Supergirl pilot has leaked and it's absolutely terrible

[Skatologist]

Eh, it was okay. I'm not clamoring for any more from the show, so I'll just wait how people respond to the next 4 or so episodes. I guess a lot of the dialogue seemed cliched in the cringey kind of cliche way. It definitely wasn't entirely like that, but it was noticeable. I am pleasantly surprised to see two black gentlemen having major/speaking roles in a series though.[footnote]How many white folks are angry Jimmy Olsen and Hank Henshaw are black? Now I want to ask does this make you more or less angry that they changed the characters' most common personality traits from what I've read about them? [/footnote] I've rarely seen that out of entertainment either made by or intended to be for blacks.

Random waitress:
Can you believe it? A female hero! It's nice for my daughter to have someone like that to look up to!

Isn't that a little bit sexist? Like, how come Superman can't be a role model for her daughter?

I'll just try to respond to your comment in particular Aero, because I think I'd find it difficult snipping everybody into this conversation. Often when I see the "you now have someone to look up to" thing, I usually take it as you can strive to be that thing (a hero, an astronaut, a scientist, a president, etc.). It becomes a bit more difficult when you can't really "identify" with such a certain career because it would seem like the career is exclusionary to a group you are a part of (women, black, short, poor, overweight).

Take for example the current US president. When black mothers and fathers told their children that they had someone to look up to when our president took office in 2009, this did not mean that they were telling their children that all other presidents or politicians cannot influence their children or they can't have them as role models; rather that they have someone whom they can identify with having a career previously thought to be impossible for them because they had not yet achieved it.

An obvious counter I can see to this being used is that in worlds where superheroes exist, no one should strive to be a superhero because such people are just a plain ordinary without the power that such heroes have.

 

[laggyteabag]

I will probably watch it, though, not until the whole season starts airing. I cannot say that I have high hopes, but who knows, maybe the episodes past the pilot will show a great deal of improvement. The series is just banking off the success of Arrow and The Flash, so hopefully it is at least somewhat decent, but we will of course have to wait and see.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Well, no. The point of 2nd wave feminism was to make gender not an issue. The point of 3rd wave feminism is to abolish gender structures across society, including little unimportant things like incest taboos, entirely.

Do I even want to know why you'd think such a thing?

From the queen ***** of 3rd wave feminism(Andrea Dworkin) herself

The discovery is, of course, that ?man? and ?woman? are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs. As models they are reductive, totalitarian, inappropriate to human becoming. As roles they are static, demeaning to the female, dead-ended for male and female both. . . .
I have defined heterosexuality as the ritualized behavior built on polar role definition. Intercourse with men as we know them is increasingly impossible. It requires an aborting of creativity and strength, a refusal of responsibility and freedom: a bitter personal death. It means remaining the victim, forever annihilating all self-respect. It means acting out the female role, incorporating the masochism, self-hatred, and passivity which are central to it. Unambiguous conventional heterosexual behavior is the worst betrayal of our common humanity. . . .
The incest taboo does the worst work of the culture: it teaches us the mechanisms of repressing and internalizing erotic feeling ? it forces us to develop those mechanisms in the first place; it forces us to particularize sexual feeling, so that it congeals into a need for a particular sexual ?object? ; it demands that we place the nuclear family above the human family. The destruction of the incest taboo is essential to the development of cooperative human community based on the free-flow of natural androgynous eroticism. . . .
The incest taboo can be destroyed only by destroying the nuclear family as the primary institution of the culture. The nuclear family is the school of values in a sexist, sexually repressed society. One learns what one must know: the roles, rituals, and behaviors appropriate to male-female polarity and the internalized mechanisms of sexual repression. The alternative to the nuclear family at the moment is the extended family, or tribe. The growth of tribe is part of the process of destroying particularized roles and fixed erotic identity. As people develop fluid androgynous identity, they will also develop the forms of community appropriate to it. We cannot really imagine what those forms will be. . . .
As for children, they too are erotic beings, closer to androgyny than the adults who oppress them. Children are fully capable of participating in community, and have every right to live out their own erotic impulses. In androgynous community, those impulses would retain a high degree of nonspecificity and would no doubt show the rest of us the way into sexual self-realization. The distinctions between ?children? and ?adults,? and the social institutions which enforce those distinctions, would disappear as androgynous community develops.

