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| Episode discussion - Thursday 13th August 2015 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: 13 Aug 2015, 16:03 (7,979 Views) | |
| Sey | 15 Aug 2015, 12:57 Post #61 |
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Ronnie is a psycho who kills in cold blood and shows no empathy or compassion to anyone. How the hell is that a role model? |
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| Mrs Peel | 15 Aug 2015, 13:16 Post #62 |
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Ronnie is not a heroine. She isn't a postive protection force for Roxy either. The most interesting thing that Roxy has offered in arguing with Ronnie has been her defence of various people who are, by any definition of the word, bad. Ronnie claims to have protected Roxy from Archie. Roxy argues - and she is right in this argument - that Archie never made any untoward advances to her and that she loved him. Ronnie argues that she protected Roxy from Carl White. Roxy replies that she went into that relationship with her eyes open and that she quite liked him. We know that Dean is a rapist, and many of the female residents of Walford do - Linda, because she was raped; Sharon, because she's Linda's friend and believes her; Stacey, because she was a rape victim and identifies Linda's claims and behaviours as real; Shabnam accepts that Dean did what he did. And Ronnie amongst them. However, there are women in the Square who either don't believe Linda's claims or who simply believe that the CPS chose not to prosecute, so they give him the benefit of the doubt - Shirley, because she's Dean's mother; Denise, because she's his stepmother. Lola worked for him. Neither Jane nor Carol have ever ventured an opinion. Tina is fence-sitting, and Sonia has never said anything. Roxy believes he's "innocent" because of the CPS's refusal to prosecute. Most people know that such a finding doesn't mean the perp didn't commit the crime, it's just that there's not enough proof. But this would not be the first time that Roxy has fled Ronnie for a potentially worse situation. She fled Ronnie for Archie. She fled Ronnie for Carl, and now she's fleeing Ronnie for Dean. Ronnie treats Roxy like a living doll, a toy she can manipulate and control. She encouraged Roxy to remain in adolescence, promising that she would always be there to pick up the pieces and protect her. Roxy wants a normal relationship and family situation for herself and her daughter. She should have left with Aleks. Roxy and Ronnie are the Mitchells' Sylvie and Babe. As a matter of fact, EastEnders is totally now and has been for almost a decade, all about overtly strong, but singularly male-dependent, women as opposed to weak men. Stacey treated Bradley like shit and he died for her. She now treats Martin like shit -and Martin has come from another relationship where he was treated like shit by his ex-wife - and he puts up with it. For the longest time, Mick sidelined his wife and kowtowed to the word of his sister-mother, even allowing her to trashmouth Linda without uttering a word. He admits to Linda that he's weak. As if to emphasize this, the show depicts him regularly gadding about, even outside the pub in his wife's pink dressing gown. Babe and Claudette mask cruel, controlling natures by depicting themselves as nice elderly women, when they call the shots in their families. Carol's word is law in her home. She and Bianca united to exile Ricky, yet Bianca returns home after six weeks away, wanting to move in a man she barely knows. Until recently, Jane was the mastermind behind the Beales' big deceit. Cindy leads Liam by the short and curlies. Every business venture Sharon's ever fronted has been made possible by a man - the Mitchell brothers, Steve Owen, Den, and now Phil. Kathy's fleeing one man, but only with the help of another. I wonder if current EP has it within his creative ability to make Gavin Sullivan a truly Alpha male? I have awful visions of him becoming entangled somehow with Ronnie Mitchell, who is as man-dependent, in another way, as any of these people. The truly strongest woman character on the show is there no more - Janine. She killed, but in self-defence. And she used her wits an awful lot more than Ronnie ever did. Edited by Mrs Peel, 15 Aug 2015, 13:39.
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| Mrs Peel | 15 Aug 2015, 13:29 Post #63 |
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I accept the fact that violence against women is growing. Pejorative actions of any sort, verbal or physical, are growing daily, especially as more women challenge for positions traditionally dominated by men. People of colour know exactly about that. All it took to bring racists out of the woodwork was the election of a black man to the most powerful political position in the Western world. Two women in the US are seriously challenging for the Democratic and Republican nominations for President, and the He-Man-Woman-Haters Club are out in force. They'd rather promote a bare-faced bully who refers to women as "pigs" or a self-avowed socialist who once wrote an essay proclaiming that the majority of women fantasize about being gang-raped. The two women candidates for the Labour party leadership are subjected to blatantly sexist questions about their appearance, their weight, their children etc. This is the last battlecry of white male privilege and its lowest common denominator is violence against women. But when a woman responds with violence, not just against her attacker, but against all men in general, it makes her no better than a violent man. Killing Carl White, mainly because he was obnoxious and seeing her sister, glassing the off-duty policeman in Majorca because he showed her attention she didn't want, trash-mouthing Charlie, threatening Aleks ... that's no role model. Edited by Mrs Peel, 15 Aug 2015, 13:29.
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| Sey | 15 Aug 2015, 18:54 Post #64 |
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I saw yesterday's episode after my previous post and it really just riled me up even more. The way she spoke about Charlie was absolutely horrible, good on Roxy for taking a stand against Ronnie for once. |
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| Desdemona | 16 Aug 2015, 15:45 Post #65 |
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Ronnie was assaulted by Carl and she refused to be a victim. Since male-on-female violence is endemic in a patriarchal society, it is an absolute relief to see a female character in soap who stands up for herself (and other women) and kills when necessary. Edited by Desdemona, 16 Aug 2015, 15:45.
