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Author Topic: Asking Women: Did Janine from The Real Ghostbusters rub you the wrong way?  (Read 1778 times)

Neonivek

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http://phelous.com/2015/07/29/phelous/and-the-movies/the-real-ghostbusters-the-bad-episodes/

Ok this is what is inspiring it...

Now I believe it is total BS with Janine being "Not appealing to young girls" but I sort of believe not to base things based on assumptions.

But was Janine an appealing character to you back then and/or even now when she was in the original and syndicated run? (as in when she had pointy glasses and a Brooklyn accent)

I just want to believe that for years networks have been pretty much been making up the "What appeals to girls" in that they made them what they pictured as gender normative.

Or did girls, as a whole, honestly only like Motherly and nurturing female characters?
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nenjin

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^ isn't a woman but had to comment.

I only vaguely remember the series, even though I watched it quite a bit....yeah, I do recall at some point the series shifted and I didn't enjoy it as much. I clearly remember the "Why the fuck is Slimer such a big deal now" moment too.

I watched the link and am mostly in agreement about Janine.
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wierd

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I watched a few episodes of that series when I was a kid.  (*is also not a woman)

I distinctly remember going "wtf? Slimer was not a good guy in the movies." (just without the wtf being verbalized, being a kid and all.) when the show became all slimer centric. 

Removing consequences, removing quirky character behaviors (Like original Janine), and making it have cancer inducing levels of saccharine all smack of political biases of censors, for sure-- and are all things I too disliked.  It was one of the reasons I despised later scooby doo, and especially despised the smurfs/care bears/ and other shows of that general nature.

Not that the modern era for cartoons are any better.  Don't get me started on what happened to children's TV after the 90s.  (For a short while in the 90s, there were these gems of children's cartoon glory that just held up. Then other people got their claws into them, and were compelled to either censor the shit out of them, or worse, "reimagine" them. Batman cartoons being a prominent victim.)
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Gunner-Chan

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I remember liking the cartoon when I was little, but I don't remember if I even still bothered to watch it long enough that it went bad... I kinda remember it staying the same for the most part as long as I watched it, though I guess I do remember slimer becoming almost the main character after long enough and that actually felt kinda annoying. To be honest the old cartoons I remember watching the most and longest were both the Gi joe cartoon and the various mario brothers cartoons... So I might be off.

Also, while I am a woman I'm also about one of the least gender normative ones on the board. I'm likely more masculine than a not insignificant part of the guys here. So not sure my opinion is exactly on topic.

I will add though, female representation was something a lot of older cartoons could of handled in a less shoehorned way. A lot of cartoons had a specific type they forced all those characters into for the most part, and doing that constantly was about the same as not having a female in the main cast at all.
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Tiruin

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Ok this is what is inspiring it...

Now I believe it is total BS with Janine being "Not appealing to young girls" but I sort of believe not to base things based on assumptions.

But was Janine an appealing character to you back then and/or even now when she was in the original and syndicated run? (as in when she had pointy glasses and a Brooklyn accent)

I just want to believe that for years networks have been pretty much been making up the "What appeals to girls" in that they made them what they pictured as gender normative.

Or did girls, as a whole, honestly only like Motherly and nurturing female characters?
In what way was that assumption based on? :P
I sorta dislike how some assumptions are used to conclude things for a general audience when the basic point revolves around the character traits [ie attitude and wholesome characterization] than...just a handful of general traits. So...unsure as a whole, just saying I dislike how conclusions are based on assumptions [and given the subtext of how presentations are made in the media at times, it delivers only a very general idea] x_x
...As in assumptions that say gender normativity = this specific attitude. It's like saying attitude should conform to gender because 'expectations' restrictive to gender. >_>

Disclaimer: I did not watch the show [fully] as presented in the video [due to...many restrictions like different country] but...I do note how presentations affect people. I did like them as a kid, though I was only exposed to snippets of the shows at the time because of how varied the timeframe was in my location and place.

tl;dr: Gunner-Chan summarizes my point very well ._.
I will add though, female representation was something a lot of older cartoons could of handled in a less shoehorned way. A lot of cartoons had a specific type they forced all those characters into for the most part, and doing that constantly was about the same as not having a female in the main cast at all.
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Owlga

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The problem is and was that writers think women are a whole diffrent species and need to be written differently inherently. Humans have far less sexual dimorphism than most people care to realize.
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wierd

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Yes and no.  Women tend toward the passive-aggressive axis, while men trend toward the physically violent/confrontational axis. That's not just a stereotype. (There really are morphological differences in the limbic system controlling those behavioral axies between genders.) This is not meant to shoehorn; just that there is a trend bias that follows gender.  (There are plenty of violent women, and passive aggressive men.)

