Thanks, I hate it - The Magicians S4 Finale

[lierdumoa]

So the thing that makes me ABSOLUTELY INCANDESCENT WITH RAGE is this line from Hollywood Reporter’s interview with the magicians creative team [x]:

“And from a dramaturgical point of view, it’s kind of great that at last, the white male lead on a show is no longer safe.”

It’s so transparently disingenuous.

I mean first of all, when fans complain about shows fridging “everybody except the white guys” it’s because we want shows to STOP fridging women & POC. It’s not because we want shows to START fridging white guys IN ADDITION to women & POC.

And secondly, if they sincerely wanted to make a statement about the unimportance of privileged white men, they would have fridged Josh, instead of spending two seasons setting him up as Quentin’s more heterosexual, more neurotypical REPLACEMENT.

Josh is the textbook white straight cis neurotypical male self-insert Gary Stu. He’s a mediocre white man who requires constant validation.

Every single Josh scene goes something like this:

Josh: I know I’m not important or special .

Core Castmember: You’re wrong, Josh. You’re actually very important and special. I’m sorry I didn’t realize it sooner, and give you the validation you deserve.

The show constantly rewards him for his mediocrity. He gets a giant werewolf penis, and then he gets to angst about his giant werewolf penis. He gets a hero’s journey. The show even hands him naked!Margo on a silver fucking platter like she’s some kind of fucking participation trophy.

Oh yeah, don’t get me started on Josh/Margo. The straight male gaze is so glaringly obvious in how that romance was written.

Their relationship literally starts with her servicing him sexually out of pity after he gives a big speech about how he doesn’t want to be a rapist. So many of his scenes in the last season serve no purpose except to 1) demonstrate to the audience how “chivalrous” Josh is and then 2) immediately reward Josh’s so-called chivalry with pussy.

And the show pulls the exact same patriarchal bullshit with Penny23/Julia. Penny23 knows Julia’s not sexually or romantically interested in him, but he keeps putting niceness coins into his Julia vending machine until eventually sex comes out.

Both of these relationships reinforce the message that the love of a beautiful woman is a reward mediocre straight men earn for being Nice Guys™.

Margo having a romance with Fen would have made a million times more sense. Fen was supposed to be a lesbian in the books anyway, and Margo’s canonically expressed sexual interest towards both men and women.

Oh and I could write a whole other post about how Eliot spent 50 more years with Quentin than Alice yet somehow the show gave Alice’s grief higher priority, further demonstrating their continued commitment to prioritizing patriarchal heteronormativity ahead of queer representation.

Just.

The sheer unmitigated gall of these showrunners.

To write the most grossly patriarchal narrative possible, ending with them fridging a queer, mentally ill character, then still have the audacity to award themselves progressiveness points.

Comments

[lierdumoa]

Yes the fact that the character who got fridged was *actively suicidal* takes this to a whole new level of disgusting. Quentin was clinically depressed, and people in the LGBTQ community experience particularly high rates of depression, *especially* bisexuals who experience higher rates of depression than either gay men or lesbians. So to say that Quentin is privileged and that his fridging is progressive erases the real world suffering of people with depression, and bisexuals, and particularly bisexuals with depression.

They couldn’t have more blatantly stated “your marginalization and oppression doesn’t matter.”

FUCK THOSE RANCID SHITHOLES CALLING THEMSELVES SHOWRUNNERS. DRAG THEM TO HELL.