I know this has been adressed many times by a lot of people, but I was pondering this question from someone who is hurt by some of the problematicness themselves, and the usual response didn't quite cover it.
My opinion in short:
There's lots of ways to "support" a work: watching/reading it, paying for it, promoting it, etc. Each should be considered separately.
And there are two questions when it comes to whether you or not you should "support" a work, for whatever definition of "support" is relevant:
1) What effect does it have on you?
2) What effect does it have on other people?
How you weigh the two answers is a matter of personal ethics, but they should both have weight. And it's very important not to weight what affects you more than what affects other people in anything claiming to be an objective analysis of the ethics of a situation.
Unfortunately people tend to conflate all the different forms of support, which I think is unhelpful.
( My opinion in looooooong )
My opinion in short:
There's lots of ways to "support" a work: watching/reading it, paying for it, promoting it, etc. Each should be considered separately.
And there are two questions when it comes to whether you or not you should "support" a work, for whatever definition of "support" is relevant:
1) What effect does it have on you?
2) What effect does it have on other people?
How you weigh the two answers is a matter of personal ethics, but they should both have weight. And it's very important not to weight what affects you more than what affects other people in anything claiming to be an objective analysis of the ethics of a situation.
Unfortunately people tend to conflate all the different forms of support, which I think is unhelpful.
( My opinion in looooooong )
Barred CHOGM protestor 'not a threat' The Queen is visiting, better lock up the environmentalists! On the plus side even commercial FM radio news was talking about it.
Rio Tinto accused over Bougainville 'genocide'
Housos: a tv show making fun of disabled people living in public housing. As a disabled person who grew up in public housing around a lot of disabled people my response was nostalgia coated in a heavy layer of "Fuck you"(*). Here's the first episode of Housos, I only got three minutes in, maybe it suddenly becomes SUPER AMAZING after that but somehow I doubt it.
(*)Given that my childhood involved a lot of people swearing and resentment towards middle class(**) wankers who thought they were better than us I guess it's appropriate.
(**)I tried to look up about the guy who made this, but once I hit "He won the Tropfest award…although he had submitted the film under the pseudonym Laura Feinstein in order to appeal to the sensitivities of the judges" I decided I'd hit my loathing limit for the day.
Rio Tinto accused over Bougainville 'genocide'
Housos: a tv show making fun of disabled people living in public housing. As a disabled person who grew up in public housing around a lot of disabled people my response was nostalgia coated in a heavy layer of "Fuck you"(*). Here's the first episode of Housos, I only got three minutes in, maybe it suddenly becomes SUPER AMAZING after that but somehow I doubt it.
(*)Given that my childhood involved a lot of people swearing and resentment towards middle class(**) wankers who thought they were better than us I guess it's appropriate.
(**)I tried to look up about the guy who made this, but once I hit "He won the Tropfest award…although he had submitted the film under the pseudonym Laura Feinstein in order to appeal to the sensitivities of the judges" I decided I'd hit my loathing limit for the day.
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Jon Stewart and the Burden of History A flawed but still interesting critique of John Stewart. This came up on my dash shortly after a discussion of how not-that-feminist Jane Austen was, and I think in both cases there's that ambiguity between satire for it's own sake and political statement. Critiquing hypocrisy and ridiculousness does not always extend to critiquing the system that allows such hypocrisy and ridiculousness to flourish, or those who are sensible and honest but harmful.
Mass Effect: Conviction Comic about the new crew member James Vega. And oh look, after the recent DLC where you had no choice but to destroy a planet of unfriendly aliens(*) we have yet another scene of a privileged guy berating thuggish aliens for being so belligerent about his complicity in the mass murder of their people. YAY.
A nice collection of links about this #yesgayya thing.
Also, I have no link to hand, but Australia now allows for a third gender on passports, and has removed the surgery requirement for trans people, huzzah!
(*)Making this the fourth time the player has to decide if (or in what way) they want to be complicit in genocide/mass murder. I would like a new moral dilemma please.
Mass Effect: Conviction Comic about the new crew member James Vega. And oh look, after the recent DLC where you had no choice but to destroy a planet of unfriendly aliens(*) we have yet another scene of a privileged guy berating thuggish aliens for being so belligerent about his complicity in the mass murder of their people. YAY.
A nice collection of links about this #yesgayya thing.
Also, I have no link to hand, but Australia now allows for a third gender on passports, and has removed the surgery requirement for trans people, huzzah!
(*)Making this the fourth time the player has to decide if (or in what way) they want to be complicit in genocide/mass murder. I would like a new moral dilemma please.
