wingedbeast

Stuff Done Right: Episode 4 Representation

2015-01-06T03:02:25Z

Being that I swim deep in an ocean of privilege, I hesitated on this one. The only representation concern I personally have is that of atheism, which is problematic, but not nearly as problematic as other groups. But, I have a couple examples that I believe really do justice in representing groups that rarely get deserved representation.

I'm not going to focus on any one group, so this is going to be a bit scattered. Then again, I really don't want to claim that any one group is represented in full. Give a fiction a full cast of characters and you still can't fully represent any group. But, these are the examples that I think do the best with the task.

Firstly, we've got Elisa Maza. Detective Elisa Maza of the NYPD is the Gargoyles' human ally and, arguably, a human member of the Gargoyle's clan. A big difference between her and the 80s cartoon version of April Oneal is that Elisa Maza is never a damsel in distress.

Elisa Maza, also, has an African American mother and a Native American father. This is an important part of her character, that comes up at least twice in the series, and not in pat "and look how bad racism is" storylines. But, it is not the entirety of her character.

In terms of showing viewers an example of a woman being strong without sacrificing femininity (Elisa Maza is always both strong and feminine, without having to compromise either) and a person of color being a person with a different ethnicity rather than a different ethnicity expressed as a person, this is good representation, I think.

However, in a show that focuses on issues of bigotry, she doesn't experience much in the way of bigotry. Now, a kid's show has its limits, so this might be understandable. But, there are only two occasions that spring to my mind.

One time when she and a couple gargoyles found themselves on the lost island of Atlantis, where various sentient creatures such as gorgons and Cyclopes and minotaurs live, and she was suddenly the subject of anti-human bigotry in a turnabout of the normal conditions. The other was that Tony Dracon, who holds minor rank in organized crime and is generally a jerk anyway, had the sexist habit of calling Detective Maza "Sugar".

So, while I think she does a good job, a job done rather well because she's a character first and representation second, we need someone else who gives us a hint of what dealing with bigotry is like.

For that, I'm going to go to Cherry Littlebottom. For those of who haven't read Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (and you really should), I'll provide some background.

In the Discworld, the Dwarves have a different attitude with regards to sex and sexuality than we humans. All Dwarves are Dwarves. When two Dwarves fall in love, they are two Dwarves and what's going on under all that leather and chainmail is no business of anybody but those two. There's no distinctions made on the matter of sex. All Dwarves are referred to as "he".

On the one hand, this is nice. If you're born into Dwarven society, or adopted in as the case of Captain Carrot, regardless of what your biology is, you have an equal chance of being respected in whatever field you go into, and an equal chance of having respect as a homemaker.

On the other hand, it's a little like the Model T. You can be whatever gender you like, so long as it's male. That means taking part in stereotypical male pastimes like quaffing large amounts of beer, being rowdy, getting into bar fights, etc. If you're into that, that's all well and good. But, Cheery Littlebottom wasn't into that.

Cheery Littlebottom, who came from Uberwald and studied with the Alchemist's guild, had learned that humans have another option. So, Cheery changed name to Cherry and did something unheard of among Dwarves, adopted the feminine idenity and personal pronoun.

She wore makeup (only a little at first), wore a long skirt (chainmail, of course), and had her helmet modified so as to allow more adornments. Of course, she was still a dwarf, so she would never go without her axe and helmet and would certainly never shave or trim her beard. But, that didn't mean she couldn't have a pink axe and a braided beard.

It did mean that she would immediately, regardless of how quietly adopted this new identity and how much she wanted to do so without causing a stir, face bigotry from other Dwarves. They can't really say why it's so wrong. It's not like people didn't already know she had legs. But, now they were... there under a skirt!

Even Captain Carrot, otherwise unabashedly a good guy, initially expresses a kind of soft bigotry. You've probably heard the kind, the kind where they're technically free and he won't take away the right, but he really wishes she wouldn't... do that... in public like that. And, he's immediately shown to be in the wrong about the whole thing.

The bigotry towards Dwarven women is so strong that it becomes a driving force of one of the bad guys to squash this cultural movement towards Dwarven women. People hate Cherry not because of anything she does, but because of her self-identity. They hate her in a realistic way and she weathers that hatred with realistic, if not openly heroic aplomb.

To be clear, I don't think that Terry Pratchett intended Cherry Littlebottom to be a representation of transgender people, neither do I think she does so naturally. It's stated that Cherry is, biologically speaking, female. And, while it's not expressly state, I think that Terry Pratchett's intent is that those Dwarves who follow her into womanhood are also female. (Although, in my personal head-cannon, it's a mixed bag. It's still nobody else's business what's under all that leather and chainmail, regardless of the identity a Dwarf wishes to express with the leather and chainmail.)

