Hahahahaha ...sorry the last comment made me laugh!
I reckon you are allowed to think anything you like. I suppose though admittedly I like it a lot ....your passion comes across differently to different people. AND OMG we are PRECIOUS in our fandom. LOL! I watch what I watch for pure escapism....and prior to LJ joining gave it not much thought. I choose to live my RL in a way that does not always reflect what I watch on TV....food for thought really. I like others opinions they make me think....agree or not.
STILL to find that strong female character in 'Deadliest Catch' Hahaha
Okay first what exactly is setting off these comments because I think its something I would be interesting in seeing? Secondly I think that if someone is telling you what to think or how to react to something they're an idiot. I think we all tend to have different tolerance levels and way of looking at things and what we find offensive does vary. You obviously wouldn't react to the word savage the way I do and I suspect part of the reason we have such different views on feminism is that we obviously come from very different places. I think the very definition of tolerance is that we understand these sorts of things.
You know, I basically agree with the first comment. I think our culture is steeped in sexism and racism and that it's not okay. At the same time, I think we can celebrate what people get right, criticize what people get wrong, and *hopefully* see improvement over time.
I'm not telling you you're wrong; we might be better off if everyone who protested racism and sexism in shows didn't watch those shows. For me, if I hadn't had people spelling it out online--people who watched those shows and then said THIS IS SEXISM/RACISM--I would probably never have seen it. I would have gobbled up a LOT of really awful ideas without thinking about them. I still do. Would it be better if those ideas never gained a platform? Absolutely. Is that going to keep me from falling in love with flawed shows? Probably not. I admit that I'm flawed myself and so things that really should ring warning bells sometimes don't.
I don't know if you're even responding to the comments on your last post, or if there's something else going on, but my last comment wasn't very clear--hopefully I did a better job here.
It's not one thing, it's a bunch of tv shows all at once. NCIS, Criminal Intent, Castle, the new Stargate show (not to mention Atlantis), even books I've been reading.
It's the lack of PROGRESS. We claim we want this shit, but it's never going to happen it we keep buying and watching the same old shit.
At this point, if I think about the lack of change in the industry and how it's getting steadily worse and not better, I'm going to just give up on everything and go become a hermit (oh god at least there wouldn't be accounting there).
I think my frustration is that producers and studios and everything else don't look to see if people are saying 'bad' things about their work. They look and they see people talking about it, blogging about it, writing fic and making vids, tivoing it, dvring it, watching it live, what have you. It's bottoms in seats and they don't CARE whether it's good or not, as long as the numbers stay.
This industry is never going to change. It's just not. People won't stop watching things with issues, and the people in charge will never listen to complaints because people are STILL WATCHING.
In fairness, I think this is executives doing those things, more so than the actual creative people (OK this is hardly true of every case *coughMallozzicough*) - executives only care about eyeballs and ratings and box office. They also don't apparently have the brain power to realize that they could do something different but good and get the same results, so they just double down on whatever piece of crap generated a little money, over and over, and well, here we are in the sinking pit of crap.
(This is not to say the writers and creative people are not responsible too, because they totally are. I just wanted to recognize the power issue at play, where the executives are the ones approving projects. Basically I'm saying "We need moar blame!")
Oh, this, yes. To be fair to the creators (well, most of them), they probably want to do different and better things, but they're handicapped by an industry that sees different and better as "losing money" (please see the recent fracas with someone at Marvel saying white boys won't buy things with non-white-boy-leads)
"Anything I don't like! The things I like are flawless!" :P
Um, on a non-sarcastic note, what are your thoughts on Castle? I'm not gonna eat you for them, just honestly curious. Other than the two-for-one of Russian AND Chinese mobsters (I guess we should be glad they weren't Chechens?) at the start of the season, I hadn't noticed anything egregious.
My issue with Castle was that Beckett is the stereo-typical female hard-ass cop who actually has no power and hates the male lead who's, of course, smarmy and cool and whatever.
I pretty much tuned the show out after she was whining about giving a media interview.
It might not have been so bad if Criminal Intent hadn't done the exact same thing to Megan Wheeler when they brought in that annoying new male character.
