04/17/03 i really get into my television shows. mostly i become enthralled by the WB shows, such as felicity, dawson's creek, and smallville. a reason for this is that they portray some realistic views of life and especially of adolescence. but over the years i've caught these shows on the telly, i've noticed an ugly trend of a certain type of character. she is the monster who rears her head when she thinks everyone in boob-tube land is under her spell. but i for one see through her: the infallible, intellectual, retrospective, girl-next-door-cute pseudo-heroine. she is so perfect that no one woman could ever attain her goddess-like status. she is the prime example of the term "too good to be true".
JOEY POTTER: i have never truly fallen for katie holmes's portrayal of a young boonie-town woman in dawson's creek. miss potter fulfills the prerequisites of pseudo-heroine of the creek, as her dad was in jail, her mom died of cancer when she was a toddler, and her older sister took care of her along with an illegitimate child of her own. oh, and she's poor. i think that about covers the bases of a sordid past (checkmark!). as her present roomate once told her, "you're smart, and you don't even know it! you're beautiful, and you don't even know it!" i'm so sick of these succinct statements of potter's wonderfulness. and didn't you hear? she doesn't even know it! that's another thing about these classic beauties -- they're incredibly humble.
i think i started disliking the character of joey potter even more so after her first-love stint with dawson. after that, she moved on to jack who thought she hung the moon. you know, since she's so "honest, pure, smart, and beautiful." but jack is gay, and that is something even the great joey cannot rectify. then there was pacey -- oh, sarcastic lovable pacey! -- and she ruined him. that took the cake. now i'm seeing miss pure potter in bed with charlie-what's-his-face. you see? her storyline is getting so repetitive and cyclic that i don't even care to remember names. i hate the fact that every male counterpart on the show must fall for her so-called charm. she has what the entertainment industry calls moxie, but too bad the writers always use it in such a way that it induces vomit.
LANA LANG: vancouverite kristin kreuk, although a very good-looking young lady in her own right, has more or less assassinated the character of lana lang. when i was younger, i read through some of my dad's old superman comics and had always imagined lana lang to be stronger, more unique, and just less mousey. like potter, lang embodies the requirements it takes to become pseudo-heroine of smallville. for she, too, hardly remembers the warm embrace of her parents. at the age of three, her parents were killed in a freak meteor shower as they stood by their car with infant lana just across the street. for that sole reason, it would be sacrilegious for someone like myself to outwardly despise her character.
presently, she is the most popular girl at her school (who da thunk it?), she takes part in the school paper, she has the football quarterback as her boyfriend, and she holds clark kent's heart in the palm of her fragile, well-manicured hand. maybe i just never liked kristin kreuk's acting (or lack thereof) all that much; you can witness this in the somewhat welfare canadian series edgemont, where both her facial expressions and monotonous voice remained intact. i simply do not like the idea that someone as delightfully complicated as superman himself could fall for a lana lang who is so completely transparent, even if she does happen to be wrapped in a tight little chinese-dutch package.
girls my age and younger shouldn't have to look up to fabricated women like joey potter and lana lang. i realize that they're only characters on a television show and that they hold no bearing on reality. but i choose to disagree. the people who write and script these young women have the responsibilty of creating characters with flaws and idiosyncracies, details in their personalities that viewers can fall in love with. this isn't out of jealousy nor is it out of spite; i can admit that these women are good-looking and perhaps even stunning on some days. but when those idiosyncracies are taken away from female characters only so that we may focus on their "perfect" qualities, we fail to love a full, complex heroine and are left with the remains of an ignorant prom princess.
© copyright dullsville, est. 2002
we are not affliated with smallville, its cast, or creators. we just think they're funny.
