With the recent announcement of Young Justice: Outsiders, I wanted to share a little clip that I've always found interesting. For anyone who hasn't watched this, no spoilers, and minimum spoilers...
With the recent announcement of Young Justice: Outsiders, I wanted to share a little clip that I've always found interesting.
For anyone who hasn't watched this, no spoilers, and minimum spoilers for the comics bridging season one and two.
The clip itself gives enough information for the episode itself, so I am not going to go into their mission details.
Background
A little background on Nightwing (Dick) and Batgirl (Barbara) in this series. In this series, there's a few mentions of Dick being called a dog by Wally along with strong hints that Dick has had relationships with women from school and on their team. In the comics, after a long day saving the world on his 18th birthday, he goes home and is pleasantly surprised to find Barbara waiting for him. He asks her why they're not together and she responses saying because he's a dog. And maybe because I'm an adult reading a comic, I assume they have a casual relationship complete with adult sleepovers. But regardless of if they have a sexual relationship or not, they have known each other since they were kids, trained together and are close.
The punchline
So onwards to the joke...When I saw this, I saw it as Barbara giving Dick a hard time. She's teasing him. But she's also pointing out that though the mission details are important, it was unnecessary for him to include an explicit explanation on the team drawn.
If you follow the show, a lot of episodes have this format - crisis info is given, mission is explained, team is chosen and off they go. There are mentions such as "Ms Martian, you will read their mind and xyz", but "because you're a telepath" is not included.
Reactions
So this is the part I find interesting, Barbara is teasing Dick, but the rest of the team is slighted. Ms Martian's reaction or lack of is a sign that she understood Barbara was teasing him, which makes sense since she's one of the members of the original team (and telepathic). The other two members are newer and probably have not established a deeper relationship with Batgirl or Nightwing.
And back to two members of the team going "yeah, why", they had no issues and presumably wouldn't even have noticed if Barbara didn't say anything.
So this sort of becomes a joke that a woman can't make because she'll be viewed as causing trouble where there wasn't any. But of course, just because someone didn't notice or wasn't offended doesn't mean there wasn't an issue. Sure, it's not earthshattering, but is it not worth one small mention?
The real punchline
This show has always impressed me, especially considering the target audience is definitely much younger than I am. I actually think this joke is directed at the audience, not the characters. Often when minorities are included in shows and movies, it is explained why. Oh that brown kid that we watched you leave school and walk home with, he's not some kid you go to school with; he's the kid of the family that owns the Indian restaurant down the street. We see these explanations so often that we don't notice them until they are pointed out.
Batgirl isn't pointing this out to Nightwing, she's pointing it out to us.
I didn't even realise this needed explaining. I almost cringed at the clumsiness of Batgirl making this implicit sexism so obvious. Given that every word uttered by these characters in a 22-minute...
Batgirl isn't pointing this out to Nightwing, she's pointing it out to us.
I didn't even realise this needed explaining. I almost cringed at the clumsiness of Batgirl making this implicit sexism so obvious.
Given that every word uttered by these characters in a 22-minute episode is important and must be relevant (just like in short stories, there's no room for digressions), and there are no ad-libs, that means the writers wanted to make this obvious point. It's not like Nightwing even needed to add that explanation: his mission exposition could simply have omitted the reason for having an all-female team. The only reason he said that is so that Batgirl could highlight the stupidity of it - for our, the audience's, benefit.
The writers are pointing out that this happens all the time: any time someone who's not a white man manages to get on to a mission team in a movie or show, there has to be an explanation why. We can't just have non-white non-female people being on teams at random. What sort of undisciplined world would that be? No. Non-white non-female people always have to be justified. Which is stupid. Which is why Nightwing had to be this stupid, so Batgirl could point out that stupidity.
EDIT: I suppose I should point out that I hadn't noticed Nightwing's implicit sexism until Batgirl pointed it out. I'm not that woke! But, as soon as she pointed it out, I recognised what she was doing and who she was doing it for.
I honestly didn't notice until Batgirl pointed it out too. If she didn't say anything, that mission report probably wouldn't have stood out to me at all.
I honestly didn't notice until Batgirl pointed it out too. If she didn't say anything, that mission report probably wouldn't have stood out to me at all.
Does the fact that the ship's crew laughs at batgirl's "not the only woman that can mess with a man's mind" quip after Nightwing signs off kind of undercut the point of having the interaction in...
Does the fact that the ship's crew laughs at batgirl's "not the only woman that can mess with a man's mind" quip after Nightwing signs off kind of undercut the point of having the interaction in the first place? I mean if you're showing the audience that it shouldn't be out of place for an all female crew to take on a mission, but then break up the awkward interaction with something that reduces the event to a joke, doesn't it reduce the impact of what was said?
Edit - another question; does this show ever have an all female team roster take on an assignment without specifically calling attention to it?