I do, however, believe that Cherry Littlebottom is a good representation of people who's identities do not fit the pre-defined acceptable identities of a society. If the LGBTQ invites her in, she'd be a good addition. But, any identity that society deems dangerous or immoral (without actually causing any harm) could find an ally in Ms. Littlebottom.

To contrast for negative example, I'm going to go back to Gargoyles and look at Lexington. I like Lexington. He's a tech geek. He's not one of the strong Gargoyles. He's more nervous than the others. He's even tender. And, according to Greg Weisman, he's gay.

It's almost good... sort of. But, he's not said to be gay or shown to be interested in other male Gargoyles in the show. So, he's not really representing. A part of me also wonders if he isn't a bit of a stereotypical choice or if the decision to write him as gay didn't result in a bit of stereotyping. After all, he is smaller and less physically powerful.

That said, he's not as bad as the Super Friends. Let's see, we have Apache Chief... because regardless of his power that's his identity. We also have Samurai, who's only Samurai characteristic is that he's Japanese. Black Vulcan is... yeah, you get the point.

Still, DC did improve by the time we got to JLU's John Stewart and the related show Static Shock.

Now, of what I've done so far, this is where I'm most certain I've gotten something wrong or missed some essential detail. So, I'm not only going to invite comment, but correction as well. Please.

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Stuff Done Right Episode 3: Forgiveness

2014-12-08T23:44:27Z

Trigger Warning: This discussion will include topics of forced forgiveness and rape. I will give an additional begin and end warning for those who wish to skip past the topic of rape.

Forgiveness is a touchy subject for me, largely because of the calls to forgive that, to me, tend to seem centered on the notion that it's a victim's responsibility, for whatever reasons. I hate that notion with a passion. It triggers very bad things in me and I'm willing to bet that I'm not the only one.

For this episode, I have three episodes, each from a different show, on a spectrum from the wrong way to handle it to the less wrong way to, quite possibly, the healthiest expression of forgiveness I've seen in fiction. Each of these episodes will include multiple spoilers.

[Begin Trigger Warning: Rape]

In the show Joan of Arcadia, one sub thread was that the main character's mother, Helen, had been raped in her past. Wisely, the writers did not make this an overwhelming element of Helen's character. She was strong, intelligent, concerned, and caring. This was just one element, but one that had its own scars that she had to deal with. I think that much was done well and handled the topic with sensitivity.

In the episode "Common Thread", a preist calls Helen on behalf of the man who had raped her some 25 years prior. That man is now dying and wishes to apologize.

That was the first wrong thing done. The man's apology waits until he is visibly weak and soon to die, and embedded within a religion that gives benefit to attaining forgiveness. The man has nothing to lose and, in his mind, only potential gain for getting Helen to forgive him.

Seeking forgiveness can be selfish. That, in and of itself, isn't a bad thing if it's only an element that is firmly balanced with a concern for those one has wronged.

Helen does not, in her first meeting with the man, accept the apology or forgive the man. His reaction is to begin to cry and start some kind of spasm related to his illness. Very quickly, Helen is ushered out of the room and is left with the priest, who gives her a look that very easily reads as attempting to hide his disappointment with her.

At the end of the episode, Helen makes another trip to the hospital to see the man and forgive him, but finds out that he passed away before she had the chance, leaving her feeling guilty.

There's a lot of wrong, here. I find the man's emotional guilt to be too easily faked, the priest potentially too easily manipulated, so I don't really believe the rapist to actually feel penitent for what he had done.

Moreover, I find the notion that Helen had a moral responsibility to forgive, on short notice with the ticking clock of the man's mortality, to be a horrific notion of how forgiveness should work.

Helen should be the one to decide and adjust her timetable of when/if she might find it in herself to forgive. If her attacker was short on time, that only meant that he should have gotten an earlier start on his attempts.

[End Trigger Warning]

The rest of this episode won't touch on that. And, we'll move onto somewhat lighter fair, Xena.

"The Rheingold" deals with a past&present episode of Xena. In the past, Xena manipulates Odin and a Valkyrie in order to gain access to a special kind of gold in order to acquire power. In the present, Xena, Gabrielle, and various Norse people are dealing with a monster, Grindle.

The spoiler is that the Valkyrie that Xena had manipulated had become the monster and that Xena's means of defeating Grindl was not to kill the beast but to loudly beg for forgiveness.

This is less wrong than the previous example on the basis that we've seen a lot of Xena by this point. We've seen genuine guilt and a concern for her victims that goes beyond simply desiring that they take her guilt away.

