Some random thoughts on Kamisama Kiss Episode 1: "Nanami Becomes a God"

Animation:

So, this is the pilot . . . and it shows.

This episode has that kind of incomplete feeling that a lot of anime pilots have. Everything looks a little bit rushed, a little bit choppy. There are scenes with no backgrounds or with minimal backgrounds that don't really seem like they should have no and/or minimal backgrounds. I spent a lot of my time while watching this episode thinking "Hey, where's the set?"

Of course, the animators may be trying to emulate the style of the manga, which is not exactly background-heavy, but what works in a black-and-white comic does not necessarily work as well once you add color and motion into the equation.

And speaking of backgrounds: In all 3 of the first 3 episodes of this series, there is a serious overuse of backgrounds constituted entirely by bubbles. I don't mind bubbles and sparkles and roses--oh my--in shoujo titles, generally speaking, but there is a tipping point. Seriously. Too many bubbles.

The character designs look good, and the animators were obviously conscientious about matching Julietta Suzuki's style. As I was watching, I remember thinking that there was something a little odd about the way the characters' mouths were drawn--and then I remembered thinking the exact same thing while reading the manga. So that's neat.

Voice Acting:

It's good. Not many characters are introduced in the first episode, but the male and female leads (Shinnosuke Tachibana and Suzuko Mimori) have really nice energy, and as a fan of the comic, I was pleased. (I never had that "Hey, that's not my Tomoe [or whomever]!" moment.) Tomoe comes off as both vulnerable and arrogant, and Nanami's voice actress manages an innocent enthusiasm and a sense of humor that helps to carry the more unlikely moments of the show. Both sound appropriate for their roles, and I enjoyed their performances. Unfortunately for me, I have seen just enough Sekirei to find Minato's voice actor a bit jarring as Tomoe, but I'll get over it.

Adaptation from the manga:

I think I wanted more. Like, literally, more. More content. Sometimes anime adaptations go out of their way to fill in what could be considered the "gaps" in manga: the stuff that happens between pages, between panels, between chapters and so forth. Sometimes they try to adhere strictly to the source material, adding and subtracting as little as possible. "Nanami Becomes a God" fits more in the second category than the first, but I think I would have been happier if the anime's creators had taken more creative license. Maybe added more detail, more backgrounds, more scenes. More little bits of business with the characters. If anything, this episode is less detailed than the equivalent plot arc in the manga.

The Opening Credits:

Song: "Kamisama Hajimemashita" by Hanae

Oh my. What is this song? Why is it here? Why does it sound like it's being performed by grown women pretending to be elementary-school girls? And why does it include lines like (according to the subtitles on Funimation and Hulu), "I want to be a bad girl / But I'll be a good girl" and "So I beg you / Let me keep doing sneaky things"? And why are most of the opening images just Nanami in various outfits? Boring, everyday, non-god-related outfits, at that? And what's with all the sensual focus on her mouth? And where are the men? I thought this was a reverse-harem title. Oh, wait, there they are. Lining up like the potential love interests in an otome game. There has to be a more interesting way to show them off.

Huh. I think these Opening Credits missed a really great opportunity to make use of the demons and other supernatural elements that are integral to this universe, but oh well. At least we've got inappropriate sexual innuendo. And clips of Nanami wearing clothes. Well, mostly. There are a couple of dubious images in which it's not exactly clear how much in the way of clothes she is actually wearing. And one in which she's posing with fruit. I don't know what to make of the overt sexualization of the overtly childlike Nanami in these opening credits.

The song itself is catchy, and kind of fun if you can get over or get into the 'little-girl' delivery. At first I thought it was just ridiculous, but to be honest, the more I listen to it, the more I like it. That's jpop for you, I guess.

On a side note, you can see Hanae's music video to the song on her youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/hanaechannel

Closing Credits:

Song: "Kamisama Onegai" by Hanae

So what's in the closing credits? The following:

A song that's fairly similar in tone to the opening song (which makes sense, since both songs are by the same artist, and both seem to have been made specifically for this anime), though less upbeat.

