“When I was nine years old Star Trek came on. I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, ‘Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!’ I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.” – Whoopi Goldberg
To me, nothing crystallizes the mantra of ‘representation matters’ quite like Whoopi’s quote about why she was so passionate about getting involved with the Next Generation. And it was echoed early in 2015, when a fetal amputee had this to say about Mad Max: Fury Road:
I am just about the biggest advocate for “representation matters” there is, but as a white woman I never really felt it applied to me all that much. Watching Fury Road, I realized how wrong I was. I’ve been this way my entire life and I’ve never felt “handicapped.” I’m disabled, yes – there’s shit I just can’t do, but an invalid I am not. For the most part I’ve always approached life with a “figure out how to do it and just get it done” attitude; I am loathe to admit I can’t do anything and I never give up without exhausting all the possibilities available to me. Watching Fury Road, I felt like I was watching my own struggle brought to life (albeit in a very fantastical setting), and I don’t think I ever realized how truly profound that could be for me.
This is a response that I see over and over again, both within the games industry and in other media. Members of minority groups – particularly those in their formulaic years – just respond off-the-charts to seeing themselves represented in the art they consume. The properties that take chances and make these strong characters that appeal to non-traditional audiences can end up broadly increasing the marketplace and, perhaps more importantly, doing it by creating fanatical, devoted fans. And in most cases, if delicately done, it can be done without impacting your core audience one iota.
Some reactionary critics will claim that this is merely an attempt at ‘social justice’ – i.e. attempting to make the world a better place through your art. And make no mistake about this, there’s truth to this. Gay marriage being legal and accepted today in the US had a lot to do with things like Ellen and Will & Grace, and how they normalized ideas and minorities considered radical only a decade or two ago. Pot legalization probably owes a lot to Sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men just having people talk about it normally, and so on.
But lets not ignore as well that big bucks are at stake here. Big budget nerdgasms like Avengers & Guardians of the Galaxy had both 40%+ female attendance in the theaters. And quite frankly, those would have been much smaller, shittier movies if the directors of those films could not guaruntee to get butts into seats that stretched beyond the white, male comic book nerd.
These are the things that come to mind as many discuss the diversity in the latest chapter of the Star Wars franchise, a movie that is both a massive critical and commercial success. This has inspired, of course, a ton of people to write about the diversity of the cast overall, with much of it focused on Rey (who may well be my new favorite Star Wars character) and the Bechdel Test (caveat: I find the Bechdel Test to be overused and misused, but I understand its importance). Finn also gets discussed plenty, as does the female Captain Phasma, and the generous number of background characters that make the war and world of Star Wars more multicultural, with a focus on asians. Many people agree that JJ Abrams did something great, which was to make a movie likely to inspire your daughters as well as your sons.
But those aren’t the takes that amuse me, or are central to my point.
What interests me are the reactionary idiots who get mad about stuff like this. They started by floating a hashtag promoting the idea that SW:TFA promotes white genocide back in October. And sure, the people who founded that twitter hashtag admitted that they were just trolling. Still, it seems like more than a handful of MRAs and white supremacist assholes didn’t seem to think the idea was too farfetched. Thankfully, the noted and frequently awesome reactionary-tracking blog “We Hunted the Mammoth” has been tracking the idiocy in all of its drooling glory.
Most amusingly, Return of Kings boasts that they launched a boycott that may have cost Disney $4M dollars in ticket sales. Granted, the math that they use is ‘creative’ (i.e. about as grounded in reality as the Narnia books), and still the best that they can come up with is something that is a rounding error to the movie’s 1B money hat. Seriously, to Disney $4M is money that, if dropped on the floor, may not be worth JJ Abrams bending over to pick it up. But the reactionary idiot brigade didn’t stop there. There’s also this little doozy, one of the classic channer infographics, which contains this analysis of BB-8:
Who is the White Male audience supposed to identify with? Simple, the little white Cuck Ball The nebbish, quiet, white beta orbiter character attaches itself to the white female lead, but is almost sold off (unsuccessfully) at one point. It is forced to watch the romance unfold.
