Black Hat Brigade: Episode 16
Oct. 7th, 2015 01:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastEstablishing shot: An ornate mirror displaying a swirling cloud. The camera pulls back to show a smallish conference room. The character known as The Evil Queen stands beside.
Evil Queen: Appearances matter. We try to tell people to look beyond the surface. We tell our children that it doesn't matter what's on the outside. But, this is a reality, particularly for women. The ability to empathize with a character is influenced, heavily, by easily standardized visual cues.
Evil Queen: Mirror Mirror, this is par. Please, the bit about a scar.
The mirror's swirling cloud opens up to flash over pictures of various scars.
Evil Queen: Scars that touch the eye or dipslay the teeth are standard visual cues to "threat" or "bad".
Evil Queen: Mirror Mirror with great visage, show me the pre-arranged image.
The mirror's swirling cloud closes in then expands to show an image of The Evil Queen on the left and a picture of Snow White on the left.
Evil Queen: You'll notice that I'm drawn to be attractive, except for the dress and the stern expression. Ms. White is shown in a very soft expression, doe-eyes, everything to indicate safe and "innocent".
Azog: Is this what this Brigade does? Fashion advice from humans?
Evil Queen: If we want the sympathetic attention of audiences and readers, we need to make some basic fashion choices.
Banzai fails to hold back a high-pitched chortle.
Reepichee: Now, now. We could at least be polite.
Evil Queen: Excuse me. Is there something the matter?
Scar: To be honest. For those of us of the furred persuasion there is... humans lack for fashion credibility.
Evil Queen: And why is that?
Scar: Let's see. How could I put this tactfully?
Banzai: Your entire species has the mange!
Scar: Perhaps not like that.
Banzai: Please. I know that hyenas are a very rare example of a mammal species in which the female shows off her penis to attract a male, but human mange-love is just weird!
Reepicheep: She does have a point. Attraction tends to be about cues to health, fertility, and sex-identification characteristics. It's humans that add on an extra layer that's all about wealth and, as they say, selective mange upon a species with a disturbingly sparse fur coverage in the first place.
Reepicheep: Asking us to alter ourselves for a human audience to easily find sympathetic... well, that's a grave injustice and what we're supposed to be about avoiding.
Evil Queen: I get it. I do. If it were my choice, I would have not lived in a world where I did not have to take a supernatural source of information and wisdom and use it primarily to check, daily, for any young ladies around that might win out at patriarchy, despite all my efforts to stay in power.
Evil Queen: That said, it is important that we understand these matters. This is part of how the injustice is done to us. When typically "bad" character types, such as Igor, are presented as "good", the visual cues are altered just along these lines.
Azog: I think we get that. Aside from a cliched and unsustainable leadership model, I am coded evil through my pale skin and scars. That may make it harder for some to empathize with me, but that's not fixed with getting rid of the scars or giving me wider eyes. Just an understanding of war. Honoring service in war without explicitly honoring the scars is like loving soldiers only when the cost of war is completely unseen and treating them as "not real troops" when they speak out against your positions.
Azog: The trick isn't appearance, but perspective.
Evil Queen: That is all very nice, but also very pie-in-the-sky. A nigh-global culture that reads these visual cues very similarly is a reality. And, I don't see that we should make it difficult on them.
Scar: I don't see that we should make it particularly easy on them, either. Subversions are already popular. Enchanted and Frozen both incorporated subversions of typical relationship tropes. Some of the best movies include multiple stories from multiple perspectives to produce moral questions without clear answer. Let us subvert these visual cues.
Evil Queen: I'll wish you all the luck, but I don't think that there's much hope for it. Appearances, regardless of all the ways they don't matter, still matter.
Reepicheep: I... will... agree to an extent. But, speaking as one who is so often limited, in my canon, by the expecations of others, I shouldn't change myself to meet those expectations, not when I'm never going to win that.
Reepicheep: I shouldn't speak ill of you for your efforts to do so, if you so choose. People should feel free to choose their appearance as they please. I do wear this hat and this rapier, in part, because I enjoy something of a classic "hero" look.
Scar: That said, when given without the expectation that I will change to meet the alternate visual cues, I should like to know these visual cues. I may never choose to be anything but the coded gay character that I am, but I would like to know which cues I'm giving... if only to play with them.
Evil Queen: Appearances matter. We try to tell people to look beyond the surface. We tell our children that it doesn't matter what's on the outside. But, this is a reality, particularly for women. The ability to empathize with a character is influenced, heavily, by easily standardized visual cues.
Evil Queen: Mirror Mirror, this is par. Please, the bit about a scar.
The mirror's swirling cloud opens up to flash over pictures of various scars.
Evil Queen: Scars that touch the eye or dipslay the teeth are standard visual cues to "threat" or "bad".
Evil Queen: Mirror Mirror with great visage, show me the pre-arranged image.