I will say, after they brought the new dude in, they did something with Wheeler I thought was really cool... both New Guy and The Boss took very unusual and supportive stances about her being pregnant. Up to and including being willing to change diapers. (The Boss, at least.) That was almost as cool as her and Chris Noth going and getting into a bloody fight with an entire firehouse together.
It saddens me to to recognize negative patterns as they're echoing back into prominence.
It's all too easy to hide from the truth and declare that Entertainment is off-limits to social change but I prefer a more positive route. I hate overtly political art but this isn't about our cultural artifacts having to taste like vitamins.
Good stories and songs are side by side with food and drink. We gather together and break them open and we're steeped in their pleasure. That's what they're for.
I assume that somewhere out there, people are gathering around some backwards nonsense, to put it politely. They have no problem smiling and laughing over it.
Your innocent question has unearthed a powerful cultural zeitgeist. I'm not waving a bony finger at the End of The World as We Know It but as a whole, the population watching these shows is less intelligent than it was a decade ago.
We've got a surge of people who haven't been educated about what we were fighting for and their lives don't bear the fruits of it anyway.
And those folks are making millions for advertisers who don't care how backward the programs in between their commercials are.
And unfortunately, all this has affected serials that you once trusted.
I used to get about 30 comics a month. Now I get three. If you're feeling like this, walk away from the source of your anger. It's very liberating.
Then again, nothing I watch is counted towards any kind of official tally. Not even the comics I read, legitimately, are counted - overseas sales aren't included in sales rankings. And my house is in a blackspot for commercial TV, so I see no ads.
Arguably a part of the problem is that executives often kill shows which try at least somewhat to move past them. And put forth stuff that's, well, rife with it a lot of the time.
So, to paraphrase the Bard, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the executives..." ; )
I was told by a very prominent network executive not to put any women in our shows, because "men don't want to see women on TV."
And this was DOCUMENTARY television. The stuff that's supposed to be INTELLECTUAL.
(This was the same exec who insisted that, for a documentary on Egypt, we needed to find a "Egyptian with a really thick accent and a milky eye" as an expert. Didn't matter if he had a degree - but he HAD to have a "milky eye." I SHIT YOU NOT.)
I would love to say that it was the men who were doing this - but the women can be worse. I had several men who mentored me. Every woman I ever met in the industry who was at my level or above tried to destroy me or sabotage me (sometimes in very blatant ways, once in a very blatant way that got her fired). It was incredibly fucked up. Many women want to be the ONLY successful woman in the organization. (I've had more success finding female mentors in the industry I've transitioned into.)
In order to put even one-quarter-way decent stuff on the air, you constantly have to fight tooth and nail. The things that network execs demand would freakin' amaze you.
I don't know - I barely watch much TV these days myself, but that's mainly because I'm either at work or on the computer - or just out somewhere, running errands or something. If I do watch something, it would probably be on the History Channel (hey, they've got some cool shows).
I have seen (most of) the new Stargate show, and... Well, it did feel a bit... rushed, perhaps? (Maybe because I missed a good 9-10 minutes of it, I don't know.) Like it was trying to be something, but falling just a bit short. I don't know a lot about the characters - hell, I'm not sure what all their names are - but what I saw didn't strike me as being especially sexist or racist. (And given my co-workers - whether they're joking or not - I know what both sound like.) Honestly, I just saw people. But I don't usually consider things like gender or skin color as relevant, so hey, what do I know?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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http://www.tvguide.com/listings/default.aspx
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I reckon you are allowed to think anything you like. I suppose though admittedly I like it a lot ....your passion comes across differently to different people.
AND OMG we are PRECIOUS in our fandom. LOL!
I watch what I watch for pure escapism....and prior to LJ joining gave it not much thought. I choose to live my RL in a way that does not always reflect what I watch on TV....food for thought really. I like others opinions they make me think....agree or not.
STILL to find that strong female character in 'Deadliest Catch' Hahaha
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That is all. :D
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I'm not telling you you're wrong; we might be better off if everyone who protested racism and sexism in shows didn't watch those shows. For me, if I hadn't had people spelling it out online--people who watched those shows and then said THIS IS SEXISM/RACISM--I would probably never have seen it. I would have gobbled up a LOT of really awful ideas without thinking about them. I still do. Would it be better if those ideas never gained a platform? Absolutely. Is that going to keep me from falling in love with flawed shows? Probably not. I admit that I'm flawed myself and so things that really should ring warning bells sometimes don't.