Still images of two male harem members who don't even make an appearance in the first episode, followed by a still image of Tomoe from his good ol'days, with more hair and more evil. All while silent "film clips" from the episode we just watched play in the upper right-hand corner. This is actually more forgettable than the opening credits sequence.

Overall Impression:

Um . . . undecided? I like the manga better so far, but I'm still really happy this exists. Since I plan to keep watching this series as it comes out, I may start doing episode recaps. Maybe I'll get a better grasp on how I feel about the show then.

Kamisama Kiss has an anime!

Obviously, I am completely behind on my following of manga- and anime-related updates on the Internet, or else I would have already known that Kamisama Kiss, which I blogged on here, has been adapted into an anime.

I was just doing one of the things I do, which is to say browsing through Hulu.com's "Recently Added in Anime" category, and hey-presto, there it was like Christmas and my birthday. Right here: http://www.hulu.com/kamisama-kiss.

I had been thinking for quite some time now that Kamisama Kiss, with its appealingly designed spirits and its unapologetic ::cough:: reverse-harem ::cough:: approach, would be quite well-suited to an anime adaptation, but who knew that the universe was listening?

Will watch.

Will blog.

We'll see how it goes.

Spotlight #8: Jiu Jiu

Well, I've already covered Kamisama Kiss, and chances are good that, in the not-so-distant future, I'll be blogging on Her Majesty's Dog and Inu X Boku Secret Service / Youko x Boku SS (now that the English-licensed anime's out and most of it is even up on Hulu), so I think I'll be declaring "Girls and Their Dog-Boys" an official subcategory of femdom manga+anime. Come to think of it, Tramps Like Us / Kimi wa Petto would also fit more-or-less into this category, and even Inuyasha would get an honorable mention--though I don't think it really fits the 'femdom' criteria (magic necklace aside).

So, anyway. On to discussion of the femdom dog-boy manga to end all femdom dog-boy manga: the recently-licensed Jiu Jiu, volume one.

English Title: Jiu Jiu
Japanese Title: Jiu Jiu
Author: Touya Tobina
English Publisher: Viz Media
Manga?: Yes
Novels?: No
Anime?: No
Volumes out in English: 1

Technically, Night and Snow aren't dog-boys, but wolf-boys. Not to be confused with werewolves, which are a different monster in this universe. Nope, the two male leads are just domesticated demon/human hybrid wolves who can transform into boys. Naked boys, because this isn't a White Wolf role-playing game and they can't take "whole cloth." There is a predictable amount of the boys turning into naked humans and cuddling the heroine inappropriately, but it all plays out as quite innocent, mostly because the motivation on the wolves' part seems to be dog-like loyalty combined with an equally dog-like desire for attention rather than anything hormonal.

Takamichi, our heroine, is a demon slayer, and Night and Snow are her "Jiu Jiu," or demon-hybrid servants, who assist her in hunting the more dangerous, wild varieties of demon. When they're on the job, that is. In their day-to-day life, the wolf-boys are her pets while they're at home and her classmates while they're at school, making the trio's relationship a bit odd, to say the least. (They have a cage to sleep in--as dogs--but consistently end up sneaking into Takamichi's bed--as naked boys--in the night. Oh, running nudity gags.)

The story is . . . surprisingly affecting. (Warning: There be SPOILERS ahead.) At the beginning of the manga, we get a flashback scene in which Takamichi is having a hard time getting over the death of her twin brother. Her father, the demon-slaying clan head, gives her two demon wolf puppies to raise. (Time then jumps ahead three years to the manga's current continuity.) The emotional core of the manga is Takamichi learning to care for her pets, even while the trauma of her brother's death makes her want to push away those people she most loves. This setup offers some real internal conflict for the character, and it's also quite the refreshing change-of-pace to see the girl, for once, be the tortured/emo/angsty hero worried about sullying the ones closest to her.

