Anyone remember this joke?
There were two sisters who wanted to buy a bull. They had $500 to spend on it, so money was tight. They spent a long time looking, and finally found a bull who seemed to fit their specifications for $499. They wanted to be sure before purchasing, so one of the sisters went to check out the bull. She looked him over, talked to the previous owner, and decided it was worth the price. Now she just had to tell her sister to bring the trailer to pick it up. Unfortunately, after paying for the bull she only had $1 left, and telegram rates were high: $1 per word. (This was back in the time before cell phones, natch.) What was she to do? She agonized over it for a while, and finally came to a solution: she told the telegraph operator to wire her sister the word "comfortable."
"Comfortable?" he repeated, quizzically.
"My sister's blonde," she explained. "She'll read it very slowly."
Or how about this one:
A blonde woman is looking for a job. She finds employment in road repair, and her first assignment is to paint lines on the road (by hand... I don't know why). Her employer sends her out to the road with a bucket of paint and a brush and tells her that she needs to paint two miles of lines a day to keep up quota. The first day she paints four miles of lines, and he's impressed. The second day she only does two; it's good enough, but he's concerned. The third day she only does one. Her employer notices her steady decrease and asks her what the problem is.
Her answer: "The bucket keeps getting farther and farther away!"
Yes, ladies and gentlemen and various non-gendered persons, not only are blondes slow readers, but they are so lacking in common sense that it never occurs to them to pick up the bucket and bring it along.
There are hundreds of these jokes floating them around. Some of them have "a blonde, a redhead, and a green-haired girl," and the blonde is the punchline. Others dispense of the supporting cast and just go straight to insulting the fair-haired. Meanwhile, as a blond-haired person, I am told by the people who tell these jokes that I do not have the right to be insulted because "nobody believes this stuff" and "I didn't mean any insult."
NEWSFLASH, GUYS: Nobody else got the memo.
Film studio executives and writers are patently unaware that being blonde does not make you less intelligent. This is why we have productions like "Legally Blonde" and "Lizzie McGuire" - shows that play on the idea of blondes being stupid (Legally Blonde, at least, was a subversive effort) or just plays them as shallow, clothing/boys/drama-obsessed, and/or generally worthless. (See also: The Vampire Diaries, especially the book series.) The stereotype isn't limited to the female sex: blond men are often portrayed as very physical men, lacking in the brains department.
Of course, "dumb blonde" isn't the only stereotype out there - for variety's sake, you can witness the "popular blonde," who may or may not be low of intelligence but is almost certainly gorgeous, earning the jealousy of the brown-haired protagonist and the attention of many, many mens. (And make no mistake: the Popular Blonde is almost always a supporting character, typically used as a foil for the less adored, brunette "everygirl.") This character features in such productions as Lizzie McGuire (again - the ditzy blonde protagonist gets a bitchy blonde foil), The Princess Diaries (Lana and Josh), Huge (Amber), Animorphs (Rachel - a rare leading role), Danny Phantom (Dash), and High School Musical (Sharpay). (Another classic example: Rocky.) If a potential love interest comes into the picture - say, Nate Cooper (The Hottie & the Nottie), Scott Howard (Teen Wolf), Troy Bolton, or Stefan Salvatore - then the Popular Blonde is the protagonist's competition, and the love interest must learn to look past her superficiality (make no mistake, blonde is nothing but) and choose the "plain" brunette. (Except for Troy Bolton, who must blow her off repeatedly because Gabriella kicks ass.) On the other hand, if the protagonist is male, he may just be required to date her - her blonde self is a prize for the triumphant man to obtain (She's Out Of My League).
(This does no favors to brunettes, either. The beauty of a brown-haired woman is almost always presumed to be "inner", or based in her facial features - brown on its own cannot be beautiful.)
A subset of the Popular Blonde is the Bitchy Blonde, who is not only fawned over by everyone, but is so self-centered that she cannot stand not to be fawned over by everyone - or, at the least, cannot stand to see someone else get positive attention. Twilight features Lauren and Rosalie, both of whom exist largely to be jealous of Bella; Dash, Lana, Josh, and Sharpay also make a comeback. Stacy Hansen of the Girl Talk series is a classic example, and she's joined by Casey Cartwright (Greek), Johann (The Hottie & the Nottie - it has a male version too!), Sally Peep (The 10th Kingdom), and Caroline (Everybody's Doing It). It's A Boy/Girl Thing has Woody and his girlfriend Breanna (though it does feature one subversion). Kyle (Beastly) is a unique example - a Bitchy Blonde in the protagonist role, who is cursed by another Bitchy Blonde for being shallow.
On the other end of the spectrum, there's the Wholesome Blonde. You already know her; you probably grew up on her movies. Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty. Rapunzel. The fair maiden with flaxen hair who has been horribly imprisoned by an evil wizard, whom the hero must rescue so he can put her shining tresses on display for all to see. And here is the insanity - while blonde hair is degraded for its supposed association with low intelligence and poor attitude, it is simultaneously prized for its allegedly singular beauty. It seems that a blonde woman is a wonderful thing for a man to have, but a very poor thing to be.
Not every blonde character falls prey to these stereotypes. Non-comedy settings with adult characters usually dodge them altogether. It is also true that these character types are occasionally used for brunette characters. However, brown hair is not used to emphasize their character traits the way blonde hair is. No one talks about a "dumb brunette." Brown hair does not shimmer dramatically in loving close-ups. Story writers do not make special note of an annoying character's brown hair.
These stereotypes didn't pop out of nowhere. And that's what leads me back to the blonde jokes. People crack them all the time, thinking they're harmless. Someone else hears them and has it reinforced in xir head that blonde people are a certain way. They get on board a movie, and produce these stereotypical characters of fair hair. People watch the movie, and when they walk away they remember more than the movie - they remember a well-written brunette character (if there is one) playing off against a badly-written caricature of a blonde character, and so they come to believe that brunettes are deeper, smarter, nicer, more complex, or more interesting. And that it's all right to make blonde jokes because "nobody believes them anyway."
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
The Owner's Manual To Your White Brain: An Intro
That's right, guys. A manual. To YOUR White Brain.
Well, we need one. I sure as heck didn't know how to run mine when I first started trying to understand racism, so it's a foregone conclusion that anyone else who's just started doesn't, either. In addition to the aforementioned fuckup, I've gone through so many dumb ideas and misunderstandings and complete failures to figure out what people are saying that it finally hit me: white people probably don't need to learn as much about racism (in the first few months of their education) as they need to learn how to learn about racism. It's not something that can simply be conveyed through memes and quick ideas (though I do love me some memes), nor is it something that can be understood just by knowing the facts that it is made of. It is something that has to be felt, as close as the white brain can possibly come to grokking it. Unfortunately, you cannot tell someone to feel something and cause them to feel it. You have to communicate in the right way, and sometimes they just won't get it until one day it sinks in and then they're going to wonder how the heck they could have been so stupid.
What I want to do is provide a resource for white people to start untraining themselves without making a mess all over PoC's work space - an online workshop, if you will. I'll be staying away from buzzwords - which newbies tend to stare at befuddledly before wandering off for a game of checkers - and relying on allegory, the resources I have found that have helped me to get it, and parables. (Unlike Jesus, I will not make fun of people if they fail to understand them.) During the process, I hope to draw from and bring light to the work and resources of people of darker persuasions (and their pale allies, as relevant), without whose efforts I would still be completely clueless.
I cannot teach someone about racism. I can only teach them how to learn about racism. And that, I hope, will be worthwhile.
Well, we need one. I sure as heck didn't know how to run mine when I first started trying to understand racism, so it's a foregone conclusion that anyone else who's just started doesn't, either. In addition to the aforementioned fuckup, I've gone through so many dumb ideas and misunderstandings and complete failures to figure out what people are saying that it finally hit me: white people probably don't need to learn as much about racism (in the first few months of their education) as they need to learn how to learn about racism. It's not something that can simply be conveyed through memes and quick ideas (though I do love me some memes), nor is it something that can be understood just by knowing the facts that it is made of. It is something that has to be felt, as close as the white brain can possibly come to grokking it. Unfortunately, you cannot tell someone to feel something and cause them to feel it. You have to communicate in the right way, and sometimes they just won't get it until one day it sinks in and then they're going to wonder how the heck they could have been so stupid.
What I want to do is provide a resource for white people to start untraining themselves without making a mess all over PoC's work space - an online workshop, if you will. I'll be staying away from buzzwords - which newbies tend to stare at befuddledly before wandering off for a game of checkers - and relying on allegory, the resources I have found that have helped me to get it, and parables. (Unlike Jesus, I will not make fun of people if they fail to understand them.) During the process, I hope to draw from and bring light to the work and resources of people of darker persuasions (and their pale allies, as relevant), without whose efforts I would still be completely clueless.
I cannot teach someone about racism. I can only teach them how to learn about racism. And that, I hope, will be worthwhile.
I Am A Meat-Eater
I've mentioned that before, right?
I eat meat. I also don't eat a lot of flour or sugar. Most of my diet is eggs, whole meat (beef, pork, and chicken), fruit, nuts, and vegetables. And that's not on a most-to-least basis, like a food ingredients list. I eat a lot of vegetables. I ate about a cup of coleslaw for dinner just now, no exaggeration.
And yet no one - with the exception of close family members and a few like-minded people on the Internet - is okay with my diet. It doesn't matter who I talk to. Low-fatters think I'm going to die because I'm not eating "enough" grain (even though eating grain is what caused me to gain weight in the first place). Vegetarians think that I'm going to give myself cancer, or that I'm just plain immoral, or whatever. You'd think that everyone else would leave me alone, but no - the average, snack-food-eating American would like me to know that I am too extreme and "everything in moderation" is the best choice for me.
But it's the vegetarians that anger me the most. They and I both know what it's like to be marginalized. To have Conventional Wisdom-touting dickheads telling us that we're killing ourselves, that our diet isn't possibly sustainable, that we're insane because they could never eat that much broccoli in a day. Having people constantly tell us that we're killing ourselves when our own experiences show otherwise.
And yet I end up slammed by vegetarians regularly, and always for the following reasons:
1: Eating meat is unethical. Isn't it obvious? You're killing a poor, defenseless animal just because it tastes good! You heartless beast!
WHAAAAAARGARBL.
Yes. I am SUCH a monstrous individual that I deliberately contribute to the death of animals JUST so I can please my palate. Instead of the more obvious solution, which is "I tried it, and I can't sustain my body without animal products." Which is true, incidentally. Even though the average vegetarian will not believe me because they don't have this problem (yet). I know that there are cool things like free-range, grass-fed beef and high-protein stuff (like tempeh and other awesomeness) that I could be eating... if I could afford them. It's no accident that most vegetarians are middle-class.
2: But eating meat is wrong! Look into that poor animal's eyes! How can you say that you have more of a right to live than it does?
Because I am not it. It's that simple. The law of the jungle and all that. Some argue that humans are exempt from the law of the jungle because they are capable of viewing meat consumption as wrong, which is a fancy way of saying "eating meat is wrong because I said it is." BULLSHIT.
3: You're ruining your health!
By eating fresh vegetables, fruit, nuts, and a few servings of whole meat (we're not talking hot dogs here) in a day, I am giving myself cancer/a heart attack/a stroke/whatever? There is absolutely no evidence to support this outrageous assumption, aside from some really sketchy stuff from the 1970's.
4: Meat farming trashes the environment!
