This is the list for those characters that clearly were supposed to be funny, relatable or at the very least, decent. We previously made a list of characters one is meant to hate and their primary function is to be detestable. That's not the case here. These are characters that should be normal but who we seriously could not dislike more. Now, it takes a lot for us to actually hate a character, usually we're just disinterested and forget the character, but these people really push our buttons. The fault mainly lies in terrible writing.
1. Willie in Temple of Doom. GOD!!! This was our least favourite Indiana Jones flick, mainly because of her. She's truly one of the most offensive female characters we've ever seen on screen. Everything about her pretty much ticks us off.
2. Anakin Skywalker in Attack of the Clones/Revenge of the Sith. No, we didn't pick Jar Jar Binks. Frankly, because Anakin annoys us way more. The constant childish bitching (that we're supposed to buy as sexy brooding) makes you want to poke your ears with a hot iron. Suffice it to say, with this character they basically neutered one of cinema's greatest villains.
3. Mary Jane Watson in Spider-man/Spider-man 2/Spider-man 3. We re-watched the second movie recently and, Jesus... even Aunt May is more dynamic than Mary Jane. She is truly the worst girlfriend ever. She cheats on all her boyfriends, needs to be rescued CONSTANTLY and is completely useless. She doesn't even possess any attitude to at least partially salvage her character. These first three characters are truly on a different level from the rest on this list.
4. Constance in The Musketeers. We've written about her in length in another post, so there's no need to expand on why we don't like her. It's this cliché in the style of "I'm a strong independent woman, but my world revolves around a guy".
5. Yahiko in Kenshin. Hands down the most annoying child character we've come across. And trust us when we say, that this series is not lacking in annoying characters. The other characters though, have some saving graces about them, even if it is through their interaction with other characters. Not so with Yahiko. He ruins every scene he is in.
6. Bella in Twilight - films. The source material is already quite horrendous so it's no surprise her character wasn't improved in the subsequent adaptations. This teenage girl has some serious psychological issues and exhibits toxic behaviour which, if framed correctly, could make an interesting storyline. Instead it's just teenage girl's fantasy of being with an older stalker dude. The reason why she is such an empty vessel though, is basically so that viewers can project themselves onto her.
7. Valentine in Parade's End. Another that shares the same dilemma with Constance. She's a suffragette created by ignorant men who knew nothing of the real struggle for women's suffrage. And to show that we're not hating on men (we mean, Twilight was created by a woman after all), Sienna Miller did way more justice to this type of character in a film created by men, The Lost City of Z.
8. Faith in Strange Days. Now, granted, this character is framed to be at least a little unpleasant, but we're seriously supposed to buy that she's someone you would completely be hung up on? No. It's really not believable at all. Plus in a movie that has Angela Basset's Mason, Faith comes across as bratty, emo and useless.
9. Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. Worst female character in any Disney animation. Most Disney female characters at this time weren't a lot better, but Aurora takes it to the next level. And unlike her predecessors, Aurora lives a carefree life surrounded by people who love and adore her. In film, this kind of a situation can make a character boring and annoying if she's not given any personality, and boy, does Aurora qualify. She's like a horrible watered down version of Ariel.
10. Ashley in Gone with the Wind. In here, the problem for us is more the framing than the actual character. This film has the whole man of action vs man of intellect going on - so Ashley is made into this dreamy, romantic and indecisive character to contrast Rhett Butler's more robust and aggressive man's man character. Mostly what we don't like about him is that he is so removed from reality that he doesn't even realise that he's leading Scarlett on, thus treating both his wife and Scarlett unfairly.
FOREWORD: Killing cops, not cool. Cops killing people, also not cool. These are not mutually exclusive opinions. So this post is going to be fairly serious, because there are a lot of difficult things we want to discuss here. As one of us did her thesis on criminal sociology and the other majors in media studies, this subject felt like a natural fit. But we wanted to do this also, because one of us is REALLY into police dramas (the British ones for real and the American ones for guilty pleasure). On the other hand, what truly triggered this idea was watching Chicago P.D. and connecting it to the current climate surrounding police brutality and the lack of accountability that seems to be expected from the police. We'll mainly discuss American shows and briefly contrast them with their British counterparts.