The art is cute, if not especially intricate, with the requisite amount of bubbly shoujo backgrounds counterpointed by blood-splattered action scenes. The character designs are quite stylish, and the heroine has a particularly distinctive, little-girl-meets-angular-tomboy look to her, which ramps up the coolness factor quite a bit--and makes me want to figure out how to work a cap and sword into my own wardrobe.

It's a good look for her.

Takamichi, I want your hat.

Some of the panels, especially those which focus on shape and color more than detail, are actually quite beautifully composed, and really enhance the mood in a few key dramatic moments.

The weird: the male leads are three years old. Not that there's anything technically romantic about their relationship with the heroine in the first volume. And no real reason, aside from shoujo convention, to assume that their three-way relationship will blossom into romance. But they are three years old. And dogs. Which would make them, as dogs, approximately twenty-one years old. While Takamichi is sixteen. Which inverses the problem without really solving it. And some of the scenes look like this:

She sleeps with her puppies even though she's a cat person.

And this:

Why are they blushing so hard? Because Night's mistress just got up the courage to call him a "good dog." Aw, that's adorable. And a little messed up. I love manga.

Ultimately, I quite like this title. It has action, demonic puppies and a nontraditional female lead, along with hefty doses of squee-worthy cuteness and angst in equal measure. I also count it as a plus that the canine characters act a lot like you'd imagine dogs would if they could walk, talk, and demand extra Frisbee time. I'm looking forward to seeing how Takamichi's (hopefully platonic) relationship with her pups unfolds in future volumes.

Spotlight #7: The Flowers of Evil

This post could just as easily be entitled "What just happened to me while I was standing in the manga aisle at Books-A-Million?" Or perhaps "What the frell just happened to me while I was standing in the manga aisle at Books-A-Million?" Because fictional curse words convey a sense of out-of-one's-element confusion that real ones just can't.

Without further to-do:

English Title: The Flowers of Evil
Japanese Title: Aku no Hana
Author: Shuzo Oshimi
English Publisher: Vertical
Manga?: Yes
Novels?: No
Anime?: No
Volumes out in English: 1

So, this middle-school kid, Takao, is kind of a loner and really likes reading Baudelaire. He has a prized copy of the poetry collection The Flowers of Evil that he carries around with him. It has an awesomely creepy eyeflower on it. His schoolmates get on his case for being so unutterably bizarre as to read stuff (which, as I recall, is exactly what middle school kids do when they see someone having the audacity to read in public) so he's already got a reputation for weirdness at the beginning of the book. He's head-over-heels for the cute, smart honor student Saeki, so much so that when he happens to find a bag with her gym clothes in it, he steals the gym clothes. Naturally. (Baudelaire made him do it.)

And that's how the manga starts. SPOILERS ahead--because there is so little plot here that I have to talk about a lot of it to talk about any of it:

Unfortunately for Takao, Weird Girl Nakamura saw him steal Cute Girl Saeki's clothes, and from that point on, Takao pretty much becomes Nakamura's bitch. (In this volume, anyway. Not sure what will happen later.) What does Nakamura want from Takao? Well, more perversion. She's very excited to have found her very own real-life pervert to mess with, and she wants him to reveal all his perverted thoughts about Saeki to her. Actually, what she says is that she wants to "strip" Takao bare of all the "skin" his perverted self is hiding behind, so . . . that's interesting. (Especially as that moment nicely represents what I assume will be the emotional core of the series.)

I have no idea what to make of this. I saw the premise as laid out in blurb-form on the back of the book, thought "hey this fits in the femdom category as I describe it; maybe I should check it out" and then read a little of the volume to see if I liked it enough to buy it and bring it home with me. I ended up finishing the volume before I could decide whether I liked, hated or was completely indifferent to it. I just don't know. I read it yesterday and today I still don't know.

