![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 05:49 am (UTC)From:That's kind of funny in the context of a discussion of Dr. Who.
it's like the biggest issue I have with SGA is wondering where the hell the other nationalities are on the show, other then the American and Canadians, it's supposed to be a international expedition peoples!
Well, not that I wouldn't mind seeing more non-Americans on the show, but of the lead characters up to mid-S3, there are two Americans (Sheppard and Weir), one Canadian (McKay), one Scot (Beckett), and two aliens (Teyla Emmagen and Ronon Dex). The two major recurring characters are an American (Lorne) and a Czech (Zelenka). We see background characters with different flags all the time. More non-American one-shot characters would be super-welcome (though there's of course the restriction that soldiers have to be Americans, which gets in the way of more non-American redshirts), but three out of eight Americans in the major cast is actually pretty respectable. Especially given that in the SG universe, Stargate command is an American institution, albeit under international oversight.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 06:06 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 04:37 pm (UTC)From:I would love for there to be more non-American recurrings, but you can understate the degree to which the characters are American, and honestly I don't think the demographic breakdown is that unlikely for a Stargate program largely controlled and funded by the U.S. Except in the sciences, but McKay monopolizes almost all the science dialogue, and of the other scientists we know well, one is, in fact, non-American (the dark horse newcomer being American Katie Brown. Don't know if we'll see more of her later).
(Gall appears to have been an American, but the scientist with a speaking role who assisted Zelenka in "Duet" was German.)
let's talk about exposure to foreign entertainment
Date: 2007-07-15 07:51 am (UTC)From:One television show, see, I'm sorry but I do find this a little funny. Come to me if you've grown up in a country where more then 60% of all television shows, and more then 80% of all dramas are foreign, where the people you see on the television and movies have different accents to the people you see everyday.
Where you get to see one or two local films produced in a year.
Where you see more teenagers portrayed in the American school system then the one you go to everyday and ask your mother why it is that you have to wear a school uniform and get chastised for pronouncing words with an American accent because it's not correct to way you learnt how to pronounce it on Beverley Hills 90210 or Degrassi Junior High. Where you know more about American Civil War from then you know about your nation's war in the Pacific.
Unless your parents only watched British television every single night I don't think you'd have any concept of where I'm coming from. I don't get to see very many Australians on my television set, even now, not counting our crap soap operas and most of the Australians who go to Hollywood have to put on American accents to play American characters with a few exceptions.
If you just want to talk about exposure to foreign entertainment, ask any non-American about their experience, actually, I think the British are lucky, they actually get to see good British dramas.
that soldiers have to be Americans
Where does it say there only has to be American soldiers?
There are foreign soldiers on Atlantis, who don't have any lines. There is presumably opportunity for them to have lines. In particular watch 'Conversion' both the soldiers standing guard outside Sheppard's quarters have foreign flags on their shoulder and in the first episode there are soldiers with foreign flags.
Re: let's talk about exposure to foreign entertainment
Date: 2007-07-15 03:34 pm (UTC)From:Re: let's talk about exposure to foreign entertainment
Date: 2007-07-15 04:23 pm (UTC)From:Come to me if you've grown up in a country where more then 60% of all television shows, and more then 80% of all dramas are foreign, where the people you see on the television and movies have different accents to the people you see everyday.
Hm. Let me try to put this in a way that doesn't suggest that I endorse American imperialism, because I don't.
I don't believe that the fact that many non-Americans know way more about American culture than Americans know about any given non-American culture has much, if anything, to do with non-Americans being particularly open-minded, interested, or curious; conversely, I don't believe that it has much to do with Americans being closed-minded, insular, or self-absorbed. I think most people are just about as culturally insular as their geopolitical circumstances allow them to be and judge by their own personal/cultural standards as much as they can get away with it.
I lived in England for about a year and a half. I expected to meet pointed remarks about U.S. foreign policy that I couldn't answer, given my own politics. Instead, I found (among some people, obviously, not all) a mindless anti-Americanism grounded in stereotypes and xenophobia. Most of the anti-Americanism I encountered in the U.S. was about as sophisticated as U.S. anti-French jokes and based upon just about as much knowledge of the culture. In England before WWI the British knew damn little about foreign cultures even while administering a vast foreign empire.
So, while I am sympathetic to the plight of peoples overwhelmed by the American sociocultural machine backed up by American economic and military power, I don't feel that non-Americans deserve particular "credit" for being more open-minded on this point. And--perhaps more to the point--a person is going to have to do more to convince me that a judgment is wrong than to tell me that it's based on a value deemed to be American. Especially when that person's remarks seem to be based on a serious misconception of English culture.
There are foreign soldiers on Atlantis, who don't have any lines.
You're absolutely right. I was way too sleepy last night posting this!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 02:55 pm (UTC)From:I'm sorry, but she's right - that was a giant cop-out.
Try this: when I went to do my first aid course, the teacher told us that she has taught classes where every single student thought the national emergency phone number was 911. That's a roomful of people more familiar with the emergency phone number of another country than that of their own.
She told this anecdote to my class after thanking us for all knowing that our emergency number is 000. No one in our group did not understand the point of her anecdote - no one there did not know what the US's emergency number is. It would be inconceivable that they did not.
I also know what the UK's emergency number is, 999.
There are people here in actual emergencies ringing the US number, not the Australian number.
Even the Australian national broadcaster, the ABC, doesn't broadcast exclusively Australian content. It couldn't. (It shows a lot of British stuff.)
National law requires our television stations to show a minimum of 10% of Australian content. Try to imagine American TV if up to 90% of it was *not* USian.