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Hanna, you call out the false dichotomy between the miserable married and passionate single, and in this weekend's New York Times Magazine, Ginia Bellafante discusses Jodi Picoult's novels, and the false dichotomy between good parent and bad. Substitute marriage for parenting—"the difference between marriage that assumes the shape of performed concern and marriage that takes the form
of active tending"—and you've hit on what we've been discussing all week with Tsing Loh's piece... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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Willa, I'm glad you talked about Ginia Bellafante's great Times piece about Burn Notice. I've loved the show from the start, but I always stumbled over Gabrielle Anwar's character, Fiona. At first I couldn't get past Fiona's lack of repentance for her past as a member of the Irish Republican Army. I know Americans always had a soft spot (and deep pockets) for the IRA, but post-9/11, we're all agreed they were terrorists, right? Then I realized that the show's creators are just into blowing stuff up. (Exhibit 1: the weird promo that tells viewers the show's Web site will help them improve their "spy skills" while showing the show's hero, Michael, use a cell phone to trigger a massive explosion. I worry that visiting the site could land me on a watch list.) The whole IRA thing was just a handy excuse to explain why she knows so much about guns and ammo.
As Ginia and Willa point out, Fiona has no time for the "He's Just Not That Into You" meme. She has always been the boy in the relationship with Michael. She's prone to violence while Michael is the gentling, moderating influence who makes sure that no one gets hurt when she shoots and bombs. He's the home body who wants to keep his loft and his yogurts (the only thing he eats) to himself. She's the more sexually aggressive of the pair. She even thinks like a man: In Episode 2 of the current season, Michael freaks out when it appears that Fiona has been killed in a booby-trapped house. When he gets home, he finds her there, oblivious to the idea that he might be worried—not because she's a jerk but because she's so confident that she can take care of herself that it doesn't even occur to her that other people could be anxious.
And yet, I'm worried that they're softening Fiona up. In the first two episodes of this season, Fiona has displayed a very uncharacteristic affection for kids. That would be fine—tough women have hearts—except that it has made her into an unreliable operative. In Week 1, she bonded so completely with a sick child that she screwed up the case by getting into a girl fight with the target of the investigation. (Both of them were wearing bikinis at the time. Burn Notice's Miami setting allows for more swimwear scenes than an Australian soap opera. Usually Fi dons skimpy outfits to take advantage of tough guys who become as weak as kittens when they get a glimpse of her fabulous gams. It wasn't so obvious why the meeting with the sick-kid-scamming female mastermind had to take place in a hot tub.) In Episode 2, her emotional response to a situation—a teenage football star's sister had been sexually harassed by a local gangster—got in the way of rational thinking, which, as Michael's voice-over always reminds us, is essential for a good spy.
Fiona doesn't need "He's Just Not That Into You." She needs "It's OK Not To Go Gaga for Kids."
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In the Sunday New York Times, Ginia Bellafante praised USA's sleek and cheeky Miami spy show Burn Notice as a "winning post-feminist revenge fantasy." Why? The series' leading lady, Fiona (played by Gabrielle Anwar) has zero respect for the He's Just Not That Into You meme.
Unlike women following the advice of the aforementioned self-help book, Fiona refuses to accept her super spy, ex-boyfriend Michael's frequent rejections, regularly engaging in jealousy-inducing, bikini wearing antics to win him back (while, simultaneously, helping him blow things up, shoot people and clear his name). In Bellafante's reading, this shameless behavior doesn't make Fiona pathetic, it makes her a badass who has tapped into her own masculinity. Instead of feeling powerless and mortified because she loves someone who doesn't love her in return, Fiona won't "regard her romantic pursuit as a pitiable behavior in need of reform."
While Bellafante might have reserved the "post feminist revenge fantasy" compliment for a character who doesn't spend her time "interrupting stakeouts and shooting sprees and manhunts to ask Michael for a key to his apartment," she's got a point: He's Just Not That Into You may be common sense, but it's also based on a woman's (supposed) total powerlessness in starting relationships.
If he's into you, he'll call. Doing anything proactive would be a waste of time, not to mention, pathetic. (As the trailer for next week's film version of He's Just Not That Into You makes abundantly clear, that one extra, unsolicited phone call could be really, really embarrassing.) God forbid, you should pursue some one you truly liked; you might get rejected to your face, which would be so much harder to bear than getting passively rejected by an unanswered voice mail. If the prospect of a real-time dismissal seems worth the risk in certain, obviously rare!, cases, He's Just Not That Into You can't help. Fiona could. Maybe she should write her own book (if she can find time between all the fire fights). It could be called He's Just Not That Into You: Who Cares?
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