Posts tagged the politics of representation
TV taught me how to feel Now real life has no appeal
It appeared as if Jenny died and I pursed my lips and thought “She better get brought back to life before the end of this episode or they’ll be able to hear me screaming about the Bury Your Gays trope from Los Angeles to Reykjavik.” Fortunately, she does.
(via themarysue)
The casting of Cumberbatch was a mistake on the part of the producers. I am not being critical of the actor or his talent, just the casting
- Star Trek actor Garrett Wang is coolly generating a discussion with his fans on the whitewashing in Star Trek Into Darkness on his twitter page. (via racebending)
WELP!!!!!!!!
You got folks IN THE SYSTEM saying Curdlesnatch shouldn’t have fucking been there.
NO EXCUSES.
(via sourcedumal)
(via witchpieceoftoast)
IDK how casting Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan isn’t disrespectful to Gene Roddenberry tbh.
That man fought networks tooth and nail to have people of different races on his show. He fought long and hard to have an interracial kiss on TV.
My grandmother does not like Sci-Fi, but you better believe her ass was watching Star Trek, you know why? Because it was one of the few places you could see a black woman on TV. And she had an important job! She was important! She wasn’t just in the background.
Shit, as fake and hokey as Chekov’s accent was, he made sure there was a russian on the show, why? BECAUSE HIS VERSION OF THE FUTURE WAS ONE OF DIVERSITY AND PEOPLE GETTING ALONG KINDA SORTA.
NOT LIKE THE OTHER TREKS TRIED TO PRESERVE THAT MESSAGE
OH
WAIT
THEY
DID
(No I don’t know about the dude doing the Blue Steel back there, I barely remember Enterprise it’s boring)
“It’s about the actors performance.”
MAAAN, fuck that noise.
No, it’s not, there are HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of actors out there of Indian descent. You’re telling me that Binglebangle Coochiebutt was better than all of them? Show me the tapes, I gotta see that. Show me them auditions that I’m pretty sure they didn’t even do because casting a white dude is easier than being not a bastard.
People of color already struggle when it comes to seeing ourselves in the media, and before you go “But he’s a baaaad guy.” No one is saying that PoC can’t be cast as bad guys. It’s that we’re cast as the same kind of bad guys each and every fucking time. Mindless, one note, stereotypical.
Khan was different, he was smart, he was strong, he was cunning, he was layered. He garnered the respect of his enemies he was that fucking great. AND HE WAS BROWN. AWESOME SAUCE YEEEEEAAAAAH.
But nope, let’s cast a white dude because who gives a shit about diversity. HAHAHAA WE HONOR U GENE RODDENBERRY BY WHITEWASHING.
P.S I’m just gonna link this cause shut up I do what i want.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/01/showbiz/tv/tv-kids-self-esteem
(via irony-rocks)
elementary’s continuous avoidance of sexualizing women’s bodies when revealed onscreen consistently amazes me thank you so fucking much
(via bellamyyoung)
one tiny thing that just struck me:
How far the show went out of its way to make it clear that Holmes wasn’t sexually pressuring Irene. He offered her his “bet,” and I can imagine a zillion other shows that just would have left it there as a sexy “edgy” flirtation, but no - Holmes stopped himself in the middle of the flirt to make it clear that he was not conditioning his silence about her thefts on her going on a date with him.
Similarly, when he came to see her after she refused to go out with him again, obviously someone somewhere was afraid he’d look like a stalker, and so he began his speech by making it very clear that he understood it was her right to refuse him - I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a show actually spell that out in words before, because we’re all supposed to understand that the romantic couple is meant to be and therefore all’s fair, etc etc.
giandujakiss [x]
in a media landscape where men pressuring women and violating their boundaries is portrayed as natural in many ~innocent and romantic~ relationships and pretty much obligatory in ~edgy dangerous~ dynamics, I still love this to ABSOLUTE PIECES
(via mswyrr)
(via irony-rocks)
CAN I JUST
Guys, Elementary’s Irene Adler was a COMPLETE opposite of BBC’s Irene.
BBC Irene is first presented as this cunning, intelligent, independent and sexy woman who confused Sherlock with her nakedness. She ‘beat’ Sherlock and manipulated the Holmes brothers like a violin, proving herself their equal. But then we find out that all along she’d been with Moriarty as a semi-pawn, and all her planning had actually been Moriarty’s.
