You're very welcome! I worried I came off as brusque somehow, I'm very glad I struck the right tone.
And I have been wanting to post these ideas for a while - I have mentioned them in another post (and I recall arguing with someone on the subject who I think was simply determined to be argumentative) and my very first icontest entries - to Otherworldlyrics - included icon an icon of Nikki lying dead in Fool For Love because I wanted to make a point about how POC's were erased from the narrative. But I never really did anything "formal" beyond that. But a meta post would not be a bad idea.
I haven't seen Veronica Mars yet, is it any different to btvs in it's portrayal of diversity? I find American TV to be well night awful, even now.
It's supernatural show, people get killed left and right as a genre requirement. The issue is that non-white\non-straight people don't recieve the roles, that would grant them solid chance to survive.
YES.
There's also two other issues, IMO: 1) that the writers are claiming to be "enlightened" (liberal) which means, they do not wish to be identified as racist. In order not to be called racist, you need to educated yourself, not make dumb mistakes of the sort the writers of btvs made repeatedly. (And Joss wrote Restless, let's not forget. His show, his responsibility.)
So the sort of tropes I've been talking about are all the more egregious because their designed for the psychological comfort of the white middle class writers and largely white middle class audiences they assume are watching. Which leads to and intersects with the next issue:
2) It's not that a character dies (this is a freakin' violent show as you point out) in and of itself that is bad; it's the how and why that matter. It's the pile-on of errors and unexamined biases as reflected in the writing. It's the patterns that are reflected in the larger culture, that the writers have learned and unknowingly fail to examine.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
Re: Part 2 - please read part 1 first!
Date: 2015-05-27 05:24 am (UTC)And I have been wanting to post these ideas for a while - I have mentioned them in another post (and I recall arguing with someone on the subject who I think was simply determined to be argumentative) and my very first icontest entries - to Otherworldlyrics - included icon an icon of Nikki lying dead in Fool For Love because I wanted to make a point about how POC's were erased from the narrative. But I never really did anything "formal" beyond that. But a meta post would not be a bad idea.
I haven't seen Veronica Mars yet, is it any different to btvs in it's portrayal of diversity? I find American TV to be well night awful, even now.
It's supernatural show, people get killed left and right as a genre requirement. The issue is that non-white\non-straight people don't recieve the roles, that would grant them solid chance to survive.
YES.
There's also two other issues, IMO: 1) that the writers are claiming to be "enlightened" (liberal) which means, they do not wish to be identified as racist. In order not to be called racist, you need to educated yourself, not make dumb mistakes of the sort the writers of btvs made repeatedly. (And Joss wrote Restless, let's not forget. His show, his responsibility.)
So the sort of tropes I've been talking about are all the more egregious because their designed for the psychological comfort of the white middle class writers and largely white middle class audiences they assume are watching. Which leads to and intersects with the next issue:
2) It's not that a character dies (this is a freakin' violent show as you point out) in and of itself that is bad; it's the how and why that matter. It's the pile-on of errors and unexamined biases as reflected in the writing. It's the patterns that are reflected in the larger culture, that the writers have learned and unknowingly fail to examine.