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seeksadventure
I reviewed The Vampire Diaries 1.01 "Pilot" over at Innsmouth Free Press: Gossip Girl Gets Fangs? The Successes and Failures of The Vampire Diaries"
Excerpt: Basically, the trailers were exactly what I expected from a teen vampire show on the CW, but not really what I wanted after reading the books. This was exacerbated when I saw the still advertisements, in particular the one where the image was focused tightly on Elena’s face and one vampire had his hand around her throat and the other vampire stroked her cheek. Though it could have been a consensual display of dominance and violence, the image itself gave us nothing of that. Instead, it showed Elena helpless, on the verge of tears, and simply waiting for whatever fate was to become of her. I hated this as an advertisement in general, but in particular, for stripping Elena’s agency from her. When I read the books, one of the things that struck me was the way she actually acted: she didn’t simply wait for the vampires (or the boys, before she knew they were vampires) to come to her. She wasn’t a helpless victim, she fought back no matter what went on around her. With that stripped out of the advertisement, I worried the creators would strip it out of the show, too, because it wasn’t what the creators thought would attract viewers.
Excerpt: Basically, the trailers were exactly what I expected from a teen vampire show on the CW, but not really what I wanted after reading the books. This was exacerbated when I saw the still advertisements, in particular the one where the image was focused tightly on Elena’s face and one vampire had his hand around her throat and the other vampire stroked her cheek. Though it could have been a consensual display of dominance and violence, the image itself gave us nothing of that. Instead, it showed Elena helpless, on the verge of tears, and simply waiting for whatever fate was to become of her. I hated this as an advertisement in general, but in particular, for stripping Elena’s agency from her. When I read the books, one of the things that struck me was the way she actually acted: she didn’t simply wait for the vampires (or the boys, before she knew they were vampires) to come to her. She wasn’t a helpless victim, she fought back no matter what went on around her. With that stripped out of the advertisement, I worried the creators would strip it out of the show, too, because it wasn’t what the creators thought would attract viewers.