But, there are two points. Forgiveness isn't that easy. Xena doesn't make that same display towards Grindle/Grinhilda, even in token. Xena's entire bid for forgiveness, even in the interest of saving her victim from the pain of her own causing, was repeatedly yelling "forgive me"... Let's call that a less-than-satisfying forgiveness narrative.

While it may be powerful, forgiveness of others doesn't have that particular power where giving someone else forgiveness means you stop being a monster. I've found that a large part of what impacts me isn't forgiving other people what they did, but forgiving myself the lack of power to stop them.

This is all, of course, acknowledging that the show didn't have a lot of time to carry all of this out and that the episode wasn't so much about forgiveness so much as it was about past guilt and current pain.

That said, there's an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender that I want you to take a long look at.

I promised a future episode with more detail on the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Southern Raiders", here it is.

This is towards the latter half of the final season. Zuko has grown out his hair and joined Team Avatar. Katara hasn't been too accepting of the new Firebending Master in their midst.

And why should she? He'd convinced her of his redemption just half a season prior. She was ready to use the special spirit-water she had gotten from a spirit oasis at the North Pole to heal his scar. After all that he had done, from kidnapping her to burning down villages trying to find her to kidnapping Aang and nearly getting him killed, she was ready to forgive and heal Zuko. Instead, at the first opportunity, he turned around and side with the Fire Nation, which got Aang a shot of lightning through his back.

That's a lot of good reason to both hold a grudge and, quite reasonably, be suspicious of Zuko's will to hold onto his good intentions.

Thing done right #1. At no point does Zuko demand, expect, or, in any way, pressure Katara into forgiving him or going easier on him.

That continues into the episode proper, which starts with a Fire Nation attack and Zuko, nigh single handedly, fending it off so the team can make a safe getaway. At camp that night, while everybody else is praising Zuko for being a hero, Katara ruins the moment by bringing up what Zuko had done to them, what the Fire Nation had done to them, that the Fire Nation had taken her mother from them.

Still, nary a drop of pressure on Katara.

Zuko's response is to ask Sokka for information on what happened to his and Katara's mother. Finding out that she was killed in a raid, Zuko offers Katara the chance to find the man who killed her mother.

Aang's reaction... can be taken in two different ways.

Aang allows Katara and Zuko to borrow Appa for the trip, but tells Katara that what she should do is, upon confronting the captain that killed her mother, release her anger, let it go, and forgive the captain.

I want to stress that I'm not opposed to characters *choosing* to do this. I'm not opposed to that being an option. And, in that sense, I think Aang gave some good advice... poorly prefaced. The problem is that it can also come off as a command, an expectation, or some form of moral obligation.

That in mind, I still think this is a thing done right. When dealing with anger over past wrong doing, it's a part of the experience to have people give this kind of advice/expectation/moral obligation, often with little differentiation between the three. So, some representation of the sometimes good/sometimes bad advice is good.

Flashbacks en route show that Katara didn't just lose her mother, she was there to personally witness her mother's murder at the hands of a Firebender... that was looking for a Waterbender... that her mother admitted to being in order to protect Katara. That is a lot of pain for one child, no older than five, to deal with. And, one of her present-day comments "I'm not the weak little girl I was back then" shows that a lot of her anger was at herself, for being a five year old back then.

When she reaches the base of the Southern Raiders, she bloodbends a Fire Nation soldier in order to get information. Bloodbending, for those unaware, is when a Waterbender (someone with the power to telekinetically manipulate water) bends the water in someone's blood.

Imagine, just for a moment, your muscles painfully tightening and jerking around, seizing up in painful positions that you can do nothing about. Bloodbending is not a pleasant thing to happen to you. In this moment, driven by this pain, Katara is not a pleasant person. She does have the possibility of becoming a real evil in this world.

The captain, the murderer of a woman who was giving herself up for capture, is now retired. He's old, living with his mother, miserable, and pathetic. When Katara confronts him, he's even ready to let her kill his own mother so he can live. All of this just angers Katara more.

In the midst of down pouring rain, Katara the Waterbending Master displays the kind of power that could fell armies. She terrifies the old captain. Then, with shards of ice inches from his face, she stops. She cannot bring herself to kill him. Instead, she screams... then walks away.

Did Katara release her anger? I don't know. Neither does she. She says it, herself. She doesn't know if she was too strong to kill him, or not strong enough. That is a legitimate question.

She does specify that she did not forgive him. The man who murdered her mother may not have any vengeance coming his way. But, neither is he forgiven. She may never forgive him. And, that's okay. She's not held back by this or subject to any other kind of emotional, sociological, or psychological penalty.

She does, however, forgive Zuko. No deals made. No requests made. No pressure from anybody. Just the closure on a great pain and the fact that Zuko respected her feelings enough to try to help her get the closure she needed in her own way.

