I remember a very subtle and clever one where Voyager encountered a very smarmy superior race that constantly talked down to the humans, but when they heard Tom Paris singing some old timey song they tuned into it immediately as something beatiful and well worth taking.
7 Likes
I vaguely remember that one!
2 Likes
Wasn’t it the Holographic Doctor who was the one who introduced that species to music?
4 Likes
4 Likes
People have a choice what they are hurt by when it comes to stuff other people do that isn’t directed at them or is even intended as an insult. In this case it also seems completely arbitrary. You can apparently dress like Black Panther as a white kid, but not darken your skin. Why one, but not the other? Why was it OK to “mock” Arabs by having a costume party where people dressed up as Arabian Nights, classic orientalism, and became a problem only when Trudeau painted his face?
If you feel hurt because a kid wants to cosplay as a black superhero, maybe it’s not the kid that’s the problem. Maybe you focus on the wrong problems. And I don’t think you can sepearate the issues as cleanly as you claim. Tell a kid he can’t pretend to be a black person and you build a barrier, tell him that those are different.
I think the statement from Trudeau, independent from the source, says a lot about whether his apologies have been genuine. Chronology:
- first two blackface incidents published;
- Trudeau issues halfassed apology (halfassed because he said he should have known better, but didn’t);
- third incident published;
- Trudeau issues better apology (better because he owns it and recognizes the harm done);
- Less than 24 hrs after #4, Trudeau issues statement saying, “Hey, I’m not perfect and neither is anyone else. Get over it.” This statement pretty much cancels out either apology.
8 Likes
FTFY
If a white kid wants to dress up as Black Panther that’s fine. If a white kid wants to wear dark face makeup then his parents or guardians have a responsibility to explain why that’s a no-no.
11 Likes
So the problem isn’t systemic racism, it’s that some people are offended by systemic racism, and if they just stopped being offended, the problem would magically go away?
13 Likes
My view is that Lee used Brechtian techniques (such as the over-the-top commercials) to create Brecht’s distancing effect, preventing the audience from sympathizing with the characters in order to give the audience a hypercritical awareness of what they’re viewing.
I believe one reason he took this approach is because the film is a critique of the tv/film industry, and a personal testament by a black artist about the difficulty of working within a medium whose history very much involves the oppression of black folks, and so Lee wanted audiences to never forget that the movie they’re watching is part of that industry and history. Without an unsympathizing critical distance, people can easily make the story and characters the focus of their feelings, rather than the film, and it’s that meta-perspective of viewing the film as a film that Lee wanted (imho).
Furthermore, because racist attitudes and stereotypes are often transmitted to viewers unconsciously, the (intended) consciousness caused by the distancing effect can be a bulwark against that transmission, which is important for a movie like Bamboozled that is full of racial caricatures (but working to fight against them).
Anyway, that’s my two bits on the matter. There are other ways to interpret it, of course, but my undergrad education featured way more Brecht than was probably necessary, so I think I’m just more inclined to do this sort reading of the film.
3 Likes
For me, it was always their speech and mannerisms that evoked the similarity.
I may not be recalling DS9 correctly, but I remember that, every once in a while, they would hit the audience over the head with it then go immediately back to deracialized Bashir.
4 Likes
IIRC, they liked the music bc of its mathematical properties.
ETA: This is the episode
4 Likes
I absolutely believe that Trudeau was sheltered and privileged and that’s not a situation I see changing much, deep in the structure of his interior worldview.
In other words I never expect a perfect or even good apology from him, because I don’t believe a person magically flushes racism out of their system like a three-day-cold.
What I do hope is that a person knowing they have racist blind-spots, and having that demonstrated to the world publicly in a way that can’t be brushed off, means that the person is more likely to take the best path, and instead of blithely assuming they’re not racist, they more profoundly listen to directly experienced advisers and POC, instead of that idiot that got them into messes, themselves.
That’s also the only positive I saw from Warren’s mess-ups, is that she eventually saw the only way out is to profoundly listen and with the most force possible display that she was listening to the people she didn’t check in with before the mistake. We’ll see if she’s successful at that, same with Trudeau.