Was it interesting? Yes, more or less, though it sounds more interesting than it is. This manga has a pretty slow, thoughtful pace, and very little actually happens in Volume 1.

Did it make me think about sexual awakening, and what it means that (in both America and Japan) kids generally experience the emergence of their own sexual selves before a repressed society is willing to give them the tools with which to understand their newfound urges and realizations? Of course.

Did it make me think about perversion and what it means? A little. Not as much as you might think. In one of the author pages, Shuzo Oshimi states that he hopes that this manga will get people to think about perversion. Which got me contemplating perversion more than I otherwise would have. Of course, this is only volume one, and there's lots of room for further development of this topic.

It's marketed as for kids 13+, which is nice, since it means that some kids still in puberty will be encouraged to read a manga actually about puberty. But hey, it's (as my own experience attests!) not bound in plastic wrap, so probably whomever wants to can gain access to it.

Is it good? No clue. Is it bad? Again: no clue.

It's well-dawn, anyway, though the art has that unnervingly solid look to it that a lot of horror, seinen and shounen manga use, and that style isn't particularly to my taste. Fits the tone of the book, though.

Are the characters sympathetic? Honestly, I found Nakamura more sympathetic than the whiny protagonist or the innocent, virginal, untouchable object of his 'shameful' desires. Perhaps because she was trying to be honest about her own socially unacceptable desires. Then again, if I found out at the end of the series that she was a projection of Takao's psyche, I would not be exactly surprised, in spite of the fact that she interacts with other characters. So, this indicates to me that she is not (yet, anyway) fully developed as a character in her own right.

Does it support the whole virgin/whore dichotomy thing? Oh boy oh boy yes.

Does it interrogate the same? A little. Mostly in that Takao's pedestal-worship of the virginal Saeki is so obviously something he does arbitrarily, for himself, without learning anything about the girl one way or the other. There's room for later volumes to shatter his dichotomous mode of thinking about women, and I think the series as a whole may get a lot more interesting if it goes in this direction.

Concluding remarks: At this point, the manga has the potential to become 1) brilliantly insightful, 2) disgustingly offensive or 3) unutterably boring. It also has the (approximately equal) potential to become all three at once.

In other words: What the frell was that?

Spotlight #6: Kamisama Kiss

English Title: Kamisama Kiss
Japanese Title: Kamisama Hajimemashita
Author: Julietta Suzuki
English Publisher: Viz Media
Manga?: Yes.
Novels?: No.
Anime?: No.
Volumes out in English: 8

Wow, it's been a looong time since I posted anything here. I guess I could talk about my work, my life and why I've let this blog lie fallow for so long, but I think I'd rather just jump back in with a new 'femdom manga' spotlight.

Like many a manga hero/heroine, Kamisama Kiss's Nanami Momozoni has a useless parental unit (in this case, her father) whose bad habits with money eventually lead her to become broke, homeless and alone. As we all know, broke, homeless and alone is an excellent jumping-off point for the hero/heroine in a shoujo or shounen manga. (See: Hayate the Combat Butler, Fruits Basket, Ultimate Venus and oh so many more . . . ) Sometimes, being broke, homeless and alone means that a manga protagonist will stumble their way into working as a maid/butler/housekeeper/groundskeeper in a live-in job at a new home, which is usually occupied by attractive members of the opposite sex. At other times, being broke, homeless and alone will directly precede the hero or heroine's discovery that they are the long-lost heir or some other form of successor to a new home, also frequently populated by attractive members of the opposite sex.

