Penny comes across as passive, naive, and angelically good as she strives to help homeless people and, even when at death's door, refuses to condemn the jerk who took advantage of her, publicly humiliated her, and then effectively killed her. In short, she is a weak female character, an anomaly in the writing of Joss Whedon. So, before coming to Whedon's defense, I will say that I understand where the feminists/ other outraged viewers are coming from. However, I want to use this post to make several important points in Dr. Horrible's favor. Firstly, Penny's flat character can be read as a purely representative role, symbolizing Billy's connection to his "good" side (Penny is, after all, an emblem of perfection). When Penny dies, Dr. Horrible looses all restraint and Billy, as shown by the swift scene at the productions end "doesn't feel a thing." Secondly, yeah, I get the fact that Dr. Horrible features no other prominent female characters, making Penny's flatness somewhat of a blow to Whedon fans who watched shows like Firefly (full of butt-kicking females). However, the production, as I've already mentioned, exhibits so much excellence in literally ALL other areas that I believe we should cut Whedon some slack. Heck, change that to a lot of slack. This is the guy responsible for characters like Buffy, Zoe, and Saffron, all females of immense fortitude. I think we can forgive the guy for ONE weaker, more symbolic female character in in Dr. Horrible, especially seeing as the production lasted less than an hour!
In summary, Dr. Horrible is awesome, Penny is a symbol, and can we forgive Whedon (the champion of female power in TV) for one case of inconsistency in an otherwise unapproachable production?
4 comments:
The character of Penny didn't really bother me like many of the people in class today. I saw Penny's character as who she was suppose to be, the damsel in distress. Her character came right out of any superhero comic book. I was enraged that she wasn't a strong female character, I thought she served her purpose well.
As a naturally argumentative person, let me be the first to say that such people will find any flaw to pounce upon just because. The Whedon fans throwing dirt you mentioned aren't necessarily saying they dislike Dr. Horrible, I quite like it personally, but maybe being combative and critical is enjoyable to them. I don't know if you asked that question intending to receive an answer, but there it is, take it for what it's worth. If it weren't Penny, it would be something else, trust me.
Yeah I'm not super uptight about Penny, she was badly done, but so are a lot of characters in TV (male and female). I frankly wish there were more things to debate besides just doing a feminist reading of it.
There are, of course, more things to debate. I've just pushed you all towards the feminist debate...sorry about that. But not really. [Evil laughter.]
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