Yeah, it does (except for the few organic and otherwise well-managed farms that take care of their stuff). And I hate that. Almost as much as I hate the fact that responsibly-raised beef causes $16 a pound. There's a technique someone of my income level can use to afford that. It's called "live on eggs."
In many ways, the arguments against eating meat remind me of arguments against homosexuality and transsexuality (despite some vegetarians' insistence that it's the other way around.) It's a lifestyle choice. It's immoral. It will make you get sick and die. Other unsubstantiated bullshit. Like your average gay/bi/trans person (which, incidentally, I am - all three, even), I have nothing against straight people, even Christian straight people. As long as they mind their own business. And I feel the same way about vegetarians. Eat what you want, but spare me the insufferable self-righteous lectures. I've heard them all.
5: The existence of this post indicates that you are desperately trying to justify your meat eating and secretly you know that vegetarianism is right!
The existence of this post indicates that I am fed up with self-righteous vegetarians telling me who I am and what I am thinking.
I eat meat. I also don't eat a lot of flour or sugar. Most of my diet is eggs, whole meat (beef, pork, and chicken), fruit, nuts, and vegetables. And that's not on a most-to-least basis, like a food ingredients list. I eat a lot of vegetables. I ate about a cup of coleslaw for dinner just now, no exaggeration.
And yet no one - with the exception of close family members and a few like-minded people on the Internet - is okay with my diet. It doesn't matter who I talk to. Low-fatters think I'm going to die because I'm not eating "enough" grain (even though eating grain is what caused me to gain weight in the first place). Vegetarians think that I'm going to give myself cancer, or that I'm just plain immoral, or whatever. You'd think that everyone else would leave me alone, but no - the average, snack-food-eating American would like me to know that I am too extreme and "everything in moderation" is the best choice for me.
But it's the vegetarians that anger me the most. They and I both know what it's like to be marginalized. To have Conventional Wisdom-touting dickheads telling us that we're killing ourselves, that our diet isn't possibly sustainable, that we're insane because they could never eat that much broccoli in a day. Having people constantly tell us that we're killing ourselves when our own experiences show otherwise.
And yet I end up slammed by vegetarians regularly, and always for the following reasons:
1: Eating meat is unethical. Isn't it obvious? You're killing a poor, defenseless animal just because it tastes good! You heartless beast!
WHAAAAAARGARBL.
Yes. I am SUCH a monstrous individual that I deliberately contribute to the death of animals JUST so I can please my palate. Instead of the more obvious solution, which is "I tried it, and I can't sustain my body without animal products." Which is true, incidentally. Even though the average vegetarian will not believe me because they don't have this problem (yet). I know that there are cool things like free-range, grass-fed beef and high-protein stuff (like tempeh and other awesomeness) that I could be eating... if I could afford them. It's no accident that most vegetarians are middle-class.
2: But eating meat is wrong! Look into that poor animal's eyes! How can you say that you have more of a right to live than it does?
Because I am not it. It's that simple. The law of the jungle and all that. Some argue that humans are exempt from the law of the jungle because they are capable of viewing meat consumption as wrong, which is a fancy way of saying "eating meat is wrong because I said it is." BULLSHIT.
3: You're ruining your health!
By eating fresh vegetables, fruit, nuts, and a few servings of whole meat (we're not talking hot dogs here) in a day, I am giving myself cancer/a heart attack/a stroke/whatever? There is absolutely no evidence to support this outrageous assumption, aside from some really sketchy stuff from the 1970's.
4: Meat farming trashes the environment!
Yeah, it does (except for the few organic and otherwise well-managed farms that take care of their stuff). And I hate that. Almost as much as I hate the fact that responsibly-raised beef causes $16 a pound. There's a technique someone of my income level can use to afford that. It's called "live on eggs."
In many ways, the arguments against eating meat remind me of arguments against homosexuality and transsexuality (despite some vegetarians' insistence that it's the other way around.) It's a lifestyle choice. It's immoral. It will make you get sick and die. Other unsubstantiated bullshit. Like your average gay/bi/trans person (which, incidentally, I am - all three, even), I have nothing against straight people, even Christian straight people. As long as they mind their own business. And I feel the same way about vegetarians. Eat what you want, but spare me the insufferable self-righteous lectures. I've heard them all.
5: The existence of this post indicates that you are desperately trying to justify your meat eating and secretly you know that vegetarianism is right!
The existence of this post indicates that I am fed up with self-righteous vegetarians telling me who I am and what I am thinking.
I Fucked Up
What else is there to say? I fucked up.
I'm referring to an earlier post, "Criticism of the SWPD Community." There I ranted about how every time I wandered into a thread I found someone rageing about whatever I happened to be thinking about, calling it a white thing and (in my mind) accusing me of being some kind of savior and yadda. So I wrote a lengthy, ranty post on it.
Maybe I needed to write that post. I'm sure the catharsis at least helped me to get through that phase so I could eventually get to somewhere more stable. Doesn't matter. The fact is, it was a bad reaction. See, there is a lot of rage in old posts on SWPD. Rage directed against white people and their fuckeduppitude toward POC. And when I read those posts, I ended up absorbing that rage and feeling like it was directed toward me. And then I took it out on the writers, who I don't think really deserved it.
So, I fucked up.
Question is, what am I going to do about it? Well, the one thing I can do: use my fucked-up white experience to try and prevent further fuckuppitude in the future. How? Well, the takeaway lesson from this experience is that there's a lot more to Anti-Racism 101 than a single blog post or epiphany. I thought that since I'd read the post I was off too a good start, but all I had was a bad case of Novice Disease. I learned that breaking yourself of whiteness, no matter how good your intentions are, how smart you are, and how well you think you've got it, takes more than a few minutes of shock followed by a few days of radically rethinking your worldview.
BIG SHOCK, right? I know, I read that from people of multiple races. But I thought I was different. I thought I was getting it. That's something that a lot of white folks tend to do: assume they're getting it. Of course, assuming you're getting it + a safe space to blather about whatever you're supposedly getting without criticism or even a capacity to understand why you might deserve it = fail.
Starting now, I'm going to try and fuck up less. I've realized a lot of things that I think are going to help. I'm also going to try and turn my biggest disadvantage - my fucked-up white brain - into more of an advantage. I've figured out a few things, and I think that if I can explain them in a way that the white brain is actually capable of understanding, I can do some good. So I'm going to start there.
I'm really sorry, guys. I can only imagine that any POC who read that post (if any of them read it - I rather hope they didn't) were gobsmacked, disgusted, and probably enraged by the sheer amount of fuckedupittude. I don't blame you. And I expect any future readers to be good and cynical about what I'm about to do next.
(On the other hand, if you have no idea what I'm talking about and this post looks like so much existential baloney, feel free to ignore it.)
I'm referring to an earlier post, "Criticism of the SWPD Community." There I ranted about how every time I wandered into a thread I found someone rageing about whatever I happened to be thinking about, calling it a white thing and (in my mind) accusing me of being some kind of savior and yadda. So I wrote a lengthy, ranty post on it.
Maybe I needed to write that post. I'm sure the catharsis at least helped me to get through that phase so I could eventually get to somewhere more stable. Doesn't matter. The fact is, it was a bad reaction. See, there is a lot of rage in old posts on SWPD. Rage directed against white people and their fuckeduppitude toward POC. And when I read those posts, I ended up absorbing that rage and feeling like it was directed toward me. And then I took it out on the writers, who I don't think really deserved it.
So, I fucked up.
Question is, what am I going to do about it? Well, the one thing I can do: use my fucked-up white experience to try and prevent further fuckuppitude in the future. How? Well, the takeaway lesson from this experience is that there's a lot more to Anti-Racism 101 than a single blog post or epiphany. I thought that since I'd read the post I was off too a good start, but all I had was a bad case of Novice Disease. I learned that breaking yourself of whiteness, no matter how good your intentions are, how smart you are, and how well you think you've got it, takes more than a few minutes of shock followed by a few days of radically rethinking your worldview.
BIG SHOCK, right? I know, I read that from people of multiple races. But I thought I was different. I thought I was getting it. That's something that a lot of white folks tend to do: assume they're getting it. Of course, assuming you're getting it + a safe space to blather about whatever you're supposedly getting without criticism or even a capacity to understand why you might deserve it = fail.
Starting now, I'm going to try and fuck up less. I've realized a lot of things that I think are going to help. I'm also going to try and turn my biggest disadvantage - my fucked-up white brain - into more of an advantage. I've figured out a few things, and I think that if I can explain them in a way that the white brain is actually capable of understanding, I can do some good. So I'm going to start there.
I'm really sorry, guys. I can only imagine that any POC who read that post (if any of them read it - I rather hope they didn't) were gobsmacked, disgusted, and probably enraged by the sheer amount of fuckedupittude. I don't blame you. And I expect any future readers to be good and cynical about what I'm about to do next.
(On the other hand, if you have no idea what I'm talking about and this post looks like so much existential baloney, feel free to ignore it.)
Sunday, October 24, 2010
STFU, Joe-Bear
Over at Joe. My. God, literature is on death watch. The reason? "Teen Paranormal Romance" has its own section in a bookstore somewhere.
Really, Joe? REALLY? The proliferation of fantasy stories geared toward teenage girls means the death of all literature? MY GOD, man, how DARE we cater to a reading audience that isn't middle-class adult intellectuals?
Seriously, so what if it isn't stimulating or utterly brilliant or anything other than feel-good kitsch? I may point out at this point that a lot of gay men are known for their utterly irrational attachment to Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, and/or Lady Gaga, and while I don't necessarily share this affection, I don't go whinging about the death of good music every time I see someone raving about Garland's alleged singing skills.
Some protest that these stories rot girls' brains, but so what? The last time I heard about comic books rotting kids' brains was... oh, never. It's always the romance stories that get singled out for criticism. People just have an allergic reaction to romantic literature, especially if it has a fantastic angle.
Now, if someone wants to complain about the stories setting unrealistic expectations, we might be able to get somewhere, but otherwise, STFU.
And then there's the other problem, summed up by one commenter:
It's not dead. It's never been dead; it'll never be dead. It's just tricky to find, as it's always been.
Really, Joe? REALLY? The proliferation of fantasy stories geared toward teenage girls means the death of all literature? MY GOD, man, how DARE we cater to a reading audience that isn't middle-class adult intellectuals?
Seriously, so what if it isn't stimulating or utterly brilliant or anything other than feel-good kitsch? I may point out at this point that a lot of gay men are known for their utterly irrational attachment to Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, and/or Lady Gaga, and while I don't necessarily share this affection, I don't go whinging about the death of good music every time I see someone raving about Garland's alleged singing skills.
Some protest that these stories rot girls' brains, but so what? The last time I heard about comic books rotting kids' brains was... oh, never. It's always the romance stories that get singled out for criticism. People just have an allergic reaction to romantic literature, especially if it has a fantastic angle.
Now, if someone wants to complain about the stories setting unrealistic expectations, we might be able to get somewhere, but otherwise, STFU.
And then there's the other problem, summed up by one commenter:
"Literature Death Watch" So says every generation once it reaches a "certain age." I'm sure newspaper editorials said the same thing when Jackie Collins started to get published. She and her ilk didn't destroy lit and I don't think the Twilight novels will either.Ex-fucking-actly. Schlock writing has been around ever since writing became a pastime available to multiple people. When people look back and see only the classics, it's not because every book ever written was gold. It's because all the crap that it was published alongside has been forgotten. Just like the bad writing that's being published now will be forgotten in another decade - just in time for someone to look at all the new garbage being published and declare that true literature is dead. They do the same shit with movies, and music, and every form of media we've had around long enough for some true classics to emerge.
