With a mini-rant to kick it off:
I'm glad to see so many people taking on the Skyler haters. Some ass on the R.S. site calls everyone who discusses this "gay." I'm sure it's an attempt at humor, but it's honestly a sad reflection on too many males. If a guy cannot understand why someone would like dick - well, I would imagine that person thinks that sex in general is all icky, but lacks the self-reflection to understand the depths of misogyny that requires - or maybe the massive homophobia we see too often in American society is from guys who are afraid of their own unresolved attractions - but it's telling when someone cannot accept or someone who demeans someone else's sexual attraction - as if the worst thing in the world is to be "like a girl" who likes dick. I feel sorry for any female who ends up with a guy like that, honestly.
People hate Skyler White.
I know this because I've written about her sympathetically; I may as well have written COME AT ME, BRO in all caps. Remember when Walt bullied and bullshitted his way back into their home in Season Three, daring her to rat on him, knowing she couldn't? Remember how awful and gross that was? I called that one of Walt's lowest lows; some commenters felt differently. "That was a friggin' high point for Walt, it showed he STOPPED being a pushover to his overbearing wife, and started fighting back." Because Walt had been such a milquetoast up until that point? "[What about] men who don't want women to kick them out of the houses they bought with their money? What legal right did she have to kick him out? none! Good on Walt for 'brutalizing' his wife into obeying the fucking law and letting him use his own hard earned property." Well, we certainly wouldn't want anyone on Breaking Bad to disobey the law.
This kind of reaction is not uncommon, for Skyler in particular and for women – often wives – on top-drawer TV dramas in general. Characters like Skyler become targets of vituperation unimaginable to their male counterparts, most of whom engage in vastly more destructive and immoral behavior every episode. By failing to indulge every whim of the the male antiheroes around whom their shows are built, the women become obstacles to those men getting exactly what they want when they want it at all times, which is the core fantasy of antihero fiction. Cold cunning, ruthlessness, rage, self-interest, a propensity for physical violence – we gender these unheroic characteristics as male, and celebrate them; passivity, bitterness, grief, emotional enmeshment, a knack for attacking and deflating egos – we gender these unheroic characteristics as female, and loathe them.
more about the show, in general, at the link.
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