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I think I'll quote somebody out of context, because that's always worked really well for me in the past.
Saying "black characters are written too broadly in New Who, making them resemble stereotypes" rather ignores the fact that white characters are treated the same way.
Look. This is the problem with trying to raise white people on Sesame Street in order to cure racism: you get a generation of white people who think it's to their credit that they hold everyone to the same standard, and run around operating like the world is one big, happy block party -- people who think they're complementing themselves when they say they're "colorblind."
BLIND is not a moral positive. BLIND is an inability to perceive what the non-blind people around you can clearly fucking see. My grandfather was red/green colorblind. His family also had a strawberry farm. His father used to beat him for not obeying instructions to pick only the RED strawberries and leave the GREEN ones on the bush.
Now, I'm not recommending regular beatings for the colorblind. That wasn't a nice thing to do (my great-grandfather was not a nice person in general, for oh so many reasons). But the thing is, my grandfather's colorblindness? Was a problem, because there is actually such a thing as color when it comes to strawberries, and it's easier to work on a strawberry farm when you can see it.
And there is actually such a thing as race. If you can't see it, you're not doing yourself or anyone else any favors. There are cases where you can give the EXACT SAME script/character arc/iconography/etc. to a white performer and to a performer of color, and the overall effect WILL BE DIFFERENT. Race is real. People respond to it, often on levels they aren't entirely aware of. So it actually misses the whole entire point of discussing race and racism if your sole defense is "but we're just treating them the exact same way we treat white characters!" It may be true, or it may not be true, but either way it's singularly useless.
Some fans seem to find gender easier to understand than race, so think of it this way: if there's a character that isn't very bright but always uses sexuality to manipulate other people, does it make a difference if that character is a man or a woman? Isn't it more of a stereotype in one case than in the other? And if some writer or producer said, "Oh, it's not sexist -- this is just what we were going to do, and we thought we might hire a male actor, but we went with a woman instead, so we kept the same stuff!" that doesn't magically make her not a sexist cliche, does it? If they'd cast a man, the character would read one way; when they do cast a woman, it reads differently. Same character. Different, because of the baggage we bring surrounding gender. If you were somehow magically oblivious to any and all gender issues, you might not notice that. But you wouldn't thereby be a better person than the rest of us. You'd just be oblivious.
Unfortunately, in our culture, we are conditioned to see white people as Real People, and black people as sort of thin slices of people, operating in one of a very few available modes and with only a very few emotions and interests. Therefore it's just different to write a white character "broadly" versus a black character. It's not enough to write the black character "just like" all your white characters, because race is not invisible to most of us and it doesn't have no consequences. In order to challenge people's already racist assumptions about black characters, writers have to work that much harder, and they have to work not blind. They have to work with their eyes open and their brains engaged and with the awareness of subtle signals and context and connotation that anyone who writes for a living should damn well be conversant with. To do less than that is to write lazily, to write foolishly, to write contemptuously of one's characters and one's craft, and to do all that because you can't or won't go the extra mile to bring race into the universe of stuff that factors into your writing does, in fact, have racist implications.
"Colorblindness" may be one's reason for making all of those mistakes, but it isn't an excuse, and it doesn't magically make the product impervious from criticism. Be less blind.
Saying "black characters are written too broadly in New Who, making them resemble stereotypes" rather ignores the fact that white characters are treated the same way.
Look. This is the problem with trying to raise white people on Sesame Street in order to cure racism: you get a generation of white people who think it's to their credit that they hold everyone to the same standard, and run around operating like the world is one big, happy block party -- people who think they're complementing themselves when they say they're "colorblind."
BLIND is not a moral positive. BLIND is an inability to perceive what the non-blind people around you can clearly fucking see. My grandfather was red/green colorblind. His family also had a strawberry farm. His father used to beat him for not obeying instructions to pick only the RED strawberries and leave the GREEN ones on the bush.
Now, I'm not recommending regular beatings for the colorblind. That wasn't a nice thing to do (my great-grandfather was not a nice person in general, for oh so many reasons). But the thing is, my grandfather's colorblindness? Was a problem, because there is actually such a thing as color when it comes to strawberries, and it's easier to work on a strawberry farm when you can see it.
And there is actually such a thing as race. If you can't see it, you're not doing yourself or anyone else any favors. There are cases where you can give the EXACT SAME script/character arc/iconography/etc. to a white performer and to a performer of color, and the overall effect WILL BE DIFFERENT. Race is real. People respond to it, often on levels they aren't entirely aware of. So it actually misses the whole entire point of discussing race and racism if your sole defense is "but we're just treating them the exact same way we treat white characters!" It may be true, or it may not be true, but either way it's singularly useless.
Some fans seem to find gender easier to understand than race, so think of it this way: if there's a character that isn't very bright but always uses sexuality to manipulate other people, does it make a difference if that character is a man or a woman? Isn't it more of a stereotype in one case than in the other? And if some writer or producer said, "Oh, it's not sexist -- this is just what we were going to do, and we thought we might hire a male actor, but we went with a woman instead, so we kept the same stuff!" that doesn't magically make her not a sexist cliche, does it? If they'd cast a man, the character would read one way; when they do cast a woman, it reads differently. Same character. Different, because of the baggage we bring surrounding gender. If you were somehow magically oblivious to any and all gender issues, you might not notice that. But you wouldn't thereby be a better person than the rest of us. You'd just be oblivious.