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I just inhaled all seven episodes of the period drama Downton Abbey, set in an English country estate in around 1913. One the one hand, it was very engaging and I got quite attached to the characters. On the other hand, the only way I got through it was by stopping every now and then to be irritated and work on this post, which is serious business enough to be posted here instead of ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alias_sqbr.
It's that irritatingly common form of modern period drama, which says "Yes, the olden days were unjust, but they had a sort of charming simplicity, and the way things were made better was with politeness and determination and not rocking the boat too hard, and anyone who complained too much was a selfish uppity thug or tragic monster".
( Read more... )
alias_sqbr.It's that irritatingly common form of modern period drama, which says "Yes, the olden days were unjust, but they had a sort of charming simplicity, and the way things were made better was with politeness and determination and not rocking the boat too hard, and anyone who complained too much was a selfish uppity thug or tragic monster".
( Read more... )
We finally got a digital tuner setup on our computer network meaning we can watch and record tv really easily, and thus I've been watching a moderate mount of commercial tv for the first time in a while. Which, yay Rage etc, but OH GOD every time I see an ad for Angry Boys I feel really gross. Blech. Dear Australian comedians, blackface is neither cool or clever. "Summer Heights High" had creepy gender and sexuality stereotypes as well, I wouldn't be surprised if Angry Boys had them too.
I looked around for decent criticism of "Summer Heights High" back when it was on but it was all incredibly shallow, noone made it past "is it ok to show negative stereotypes to critique and satirise them?" to "assuming that social satire is ok in principle, does this particular satire do what it's aiming for or does it perpetuate the stereotypes it's claiming to critique?".
I looked around for decent criticism of "Summer Heights High" back when it was on but it was all incredibly shallow, noone made it past "is it ok to show negative stereotypes to critique and satirise them?" to "assuming that social satire is ok in principle, does this particular satire do what it's aiming for or does it perpetuate the stereotypes it's claiming to critique?".
One of the characters in the upcoming Dragon Age game has been significantly lightened in promotional material. On the plus side all the comments last I checked were angry about it, yay for a fandom I'm in not being angrymaking :) (Also, totally shallow, but I am SO impatient for DA2 to come out, and am glad the companions seem slightly more diverse this time, even if the PR department disagrees)
After my post about class in speculative fic I've been pondering more lefty fantasy, and today remembered Maid Marian and her Merry Men, a humourous 80s/90s kids show written by Tony Robinson which retold the Robin Hood legend with Maid Marian in the lead as a working class freedom fighter. It's sometimes painfully dorky and not always exactly deep, but it was fun for what it was and had some clever social commentary every now and then.
After my post about class in speculative fic I've been pondering more lefty fantasy, and today remembered Maid Marian and her Merry Men, a humourous 80s/90s kids show written by Tony Robinson which retold the Robin Hood legend with Maid Marian in the lead as a working class freedom fighter. It's sometimes painfully dorky and not always exactly deep, but it was fun for what it was and had some clever social commentary every now and then.
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Enjoying Lost Girl made me decide to check out some paranormal romance-y books…which has reminded me why I like Lost Girl and don't tend to read paranormal romance.
Some vague spoilers but nothing significant.
( Read more... )
Some vague spoilers but nothing significant.
( Read more... )
If you like watching slashy pretty men being jerks and are fine with the erasure, dismissal, objectification and mistreatment of anyone who isn't white, straight, male, upper middle class, English, and able bodied, then this is the show for you. Well, episodes 1 and 3 are, episode 2 is just bad all round (and amazingly racist).
I...found parts of it interesting and engaging, and the slashiness is of a particular type I quite enjoy, but on the whole it wasn't as clever as I would have liked and large sections made me very annoyed. Meta: Neoliberal Holmes, or, Everything I Know About Modern Life I Learned from Sherlock gives a very damning critique, but to follow up on the portrayal of Watson's disability in particular: it is NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN. At all. Not even vaguely alluded to.
And "That's the way it was dealt with in the books" doesn't make it ok, that just means it's not inaccurate as well as ableist. If they were doing a totally 100% literal adaptation which followed every minute detail exactly as it happened in the books I might forgive them and blame Arthur Conan Doyle, but they weren't by a long shot. They chose to keep that particular flaw of the books and must bear the responsibility for that choice.
I...found parts of it interesting and engaging, and the slashiness is of a particular type I quite enjoy, but on the whole it wasn't as clever as I would have liked and large sections made me very annoyed. Meta: Neoliberal Holmes, or, Everything I Know About Modern Life I Learned from Sherlock gives a very damning critique, but to follow up on the portrayal of Watson's disability in particular: it is NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN. At all. Not even vaguely alluded to.