Then from Shulamith Firestone
https://books.google.com/books?id=PL5DmsnEeZEC&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=abolish+incest+taboo+feminism&source=bl&ots=9fSqYO1nuQ&sig=y4dxYk5nXV4P-PRioew0Khh7gI0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=I11iVc7VHoqFsAWHrYH4DA&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=abolish%20incest%20taboo%20feminism&f=false

The fact of the matter is that 3rd wave is fucking insanity incarnate. Of course, most of the people who follow it fall under the category of useful idiots that don't understand what they're advocating for, but there are plenty that do and actually believe in the insanity.

Holy crap did Andrea Dworkin actually encourage incest? Something that is known to cause systemic problems in all sexually reproducing life forms? Did she actually encourage destroying the foundation of role models that is necessary for people to come out as well adjusted people, from early life exposure to a decent homelife? Did she actually encourage pedophilia? Yes on all counts, this human is the scum of the earth...

 

[HardkorSB]

You guys are really reaching for these "gotchas". Yes a girl can look up to a guy and vice versa but when ALL your heros of particular type are male it makes it feel like being a male a requirement and you could never be like that, especially when you have people around you reinforcing that belief. Like it or not gender is still an issue and people tend to have role models of their own gender to give cues on they should act. A work is not "sexist" because it acknowledges that rather than going the idealised route where sexism is no longer an issue.

Lines like these should be said by fans of the show, not characters in the show.
This just screams "SHE'S A GIRL!!! DO YOU SEE?!? LOVE AND ADMIRE HER!!!"

 

[Skatologist]

While I'm in agreement with your general sentiment, I don't think that a work of fiction should ever outright address this unless they're intending to break the fourth wall. Aliens, Terminator 2 and The Matrix didn't do it and the movies were better for it. Power Rangers, PowerPuff Girls and Teen Titans didn't do it and the shows were better for it. And I'm pretty sure that's simply because the writers forgot about him.

Well kids should have at least one Kryptonian to look up to that isn't a psychopath, terrorizing the entire planet and doing more damage than the supposed bad guys ever did /ManOfSteelBashing

Except all those shows did episodes based around Girl Power....and they're largely considered the worst parts of them. At least in PPG's case they also had Femme Fatale screaming about feminism justifying her actions and twisting it to suit her needs to balance it out.

Really? I had been a fan of all of those programs and can't really point to "girl power" for either PPF or TT (Power Rangers has too much for me to check). It seems your PPG one you were referencing was "Equal Fights". Believe me, there were tons more episodes of PPG worse than that episode. Anyways, Lauren Faust has often been criticized for a few of her series tackling certain subject matters a bit too blatantly and often in a ham-fisted manner. That episode was a prime example of that. Anyways, I enjoy, "Members Only" much more.

Do I even want to know why you'd think such a thing?

From the queen ***** of 3rd wave feminism(Andrea Dworkin) herself

How exactly is Dworkin a 3rd wave feminist? Did she define herself as such? Did she create the term? Are 3d wave feminists even reading her works? Because all I come across is the timeline of feminism showing that was 2nd wave and radical. IE not a 3rd wave feminist.

 

[Jux]

-snip-

Ok, there's a lot going on here, so let's see if we can get through this. First off, citing two feminists from the 70's as evidence that feminists want to abolish incest as a taboo is completely unsupportive of your position, partly because neither of those women were actually 'third wave feminists' (they were considered second wave[footnote]http://bigthink.com/articles/the-waves-of-feminism "Several major sex-negative feminists emerged from the social criticism arm of the Second Wave, including anti-porn crusaders Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon."[/footnote][footnote]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_feminism "Chronologically, it can be seen within the context of second wave feminism that started in the early 1960s.[15] The primary players and the pioneers of this second wave of feminism included Shulamith Firestone, Kathie Sarachild, Ti-Grace Atkinson, Carol Hanisch, and Judith Brown."[/footnote]. Second, Dworkin actually spoke out against incest pretty strongly, saying "incest is terrifically important in understanding the condition of women. It is a crime committed against someone, a crime from which many victims never recover"[footnote]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin[/footnote]. I don't know as much about Firestone, but looking at a quick bio, it seems she had some pretty bizarre views (the cybernetics thing in particular). Third, you're being incredibly reductive with what amounts to 'waves' of feminism. Third wave feminism is comprised of several competing schools of thought that are often very much in conflict with each other. Lumping them all in as trying to make incest acceptable is at best uninformed, at worst downright dishonest.

I like that you'd backhandedly label me a 'useful idiot', but perhaps you might want to further your own education on the subject before making such sweeping, derogatory statements.

 

[Jux]

Holy crap did Andrea Dworkin actually encourage incest? Something that is known to cause systemic problems in all sexually reproducing life forms? Did she actually encourage destroying the foundation of role models that is necessary for people to come out as well adjusted people, from early life exposure to a decent homelife? Did she actually encourage pedophilia? Yes on all counts, this human is the scum of the earth...

