avphibes

Since I've been hating on the current cultural hotness in my last few posts, I figured I'd switch it up a little and say how much I've been loving on something. That something being the (now, tragically, cancelled) teen show "Veronica Mars," which I just finished watching all the way through from the beginning. "Veronica Mars" is a pretty tight, fun, engaging little detective show full of soapy plot-twists, but I think I love it for more than that. I feel, though, like I can't start delving into my love of our savvy, mystery-solving teen heroine without first talking about contemporary feminism.

Contemporary feminism is so chaotic as to be almost impossible to get a grasp on. The old Onion article Women now Empowered by Everything a Woman Does is becoming less satire and more the commonly accepted truth. Still, there is this pesky logic that if feminism is defined by a woman choosing her own destiny, then any destiny a woman chooses- no matter how banal or degrading- upholds the ideal of feminism. And so, in this postmodern age, feminism is just a mad-lib that every woman can fill in to her own liking. "When a woman chooses to [verb] or feels [adjective], then she is [adjective], which promotes the strength of women by [verb]ing our [noun]."

And so, nowadays, when I've just come to accept that everything from pole dancing to buying expensive shoes is a celebration of our female spirit and independence, I feel almost thrown for a loop when I encounter a female in pop culture (fictional or non), that seems to embody something loftier than what seems to be the ultimate contemporary feminist ideal of self-indulgence. If I had a daughter (which in the chaos of contemporary culture, frankly, terrifies me), I would want her to be like Veronica Mars.

The irony, though, is that the character of Veronica Mars is completely unrealistic. She is far more savvy, smart, clever, focused and ethical then any teenager (or even adult) probably ever was or will be. And so here is were I bring Ayn Rand into the discussion. I read some essay by Ayn Rand somewhere down the line where she posited that art and culture had a responsibility to show an idealized view of human potential rather than celebrating mediocrity for the sake of populism. So maybe she was a crackpot who wrote overwrought romance novels about capitalist philosophy, but I have to say I kind of agree with her on this one. I, personally, would rather believe in the potential of an exemplary-yet-unrealistic character than rally around one who has the same weaknesses and foibles as myself.

Of course now we get into some trickiness. Is "Veronica Mars" actually a feminist show, or is it secretly undermining? It was, after all, created by a man. And is Veronica's strength, drive, intelligence and value system the ideological equivalent of the stick-thin fashion model giving girls an unattainable and unrealistic standard of what they ought to be? Over the course of just the first season of the show, Veronica gets raped, abandoned by her alcoholic mother and has to deal with the murder of her best friend. Any one of these things are a carte-blanche for a real-life woman to become a self-destructive, socially maladroit ball of whimpering and/or misanthropic jelly. Is the fact that Veronica's core values of justice, loyalty and egalitarianism are forged and strengthened by these events admirable or ridiculously implausible? Did they just take a heroic masculine ideal and put it in the body of cute teenage girl?

Call me a hopeless romantic, but I want to believe in a world where women have such strong value systems to guide them and ground their actions. "Values" get such a short shrift nowadays in our moral-relativist world. We get told a lot to "be true to yourself" but this is almost laughable when identities are as interchangeable as lip gloss shades. In the metaphorical websites of our lives, we're all focusing on the cool flash intro instead of the site map. We do whatever we feel like and then construct moral rationale around it instead of choosing our actions based on an set morality. Me? I'm a mess. I have only the vaguest idea what my values are. But I wish I was more like Veronica Mars.

But enough of my meanderings about "meaning." Let's get back to talking about the TV show. First off: It's a travesty that it was cancelled. A travesty! It wasn't even on long enough to start sucking! I mean, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (which clearly was a sort of template for "Veronica Mars") had pretty much jumped the shark by the time we said goodbye to it, but this show was cut short in it's prime. Honestly, I think after the end of season three when I heard it had been cancelled, I was in denial and thought they'd come around and bring it back, but no dice. I have reached the stage of acceptance, now, but I'm still annoyed. This is what I get for liking shows with low ratings.

And can we talk for a moment about Jason Dohring? That kid has "heat." I'll admit, when I started watching the show, I was like "this bland young-Ed-Norton-looking guy is supposed to be the sexy bad boy? Gimme a break." But I stand corrected. He smolders. Every time he kisses a girl, I get flustered. When he first kisses Veronica in season 1, I was like a southern belle with the vapors having to fan my blushing face. You hear talk about actors paired as love interests having "chemistry," but Jason Dohring just has chemistry, period. I feel like you could pair him with a dust mop and it would be totally hot. I don't know what he's doing now that the show is cancelled, but I'm curious to see what becomes of his career. The guy who plays Duncan Kane, however...yawn.