Hello everyone, and welcome to the third installment of Brain Food At The Movies, wherein I talk about Star Trek – Into Darkness!
It’s easily one of the most shallow, pandering, lazy pieces of writing slapped on screen that I’ve ever seen, and includes an unfortunate amount of whitewashing in replacing the character of Khan with a white guy, Super Benederp Cucumbatch, when he had been Indian in the original series and played by the most excellent Ricardo Montalban.
As it turns out, the reboot of The Fantastic Four films may cast a new Johnny Storm, and word has it that he could be . . .
Wait for it . . .
. . . black.
(Which also means that Sue Storm may also wind up being . . . . *whisper* black.)
Shhhhh!
I know we’re not supposed to be noticing that, being that we’re all post-racial and colorblind and all. But it doesn’t stop folks from pitching a fucking fit. Some shit about it betraying the original vision for the character or something. Y’know, kinda like Heimdall in Thor.
If anybody has seen Chronicle, the option of having Michael B. Jordan play Johnny Storm makes a whole lot of sense. Young, hot-headed dude who loves the fact that he’s a fucking superhero? Yeah, I can see it.
But when it’s Benadryl Cucumbersnatch playing an iconic man of color villain who was so awesome that even James T. Motherfucking Kirk had to show respect, all of a sudden it’s about the best person for the job.
Riiiiight.
I seent yo’ ass.
Hello everyone, and welcome to a very special episode of Brain Food… At the Movies!
The movie that I reviewed? The Host!
No, not the awesome South Korean Sci-fi horror film from 2006, but the very boring, rather disturbing (for all the wrong reasons) movie based off of Stephenie Meyer’s book of the same name.
While not as bad as I thought it was going to be, I certainly did not come out of this sober…
Hello everyone, I had the great honour of driving down to Seattle last weekend and meeting up with the super awesome Dennis Upkins!
And not only that, but I got an interview with him too!
And then I recorded a panel he was a part of called Next Gen Publishing.
Apologies for the shakiness of it, and the audio as well. This was literally a last minute arrangement so things were not the best, but as the questions were explained by the panel, hopefully, you’re not missing out on much.
Enjoy!
So I dithered about posting on these because I don’t like bringing the authors any additional publicity. For many books, the worst enemy is obscurity. But I had to share my pain, folks.
Remember Victoria Foyt and Save the Pearls? Remember how we all wondered how any author could hit such serious WTF territory?
I bring you the latest Foyt-esque forays from two other authors. You’re welcome.
Wow, it’s been a good while, hasn’t it? But here it finally is, episode 28 of Brain Food, wherein I review Daniel H Wilson’s book, Robopocolypse!
A special thank you goes out to Sparkindarkness for his contribution to this video, and I highly encourage you all to go and read his reviews over at Fangs For The Fantasy.
And especially check out his article on What Will You Do In A Dystopian?
[On a side note, please ignore the number at the start... this is episode 27, not 28... I just got a touch mixed up there. >_>]
Here’s something I wanted to talk about every time a movie comes out that shows us an “empowered” White girl and says how she’s some sort of role model for all women because she shows that women don’t have to be fragile or delicate.
As much as I loved Brave and despised Snow White and the Huntsman, people saying this sort of thing really, really irritates me.
Know why it irritates me? Because so many women don’t get to be seen as fragile, delicate, or vulnerable. Most of these women are women who look like me.
As I watch many many many programmes and critique them I inevitably get someone saying the same damn thing:
“Just don’t watch it!”
There are many replies to this, but irritation has worn me down until even I, who am not generally given to swearing, have to ask
“What the fuck do you expect me to watch?!”
Seriously. I’m a gay man who likes to watch the fantastic – primarily Urban fantasy, what do I watch? Because we’ve now reviewed 37 television series from start to finish (or current) and we’ve got two – TWO – with a GBLT protagonist. Lost Girl, headed by a bisexual woman and her true love/primary love interest is already underscored as being a man. And Sanctuary where Helen Magnus is a bisexual woman – you may have missed it though since it was one reference in one episode of 4 seasons – the rest of the time was focused on men. We don’t even have a GBLT person as part of an ensemble cast.
20 of those don’t have even a brief, token GBLT presence. Not for one second, not a bit actor, not a one off, not a thing. Completely and utterly straight from start to finish. Some of them have managed to reach their 5th season without any GBLT people.
4 of them have a GBLT character who appeared for one or two episodes – out of 8 seasons in some cases (yes, Supernatural, that’s you. Though your subtext means the slash fans love you and ignore your erasure) Of course that doesn’t stop these shows have a running commentary of bad gay jokes (Being Human US, Misfits – ye gods Misfits, the very poster child of a hot mess) or used these single episodes to push the horrible tropes (Being Human UK with the gay vampire killing his human lover).
2 of them have a recurring token. But, frankly, that’s generously deciding the Manscaping medieval prince who faints at the sight of blood (the dead Renly) and his lover, the knight of flowers count as tokens rather than one-offs on Game of Thrones. And despite Danny being nothing more than a token who only shows up in one episode in four whenever one of the straight characters needs something, Teen Wolf will always be loved by the slashers (If you want any greater evidence of how this damages us, both Racialicious and Kiss My Wonder Woman have actually praised Teen Wolf for their handling of sexuality while criticising it for its greater inclusion of other marginalised people. Yay for homophobic double standards!)
2 of them have recurring minor characters – but while I love Dark Angel’s Original Cindy, as the series progresses she just becomes more and more of a support character for Max. It’s pure desperation that has me include Bill Forbes 5 episodes on The Vampire Diaries a recurring character – and after his conversion therapy episode I could do without that as well.
