la_marquise | Howard isn't funny: a rant.

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Howard isn't funny: a rant.

So, the marquis and I have finally got around to watching The Big Bang Theory. (Yes, I know. But we have a Hong Kong film mountain to watch, you know.) On the whole, we like it. It's reasonably sharp, most of the time, and it's funny and it's pretty kind to the tribe of the fan. And on the whole, the characters are believable and appealing and engaging. I buy that Penny would go for Leonard: he's a nice guy. I get why everyone puts up with Sheldon, despite, well, Sheldon. And Raj is adorable.
But then there's Howard. Howard isn't funny. Not to me. I've met Howard too often, and, like Penny, I don't like him close to me one bit. Howard makes my skin crawl. I've been on the receiving end of that and it's vile.
It's a fine piece of writing by the script team and a wonderful piece of acting by Simon Helberg. I believe in Howard 100%. Like I said, I've met him.
The writers get that he's creepy. I get that. His friends get it, too. And yet, and yet...
There's an episode in season two -- no. 12, 'The Killer Robot Instability' -- that crystallised for me how and why I'm uncomfortable with the character. This is the episode when Penny finally has enough of him coming on to her and harassing her, and tells him some home truths about himself and how his behaviour makes her feel. He's deeply hurt by this. The other guys for reasons of their own gang up on Penny and make her apologise to Howard. She gets to sock him, too, but the pay-off is that he gets to go back to his usual ways and his friends don't have to do anything about him.
In the extras on the dvd for that season, the writers talk about that episode, and how important it is, because we get to see that Howard is vulnerable, that he has feelings. In principle, I have no problem with that. I understand. I know that the creepy behaviour is a cover for deep insecurity and loneliness and anxiety. I really do understand all that. I even sympathise.
But...
The thing is, this isn't news. I don't need to see the softer side of Howard. I knew it was there already and so, I'm willing to bet, did the majority of other women out there, especially women in fandom. Because we have all -- or almost all -- been on the receiving end of that desperate persistent creepy harassment. We have all snapped. We have all been told off, because Howard has feelings, you know, you mean girl. All the writers of that episode have done is reaffirm a daily fact of female life and female socialisation. It's our job to keep the menfolk happy by tending to their feelings. It's our job not to hurt them. It's our job to put up with all kinds of behaviour, because they only do it because they're sad/lonely/misunderstood. Penny doesn't need to learn about Howard's feelings, whatever the writers think. She knows. Of course she knows. She was brought up to know. But the writers -- who are male, and who on the whole do a fine job with the show -- have let Penny and the female audience down badly here. Because this episode is back-to-front. It's not Penny who needs to learn, it's Howard and his friends.
Howard manifests a common belief amongst some men -- that they are somehow owed access to women, that they have a right to it and that they can express this by pestering and harassing and bullying until some woman some day just has enough and gives in. It's clear that some people find watching this behaviour in a sitcom funny. I don't. It makes me cringe. When Penny finally snapped, I cheered, because I hoped that the writers were going to come through for me, and have Howard learn that women are people, not objects. I wanted him to look at himself and really think about it -- and apologise to Penny. And I wanted his friends (well, Leonard and Raj, anyway, Sheldon doesn't do people) to back her up in discouraging his standard behaviour. But the episode let me down, because it was all about man-angst.
It's not just that I'm mean and man-hating. I really do feel sorry for Howard in a lot of ways. But I'm not responsible for him and men like him. And I'm tired of living in a world in which I and other women have to be. I'm tired of having to endure harassment because I might hurt a man's feelings if I object. And I'm tired of the media reinforcing that attitude.
There's been an ongoing debate in UK fandom over sexual harassment and one of the issues that has come up a number of times is the perceived unwillingness of some parts of male fandom to police itself. This episode of TBBT is one of the best examples I can think of of the ways in which men can collude -- even unwittingly -- in maintaining the status quo of harassment. No-one stands up to Howard and says, 'She was right, and you need to apologise and stop doing it.' Oh, they sigh and roll their eyes at how he acts, but they don't intervene, they don't try and stop it, they don't police it in any way. They think, 'Oh, that's just Howard' and don't go beyond that. In s.2, ep.12, they go so far as to think 'We need him happy: make her say sorry,' which is just plain wrong. And it could have been a great episode, it could have been a genuinely important episode, because it could have reinforced something else, which is that men can support women against harassment and that harassers can start to learn.