It's not dead. It's never been dead; it'll never be dead. It's just tricky to find, as it's always been.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Y'know what really pisses me off? Tsu'tey.
I know, I know. With all the things wrong with Avatar (White Savior Syndrome, the portrayal of Native Americans/Na'vi as amazing and powerful super-nobles who just don't have enough chutzpah/imagination to rescue their own sorry asses, yadda) I pick Tsu'tey, of all things, to bitch about. Why?
Well, I'm a writer - one that loves well-developed characters characters. And despite all the changes L.A.'s had, there's one thing our gold-rush pioneers in Hollywood are still good at doing in spades: pissing on tertiary guys, especially brown/blue ones. Case in point, Tsu'tey.
Who is this mysterious blue man? Well, according to the movie, he's a Na'vi warrior in Ney'tiri's tribe. Nobody knows where he came from, what his credentials are, or how he is in any way relevant to the plot - all we know is that he is engaged to Ney'tiri (what is with those apostrophes?) and slated to become the next tribe leader. Throughout the movie, he does such pivotal things as (1) standing around staring disapprovingly at Jake, (2) teasing Jake, (3) losing his fiancé to Jake, and (4) dying so Jake can take over the tribe.
WHAT THE FUCK.
I'm sure some people don't see why this is a problem. Y'know, every story has characters that aren't integral to the plot. They're there to give it some depth, y'know, make it look like there's an established world. They don't have to do great stuff.
Not Tsu'tey. He doesn't exist to give the story additional depth. He exists so that Jake can take everything he has.
I'm not even kidding. In the beginning, Tsu'tey is betrothed to Ney'tiri, the totally hot catgirl who ends up helping Jake out. It's stated that she's engaged to him. Jake is warned away from hitting on her because of this. Tsu'tey mocks him constantly and tries to get him killed because of this. Because of this, and the fact that they're supposed to be the next leaders of the tribe, you get the general idea that there engagement is kind of a big deal.
And then what happens? One day, without warning, Jake and Ney'tiri just go off and get laid/married. There's no explanation as to why this is suddenly acceptable. Jake just hits on Ney'tiri, and she's like "Oh, fuck tradition! I like you, let's get hitched." I'm all for her having the choice, but it pretty much flies in the face of all the setup about her Very Important Engagement. And what does Tsu'tey do when he sees them the morning after their wedding night? He's indignant for all of two seconds and then he's like "Hmph, whatever," and walks off.
I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty damn pissed if my FIANCÉ went and married someone else and didn't even TELL ME and I didn't find out until I walked in on their honeymoon. So what's with Tsu'tey? Maybe he didn't care because they didn't actually like each other that much (Hollywood Rule: Arranged = Loveless), but we never find out.
Okay, so what else does Tsu'tey do? Well, he becomes temporary leader after the old one dies, and he translates for Jake when addressing the other Na'vi, and then... he dies. That's it, that's his big accomplishment. It's a hugely badass scene, and it does end up saving everybody, but... well, let's just say he's not getting the girl.
Like I said, he exists just so Jake can take all his stuff. Take him out, and nothing would change in the plot (except Ney'tiri's dad would have to live a while longer). He is nothing more than a colossal "fuck you" to the Na'vi - a way for Jake to appropriate their things for his own benefit while Cameron appropriates the Natives' for his, and making it okay by giving his half-assed permission. And he's badly written to boot.
The way I see it, that "translate for me" exchange can only be interpreted two ways:
SULLY: Brother, please accept my asking you to translate for me as appropriate recompense for my stealing your girlfriend.
TSU'TEY: I absolutely consider your cheap token of respect to be equivalent to your phenomenal token of not giving a damn about my people or their traditions.
Or:
SULLY: Brother, please accept my asking you to translate for me as appropriate recompense for my stealing your girlfriend.
TSU-TEY: What, Ney'tiri? You can keep the bitch. Hell, I owe you for taking her off my hands.
Strangely, the least potentially canon option is also the most plausible. It could have been an interesting plot twist, but JC doesn't even give us that.
Well, I'm a writer - one that loves well-developed characters characters. And despite all the changes L.A.'s had, there's one thing our gold-rush pioneers in Hollywood are still good at doing in spades: pissing on tertiary guys, especially brown/blue ones. Case in point, Tsu'tey.
Who is this mysterious blue man? Well, according to the movie, he's a Na'vi warrior in Ney'tiri's tribe. Nobody knows where he came from, what his credentials are, or how he is in any way relevant to the plot - all we know is that he is engaged to Ney'tiri (what is with those apostrophes?) and slated to become the next tribe leader. Throughout the movie, he does such pivotal things as (1) standing around staring disapprovingly at Jake, (2) teasing Jake, (3) losing his fiancé to Jake, and (4) dying so Jake can take over the tribe.
WHAT THE FUCK.
I'm sure some people don't see why this is a problem. Y'know, every story has characters that aren't integral to the plot. They're there to give it some depth, y'know, make it look like there's an established world. They don't have to do great stuff.
Not Tsu'tey. He doesn't exist to give the story additional depth. He exists so that Jake can take everything he has.
I'm not even kidding. In the beginning, Tsu'tey is betrothed to Ney'tiri, the totally hot catgirl who ends up helping Jake out. It's stated that she's engaged to him. Jake is warned away from hitting on her because of this. Tsu'tey mocks him constantly and tries to get him killed because of this. Because of this, and the fact that they're supposed to be the next leaders of the tribe, you get the general idea that there engagement is kind of a big deal.
And then what happens? One day, without warning, Jake and Ney'tiri just go off and get laid/married. There's no explanation as to why this is suddenly acceptable. Jake just hits on Ney'tiri, and she's like "Oh, fuck tradition! I like you, let's get hitched." I'm all for her having the choice, but it pretty much flies in the face of all the setup about her Very Important Engagement. And what does Tsu'tey do when he sees them the morning after their wedding night? He's indignant for all of two seconds and then he's like "Hmph, whatever," and walks off.
I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty damn pissed if my FIANCÉ went and married someone else and didn't even TELL ME and I didn't find out until I walked in on their honeymoon. So what's with Tsu'tey? Maybe he didn't care because they didn't actually like each other that much (Hollywood Rule: Arranged = Loveless), but we never find out.
Okay, so what else does Tsu'tey do? Well, he becomes temporary leader after the old one dies, and he translates for Jake when addressing the other Na'vi, and then... he dies. That's it, that's his big accomplishment. It's a hugely badass scene, and it does end up saving everybody, but... well, let's just say he's not getting the girl.
Like I said, he exists just so Jake can take all his stuff. Take him out, and nothing would change in the plot (except Ney'tiri's dad would have to live a while longer). He is nothing more than a colossal "fuck you" to the Na'vi - a way for Jake to appropriate their things for his own benefit while Cameron appropriates the Natives' for his, and making it okay by giving his half-assed permission. And he's badly written to boot.
The way I see it, that "translate for me" exchange can only be interpreted two ways:
SULLY: Brother, please accept my asking you to translate for me as appropriate recompense for my stealing your girlfriend.
TSU'TEY: I absolutely consider your cheap token of respect to be equivalent to your phenomenal token of not giving a damn about my people or their traditions.
Or:
SULLY: Brother, please accept my asking you to translate for me as appropriate recompense for my stealing your girlfriend.
TSU-TEY: What, Ney'tiri? You can keep the bitch. Hell, I owe you for taking her off my hands.
Strangely, the least potentially canon option is also the most plausible. It could have been an interesting plot twist, but JC doesn't even give us that.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Rethinking This Whole "Racism" Thing
Between Tim Wise and Noel Ignatiev, I've been doing me some thinking.
And I'm thinking they're right. (I know, I know... I think the white guys are right, what a concept.) I do think that attempting to disclaim whiteness when dealing with PoC is an utterly stupid idea, because the only thing it could possibly accomplish is to disenguilt the pale people of their connection to and at least former complacence in racism - not a good idea. So if a PoC refers to you as white, live with it.
On the other hand, what good does it do for you to identify as white to white people? 90% of the time, the only thing it will do is get you privilege. If you're very careful - if you make it pointedly clear to everyone you interact with that while you may be white, you are against racism - you may lose a tiny bit of that privilege, but still, "not playing by the rules" is a more forgivable offense than "not being white."
Many PoC have used the phrase, "The master's tools will never demolish the master's house." While I sort of grasped the general concept of "your oppressor will never try to help you unless he can do so without undermining himself," it has become clear that there is more meaning in it. In some countries - and certainly in the United States - being white is like being a member of the Catholic Church.
For those who haven't had the displeasure of being an ex-Catholic (or read about someone having the displeasure of being an ex-Catholic), here's how it works: Every person born into a Catholic family is baptized into the church as a baby. They go through the ceremony, get wet, yadda, and get their name enrolled in the Church's records. And in most cases, your name stays there for life. Even if you apostatize, even if you swear off everything your church stands for, even if you become a dedicated Satanist for the rest of your life, unless you fight tooth and nail to get your name taken out of the roster (and sometimes even then), you are counted as a member of the Catholic Church. This wouldn't be too bad if it was just a clerical issue - whoever's in charge of your new religion probably doesn't care what some fusty old church has to say, particularly if you've become an atheist - but it's not. Instead, the Church will use their artificially bloated member list at every opportunity to try and get power. You don't think Catholic law should become dominant in a given country? Look how many card-carrying Catholics there are in that country! Want to prosecute the Pope for complacency in child rape? You're going after a nation, and I have the papers to prove it. (This is the really insidious part: even Catholics don't have a say in how they're represented. Even if they hate the Pope. Even if they approve birth control or would like to sell the Vatican and use the proceeds to buy food for the hungry, their names still get used to back up the very things they oppose.)
Likewise, when you have the right set of genes to be assumed white and don't do anything to make people think otherwise, even if you don't agree with the principles that Whiteness has dropped on the country, you will be used to support its principles. Answer "White" on racial surveys? Politicians will point to the enormous white majority to justify racist laws. Be yet another pale face in your social circle? Somebody will think of a racist joke to "share," and they won't hold back on your account. Even arguing your innocence of a speeding ticket could cause a problem - the cop might give it to you anyway, or he might let you off and go home feeling happy and secure that he's helped out another innocent white person.
The Master's tools may not destroy the Master's house, but the unfortunate fact is that this concept of white supremacy will not be destroyed as long as us pale people remain complacent. A hundred well-read, well-argued, and intensely frustrated voices of color can explain the problem over and over again, but as long as white people believe that the pale are all on their side, most of them are never going to listen to them. This isn't fair, it isn't right, and it's supremely racist, but it's a fact. And us pale people - be we racially "white" or not - are in a unique position to do something about it.
But am I saying that the pale hold the sole power to end racism? Hardly! This is only one facet of anti-racism work, and it does not happen a vacuum. People like Noel Ignatiev and I have only come to realize this was even a problem because of the hours of hard work from PoC. And even if the white majority can be made to stop believing in the sanctity of the white race, that effect will not dissuade them of the inferiority of other races. Nor can it end oppressive lawmaking, increased poverty in communities of color, and many other issues that PoC face. In many aspects, PoC have and will continue to take the lead, with white/pale people assisting as is necessary and beneficial. This just happens to be one issue (possibly the only one) that pale people, specifically, must fight on their own.
And I'm thinking they're right. (I know, I know... I think the white guys are right, what a concept.) I do think that attempting to disclaim whiteness when dealing with PoC is an utterly stupid idea, because the only thing it could possibly accomplish is to disenguilt the pale people of their connection to and at least former complacence in racism - not a good idea. So if a PoC refers to you as white, live with it.