Unfortunately, in our culture, we are conditioned to see white people as Real People, and black people as sort of thin slices of people, operating in one of a very few available modes and with only a very few emotions and interests. Therefore it's just different to write a white character "broadly" versus a black character. It's not enough to write the black character "just like" all your white characters, because race is not invisible to most of us and it doesn't have no consequences. In order to challenge people's already racist assumptions about black characters, writers have to work that much harder, and they have to work not blind. They have to work with their eyes open and their brains engaged and with the awareness of subtle signals and context and connotation that anyone who writes for a living should damn well be conversant with. To do less than that is to write lazily, to write foolishly, to write contemptuously of one's characters and one's craft, and to do all that because you can't or won't go the extra mile to bring race into the universe of stuff that factors into your writing does, in fact, have racist implications.
"Colorblindness" may be one's reason for making all of those mistakes, but it isn't an excuse, and it doesn't magically make the product impervious from criticism. Be less blind.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-13 07:43 pm (UTC)From:If the truly best actor/actress for the job is a PoC, the role is problematic for a PoC to play, but integrity of the characters/story would be compromised by changing either the new role or the previously established characters--which is the lesser evil? Hiring a second choice white actor/actress? Throwing continuity and character development out the window? Is there a third, better option?
The thing is, saying "we should always hire the best actor/actress for the job" is examining the problem as if it existed in a vaccuum, and my whole comment was basically about how you can't do that, because to address racism, you have to recognize patterns and context, and not just treat individual examples as if they *weren't* part of the pattern.
I mean-- ok, here's a really obvious example. Suppose back when "Buffy" was holding auditions for the character of Spike, Nicholas Brendon's twin brother randomly showed up and just happened to be a slightly better actor than James Marsters. Would he get the part? Probably not, because it would be incredibly distracting for casual viewers to turn on the TV and be like "Wait, Xander is a vampire now? Why is there a vampire that looks just like Xander? Is Spike secretly one of Xander's ancestors? Is he a clone? What's going on?" Probably, James Marsters would get the part instead, because of all the baggage and confusion that it would cause to hire Nicholas Brendon's twin brother to play Spike.
The fact that Nicholas Brendon's twin brother might be the most talented actor *doesn't make him the right person for the part,* because the role doesn't exist in a vaccuum. It exists in a bigger context, as part of a bigger story-- we're not talking about casting a one-man show, here. Do you see what I'm getting at? I'm not sure I'm saying it right.
I mean, it's like if you coincidentally, three times in a row, cast three redheads as three Babes of the Week on SGA and they all end up hooking up with Ronon Dex. After you've done that three times, people are going to *pick up on the pattern* and say "Ronon is totally into girls with red hair," and think of that as an integral part of his character-- he loves redheads! Of course! Even if it *actually* was just a coincidence, by the third time you open up auditions for Ronon's Babe of the Week, you *have to ask yourself*, "OK, are we going to purposely cast another redhead, or purposely go for something different, or just choose randomly? Because people pick up on patterns, and if we cast another redhead, it's pretty much the same as making it canon that Ronon loves redheads, so *if that's the message we want to send*, then we should do that."
You have to think about the message you're sending with your choices, because people pick up on patterns. Roles don't just exist on their own, with entirely no relation to other roles, no connection to other actors and actresses, no references to other shows, to our history or society. They exist in a context. And a smart casting director *knows this*, and will cast accordingly. Making it about "the best actor for the part" is a straw man, I think, especially because so many roles (like the Doctor himself, for instance) are NOT and probably never will be open to "the best actor for the part."
no subject
Date: 2007-07-13 08:09 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-07-13 10:02 pm (UTC)From:I still don't think it really *does* boil down to that, though. I mean, just off the top of my head, I can think of so many ways that there still could have been a "rebound Companion" story arc, with Freema cast as the companion-- *without* the unfortunate stereotype that DW S3 invokes.
-- Give her an episode like "Father's Day," where we could have learned more about what's important to *Martha*.
-- Give her something *active* to do in the finale, besides being the disciple who insists loudly on her own insignificance, would have helped a lot.
-- Give Martha some active motivation to travel with the Doctor *besides* having a crush on him.
(Or, if you really *must* have Martha being in love with the Doctor, then just have her be more adult about it. I mean, she's a smart, mature, adult woman. Either have her *do* something about her crush-- make a move and get rejected and deal with that-- or else have her realize that Ten has way too many issues to be her boyfriend and show her at least trying to get over it, instead of just pouting and pining whenever Rose is mentioned.)
Also, as a lot of other people have pointed out, it would have helped if Martha hadn't come directly on the heels of Mickey, another black Companion who *was* brave, smart and loyal, but was constantly dissed by the Doctor and treated as "not good enough" for most of his appearances.
So I really don't think it comes down to "destroy the integrity of the story" or "cast a white girl." I honestly think that all the suggestions I've made, would have made DW S3 *stronger*-- give us a chance to get to know Martha better, make her a stronger character, treat the romantic subplot with more maturity, think about the resonances between Mickey and Martha and what kind of message that might send. Etc.