I’ve been re-watching Alias lately, and I’ll probably do a more comprehensive series review later, but for now one thing is jumping out at me:
The men go by their last names. The women go by first names. WTF?
At first, I tried to cut them slack because Sydney’s father is also “Agent Bristow” (and he’s often called “Jack” for that very reason). But Vaughn, who at first has no contact with Jack Bristow, calls her Sydney. And Sydney is still calling him “Vaughn” after they’ve been dating for a while.
But that excuse fell apart when Lauren Reed showed up, and everyone mostly called her “Lauren”.
We could go on for pages about the significance of women’s surnames in a patriarchal culture, but I’ll try to be brief: surnames belong to men. Everyone inherits their surname from their father (except in rare instances which are considered abnormal and socially suspect). Men are socialized (at least in the US) to respond to “Hey, Smith!” as easily as “Hey, John!” and be proud of the surname. They’re socialized to feel rejected if a wife refuses to take their name.
Women are conditioned not to get attached to their birth surname because they’re going to trade it in for hubby’s surname. We’re taught from grade school to write out what our names would be if we married our crush du jour and see how the new name sounds. Men’s last names are fixed – a foundation to build on. Ours are borrowed, transient – dust in the wind.
Which is why it irked me when Lauren – who’s kept her “maiden” name instead of taking her husband’s last name, thus suggesting an attachment to her birth surname – still gets the first-name treatment, just like Sydney. The effect is to keep her and Sydney girlish next to the men. I mean, contrast this with “Cagney and Lacey”, who get called by their last names and titles just like the men they work with. Hell, even Stargate SG-1 kept Carter on a last name basis (except with Daniel, who called almost everybody by first name). There’s also Scully of The X-Files. The use of last names remind us that these women have achieved rank, distinguished themselves somehow. Earned the right to be called by another name than the one the kindergarten teacher had for them.
For Sydney, I could come up with one more excuse – that the show is about her as a whole person, not just “Agent Bristow.” But, again, that wouldn’t explain the producers’ choice to have Lauren go mostly by her first name, too.
And no, I don’t think the producers sat down and thought this up to be sexist or to denigrate the two characters (some of the writers and producers are in fact women). More likely, they just automatically envisioned the women characters by first names (and the men by last) because that’s what we’re all trained to do.
Gategrrl says
January 30, 2008 at 12:40 pmOh, I have another anecdotal last-name story to add to the list! I just remembered!
When I was living in South Korea for a year and a half, I was hit with culture shock at the incredibly patriarchical culture there. Traditional Korean culture makes current chauvenistic Western culture look like it’s extremely liberal.
Anyhow, to the point. After I’d been there for a while, a few Korean women/wives/unmarried women had told me, married women do NOT take their husband’s family names. They weren’t happy with that state of affairs, and indeed, there was some kind of movement to change that. Why? Well, in Korea, a highly Confucist society, a woman marries into her husband’s family, and is henceforth under her mother-in-law’s control. (If you marry the oldest son, you’re especially screwed.) But the new wives don’t take their husband’s name out of tradition, and they felt that because of that, they weren’t really part of the new family they’d joined and if they had a real harridan for a mother-in-law, well, it was screw-the-new-wife time.
I found it an interesting reversal of what happened during the feminist movement in the West and the US.
This was over ten years ago now, so I don’t know how much has changed since the early nineties, but that sort of cultural change takes a long time to permeate a society.
Some of the strongest women I’ve ever known were Korean. They put up with a LOT of crap.
SunlessNick says
February 1, 2008 at 7:10 amA time a couple of months ago, I was listening to the radio, when this woman – http://www.bristol.ac.uk/Depts/Anatomy/about/staff/roberts.htm – was being interviewed about old bones and archaeology. (I had first heard of her from this show – http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/E/extremearchaeology/index.html – and had naturally decided she rocked).
The guy interviewing her thought she rocked as well, and clearly did respect her – but he had no sense that it might be inconsistent with that respect to refer to her as “Dr Alice” rather than “Dr Roberts.”
BetaCandy says
February 1, 2008 at 1:46 pmGategrrl said:
It’s sad to think we’ve somehow built a civilization in which these two sentences make sense together, consecutively. Because they really shouldn’t. (But I know it’s true.)
I’m sure I don’t understand all the cultural nuances there, but it sounds like a Korean woman goes through her marriage having no respect and possibly having to take a lot of abuse, then suddenly she develops a daughter-in-law who has no respect and no choice but to take her abuse. Which sounds like a recipe for cyclical abuse.
