SIGNAL BOOST: What a crappy, tacky, EMBARRASSING move. Sounds like Jada deserved her prize, and that her school can’t handle a student’s critique!
Signal Boost: From Casey:
From Amazon Watch, please sign this petition to protect the
indigenous people of Brazil by stopping the Belo Monte Monster-Dam:
(there are other petitions to sign on the site, too)
Signal Boost: Time to pass the hat!
What the hell?? Nonprofit sterilizing clients since 1997.
Whitney Houston may not be played by a black actress. What. Maybe they mean Rihanna?
Why I am a Male Feminist
On Misogyny and Rape Culture in Geekdom.
Navajo Nation sues Urban Outfitters. About gotdamn time!
Albany to bar condoms as evidence of prostitution.
From Casey:
From the Daily Mail (more like Daily FAIL), a “controversial” new
study says that having runway models larger than a size zero would
“encourage unhealthy eating habits and worsen the obesity epidemic”.
From Jenn:
Lucy Lawless was arrested along with six Greenpeace New Zealand companions after they boarded a Shell-owned oil-drilling ship to prevent it from leaving port for the Arctic.
From Raeka:
This might be better on What Privilege, but it was such an
interesting link I had to send it.
A story of love!
Oh wow. A series of FB messages from a girl who got a new tattoo. It looks like elaborate trolling.
Response to homophobic, classist, and racist Smith alum rant.
LGBT language FAIL. I’ve interviewed T before here. He responds to reader concerns here.
From Nuri:
I found this kinda sexist…
From Azzy:
New findings suggest that “privilege promotes dishonesty”.
A senator I can get behind!
From Casey:
From Shakesville; Utah has passed a bill allowing schools to abolish sex ed class and those who keep the courses are prohibited from teaching about how to use contraceptives because “sex outside marriage is devastating”.On racebending
The anniversary of the 228 incident
On human trafficking, and immigrant transgender women.
From Casey:
From the Freakin’ Awesome Network Forums, current WWE Champion CM
Punk and Chris Brown are having a “Twitter war”. It’s gotten to the
point where WWE is acknowledging it on their TV programs and website
so people are starting to think Brown will be involved at Wrestlemania
in some capacity.
Does the gender binary still have a place in modern Wicca?
Rush Limbaugh calls a politically active and aware woman a slut. Also he wants to watch feminists have sex.
From Casey:
Bronies on DeviantArt are bawwwing about how awful and MEEN people
are for calling out Derpy Hooves being an ableist character.
From Casey:
Apparently, CBS casted Lucy Liu as as Watson in their own version of
Sherlock called “Elementary” and everyone (besides me) is upset about
it. Basically, they’re saying “I’m not trying to be sexist BUT HOW
DARE THEY MESS WITH TRADITION, ALL THE MAIN CHARACTERS ARE SUPPOSED TO
BE MEN BLARGH!”
Woman denied communion at mother’s funeral.
Gorgeous revamps of Disney ‘ships.
FB lawsuit.
The changing demographics of Christianity.
More on Derpy.
Single parenthood—–> child abuse!!!
I guess entrapment only is a “thing” when you’re legally an adult.
Setting Holmes in “modern times” isn’t unique to the BBC Sherlock; the Basil Rathbone Holmes solved tons of cases directly related to World War II, and he wasn’t supposed to be 120 at the time—they just hand-waved away his canon age and sent him trotting around the globe on 1940s ocean-liners and what-not. (I haven’t seen all the Rathbone Holmes-in-modern-days films, so don’t know if he ever went on a 1940s-style plane…)
There have been a few other “modern Sherlock” radio, TV, and film incarnations since. The BBC Radio series Second Holmes, for instance (which is terrible). Also props to the animation series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, in which a cryogenically frozen Holmes is decanted in the future (which is actually kind of wonderful).
I think it is most likely that the BBC Sherlock was the direct inspiration for the upcoming US one with Lucy Liu (whom I love, and who has definitely been very complex and far from “just a glamour figure” in Southland), but I also think the BBC Sherlock is just part of a long history of making Holmes and Watson into whatever we want them to be.
I think I can refine the point here. Homages are okay. The problem is, there’s a big power dynamic coming into play when you talk about US film/TV makers ripping off the intellectual contributions of other cultures, inside or outside a framework of “coming from earlier source material.”
Example: Star Wars was very much a visual rip-off of the British Dr. Who of the 70s and a story rip-off of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress. Neither of them sued Lucas for stealing their ideas and adding nothing original (and Lucas considered buying the rights for the Kurosawa film, so he wasn’t unconscious of what he was doing). But then Lucas turned around a year later and sued the hell out of the original Battlestar Galactica for, um, having space ships? He alleged it looked like SW or something… as if SW looked nothing like Dr. Who or Trek or WWII fighter planes, and nobody had ever had a spaceship in their TV show before.