Batgirl comment and the team laughing is why I think it points to Batgirl was just teasing Nightwing. Not sure if Young Justice was doing this, but I have noticed a lot of shows and Marvel movies...
Batgirl comment and the team laughing is why I think it points to Batgirl was just teasing Nightwing.
Not sure if Young Justice was doing this, but I have noticed a lot of shows and Marvel movies have lots of example of this, where they do undercut tension for a laugh. There was a cheap easy joke to throw in, so they did.
Edit: I actually can't think of another planned mission that's women only...
With the recent announcement of Young Justice: Outsiders, I wanted to share a little clip that I've always found interesting.
For anyone who hasn't watched this, no spoilers, and minimum spoilers for the comics bridging season one and two.
The clip itself gives enough information for the episode itself, so I am not going to go into their mission details.
Background
A little background on Nightwing (Dick) and Batgirl (Barbara) in this series. In this series, there's a few mentions of Dick being called a dog by Wally along with strong hints that Dick has had relationships with women from school and on their team. In the comics, after a long day saving the world on his 18th birthday, he goes home and is pleasantly surprised to find Barbara waiting for him. He asks her why they're not together and she responses saying because he's a dog. And maybe because I'm an adult reading a comic, I assume they have a casual relationship complete with adult sleepovers. But regardless of if they have a sexual relationship or not, they have known each other since they were kids, trained together and are close.
The punchline
So onwards to the joke...When I saw this, I saw it as Barbara giving Dick a hard time. She's teasing him. But she's also pointing out that though the mission details are important, it was unnecessary for him to include an explicit explanation on the team drawn.
If you follow the show, a lot of episodes have this format - crisis info is given, mission is explained, team is chosen and off they go. There are mentions such as "Ms Martian, you will read their mind and xyz", but "because you're a telepath" is not included.
Reactions
So this is the part I find interesting, Barbara is teasing Dick, but the rest of the team is slighted. Ms Martian's reaction or lack of is a sign that she understood Barbara was teasing him, which makes sense since she's one of the members of the original team (and telepathic). The other two members are newer and probably have not established a deeper relationship with Batgirl or Nightwing.
And back to two members of the team going "yeah, why", they had no issues and presumably wouldn't even have noticed if Barbara didn't say anything.
So this sort of becomes a joke that a woman can't make because she'll be viewed as causing trouble where there wasn't any. But of course, just because someone didn't notice or wasn't offended doesn't mean there wasn't an issue. Sure, it's not earthshattering, but is it not worth one small mention?
The real punchline
This show has always impressed me, especially considering the target audience is definitely much younger than I am. I actually think this joke is directed at the audience, not the characters. Often when minorities are included in shows and movies, it is explained why. Oh that brown kid that we watched you leave school and walk home with, he's not some kid you go to school with; he's the kid of the family that owns the Indian restaurant down the street. We see these explanations so often that we don't notice them until they are pointed out.
Batgirl isn't pointing this out to Nightwing, she's pointing it out to us.
I didn't even realise this needed explaining. I almost cringed at the clumsiness of Batgirl making this implicit sexism so obvious.
Given that every word uttered by these characters in a 22-minute episode is important and must be relevant (just like in short stories, there's no room for digressions), and there are no ad-libs, that means the writers wanted to make this obvious point. It's not like Nightwing even needed to add that explanation: his mission exposition could simply have omitted the reason for having an all-female team. The only reason he said that is so that Batgirl could highlight the stupidity of it - for our, the audience's, benefit.
The writers are pointing out that this happens all the time: any time someone who's not a white man manages to get on to a mission team in a movie or show, there has to be an explanation why. We can't just have non-white non-female people being on teams at random. What sort of undisciplined world would that be? No. Non-white non-female people always have to be justified. Which is stupid. Which is why Nightwing had to be this stupid, so Batgirl could point out that stupidity.
EDIT: I suppose I should point out that I hadn't noticed Nightwing's implicit sexism until Batgirl pointed it out. I'm not that woke! But, as soon as she pointed it out, I recognised what she was doing and who she was doing it for.
I honestly didn't notice until Batgirl pointed it out too. If she didn't say anything, that mission report probably wouldn't have stood out to me at all.
Does the fact that the ship's crew laughs at batgirl's "not the only woman that can mess with a man's mind" quip after Nightwing signs off kind of undercut the point of having the interaction in the first place? I mean if you're showing the audience that it shouldn't be out of place for an all female crew to take on a mission, but then break up the awkward interaction with something that reduces the event to a joke, doesn't it reduce the impact of what was said?
Edit - another question; does this show ever have an all female team roster take on an assignment without specifically calling attention to it?
Batgirl comment and the team laughing is why I think it points to Batgirl was just teasing Nightwing.
Not sure if Young Justice was doing this, but I have noticed a lot of shows and Marvel movies have lots of example of this, where they do undercut tension for a laugh. There was a cheap easy joke to throw in, so they did.
Edit: I actually can't think of another planned mission that's women only...