The mirror's swirling cloud closes in then expands to show an image of The Evil Queen on the left and a picture of Snow White on the left.
Evil Queen: You'll notice that I'm drawn to be attractive, except for the dress and the stern expression. Ms. White is shown in a very soft expression, doe-eyes, everything to indicate safe and "innocent".
Azog: Is this what this Brigade does? Fashion advice from humans?
Evil Queen: If we want the sympathetic attention of audiences and readers, we need to make some basic fashion choices.
Banzai fails to hold back a high-pitched chortle.
Reepichee: Now, now. We could at least be polite.
Evil Queen: Excuse me. Is there something the matter?
Scar: To be honest. For those of us of the furred persuasion there is... humans lack for fashion credibility.
Evil Queen: And why is that?
Scar: Let's see. How could I put this tactfully?
Banzai: Your entire species has the mange!
Scar: Perhaps not like that.
Banzai: Please. I know that hyenas are a very rare example of a mammal species in which the female shows off her penis to attract a male, but human mange-love is just weird!
Reepicheep: She does have a point. Attraction tends to be about cues to health, fertility, and sex-identification characteristics. It's humans that add on an extra layer that's all about wealth and, as they say, selective mange upon a species with a disturbingly sparse fur coverage in the first place.
Reepicheep: Asking us to alter ourselves for a human audience to easily find sympathetic... well, that's a grave injustice and what we're supposed to be about avoiding.
Evil Queen: I get it. I do. If it were my choice, I would have not lived in a world where I did not have to take a supernatural source of information and wisdom and use it primarily to check, daily, for any young ladies around that might win out at patriarchy, despite all my efforts to stay in power.
Evil Queen: That said, it is important that we understand these matters. This is part of how the injustice is done to us. When typically "bad" character types, such as Igor, are presented as "good", the visual cues are altered just along these lines.
Azog: I think we get that. Aside from a cliched and unsustainable leadership model, I am coded evil through my pale skin and scars. That may make it harder for some to empathize with me, but that's not fixed with getting rid of the scars or giving me wider eyes. Just an understanding of war. Honoring service in war without explicitly honoring the scars is like loving soldiers only when the cost of war is completely unseen and treating them as "not real troops" when they speak out against your positions.
Azog: The trick isn't appearance, but perspective.
Evil Queen: That is all very nice, but also very pie-in-the-sky. A nigh-global culture that reads these visual cues very similarly is a reality. And, I don't see that we should make it difficult on them.
Scar: I don't see that we should make it particularly easy on them, either. Subversions are already popular. Enchanted and Frozen both incorporated subversions of typical relationship tropes. Some of the best movies include multiple stories from multiple perspectives to produce moral questions without clear answer. Let us subvert these visual cues.
Evil Queen: I'll wish you all the luck, but I don't think that there's much hope for it. Appearances, regardless of all the ways they don't matter, still matter.
Reepicheep: I... will... agree to an extent. But, speaking as one who is so often limited, in my canon, by the expecations of others, I shouldn't change myself to meet those expectations, not when I'm never going to win that.
Reepicheep: I shouldn't speak ill of you for your efforts to do so, if you so choose. People should feel free to choose their appearance as they please. I do wear this hat and this rapier, in part, because I enjoy something of a classic "hero" look.
Scar: That said, when given without the expectation that I will change to meet the alternate visual cues, I should like to know these visual cues. I may never choose to be anything but the coded gay character that I am, but I would like to know which cues I'm giving... if only to play with them.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-07 02:39 pm (UTC)There's the expected difficulty persuading beings who have -earned- their scars, and are proud of them, that they need to appear cute and sweet so that people will like them. (Also, it's pretty obvious how Azog got those. How did Scar get his, I wonder?)
Also, amused at Scar's and Banzai's perspective here. Fashion? From humans? Really now. xD
no subject
Date: 2015-10-07 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-09 01:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-09 01:36 am (UTC)But, he's also intended to be not a total good guy, by my understanding.
For instance, Scar is never coded as a badass, at least not of the physical variety that would earn a scar over his eye. It's pretty much there to be off-putting and make him look like a bad guy.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-09 02:22 am (UTC)It's been a very long time since I saw the Lion King, so I can't say what my original impression of Scar was.
I do like that you remembered that hyenas are matriarchal. I was also delighted by that in Ursula Vernon's "Digger"--the hyena-people are matriarchal "primitive" hunters. Unlike whatever ignoramus wrote up D&D's gnolls...
no subject
Date: 2016-03-09 02:50 am (UTC)But, I also see a lot of intent focused on using a scar or some kind of mar touching the eye as a sign of being a bad guy.
And, for Digger... yeah, I'd heard about it, then later I'd come across it and it wasn't until a specific point that I realized it was the same thing I'd heard about. Really is a well done story.