On the other hand, what good does it do for you to identify as white to white people? 90% of the time, the only thing it will do is get you privilege. If you're very careful - if you make it pointedly clear to everyone you interact with that while you may be white, you are against racism - you may lose a tiny bit of that privilege, but still, "not playing by the rules" is a more forgivable offense than "not being white."
Many PoC have used the phrase, "The master's tools will never demolish the master's house." While I sort of grasped the general concept of "your oppressor will never try to help you unless he can do so without undermining himself," it has become clear that there is more meaning in it. In some countries - and certainly in the United States - being white is like being a member of the Catholic Church.
For those who haven't had the displeasure of being an ex-Catholic (or read about someone having the displeasure of being an ex-Catholic), here's how it works: Every person born into a Catholic family is baptized into the church as a baby. They go through the ceremony, get wet, yadda, and get their name enrolled in the Church's records. And in most cases, your name stays there for life. Even if you apostatize, even if you swear off everything your church stands for, even if you become a dedicated Satanist for the rest of your life, unless you fight tooth and nail to get your name taken out of the roster (and sometimes even then), you are counted as a member of the Catholic Church. This wouldn't be too bad if it was just a clerical issue - whoever's in charge of your new religion probably doesn't care what some fusty old church has to say, particularly if you've become an atheist - but it's not. Instead, the Church will use their artificially bloated member list at every opportunity to try and get power. You don't think Catholic law should become dominant in a given country? Look how many card-carrying Catholics there are in that country! Want to prosecute the Pope for complacency in child rape? You're going after a nation, and I have the papers to prove it. (This is the really insidious part: even Catholics don't have a say in how they're represented. Even if they hate the Pope. Even if they approve birth control or would like to sell the Vatican and use the proceeds to buy food for the hungry, their names still get used to back up the very things they oppose.)
Likewise, when you have the right set of genes to be assumed white and don't do anything to make people think otherwise, even if you don't agree with the principles that Whiteness has dropped on the country, you will be used to support its principles. Answer "White" on racial surveys? Politicians will point to the enormous white majority to justify racist laws. Be yet another pale face in your social circle? Somebody will think of a racist joke to "share," and they won't hold back on your account. Even arguing your innocence of a speeding ticket could cause a problem - the cop might give it to you anyway, or he might let you off and go home feeling happy and secure that he's helped out another innocent white person.
The Master's tools may not destroy the Master's house, but the unfortunate fact is that this concept of white supremacy will not be destroyed as long as us pale people remain complacent. A hundred well-read, well-argued, and intensely frustrated voices of color can explain the problem over and over again, but as long as white people believe that the pale are all on their side, most of them are never going to listen to them. This isn't fair, it isn't right, and it's supremely racist, but it's a fact. And us pale people - be we racially "white" or not - are in a unique position to do something about it.
But am I saying that the pale hold the sole power to end racism? Hardly! This is only one facet of anti-racism work, and it does not happen a vacuum. People like Noel Ignatiev and I have only come to realize this was even a problem because of the hours of hard work from PoC. And even if the white majority can be made to stop believing in the sanctity of the white race, that effect will not dissuade them of the inferiority of other races. Nor can it end oppressive lawmaking, increased poverty in communities of color, and many other issues that PoC face. In many aspects, PoC have and will continue to take the lead, with white/pale people assisting as is necessary and beneficial. This just happens to be one issue (possibly the only one) that pale people, specifically, must fight on their own.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Why Bashing Millennials Is Wrong
Yo. Well, I have to say, reading Noel Ignatiev's work has given me a lot to think about. It's cracked my brain and helped to deprogram my whiteness. I'm not some magic racism fighter, but I have a lot of thoughts that I'll put together once I get over my cold.
In the meantime, here's someone sticking up for 20's-and-under of any color (or so I presume; she seems to know more about white Gen Y-ers than any other demographic):
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/149/do-something-in-defense-of-millennials.html
I'm in the "entitlement" generation. We think the word owes us everything and we won't work for anything (and this is somehow the product of some inscrutable generation-ness, possibly caused by all the brand new technology we have at our disposal (remember, kids, television will rot your minds!). And not, say, because middle-class white people are reaping the effects of raising middle-class white kids. Here are your toys, kid; your college education is already paid for. Just get your degree and you'll be set in a high-paying job for the rest of your life.
Me, I prefer to think of us as the "breakout" generation. I broke out of my parents' extremely oppressive religious ideals, and then my inability to perceive systemic discrimination against anyone who wasn't like me. Kids who get their college degrees are finding that they're not getting them the high-paying jobs their parents hoped for, so they're breaking out into other fields (including the working class - what's an entitled kid to do?) Many of us are breaking out of our parents' silly ideas, including heteronormativity, willful ignorance, and the value of a suit-and-tie job. They're not all good breakouts. But really, what makes the older generations afraid of us isn't our entitlement - it's our refusal to play the game they set up for us.
Of course, the lady is offering some bullshit about self-confidence, like being full of ourselves is any substitute for being awesome people. I wholeheartedly disagree with that and will criticize any unduly self-opinionated millennial with gusto... just as I will criticize any unduly self-opinionated parent who believes that all of us are full of ourselves and are going to murder society.
On second thought, I'm going to have to revoke my support of this lady. She's not doing anything to fight the stereotypes about millennials - she just argues that these stereotypes are actually good for the future, then expresses her wish to be more like us. A for effort, D for results.
In the meantime, here's someone sticking up for 20's-and-under of any color (or so I presume; she seems to know more about white Gen Y-ers than any other demographic):
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/149/do-something-in-defense-of-millennials.html
I'm in the "entitlement" generation. We think the word owes us everything and we won't work for anything (and this is somehow the product of some inscrutable generation-ness, possibly caused by all the brand new technology we have at our disposal (remember, kids, television will rot your minds!). And not, say, because middle-class white people are reaping the effects of raising middle-class white kids. Here are your toys, kid; your college education is already paid for. Just get your degree and you'll be set in a high-paying job for the rest of your life.
Me, I prefer to think of us as the "breakout" generation. I broke out of my parents' extremely oppressive religious ideals, and then my inability to perceive systemic discrimination against anyone who wasn't like me. Kids who get their college degrees are finding that they're not getting them the high-paying jobs their parents hoped for, so they're breaking out into other fields (including the working class - what's an entitled kid to do?) Many of us are breaking out of our parents' silly ideas, including heteronormativity, willful ignorance, and the value of a suit-and-tie job. They're not all good breakouts. But really, what makes the older generations afraid of us isn't our entitlement - it's our refusal to play the game they set up for us.
Of course, the lady is offering some bullshit about self-confidence, like being full of ourselves is any substitute for being awesome people. I wholeheartedly disagree with that and will criticize any unduly self-opinionated millennial with gusto... just as I will criticize any unduly self-opinionated parent who believes that all of us are full of ourselves and are going to murder society.
On second thought, I'm going to have to revoke my support of this lady. She's not doing anything to fight the stereotypes about millennials - she just argues that these stereotypes are actually good for the future, then expresses her wish to be more like us. A for effort, D for results.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
RACE TRAITOR: The Point Is Not To Interpret Whiteness But To Abolish It
I just finished reading this fascinating talk on abolition. Rather than fighting racism from a white standpoint, Noel Ignatiev suggests that white people might do better to actively defect from the so-called "white race," effectively destroying the validity of white supremacy by making it a class/culture issue rather than a skin color issue. It's a fascinating idea, and it does fit with some thoughts I had also had on the subject, and particularly in light of Tim Wise's talk I believe it deserves some consideration. I admit that it appeals to me mainly because it requires so much sacrifice on the part of the white ally - there is no way to have your cake and eat it too if you follow this principle correctly. It is my feeling that I cannot possibly go wrong by taking the steps outlined, although I will have to read and find out how persons of (other) color feel about it and take their viewpoint into consideration as well.
In any case, it's a fascinating read. It's also a good litmus test for the budding anti-racist - if the idea of forgoing your white identity seems offensive or unthinkable to you, you need to keep working.
In any case, it's a fascinating read. It's also a good litmus test for the budding anti-racist - if the idea of forgoing your white identity seems offensive or unthinkable to you, you need to keep working.
No Ordinary Family: Pilot
This review is also belated - not because I didn't watch the episode, but because I had some other things to get out of the way first, but here goes.
First of all, the plot is as insipid as I expected. A middle-class white family's middle-class whiteness is causing them to become dysfunctional. GO FIGURE. That lifestyle is bad for you, you know. Of course, their failure (according to the story) is also that they are not heteronormative enough - Dad is taking care of his family instead of saving the world, Mom is working a full-time job instead of taking care of her family, and the daughter is (get this) USING HER OWN JUDGMENT TO CHOOSE HER BOYFRIEND. Which, according to tradition, means that he is a total douchebag who (as it turns out) is sleeping with her best friend and lying to her about it.
ANYWAY.
I was going to take the race angle first, but this mess is just too complex. The fact is, I have absolutely no quibble about a story about a white family. I have EVERY quibble about a story that just "happens to" choose a middle-class, heteronormative, almost entirely able (more on that later) white family as The Most Average People Imaginable. Like we haven't seen that a bajillion times before (Sky High, The Incredibles, The Gates, plus a slew of older shows and films) and done better to boot (see also: The Incredibles). A lot of people seem to think that this is acceptable because European-descended people comprise the majority in the United States. This kind of thinking betrays huge ignorance about the population breakdown of individual cities within the United States - many of which have non-white majorities. Yeah, I'm not buying it.
Then there's the "black best friend" angle, which is also popular in television and brings nothing new to this show - except severe unfortunate implications, as George is all too willing to donate his garage and significant quantities of resources to his white friend's newfound powers. Only the addition of Stephanie's white friend, who is equally enthusiastic, and the Rule Of Superhero Worship (as follows: IT'S GONNA HAPPEN) keep this to an even tolerable level. Additionally, the person I took to be a nameless thug of color turned out to be a white guy in an Obama mask, so we're not throwing random POC-as-criminal stereotypes around yet.
Speaking of Stephanie's white friend, her inclusion and the conversation the two have about Stephenie's powers (and Kitty Pryde) means that this show passes the Bechtel test. Which says nothing about its validity as non-oppressive entertainment, obviously. Especially given the things I mentioned above: Stephanie's prioritization of career over family being repeatedly depicted as the wrong choice, and Daphne's atrocious taste in boyfriends (nothing less than a sexist/ageist stereotype).
We'll start with Stephanie (and by extension, Jim). The show does not expressly condemn the mother's choice to pursue her career, or the father's choice to take a less demanding job so that he can spend time with his family - instead, the characters express frustration at their roles, indicating the writers' sentiment that their family is somehow "broken" because of this. I could give them the benefit of the doubt and say maybe they were just trying to twist up the usual order. There have been plenty of stories (such as Multiplicity and 17 Again, also films about heteronormative white people) where the father wants more time with his kids and the mother wants an outside life. Problem is, the original formula is vaguely subversive of the traditional heteronormative family unit. Reverse it, and... yeah. Getting super-speed enables Stephanie to achieve that magic jugglement of career and family, which is what every woman should aspire to, right? Right?
NO. This is an unreasonable goal to set for a mother, even one with superpowers. A more realistic solution would be for her to negotiate some time off from her job so she can spend some more time with her kids. Her boss would totally go for that, even. Also to accept that maybe sharing the parenting job with her husband is OK.