Yeah, sure, this may just be trolling – although a year of watching the sort of mental infants that inhabit, say, the Trump following or gaming’s most cancerous reactionary hashtag has pretty well established there are plenty of people who eat this line of reasoning up at face value. Poe’s Law is not simply about the critics who cannot detect that something is sarcasm or trolling, it’s also about the gullible and easily outraged cretins who treat these brainfarts as hills to die on defending.
Exhibit A for this is noted well-dressed white-supremacist and feminist-bashing Davis Aurini, who seems to take this line of thinking to it’s logical (using the term loosely) conclusion. You may remember him as being the film maker who made a trash can fire of a documentary about pro-diversity voices like Anita Sarkeesian while surrounding himself with a hysterical skull fetish while assuring his readers that he’s only a white nationalist ‘on paper’ that nearly collapsed amidst accusations of theft and fraud. What does he think about the new Star Wars film? Well, of course he feels that watching it is ‘the equivalent of auto-castration’.
J.J. Abrams hates you. He relishes the thought of your extinction as he looks forward to a multi-culti matriarchy where instead of studying math and sciences, everyone sits around discussing their feelings….The underlying message of the movie is that men – and White men in particular – are useless, destructive, failures, who need to get out of the way so that society can finally progress.
Let’s put aside that Aurini’s politics make Donald Trump look like Jimmy Carter, or that the chan reactionary’s obsession with cuckolding as a core concept in their political philosophy pretty much establishes that those who exhibit this line of thinking have the sophistication & maturity of a 13-year-old bedwetter and mental acumen of a whiffleball. What all these takes firmly establish is that when these people say that representation DOESN’T matter, they’re lying. If representation didn’t matter, it wouldn’t matter that Rey is awesome, is female, and kicks everyone’s ass with a phallus*. But they don’t believe that. They believe firmly that it is a threat to their rightful place in society.
True, what they believe is nuttier than a Planter’s factory, and no one should take it seriously. But it is a long cry from ‘no effect’.
Representation does matter – we should concede that everyone actually believes this now. And creators should care about it. First off, it’s the pathway to larger audiences with international & crossover appeal, which can reward you and your organization with cold hard cash. Second, it can help move forward the long arc of social progress in extremely tangible ways. And third, perhaps most of all, it apparently really upsets the Redpillers and White Supremacists that haunt the underbelly of our society. As a general rule, if you’re pissing these guys off, you’re probably doing something right.
* Aren’t nearly all weapons phallus-shaped? And really, wouldn’t they be even more upset if Rey kicked ass with a giant glowing vagina?
Although the film makers shamefully failed to properly use Idris Elba’s skills in the first Thor film, the fact that Elba as Heimdall caused apoplexy in the neo-Norse wing of the White Supremacist movement was delightful in the extreme…
Rey is an awesome character. Finn / Poe too. I wanted more Maz (maybe a Castle-defense-scene; we weren’t shown Maz was a badass). And more Phasma would’ve been nice. I can live with the Leia/Chewie Mourning-Hug gaff… At least I keep telling myself that.
Originally, Maz did have a scene where she defended the castle using force powers, but it was cut. Actually, a bunch of really cool sounding scenes got cut, including one where Leia argued with the senate. Really hope they change their mind about not putting the deleted scenes on the blu ray, they would’ve made a good movie even better.
Joe, I cannot wait to see all the deleted scenes. Our screening group all took bets to see if Phasma of Tarth would fight another * bear *. In the end, I lost money. Maybe a deleted “Phasma v Chewbacca (bear II)” cost snarky, betting, aGOT fans some of their precious ends.
I kinda agree that a politically charged “Leia sideplot,” might shift us out of the film’s refreshing pace.
One of the things I hate most about ep6, ep1, ep2, and ep3 are the rock-video jumpcuts. Sure, both ep4 and ep5 have “stylized” cut-transitions, but they never cram in the jumpcuts like a 3 minute rock-video would. RotJ set that awful trend in attempts to be “modern” during the 80’s.