The role of police
In American shows, it seems, the police's main objective is to maintain order and act as a kind of punisher for the criminals as well as a liberator for the victims and their families. We'll address more fully the police's relationship with criminals and victims in these shows later. This part is more about order and authority. There is a great article about the birth of police and how its purpose has always been to protect current power structures and hierarchies (seriously, read it; it summarizes everything so much better than we ever could). You rarely see these shows question the collective action of the police. You occasionally see some individual wrongdoing, but it's never connected to systemic problems in the police force. In addition, the characters never seem to learn from these mistakes, but instead continue to perpetuate their harmful behaviour. Their methods are escalation, aggression and even violence. The makers of these shows portray aggression and violence as effective tools for crime prevention. When in reality, you know that's bullshit. There are plenty of studies. Using the fear of police as a crime deterrent is totalitarian.
For instance, in Chicago P.D. (and in multiple other ones) their boss is actively beating people up and that is portrayed as efficient policing. He disregards their own rules and in return, is revered for it. This would be great, if the show framed his behaviour as toxic. But the show itself glorifies this approach. Even when some of the subordinates challenge this behaviour, they never do anything to fix things. This is emblematic of most network (like ABC, NBC, FOX etc.) police tv-series, you know, the ones that everyone sees. It reflects poorly on the American cop shows that a comedy show about the police (Brooklyn 99) addresses issues of prejudice and discrimination more reasonably than their dramas.
Criminals and victims
The criminals detective shows are obsessed with are invariably violent perpetrators. It's almost comical how ignorant the portrayal of criminals is in American shows. Often, the criminal is the manifestation of what's evil and wrong in society. They don't get redeeming qualities or sympathy. Depicting criminals at least somewhat humanely, is what the Brits do a lot better. In British shows the focus is very much on why the crime was committed as opposed to punishing the criminal. Wire In the Blood is a pretty good example since the whole point is to investigate the thought patterns of those who commit serial violent crimes. There are a few instances where the criminal is actually sympathetic, and frequently they have deep traumas and have been victims of crime themselves. Still, even the British won't go the extra mile to actually discuss the complexity of why crime exists in the first place. Crime is one of the most complicated and difficult social issues there is. Not even criminologists and sociologists have come to an agreement to why people commit crime. There is no one explanation that would neatly answer this question and resolve the issue. And depicting criminals as "others" is not helping.
Victims are the one thing that most detective shows portray similarly. They are the innocents who either have no connection to the crime or the criminal. If they do, it is unwittingly. These shows ignore the fact that in reality the vast amount of victims of violent crimes actually have criminal history themselves. The victims rarely have any character either, they only function as an accelerator and justification for the officers' aggression and violence. This kind of polarization of criminal vs victim feeds into the simplistic narrative that crime just exists and that criminals deserve to be marginalized. Not a thought is given to the idea that changing the structures of society and its approach to criminals and crime would be the most effective way to prevent crime. Obviously, this isn't an issue with only the American police. It's pretty ubiquitous.
We do realize that these are fictional works, and the other one of us still really enjoys a lot of these shows despite their problems, but it would also be naive to say that media doesn't in some way affect your perception of the world. All in all, what we get when watching these shows, in particular the American ones, is that the police are there to serve the powerful through borderline authoritarian means of aggression, fear and violence. Rather, those qualities are seen as requirements to do the job well and not as the horribly damaging unprofessionalism that leads to people's deaths in real life. And what many of these shows don't understand that the lack of accountability and putting your loyalty of the police force above the community you're supposed to serve and protect, hurts not only the society at large - be it criminals, victims or bystanders - but also the police community itself.
