certainly, many christians are not surprised by the news that the supposed son of god didn’t look anything like the image on the right, but nonetheless have no trouble looking to that image. because, as evidenced recently and quite visibly by the high profile killing of trayvon martin (among other less publicized killings), as well as the backlash against fictional characters of color, under white supremacy, non-whiteness cannot possibly be ascribed to the epitome of purity and goodness that is the popular image of jesus christ. as savior, as martyr, jesus must be white, because white is all that is good. white=light, after all, and light “drives out the darkness.”
all this, despite the fact that historically speaking, jesus could not possible have been “white” (or at least what we would call “white” today, since white as a racial categorization didn’t even exist til about 1650 years after jesus’ birth). white jesus simply defies logic. as hari kondabolu has put it, “two brown people cannot make a Swedish fucking tennis player… Any child or racist can tell you that.”
(go to 2:21 for white jesus specifically, though it’s all great.)
and while we’re on the subject of historical revisionism and christian fantasy, what the fuck do chocolate eggs and bunnies have to do with christ’s resurrection? eddie izzard offers his thoughts:
**it’s true, i’m a a little lot bit of a zombie fanatic, and i was originally gonna include my own post on the walking dead (twd) and race here, but i found this one to be as illuminating as anything i could say. anyway, twd/contemporary zombie mania and gender is its own post anyway, so maybe i’ll get to that myself in the future. in the meantime, here’s to a *hopefully* rad 3rd season of twd (and check out the original comics that inspired the series here).**
It’s an old and uninteresting complaint: black characters on TV — and horror movies — get killed or written off too early. Clearly, that is what’s been happening on The Walking Dead with T-Dog. (For a good rant, head to Clutch).
I’m going to try to push the debate further, past “isn’t it a shame characters of color get short shrift.” The truth is the T-Dog Problem signals broader problems with The Walking Dead and some other prominent dramas. It’s a symptom of an ailment the writers might actually care to remedy, beyond appeasing black viewers.
First, the basics. Earlier this season T-Dog told Dale he was concerned about being black and a weak link in the group. This was an insightful moment from the writers, foregrounding the idea that being different after the apocalypse might be a problem — after all, in times of stress, people stick to their own — and an interesting meta-commentary on the fragility of being a black character on TV — T-Dog was a great candidate for a quick kill. Then T-Dog disappeared. I literally forgot all about him until last week, when he had one line that was almost comically interrupted. This week T-Dog was similarly marginal, leading Vulture‘s recapper to state: “By this point, the casual dismissal of one of two minority characters…on this show is feeling extremely suspect. The only thing saving it from being full on offensive is that the same treatment is being given to Hershel’s entire white family.”
The problem isn’t only about a tired debate over representation.
The real problem with T-Dog’s absence is it undermines the point of the whole show. Let me explain. Continue reading →
hello internet. its been a while since we last just talked, ya know — without a specific topic or a title with a colon in it — so i thought it was time for another random-ass link parade post i’ve decided to call intermissions, for whatever reason. and besides, due to my insomnia or dsps or just poor choices or whatever the fuck, until yesterday, i was pretty much up for three days straight. (*okay full disclosure: i slept for like 5 hours after the first 42. still a new personal record.) anyway. thats given me time to look at a lot of messed up shit on the internet. and there’s a lot of it. and it’s kinda feelin like we’ve slipped back are stuck at about a half century ago, where black people are still being legally murdered and queer people are being overtly equated with pedophiles. and so, dear reader, i wanted to take this opportunity to share with you some of my findings in this more informal setting.
lets start with alaska, shall we?
ad transcript: “Carol runs a daycare center in anchorage. But if proposition 5 passes, it will be illegal for carol to refuse a job to a transvestite who wants to work with toddlers. If she hires him, she risks losing customers. And if she refuses, she can be fined or imprisoned. Anchorage is already a tolerant city. Vote no on Proposition 5.”
yup. because even the idea that a gender-variant person (especially one who is male-assigned) would want to work with children is shocking, threatening –even to this baby! poor, poor carol. what’s a transphobe to do these days??