It may seem odd that the half-hour episode gets so much more time devoted to the description than the two full-hour episodes. But, this episode does so much right. It shows both sides of the forgiveness equation in Katara and Zuko. It shows the pain that past wounds can still cause years later. It shows the well meaning advice that can often be trite instead of wise. It shows the potential for going down a bad path.

It also shows that the healthy path is not so narrow as that well meaning advice often claims.

I'd also like to give an honorable mention for the Farscape episode "The Way We Weren't." Forgiveness isn't explicitly mentioned, though it can be interpreted. Though, this is more about the pain of guilt and working towards a way of processing and acknowledging guilt that is healthy, rather than self-destructive.

As always, comments and thoughts are encouraged.

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Stuff Done Right Episode 2: Angst

2014-11-29T18:01:04Z

The common go-to for making a teen heart-throb, someone's got to be the tough, angsty one. And, it's so easily done wrong. The problem is similar to that of comic relief, in that angst done wrong is just annoying.

For the positive examples, I have Zuko (yes, I will be going back to that well often), Nick Knight from Forever Knight (a show that I hope doesn't date me horribly), and I'll even include Josh from Being Human.

I think that there are two parts you have to keep in mind when writing angst. The first, of course, is that there has to be a reason for the angst. Zuko's reasons change, throughout the series, but they start out with his father's emotional abuse, followed by his father purposely burning him followed by a banishment. Zuko wants what he cannot have, his father's affection. (Simple explanation for a complex character, I know, but it works for now.

Josh is a classic werewolf, full moons turn him into a monster. That and he simply doesn't have the social graces that Aiden has to help him take difficulties with grace. But, hey, classic monster werewolf, big green hulk, those are both good reasons.

The second part is that there has to be a part of the angsted character's life that isn't about the angst. Unlike what we might see in certain shows or movies, people who brood in their angst aren't usually trying to get the world to see how angsty they are. Angst is fear, after all, and it feels like weakness. So, a lot of the time, people with angst want to cover it up, feel something else, smile once in a while.

Zuko has a mission to focus on... then trying to build a life as an exile... then trying to fit into a Fire Nation that... Okay, it feeds back into his angst, but the point is he's doing something, not just angsting. Josh cares about people, makes dinners for a semi-normal experience, and cares about people.

Nick Knight makes a good contrast against my negative example, Edward Cullen. Nick, in his past, killed people without maintaining the "they were evil" excuse and has a genuine guilt over that. Edward's only guilt is about his bare existence at all. Nick is an officer of the law keeping to that duty. Edward seems to have two modes, angstified and controlling, and the angst seems both too showy and too shallow to be believable.

(By the way, if you want to look over some good deconstruction of Twilight, you can find it here http://www.anamardoll.com/ )

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Stuff Done Right Episode 1: Comic Relief.

2014-11-23T01:41:20Z

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, so here's my attempt at a blog.

Because we all have things to complain about, particularly when it comes to fiction, my first post will be the start of a series, what I'm going to call Stuff Done Right. The premise is to discuss certain ideas, tropes, story lines that have often been done poorly, aggravatingly, unhealthily, highlighting the parts where they've been done, in my opinion, right. There will be some contrast, so complaints will be had. And, I invite people to disagree with me on these topics.

To start off...

Stuff Done Right Episode 1: Comic Relief.

Examples of comic relief done well include Columbo, Patrick Troughton's and Matt Smith's Doctors (Tom Baker's defies classification), Broadway of Gargoyles, and Sokka from Avatar: The Last Airbender. (By the way, please check out http://amarie24.dreamwidth.org/ for a deconstruction of the A:tLA series.)

I think this poses a good range of comic relief characters done well (and, yes, this means that a main character can be comic relief within their own series). They each have slightly different ways of doing what comic relief does, relieving the tension through comedy. And, they each scale differently on the question of how much they're in on their own joke.

Some make you think them less intelligent, some make you think them less sane, and some make you think that they're smart and sane and just not good at paying attention. But, I think the unifying quality is competence. You cannot deny that any of these characters are completely competent in their strengths that are invaluable for their respective roles.

For instance, let's look at two shots of Broadway from the same episode.

Here we have a big, goofy kid of a character. The context of this shot is that he's watching a movie, so big goofy kid is a good description of Broadway... at times.

This is the same character in the same episode with just a change of context. That's him crushing a future-style gun in one hand while holding the owner of said gun in the other. That isn't unthinking anger on his face, that's knowing anger with a purpose.

To contrast this against comic relief that didn't work we have...

... a character that gets into trouble and gets in the way.

That's a quick (stop laughing, please) jot of my thoughts on the matter. What do you think?

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