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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2nlMAU8:
lazaefair:
bomberqueen17:
ms-daphne replied to your post “I never did write anything original during November. I got as far as…”
I think it would be an interesting storytelling excercise for like all of hollywood to do this for one year. One solid year of movies being 17% male. You know, as an exercise. A cinematic etude.
Fuck yes.
Like I said, it doesn’t have to like, be a Thing. Nobody’s ever got to mention it. “What do you mean, there’s no men in this film? Chris Hemsworth’s got his shirt off in it for like, five whole minutes! There’s a whole long scene where we watch him work out!” “He dies in the second scene.” “Yes but he’s so important to the emotional arc of the film, you know?”
It’d be neat if they did this with race, too–
“What? There are totally white people in this film. Our Hero and her lithe, feisty-but-submissive Love Interest/Sidekick Boy [who will either later die to fuel her woman-pain OR will be her trophy at the end] go to the exotic, distant Suburbs to meet up with the Mystical Caucasian! Her husband prepares them traditional foods [there’s a beautifully-shot scene where our protagonists struggle to respectfully eat hot dogs suspended in gelatin and unseasoned boiled chicken breasts with no salt, played for laughs] and then imparts plot-crucial Mystical Knowledge to them, whereupon they flee, and the Suburbs are destroyed by the pursuing Big Bad. These characters are never mentioned again except in a desultory flashback where the Hero is given renewed resolve to defeat the Big Bad because of the horrible tragedy of what it did to the Suburbs.”
But what do I know.
That point about the food being played for laughs and exotica…those PoC feels, man.
Movies are slightly better about that specific trope these days, but only because white American people have so thoroughly, comprehensively appropriated non-Western food via foodie/gourmet culture that it’s now viewed as a mark of coolness and sophistication for a white character to nonchalantly consume non-Western food. But still, no actual PoC are necessary for the experience. (I’m thinking the larb scene in Spider-Man: Homecoming.)
Inverting those tropes is an excellent idea, is what I’m saying. I need to keep this in my back pocket for when I get my shit together and start making films.
Yes– we’ve moved on from exotification into appropriation, and while it’s less… openly icky?… it’s just a different flavor of icky.
Listen, one of the ancestral foodstuffs on my family’s yearly Easter table was a, brace yourself, Jell-O based salad with shredded carrots. Lime Jell-O, as I recall. The recipe died with my grandmother but it’s a thing. (We also had that salad with canned mandarin oranges and marshmallows in it, served as a side dish not a dessert, so. My mother did not cook that way, but my grandma sure did.) I’m That Kind of White Ppl! I know it! I gotta own it. I unashamedly ate the hell out of that stuff as a kid. I’d eat it again, I have no goddamn sense, this is my genetic legacy. (If I go somewhere and they have the marshmallow salad I always take some and am always like self, this is not really food, but it doesn’t matter because I am not listening to the lecture I have already eaten the marshmallows. I can’t help it. It’s labeled salad for chrissakes. it’s got coconut shreds in it. candied fruit and shit. a walnut or two for deniability. i can’t control myself. it’s disgusting. god, maybe i can get my sister to make it for christmas. NO)
We need more #ownvoices media, for damn sure, because nobody’s going to undo the weird distorted funhouse-mirror culture that white supremacist media has given us like someone who actually has a different POV. I liked Riz Ahmed’s point about how calling it “diversity” makes it sound like it’s an optional extra condiment, while “representation” is much more accurately a descriptor– trying to make media look more like the world really does, in the hopes of undoing this weird cultural distortion. What I’d love to see is a policy that if you’re telling a story set in a time and a place, you have to then use the actual demographics of that place in your casting. New York City 1935? Look up the nearest census and the city directory; your cast has to be those same percentages. Your crowd scenes? 51% women, 39% African-American, 25% over 40, whatever the real demographics are you have to make that happen. And go from there, see what results. (Sure, sure, you’ve got to understand that a white dude is probably gonna have a white mom, etc., but also think, Black people have Black friends, how weird is it for you to have one sole token Black person who only has white friends??? Own the distortion, there, and think it through.)
But there’s also an important space for straight-up trope inversion to call attention to the damage that’s been done. OK fine, 17% women is the standard average in Hollywood movies? Now we have to do 17% men. See how weird that looks? You can still tell a story, but you’re going to understand that it’s a distorted story. Try it for a while and then go back to your old faves and see them with a new eye.
I really want to focus on thinking about what kind of characters are deemed disposable, too. Who gets to die in the background of the scene and be reduced to at most a “what a shame” moment later, or the tic in the hero’s jaw as she surveys the damage?
Damn skippy I’m killing off the white dude you thought was gonna be the protagonist.