Next up we have Daphne, the teenage daughter who is obsessed with her personal life, sucks at choosing boyfriends, and wants nothing to do with her parents... where have we heard that one before? (Hint: 17 Again, Modern Family, The Vampire Diaries.) It's not so much that her parents don't approve of her boyfriend, but that she doesn't appraise them of everything going on in their relationship, which is punished soundly when she learns that he is boinking her best friend behind her back. And of course it's not his problem for being a lying douchebag - it's her problem for having the naivete to actually trust the guy. Eeeeeyup. In addition to cluing her in to her boyfriend's shenanigans, her psychic powers force her to actually spend some time talking to her parents (yet another way in which they magically start fixing the family).
Remember, girls: your growing independence from your parents as you age is a bad thing. Mommy and Daddy know what's best for you, so make sure you attend all your Meaningful Family Talks, and always do what they say!
Now, I could be completely off on this. For all I know, Daphne could turn out to be an intelligent, independent character (as much as is reasonable for a teenage girl) whose opinion is valid and valued by her parents... but I'm not holding my breath.
Next up is JJ, the token learning-disabled kid. Knowing as little as I do about the learning disabled, I'm not going to take this one on in detail, but even I can tell that they're doing it wrong here. First of all, there's his mother, who is a total asshat about the problem. Paraphrased: "They want to put him in a SPECIAL EDUCATION class. MY son. In a SPECIAL EDUCATION class. This is ridiculous! I'm a middle-class white mother! WHY are they punishing me like this?" Seriously, she acts like it's about her, rather than about the actual difficulties her son is having. Her temper tantrum, and the rest of the show's context, further lead one to believe (without ever confirming) that there's nothing actually wrong with JJ, that he's perfectly intelligent and would be getting good grades if only his mommy was around to help him with his homework. This, of course, casts the school officials who want to put him into a special-education class as clueless monsters who just don't understand how speshul her kid is, and really denigrates the reality of being learning disabled.
Secondly, none of it matters, because GUESS WHAT! Getting dunked in a lake full of magical glowing stuff has made him a SUPER-GENIUS! Ha ha, and you thought he was actually going to have to deal with his problem for a second. You noob. This is another fantastic example of disability erasure - where any character who is disabled either has some superpower to compensate (Daredevil, Percy Jackson et al), or is magically cured of it before the plot ever starts (many amateur Mary-Sue stories), which makes it completely moot. Anyway, becoming a super-genius magically fixes JJ's bad-grades problem, re-encouraging him to apply himself to his schoolwork and Be Successful.
Now here's the thing: Faildelivery aside, I'm enjoying that they've cast a supergenius into a main role. I'm a smart guy, and my kind are often deeply misunderstood in TV. Like Gil Grissom, Data, Bones, or House, they are typically brilliant but lacking in social ability; they have no sense of humor but are always played for laughs, and in many cases they are cast across a less-intelligent protagonist with whom we are supposed to sympathize for having to live/work with a stuffy, clueless know-it-all. Furthermore, we allegedly have only the nerdiest of hobbies - crossword puzzles, sci-fi shows, or randomly building amazing devices in our garages over the weekend (depending on the target age of the show in question).
Now, JJ wasn't raised smart, he became smart. So culturally, he should be more like a real smart person - calculating, liable to overthink things, continually frustrated that everyone around him is so dense, but otherwise no different from anyone else. On the other hand, I don't want his character to become worthless because he doesn't have a physical ability like his parents. If he ends up building incredible physics-defying devices and giving them all to Superdad, I'm going to be pissed. On the other hand, he could be more like Syndrome or Kick-Ass, which would be well worth my viewing time.
Now that that bit of ARGHWHATTHECRAP is out of the way, we'll go to Jimbo!
Jim is the protagonist of the story. This white, middle-class guy was written by white, middle-class guys, and it shows. He's an overall great guy; he works as a police artist, but his job isn't so demanding that he doesn't have time for his kids. He doesn't get his kids, to be sure, and he's convinced that their burgeoning independence is a sign that his family is falling apart (a sentiment the writers obviously agree with), but with a family as obviously dysfunctional as his (workaholic Stephanie, selfish Daphne, emo JJ), what's a guy to do? Man up! Force the family on a vacation to South America, where you continually nag them to enjoy themselves and do Family Things (read: the stuff you want) until you all get into a horrible plane accident. Then just go home and keep nagging them until BAM, they get superpowers, forcing your kids to turn back to you and Mom to help them. VICTORY!
But what's that? You want MORE? You want to fight crime and help people and other stuff you're inexplicably not doing just by working for the police force? Well, no problem! Just recruit your Black Best Friend for a sidekick, promise your wife that you're not going to start doing what you're about to do, and then launch yourself into deadly situations with absolutely no experience or idea of what you're facing.
GAAAAAAAW.
First there's the ageism. Jim's kids are growing up, which means that it is totally unreasonable for him to expect that they stay under his thumb. Not that they don't still need his guidance, but maybe he should try engaging them as the nearly-adult minds that they are instead of the children he expects them to be. (Yes, I know that's difficult. Real life usually is, even if you have superpowers.) Furthermore, Stephanie ignores her son's insistence that he is genuinely disabled in favor of her Important Adult Opinion that he only has self-esteem issues that he needs to get over. (She's never proven wrong, either.) Then there's the sexism. Jim somehow thinks it's okay to lie to his wife about his activity because he "needs" to "do this." He has a burning urge to fight crime which somehow supersedes his marriage vows, and apparently we're supposed to be okay with this. Well, I'm not.
Furthermore, he has no problem with co-opting George's garage for a superhero base. Now maybe it's just me, but I think if my best friend volunteered that much time and resources, I'd be a little hesitant. I might even say something like "Who there, Black Best Friend. You have a life and a family and stuff. I appreciate the offer, but you don't need to be the Magical Negro on my behalf." Again, it's about the wedding vows. Their families should be coming first - especially with the way Jim keeps carrying on about his.
Now that I've done ripped this show to shreds, you might find it crazy that I'm going to keep watching it. And you may be right. But one of the crazy things about us Smart People is that we find value in watching stuff that is crap, so we can analyze it, figure out why it is crap, and maybe educate others about the problems in it. Besides, I am curious, in a completely non-stereotypical-smart-guy way. The show managed to wrap up nearly every problem it started with in one episode. I really want to see where it takes the next. Hopefully somewhere where the kids learn to use their abilities to empower themselves and Jim realizes he can't control his family and run off to do whatever he pleases.
First of all, the plot is as insipid as I expected. A middle-class white family's middle-class whiteness is causing them to become dysfunctional. GO FIGURE. That lifestyle is bad for you, you know. Of course, their failure (according to the story) is also that they are not heteronormative enough - Dad is taking care of his family instead of saving the world, Mom is working a full-time job instead of taking care of her family, and the daughter is (get this) USING HER OWN JUDGMENT TO CHOOSE HER BOYFRIEND. Which, according to tradition, means that he is a total douchebag who (as it turns out) is sleeping with her best friend and lying to her about it.
ANYWAY.
I was going to take the race angle first, but this mess is just too complex. The fact is, I have absolutely no quibble about a story about a white family. I have EVERY quibble about a story that just "happens to" choose a middle-class, heteronormative, almost entirely able (more on that later) white family as The Most Average People Imaginable. Like we haven't seen that a bajillion times before (Sky High, The Incredibles, The Gates, plus a slew of older shows and films) and done better to boot (see also: The Incredibles). A lot of people seem to think that this is acceptable because European-descended people comprise the majority in the United States. This kind of thinking betrays huge ignorance about the population breakdown of individual cities within the United States - many of which have non-white majorities. Yeah, I'm not buying it.
Then there's the "black best friend" angle, which is also popular in television and brings nothing new to this show - except severe unfortunate implications, as George is all too willing to donate his garage and significant quantities of resources to his white friend's newfound powers. Only the addition of Stephanie's white friend, who is equally enthusiastic, and the Rule Of Superhero Worship (as follows: IT'S GONNA HAPPEN) keep this to an even tolerable level. Additionally, the person I took to be a nameless thug of color turned out to be a white guy in an Obama mask, so we're not throwing random POC-as-criminal stereotypes around yet.
Speaking of Stephanie's white friend, her inclusion and the conversation the two have about Stephenie's powers (and Kitty Pryde) means that this show passes the Bechtel test. Which says nothing about its validity as non-oppressive entertainment, obviously. Especially given the things I mentioned above: Stephanie's prioritization of career over family being repeatedly depicted as the wrong choice, and Daphne's atrocious taste in boyfriends (nothing less than a sexist/ageist stereotype).
We'll start with Stephanie (and by extension, Jim). The show does not expressly condemn the mother's choice to pursue her career, or the father's choice to take a less demanding job so that he can spend time with his family - instead, the characters express frustration at their roles, indicating the writers' sentiment that their family is somehow "broken" because of this. I could give them the benefit of the doubt and say maybe they were just trying to twist up the usual order. There have been plenty of stories (such as Multiplicity and 17 Again, also films about heteronormative white people) where the father wants more time with his kids and the mother wants an outside life. Problem is, the original formula is vaguely subversive of the traditional heteronormative family unit. Reverse it, and... yeah. Getting super-speed enables Stephanie to achieve that magic jugglement of career and family, which is what every woman should aspire to, right? Right?
NO. This is an unreasonable goal to set for a mother, even one with superpowers. A more realistic solution would be for her to negotiate some time off from her job so she can spend some more time with her kids. Her boss would totally go for that, even. Also to accept that maybe sharing the parenting job with her husband is OK.
Next up we have Daphne, the teenage daughter who is obsessed with her personal life, sucks at choosing boyfriends, and wants nothing to do with her parents... where have we heard that one before? (Hint: 17 Again, Modern Family, The Vampire Diaries.) It's not so much that her parents don't approve of her boyfriend, but that she doesn't appraise them of everything going on in their relationship, which is punished soundly when she learns that he is boinking her best friend behind her back. And of course it's not his problem for being a lying douchebag - it's her problem for having the naivete to actually trust the guy. Eeeeeyup. In addition to cluing her in to her boyfriend's shenanigans, her psychic powers force her to actually spend some time talking to her parents (yet another way in which they magically start fixing the family).
Remember, girls: your growing independence from your parents as you age is a bad thing. Mommy and Daddy know what's best for you, so make sure you attend all your Meaningful Family Talks, and always do what they say!
Now, I could be completely off on this. For all I know, Daphne could turn out to be an intelligent, independent character (as much as is reasonable for a teenage girl) whose opinion is valid and valued by her parents... but I'm not holding my breath.
Next up is JJ, the token learning-disabled kid. Knowing as little as I do about the learning disabled, I'm not going to take this one on in detail, but even I can tell that they're doing it wrong here. First of all, there's his mother, who is a total asshat about the problem. Paraphrased: "They want to put him in a SPECIAL EDUCATION class. MY son. In a SPECIAL EDUCATION class. This is ridiculous! I'm a middle-class white mother! WHY are they punishing me like this?" Seriously, she acts like it's about her, rather than about the actual difficulties her son is having. Her temper tantrum, and the rest of the show's context, further lead one to believe (without ever confirming) that there's nothing actually wrong with JJ, that he's perfectly intelligent and would be getting good grades if only his mommy was around to help him with his homework. This, of course, casts the school officials who want to put him into a special-education class as clueless monsters who just don't understand how speshul her kid is, and really denigrates the reality of being learning disabled.