The problem happens when this bias is given stereotypical forms, instead of just being a realistic representation; The reality is that this is a spectrum, where any single person can manifest anywhere on that spectrum, but with bias toward a location. ANY such manifestation is "normal."

What the Q5 tools did, was try to define what "Normal" gender behavior is.
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Tiruin

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Yes and no.  Women tend toward the passive-aggressive axis, while men trend toward the physically violent/confrontational axis. That's not just a stereotype. (There really are morphological differences in the limbic system controlling those behavioral axies between genders.) This is not meant to shoehorn; just that there is a trend bias that follows gender.  (There are plenty of violent women, and passive aggressive men.)
...Tend toward? Details and added specificity please. :P
Because attributing behavior towards these [limbs? the...limbic system? Don't you mean how these actions are interpreted instead?] would...pretty much equal a stereotype of expression.

E: This is me being silly and having selective memory (though I know what the limbic system is; just curious what the differences are as what I know is that the only significant differences are within the anatomical/physiological areas between the sexes.)
« Last Edit: July 30, 2015, 02:52:49 am by Tiruin »
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wierd

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The limbic system is a system in the brain the affects behavior through chemistry. Specifically, the balance between the action of the prefrontal cortex, and the amygdalar region, which is known to have a significant impact on anger, and other emotionally derived behavioral patterns, vs suppression from the prefrontal cortex.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic_system

There are anatomical differences between male and female brains, with regard to this system.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/15573627_Sexual_dimorphism_in_the_mammalian_limbic_system


Since no two brains are the same, there are female brains that have features that strongly resemble male brains, and vise versa. The trend happens when you explore many brains for their morphology. (and subsequently, for their biochemistry, functionality, and associations with behavioral patterns.)


Men and women really do have some pretty complicated differences in how they process emotional stimuli, and how they engage in group activity. This shows up in fMRI and other types of activity assays, as well as in neurotransmitter levels, and gene expression assay studies.  Men and women really do trend toward having different primary modalities of operation when it comes to this region. That does not mean that one way is better than the other; just that nature has selected for genders to bias behavior.

Representing that natural bias is being realistic.  Hyper-representing that bias with "Idealized" personifications however, is not.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2015, 01:42:13 am by wierd »
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Rex Invictus

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I don't understand the idea that men and women are not morphologically and psychologically different. Androgens have been shown to control a lot of behaviours whilst estrogens usually do (mostly) the opposite of them.

People act like we're some kind of star children, made of minds and not linked to our bodies, when we're as much rutting animals in fleshsacks as any other animal on earth. I got my cats neutered and their aggressiveness to each other dropped massively.

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Tiruin

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Rex, I'm aware of how your stance to all these were as from some threads you made before--but the significant differences lie within anatomy and physiology--psychologically, its in interacting based on a stimulus, and even then...that doesn't make it a primary precursor alone.
So generalizing based on generalities does not help there. :P

...Also I'm unsure how that post was related to the OP. o_O
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Neonivek

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Yeah, I don't want this to go too far into "how men and women are different"

I am mostly trying to confirm or deconfirm the bias the Q5 had about girls at the time.
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wierd

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Which I tried to answer--  The Q5 people took a natural bias toward a specific type of behavioral pattern, idealized it, hyper-accentuated it, and expected people to just love how far out in left field that person would be.

As the linked commentary video pointed out via interviews, the Q5 people had no solid data to support that people wanted this kind of depiction; instead, the basis for hyper-accentuating the "motherly" behavioral archetypes in a character that (in the movie) was a sassy brooklynite (and was thus properly depicted the first time, given that this is a cartoon based off the movie) came from no other place but the internal stereotypes of the Q5 team about what and how women should be. THAT is what is offensive.  (Women should be who and what they are, not what other people tell them to be. The same is true for men also.)

Dictating what the behavioral normative is, was their cardinal failure here. It is fundamentally what they did wrong. The gall to try and say that their opinions about what constitutes normative behavior are somehow fact, (when in reality it was a fact that their suggestions were completely based on opinion; the exact opposite) only fans that flame.  This is no better, intellectually at least, than American fundie groups trying to dictate what a marriage is, as if their opinions had any more weight behind them than being mere opinions. Ultimately, it is the same intellectual crime.



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Neonivek

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So part of it... would be like me taking something like "people like chocolate" and then "fixing" a car by making it entirely made of chocolate.

Instead of say... putting a place to put your chocolate bar in the car.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2015, 03:08:20 am by Neonivek »
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Eric Blank

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OK, usually I don't have significant problems with analogies, but that was just nonsense. What the hell? :v

(I vaguely remember seeing this show, like, once, and concluding that it was terrible.)
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