Not quite. It's very likely this is a quote taken out of context, when you look at other things she has said on the subject of incest for a frame of reference.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Holy crap did Andrea Dworkin actually encourage incest? Something that is known to cause systemic problems in all sexually reproducing life forms? Did she actually encourage destroying the foundation of role models that is necessary for people to come out as well adjusted people, from early life exposure to a decent homelife? Did she actually encourage pedophilia? Yes on all counts, this human is the scum of the earth...

Not quite. It's very likely this is a quote taken out of context, when you look at other things she has said on the subject of incest for a frame of reference.

It still doesn't make what she said at all rational or correct. Even in the broadest and most accepting terms I can muster, I still can't condone even the tiniest things she says, even in broader context. This is why I can't take feminism as a whole seriously. Lots of good ideas. Totally tarnished by insane people who get their platform by shouting others down.

 

[Jux]

It still doesn't make what she said at all rational or correct. Even in the broadest and most accepting terms I can muster, I still can't condone even the tiniest things she says, even in broader context. This is why I can't take feminism as a whole seriously. Lots of good ideas. Totally tarnished by insane people who get their platform by shouting others down.

While Dworkin wrote some pretty influential stuff, I don't think you'll find many people now that accept her ideas wholesale. Speaking of things we can't take seriously, I can't take people seriously when they trot out that line. You uncritically accepted ravenshrikes quote without a second thought, and when presented further information, you handwaved it away. And then you used that to broadly dismiss feminism as a whole. It's a copout reaction, and you can apply it to any kind of philosophical or political stance when you cherry pick how an individual acts instead of examining the underlying ideas.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

It still doesn't make what she said at all rational or correct. Even in the broadest and most accepting terms I can muster, I still can't condone even the tiniest things she says, even in broader context. This is why I can't take feminism as a whole seriously. Lots of good ideas. Totally tarnished by insane people who get their platform by shouting others down.

While Dworkin wrote some pretty influential stuff, I don't think you'll find many people now that accept her ideas wholesale. Speaking of things we can't take seriously, I can't take people seriously when they trot out that line. You uncritically accepted ravenshrikes quote without a second thought, and when presented further information, you handwaved it away. And then you used that to broadly dismiss feminism as a whole. It's a copout reaction, and you can apply it to any kind of philosophical or political stance when you cherry pick how an individual acts instead of examining the underlying ideas.

Oh trust, me my distrust of feminism as a movement comes from more than that one quote, it's just an example of what has soured me on the label as whole. I see all sorts of objectionable things from all over feminism as a movement. There are plenty of great ideas, but there are plenty of people who gain the majority of good will, but then espouse things like Trans exclusionary view points. As smaller core movements that do specific things I can get behind, those smaller groups who actually aren't trying to wield feminism as a political weapon.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

Its not bad. Its exactly what I expected from CBS - 50% chick flick, 50% actual superhero show, trying to appeal to the widest audience possible. The pacing was a bit messy but its a pilot so that's gonna happen. There's a risk it could become a bit too Smallvilley but I think the guy from Arrow/Flash can probably pull it off.
Sure, when it first airs there will be a whole shitstorm of people who think its sexist arguing with people who think its not sexist but it will all blow over in a few weeks like it always does.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Holy crap did Andrea Dworkin actually encourage incest? Something that is known to cause systemic problems in all sexually reproducing life forms? Did she actually encourage destroying the foundation of role models that is necessary for people to come out as well adjusted people, from early life exposure to a decent homelife? Did she actually encourage pedophilia? Yes on all counts, this human is the scum of the earth...

Not quite. It's very likely this is a quote taken out of context, when you look at other things she has said on the subject of incest for a frame of reference.

It still doesn't make what she said at all rational or correct. Even in the broadest and most accepting terms I can muster, I still can't condone even the tiniest things she says, even in broader context. This is why I can't take feminism as a whole seriously. Lots of good ideas. Totally tarnished by insane people who get their platform by shouting others down.

The problem is that Dworkin falls into a very specific category - People who utilize words for purposes beyond their definition, or use them for the definitions that are either archaic, or so far away from common usage that its impossible for anyone to understand what the hell their talking about.

In the quoted text, Dworkin got down right convoluted. She had earlier in that work claimed that an erotic relationship was one that relied on non-verbal and touch ques for communication. In that context, 'incest' could simply be viewed as an unconventionally closer bond then the nuclear family allowed.