And "That's the way it was dealt with in the books" doesn't make it ok, that just means it's not inaccurate as well as ableist. If they were doing a totally 100% literal adaptation which followed every minute detail exactly as it happened in the books I might forgive them and blame Arthur Conan Doyle, but they weren't by a long shot. They chose to keep that particular flaw of the books and must bear the responsibility for that choice.
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Overall I liked the new Sherlock Holmes series, here are my spoilery general thoughts.
And now a spoilery grumble about the portrayal of Watson's limp in Sherlock. I don't know enough about PTSD to say anything about the portrayal of that. They didn't seem to be going to much effort to show it at all, really, apart from him being generally down to start with.
( Spoileryness. Doesn't spoil whodunnit )
And now a spoilery grumble about the portrayal of Watson's limp in Sherlock. I don't know enough about PTSD to say anything about the portrayal of that. They didn't seem to be going to much effort to show it at all, really, apart from him being generally down to start with.
( Spoileryness. Doesn't spoil whodunnit )
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I vaguely recall someone saying this was crap.
*get bored, stop watching, am thus stalled on Farscape for about a month*
*read blurb to remind myself*
Oh god that sounds like Avatar minus the moral and every other "white man is taken in by simple native people, local girl falls for him, thuggish native boyfriend objects" plot.
*start rewatching*
It is Avatar minus the moral.
( Cut for spoilers and aaaargh )
*get bored, stop watching, am thus stalled on Farscape for about a month*
*read blurb to remind myself*
Oh god that sounds like Avatar minus the moral and every other "white man is taken in by simple native people, local girl falls for him, thuggish native boyfriend objects" plot.
*start rewatching*
It is Avatar minus the moral.
( Cut for spoilers and aaaargh )
A new BBC modern day Sherlock Holmes series written by Stephen Moffat. To be honest the trailer didn't grab me (though the concept does) but Watson seems unambiguously disabled (he uses a cane and seems to have PTSD) which is cool as long as they don't got to a hinky place with it.
RSA Animate - Smile or Die Barbara Ehrenreich on the perils of seeing positive thinking as directly correlated to life success. To a certain extent the animation acts as captions(*) but since I couldn't find an actual transcript here's an article where she says similar things.
What Good Writers Still Get Wrong about Blind People
I am not Your Plot Device about fictional depictions of Multiple Personality Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder.
(*)I tried watching it with the sound off and it was actually pretty cool :)
RSA Animate - Smile or Die Barbara Ehrenreich on the perils of seeing positive thinking as directly correlated to life success. To a certain extent the animation acts as captions(*) but since I couldn't find an actual transcript here's an article where she says similar things.
What Good Writers Still Get Wrong about Blind People
I am not Your Plot Device about fictional depictions of Multiple Personality Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder.
(*)I tried watching it with the sound off and it was actually pretty cool :)
This is a somewhat expanded version of the presentation I made about Disability in Science fiction.
Note: Don't take my word for any of this! I'm still figuring this stuff out. Corrections and other input very much welcome!
I've reached a point where I Just Can't Think About It Any More, I may edit again later. Make sure to check to out the comments for other people's additions.
The fantasy examples are very much tacked on, I'm sure there's fantasy specific tropes I'm missing, plus links to the relevant Disability Tropes. Mental illness and cognitive impairments are underrepresented too.
( Read more... )
Note: Don't take my word for any of this! I'm still figuring this stuff out. Corrections and other input very much welcome!
I've reached a point where I Just Can't Think About It Any More, I may edit again later. Make sure to check to out the comments for other people's additions.
The fantasy examples are very much tacked on, I'm sure there's fantasy specific tropes I'm missing, plus links to the relevant Disability Tropes. Mental illness and cognitive impairments are underrepresented too.
( Read more... )
So Cam was watching Supernatural and I had my headphones on listening to music instead. But he knocked on my shoulder "This is actually pretty good." he said. Yeah..guess how long that lasted.
( Cut for spoilers for 5.19 )
( Cut for spoilers for 5.19 )
I've been rewatching Press Gang with a bunch of friends. It's definitely not perfect, but very cleverly and funnily written (&hearts Stephen Moffat) and made a decent shot at depicting important issues relevant to teenagers at the time. (It also introduced ten year old me to the idea of the internet)
I just watched an episode introducing a tetraplegic character in an electric wheelchair, and two things that struck me were that (a)Pretty much every line was a joke about being in a wheelchair (they are afaict the sort of jokes that people in wheelchairs are likely to actually say, but it was a bit one note and according to Wikipedia the character was written out because the writer "couldn't figure out what to do with him" eg he ran out of wheelchair jokes) and (b)Unless the actor was doing a better job than one expects of kid's TV he was actually disabled.