None of how it shakes out means that their past mistake will be better off erased or minimized, that’s the other lesson. It’s not about finding a way of purifying a sinner, but finding a way to give the power where it should have been before.
7 Likes
Were you a film student? 
But seriously, I can see that. I had not considered that angle before.
Which is interesting, because I think most films about race go in completely the opposite direction, they seek to have the viewer overly identify with the oppressed, which works in drawing empathy out from the viewer. I do wonder if it contributes to the deification of the suffering of the oppressed? Not that we shouldn’t empathize, we very much should, but if we think that suffering makes one no longer fully human, in the sense of exhibiting complex sets of behaviors that can’t always be classified as “good”, we might miss the forest for the trees, that the rights we all should enjoy aren’t restricted to some set of “perfected” citizens, but for all of us. It unintentionally helps to perpetuate teleological views of history that assumes progress naturally, instead of progress through hard work. maybe it also produces it’s own kind of critical distance of “that’s in the past, not today. We can safely imagine this as work already done, so rest easy viewer.”
Plus, I kind of feel like those movies tend to be aimed at white audiences primarily, that we’re invited to witness the suffering caused by those very same structures that privilege us as a kind of catharsis?
Nothing wrong with too much Brecht…
6 Likes
Probably… it was not a perfect show by any stretch… they had some excellent episodes and thoughtful arcs, but sometimes they fell flat.
5 Likes
Not one of may favorite stories, simply because of its “Space Jesus” deus ex machina ending.
But up to that point it was a caustic look at Colonial Britain. Which by the early 1970’s when the story was written involved a lot of support of flat out racism and nastiness.
It had one good season with its long arc on the Dominion War. But it had gotten away from its initial premise by then.
State the nature of the problematic imbroglio.
4 Likes
Sure, but I think the point was supposed to be that they would all evolve into that, not just the one guy…
But as an anti-colonial/anti-empire statement, it works very well.
The dominion war was like the last 3 season, though, and really goes all the way back to the second season, with the introduction of the dominon into the series and into the alpha quadrant - the whole series pretty much builds to that conflict. And I think the connections for the entire series hangs together generally pretty well - rebuilding bajor, the relationship between Sisko and the prophets and the Bajoran people, the Cardassian reorientation, especially during the Dominion war itself. it’s a great way to explore some really thorny political and social issues caused by tensions and then outright conflict. It’s by no means a perfect series, but it was really unlike any other Trek series up to the current ones (which I think have more in common with DS9, at least Discovery anyways). YMMV, of course, but it remains my favorite Trek series, in part because it did not shy away from controversial topics like racial and ethic hatreds and the complicated ways that manifest in a society or between societies , but tried to face them square on.
6 Likes
perhaps plots are recycled?
2 Likes
Because blackface has a specific history of being racist. Might as well ask why I can describe a person with dark skin as being “black” but not by using the n-word. Why one and not the other? You know why. If entered this conversation unaware that putting on blackface is a racist symbol akin to using racial slurs then this is an opportunity to learn that blackface is like that.
And you apparently don’t understand what I mean by “hurt people”. As if it is limited to making someone clutch their pearls rather than participating in a system that pays people reduced wages, denies them work and homes, puts them in prison and kills them. We aren’t just temporal slices of humans taking disconnected actions with no consequences.
Further, looking down on other people for having negative emotions in response to your actions is nothing but being an asshole under a veneer of stoicism. If you know that your word choice or costume or whatever is going to hurt other people’s feelings and make them angry — and even if that’s the only thing wrong with it — and then you do it anyway, you are saying, “My decision to use this word or dress this way is more important than your feelings.” Saying they have a choice is just deflecting blame. You had a choice too!
It wasn’t okay to mock Arabs by having a costume party. The blackface part of it is getting media attention because it’s so far over the line. If the images were merely of Trudeau in a turban at a costume party I expect Trudeau would still be apologizing*, it’d just blow over quicker.
9 Likes