So that leaves me with 7 shows with major GBL characters. With the protagonists that brings it to 9 out of 37
And these 7? We have American Horror Story with raped and murdered gay men, raped lesbian and graphic depictions of conversion therapy. Yay. I couldn’t even watch it in one sitting.
Almighty Johnsons has Sjofen, “the goddess who goes both ways” who has a one night, off-camera fling with Axel (a man) when he’s magically turned into woman and then focuses entirely on men from then on – but they make lots of jokes about her.
Hex and it’s many many many many, ye gods many, dead gay men and lesbians. Sometimes the same character died twice.
True Blood which I’ve already complained about.
Bedlam with a closeted character who was finally revealed as gay, had one kiss with a guy before vanishing without explanation.
So, that leaves Warehouse 13 (which, on day, will stop putting Jenks in the plot box and leave the gay jokes behind), Buffy (which wiser folks than I have complained about)
This is the genre I’m watching. This is what I get served up to me. So, again, what the fuck do I watch? What do I watch which doesn’t prompt me to criticise? And this is just criticising on grounds of sexuality – throw in race, gender and ability as well and the hot mess just gets hotter and messier.
There now follows a moment where everyone tells me to watch Glee or Modern Family or some other soap and sitcom, completely ignoring the genre that interests me. It’s ridiculous that when faced with an entire genre of erasure and shit – multiple genres of erasure and shit – the answer is to try different genres! I don’t like sitcoms, I hate soaps, I loathe high school dramas and I don’t remotely see the attraction of musicals. I don’t want to be bored to tears so I can cling to a show that actually realises we exist.
This is the same reason I rarely boycott shows, because I end up boycotting my entire genre and all the shows I have any chance of actually enjoying. Is that depressing? Yes, of course it is – but that’s reality but that’s also why I want to change things.
Which is why I won’t “stop watching it”. I will keep watching it. I will keep watching it and I will find the parts I enjoy and I will continue trying to be part of the genre I love. And I will continue banging on the window when they try to shut me out, continue shouting when I’m missed and demand that it be better, that it does better. For me to stop watching it would be for me to finally give up on the genre, for me to decide it can’t be fixed and needs to be rebuilt before I get involved again – I’ve already done that with some book genres, and it wounds me to feel driven to it.
This genre has a problem with marginalised people. MY genre has a problem with marginalised people. And it’s not going to be fixed by closing my eyes and pretending the problems don’t exist. Nor will it be solved by anyone who is hurt by these problems being driven away by people demanding our silence, demanding we “just don’t watch it.”
I promised a Martha Jones salute in my intro post, and people seemed enthusiastic about it, so here it is! (warning: Rose gets compared mildly unfavorably a few times, for those who would be bothered by that)
I’ve recently been watching New Who with a friend (her first time through), and I’ve been struck even more strongly with how Martha has the best companion character arc in the entire series so far. The best. And this despite the show constantly and inexplicably treating her as second-class to Rose! But one of the greatest things about Martha is that in the final tally, how the Doctor treats her isn’t the most important part of her life, because unlike a lot of the other companions, Martha is so much more than her period of traveling with the Doctor. She’s not defined by him. After traveling with him—even before traveling with him—she’s got kick-ass narratives all of her own, and she’s going to live her life on her own terms (now alas, if only we could have seen more of her story on the show, but we see enough to know it is there).
I give you:
10 Reasons Martha Jones is Awesome,
in Roughly Chronological Order
Hi there! I’m a new contributor here at Ars Marginal. My pop culture habits are definitely in the nerd demographic, so you can expect posts from me that explore why Martha Jones is awesome or are recommendations for queer-normative fantasy. Being a numbers geek, I’m also fond of doing the math on institutional racism / sexism / other -isms in media, which is useful whenever people tell me I’m either making things up or, alternatively, that it doesn’t matter if the straight-white-male narrative dominates. *stabstab* Yeah.
I also work in Hollywood, and am faced daily with how backward and behind the film industry is. Popular media might be shaping people’s attitudes in fundamental ways (heck, Racebending’s recent review of Red Dawn pointed out that 28 percent of Americans rarely or never interact with people of Asian heritage, leaving movies their only exposure to Asian-American diversity), but that responsibility never even crosses the minds of the majority of writers / directors / casting staff here in Los Angeles.
Anyway, I thought I’d introduce myself by linking to a few posts I’ve written recently on institutional racism:
Why Is the “Normal Television Family” Always White?
It pisses me off that Hollywood only allows diversity in families that aren’t the two parents, 2.5-kids-and-a-dog, white picket fence American “ideal”:
But, of course, the family who moves into the alien development, the “normal” human family we’re meant to contrast the aliens against, is all white. Because white is normal. And human. It’s the weird alien family who cry tears of green goo out their ears who have people of color among them; diversity is acceptable there. Why not have had the human family be mixed-race, or Hispanic, or Asian?
John Scalzi is a science fiction writer (and current president of the Science Fiction Writers of America) and runs the popular blog Whatever, where he’s made positive posts before on gender and race. Which meant I was sorely disappointed with his recent Star Trek parody novel Redshirts:
[Y]ou made close copies of exactly the five white men in Star Trek’s main cast—and only them, because for some reason the two crew members you chose to excise were the black woman and the Asian-American man.
How could you possibly think this was okay?
[...] Mr. Scalzi, I’m sorry to say this, but you did worse than a show that was written in the sixties.
Scalzi stops by in the comments to respond and offer his reasoning for doing it, saying that he was going for a commentary by deleting all the diversity. I tell him I do not think it worked.
Anyway, this is already longer than I meant an intro post to be, so hi, thanks for having me, and I’m excited to be here! (And if anyone would like me to put together a post here on anything specific that relates to the math of popular media and/or Hollywood behind-the-scenes, feel free to drop me a comment and let me know!)