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I agree. With everything. Well said. (I just started watching Big Bang too, and yeah. Howard is not a bad guy, but I don't want him anywhere near me, and I have cut most of the Howards out of my life.)

Thinking about this more, I think Howard gets a slight (slight) redemption a little later on. Couldn't say what episode, can't remember, but (slight spoiler warning) he eventually does succeed with a girl... but it's going horribly while he's being a creep (duh) until they find something to genuinely connect over.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on that episode when you get there.

He does improve, I think, and he becomes a bit more respectful to Penny. But the gf -- who is meant to be a grad student -- is played as very dim, which I find a bit grating.

She grated on me too, but I think her dimness is similar to the others'... she was very smart and knew all about science stuff, that time her and Leonard went off about I don't know what. It's social and tone of voice stuff she's dim with. Played very over-the-top, but otherwise not unbelievable to me.

It's the way she lets Howard patronise her, I think. She needs to be more confident about her ability -- more like Lesley, who I miss -- and that's another thing, the fact that the writers dropped her because all they could think of to do with her was for her to taunt Sheldon and have casual sex. Because apparently intelligent women don't have lives. Sigh.
Of course, being me, I'd go for Lesley and Raj as thing. Lots of potential trying to solve his selective mutism through assorted unlikely experiments.

I miss Lesley too. The thing I love about her is that she's hot (and the boys say so) but she wears normal clothes and doesn't fuss with her hair and such every day (but does dress up for dates). I love seeing that so much on tv.

She rocks in every way.

Wow. I'm now torn between never wanting to watch TBBT (about which I know nothing at all) and wanting to watch it immediately. :)

Oh, watch it. It mostly rocks.

Sounds like another sitcom Howard* whom I dislike and find unfunny for very similar reasons. I wonder whether it's something about the name...

*In Last Of The Summer Wine.

I don't watch that, but you may be on to something!

I haven't seen this episode, Kari, but wow, what a great post. So, so true! I remember once at a con (there were a big crowd of us sitting on the floor for some reason) turning round and thwacking a creep who had started stroking my leg. I shudder at the memory. We're supposed to be polite and make light of such things, aren't we? (Ha ha ha, excuse me, I have somewhere else to be...) And I normally do. But on this occasion I snapped. And I felt horrible about it - not that I actually hurt him - but he thought it was fine to start stroking my leg, fer god's sake, like it was public property! Yugh.

OMG! That is appalling.

You should not have felt badly about this! He deserved it.

Ugh. In the SCA, for a while (and it probably still goes on, just not among the people I hang out with), guys would come up behind women and start rubbing their backs without asking. Ew. Kind of like how Bush did that to the woman who was a major ambassador from Germany (?) a few years back.

Eww. That can happen here at some cons, too.

The sad thing is, I think these guys really were trying to be nice. Just...not succeeding.

But how could he behave differently? And if this different way of behaving were explained to him, would he ask "So this will help me get girls, right?"

If he subliminates the message and makes being not a creep part of his personality, does the motivation matter?

Sublimate, sublimate. I can has language skills. :)

Well, he could try and not come on to every woman he meets, he could try approaching them as people, not objects (he has perfectly reasonable conversations with men: he could, for instance, be shown being interested in Bernadette's research, rather than just her body).
He probably would ask that. But as a learned behaviour, it works, and it tends to end up with the man actually grasping the women-are-people thing, too.

Like you said. Though I haven't seen TBBT.

I know Howard all too well - and have also been reproved for being 'rude' to him. Because Howard responds really well to a subtle rebuff, right? :(

We should print T-shirts: 'Sex and Attention are not human rights.'

And you're the first person I've read since Virginia Woolf who's laid plainly on the table the assumption that women have a special responsibility for protecting feelings. Especially male feelings. And that it's not reciprocal.

I want that t-shirt!

Totally agree. Howard is vile. And I occasionally feel that the writers could do more to highlight that this behaviour is not ok.

Oh, yes. You would think they could do it. But they seem to think he's funny.

