I’m plodding my way through the second season of Alias, after having watched the third and forth seasons initially, and something occurred to me:
Michael Vaughn is pathologically incapable of being faithful – emotionally and/or physically. Unless, of course, he’s with Syd; then he epitomises the word. But when he’s not, then he wants to be with her – or he just gives up all pretence at fidelity and cheats on whoever he’s with to be with our heroine.
Conclusion? Fidelity is a virtue, if it’s OTP (the show’s ‘One True Pairing’). When it’s not, it’s just a hindrance to the OTP.
When we first meet him, he’s in what we assume to be a long-term relationship. Despite this, he and Sydney exchange longing looks and an inappropriate emotional intimacy – both for the fact he’s in a relationship and he’s her handler, who needs to have a clear vision regarding her – possibly as a way of justifying their (mainly his) behaviour. Yes, he may be cheating emotionally, but not physically, and that’s what counts, right?
Rubbish. Brigitte Bardot once said something like “˜it is better to be unfaithful than to be faithful and wish you weren’t'; in other words, if you want to cheat, then cheat, but don’t long to be with someone and restrain yourself just so you can sit on your moral high horse and say you didn’t cheat. Emotional infidelity is as least as bad as physical infidelity, and somewhat worse, because it allows people to convince themselves that nothing’s happening and therefore, nothing’s wrong.
Eventually – after the girlfriend is off the scene – Vaughn and Syd jump into bed. The message? It’s OK to string along your current girlfriend in whom you’ve lost interest, until you find some other excuse to dump her and be with the woman you REALLY want.
Cut to season three. Sydney has disappeared for two years, and in the interim Michael has married. Syd is back on the scene for a month or two before the longing begins again. This time, Michael cheats with abandon. The writers tried to soften this little indiscretion by having Lauren cheat first – with Sark, no less. But Vaughn doesn’t know this at the time. He cheats on Lauren thinking she’s been faithful, then tries to “˜backdate’ his conscience and justify his own fidelities with the fact she was cheating at the time, too – he just didn’t know it at the time to justify it then.
The message? It’s OK to cheat on wifey with OTP because, well, wifey did something to deserve your infidelities. You may not know what it is, but she did it.
I shudder to think how many men must pick up on storylines like this and use the same logic to justify their own infidelities.
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But regardless I don’t like the idea of evaluating media because of a potential negative influence it might have on the thinking of others.
Why the hell not?
It’s not like anyone is saying that people shouldn’t be legally allowed to make trash.
Maybe my view is just skewed because I spend my days suggesting books to children and their parents, and because I’m such a firm believer in the value of stories, but I think that content matters and that it matters because it influences people. “The pen is mightier than the sword” goes both ways. Good art makes a difference and propaganda works.
When talking about literacy, educators use the phrases “learning to read” and “reading to learn” to describe different ways in which literature is used in the classrooms. Stories and information do not cease to be something we learn from simply because we are no longer children or because they are given to us through pictures and sounds instead of text.
I’ve learned a lot from media.
Some of it was false. I spent years reading romance novels thinking that everyone must be wrong about how much women want sex compared to men, but that they must be right about how the men and women react to pictures versus stories. My college friends and I laughed at the Playgirl someone had bought and wondered how it could ever be considered sexy.
Some if was true. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I’ve managed to find porn/erotica/what-have-you that does not follow the “consent is synonymous with submission” mantra that mainstream media rarely veers from, and I find it incredibly sexy. The idea that women are biologically not as turned on by images as men is now something I seriously question.
To me, saying that one shouldn’t evaulate media based on how it may influence people is like saying one shouldn’t care if people lie. The fact that not everyone will be influenced the same way or that some lies are kind does not mean that we should never discuss how media influences us or not teach children to value honesty.
Mickle(Quote) (Reply)
I think that’s the part where “influencing people” comes in.
It’s not like bad behavior should never be shown, or even that ambiguous behavior shouldn’t be shown, but when bad behaviour is presented as good – that’s not only annoying, it does the opposite of what good art is supposed to do.