it’s no surprise that the opponents of proposition 5, an ordinance to include gay, lesbian, and transgender people in anchorage’s already existing anti-discrimination law, chose to depict the most stereotyped, caricatured image of a male-assigned gender-variant person they could. in the ad, they refer to this person as a transvestite and accurately use male pronouns (presumably to emphasize the supposed incongruity and unnaturalness of the applicant’s appearance). it seems like the people behind the ad are well aware of the difference between a transvestite and a trans woman, but are counting on the public to conflate them both with this image. after all, both are male-assigned expressions of femininity, and everyone knows that’s just perverse. disgusting. who cares what the specifics are.
the ad doesn’t stop there. it more than just implies that trans women and cross-dressers are sexual predators just waiting to abuse children –with this image, it straight up says it. apparently, all we’re waiting for is to be given “special rights” and then it’s a green light for molestation. the whole campaign is eerily similar to this widely used video from 1961, warning boys of the “homosexual threat.” seriously, watch that shit.
the ad pulls out some fucked-up orwellian double-think to close its hate-mongering message. “anchorage is a already a tolerant city. vote no on proposition 5.” whew! check off that diversity box!
“Anchorage already tolerates black people and women! Isn’t that ENOUGH?” one anomalously coherent youtube commenter writes
while sadly, it appears that on tuesday, anchorage voters rejected prop5, it also seems likely that some shady shit went down with the vote, and the aclu is demanding an independent review.
whipping up public sentiment against trans people (trans women, in particular — woo team trans-misogyny and heteropatriarchy!) based on the implication that we’re pedophiles is not isolated to alaska or the 1960s. in february, protesters of an anti-trans discrimination bill in baltimore county lined the streets of the their county councilor’s office, with at least one woman using her daughter to hold up a sign (clearly written by the child herself) reading, “Why won’t you protect me? KEEP THE MEN OUT OF MY BATHROOM.” that bill, thankfully, did pass — restroom protection intact.
transphobia is, of course, not relegated to our shores alone: did you know that 17 european countries force trans sterilization? niether did i, or a lot of people, apparently. from mother jones, “People rightly flipped out… over the news that Swedish parliament would not be repealing a barbaric law that forces sterilization on trans people seeking to change their gender on legal documents… Considering how shocking people find Sweden’s law, it’s worth pointing out the country is 1 of 17 in Europe (shown in red below) that require trans people to have a surgical procedure that results in sterilization before legal gender change is made to their identification…”
oh, joy.
back in the states, the GOP circus continues, with the again inevitable nominee romney coming under fire for his unfortunate — and substantial — financial ties to the National Organization for Marriage (you can guess what they do), after confidential documents were made public by a federal court investigating NOM’s activities in maine. the 2008 internal documents detail NOM’s divide-and-conquer strategy for getting california’s infamous gay marriage-banning prop 8 passed, stating, “The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks — two key democratic constituencies.” it is being speculated — and with good reason — that as a high-value donor to NOM, romney was aware of the organizations blatantly fucked up tactics.
meanwhile, last holdout santorum –i’m not even counting gingrich anymore–almost forgets to filter.
One more reason not to go see the lorax movie emerges, as the film attempts to reach unprecedented levels of irony by commercially partnering with monsanto (fucking monsanto!), in addition to over 70 other promotional partnerships — which is why shit like this now appears in our sidebars.
what else we got? oh yeah… dharun ravi, the college student who secretly broadcast his roommate, tyler clementi, kissing another man. clementi soon jumped to his death from the george washington bridge. last month, ravi was found guilty on 15 charges ranging from invasion of privacy to tampering with evidence, and sentenced to ten years in prison. ten years. i’m all for decrying homophobia, but what the fuck good is locking up this kid for a decade gonna do?
“I can’t justify Ravi’s decision to invade his roommate’s privacy, especially not at a moment in which he would be extremely vulnerable. I also cannot justify Ravi’s decision to mess with evidence, even though I suspect he did so out of fear. But I also don’t think that either of these actions deserve 10 years of jail time or deportation (two of the options given to the judge). I don’t think that’s justice…
I’m also sick and tired of people saying that this will teach kids an important lesson. Simply put, it won’t. No teen that I know identifies their punking and pranking of their friends and classmates as bullying, let alone bias intimidation. Sending Ravi to jail will do nothing to end bullying. Yet, it lets people feel like it will and that makes me really sad. There’s a lot to be done in this realm and this does nothing to help those who are suffering every day.” –danah boyd, quoted on racilicious
one last important read: i know we’ve all probably read a lot — or written some ourselves — on trayvon martin, but this little post by Aurin Squire is a must. the author reflects on what happened to martin and his own experience Walking While Black, and manages to say so much with such economy of words. i really like this piece.