(Your picture was not posted)
lazaefair:
bomberqueen17:
ms-daphne replied to your post “I never did write anything original during November. I got as far as…”
I think it would be an interesting storytelling excercise for like all of hollywood to do this for one year. One solid year of movies being 17% male. You know, as an exercise. A cinematic etude.
Fuck yes.
Like I said, it doesn’t have to like, be a Thing. Nobody’s ever got to mention it. “What do you mean, there’s no men in this film? Chris Hemsworth’s got his shirt off in it for like, five whole minutes! There’s a whole long scene where we watch him work out!” “He dies in the second scene.” “Yes but he’s so important to the emotional arc of the film, you know?”
It’d be neat if they did this with race, too–
“What? There are totally white people in this film. Our Hero and her lithe, feisty-but-submissive Love Interest/Sidekick Boy [who will either later die to fuel her woman-pain OR will be her trophy at the end] go to the exotic, distant Suburbs to meet up with the Mystical Caucasian! Her husband prepares them traditional foods [there’s a beautifully-shot scene where our protagonists struggle to respectfully eat hot dogs suspended in gelatin and unseasoned boiled chicken breasts with no salt, played for laughs] and then imparts plot-crucial Mystical Knowledge to them, whereupon they flee, and the Suburbs are destroyed by the pursuing Big Bad. These characters are never mentioned again except in a desultory flashback where the Hero is given renewed resolve to defeat the Big Bad because of the horrible tragedy of what it did to the Suburbs.”
But what do I know.
That point about the food being played for laughs and exotica…those PoC feels, man.
Movies are slightly better about that specific trope these days, but only because white American people have so thoroughly, comprehensively appropriated non-Western food via foodie/gourmet culture that it’s now viewed as a mark of coolness and sophistication for a white character to nonchalantly consume non-Western food. But still, no actual PoC are necessary for the experience. (I’m thinking the larb scene in Spider-Man: Homecoming.)
Inverting those tropes is an excellent idea, is what I’m saying. I need to keep this in my back pocket for when I get my shit together and start making films.
Yes– we’ve moved on from exotification into appropriation, and while it’s less… openly icky?… it’s just a different flavor of icky.
Listen, one of the ancestral foodstuffs on my family’s yearly Easter table was a, brace yourself, Jell-O based salad with shredded carrots. Lime Jell-O, as I recall. The recipe died with my grandmother but it’s a thing. (We also had that salad with canned mandarin oranges and marshmallows in it, served as a side dish not a dessert, so. My mother did not cook that way, but my grandma sure did.) I’m That Kind of White Ppl! I know it! I gotta own it. I unashamedly ate the hell out of that stuff as a kid. I’d eat it again, I have no goddamn sense, this is my genetic legacy. (If I go somewhere and they have the marshmallow salad I always take some and am always like self, this is not really food, but it doesn’t matter because I am not listening to the lecture I have already eaten the marshmallows. I can’t help it. It’s labeled salad for chrissakes. it’s got coconut shreds in it. candied fruit and shit. a walnut or two for deniability. i can’t control myself. it’s disgusting. god, maybe i can get my sister to make it for christmas. NO)
We need more #ownvoices media, for damn sure, because nobody’s going to undo the weird distorted funhouse-mirror culture that white supremacist media has given us like someone who actually has a different POV. I liked Riz Ahmed’s point about how calling it “diversity” makes it sound like it’s an optional extra condiment, while “representation” is much more accurately a descriptor– trying to make media look more like the world really does, in the hopes of undoing this weird cultural distortion. What I’d love to see is a policy that if you’re telling a story set in a time and a place, you have to then use the actual demographics of that place in your casting. New York City 1935? Look up the nearest census and the city directory; your cast has to be those same percentages. Your crowd scenes? 51% women, 39% African-American, 25% over 40, whatever the real demographics are you have to make that happen. And go from there, see what results. (Sure, sure, you’ve got to understand that a white dude is probably gonna have a white mom, etc., but also think, Black people have Black friends, how weird is it for you to have one sole token Black person who only has white friends??? Own the distortion, there, and think it through.)
But there’s also an important space for straight-up trope inversion to call attention to the damage that’s been done. OK fine, 17% women is the standard average in Hollywood movies? Now we have to do 17% men. See how weird that looks? You can still tell a story, but you’re going to understand that it’s a distorted story. Try it for a while and then go back to your old faves and see them with a new eye.
I really want to focus on thinking about what kind of characters are deemed disposable, too. Who gets to die in the background of the scene and be reduced to at most a “what a shame” moment later, or the tic in the hero’s jaw as she surveys the damage?
Damn skippy I’m killing off the white dude you thought was gonna be the protagonist.
(Your picture was not posted)