Summary (minor SPOILERS for Volume I): So, broke and homeless Nanami, who is all alone, is busy being broke and homeless and alone when she comes across a strange man who has been treed by a small dog. Nanami 'rescues' said man from said dog. After a short conversation, the man kisses Nanami on the forehead and tells her he is giving her his home. Our heroine thinks this is weird, but takes him up on it, as then at least she will no longer be homeless and alone (she will still be broke, but hey, you can't have everything). When she gets to her new home, she finds out that it is a shrine and that she is the new god of the shrine. She also meets Tomoe, the attractive-member-of-the-opposite-sex who will become her fox-spirit shinshi (meaning, in this manga at least, her spirit-beast servant). Tomoe is kind of a jerk and Nanami is kind of a ditz (this is shoujo manga, and it would honestly be more noteworthy if Tomoe were nice and Nanami were competent), but as the manga progresses, they slowly develop feelings for one another. One at a time, other attractive-members-of-the-opposite-sex start cropping up, giving the manga that "harem" feel we all know and love.

This goes on the femdom list, obviously, on account of the "shinshi contract" that Nanami enters into with Tomoe, which means that, not only is he bound to serve her, but he is magically bound to obey any command she gives him.

Nanami's reaction upon learning that Tomoe, who is kind of a jerk, will be loyal to her if she enters into the contract (Volume I, Chapter 2, page 64):



Nanami's reaction upon learning that Tomoe, who is kind of a jerk, is magically bound to obey her (Volume I, Chapter 5, page 144):



Nanami's not going to be breaking the shoujo manga heroine mold anytime soon, but I kind of love her for the two moments illustrated above. They're small, but they're important to me as a reader simply because it's rare to see a shoujo manga heroine express desire for any kind of power. In a lot of what I describe as 'femdom' manga and anime (not that there is all that much of it around to begin with), heroines luck into or back into power. They don't get it because they want it; it's just forced upon them. Because these characters are 'good' girls, and in many cases 'good' is expanded to mean 'passive', especially when we are talking about women of any age. (While this equivalence may be more prevalent in Japanese media, it's certainly to be found in American-made products as well.) It's refreshing to see Nanami, who is positively portrayed, gleefully anticipate having and using power, even if only for a few moments.

Of course, whatever authority Nanami has is largely subverted by the fact that Tomoe, who is kind of a jerk, spends a good portion of the series 'training' his master to become a better god, thus flipping the female-dominated master/servant relationship and turning it into a male-dominated teacher/student relationship, which is a pretty common trick for shoujo manga to play. Still, Nanami manages to retain some authority when it counts--in spite of her shinshi's sadistic streak--and she frequently manages to get her own way. This sometimes leads to her getting into trouble and realizing that she should have listened to the male lead, but again, this is shoujo manga. These things happen.

In many ways, Kamisama Kiss is a paint-by-numbers brand of shoujo title. The main characters, though ultimately sympathetic, are somewhat annoying and the supporting cast members (with one or two exceptions) are not particularly memorable. The art is pretty (and almost unbearably cute at times) and it does what it is supposed to do, but it rarely goes beyond that.

I love this series anyway. I really, really enjoy reading Kamisama Kiss. (So much so that when I cannot find the latest volume on the shelf at my local bookstore, I actually ask for it by name at the customer service desk. I know that doesn't sound like much, but it takes me a certain amount of courage to admit to a fellow adult that I want to read something with "Kiss" in the title. The cover art and graphics are usually in pastel tones, too . . . ) It's a cute, frivolous, wish-fulfillment title, with some adventure, some magic and lots of pretty animal-boys for the heterosexual preteen/early teen girl gaze (because they deserve eye-candy too!). Kamisama Kiss doesn't have a lot of surprises or even a lot of plot, but it makes for a fun, relaxing break from reality. And sometimes that's all you need.

Spotlight #2: Captive Hearts

English Title: Captive Hearts
Japanese Title: Toraware no Minoue
Author: Hino Matsuri
English Publisher: Viz Media
Anime?: No.
Summary: Kuroishi Megumi's family has been cursed to serve the Kogami family since the Muromachi era. As the Kogami family's been missing for fourteen years or so, no one bothers to tell unsuspecting Megumi about the curse until Kogami Suzuka shows up. Megumi has fits of intense servility around her; Suzuka has fits of non-curse-induced shiness around him. The two spend their days being dumb and adorable at each other.