Not that everything has to be good art…
Mickle(Quote) (Reply)
Very nicely said. Every time the media makes a choice about what it will and won’t present, they’re self-censoring. In evaluating their CHOICES, we are not suggesting censorship, we’re just looking at the self-censorship that’s already in place, and asking why (for example) it’s okay to show adultery as a celebrated piece of the story, but not okay to show domestic abuse as something to applaud.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Well the thing that really been getting my goat lately is this tendancy to justify fidelity if it’s the show’s OTP. I was watching this twdry Bitish soap a while ago and what struck me is how infidelity in the show’s main relationship was portrayed as dishonest and hurtful, and how so many shows gloss over that part of it for the sake of tension and water-cooler conversations – Grey’s is at the top of my blacklist right now because of it
But what PARTICULARLY annoyed me about Alias is the way they chopped and changed Vaughn’s attitude towards fidelity, thereby emphasising that it was justified so long as he was cheating WITH Sydney. He never cheats ON her, but at the same time, never has a relationship with someone else where he doesn’t cheat WITH her. It was remarkably inconsistant as well as glossing over another human truth – wouldn’t someone as otherwise pratical, cluey and grounded as Syney quickly work out that Vaughn was a self-entitled jerk who wasn’t worth her time?
scarlett(Quote) (Reply)
Yeah, and that also flies in the face of a basic truism: once a cheater, always a cheater. If he’ll cheat with you, he’ll cheat on you (or reverse the gender, as preferred).
It’s hard to buy these characters who cheat with a lead, but never on her, because it just almost never happens in real life.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Well, I have met people who delude themselves that the person who cheats WITH them won’t cheat ON them, but they generally have pretty poor judgement when it comes to relationships. That’s something that bothered me with Sydney – she otherwise had quite solid judgement, with her parents, her friends, Sloane, but never stopped to think that maybe she didn’t want to be with someone who would cheat WITH her because maybe that would come around to bite her on the ass one day.
scarlett(Quote) (Reply)
I think the missing aspect of this conversation is the viewpoint of sex itself. The viewpoint of sex in the media is an amalgamate of fundamentalist Christendom (sex is a dangerous thing to be contained within fidelous relationships) and Darwinianism (sex is just a fun biological activity). On the one hand the media portrays sex as glamorous fun, and on the one hand there’s that slut/stud double-standard. When it comes to fidelity, those two viewpoints of sex collide: monogamy is good, but sex is meaningless. Therefore half the time the sex belongs in a fidelous relationship (the OTP) and half the time it is nothing but a physical connection that holds no weight/obligation of its own (therefore the non-OTP cheating isn’t bad).
People in real-life tend to view sex in one of those two viewpoints. Either sex needs to be contained in monogamy and therefore it’s bad to express any temptation one might have to engage in carnal actions with another, or else “it was just sex” and was no threat to the emotional relationship (the old, “I love my wife” rag). Some couples balance these two elements by coming up with rules governing extra-relationship sex, some just forgive and use one indescretion to justify another later on, and some hold the wrongness of infidelity over themselves like Damocles’s sword to keep themselves from cheating.
Personally, I don’t think either attitude is healthy or conducive to maintaining monogamy.
That being said, there is a third viewpoint of sex that I have yet to see on television outside of Babylon 5′s Minbari: that sex is a sacred intimacy. I know two couples made up of individuals who have this view of sex, that it is a pleasure given by the Divine to share only with one’s chosen and bonded mate, and believe me: these couples do not have a problem with fidelity. They love their mates, and sex is an expression of that love that they don’t WANT to share with another. That viewpoint is my own as well, and I still have my “v-card” at 23 because of it. If sex in our culture was considered a beautiful gift that is part physical and part psychological (which oxytocin and vasopressin/prolactin assure that it is), then Vaughn-esque situations would be rare instead of the cold statistic that 80% of couples will be affected by infidelity on one or both parts.
IMO, of course.
DragonLadyK(Quote) (Reply)
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