contains rage

[usuallyhats]

There is this new program on E4, Misfits, about superheroes, which I'd been looking forward to because yay superheroes! And then I actually watched it. [trigger warning, also spoilers] I... honestly cannot believe that they actually gave Alisha the "super" power of making people (so far, solely men) want to rape her. Lots of people were involved with making this pilot, and not one of them went "that is maybe a bit Incredibly Awful"? Really? Apparently all the characters' powers reflect who they were before they got them - the runner can turn back time, the overlooked guy can turn invisible à la Marcie Ross on Buffy - which just makes it even worse. The thinking seems to be: "hey, if she will look/act like that, men can't help what they do to her!" Disgusting. The other woman, Kelly, is telepathic, which rings alarm bells for me since it's a bit "women = empathic! intuitive!", not to mention (currently) a rather passive power, but as problems go that pales into insignificance next to the wrongness of Alisha's power. (Argh, i just looked at the Misfits page on Facebook. Each character has been given a single characteristic to describe them: the men are variously athletic, lippy or quiet whereas Alisha is "the hot one" and Kelly is "the chavvy one", because they are defined solely by their appearance. With bonus classism.) The F-Word has a post on this up, they are more eloquent than me, as ever.