It has finally happened. I've waited not-so-patiently as Merupuri, Vampire Knight and even Wanted cropped up on the shelves of my local bookstores, and Hino Matsuri's Toraware no Minoue has finally been licensed in English.

Toraware no Minoue, or Captive Hearts, was one of the first "femdom" manga to catch my attention back when it first started making the scanlation/fansite circuit. Intrigued, I ordered the five tankoubon online and taught myself kana by trying to translate the first few volumes from Japanese to English on my own. (I'm, uh, still working on that . . . yeah.) For this reason, I have a fairly strong personal attachment to the manga, though I suspect that my (blind) admiration for the work predates my days as a discerning manga consumer, so I'll do my best to try to remain objective in this "spotlight."

Art: The art is pretty and technically well-done, though it's clear that the mangaka was still getting a feel for the look of her characters, especially in early cover and filler art. Hino Matsuri tends not to focus much on differentiation in character design. The primary cast of Captive Hearts is thankfully small enough (1 adult male, 1 young male, 1 young biological female and 1 transgender female) that eye shape and hairstyle are usually sufficient as distinguishing features. (This is a different story than in, say, Vampire Knight, where the huge cast of bishounen vampires should really come with a chart or something--actually, this being shoujo manga, they may very well come with a chart. I will have to double-check.) The page design is busy to the point of looking a bit frantic, but this suits the rather slapstick humor that the series occasionally delves into, and I find it a nice change of pace from the more standard shoujo images of wide-eyed closeups and flowery backgrounds.

Plot: The servant's curse is a nice twist on the standard shoujo "boy meets girl" fare, and I like that we see the action from both Megumi's and Suzuka's points of view. Thankfully, the romance picks up pretty quickly, so we don't have to wade through the "Now I like him now I don't, now he likes me and I don't like him, now I like him but he stopped liking me, etc." mood swings that a lot of shoujo titles have fun tormenting us with.

Characters: Suzuka is sweet as a puppy, cute as a puppy, innocent as a puppy, enthusiastic as a puppy, and probably about as smart as . . . you get the idea. Megumi is ever-so-slightly more complex, and would probably be a pretty unbearable Standard Issue Bishounen Jerk(TM) if his curse had never shown up (though we only see a scant few pages of his life before Suzuka, so nothing is certain on that front). Megumi's overly enthusiastic father is pretty enjoyable, though he's mostly used for exposition and recurring "discipline" gags in the first volume.

Side Stories: The first volume has two side stories that take up too many pages for my taste. These are more or less Standard Issue shoujo stories, and lack the imagination and sense of fun that make the main plot so enjoyable.

Captive Hearts has romance, an ancient Chinese curse, an ancient Chinese dragon, and just enough bondage gags to qualify as femdom fanservice. All in all, it's a fun little title that touches briefly on the relationship between service and love, but mostly just takes its "servant curse" premise and runs with it.

What's Not on TV: an Armchair Feminist Take

There are many other things I could be doing. There are many other things I should be doing. However, at the end of a very busy week, what I somehow want to do is blog about TV shows. TV shows have been haunting me lately. I look at a piece of feminist theory these days, and it inevitably invokes a kind of feminist TV nostalgia.

Hypothesis: Even though we pretend that modern-day entertainment media is progressive, egalitarian and so Girl Power that we might as well just sit back and enjoy the show(s), television serials have actually been getting less feminist in the last ten years, and instead of addressing this problem, we close our eyes and think of England (that was for you, Shadowedge). Buffy is just the exception that proves the rule.

Things I miss in/on television:

Girls who talk to each other about things other than sex, men, fashion and the main (usually male) character of any given series. Now repeat the previous sentence, replacing "girls" with "women." I also miss the presentation of "women" in television. You know, women with problems beyond stinky relationships with men.

Once upon a day, from the mid-80s to the 90s, we had TV shows that offered things that are no longer being offered on "mainstream" cable television.