None of the genius was hers, she only got the information through her ~womanly wiles~ and required Moriarty to help her with her plans. So unhappy with how that turned out. Not to mention the very ick lesbian-cured-by-a-man bit, where her love for him betrays her in the most ridiculous way with the worst pun I’d ever heard (SHER-locked indeed, jesus fucking christ). The ending of course, as we all know, is her on her knees in some sandy supposedly Middle-Eastern nowhere, about to be beheaded of all things, and Sherlock swooping in to save the damsel. *SEVERE EYE ROLL*
BUT IN ELEMENTARY
Irene is first presented as a victim of Moriarty, a pawn of his that he manipulated to shatter Sherlock and destroy his morale. She has been mentally-fucked with, she is a shell of her former self, she is a woman without agency in this battle between two men. Then in a complete turnaround plot twist, it was Irene’s nakedness that betrayed her and gave Sherlock clarity to her real involvement with Moriarty, and later on, she IS Moriarty. All of Moriarty’s plans and genius and insidious intellect has been hers all along, and to quote “As if men had a monopoly on murder.” (you’re an evil bitch Irene, but goddamn I love you). And in the end she didn’t need rescuing by him, he needed rescuing from her by the lovely and incredibly talented Joan ‘Badass’ Watson.
It was JOAN that saw her weakness and took her down like a ton of bricks because NO ONE calls her a mascot and goddamn gets away with it. Oh and no one fucks with her BFF either. So yes, Elementary’s Irene was also in love with Sherlock, but their love made them weak for each other, almost a stalemate. It took Joan to break that unhealthy relationship and give Sherlock his life, and his focus, back to him.
Then he rightfully acknowledged Joan’s badassery by naming a bee after her. (And I think it’s Euglossa Watsonia. I know Sherlock said “Euglassia” but Euglossa is an actual bee type).
(via rubberglue)
“You talked to one of my lieutenants. He has, over the years, played the role repeatedly and with great conviction. More often than not, he’s done so to protect my identity. Other times, it was because I suspected a potential client might.. struggle with my gender. As if men had a monopoly on murder.”
let me explain to you how genius the deconstruction of Irene Adler isbecause in making her a conscious manipulation; an artful and purposeful creation by moriarty in order to ensnare sherlockthey have destroyed The Woman; the one individual who eclipsed the whole of her sex and at whose feet Sherlock fellthey’ve taken the goddess down off her pillar and revealed the woman in the fridge was a doll all alongIrene Adler is only a story; can only ever be a story; because there is no Womanonly womenand they are villains as well as heroines and they are clever even when they make mistakes and they can hold the world togetherwhether to take advantage of it or to save it for the people they lovebut there is no Womanthere never could beand Sherlock had to learn thatelementarythe best goddamn showyour favs could never
(Source: pennbadgleyy, via einmyrias)
Unpopular Opinion (Spoilers for Elementary Finale)
Hm.
I mean I’m never here to blindly defend my faves, and I think your point is valid and important to discuss; villain!Irene doesn’t happen in a vacuum free of societal context. But I feel like ultimately this argument disregards a lot of what this adaptation does to dismantle the idea that Sherlock was ever that unbeatable or perfect to begin with. This Sherlock is surrounded by people who question him, who challenge him and prove him wrong on a near-weekly basis. He’s forced to acknowledge and respect the superior skills or insights of others all the time. His colleagues and his sponsor, two of whom are PoCs, and of course, his partner. There IS a non-villainous woman (of color!) in his life who bests him in large and small ways every day. And yes he does come out on top of Moriarty in the end, but the whole point is that he didn’t and couldn’t have done it without Joan.
If it weren’t for Watson’s existence I wouldn’t be saying this, because while I loved the twist it does suck that Irene was rolled into another character, but I think there’s something interesting about, in this adaptation, making Irene Adler an idea(l), a fiction, just one of the ways that Holmes’ conceit (and the idea that there’s one woman, superior to all those ~other women of course, who can get the better of him) is dismantled. His conceit is his downfall.
Emphasis mine.
