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.

Comments

[paranoidangel]

I didn't get round to watching this till last night because I can't stay up that late, but I thought it was quite a good power for her. The woman who plays her said in my TV guide that she thought it was a bit of a bizarre power, and I can't work out if it'll be useful. But I can see what a difference it'll make to her life, just as everyone else's powers make a difference to theirs. In the scene where they have music over they show her getting ready to go out and then realising she can't it made it clear how much it'll change her life. Since she clearly used sex, or at least the promise of it, to manipulate people, it's a good thing in that it stops her from doing that.

And given that we don't know what that annoying bloke's power is (or if he has one) or why they got these powers and the probation officer got possessed, I'm interested to see where they're taking it.

[usuallyhats]

Although I don't like her using sex to manipulate people, I'm still pretty uncomfortable with the idea of stopping her using the threat of rape. The montage at the end made me feel like instead of getting a power, she'd got a limitation. :/

I was looking forward to seeing where the series was going, but the handling of Alisha's storyline really put me off.

[paranoidangel]

I think that's supposed to be the point though - all their powers are limitations.

[usuallyhats]

I can see how Kelly's telepathy and (*brief pause while I look up the other characters' names*) Simon's invisibility can count as limitations, but I'm not sure that Curtis's is. And all their powers are also strengths, whereas Alisha's... isn't, really.