And sure enough he is.
So that's a kid's show, on an english budget, with a tetraplegic/quadraplegic character played by an actual tetraplegic..in 1989. I'm just saying, is all.
I just watched an episode introducing a tetraplegic character in an electric wheelchair, and two things that struck me were that (a)Pretty much every line was a joke about being in a wheelchair (they are afaict the sort of jokes that people in wheelchairs are likely to actually say, but it was a bit one note and according to Wikipedia the character was written out because the writer "couldn't figure out what to do with him" eg he ran out of wheelchair jokes) and (b)Unless the actor was doing a better job than one expects of kid's TV he was actually disabled.
And sure enough he is.
So that's a kid's show, on an english budget, with a tetraplegic/quadraplegic character played by an actual tetraplegic..in 1989. I'm just saying, is all.
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Annoying: Induced Mutation Psychosis: Born a freak—a freak whose freakishness only made him a more desirable foodstuff—he never had anything to look forward to except his own death. Now that his destruction is imminent, he can finally experience a modicum of pleasure. In his place, would any of us behave differently?
(I have a similar reaction to a lot of the "Lol, they look like they have some sort of congenital defect" stuff at Photoshop disasters)
Not annoying: I just watched the Kim Possible episode "Mind Games", where Kim swaps bodies with her sidekick/friend Ron, and the fact that he's a boy and she's a girl was not considered the primary point of of difference, at most Ron talked about the pros and cons of wearing skirts. Instead it was all about the specific difference between them, eg popularity, number of commitments etc.
Plus all the comments about "a guy in Draken's body" amused me because deep down I am a twelve year old boy :)
(I have a similar reaction to a lot of the "Lol, they look like they have some sort of congenital defect" stuff at Photoshop disasters)
Not annoying: I just watched the Kim Possible episode "Mind Games", where Kim swaps bodies with her sidekick/friend Ron, and the fact that he's a boy and she's a girl was not considered the primary point of of difference, at most Ron talked about the pros and cons of wearing skirts. Instead it was all about the specific difference between them, eg popularity, number of commitments etc.
Plus all the comments about "a guy in Draken's body" amused me because deep down I am a twelve year old boy :)
So in general I've found Supernatural Season 4 so consistently and absurdly sexist it's often like watching a hilariously wrong parody. This episode took this to it's logical conclusion, it's like someone wrote a deconstruction of the show and sneakily disguised it as a regular episode.
I watched the first 5 or so minutes of this episode then stopped and went to Cam.
Me: I need to know if this episode is going to piss me off as much as I think it will.
Cam: Which one is it?
Me: Well, it starts with a beautiful blonde woman who is viciously bludgeoned to death by her husband for no apparent reason. And now it looks like it's all the fault of an evil woman.
Cam: You are going to have to be way more specific.
Me: It's an evil stripper.
Cam: Let me look it up....Oh that episode. It goes somewhere interesting, trust me. You should keep watching.
And I did, and then I went "OH. I remember hearing about this one. Hee."
( Spoilers for Supernatural 4.14 )
I watched the first 5 or so minutes of this episode then stopped and went to Cam.
Me: I need to know if this episode is going to piss me off as much as I think it will.
Cam: Which one is it?
Me: Well, it starts with a beautiful blonde woman who is viciously bludgeoned to death by her husband for no apparent reason. And now it looks like it's all the fault of an evil woman.
Cam: You are going to have to be way more specific.
Me: It's an evil stripper.
Cam: Let me look it up....Oh that episode. It goes somewhere interesting, trust me. You should keep watching.
And I did, and then I went "OH. I remember hearing about this one. Hee."
( Spoilers for Supernatural 4.14 )
I just watched Avatar: the Last Airbender and it was awesome (see my lj for squee) but something struck me in the third season, when the teenage characters started to interact more with their adult allies en masse.
While many of the teenage/child characters are female, and are written really well, hardly any of the adult ones are. There's a lot in the world, in the form of off-screen or dead mothers etc, or characters who show up for a single episode. But I can think of hardly any female characters over 20 who appear on screen for more than one episode, and none who really DO anything apart from the grandmother who is only at the very beginning of the series.
( Spoilery listing )
While many of the teenage/child characters are female, and are written really well, hardly any of the adult ones are. There's a lot in the world, in the form of off-screen or dead mothers etc, or characters who show up for a single episode. But I can think of hardly any female characters over 20 who appear on screen for more than one episode, and none who really DO anything apart from the grandmother who is only at the very beginning of the series.
( Spoilery listing )