Not to start off a whole new debate 😉
I’m not sure I’d see the Leia/Chewie hug as a gaff.
Chewie is possibly the best introvert character on screen, he quietly does his job and doesn’t need a fanfare or medals to point that fact out.
As an introvert myself at a time of grief the last thing I want is attention, or someone giving me meaningless platitudes, especially if they know the depth of my loss.
What would a hug prove? Leia knows the loss Chewbacca has had and nothing she could say or do would be any more demonstrative of her love for Chewbacca than giving him the space to grieve alone.
Vhaegrant, well said. I think the lack of any form of empathy for the Wookiee risks rendering Leia somewhat heartless OR prejudice to non-humans (serious). And all that can be dismissed as crazy talk if Leia, at least, attempts contact and Chewie refuses it. That would be a FIX to this Gaff and supports your introvert claim. So the problem in this scene is really Leia, who jumps into Rey’s arms so we know she’s not heartless… Prejudice maybe?
I think some of this falls down to just how much information you can fit into a single scene.
Leia and Chewie have had a long established relationship, they would know how to react to each other. I find the scene more poignant for this lack of apparent reaction as it speaks to what doesn’t need to be said. They both know what they have lost.
It’s not lack of empathy or prejudice, just acceptance of another’s grief.
On the other hand Rey is a part of Leia’s past. Possibly a blood relation (I don’t think it’s overly spoilery to speculate that she is Luke’s daughter) and tied to the disappearance of her brother who failed to train up her son (Kylo Ren), besides the point that her estranged husband died by her sons hand while attempting rescue. I think Rey deserved a hug 😉
Maybe Chewie will get a hug in the Director’s Edition DVD 🙂
“More poignant for this lack of apparent reaction.”
This is some jedi-level hand-waiving. Bravo. And I agree that Rey’s hug is important; perhaps for reasons we don’t even know yet. In the end, I will always find something to nitpick; even parts of ESB bother me. (Namely the Empire’s Tactics during the Battle of Hoth; scene is still beautiful–iconic.)
‘These are not the scenes you’re looking for.’ 😛
It would be interesting to know what deleted scenes hit the cutting room floor or didn’t even make it to filming. I may even go and read the tie in novel to see if it fills in any gaps.
The original films always had a good visual style, a sense of a lived in world with it own sense of history (something lacking from the cgi wizardry of the prequels) and that was nice to see back.
Also the Millenium Falcon. I would be happy with any Star Wasr film as long as the main protagonist was the Falcon 😉
I always felt the redemption story line underpinning Luke and Vader’s arc was weak. But have to agree that ESB had some beautiful visuals in there.
Return of Kings was also busy recently reminding people that 9/11 was an inside job/controlled demolition, which I think pretty much pegs their grounding in reality.
“But lets not ignore as well that big bucks are at stake here. Big budget nerdgasms like Avengers & Guardians of the Galaxy had both 40%+ female attendance in the theaters. And quite frankly, those would have been much smaller, shittier movies if the directors of those films could not guaruntee to get butts into seats that stretched beyond the white, male comic book nerd.”
The only thing to do to get around 40% attendance from the gender your movie isn’t primarily marketed to is to be succesful. That number is standard for high grossing movies. Even movies like Twilight or Fast and Furious have similiar audience break downs.
Yes, it matters. It helps, at least somewhat. How much it matters is debatable. Yes, some complete fucking morons genuinely complained that there was no non-Hispanic white male among the new heroes. Non-Hispanic white male representation matters, too, but not every fucking movie needs to be about me. I have no trouble admiring Finn, Poe, or Rey.
Diversity is worth doing if it can be done right. But if it’s laughable to believe that disgruntled white males cost TFA any serious money, it’s also at least questionable whether putting minority characters into, for instance, Witcher 3, would make any serious financial difference. I don’t think a lot of people bought Mass Effect because of Captain Anderson. The hero is far more important than the supporting cast.