Secondly, none of it matters, because GUESS WHAT! Getting dunked in a lake full of magical glowing stuff has made him a SUPER-GENIUS! Ha ha, and you thought he was actually going to have to deal with his problem for a second. You noob. This is another fantastic example of disability erasure - where any character who is disabled either has some superpower to compensate (Daredevil, Percy Jackson et al), or is magically cured of it before the plot ever starts (many amateur Mary-Sue stories), which makes it completely moot. Anyway, becoming a super-genius magically fixes JJ's bad-grades problem, re-encouraging him to apply himself to his schoolwork and Be Successful.
Now here's the thing: Faildelivery aside, I'm enjoying that they've cast a supergenius into a main role. I'm a smart guy, and my kind are often deeply misunderstood in TV. Like Gil Grissom, Data, Bones, or House, they are typically brilliant but lacking in social ability; they have no sense of humor but are always played for laughs, and in many cases they are cast across a less-intelligent protagonist with whom we are supposed to sympathize for having to live/work with a stuffy, clueless know-it-all. Furthermore, we allegedly have only the nerdiest of hobbies - crossword puzzles, sci-fi shows, or randomly building amazing devices in our garages over the weekend (depending on the target age of the show in question).
Now, JJ wasn't raised smart, he became smart. So culturally, he should be more like a real smart person - calculating, liable to overthink things, continually frustrated that everyone around him is so dense, but otherwise no different from anyone else. On the other hand, I don't want his character to become worthless because he doesn't have a physical ability like his parents. If he ends up building incredible physics-defying devices and giving them all to Superdad, I'm going to be pissed. On the other hand, he could be more like Syndrome or Kick-Ass, which would be well worth my viewing time.
Now that that bit of ARGHWHATTHECRAP is out of the way, we'll go to Jimbo!
Jim is the protagonist of the story. This white, middle-class guy was written by white, middle-class guys, and it shows. He's an overall great guy; he works as a police artist, but his job isn't so demanding that he doesn't have time for his kids. He doesn't get his kids, to be sure, and he's convinced that their burgeoning independence is a sign that his family is falling apart (a sentiment the writers obviously agree with), but with a family as obviously dysfunctional as his (workaholic Stephanie, selfish Daphne, emo JJ), what's a guy to do? Man up! Force the family on a vacation to South America, where you continually nag them to enjoy themselves and do Family Things (read: the stuff you want) until you all get into a horrible plane accident. Then just go home and keep nagging them until BAM, they get superpowers, forcing your kids to turn back to you and Mom to help them. VICTORY!
But what's that? You want MORE? You want to fight crime and help people and other stuff you're inexplicably not doing just by working for the police force? Well, no problem! Just recruit your Black Best Friend for a sidekick, promise your wife that you're not going to start doing what you're about to do, and then launch yourself into deadly situations with absolutely no experience or idea of what you're facing.
GAAAAAAAW.
First there's the ageism. Jim's kids are growing up, which means that it is totally unreasonable for him to expect that they stay under his thumb. Not that they don't still need his guidance, but maybe he should try engaging them as the nearly-adult minds that they are instead of the children he expects them to be. (Yes, I know that's difficult. Real life usually is, even if you have superpowers.) Furthermore, Stephanie ignores her son's insistence that he is genuinely disabled in favor of her Important Adult Opinion that he only has self-esteem issues that he needs to get over. (She's never proven wrong, either.) Then there's the sexism. Jim somehow thinks it's okay to lie to his wife about his activity because he "needs" to "do this." He has a burning urge to fight crime which somehow supersedes his marriage vows, and apparently we're supposed to be okay with this. Well, I'm not.
Furthermore, he has no problem with co-opting George's garage for a superhero base. Now maybe it's just me, but I think if my best friend volunteered that much time and resources, I'd be a little hesitant. I might even say something like "Who there, Black Best Friend. You have a life and a family and stuff. I appreciate the offer, but you don't need to be the Magical Negro on my behalf." Again, it's about the wedding vows. Their families should be coming first - especially with the way Jim keeps carrying on about his.
Now that I've done ripped this show to shreds, you might find it crazy that I'm going to keep watching it. And you may be right. But one of the crazy things about us Smart People is that we find value in watching stuff that is crap, so we can analyze it, figure out why it is crap, and maybe educate others about the problems in it. Besides, I am curious, in a completely non-stereotypical-smart-guy way. The show managed to wrap up nearly every problem it started with in one episode. I really want to see where it takes the next. Hopefully somewhere where the kids learn to use their abilities to empower themselves and Jim realizes he can't control his family and run off to do whatever he pleases.
Monday, October 4, 2010
MUST SEE: Tim Wise on White Privilege
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Xe1kX7Wsc
Full transcript:
This is a brilliant, powerful, and utterly illuminating piece. One of the biggest flaws I have noticed in anti-racist work (at least on the blogosphere), from people of any color, is the simple inability to connect with white allies. They express the problem, they express their rage, and they have that right, but it is rare for someone to actually communicate, to cause the white person to truly appreciate that they useful in the battle against racism and in fact have a sizeable stake in it. This communication may not be cathartic, and one often feels that the other party does not deserve such treatment, but it is vital in the acquisition of allies - something that other marginalized groups have already discovered. Tim Wise (likely by virtue of being white himself) has managed to communicate with the white mind, bringing to light one of its greatest flaws - to believe, because of the repeated affirmation of their whiteness on all sides, that even the most disenfranchised white person has more in common with their own oppressors than with their fellow oppressed. This is, in a word, bullshit - and I will try to remember that in the future.
(I will also remember to double-check my sources. I wasted a huge amount of time transcribing the talk, optimistically thinking that I was doing something useful, when there was already a PDF version available. Oh, well.)
(Via stuff white people do.)
Full transcript:
'Cause if you know the history of the whole concept of Whiteness, if you know the history of the whole concept of the white race, where it came from and for what reason, you know that it was a trick - and it's worked brilliantly.
See, prior to the mid- to late-1600's in the colonies of what would become the United States, there was no such thing as the white race - those of us of European descent did not refer to ourselves by that term, really ever, before then. In fact, in the old countries of Europe, we had spent most of our time killing each other. We didn't love each other; we weren't one big, happy family. The side of my family that comes from Scotland, hell, they didn't even worry about fighting people outside of Scotland. Highlanders and lowlanders just fought the hell out of each other. So there was no white race, but in the colonies of what would become the United States, what did we see in the 1660's-1670's? We began to see that Africans of indentured servant status (many of them not enslaved yet, they were not necessarily permanently enslaved; some were, others were indentured like many poor Europeans for periods of seven to eleven years - they could work off their indenture and then they would be free labor, technically) realized, as did the white indentured servants, the Europeans (who hadn't even been called white yet) that they had a lot of things in common, like the fact that they were all getting their clock cleaned by the elites. And so they would get together, more than our history books taught us. To fement(?) rebellion against the elite, to try to get a better deal for themselves on the basis of economic necessity and economic justice.
And what did the elite do? When you see that you're outnumbered by black and white folks who are penniless, landless, peasants, you have to do one of two things: you either have to kill them all, but you can't do that, 'cause who's gonna work? Rich folks weren't going to. They had to get poor people to work. The whole point was to be a person of leisure, back in those days. That was the goal, was not to work. So you couldn't kill them all, you didn't want to kill them all, you'd have to do the work yourself! You'd have to build your own levy. Build your own house. No. Pick your own tobacco! Harvest your own cotton... no. We're not going to do any of that. So you can't kill them, but you can co-opt them, and so the elite in Virginia, for example, in the colony, begins to give certain carrots to people of European descent, saying things like "You know, we're going to let you own a little land. Not much, but just a little. And we're going to get rid of indentured servitude, now you're free labor - and by the way, once you're free labor you get fifty acres of land. Just because you're free labor, see, so we're going to cut you in on this deal. We're going to let you enter into contracts. We're going to let you testify in court, and here's the best of all: we're going to put you on the slave patrol. To keep those people in line," right? The idea was, "you're still going to get your clock cleaned. We still don't like you. We still aren't really going to empower you or change your economic subordination, but we're going to make you honorary members of this team, and you're going to help us keep those other people down."
And so they got a little taste of power, and it did effectively divide and conquer those coalitions - those rebellions began to stop almost instantly. Fast forward to the Civil War era, you have rich white folks in the South where I come from, standing up and openly admitting that the reason they're prepared to secede from the Union - and the only reason they ever articulated publicly, EVER - was to maintain and extend slavery and white supremacy, not only where it already existed, but into the newly acquired - that is to say, stolen - territories from Mexico, to the west. That was what they said. Now we lie about it. We say it wasn't about slavery. That it was about state's rights. Yes, the right of the states to keep and maintain slaves, exactly. But back then they had no shame, so they didn't try and cover it up. They only said it, but once again the rich didn't want to go and do the work - are you kidding? No. They're going to get poor people to go fight for them. And the poor folks didn't even own slaves. Now think: how do you get poor people, who don't even own the shirt on their back - let alone slaves - to go fight to keep your slaves for you? You've got to convince them that their skin is more important than their economic interest, because think about it: if I am a farmer who has to charge you a dollar a day or two dollars a week to work on your farm, to harvest that tobacco or pick that cotton, but you can get a black person to do it for free (because you own them), who's going to get the job? Not me. In other words, slavery actually undermined the wages, and the wage-based economic floor, of the typical white working-class or low-income person. But they were told, "if these people are free they're going to take your job." No, fool, they got your job. That's the point. And so at some level, again, working-class white people being harmed by white privilege. Relatively, being advantaged, right? Being given a leg up, being given a membership to the club, but in absolute terms being kept economically subordinated by the very thing that gave them a sense of superiority. How's that for irony?
Then in the present era - this hasn't stopped, this is not ancient history - now we have people running around insisting that we should close the border with Mexico because, if we don't, the wages of working-class people will continue to fall, the implication being that the only reason workers are paid like crap in this country is because the border is opened. But if you believe that, you would actually have to believe that if that border were closed, then all these owners of capital and industry would just say "Oh, well, you figured us out. Here, it's a raise." Do we really believe that the only thing keeping bosses from paying people more is the presence of low-wage, medium-semi-skilled labor from south of this artificial border? Is that really what we believe? We know that if that border was closed, it isn't going to be closed to capital. It isn't going to be closed to goods. If you have a border that can be crossed by capital, looking for the highest return on investment or goods, looking for the highest price, but labor is chained to its country of origin, how is that going to work to the benefit of working people? By definition, it doesn't. By definition, it emiserates the working class. Divide, and conquer.
