Yet another Two White Guys Do The Same Thing Every Week show starts airing. Fans cream themselves instantly and jump on the show, declaring it the best thing ever, shipping the two white male leads, and occasionally pointing out its problematic aspects in between.
Meanwhile, shows starring women, characters of color, fat characters, or disabled characters also start airing. One of two things happen: some of the fans loudest about social justice pretend these shows don't exist. Alternatively, they go overboard in finding reasons to criticize these shows.
From there, they either continue to watch and constantly find things "wrong" with these shows, while in the very same posts squeeing about their Two White Guys programming; or they give up altogether and go back exclusively to Two White Guys.
There are long and plentiful meta posts about how Supernatural or Sherlock OMG TREATS THE FEMALE CHARACTERS AND CHARACTERS OF COLOR SOOO BADLY! Meanwhile, fans write the most horribly sexist and racist posts about, say, River Song, or Samantha Bloom, thinly veiled as criticism borne of concern for social justice issues.
Forgive me for being
You don't need to check out every single show starring minorities. You don't even need to like them all. But I can read, and I have a functioning brain; I see the pattern, and I know when I see bullshit.
So I've taken to avoiding fans who scream loudest about social justice, because that's where I've found the ones most full of shit. And I know I'm missing out on some of the awesome fans who do back up their words with action, but the fact is that there are fans who are seriously poisoning the well of social justice and aren't being called on it, and who need to be told:
Be the change you want to see in the world, or shut the fuck up.
_______
EDIT 11/21 - Hello new people wandering in. I'm finding that some of you are misunderstanding my post. I recommend you take a deep breath when you finish reading, and re-read it, and make sure it says what you think it says before you wind up disagreeing with points that were not made. I will ask you to quote back portions of this post where you think I made said points. Who knows, I might concede I wasn't clear enough. I might not. But I'm not going to argue about points or tangential arguments I didn't make.
EDIT 11/23 - Changed "So I've taken to avoiding fans who scream loudest about social justice, because they're inevitably the ones most full of shit." to "So I've taken to avoiding fans who scream loudest about social justice, because that's where I've found the ones most full of shit. And I know I'm missing out on some of the awesome fans who do back up their words with action, but the fact is that there are fans who are seriously poisoning the well of social justice and aren't being called on it, and who need to be told:" in order to clear up that I'm talking about a subgroup of fans who talk about social justice.
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chasethestars
chasethestars
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Yet another Two White Guys Do The Same Thing Every Week show starts airing. Fans cream themselves instantly and jump on the show, declaring it the best thing ever, shipping the two white male leads, and occasionally pointing out its problematic aspects in between.
True. Sometimes though it is a white man and a white woman (Chuck, Bones, Law and Order SVU, etc). And yeah, people are still squeeing about those shows. Sadly, most shows are still white. The trick is to get people with the Nielsen boxes to start watching the shows with the minority leads.
As for characters with handicaps (I'm assuming you mean physical, not mental because then I could include Tara from United States of Tara), I only know of two currently on tv: Artie (on Glee) and Auggie (Covert Affairs). I suppose you could count House? But House's disability seems to be barely there *shrugs*
(There used to be Kerry Weaver on ER, the only female character that I can recall with a physical disability on tv. Unfortunately, she was never portrayed as sexy, but rather just as a bitch. Sigh). Sadly, I think it will be a long time for a female lead (ER was more of an ensemble show than a show with a clear lead) with a physical disability to be on tv (and to be shown as sexy).
There are long and plentiful meta posts about how Supernatural or Sherlock OMG TREATS THE FEMALE CHARACTERS AND CHARACTERS OF COLOR SOOO BADLY!
I read that as "long and painful meta posts" which can sometimes be true. :)
I do not like to read those posts. Yeah, I realize that Sherlock doesn't have a lot of female characters, but the books didn't have a lot of main/major female characters either (and Moffat and Gatiss are trying to be true to the books).
Thankfully, I haven't written any meta posts about Sherlock and I don't plan to. I am sorry that those meta posts (and whoever wrote them) was your introduction to Holmes fandom. I like Sherlock (BBC version), but I can understand that not everyone does. Hopefully my squeeing on tumblr hasn't annoyed you too much (I have tried to keep it off my lj, at least until it airs in the U.S.).
Meanwhile, fans write the most horribly sexist and racist posts about, say, River Song, or Samantha Bloom, thinly veiled as criticism borne of concern for social justice issues.
The hate for female characters isn't new in Who fandom. I've read comments where people like River, but hate Amy, or they like Martha, but hate Rose (vice versa) and all variations of the above (and that's not even getting into Donna, Romana, Jenny).
So the hate posts have happened in Undercovers fandom already?! Damn, that was fast. I was not really expecting that at all. Usually people like the lead characters (okay that's not entirely true: I remember people saying that they hated Buffy and i was truly baffled by that.) Fandom is weird sometimes (and not in a good way).
Why do they hate Samantha (in Undercovers fandom)?
OT: Undercovers is doing okay in the ratings (according to TV By the Numbers)—not great, but not terrible either. I think NBC is going to cancel Outlaw with Jimmy Smits before they cancel anything else.
Who is "Sjers"?
See, I actually loved Sherlock. I don't care about how much fans are squeeing, but this particular subgroup of fans, the SJers, all decided to sit down and watch a show based on books they know are about two white guys, and then act surprised and write a buttload of meta on how much it fails--which they then pat each other on the back for--and even though it fails so hard and it just pains them, they'll keep watching. But they're the very same people who won't give non-white-guy shows a chance (Huge, Covert Affairs, Undercovers, etc), so I find their whining hard to take seriously. (Hell, I don't care if someone watches nothing but white guy shows, so long as they don't pretend to be concerned about diversity.)
But if you want to talk about social justice issues in fandom, these are the people who are controlling the conversation. (I'm pretty sure none of them will read this post; I'm not in the right circle.) And I wish they would just shut the fuck up.
Covert Affairs rocked. And I'm sure you already know, but ABC Family cancelled Huge. (On another note: I was able to watch a little bit of Nikita and I liked it. It's not Buffy, but then again nothing can touch the epicness of Buffy.)
But if you want to talk about social justice issues in fandom, these are the people who are controlling the conversation. (I'm pretty sure none of them will read this post; I'm not in the right circle.) And I wish they would just shut the fuck up.
I read her post, but I'm not sure if I understand what's she's trying to say. So she wants diversity, but doesn't like that a white guy can have sex with African American women or that a white guy has a crush on African American man? Or she wants the show to acknowledge it more? Or less?
*is confused by the points this Catelynn person is trying to make*
"I know that Apartheid ended 16 whole years ago in South Africa. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Hollis Kruger (as subtly named as Remus Lupin) probably has some lingering racial issues that might possibly influence his reaction to a lovely woman flirting with him when she presents as a South African woman of color. But the show didn't even blink. Not even a little."
Because all South Africans are racist, right? It's not like Apartheid ended because people in South Africa were opposed to it, and it's certainly not at all even possibly true that when mixed-race relationships were illegal people had them anyway or anything WHAT THE HELL IS THIS.
Ass. Projecting ass. Guess what, you racist toolbag, not every white South African is a racist, and not every black South African hates white people, and just by the way race relations in South Africa are more complicated than black versus white. "South African woman of colour" is a borderline meaningless phrase that sounds like you're trying to say she's Coloured (a distinct racial group, not a generic racist term for black people) but think that makes you sound racist.