Sunless Nick, I wonder if the producers of the broadcast thought she needed to be made more “cute” so she wouldn’t put off misogynistic listeners with her highly suspect degree-vagina combination.
Kathleen says
February 5, 2008 at 4:36 amThankyou for this post. I was in a critiquing session, reading a science fiction story (which was written by a woman but picked by those who didn’t know her surname as being written by a man) and noticed that the only characters in the story described physically (if only incidentally) were the women, and that while the men were called by their surnames, the women were referred to by their first. I’d recently read this post and it really struck me, particularly as it was a quasi-military context.
I mentioned it to the author first (to make sure she was happy with me bringing it up in critique, because I didn’t want to embarass her), who was quite surprised because it was something she had *not* thought about or done deliberately (which knowing the little I do about her I believe) and was also interested to notice it, so there was an animated little discussion at our end of the table 🙂
When next I see her I’m pointing her in the direction of The Hathor Legacy – I think she’ll appreciate it.
BetaCandy says
February 5, 2008 at 8:30 amThanks for pointing someone new our way, Kathleen!
I know it’s possible to do these things unconsciously because I’ve done them. They’re programmed into us from an early age, so it’s a process of un-learning. Which is harder than learning.
Tom says
February 11, 2008 at 12:03 pmThe thing that my wife and I always noticed about Alias was how often, whilst on a secret mission, the spies would call out to each other by their real names: “Look out, Vaughn!” “I’m coming, Sydney!” etc. Sometimes they did use code names, such as “Mountaineer,” but that often fell apart during the heat of the mission. It seemed like they didn’t put their, y’know, aliases to good use.
Lea says
February 12, 2008 at 4:41 amThis is one of the few interesting things about the tragically post-feminist, proto-Ally McBeal Lois and Clark; as a team of reporters, they were known as “Lane and Kent,” and when they married, Lois didn’t change her name. Lois Lane is Lois Lane, the name itself is too iconic (and alliterative) to change.
Patrick says
February 12, 2008 at 10:33 amOne thing I love about the Lois-Clark marriage in the comics is that the fact that she wasn’t changing her name never came up. And it made perfect sense on all fronts – professionally, her name was important, personally, it reflected her ideals (and Clark’s), and from a narrative standpoint it was part of her iconic character.
firebird says
February 25, 2008 at 9:05 pmI’ve always thought that using people’s last names to call them by was a guy thing. I find it irritating to refer to people by their last name only (e.g., Vaughn, not Mr. Vaughn, which I just find distancing) especially in novels where the name switches back and forth (because I get confused). In my personal experience, guys call each other by their last names and women are called and call everyone by first names. Because I can’t imagine feeling comfortable with someone calling me by my last name, I have never felt discriminated against that people do it. 🙂
But now I’m going to notice all the time and see it everywhere I expect. As to changing last names, my life has been confusing in that I was born out of wedlock so that I never had my father’s last name, instead getting my mother’s maiden name, which was changed when she married my step dad by adoption…and none of the three names is amenable to using as a name. I have often wanted to change my adoptive name, but I don’t know what I would change it to. I don’t believe in marriage anymore, so I don’t think I would get married so that is a moot point.
It is interesting to have the Social Security office person say, “Did you get married? Oh, wait, you were eight. I guess not.”
AF Williams says
October 17, 2009 at 9:46 amIt’s late in the day, but I just have to bring up another example of this: the late 70s-early 80s British scifi show, Blake’s 7. This was something of an anti-Star Trek, where the main baddie, Supreme Commander (later President) Servalan, was a ruthless, power-hungry, brutal, and kinky woman. She was also the only major female character to be known by her surname; in fact, the audience is never told what her first name is.
In contract, the varied female ‘good guys’ were always known by their first names, as was the cowardly non-threatening male lead.
Patrick J McGraw says
October 21, 2009 at 5:13 pmThis is one of the things I really like about The Mentalist. Teresa Lisbon is either “Lisbon” or “Boss.” Grace Van Pelt is always “Van Pelt.”
MaggieCat says
October 22, 2009 at 1:36 amI like that too. I actually do a double take on the rare occasions that somebody calls Van Pelt by her first name because it takes forever for me to figure out who they’re talking about (yes, I keep expecting it to be Lucy).
On the other hand it means the straight/white/male lead is always called ‘Jane’.