Pronouns

I first discovered the television series Bones last year, and I've been a huge fan since. (I'm looking forward to reading the novels the television series are based on after I finish my darn dissertation.)

I was disappointed, though, by how this week's episode, "The Girl in the Mask" (Season 4, episode 21) played out gender androgyny.

The episode features a doctor visiting from Japan whose fashion sensibilities, reflective of some Japanese culture norms, are androgynous by U.S. standards. The struggle to discern whether the doctor is a man or woman (of course, it's either one or the other) becomes a predominant side story involving the supporting cast.

More specifically, it's Angela who first raises the issue with Hodgins and Dr. Sweets. Hodgins' and Dr. Sweets' reaction almost make it seem as if they hadn't realized there was an issue with the doctor's gender. In fact, I was surprised that Angela was even the one who raised the issue. Doing so doesn't seem to fit Angela's character--her open, artistic, and bisexual sensibilities--that she would be so fixated on what gender the doctor is.

The next disappointing moment is when Dr. Saroyan says, "God I miss the ease of a simple pronoun." Hopefully, people will hear her line and realize that it's not that pronouns are simple, it's that we make them seem simple. I'm not really confident that this reading will be apparent to most, though. Instead, what I think most audiences will take away is a sense of unpleasant confusion brought about by androgynous people--making them the culprits instead of the limits of language. It would have been a great moment to introduce gender neutral pronouns like sie, ze, and hir.

There was a moment of hope though, when Dr. Sweets tries to explain to Angela and Hodgins that the subset of urban Japanese aesthetic that the doctor follows glorifies androgyny. He follows by saying, "gender is unimportant, we should be mature enough to accept the doctor just the way the doctor is." Though Angela and Hodgins agree that gender really isn't important, they continue on their search for the doctor's gender.

At the show's conclusion, without yet having an answer to their search, the question of the doctor's gender is raised once again. Sadly, instead of asking the doctor hirself, Angela decides to conduct a test of her own. This is especially sad because the squints avoid entering into a discussion/dialogue with the doctor due to their fear of not being "politically correct." I expected more from them.

I expected more from the show.