I, also, have not seen this TV show, and find modern comedies distinctly unfunny and unwitty anyway. However, this post is so right.

A lot of it is to do with self insertion, in the same way as in all too many so-called Hollywood comedies (and other shows) there is a beautiful, bright, funny woman, often successful, who falls for the dim, ugly, incompetent (sorry, competence is sexy and incompetence ain't) because, like, you know, the male scriptwriters are writing their wish-fulfilment fantasies and the female scriptwriters are under executive pressure to pander to the teenage male audience.

The problem is that it is reinforcing unwanted stereotypes, and making impressionable and not very bright young men think that this kind of behaviour is acceptable.

Oh, and yes, I still think the young lady in my icon is a good example of being a Gary Stu's girlfriend in a British TV show.

One of the reasons I was so irritated by this episode is that on the whole TBBT is quite careful around that kind of thing, and the relationship that develops between Leonard and Penny is believable, because it takes a long time to grow and is shown as arising from them coming to like and know each other as people. Whereas Howard never changes. Like you I am so over the cute-girl-as-reward trope that is still relentlessly churned out.

But TBBT is marvellous in loads of ways. And I genuinely don't think that many viewers of the show will conclude that Howard's behaviour is either (a) acceptable or (b) effective. If it were (b) but not (a) I think your point would be fair.

I agree that I don't think most viewers think it's acceptable. But it disturbs that it's presented as funny, because it really isn't. And it wouldn't harm the show to have Leonard occasionally tell him not to be such a jerk. (They missed a trick with Lesley, too, on that front. I never quite bought that hook-up, because I couldn't see her tolerating the behaviour for one second.)

Humour is very, very subjective.

I hate, among other programmes, The Young Ones, The Office, Steptoe and Son and Absolutely Fabulous, all for very different reasons.

I'm more likely to be very embarrassed by and for the characters in this show, as Kari describes them.

I can't stand embarrassment humour. It started off with 'I Love Lucy'. Even as a child that programme made me squirm. I much prefer the sharp wittiness of (say) 'Taxi' and for TV comedy (as oppsed to sitcom) no one has ever surpassed Morecambe and Wise or early Dave Allen.

I love wit. And intelligent satire. So nowadays I like Punt and Dennis and all the mob on The Now Show, in particular Jeremy Hardy (Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation) and Mark Steel (The Mark Steel Lectures.). None of them are sitcoms. Drop the Dead Donkey used to be very good, though, and I rather like Outnumbered.

But Kari's whole point about the incident in question is that the woman was seen to be in the wrong for dealing appropriately with inappropriate behaviour, and that she was supposed to apologise.

As I said, I've not seen this TV show, or have any intention of seeing it, since I haven't seen a comedy show I actually liked on TV in about ten years, and in a collection of over 400 films on DVD, there are less than a dozen comedies, and all the modern ones are not very funny. (Some are there because, like, say, I (heart) Huckabees they are interesting rather than funny.)

I do wonder whether they worry that they don't have anywhere to take Howard in character development terms. Because we all do know people like Howard, and really quite a lot of them eventually sort themselves out, at least enough to get a proper girlfriend. (Though some of them carry on being creepy to other people, which is pretty vile).

If Penny didn't apologise, then where does the sitcom storyline go? Penny won't talk to Howard, everything's about that, until Howard mends his ways, at which point he becomes just another slightly nerdy guy with no USP.

But I think you're onto something with the easy out; like you, I cut people like Howard out of my life (and my guess is I have only had to put up with a tiny proportion of the ones you've had to put up with) to an extraordinary extent.

Well, they could do a lot with Howard trying to learn. Plus she already pretty much avoids him when she gets the option.

I'm a fan of the show in general.

I love anything that promotes smart people and geek culture, and TBBS is well written and acutely observed because anyone who's a geek has met these guys.

However, they consistently fail when it comes to the female characters. I particularly dislike that none of the super smart women are ever depicted as being 'normal'. They are either insane, frigid, or borderline autistic (Sheldon's 'girlfriend' - although there are aspects to Amy I like a lot).

All the four guys have their quirks, but they are the heroes of the show and their quirks as passed off as amusing or endearing.

The problem is - as you state it - that the men always support each other in their foibles, and never really appreciate the women's point of view. But, of course the POV of the show is that of the men.

