( 2112 )

It’s 10:15 on a Saturday night … ok no. Actually it’s 3:15, but 10:15 sounds better right? Anyway I’m on this whole song title post title kick and whatever so. And y’know what, I need you to put however sad that sounds behind you, because I’ve just read something that you might want to check out: “You choose — triggering, tokenism or erasure: In your consumption of media, which is better–to be triggered, to be a token or to be erased?” Yeah. You’re right. It is too late to be thinking about that. Unfortunately my own – sadly extensive – media consumption, has of late left me wondering if maybe there wasn’t a cigar smoke and or asparagus tofu smoothie (whichever) filled room somewhere in Hollywood, where a group of really seriously white guys in Mad Men suits were working overtime to whitewash the media as we know it.  As in whitewash beyond the normal everyday level of whitewashing to which persons of color, educated women and members of the LGBT community have, sadly, become all too accustomed. And you know what, as odd media related thoughts of mine go, this one had a pretty precise starting point.

I was watching Justified, specifically the episode during which Raylan’s ex-wife Winona shows up at his door one night and without a word proceeds to pleasantly molest him. This seemed well, odd because I have an ex-wife and like everyone else I know with one of those, I’d frankly rather be tasked with fending off a massive invasion of alien, zombie, ferret, rapist, cannibals … while armed only with a butter knife, than re-associate myself.  So I wondered: “Is this something people in the south – in red states – do? Get divorced from people they actually still like? How weird would that be?” That’s when it hit me that I’d been having thoughts like that for a awhile, that the characters in the media I’d been consuming were increasingly alien to me culturally. And I don’t mean in an L Word, next neighborhood over way. I mean in a what they eat, what books they read, what music they listen to way.

What was hitting me was the realization that basically every new hour long drama I’d watched in a while had been peopled with, well, Red Staters, Republicans, Reagan Democrats (Simple farmers. People of the land. The common clay of the South and the new West. You know … morons). The list ran through my head: Sons of Anarchy, Walking Dead, Big Love, Breaking Bad, Shameless, True Blood, Friday Night Lights. There were a few Good Wife like exceptions that sprang to mind of course, but every time the thought popped up, the list got longer, expanded and wandered off into other media forms … I remembered that Brothers and Sisters existed, that AMC had announced a new show about an ex confederate soldier, noticed the inexplicable sidelining of the non-white actors on Hawaii Five-0 and noted that the producers of Nikita had clearly made the odd decision to make their show less and less about their Asian Nikita. Then while the memory of The Last Airbender and Prince of Persia were still fresh, Christopher Nolan up and cast this English dude as the decidedly Latino Bane. None of which adds up to a strokey beard meeting hatched conspiracy, I know. But it had me thinking. And one more week of Grace Park relegated to hot chick in bikini status would’ve at least turned into an angry ranty blog post type thing (yeah, I know, Grace Park, in scant swimwear, the shit we’re forced to complain about in this life, huh). Then I read that Tami Winfrey Harris piece and it turns out my tolerance threshold for poorly introduced media criticism is lower than my threshold for bigotry driven character creation, writing and casting. Who knew? Seriously, something about someone who clearly knows nothing about a particular genre forcefully commenting on it’s racial and gender politics alternately fascinates me and well, pisses me off to no end.

Maybe the particular level of annoyance you’re currently bearing witness too has to with having clicked open an article posing an interesting question based on a case there to be made only to find a fine question but said case left kinda un-made. But anyway, here I am, pissed at Hollywood but forced by a bad argument to defend it. And hey, It’s not like writing about race in the media from either angle is one of those doings that fills me with joy, i.e. limeade and peanut butter cookies (don’t judge). So what I’d like to do is start by giving Winfrey Harris a few pointers. First, when you’re picking examples, pick good shows. Picking crappy shows weakens your argument by making whatever you’re attempting to point out easier to pin on said example being crappy than on it being bigoted or sexist or homophobic. Second, don’t go after a genre unless you know something – well a lot – about that genre. Like you won’t find any cultural dissections of shows like Grey’s Anatomy here at 2112 because, your narrator does not, by and large watch shows like Grey’s Anatomy.

Saying: “During the hiatus of HBO’s True Blood, Renee, Paul and I have been exploring other representations of the urban fantasy genre–from book series to the teen angsty CW show Vampire Diaries. In doing so, we have confirmed what we already suspected: That is that the genre is notoriously bad at characterizations that are not of the white, straight, male variety. (Making it much like, y’know, every other genre.)” is mostly absurd. And it leaves a valid argument and an interesting and important question open to the too easy counter punches I’m going to be forced to throw at it in a few sentences.

You see following the aforementioned rules in this instance might have led away from accessing a genre based on the Vampire Diaries to the realization that the settings of the best shows, the premium dramas on FX, AMC, Showtime and HBO, are increasing less diverse, illiberal, less tolerant spaces. Or at least to examples like say the odd fact with three shows set in California to his credit, noted feminist and secular humanist Joss Whedon has only featured Hispanic leads in one show. The one set in outer space. And even leaving leads aside, Latinos were, mostly, non-existent on Buffy, Angel and Dollhouse.

The problem with that introduction, is that it picks the wrong target. There’s clearly a representation issue in Hollywood, ridiculously so on film and as I’ve pointed out more and more on television … But that is slightly less true on genre shows. Don’t get me wrong, the Angel writer’s room clearly struggled with Gunn for no other reason than his ethnicity and True Blood’s sadly struggle with Tara and with less than overwrought black women in general. Warehouse 13, Sanctuary (even post Kate) and Haven have all been distractingly light skinned. The women of Vampire Diaries aren’t exactly feminist icons, true. But by talking about it as representative of urban fantasy and science fiction, Winfrey Harris is mistakenly critiquing the genre that gave the world Dana Scully and Emma Hollis and Max Guevara and Willow Rosenberg … i.e. the source of most of the good characterizations of non-straight non-white males most people ever see in the media. Hawaii Five-0 for instance would not in fact be as offensive as it is if it weren’t for Lost and Battlestar Galactica respectively having so thoroughly demonstrated Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park’s currently underused talents. It’s simply the case that if you’re going to meet a black guy who’s a nuclear physicist rocket scientist or a Hispanic woman commanding anything other than maybe a drug cartel on a popular American television series, it’s probably going to be on a show of the Eureka and or V variety. The genre’s record isn’t perfect because its creators aren’t, but think about it this way, even the three conspicuously pale shows I mentioned earlier, clearly do a better than television on average job portraying their female characters.

Ok? Now before I go, it seems only fair to take a crack at answering the question this all started with: “In your consumption of media, which is better–to be triggered, to be a token or to be erased?” It’s an interesting question, but my answer is to reject the very notion that I have the choice to have a preference – even in the abstract. Mainstream books, movies and television shows are going to continue to do all three to me, regardless of which I’d prefer whether I like it or not because their creators and producers are essentially operating a monopoly. It’s so unlikely that Black Men, Asian Women or Gay Latino’s will stop consuming media en masse that, in the main, the only semi imagined “really seriously white guys” simply do not have to care about how the rest of us are portrayed and so, in the main, they don’t care.

Tags: Erasure, Justified, Tokenism, Triggering, Urban Fantasy, whitewashing