But the best example of all, perhaps, in the contemporary era - in the greater New Orleans area after Katrina - here you have two communities that were the worst hard-hit: the Lower Ninth Ward, mostly black community, 94% African-American, about 40% official poverty rate, heavy working-class community, and right across the canal, St. Bernard Parish Chalmette, 95% white, also working-class, high levels of poverty, economically very similar. And at the end of the day, in those first few days of September 2005, more similar than they probably would have realized. Because when those levies broke, they all got their stuff jacked. They all got their stuff destroyed. But if you had asked the white folks in Chalmette - and I've done it - who was the cause of the problems in the greater New Orleans area part of that flooding, they would have pointed across the canal at those black folks (wouldn't have called them black folks) and would have said "there, that's the problem." 70% of the white folks in St. Bernard Parish voted for David Duke, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, former head of the largest Ku Klux Klan group in the United States, when he ran for governer in 1991. Seven out of ten gladly voted for him, because he was blaming black folks for all of their problems and they bough it. What's the irony? The irony is that while they were blaming black people for their problems, while they were blaming black people for the conditions of the greater New Orleans area in which they lived, nobody was paying attention (least of all they) to the fact that these white elite politicians, either in Baton Rouge or in Washington, whose job it was to secure those levies, to make sure that levy funds were spent in the proper way and that they were spent at all, those mostly white and mostly elite politicians did nothing at the end of the day, it wasn't just the black folks in the Lower 9th Ward they didn't care about, they didn't give a rat's ass about those poor and working-class white folks either. And yet when the people of Chalmette - people of St. Bernard Parish - got back into session, first time they had a city council meeting, parish council meeting after the flooding, the lights aren't even on yet. The water isn't even hooked up, and the first order of business was to pass an ordinance saying that you couldn't rent property in St. Bernard Parish to anyone who wasn't a blood relative. Now I'll leave it up to your imagination as to why they'd want to pass a law - that law had never existed before - but now that it's been emptied out and you don't know who might be coming back, that's a damn good way to keep black people out, isn't it? 'Cause if you're 95% white to begin with, if you pass an ordinance that says that, that's a great w-you can't say "no blacks need apply," you can't say "no blacks allowed," but that was an ingenious way to get around the law. Now, they got caught, there was a lawsuit threatened and they got rid of the ordinance. But my point in bringing it up is to say, once again, "divide and conquer" is working. These white folks in Chalmette need to march across that canal and join hands with the black folks who've been sitting there, more than willing to work with them for an awful long time, and march on Baton Rouge, and march on DC, and march on the Corps of Engineers, and recognize their commonality of interest. But the whiteness, and the lure of whiteness, has tricked these have-nothing-in-their-bank-account white people into believing that they got more in common with the rich white folks on St. Charles Avenue, that didn't lose anything in that flooding, than they have in common with the black working-class folks who live about five hundred yards away.
This is a brilliant, powerful, and utterly illuminating piece. One of the biggest flaws I have noticed in anti-racist work (at least on the blogosphere), from people of any color, is the simple inability to connect with white allies. They express the problem, they express their rage, and they have that right, but it is rare for someone to actually communicate, to cause the white person to truly appreciate that they useful in the battle against racism and in fact have a sizeable stake in it. This communication may not be cathartic, and one often feels that the other party does not deserve such treatment, but it is vital in the acquisition of allies - something that other marginalized groups have already discovered. Tim Wise (likely by virtue of being white himself) has managed to communicate with the white mind, bringing to light one of its greatest flaws - to believe, because of the repeated affirmation of their whiteness on all sides, that even the most disenfranchised white person has more in common with their own oppressors than with their fellow oppressed. This is, in a word, bullshit - and I will try to remember that in the future.
(I will also remember to double-check my sources. I wasted a huge amount of time transcribing the talk, optimistically thinking that I was doing something useful, when there was already a PDF version available. Oh, well.)
(Via stuff white people do.)
Undercovers: Pilot
This review is a bit belated, on account of I only got around to watching the episode yesterday (on account of spy shows aren't usually my thing), but here goes. Starting with race issues, since they're the elephant in the room here.
First of all, my predictions were correct: the main couple are a pair of Oreos. While I won't argue the importance of having any black characters in the main roles, it is pretty obvious that they were written by white people who have no idea how black culture works in the middle class. (Furthermore, while the creative minds behind the show were hoping to get black actors, their casting call was unracified, so... yeah.) In a way that's good - who says a role has to be intended for a black person for a black person to get it? On the other hand, who says it's not cool to write a leading role specifically for a black person? In addition, almost the entire supporting cast consists of white people. I guess that's how you be an acceptable black person in this country - hire white people to run your catering business, rescue white spies, work for white government agents, etc. I know they didn't mean to show it that way, but it's thoughtless.
The show has also been criticized for hiring two black foreigners (Gugu Mbatha-Raw is English; Boris Kodjoe is Austrian-born German) to play their American roles. Its critics have in turn been criticized for being too picky - after all, nobody had a cow when British Hugh Laurie was cast as American Dr. House. Well, that's all fine and good, but Dr. House isn't exactly the sole representation of cranky, middle-aged, white male doctors on television. Or one of only a handful of white leads, period. Here they had a chance to represent an entire demographic of American people with two roles, and they felt they had to bring in foreigners? Are American black actors just not good enough, or what?
The bottom line on race: Black protagonists are a great start, but they're a start. Keep working, folks.
Then there's the sexism angle. It continues to bother me that no woman is allowed to be a spy unless 1: she is partnered with a male spy, 2: she is married to a male spy, or 3: she is going to sleep with a male spy at some point. Also, the portrayal of Samantha and Leo's past relationship also bugs me - not because they had one, but because her repeated insistence that he could not be a turncoat comes across as an interference of her personal (womanly) feelings with what would otherwise be sound judgment. (The fact that Steven was Leo's partner for some time but does not feel this way compounds the idea.) She turns out to be right, which does vindicate the problem slightly, but the fact that they never confront this assumption leaves some niggling doubt in my mind. Then there's the scene where she has to hit on a guy she is repulsed by in order to obtain information.
On the other hand, Samantha gets some totally kick-ass moments. She disregards her husband's irrational insistence that she stays "safe," and in doing so manages to save Steven and Leo. Then when she takes off to try and stop the bad guy, she not only takes out his minion without a problem, but stops him single-handedly while Steven is busy rescuing Leo. That, dear reader, is girl power. And it rocks.
Also, the white guy got shot. That was funny.
But what about the show itself? Does it have entertainment value? Definitely. I'm a little irked by some of the spy tropes (ooh, we're spies, we get to go to these exotic European locations!), but I enjoy the storyline, I enjoy the action, I definitely enjoyed Samantha's dress, and I appreciate the implication that they can successfully juggle their spy careers with their catering business. And I loved the little robot-shaped flash drive. So cute.
However, there is one last thing that I do not appreciate: the continued normalization of the overworked middle-class citizen. They spend all day working so they can afford all these luxuries that they're now too tired to enjoy - what's the point? Heck, what's the point of working so hard every day that you're always too tired for sex? More than a spy job, it struck me that these characters needed some time off to rethink their priorities. Maybe they're not so middle class; maybe they're struggling just to keep food on the table and clothes on their backs. But I doubt it. It certainly isn't made to seem that way.
I will, of course, keep watching to see how things play out.
First of all, my predictions were correct: the main couple are a pair of Oreos. While I won't argue the importance of having any black characters in the main roles, it is pretty obvious that they were written by white people who have no idea how black culture works in the middle class. (Furthermore, while the creative minds behind the show were hoping to get black actors, their casting call was unracified, so... yeah.) In a way that's good - who says a role has to be intended for a black person for a black person to get it? On the other hand, who says it's not cool to write a leading role specifically for a black person? In addition, almost the entire supporting cast consists of white people. I guess that's how you be an acceptable black person in this country - hire white people to run your catering business, rescue white spies, work for white government agents, etc. I know they didn't mean to show it that way, but it's thoughtless.
The show has also been criticized for hiring two black foreigners (Gugu Mbatha-Raw is English; Boris Kodjoe is Austrian-born German) to play their American roles. Its critics have in turn been criticized for being too picky - after all, nobody had a cow when British Hugh Laurie was cast as American Dr. House. Well, that's all fine and good, but Dr. House isn't exactly the sole representation of cranky, middle-aged, white male doctors on television. Or one of only a handful of white leads, period. Here they had a chance to represent an entire demographic of American people with two roles, and they felt they had to bring in foreigners? Are American black actors just not good enough, or what?
The bottom line on race: Black protagonists are a great start, but they're a start. Keep working, folks.
Then there's the sexism angle. It continues to bother me that no woman is allowed to be a spy unless 1: she is partnered with a male spy, 2: she is married to a male spy, or 3: she is going to sleep with a male spy at some point. Also, the portrayal of Samantha and Leo's past relationship also bugs me - not because they had one, but because her repeated insistence that he could not be a turncoat comes across as an interference of her personal (womanly) feelings with what would otherwise be sound judgment. (The fact that Steven was Leo's partner for some time but does not feel this way compounds the idea.) She turns out to be right, which does vindicate the problem slightly, but the fact that they never confront this assumption leaves some niggling doubt in my mind. Then there's the scene where she has to hit on a guy she is repulsed by in order to obtain information.
On the other hand, Samantha gets some totally kick-ass moments. She disregards her husband's irrational insistence that she stays "safe," and in doing so manages to save Steven and Leo. Then when she takes off to try and stop the bad guy, she not only takes out his minion without a problem, but stops him single-handedly while Steven is busy rescuing Leo. That, dear reader, is girl power. And it rocks.
Also, the white guy got shot. That was funny.
But what about the show itself? Does it have entertainment value? Definitely. I'm a little irked by some of the spy tropes (ooh, we're spies, we get to go to these exotic European locations!), but I enjoy the storyline, I enjoy the action, I definitely enjoyed Samantha's dress, and I appreciate the implication that they can successfully juggle their spy careers with their catering business. And I loved the little robot-shaped flash drive. So cute.
However, there is one last thing that I do not appreciate: the continued normalization of the overworked middle-class citizen. They spend all day working so they can afford all these luxuries that they're now too tired to enjoy - what's the point? Heck, what's the point of working so hard every day that you're always too tired for sex? More than a spy job, it struck me that these characters needed some time off to rethink their priorities. Maybe they're not so middle class; maybe they're struggling just to keep food on the table and clothes on their backs. But I doubt it. It certainly isn't made to seem that way.
I will, of course, keep watching to see how things play out.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
In Re: Jessica Davis
The third episode of Outlaw was very interesting. In between trying to pay off his gambling debt, Cyrus takes on the case of a white cis woman whose baby died when she accidentally left her in her car, revealing what circumstances could cause such a thing to happen. Meanwhile, his minion Eddie must defend a black trans woman who was wrongfully searched, found to have drugs on her person, and charged with drug use.
The main plot, that of the mother, was very interesting. Cyrus brings on a scientist who explains why such a thing could happen - the mother was exhausted, stressed out, and distracted by an untimely phone call, all of which caused her to forget that her husband had not taken the baby to daycare as he usually did. He explains - to the audience as much as the jury - that such an accident can happen to anyone, that "good parents" are not immune, and that for this reason a "zero tolerance" policy for the accidental death of a baby is simply unacceptable. The explanation made good sense, and I hope that more people will consider it when further cases crop up (as they invariably, sadly, will).
The emotional reaction on the part of the mother was also a factor. During most of the trial, Jessica Davis acted emotionless, preferring to comment on the details of her drive to work when the incident happened, an the quality of the bagel she ate after she arrived, making it seem like she had no grief for her lost child. Cyrus (being a magical attorney who could fix everything) managed to prove that she did grieve for the baby, and had dissociated herself from her emotions as a coping mechanism - which, he argued, was not proof that she had no love for the child.
This was especially poignant for me for the following reason: After I lost my faith, I dissociated myself and hard. I did it because I thought my strong emotions were the presence of their god - whom I no longer wanted anything to do with - and that atheists weren't supposed to feel like that - the result of my mother's brainwashing and my own naivete. So I cut myself off from those feelings. I spent the next two weeks in a miserable haze. It stopped me from feeling the pain of betrayal from learning that my god was not what I had been told, but it also stopped me from feeling happiness, or warmth, or really anything else. When my mother found out that I had left the faith, she came down on me hard for it. She accused me of putting on "fake happiness" (acting like I wasn't miserable so she couldn't use my emotions to "prove" that my choice was wrong) and of being hard and cold and other horrible things which proved that I had lost the light of God. She managed to break through to me a couple of days later, restoring my emotional status if not my faith, but neither of us really understood what had happened - until the therapist character explained the phenomenon. Whether Mum gets it, I can't say, but it was a relief for me to understand what had happened, and I hope that other people remember this episode when someone in their life acts the same way.