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| Matt | 16 Aug 2015, 17:09 Post #66 |
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But as she admitted in Friday's episode, she's willing to do anything so that her son can grow up in a "normal" family with two parents. Surely this commitment to "normative" family values, at the expense of her own happiness, problematises your desire to use her as a feminist role model? |
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| Sey | 16 Aug 2015, 17:24 Post #67 |
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He got rapey with her and she killed him in cold blood a day later. That is the height of weakness. I absolutely cannot see how that could be taken as a 'strong' act at all? And killing is never, ever necessary under any circumstances. |
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| See You Slater | 16 Aug 2015, 17:28 Post #68 |
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'Kills when necessary' FUCKING HELL. You can't just go around bumping off people for the fun of it. Carl attempted to rape Ronnie - she should have called the police as soon as she'd knocked him out with the wine bottle. Justice would have been served. Instead she decided to wait until the next day to act, and instead of doing the lawful thing slammed a boot on his head. That was not a necessary action. |
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| Mrs Peel | 16 Aug 2015, 21:32 Post #69 |
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What was the excuse for glassing an off-duty policeman in Ibiza for being attentive to her? She may not have wanted his attentions, so she could have just left. Roxy even said he did nothing untoward. No one has a right to kill "when necessary." That's not the way society works. If it were so, we'd have anarchy. And anytime a person decides to meet violence with violence as a result of some personal trauma in his or her background, he or she becomes as low as the perpetrator. Violence is never acceptable. Male-on-female violence is abhorrent, but there is also female-on-male violence, a lot of which goes unreported because of society's stereotypes. How anyone can laud Ronnie as a role model and heroine is truly beyond me. This is a woman who glassed her own sister when she didn't get her way. Oh, and she not only waited until the next day, she lugged him across the Square, tied him up and locked him in the Arches until the next day. Even Phil Mitchell was horrified and even moreso when she demanded that Phil kill him. More than that, she knew very well that he'd return for the money, which is when she killed him. Her killing of Carl had absolutely nothing to do with what he tried on the night before, and everything to do with the fact he was involved with Roxy. As Roxy said last week, Ronnie, like all psychopaths, always manages to link in some sort of explanation that makes her actions or suspicions sound justified, and all her actions, allegedly, are done to protect Roxy, who's getting wise to that now. Edited by Mrs Peel, 16 Aug 2015, 21:38.
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| Desdemona | 17 Aug 2015, 18:19 Post #70 |
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I can't think of a more empowering message to send out to all the women out there than Ronnie's story. She is a survivor of male violence and let's face it, she suffered 'rapey' from a very young age. Edited by Desdemona, 17 Aug 2015, 18:40.
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| Desdemona | 17 Aug 2015, 18:33 Post #71 |
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And rapey will be met with the appropriate reaction. Kill. |
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| Matt | 17 Aug 2015, 19:07 Post #72 |
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But, as said up there by me and other posters... a. She's desperate for her son to have a "normal" family with two parents. Surely this commitment to "normative" family values, at the expense of her own happiness, doesn't really make her work as a feminist role model? b. She obsesses over Roxy. She wants to restrict another WOMAN'S free-will. Surely, this is a problem? (One step away from the cliche that the 'abused becomes the abuser') c. As Sey and Mrs Peel have mentioned, murder is never an act of strength, and no one has the right to kill when necessary. Ronnie really is no role model. |
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| Mrs Peel | 17 Aug 2015, 19:52 Post #73 |
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There is no death penalty in this country, and people cannot be expected to take the law into their own hands. Is the law just? Sometimes, it isn't. Dean's rape of Linda was, indeed, rape; but even if Linda had reported this right away, it would have been a very difficult case to prove, if even to bring to court. Stacey killed Archie - and her reasons for doing so were debatable. When it was discovered that she killed him, the reason given was that she'd killed him "for Danielle." For Danielle? The fact that he'd raped her wasn't mentioned, but if this had anything to do with that, it was because she thought he'd made her pregnant and feared he'd make trouble about the baby. As was, when she tried to use the fact that he raped her as justification when her boyfriend, Luke, found out what she'd done, he quickly binned her off, saying that she had no right to take another person's life. When a man rapes a woman, you say she's entitled to kill him. What about when a man kills a woman? Are her family entitled to kill the man who killed her? No one's doubting that Ronnie wasn't a victim of abuse as a child, but that doesn't give her the omniscient right to kill another man in lieu of Archie or even to smash a glass bottle into the face of another because he was being attentive. It certainly doesn't give her the right, either, to treat her husband like a piece of shit because he was unfaithful to her with her sister. Charlie only cops 50 per cent of the blame for that one. This country's laws aren't the most perfect ones in the world when it comes to rape, but at least it's not a country which views the woman as the prime instigator of the ordeal and punishes her. I think the Dean-Linda situation proves that sometimes, when a rape does occur, it's extremely difficult to prove, depending on the circumstances. There are occasions, as well, when a woman accuses a man of rape for her own agenda, and that's a situation which never does women any favours. |
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7:43 PM Jul 11