I do think, though, that specifically in the case of Star Wars and the like, a prominent feminist media is hungry to praise anything that makes a clear effort to market to them. Whether sincere or cynical, Disney has done a masterful job of marketing this movie.
” I don’t think a lot of people bought Mass Effect because of Captain Anderson.”
—
On the other hand, I think having fully developed Male and Female options for Shepherd did move the needle on Mass Effect sales.
“it’s also at least questionable whether putting minority characters into, for instance, Witcher 3, would make any serious financial difference.”
It’s not really, especially once you get into international audiences. We have ample proof over and over again from many kinds of media that games that have representation from other cultures get deeper penetrations into those cultures. This is, incidentally, why it seems like every major sci-fi release bends over backwards nowadays to represent Asia (usually China) somehow. The box office sales of movies that do this vastly outsell the ones that don’t over there.
Or you can go to the numerous people who have written time and time again something along the lines of ‘when I was a kid, I’d watch ANY TV show with an asian in it, no matter how racist or pathetic that character was’. As a white man, this is a tough feeling to actually recognize, although I do admit having put down many JRPGs as well as GTA: San Andreas because they had nothing in the film that resonated with me.
“I don’t think a lot of people bought Mass Effect because of Captain Anderson.”
They probably didn’t buy THAT game, but they likely bought the sequels. Background characters that reflect diversity are important too at helping to sell the idea that this is a universe where you, as a white/gay/black/woman/whatever person can actually belong and make a fundamental difference. It’s something that a LOT of game makers and movie makers are starting to pay more attention to. As an example other than TFA, watch the Avengers movie again, and note how SHIELD and other background organizations have a lot more women in them than films 10 years ago.
I also noted this when I talked about Far Cry 4 not too long ago. In Far Cry 3, women were invisible, and only discussed by NPCs by happenstances (prostitutes who would give you the clap!) In FC4, by contrast, they still had some sexytime content, but they also had women militant rebels who would help you take back the country as you fought your mad quest. When creating a world where power stems from violence, showing that people other than white men can be agents of that violence tells the story that you could belong to this world – even when they are only background characters.
Eh, I was mostly agreeing with you.
Effective world-building and better writing helps. Customizing Shepard was infinitely more important than the skin color of any secondary character.
San Andreas was fucking awesome, and I’m pretty sure it sold rather well among white people. I seem to recall that it was the then-highest grossing game ever.
Whatever mindless action movies do to make money, I’m not particularly interested in seeing them emulated. I don’t recall a lot of diversity in Titanic, though I’m aware there were black people on the lower decks. I don’t remember anyone other than white people and blue people in Avatar. Not a single person complained about the lack of Asians in Witcher 3. The claim that it lost sales (aside from it not being a completely different game) is as speculative as the claim that TFA will take more than a couple seconds longer to be the #1 movie of all time domestically because of some idiots who are upset that all of the good white people are either old or Hispanic.
Just a quick note to point out that Kotaku In Action’s latest obsession is to call “unethical” the journalists who refer to “Return of Kings” as Men’s Rights Activists, because (1) RoK is for Pick-Up Artists and (2) PUAs hate MRAs.
I’m sure you’ll be glad to know that GamerGate isn’t giving up the fight for ethics in journalism.
I don’t ever write stuff on the internet, but I had to as this note really sounds petty and kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I doubt I’d refer to the mislabeling as unethical, but it does lack a bit of journalistic integrity to continually conflate the two in order to vilify one or the other. To do so even after attempts to correct the behavior seems transgressive at the very least.
I could go either way. MRAs has been a term that includes all manner of men’s rights activists over the years, which now covers many, many flavors of sexist idiocy (and almost none which includes actual Men’s Rights issues that are worth addressing). A term is still needed for an over-umbrella term – it may be that ‘manosphere’ is a better term.