Allow me to submit the following evidence for the court's consideration:

Kate & Allie (1984-1989)
Who's the Boss? (1984-1992)
The Golden Girls (1985-1992)
Designing Women (1986-1993)
Myrphy Brown (1988-1989)
Caroline in the City (1995-1999)

What do these shows have in common? 1. The women have lives. 2. The women have (or have had) jobs. 3. The women are the main characters, and speak to other women about things that are not necessarily guys.

Just for fun, let's try a little "Then and Now" exercise using Designing Women and the comparatively modern (and by now, thoroughly mainstreamed) hit Sex and the City:

Julia = Miranda
Mary Jo = Carrie
Charlene = Charlotte
Suzanne = Samantha

How new and progressive does Sex and the City seem now, really?

Alright, so maybe that's a little unfair to late-night TV's favorite PR agent, but it still matches up pretty well: you've got your uberfeminist, your "normal" girl, your innocent damsel and your Queen Bee.

Now, just for kicks, let's try it again with The Golden Girls:

Blanche = Samantha
Rose = Charlotte
Dorothy = Miranda/Carrie
Sophia = all the recurring snarky people (mostly gay male friends)

It's a shame that I can't much up the four women in one show with the four women in the next, but Bea Arthur's character provides both the "normal person" glue of Carrie and the "no nonsense edge" of Miranda in one convenient package, while Sophia exists to add a lot of pointed one-liners that do not usually have an impact on any episode storyline, no matter how silly.

Is this a sign of stagnation in the televised presentation of women in groups? Maybe so, maybe not. Perhaps any fictional group of approximately 4 people needs an innocent/idiot, a "strong" character, a "glamorous" character and an everyman/woman. Someone should look into it. At this moment, I'm not volunteering, but I am willing to start:

The bi-gendered, uber-formulaic Will & Grace gets awfully close to the above formula, only with two everypersons (Will & Grace), one Queen Bee (who pulls double duty as an idiot, triple if you count her breasts as well) and one standard-issue idiot. Will & Grace may get mad props for trying to make it "okay to be gay" on plain old mainstream American television, but its utter lack of strong female characters, strong gay characters, strong characters of any kind and successful, long term gay partnerships makes it something I would not recommend to, well, anyone. Do self-respecting women see themselves or an acceptable role model in Grace? In (gack!) Karen? Are the men in the show any better, as role models or fictional stand-ins for anyone, no matter what gender or sexual orientation? If I want to look at a televised interior designer and think "role model," I'll take Dixie Carter over Debra Messing any day.

I hate Will & Grace and I am not a homophobe, at least as far as I know. If there is a petition out there for "Please, please, you Hollywood jerks, make a sitcom about a gay couple rather than a heteronormative show that just includes gay people who never get to have fully developed love lives or even on-screen TLC," let me know and I will rush to sign it. I would love to see that show. (Queer as Folk does not meet this criterion for me. If you are, whether bi, gay, straight, narcissist, omni or whatever, watching that show for a reason other than the hot guys, you confuse me.) Actually, if that petition does not exist, maybe I should create one . . .

But back to presentations of women. Some more of the positive: Murphy Brown.

Murphy Brown does some things that I'm not sure have ever been done since. Murphy defines herself through her career rather than her sexuality, but manages to still be a sexually active woman who does not spend all of her time freaking out about whether she can ever find Mr. Big--I mean Mr. Right. Yes, she is a stereotypical ball-busting feminist. (I would love to argue that she transcends stereotype and embodies an Archetypal Feminist, but that might be more of a fun intellectual exercise than anything else--and I would have to watch the show again.) She can be mean, scary and rude. At the same time, there is something absolutely wonderful about a woman who can express anger openly without facing Dire Consequences every time that she does. Sure, Murphy's over-the-top, but when so many women were (and still are) taught that it's Wrong to express desire, frustration, anger, themselves, a little on-screen pushiness that does not instantly turn a woman into a social untouchable becomes a blessing in and of itself.