of course there is more. there is always more. more thoughts on the hunger games and its “unisex” appeal, katniss’ general badassery and a mainstream film with a female lead breaking pre-sale records in addition to a $155 million opening weekend, not to mention how sick i am of fucking love triangles in YA fiction (did Collins think it wouldn’t work without a bit of twi-puke thrown in? umm but seriously, TEAM GALE!). but after all the depressing shit, and enough talk on HG already, i want to leave you with this: gay dolphins. seriously. not only are they fuckin smart but they’re also hella gay. that link also features a slide show of other examples of queerness in the animal world, all fantastic.
and that about does it for me right now. i gotta go get back to not meeting my body’s basic need for sleep and other unhealthy patterns. or something. good talk, internet.
so i can’t tell if my title is punny or not, but the point is that i got more shit to say that didn’t seem to fit with the content of first post… so….take two:
cinna and katniss embrace before the games begin
Full disclosure: i devoured the books – read all three last summer (loved the first two, meh on the third), and i had super low expectations going to see the movie last week. but then i came out… surprisingly impressed. [**assumed familiarity with the story/spoiler alerts still stand**]
i wasn’t particularly impressed with the whitewashing of katniss and district 12, as i discussed earlier, though i was quite fond of some of the casting choices. Kravitz as cinna worked really well for me — as did Donald Southerland as the understated president snow — and i’m excited to see more interaction between them and katniss in the upcoming films. in fact, the acting was pretty solid all around. (well, peeta was a bit wooden but his character was consistently overshadowed by lawrence and Woody Harrelson, so it didn’t matter much.) in fact, harrelson’s haymitch ended up being another highlight. though he wasn’t as overtly cruel to katniss as he was in the book, their banter was still heated and engaging, and harrelson — even as a sexist, condescending alcoholic — remained entertaining and strangely likeable (much like the haymitch of the books).
harrelson’s surprisingly cunning drunk
as for my qualms with the movie visa vi the book, they are mostly relegated to the portrayal of district 12, hunger, and the day to day of living under military (police?) occupation. life in district 12, like most of the others, is fucking hard. you’re under constant electronic and human surveillance. a (sporadically working) electric fence keeps you in the district, and you are forbidden from entering the woods beyond the fence, especially for hunting. it even carries a potentially lethal sentence. and still katniss and gale must do this regularly, knowing it’s the only way to keep their families fed. and yet, none of this sense of pressure is communicated through the film. that sense of all encompassing oppression (especially within the walls of district 12) that was so present in the books was lost — unnecessarily, i think — in its translation to film.
additionally, for taking place in a society built around the idea of food scarcity (or at least, manufacturedscarcity), there was very little in the film for us to actually see the need or the hunger of the citizens of district 12. no constant talk of where the next meal will come from, or how it will be payed for, or how to sell the illegally caught game at the Hob without alerting the peacekeepers. many of the people in 12 appeared dirty, but not particularly skinny or malnourished. and after their lifetime of hunger, when katniss and peeta finally arrive at the capitol, there is maybe one (brief) scene of them eating the lavish food put before them — not the exciting, wide-eyed feasts of lamb stew (where was that lamb stew?!) and the other delicacies that katniss and peeta wolf down greedily in the book. (a concise analysis of the major differences between the book and the film can be found here.)
one of the biggest alterations comes in what we see in the aftermath of rue’s death. katniss mourns the same way in print and film — wreathing rue in flowers, though in the book she knows there’s no chance in hell it will be nationally broadcast; it’s a personal gesture to rue and a personal “fuck you” to the gamemakers and snow. district 11 did, however, learn of rue and katniss’ partnership –friendship, even, and sent katniss a loaf of bread in the arena as thanks. later, we learn that rue’s death and katniss’ actions do lead to a revolt in D11, but we’re never shown it. in the film, the gamemakers actually do broadcast katniss adorning rue with flowers, and this immediately leads to a violent uprising in district 11, pitting the majority-black district citizens against the peacekeepers.