It’s also worth noting that the Manosphere has been particularly turbulent over the last few years, with lots of bickering and infighting, and to some degree there’s some Judea People’s Front action going on. As an example, I thought that RoK was more MTGOWs than PUAs with a spicy dash of racism from time to time, but to be honest, there’s only so many brain cells I’m willing to devote to keeping it all straight when it all comes down to the same odious shit: decrying social progress, overstating rape statistics, and organizing hate campaigns against feminists they disagree with. I’m much happier to use We Hunted the Mammoth to keep a bird’s eye on their chicanery.
I don’t really know what to say here, but this right here is an example of the damage of conflating the two you have no idea who your enemies are.
I would definitely not use We Hunted the Mammoth as a source of insight for anything. The website is sensationalist. That’s like claiming I read brietbart to understand feminism.
I would say the infighting has to do with the more moderate movements trying to excise the extreme views and tying the groups together does nothing for trying to kill the misogynistic ideas right where they’re born. The differences between MRAs and PUAs are not subtle and continually conflating the two in light of that really hurts in destroying the bad ideas, and radicalizes more people than you think.
Your problem is that I haven’t seen a serious moderate MRA viewpoint that has gained any serious traction as of yet. If you have a website that you purport will put MRAs in a positive light, I’ll take a look, but I’ve gone wandering into those ponds before, and usually have ended up feeling the strong urge to shower and apologize to my wife on behalf of my gender.
“I would definitely not use We Hunted the Mammoth as a source of insight for anything.”
I would. The website is smug, the community is toxic, and it’s more content to shoot fish in a barrel than do anything about it, but what it reports is reliable.
I guess I’d try a voice for men for serious MRA thought. They spend a lot of time talking about:
Discrepancies in custody law.
Domestic Abuse as a Male-perpetrator/Female Victim only in law enforcement
Male Suicide rates 3x female.
Lack of AWARE type shelters for men.
Male Disposibilty …. i.e. Selective service, Save the Women First, 92% of workplace deaths, blah blah….
These are all actual issues and they are serious about them. As serious and real as issues like the wage gap, lack of diversity in various mediums, etc. Vilifying every MRA issue by trying to tie it vile male supremacist human beings like RooshV is intellectually dishonest and celebrating this type of reporting as the above comment was is very jarring. Whether you like KIA or not, not every word they utter is nonsense and subject to mockery just because KIA said it. As they say even a broken clock is right twice a day… that may be way too often for KIA.
Really, A Voice For Men? A fifteen minute google search found articles on a Voice For Men finds them:
* Taking credit for being so vile they manage to get media organizations to shut down their comments page.
* Claiming that false rape allegations are commonplace when there is actually no evidence that this is the case (and the opposite is true)
* Denying the existence of marital rape.
* Set up a fake web site in order to divert funding to a charity dedicated to abused women and girls.
* Endless complaints about feminism destroying manhood, modernity and/or american culture.
And let’s not forget their support for Gamergate. Repeatedly.
I could go on, but just reading a few of these articles makes my skin crawl. A Voice For Men is a pile of toxic dog shit. Anything good that they might do is buried under utter, idiotic hysteria. (Note: anyone who tries to deny valid & proven rape statistics and attack charities for battered women are in a hole that takes a long time to get out of). Literally the only good thing I can say about the site is that they aren’t RoK.
Here’s a nice article about the founder for A VOice FOr Men, a complete shitbag of a human being who also happens to be emotionally abusive deadbeat dad.
And for what it’s worth, the MRAs do a shitty job of addressing any of the issues you purport are serious issues in a way that results in real change. For example, it wasn’t the MRAs that really started highlighting the issues of male rape in the military — it was the feminists (who literally could not get the military to pay attention to the issue until the male-on-male rape issues were highlit). However, even for the issues where it might seem they have a point, much of the stats regarding abuse of men have been distorted by the MRA movement beyond all credibility.
“Whether you like KIA or not, not every word they utter is nonsense and subject to mockery just because KIA said it.”
Currently, they’re fighting the War of Milo’s Twitter Verification. By typing #JeSuisMilo.
