evah on the dangers of teen sex? BtVS - Season 2, Innocence. Buffy sleeps with Angel and he totally changes his behavior, killing Willow's fish and everything... (Yeah, like he wasn't obsesso-boy before that.)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 11:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 09:50 pm (UTC)It's when they choose to deal with abstinance in such an unrealistic and insulting manner (and as the only option) that pisses me off. I mean, I could probably buy Clark remaining a virgin because of his fear of the person he's close to finding out the truth about him or him inadvertantly hurting her in some way. But, then the writers present Clark with the opportunity to have a relationship with someone who knows the truth, is special in her own way, and who he actually has chemistry with! And while it's OK to titilate the teen audiance when the moment arrives have actual intercourse they then have to show how wrong (i.e. evil) this is.
I'm still trying to figure out if the Lana storyline is more or less disturbing. It's a cliche, but if you can't say the word "sex" you really aren't mature enough to be having it so it's best she didn't. (And was that DeKnight's fantasy - 100 candles and a man's dress shirt? Someone needs to quit watching the soaps and get out more.) All through this I was reminded of a flashback episode of Friends in which Monica refers to losing ones virginity as 'giving up your flower'. I was just waiting for those words to come out of Lana's mouth.
Poor Chloe is the closest thing we have to an adult here and for that she gets to live a lifetime of regret for apparently not waiting for THE one (and if Bryan Singer gets his way turning poor Jimmy gay ;).
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 10:00 pm (UTC)I'm casting my vote for "more." Considering that teens being pressured into having sex by older partners is a genuine problem - and one of the main things this teen pregnancy campaign is trying to combat - it seems downright perverse for the writers to give us a scenario in which a naughty nymphet tries to lure a virtuous older man into her bedroom, only to have him nobly refuse...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 10:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 11:15 pm (UTC)Yes! Why wasn't that the avenue taken here? Must it be implied that any woman who would want to get with Clark wants to take advantage of him? Talk about unrealistic. And it does nothing to help our picture of Clark as a hero, since his reaction is all about his feelings being hurt.
And while it's OK to titilate the teen audiance when the moment arrives have actual intercourse they then have to show how wrong (i.e. evil) this is.
I think that's what really pissed me off the most. I knew the moment the clothes started coming off that nothing was going to happen. I could see it coming from a mile off. It was a huge tease, just a setup for a punchline.
All through this I was reminded of a flashback episode of Friends in which Monica refers to losing ones virginity as 'giving up your flower'. I was just waiting for those words to come out of Lana's mouth.
That scene had this extra-creepy quality of delicate-woman-on-a-pedestal added by the Older Man quotient, definitely, since he gallantly defends her honor so she shall not be besmirched before her time. Again, if you're trying to help real teens, maybe it would be an idea to go with something real teens are more likely to encounter?
Poor Chloe is the closest thing we have to an adult here and for that she gets to live a lifetime of regret for apparently not waiting for THE one (and if Bryan Singer gets his way turning poor Jimmy gay ;).
Argh! I was so mad for Chloe this ep!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 09:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-28 11:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-29 02:06 am (UTC)::is happy to be European:: in this respect.
Sex is normal and morally neutral - it's how you treat others that matters. Condoms keep you both alive.
And owning ones own sexuality is key to being a grown up. Something it appears will never appear in any of the ex-ME writers lexicons. Which is both deeply sad and deeply fucked-up.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-29 02:13 am (UTC)I'd love to think this mindset will wear off with time, but for the time being, I'm horrified to see this kind of thing propigated and sustained, like a bad hangover.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-29 02:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-29 04:04 am (UTC)Re. contraception, I seem to recall Anya bringing condoms when she slept with Xander the first time! (Many cheers!) Did Buffy or Riley ever mention contraception?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-29 09:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-29 09:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-29 01:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-29 07:20 am (UTC)You and Toys have pretty much laid (heh) it down, so I'm just adding my vote. DeKnight has been off my Christmas card list since SR, btw. And what really makes me laugh about even the idea of this episode is recalling what Omar the TWoP recapper once said about it: "This show is gay. This show is so gay. If this show were any gayer, it would be about a design firm in San Francisco." Maybe they should stick to the sub-text.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-29 01:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-01-29 01:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-29 03:45 pm (UTC)