Murphy also acts (and dresses) professionally without gratuitously (yes, I'm looking at you, Samantha) showing off her "assets" (what a horribly mercantile term for parts of our own bodies). We know that Murphy, unlike many modern-day heroines, does not need to and would not exchange sexual or sexualized "favors" (even favors so relatively tame as glimpses of cleavage given Erin Brokavich-style) to get what she needs to get in order to get her job done: she would never shtoop to conquer.

I love Murphy Brown. I grew up with her, and the zaniness of the cast's adventures never really registered with me. I thought the show was "realistic," and I think that in the end this was a boon, because it meant that I thought a strong, aggressive woman with a high-powered job and, eventually, a child that she raised on her own was realistic. I thought that I could be powerful, aggressive and single, with no Cinderella makeover, and still be "successful" when I grew up.

Where are all the modern shows about women in jobs that focus on women in jobs and not on the sex lives of women in jobs?

The most recent show on my Feminist Nostalgia list is Caroline in the City, and even though it offers up veritable mountains of ridiculous, I can't help but love it. Reason I love it the first: Caroline has a male employee. As you can probably tell from the general nature of this blog, I am a big sucker for the femdom/malesub dynamic in fiction.

Reason the second: it's about a female cartoonist. ::swoon:: Not only does Caroline have a job, but she has a job on my short list of personal dream-jobs. That comes complete with a cute male assistant. Female fantasy, anyone? Wish fulfillment that might actually appeal to women for once? What a concept.

Seriously. What a concept. It may seem obvious, but so many current TV writers and producers are missing the boat on this one.

Speaking of female-targeted wish fulfillment: Aside from the overall cheesiness that reaches and then surpasses critical mass in its later seasons, all that Who's the Boss really needs to apologize for is its name. Who's the Boss? is not a legitimate question; the two main characters have an employer/employee relationship (though Barney's answer in How I Met Your Mother certainly has the ring of truth--so perhaps it is a legitimate question, with the rivals for the title being Angela and Mona rather than Angela and Tony). Be that as it may, the show has a lot going for it. Yes, yes, I'm far too easy on shows with female employers and male domestics, but I think they're important, if only because they constitute such a small force to stand up against the scads of shows with female domestics (Will & Grace, Two and a Half Men, The Nanny (which does offer compensatory butler-service, but sadly has women relegated to the position of only employees and children--at least until marriage) Arrested Development, even Sex and the City, etc.). And while the witty butler is an enjoyable trope, he generally only shows up in technically male-dominant shows and relationships (Nanny, Fresh Prince). To the Manor Born makes a lovely exception, but we had to import that.

A side note: I remember seeing previews for a sitcom about a divorced man who became the butler to his ex-wife and family. Did anything ever come of that? It looked pretty terrible, and it was hard to watch even the previews without feeling just a little too humiliated on his behalf, but I would be interested to see how the power dynamics played out.

Anyway, Tony is not a snarky butler. He starts the show as a "man's man," and one of the show's many (cheesy, not wrong) after-school-special messages is that he can be a "man" and a homemaker at the same time. He may lose some machismo points in the pursuit of his job, but the message from day one is: If you're man enough, you can take that kind of thing. While many modern women might think twice before inviting Tony Danza into their homes (he's one of those fascinatingly iconic, perpetually typecast TV actors who we tend no longer to envision as Real People), we can choose to accept the show's premise that he's a cute, dumb, friendly guy. Hmmm . . . a cute, friendly guy who waits on a "high-powered executive" woman. Affectionately. Where are there other TV shows like this? Is there even porn like this? We look at it now, and we can complain about the name. "We could never make a show like that now," we think. "It would be offensive to build a show on the 'female employer/male employee' dynamic as if it were something unusual and strange."

Well, fine. We got rid of the shows that offered that dynamic as an offensive "exception," but where are all the shows that offer it as the norm?