The major subplot of the episode featured Eddie and Lucinda taking on the case - as I mentioned above - of a black trans woman named Desdemona. She'd been getting sexual with a man in a car when a policeman had come up, searched her without provocation or warrant, found drugs on her person, and proceeded to claim that she had been smoking pot in the car and charge her with the same. The man she'd been with was the only one who could clear her name, but he was reluctant because he'd been seeing her behind his wife's back, and he didn't want their relationship to be known.
Eddie was very disrespectful of Desdemona at first. He treated her with barely-concealed disdain to her faced and referred to her with male pronouns behind her back. That is why I was pleased when - also behind her back - Lucinda took him to task, repeatedly correcting him on pronouns and such. Eventually he came around - especially when he saw the way she'd been treated during the night she spent in jail - and persuaded her lover to testify for her. In the end she hugged him, and while he was obviously uncomfortable, he seemed to recognize that it was a personal problem and handled the situation respectfully.
This, I felt, was an excellent example of how to treat a trans character in your show. She may have been in trouble for being trans - or for being black, or for the dual crime of being trans black - but it was not the focal issue. The focal issue was that she had been wrongfully accused, with appropriate coverage of her transgender status. Eddie expressed cissexist sentiments about her, and was forcefully and repeatedly shot down by Lucinda, making it very clear where the writers stood on the issue. My only complaint concern's Lucinda's ongoing comments about his "gender identity issues" - she seemed to think that his discomfort stemmed from him being a closet trans woman, possibly because he had been in a boy band and was hit on by the drummer. None of it made any sense, all of it was 100% Lucinda, and it just made me wish that someone would have been there to call her out on her nonsense. (In previous episodes, she has also accused him of being gay because he does not want to sleep with her - very irritating, and I hope this does not continue to be the only coverage of homosexuality.)
Garza continues to be misogynistic, flirting aggressively with his boss seemingly just because she has the nerve to be a hot woman. She takes it in stride, and in fact can tease him just as hard. Does that mean this is supposed to be okay? I'd love for them to explore that. But they probably won't because it's "funny."
Edit: In other news, Outlaw is on death watch. This cheeses me off on more levels than I can possibly express. I guess it's true: once you've alienated the Republicans and the liberals, you don't have much of an audience.
The main plot, that of the mother, was very interesting. Cyrus brings on a scientist who explains why such a thing could happen - the mother was exhausted, stressed out, and distracted by an untimely phone call, all of which caused her to forget that her husband had not taken the baby to daycare as he usually did. He explains - to the audience as much as the jury - that such an accident can happen to anyone, that "good parents" are not immune, and that for this reason a "zero tolerance" policy for the accidental death of a baby is simply unacceptable. The explanation made good sense, and I hope that more people will consider it when further cases crop up (as they invariably, sadly, will).
The emotional reaction on the part of the mother was also a factor. During most of the trial, Jessica Davis acted emotionless, preferring to comment on the details of her drive to work when the incident happened, an the quality of the bagel she ate after she arrived, making it seem like she had no grief for her lost child. Cyrus (being a magical attorney who could fix everything) managed to prove that she did grieve for the baby, and had dissociated herself from her emotions as a coping mechanism - which, he argued, was not proof that she had no love for the child.
This was especially poignant for me for the following reason: After I lost my faith, I dissociated myself and hard. I did it because I thought my strong emotions were the presence of their god - whom I no longer wanted anything to do with - and that atheists weren't supposed to feel like that - the result of my mother's brainwashing and my own naivete. So I cut myself off from those feelings. I spent the next two weeks in a miserable haze. It stopped me from feeling the pain of betrayal from learning that my god was not what I had been told, but it also stopped me from feeling happiness, or warmth, or really anything else. When my mother found out that I had left the faith, she came down on me hard for it. She accused me of putting on "fake happiness" (acting like I wasn't miserable so she couldn't use my emotions to "prove" that my choice was wrong) and of being hard and cold and other horrible things which proved that I had lost the light of God. She managed to break through to me a couple of days later, restoring my emotional status if not my faith, but neither of us really understood what had happened - until the therapist character explained the phenomenon. Whether Mum gets it, I can't say, but it was a relief for me to understand what had happened, and I hope that other people remember this episode when someone in their life acts the same way.
The major subplot of the episode featured Eddie and Lucinda taking on the case - as I mentioned above - of a black trans woman named Desdemona. She'd been getting sexual with a man in a car when a policeman had come up, searched her without provocation or warrant, found drugs on her person, and proceeded to claim that she had been smoking pot in the car and charge her with the same. The man she'd been with was the only one who could clear her name, but he was reluctant because he'd been seeing her behind his wife's back, and he didn't want their relationship to be known.
Eddie was very disrespectful of Desdemona at first. He treated her with barely-concealed disdain to her faced and referred to her with male pronouns behind her back. That is why I was pleased when - also behind her back - Lucinda took him to task, repeatedly correcting him on pronouns and such. Eventually he came around - especially when he saw the way she'd been treated during the night she spent in jail - and persuaded her lover to testify for her. In the end she hugged him, and while he was obviously uncomfortable, he seemed to recognize that it was a personal problem and handled the situation respectfully.
This, I felt, was an excellent example of how to treat a trans character in your show. She may have been in trouble for being trans - or for being black, or for the dual crime of being trans black - but it was not the focal issue. The focal issue was that she had been wrongfully accused, with appropriate coverage of her transgender status. Eddie expressed cissexist sentiments about her, and was forcefully and repeatedly shot down by Lucinda, making it very clear where the writers stood on the issue. My only complaint concern's Lucinda's ongoing comments about his "gender identity issues" - she seemed to think that his discomfort stemmed from him being a closet trans woman, possibly because he had been in a boy band and was hit on by the drummer. None of it made any sense, all of it was 100% Lucinda, and it just made me wish that someone would have been there to call her out on her nonsense. (In previous episodes, she has also accused him of being gay because he does not want to sleep with her - very irritating, and I hope this does not continue to be the only coverage of homosexuality.)
Garza continues to be misogynistic, flirting aggressively with his boss seemingly just because she has the nerve to be a hot woman. She takes it in stride, and in fact can tease him just as hard. Does that mean this is supposed to be okay? I'd love for them to explore that. But they probably won't because it's "funny."
Edit: In other news, Outlaw is on death watch. This cheeses me off on more levels than I can possibly express. I guess it's true: once you've alienated the Republicans and the liberals, you don't have much of an audience.
The Discrimination Litmus Test (The Easy Version)
Whenever someone points out a case of heterosexism/cissexism/sexism/racism/ableism/any form of non-imaginary discrimination, it's only a matter of time before this happens:
We find these truths to be self-evident, but for easy reference, here is the most recent example. Scroll down to the comments where a Well-Intentioned White Liberal (we presume) immediately argues that Glee is not transphobic (read: perpetuating transphobia) because "Ryan Murphy likes to play with gender lines," not racist (read: perpetuating racism) because "Tina [the Asian girl] had a storylone(sic) before" and because it has "one of the most diverse casts on television," and not misogynistic (read: perpetuating misogyny) because "Artie is a teenage boy" and therefore he's expected to be misogynistic. Oh, and it's not heterosexist (you know how to read this by now) because its creator is gay. (They didn't touch the ableism, strangely.)
WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG.
Here's how it works, guys. If a show portrays a stereotype or puts down a marginalized character and does nothing to combat it, it's discriminatory. Period. If a show portrays a stereotype or puts down a marginalized character, then attempts to combat it without actually empowering the character in question, it's discriminatory. Period. This is a complex issue that I could spend pages upon pages trying to explain, but who wants to read that? No one. Instead, I offer this quick-and-dirty litmus test that will allow you as a viewer/reader/other form of consumer to determine whether X's portrayal of Y is, in fact, discriminatory. Just a few simple questions and then you'll know.
Why are these things discriminatory? That's an extremely complex issue that would require multiple paragraphs to explain in-depth, so I'll sum up: To express an idea is to perpetuate the belief that that idea is valid. The only exception is when you express said idea with the direct cause of invalidating it - and even then, unless everyone knows that you are a past or possible victim of the idea you're expressing, it's risky.
Of course, there are other ways for stories to be discriminatory, even if they pass this test. This is nothing more than a quick way to weed out obvious instances.
(Initial Argument): And that's why X's portrayal of Y is discriminatory.
(Rebuttal): That's not discrimination! That's just how X happened to portray Y. It's a joke/based on reality/just how that character is/a fluke/ironic.
We find these truths to be self-evident, but for easy reference, here is the most recent example. Scroll down to the comments where a Well-Intentioned White Liberal (we presume) immediately argues that Glee is not transphobic (read: perpetuating transphobia) because "Ryan Murphy likes to play with gender lines," not racist (read: perpetuating racism) because "Tina [the Asian girl] had a storylone(sic) before" and because it has "one of the most diverse casts on television," and not misogynistic (read: perpetuating misogyny) because "Artie is a teenage boy" and therefore he's expected to be misogynistic. Oh, and it's not heterosexist (you know how to read this by now) because its creator is gay. (They didn't touch the ableism, strangely.)
WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG.
Here's how it works, guys. If a show portrays a stereotype or puts down a marginalized character and does nothing to combat it, it's discriminatory. Period. If a show portrays a stereotype or puts down a marginalized character, then attempts to combat it without actually empowering the character in question, it's discriminatory. Period. This is a complex issue that I could spend pages upon pages trying to explain, but who wants to read that? No one. Instead, I offer this quick-and-dirty litmus test that will allow you as a viewer/reader/other form of consumer to determine whether X's portrayal of Y is, in fact, discriminatory. Just a few simple questions and then you'll know.
Question 1: Is a stereotype being perpetuated? If not, is a member of a marginalized group being put down for their membership in that group, by the storyline or by another character? (Use your own judgment, but before you do, read the work of someone who belongs to that minority so you have some idea what you're looking for. For instance, a trans woman becoming a prostitute, a black teenager becoming involved in drug use, a teenage girl falling prey to a jerkwad boyfriend and being rescued by her father.)
Question 2: Is the character in question the only member of his/her minority to be portrayed?
Question 3: If yes, is the character in question the only member of the cast to fall under said stereotype/be put down? If no, are other characters belonging to the same minority treated the same way? (Protip: Using a stereotype or putting down a marginalized character for their marginalized trait is NEVER okay, but if the answer to either of these questions is "no," then you can safely say that the work is doing something to fight it.)
Question 4: Does the story, through plot or another character, obviously break the stereotype or re-empower the character? (If yes, and only in this case, is it safe to argue that the portrayal was "ironic" or "subversive." Examples of this happening would be a trans person finding a happy ending, an Asian pointing out that not all Asians are math geniuses, etc.)
Question 5: Does the re-empowerment of the character come at the hands of someone who is not a member of the same marginalized group? (If yes, it's not re-empowerment, and it's still discriminatory.)
Why are these things discriminatory? That's an extremely complex issue that would require multiple paragraphs to explain in-depth, so I'll sum up: To express an idea is to perpetuate the belief that that idea is valid. The only exception is when you express said idea with the direct cause of invalidating it - and even then, unless everyone knows that you are a past or possible victim of the idea you're expressing, it's risky.
Of course, there are other ways for stories to be discriminatory, even if they pass this test. This is nothing more than a quick way to weed out obvious instances.
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