Of course, that's not what any of those words mean, so its extremely confusing. But this is a woman who, according to Wikipedia, blamed her knee replacements on a singular act of rape, as opposed to the fact that she was the very definition of morbidly obese. So what did you expect?

 

[darkcalling]

I haven't watched the leaked pilot but after seeing the trailer I'm willing to give it a chance. It looks a little painful in how cliche ridden it is but at the same time it looks a lot better than I expected it too.

Granted I wasn't expecting much.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I haven't watched it, it looks shit and it reminds me exactly why I despise most "female targeted" media but

Random waitress:
Can you believe it? A female hero! It's nice for my daughter to have someone like that to look up to!

Isn't that a little bit sexist? Like, how come Superman can't be a role model for her daughter?

Oh for fu-
You guys are really reaching for these "gotchas". Yes a girl can look up to a guy and vice versa but when ALL your heros of particular type are male it makes it feel like being a male a requirement and you could never be like that, especially when you have people around you reinforcing that belief. Like it or not gender is still an issue and people tend to have role models of their own gender to give cues on they should act. A work is not "sexist" because it acknowledges that rather than going the idealised route where sexism is no longer an issue.

Pft, I'm sure that if the movie/comic industry decided to focus on heroines to the exclusion of heroes, there absolutely wouldn't be a massive shitstorm, because gender isn't that big a deal.

 

[Auron225]

Argh! The whole point of Feminism is to make it so that gender isn't an issue. This pilot (assuming the synopsis is valid) is doing nothing but making gender an issue. If they want to have a properly Feminist Supergirl show, nobody in-show should care about her gender. Have her go around, do all her superhero stuff, fight villains and whatnot and have her gender not matter. It really is that simple.

I completely agree. The trailer did far from sell it to me as I had a suspicion that this is what it would become (maybe not to THAT extent as described in the OP). It's sad that when this show does go down then it'll quite possibly be used to claim superhero fans are sexist "for not liking Supergirl, cause she's a girl".

 

[zumbledum]

well just seen the pilot , and yeah its cheesy and bad but its cheesy and bad in the same way arrow and the flash are. its certainly not as bad as the op's out of context quotes make it seem. the second quote for example then leads to her getting slapped down by a girl for saying that basically pointing out girl isnt a pejoration and she needs to get over herself. and the last one is because they are planning to play the weak little girl card as a way to make the big strong stupid man overconfident.

so yeah its tv trashy and bad certainly not a HBO show , but it was watchable

 

[Hoplon]

I'm not the type that gets offended easily but comparing this trash with Daredevil is sacrilege. How dare you!

Seriously though dude, how can you compare a show with excellent, interesting characters, pacing, dialogue and atmosphere with this amateurish Grey's Anatomy crap?

Mostly to illustrate something it has to measure up to and in this singular episode at least fails to do so (and i'm pretty sure sets up a monster of the week shtick, which is not great) but by enlarge it's about some one deciding to do good for it's own sake. not some horrible "I'm so super EMO" of Arrow, or the "we are the bureau of superheroes, could you fill in these forms in triplicate?" which AoS saddled us with. Flash is similar, but it's monster of the week format is annoying.

 

[Kargon]

well just seen the pilot , and yeah its cheesy and bad but its cheesy and bad in the same way arrow and the flash are. its certainly not as bad as the op's out of context quotes make it seem. the second quote for example then leads to her getting slapped down by a girl for saying that basically pointing out girl isnt a pejoration and she needs to get over herself. and the last one is because they are planning to play the weak little girl card as a way to make the big strong stupid man overconfident.

so yeah its tv trashy and bad certainly not a HBO show , but it was watchable

It's not out of context, the problem is that she asks such a retarded question in the first place that borders on Jezebel levels of trying to create drama out of nothing. The writers could have skipped the whole question but they didn't for a reason, to preempt their SJW friends from being offended by nothing. Not to mention that the answer isn't about the moronic question, it's just an even more idiotic rationalization where a middle aged woman pretends to be a girl to explain Supergirl's name. Plus what does that say about Supergirl when she's such a whiny moron?

The stupid dialogue in the end was equally pathetic too, the sister practically gets offended out of nothing and assumes that the general was saying that Supergirl will be defeated because she's a girl WHILE SUPERGIRL WAS GETTING THE SHIT BEATEN OUT OF HER. Reminds me of how feminists assume stuff so that they can play the victim. There have been countless scenes in superhero fiction where the secondary character assumes that the hero will be defeated, only in this one it's assumed it's because of gender because the moron writers tried to inject their childish agenda.

So given all this I think the spin you put in those quotes to try to make excuses for the embarrassing dialogue is the one out of context.