What we need more of are television shows showing men saying 'no' to idiotic behaviour by their friends, or learning to question the notions of masculinity that they have learned. Men - and boys - do do this. The In Betweeners is another quite funny teen boy show (British), but again it horribly mired in the obnoxious boy POV. It makes this POV normative, even for women watching the show.

What we really need is a sitcom TV show that explicitly has the POV of an all-female group. An almost impossible ask.

The most you can get is a mixed group, and yet even then usually there is a main POV that is established as a man's (How I Met Your Mother).

The best we get in the humourous stakes is Cougar Town, which is actually not as bad as it sounds, but it's for an older audience. I've been meaning to write about Cougar Town actually, because it simultaneously give me hope and makes me despair...

I share your concern about the women: I'd noticed that, too, and it worries me. And when you do get female-centred shows, they tend to be Sex and the City type stuff, where female pov == obsessed with looks and shoes and lurve.
I liked Galactica for its presentation of women -- they were as engaged with the show's main issues as the men and in similar ways. But I can't think of a sit-com more recent than Butterflies that put the female pov front and centre in a non-belittling way. And that was the mid 70s.

Waiting for God? That's 90s. And I know I've always wanted to be Diana...

Another thread I'd love to get into but just don't have the time.

We don't watch Big Bang Theory as a rule - I've caught occasional episodes and just don't find it sufficiently funny - because I don't find inadequate men entertaining in any sense.

And thinking about it, I couldn't give specifics, but I'm pretty sure I recall walking through the lounge when the teenage sons were watching it, and saying to them, if I ever find them treating women like that, they will be in more trouble than they can handle. Which I might add, would also be their Dad's response to seeing boorish behaviour.

I don't ever get this harrassment at conventions - possibly because I am greyer, heavier, and generally sterner of demeanour than Keri or Freda :-)

That and I think it's fairly well known in fan circles now that I have a 2nd dan aikido blackbelt.

Yeah, definitely. Howard makes me uncomfortable, and I wish the writers wouldn't make apologies for him.

Precisely. It wouldn't damage the show to be less tolerant of him, and it might make for some interesting new story lines.

Urgh. Makes me glad I'm not watching it. Nothing I love hearing more when you finally tell someone off who richly deserves it--well, you didn't have to be rude.

You know what? Sometimes, yes, you really really do. And you shouldn't have to apologise for it.

It's actually a really good show in many, many ways. It's just Howard.

I know exactly what you mean. I suffered from it at several UK cons. I don't know if you remember the trouble I had from a friend of Stuart's at conventions over a couple or so years. It got to the point that John who does security often at cons, had a watch on me at any con he was at, and headed him off to keep him away. They couldn't actually do anything or say anything as he hadn't broken any laws in force back then.

He would leap into private conversations I was having, one with Gerry Webb's lovely wife, with demands to know how much my mobility scooter I was using then cost. That was just one instance. Other times he circled me like a shark from a distance... Till one of the cons out by Birmingham way, I got mad and went striding up to him and told him bluntly what I would do to him if he came within 10 feet of me again. I also added if I was in a room, he could damn well stay out, and if he was there first, I would stay out.

Fan reaction was, "But he's harmless, he's a nice guy..." Yeah this guy was at one of Stuart's creepy nightclubs he dragged me to, on pain of bringing the creepy people to our house instead, when Kai was about 4-5 yrs old. When I saw him at a con and knew he recognized me, I suggested he forget he'd seen me as I was there under threat only, and I would forget I had seen him there in a black bin liner over his clothes, and a yellow sou'wester hat!

He was feeding on frightening me, and because I played nice, he got away with it for a couple years as I took advice to try and ignore him. The threat worked far better! After that, if I was in a room he did a 360 and left.

Yep, guys need to value us ladies more and look after rogues. We give a lot of ourselves to conventions, we should at least be able to do that and enjoy ourselves in a hassle-free environment!

Almost every woman I know in fandom has stories like this, and it's appalling. And there aren't enough men like John who are willing to step up and help out, too. I think too many people fail to understand that that whole 'He's a good guy really' attitude can be a form of enabling and a way of reinforcing a sexist status quo.

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Howard isn't funny: a rant.

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