Diversity and Representation in Media

Dare I call it projecting? That people go on and on about fictional portrayals of people and it suddenly makes them experts over the people they claim to speak for, or justifies behavior like this.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - People come first.

I think Moral Myopia would be more accurate.

Reminds me of Joss Whedon's feminist credentials and then the revelation he'd been cheating on his wife with actresses, and his non-apology included essentially blaming the women he'd been cheated on her with for being young, hot and sexually available, and invoking Power Corrupts as a rationale for his actions. Power doesn't always corrupt Joss, but it does always reveal.

Whedon's brand of screen feminism has always carried a good dose of fetishisation, anyway.

Yeah, it's always been problematic.

From what I've heard, it's less feminism and more what men think feminism is.

I guess people were ready to laud that when the pickings were (or seemed, idk) slim. But just like James Cameron's views on the same, we've long moved past that.

Y'know, I just realised this thread is in the Live Action Film section of the forums rather than OTC.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Nov 7th 2019 at 3:29:06 PM

So, I actually saw Dark Fate last night. I liked most of it. I still resent Cameron's "REAL FEMINISMS" remarks against Wonder Woman, but the first half and much of the second was pretty cool.

The main problem I had with the film came from a character named Carl, who shows up about midway through. Carl is an Arnold Model Terminator from the aborted Skynet future. He shows up in the first five minutes of the film to kill off John Connor and leave. This devastating loss causes Sarah to change from her established personality, "Badass Action Girl wants to kill future murderbots" to the new characterization she has in the film, "Badass Action Girl wants to kill future murderbots, but is sometimes sad".

It kinda felt like an inverted fridging, so I was weirdly okay with it. It was unnecessary; literally no part of Sarah's character would be different if John just grew up, moved to Nantucket, and went into the textiles industry or something. But it's rare to see male characters die meaninglessly so that female characters can emote for two minutes and then move on. It was kinda novel.

But the problem is that it wasn't meaningless. It did provoke tons of growth and development and personality shifting. It's just that it did all that for Carl. The main effect of John's death is that the Terminator feels really bad about it. He develops a personality, grows a conscience, somehow manages to obtain a wife and step-son, and becomes a good guy. He changes and grows, while Sarah's still the same Sarah we know and love from T2.

All of this is setup for Carl to join the party in the second half of the movie, where he proceeds to contribute f*ck-all to the plot. It's still the established main characters Sarah, Grace, and Dani actually deciding where to go and what to do. It's Sarah, Grace, and Dani who come up with all the plot beats.

Carl's only role in the film is to be awesome in action sequences. He provides an extra dose of badass to wrestle with Gabriel Luna's villainous Rev-9. John died not to motivate Sarah but to motivate Carl, and Carl is only here to perform the special effects blockbuster equivalent of opening peanut butter jars for the ladies - up to and including being the one to actually kill the Rev-9 in a Heroic Sacrifice, after Grace has already performed a Heroic Sacrifice to kill the Rev-9.

I haven't really experienced much of whedon's work but yes, I think people were just happy to have action girls in relatively well written (for the time) stories so that ended up shooting him to the top.

Really, whedon is one of the best examples of what can happen when you put too much stock in majority creators for representation of minority characters. Whedon abused that reputation to cheat on his wife and he hasn't really evolved his approach.

I think creator worship in general kinda sucks because lots of media is teamwork effort and even if creator works in role which most impact, they still aren't only one to be thanked for if work is good

Side note on Whedon, it was really fascinating seeing opinions on Whedon change in real time. Like he was still fairly popular by second Avenger movie and people were really defensive about his role in Ultron movie being kinda meh as if his style wasn't suddenly just his fault

Edited by SpookyMask on Nov 7th 2019 at 7:11:49 PM

Before the backlash, Whedon always had some convenient excuse for why it totally wasn't his fault whenever a work of his wasn't received well.

I guess people just got sick of putting up with that.

I've only really seen cabin in the woods as far as his other works go, but Ao U has pretty major issues across the board and I can't imagine how disappointing it must have been for people at the time.

CBS is developing a reboot of "The Equalizer" t.v. series starring Queen Latifah.

Edited by windleopard on Nov 7th 2019 at 10:29:43 AM

I've been pretty open in the past about how I never liked Whedon or most of his work in the first place. I always felt like his fanbase was exaggerating his abilities and putting him on a pedestal.

I think the thing that first convinced me that Whedon was kind of shit was the way he deflected blame for Alien Resurrection being...well, Alien Resurrection.

Edited by M84 on Nov 8th 2019 at 2:00:19 AM

Yeah, I also had Hype Backlash, but then again, I tend to have that whenever single person in creative team is praised a lot <_<

But I also didn't find the snarky humor that great ever really from what I remember, I guess it helps that I've never seen Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Edited by SpookyMask on Nov 7th 2019 at 8:51:42 PM

I have. It's...watchable, but I just never really thought it was all that praiseworthy. It also went downhill in the later seasons.

I'd say Buffy and Angel are the two Whedon works that hold up the best and even then you can see some the problems in those projects that his current work is getting criticism for.

I mean, I remember being in uni when I first came across Firefly and was actually a little put off by the level of unadulterated worship that series got. I actually still haven't finished watching it, and that was 10 years ago.

I saw it and it was good, have a lot of potencial and while there is some issue here and there like lack of asian chararter I can see why it got the praise it hold.

I will said wheedon also got praise because while he did fetish her chararter, he didnt do in a way it reduce her moral work as chararter most of the time, which it was(and it still is) a problem with female chararters.

It's good, and it's a shame it didn't get more seasons etc, but I didn't see anything to warrant the adoration it gets. As far as cancelled Fox series go, I think Almost Human was far better - but that might also be because I'm kinda ambivalent about Space Westerns (and I don't think Firefly is my favourite execution of that genre either) while near future postcyberpunk and buddy cop shows are my shit.

All of this makes me wonder if Whedon's work is falling or has fallen into Fair for Its Day territory.

Pretty much, you can also used he cant catch up and Old master with him: his portayal were good for feminism for a while, but he did have flaw and he didnt correct or improved.

The same wheedon of buffy is the same wheedon we see now.

Another Whedon's work that has aged poorly is Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which I loved as a teen.

If we are going into "Current works that have aged poorly" reminds me of the time I had to pop my mothers rather rosy balloon about "Mists of Avalon" and MZB.

I’m not familiar with that one - how so?