and here’s where i’m conflicted. i thought it was a well done, potentially even moving scene of the marginalized suddenly rising up against state oppression. on the other hand, it was the *only* riot scene in the film, and all i kept thinking was do we really need to further popularize images of black people rioting?? especially when it’s one of the only — and certainly the longest — scene where we even see more than a handful of black folks in the same shot. i can’t help but wonder how the longstanding white fear of black gatherings and collective anger affected the creation of this sequence…or the decision to show this district uprising rather than another (like 8, for instance, which i believe also rebels around the same time)… In and of itself i’m not sure this would have stood out, but given how few faces of color we see anywhere else in the film, i find it interesting to note which aspects of Collin’s fantasy world were whitewashed and which were allowed to retain their melanin.
anyway, the camera work had its own problems, though it at least kept things moving along at a brisk enough pace (sometimes too much so) and seemed to include more shots of blurred light and trees than the blair witch project. because this is what has to happen when you make a fucking family film about 24 children murdering each other on reality tv to keep an oppressed population docile. You get lots of screams and quick shots of forest and sky. IF you want that pg-13 rating, IF you want to get the whole family in for that slaughter-fest, then you can’t actually show the brutality of it, even if its in the books. even if the visibility of the brutality serves a significant thematic purpose, raising questions around culture-wide voyeurism, consumption, and sadism. well, i guess those things could stand to be lost in order to get that kid dollar, that family dollar. after all, as david edelstein says in vulture, “The murders onscreen are quick… The cutting is so fast that you can hardly see what’s happening, which has already won Ross praise for his restraint, his tastefulness. Tasteful child-killing!”
Tasteful child killing.
lets just sit with that for a minute, shall we? sit with it in the context of the social critique Collins provides through the hunger games. sit with it in the context of our world, of our media. of us watching this movie.
at base, the hunger games is a social critique of our voyeuristic, schadenfreude-driven, borderline sadistic culture, obsessed with “reality” tv, celebrity status, and sensationalistic news, steadily being desensitized to human tragedy through visual media. and now we can actually consume the visual representation of this written critique of our own love of voyeuristic violence –which is itself, by virtue of its source material and hollywoodization, violent and sensationalized. and we’re praising it for its portrayal of “tasteful child killing.” tasteful child killing – what kind of oxymoronic joke is that? with the movie, we are encouraged to visually consume this tasteful barbarity wrapped in a narrative ostensibly intended to indict what itself seeks to provide — visual entertainment through violence and human suffering.
there’s definitely some super meta, fucked up levels of irony operating here, but i can’t quite wrap my mind around them right now. goddamn, i’ll have to come back to this… postmodern irony-loving film students, have at it! oh, where’s abed when you need him…
<<spoilers ahead, and i’m not summarizin so wiki that shit>>
I’m really not sure where to start with all this… it’s all such a shit show! i’ll save all my nerdy thoughts on the book translation and more technical aspects of the movie for a later post so as to first focus on the shitshow that is racist fandom…
this was one of the first character posters for the Suzanne Collins book-turned-movie The Hunger Games released last november – the first widely available shots of the actors in their roles. Lenny Kravitz plays cinna – and is definitely one of my favorite parts of both the book and movie, while Amandla Stenberg is brilliant as the cherubic, tree-jumping rue. the character posters came out about 5 months ago and these are some of the responses they recieved. from t(w)eens. a whole fuck-ton of em actually.
right, right... because obviously a black man can't be "sweet and loving," (or even "simple and lovable looking"), let alone have a "calm temper" or a "quiet personality." #areyoufuckingshittingme??
umm i got the impression yall just pictured cinna as white either cause you wanted to or because under white supremacy, white's the default for a racially-unspecified person and you just didn't think about it. can you...really not get over it?
the funny thing is, cinna’s race is never mentioned in the book. Collins’ gives us some of his wardrobe choices and the fact that he has green eyes and always wears gold eyeliner. that’s pretty much it. but everyone is falling over themselves because the gay (i read him as such, anyway), white protagonist they’ve been rooting for is suddenly – gasp! – black. which of course means he’s physically incapable of embodying all of that calm, reassuring, sweetness stuff that their fantasized white cinnas did. uhg.
but wait, there’s more: we haven’t even got to rue yet… and this was a character who was explicitly described in the books as having very dark skin. more than once. but lo, the movie opens, and with it, the floodgates of barely latent t(w)een racism. Continue reading →
**this is the first of a two-part final narrative account of the implementation of the identity unit. part II appears here.**
“…But what does this have to do with today?” Discussing Race and Systemic Inequality [Part I]
“Why did they do that?” Will asks me on the afternoon of my first day at Miller’s Hill. I have just explained how scientists let four hundred black men go with untreated syphilis for nearly half a century in order to study the effects of the disease.
