I was watching
Charlie Wilson’s War last night, and it occurred to me that Sorkin’s go-to for female characters is the “gal Friday” trope, with the exceptions falling into the “just one of the guys” trope. So either women serving men or women trying to be men in Sorkin’s man’s world.
CJ Cregg is a great character. I wonder how much of her growth out of that latter trope is more attributable to Alison Janney and perhaps Dee Dee Myers than to Sorkin himself.
Side note: This Wikipedia excerpt should be cited by companies whenever they do unconscious bias training:
The casting for C. J. Cregg was jeopardized by worries of a lack of racial diversity in the show's original cast. In his intro to the West Wing Script Book, C. J.'s creator, Aaron Sorkin, writes that both the crew on the show and the network were concerned that every actor who had been cast so far was white. Sorkin writes that Allison Janney, a white woman, was the favorite for the role despite her impression that she had botched the audition. However, CCH Pounder, who was Guyanese, was also auditioning well for the role. In the end, Sorkin remarked, "when we closed our eyes at night we wanted Allison. So we cast Allison".
That last quote — “when we closed our eyes at night” — sums up Sorkin’s problematic worldview rather perfectly, methinks.
pixote