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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: 2007-07-15 08:47 am (UTC)From:It kind of seems to me like this conflicts with what other people were saying earlier in the discussion, though.
Some people are saying "It doesn't matter that British tv shows are reproducing racial stereotypes most commonly found in American literature and film, because the issues are different over here."
But, as you point out, American pop culture has infiltrated many other countries, and many people of other nationalities have become familiar with American issues, culture, values, history, etc.
I don't see it as "imposing American values" on other cultures to point out that RTD is using a cliche which has become a really common stereotype in films, books and tv *that RTD would have been exposed to*. I'd feel the same way about an American movie that used a racist cliche with its origins in British history-- like the way a lot of modern war films hearken back to films like "Zulu."
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 02:27 pm (UTC)From:I think there's room for both.
I mean, I agree entirely with you and
But I also, well, sympathise with anyone calling USians on cultural imperialism, even though this isn't the moment I'd have chosen. And "we're talking about Doctor Who!" is *not* a get-out-of-cultural-imperialism-free card (yeah, I know that was Hth, not you, Livia.) Not for the population that has its own translation of Harry Potter published alongside the British English version. (Do not underestimate how much that one example grates for an Australian, New Zealander, or a Canadian - we're expected to know two different sets of spelling *on top of our own*. In primary school (aka elementary school.) In the case of the Kiwis, they're fed Australian entertainment and literature as well as the UK and US stuff, all on top of their own. Resentment is unavoidable.)
I mean, there's something uncomfortable about how so often it's the USians choosing the critical model even when we're talking about racism and imperialism. It's not your fault, it's just... yeah.
I don't know about "most commonly found in America", either - I haven't done a point for point comparison, and I'm not the right person to do one. But I think "that *I've* most often found in American film and literature" would probably be safer.
I'd feel the same way about an American movie that used a racist cliche with its origins in British history-- like the way a lot of modern war films hearken back to films like "Zulu."
Yes, certainly, but with the exception that it's the US, not the UK, that's culturally dominant right now.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 02:41 pm (UTC)From:Wait, that was Sarah T, not Hth. *facepalm*
no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 11:17 pm (UTC)From:I don't know about "most commonly found in America", either - I haven't done a point for point comparison, and I'm not the right person to do one. But I think "that *I've* most often found in American film and literature" would probably be safer.
But that's what *other* people are arguing-- that's the whole point that I'm trying to respond to, that "XYZ isn't insensitive because that's not a *British* cliche, it's an American cliche." Well, okay, but even if I actually do agree with the argument that XYZ *is* a specifically American cliche, that still wouldn't make it completely acceptable and totally not offensive, is what I'm saying. Not unless you're actually arguing that nobody from Europe could possibly be influenced by American popular culture. (And I know *you're* not arguing that, but sometimes that's what the "cultural imperialism!" argument sounds like to me. "What?? You're saying that American films and tv often feature offensive stereotypes of ethnic groups? How could we possibly know that! We're all the way over here on the other side of the ocean! It's unimaginably offensive of you to assume that people in Europe might have been exposed at some point in their life to American films, books or tv!" Etc.)
History delivery for Ms liviapenn :-)
Date: 2007-07-16 12:20 am (UTC)From:"Mary Jane Seacole was an exceptional woman by anyone's standards. She was born in 1805 in Kingston, Jamaica, the daughter of a Scottish soldier and a free mulatto Jamaican woman. Mary - often described as a 'black Florence Nightingale' - made her way to England where she offered her services to the war office but was refused four times. Nevertheless, Mary assembled a stock of medical supplies and went to the Crimea under her own steam - how many of us would do that? She ministered to the sick and dying in terrible conditions, oblivious to the fact that her own life was in danger. She was a formidable woman and, from all accounts, an excellent nurse.
Since that time black nurses have played a big role in ensuring patients receive a high quality service. In the late 1950s and early 1960s the so-called 'Windrush' bought many Caribbean people to England, many of them going on to work in our hospitals as porters and domestics, with many more also working as nursing auxiliaries, supporting qualified nurses in their duties.
The contribution of black nurses to the NHS is enormous and should not be underestimated. Today 14 per cent of the NHS workforce of 1.5 million comes from a BME background - no fewer than 210,000 members of staff. There is recognition at senior levels in the Department of Health that BME staff are under-represented at top management levels."