I hesitate, my eyes lingering on his otherwise blank “Tuskegee Experiment” note card. How do you explain the dehumanization of racism to an eleven year old? “Well, the scientists, who were white, thought that they could do whatever they wanted to black people.”
“But why?” He scrunches his brow, genuinely confused.
I continue, “Since white people were in power – and for the most part, they still are – they could do horrible things to black people without consequences. So sometimes, they used them for experiments.”
Will’s eyes suddenly widen. “That’s awful!”
“It is. And the experiment would have continued if the press hadn’t found out about it and made it public in the seventies. Of course by then, many of the subjects had already died from the disease, and the others were very sick.”
Will is suddenly solemn, his mouth opening and closing slightly as his eyes dart from me to the Wikipedia page. Outside of Slavery, it might be the first time he has heard of any state sanctioned atrocities his racial group has perpetrated.
One month later, Naomi and I sit with the class on the carpet for our race and racism lesson. “So, who can tell me the definition of racism?” I ask the class, soliciting the mainstream definition before expanding it into racial prejudice plus institutional power. Surprisingly, students accept this new definition with little contestation.
“So how do people have power in our society?” I continue, “What does that mean?”
“Like, having a lot of money?” offers Sara, a quiet, tall, and tremendously freckled white student.
“Right! Having money is one way people can be powerful in society. What else?” Students consider the question for a moment. When no responses are forthcoming, I direct their attention to the back wall, where we have hung the ads from the gender lesson, under the heading, “What do these images tell us about ourselves?”
“What about those ads and the messages they send? Do you think people who control the media are powerful?” The class offers a collective noise of agreement before we discuss other powerful people in society, like politicians, lawmakers, police, corporate leaders, and education administrators.
“And what race are most of people in these positions?”
Without hesitation – and almost in unison – the class responds, “White.”
Alexis suddenly perks up. “They’re all men, too!” I am increasingly awed by students’ perceptiveness and acceptance of concepts and information so contrary to mainstream messages.
“Being in power is about more than political positions or laws. As we just mentioned, it’s also about the media and who we see.” Naomi tells them, “For example, think about Disney movies. What race are the main characters usually?”
Several students murmur, “White,” Before Jaden, exclaims, “But what about Mulan or Pocahontas? They’re not white!” A few students nod their heads in support.
“That’s true, there are definitely exceptions to the rule,” I say. “But generally, if you can count all the exceptions on one hand, it’s actually proving the rule.” Jaden gawks, and then leads the class in counting off Disney princesses of color one by one. Continue reading →
hugo is a martin scorsese directed children’s movie (yes, really) about an orphaned boy living in a paris train station in 1931 who is really good at fixing shit, especially clocks and other intricate mechanical items. hugo covertly works turning the clocks in the station, stealing food and supplies from local shops, and generally spends way too much time being chased around by the child-hating station inspector played by sacha baron cohen. soon, he and new friend isabelle are on an adventure to try and solve a mystery which intertwines their two families.
just to get it out of the way: hugo was visually amazing — between the cinematography, CG effects, and the imaginative and immersive environment, the film was a pleasure to look at. it was even one of those rare films in which the 3D format actually worked. the acting was pretty solid all around, and we even got to see saruman play a kind yet somehow still ominous sounding librarian.
the power of isengard commands you to pay your late fees
the thing is, from the very get-go we’re treated to a particular brand of ableism that never really stops. the film opens with a chase between hugo and the station inspector, who wears a full leg brace on his left leg and moves with a pronounced limp. of course, as his primary function in the film is to chase hugo, his leg brace and limp are consistently portrayed as ironic comic relief as we see scene after scene of his brace getting in the way of his goal. he is shown staggering along, slamming into people and objects, and at one point even manages to lodge his braced leg in a cello.
in this way, i couldn’t help thinking of jimmy on south park, another “laughable” or “comedic cripple” trope whose supposed hilarity is based on the apparent contradictions between his disability and job or passion — in this case, being a stand-up comic with a pronounced stutter. in the show, the stutter typically prevents jimmy from commanding regular comedic timing or reaching his punchlines, which for south park is the fucking punchline. Continue reading →