I don't know if you're even responding to the comments on your last post, or if there's something else going on, but my last comment wasn't very clear--hopefully I did a better job here.
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It's the lack of PROGRESS. We claim we want this shit, but it's never going to happen it we keep buying and watching the same old shit.
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At this point, if I think about the lack of change in the industry and how it's getting steadily worse and not better, I'm going to just give up on everything and go become a hermit (oh god at least there wouldn't be accounting there).
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This industry is never going to change. It's just not. People won't stop watching things with issues, and the people in charge will never listen to complaints because people are STILL WATCHING.
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(This is not to say the writers and creative people are not responsible too, because they totally are. I just wanted to recognize the power issue at play, where the executives are the ones approving projects. Basically I'm saying "We need moar blame!")
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edited for spelling fail.
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So there. *stompy feet*
Wait, there's a woman in my icon. That might harsh the squee. Not allowed!
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Um, on a non-sarcastic note, what are your thoughts on Castle? I'm not gonna eat you for them, just honestly curious. Other than the two-for-one of Russian AND Chinese mobsters (I guess we should be glad they weren't Chechens?) at the start of the season, I hadn't noticed anything egregious.
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I pretty much tuned the show out after she was whining about giving a media interview.
It might not have been so bad if Criminal Intent hadn't done the exact same thing to Megan Wheeler when they brought in that annoying new male character.
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Are any not?
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It's all too easy to hide from the truth and declare that Entertainment is off-limits to social change but I prefer a more positive route. I hate overtly political art but this isn't about our cultural artifacts having to taste like vitamins.
Good stories and songs are side by side with food and drink. We gather together and break them open and we're steeped in their pleasure. That's what they're for.
I assume that somewhere out there, people are gathering around some backwards nonsense, to put it politely. They have no problem smiling and laughing over it.
Your innocent question has unearthed a powerful cultural zeitgeist. I'm not waving a bony finger at the End of The World as We Know It but as a whole, the population watching these shows is less intelligent than it was a decade ago.
We've got a surge of people who haven't been educated about what we were fighting for and their lives don't bear the fruits of it anyway.
And those folks are making millions for advertisers who don't care how backward the programs in between their commercials are.
And unfortunately, all this has affected serials that you once trusted.
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Then again, nothing I watch is counted towards any kind of official tally. Not even the comics I read, legitimately, are counted - overseas sales aren't included in sales rankings. And my house is in a blackspot for commercial TV, so I see no ads.
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So, to paraphrase the Bard, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the executives..." ; )
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I was told by a very prominent network executive not to put any women in our shows, because "men don't want to see women on TV."
And this was DOCUMENTARY television. The stuff that's supposed to be INTELLECTUAL.
(This was the same exec who insisted that, for a documentary on Egypt, we needed to find a "Egyptian with a really thick accent and a milky eye" as an expert. Didn't matter if he had a degree - but he HAD to have a "milky eye." I SHIT YOU NOT.)
I would love to say that it was the men who were doing this - but the women can be worse. I had several men who mentored me. Every woman I ever met in the industry who was at my level or above tried to destroy me or sabotage me (sometimes in very blatant ways, once in a very blatant way that got her fired). It was incredibly fucked up. Many women want to be the ONLY successful woman in the organization. (I've had more success finding female mentors in the industry I've transitioned into.)
In order to put even one-quarter-way decent stuff on the air, you constantly have to fight tooth and nail. The things that network execs demand would freakin' amaze you.
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I have seen (most of) the new Stargate show, and... Well, it did feel a bit... rushed, perhaps? (Maybe because I missed a good 9-10 minutes of it, I don't know.) Like it was trying to be something, but falling just a bit short. I don't know a lot about the characters - hell, I'm not sure what all their names are - but what I saw didn't strike me as being especially sexist or racist. (And given my co-workers - whether they're joking or not - I know what both sound like.) Honestly, I just saw people. But I don't usually consider things like gender or skin color as relevant, so hey, what do I know?