This is why I have literally ZERO problems with Irene Adler and Moriarty being one and the same in the context of Elementary. (I don’t like the idea that Irene has been somehow consumed or rolled into Moriarty btw. She was still everything contemporary versions of Irene Adler have been to Sherlock Holmes. Why is the construct of Irene automatically less valid than the construct of Moriarty? Why see Irene as not existing instead of seeing Moriarty as an extension of Irene especially when we know that there was something genuinely real about Irene and Sherlock? Do we believe that “Moriarty” is any less of an alias than “Irene” was?)
The original conceit of Irene Adler, being The Woman, the single female that “predominated and preclipsed the whole of her sex” is wildly misogynistic. It’s a reflection of Holmes’ misogyny and it becomes even moreso in the contemporary interpretations of Irene where she is also the only woman worthy of having a meaningful relationship with him. It presents her as a special snowflake above and beyond all other women and in terms of her as a romantic partner — regardless that it wasn’t that way originally it’s certainly become part of the mythos — it makes it extremely easy to make Irene into nothing but an extension of Sherlock.
Elementary’s very premise in which it is Joan Watson instead of John Watson subverts that, but by making Irene and Moriarty the same person it keeps the fact that she does have special significance to Holmes without dismissing all other women in existence, and simultaneously completely tears down the manic pixie dream girl undertone by revealing that she had depths and breadth beyond what Sherlock could ever imagine.
I don’t think partially disregarding Irene being victorious in the end (because she WAS victorious over Sherlock; she DID beat him; she didn’t beat Joan) remotely undermines that at all especially given, as mentioned, this Holmes was never on the pedestal necessary to make that so hugely significant in the first place.
^^^^ALL OF THIS.
(via monkeyknifefight)
HOETRY: unimpressed2chainz: bitchwhoisyou: the responses to kelly rowland’s...
the responses to kelly rowland’s new song are pissing me the fuck off.
she just revealed about how she was in an abusive relationship and the emotional hardships she went through, which included some negative feelings she had about beyoncé.
but y’all just wanna be messy and make statuses about how “kelly finally admitted what we all knew, she was salty as fuck about beyoncé’s success”.
can we stop being childish, willfully obtuse, and excited about turning everything into a battle between black women. i dont understand why people have pathological obsessions with talking about women and jealousy.
agreed. i listened to the song and read a bit about how difficult it was for kelly to record and release the song; no doubt, she probably felt some guilt for her resentment of beyonce (understandable) before and after the recording of the song, but it is what it is. no one doubts that the aftermath of destiny’s child was difficult for everyone who wasn’t beyonce. and when you consider the songwriting/performance/everything make up of destiny’s child from beginning to that very carefully crafted performance at this year’s superbowl, you understand why.
kelly rowland has been through it, as both a dark skinned Black woman in the industry and a friend/sister/bandmate of beyonce. it’s very difficult to call her feelings “saltiness.” kelly speaks about the industry right in the song, how record labels were looking to her for beyonce’s star power and, sensing that she didn’t have it, did not want to hear her “bullshit.” this is also something solange has written and talked about extensively in her earlier songs: having to make that separation from beyonce in order to create music and images that were truly hers.
and that IS the fault of the same music industry that has crafted, built and supported beyonce at the expense of other Black female artists. i don’t think beyonce has a hand in this, i think such a comparison is out of her control. i think this is what happens when an industry becomes comfortable with palpable, understandable, non-threatening Black women. I won’t pretend that society does not favor light-skinned women, but it also favors those who try for classiness, for respectability, for marketability—these are things it wants, and will reject those who don’t fall into line. the standard is very much higher for Black women.
kelly was very brave. i think she understood that she was going to receive some backlash for talking about beyonce in the way that she did and even doubly so for her experiences with abuse. but her voice is very much needed and appreciate and understood. Black women experience jealousy; we are human as anyone else and we lust for things that our family/friends/acquaintances/peers have. we feel insecurity sometimes, we doubt ourselves and others. but such feelings are rarely discussed or portrayed in ways that doesn’t lose its importances to matters of “saltiness” and “cattiness.”
(via arobynsung)
i had to present my preliminary final paper topic for my fan culture and celebrity class to a room full of people who knew very little about game of thrones. this was my resulting power point (with me using lots more words then what is shown, obviously, but this gives you the general idea). i‘m sure my actual paper will end up on here eventually and we can see how much my argument has grown!!!! it’s not due for a whole week tho, so everybody calm down.
(via sulfur-and-salt)