Eh, I thought verified accounts were about being who you said you were? And I don’t think there’s any doubt remaining that Milo is a verified a–hole.
Twitter apparently has a long-standing policy of removing Twitter account authentication when you are suspended for abusing the Terms of Service, which Milo has been at least twice now. At any rate, his journalistic standards are so shoddy that you’d be hard-pressed to consider him a journalist. He is, in fact, most famous for his actions weaponizing his twitter following, an activity that I’m sure that Twitter wants to dissuade.
@Vhaegrant
Well said. More than the CGI nightmare of the prequels was the return of RotJ’s rapid, thread-closing finale. 3 seconds of saber duel / 3 seconds of space battle / 3 seconds of annoying ewoks(anakin) / 3 seconds of saber duel / Celebration.
I honestly think TFA–even with near carbon copied plot–is superior to RotJ.
Agreed. I think RotJ heralded the movement away from a movie that has cool toys associated with it, to ‘How do we sell more cute fluffy teddies to boys?’
I’m not saying merchandising is wrong, it’s obviously very profitable (apparently alongside the film takings, merchandising and liscencing has made Disney back their $4billion investment already http://www.wired.com/2015/12/disney-star-wars-return-on-investment/ ), just that it shouldn’t push you into putting cute fluffy teddies that can out fight the Empires finest into a film.
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed TFA. It has certainly made me look forward to the upcoming schedule of Star Wars films (both core and anthology). Although nothing can truly erase the sense of disappointment I felt at my first viewing of EPI: TPM. I suspect the House of Mouse is a far safer place for story telling than it’s origins.
As to the original topic of representation. I’m good with that. It’s fiction and I think it should be inspirational and appeal to the widest audience possible. Whether that be a distinction of race, gender, sexuality, disability, etc…
On the topic of Diversity/Representation… And slippery slopes (always are these days); I’ve spoken with a diverse list of people (from Miami to Manila; I have tagalog half-siblings) that were actually offended by Finn’s treatment (namely the implied cowardice, the janitor role, and ‘droid please’). And once they weren’t happy with the treatment of this black character–the token-label was invoked. We used to overhype content/brands, now we overhype diversity-casting.
TL;DR
Is TFA only diverse / representative on the surface?
I think if you are from a particular culture you’re potentially far more sensitive to any representation of it in the media. If you are not from that culture you’ll probably accept it for face value.
I didn’t see Finn run when it mattered, he certainly wasn’t a coward. Sanitation is an essential job. Unfortunately I’m a white middle-aged male living in a predominantly white country so my ear isn’t that sensitive to culturally derogatory slang (although even I picked up on Jar Jar and the Trade delegations dialect as potentially in poor taste).
On diversity casting it’s interesting that a theatre production of a Harry Potter spin off has cast Hermione Granger as a black woman and the authors response is very enlightening.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-35149864
This doesn’t go against canon, as the author herself says ethnicity in the books was never stated. But, the film cast Emma Watson and so the filmgoers iconic representation is of a white girl.
Is the theatre casting being faithful to the text or just seeking additional publicity?
I think this is an important area where computer games allow for better representation than fixed media such as films. A computer game could allow the player to model the protagonist (and no reason why other characters could not be modelled) and therefore there is no canon. Until the sad day the company decides to follow up the game or produce tie in content and establish their own canon… which is predominantly white and male 🙁
“Droid Please,” is rooted in ‘N______ please!’ and later (mostly as a work-around to the N-word), ‘Bitch please!’
From around 2004 (I think, at least on the West Coast), ‘Ninja please!’ gained in popularity but was quickly called Casual Racism. Mostly due to it being another N-word but not the N-word. If you were a conscious, liberal white person… you knew better than to use ‘Ninja please.’
It’s 2016, and Abrams lets ‘Droid Please!’ sneak into the discussion.
And quickly, Black Twitter was discussing if this, too, was Casual Racism. With a focus on whether or not it matters that a black actor says it — a white male wrote it.