[fan-lore]

[fan-lore]

[feministwalkingdead]

Criticizing the Criticism (Feminist Walking Dead)

There are a lot of legitimate reasons to dislike or be critical of a female character on TWD. Lori was self-righteous and wildly inconsistent. Andrea felt she was entitled to automatic leadership, and made terrible, libido-driven, decisions about men. Carol killed people. Michonne kept important, possibly life-threatening information to herself. 

However, there are simply too many people whose praise for the show’s female characters comes only if they are conventionally sexually attractive or highly skilled at physical combat. 

Likewise, their criticism of female characters focuses on the fact that they have multiple sex partners, are not conventionally sexually attractive, or do stereotypical women’s work. You’ll recognize these people because they tend to use words associated with real-life misogyny: “Bitch,” “Whining,” “Hysterical.” “Hag.” “Whore.” “Useless." 

These criticisms can be frustrating to read. However, it helps to recognize what you are seeing and keep it in mind if you decide you want to engage. 

(**This doesn’t even factor in the people whose hatred of a character is so all-encompassing that they will criticize her for literally anything she does, no matter how innocuous. I intend to address this issue once I’ve done some more research to determine how prevalent it is, and whether there are comparable perma-critics for the male characters. I want to make sure I’m not letting a few loud voices make me think there’s a chorus.)

[feministwalkingdead]

[somepretty-things]

Lori Grimes is, without a doubt, the most reviled character in the history of TWD. 

First of all, let’s look at what Lori did that made her so worthy of the hatred of so many fans. Well, she had sex with her husband’s former partner after her husband died and she thought the world was ending. Shane, a man she trusted implicitly, told her that her husband was dead. Now, wouldn’t you think that would make her a victim of fraud? Well, for a lot of fans, it didn’t. Lori was nothing more than a cheating whore, even though the minute she found out Rick was alive she never had sex with Shane again, or even came close. So, frankly, when it comes to people who claim she cheated on Rick, I have to assume that these people have chosen to disregard the facts of the matter. 

Then there were the charges that she led Shane on, and played Rick and Shane against each other. There’s no question that she did this, albeit unintentionally. Most of the time, she pushed Shane away, but a few times, she definitely didn’t. Her most egregious example of this, though, was when she encouraged Rick to kill Shane because she knew Shane was dangerous. Then, when Rick did just that, she was horrified and pulled away from him. (In response to this, Rick didn’t talk to her for six months, and Carl pulled away from her, too, so never let it be said that Lori didn’t suffer the consequences for everything she did.)

Yes, there were other things that made people dislike Lori. She tended to be judgmental and a bit pompous. She didn’t keep a close eye on Carl. But those were played for laughs by most of the fandom.

The real problem with Lori, though, was that her actions from day to day were mystifying, and sometimes almost criminally stupid (e.g., driving into town to retrieve Rick for no good reason, then having a one-person car accident). I put the blame for this squarely on the writing. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere,TWD has always had a tendency to underwrite and edit down its characters’ speeches, and Season Two was the height of that. That underwriting did Lori in, because her behavior was mystifying without some explanation of what was going through her head. I remember seeing interviews with Sarah Wayne Callies where she would explain, at length, Lori’s motivation for her actions. She had clearly put a lot of thought into what made Lori tick. Unfortunately, this motivation did not translate to the screen, because the character’s lines never provided any insight. I don’t know if any actress could have made that work, not even Melissa McBride, whose ability to add nuance is unrivaled.

Suffice to say, Lori’s death overjoyed a lot of TWD fans, and they were brutal about it, despite the “heroic” redemptive death the writers gave her (ugh). It was too little, too late for these fans, and they let their misogyny flag fly in their celebrations.

So Lori wasn’t missed, but it wasn’t long before another over-30 female character would become the focus of fans’ hatred and moral judgments: Andrea. 

This made me so sad because I actually liked Lori. I felt like Rick and Carl were way too hard on her in season 3 (though it made sense that if Rick was treating Lori the way he was that Carl would pick up on that and do the same). The way she died made me so sad, and then to see people saying what they said about her made me even angrier. Idk, I always wanna defend her because she’s one of those characters people have irrational hate for.