So I guess what I’m really fucking sick of is the American entertainment attitude that it’s okay for us to appropriate the work of filmmakers in less successful entertainment cultures, but it’s not okay for anyone else to engage in ripping off. Especially those heathen movie and music downloaders, who will for sure be the ruination of our society faster than serial killers, the nuclear bomb and those unwed mothers put together.
Does anyone understand what I’m saying? It’s part of American imperialism. We have been ripping off British TV for so long (Archie Bunker, at least, but I think it goes back further), and sometimes we pay them for the privilege. I dunno, maybe it’s part of the Special Relationship now – CIA gives them info, they give us entertainment because god knows nobody in Hollywood has the creativity of an empty pool basin.
But nobody paid Kurosawa for Star Wars (and it really, really IS nearly a shot for shot remake – do not argue with me unless you too have spent about six hours watching a scene from SW and a scene from HF and taking extensive notes). And American film/TV makers routinely scour non-English speaking films for stuff to rip off. Even if there are no real victims here (and in a nod to the current discussion, I’ll happily acknowledge this latest Holmes thang is not the very best example of the problem), it remains that Hollywood thinks they are entitled to appropriate the work of other cultures in the same way that misogynistic men think they’re entitled to order women on the street to smile – we should all be flattered by it, I suppose.
And that’s what pisses me off about this, and why I staunchly support any variation on the argument that Hollywood and US TV makers need to stop “borrowing” from other cultures, and should at the very least be thought of jackasses for doing it.
One of my favorite stories about this very phenomenon is what happened to Gilbert and Sullivan when they brought H.M.S. Pinafore to the United States. International copyright law was basically nonexistent at the time* which lead to something like almost 200 unauthorized productions none of which payed a cent in royalties between the official UK premier in May of 1878 and the *authorized* NYC premier in December of 1879. At some point during the US production someone suggested making the H.M.S. Pinafore the U.S.S. Pinafore and Gilbert got his snark on by rewriting the lyrics to “He is an Englishman” on the fly:
He is American!
Though he himself has said it,
‘Tis not much to his credit,
That he is American.
For he might have been a Dutchman,
An Irish, Scotch or such man,
Or perhaps an Englishman!
But in spite of hanky-panky,
He remains a true-born Yankee,
A cute American.
The relevant original lyrics?
He is an Englishman!
For he himself has said it,
And it’s greatly to his credit,
That he is an Englishman!
For he might have been a Roosian,
A French, or Turk, or Proosian,
Or perhaps Itali-an!
But in spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He remains an Englishman!
(emphasis mine)
And yet, the guy who made the suggestion apparently missed the sarcasm and said it was brilliant. *headdesk* A few minutes later (I assume it took Gilbert that long to stop calling him an idiot in his head) Gilbert pointed out that “such words might disturb the friendly relations existing between the United States of America and the United Kingdom” and ended by declaring that “as long as H.M.S. Pinafore holds afloat she must keep the Union Jack flying.”(source)
*(In fact their next one, Pirates of Penzance, opened on Dec. 30 in England and Dec. 31 in NYC and sent 4 touring companies trained by G&S around the US that spring specifically to avoid a repeat of the problem.)
Thanks so much for linking to my post!! 🙂
I find the whole lady in a traditionally male role in Sherlock Holmes ‘controversy’ rather hilarious, as I recall recently talking to a friend how I was disappointed by the Moriarty in the British Sherlock as I had been hoping they would mix it up with a female Moriarty. Am I the only person who thinks that would have been too cool?
I don’t like it when people cite tradition as a reason to do anything, but most especially in fiction. It’s fiction. It’s a chance to do something different and noteworthy – take it.
Now that you mention it, I am kind of at a loss for a Battle of Wits between female characters. Hanna (the movie from last year) came sort of close, but the battle was more a tactical, physical one than a strictly mental one.
…I need to read more.
Putting a female character in the role of the Watson, the outsider who isn’t special and asks questions on behalf of the audience, isn’t particularly new. (I hear there’s a British series that makes a habit of it). I don’t see any problems with an Asian, female Watson, but it’s not like “finally! the narrator who needs things explained can be a woman”.
JMS,
I remember that cartoon. The ’90’s were a weird, weird time.
I appreciate this concept, but honestly… I want a female Holmes. Watson’s role in the story is generally to look at Holmes in amazement, and provide support, backup and all those petty logistic things that Holmes is too much of a genius to think of. In other words, Watson is *already* a woman. 🙁 Or at least, fulfills a role that we 21st century Westerners are already very comfortable seeing a woman in.
I want to see a story where the star is an abrasive female supergenius and there’s a *man* providing her backup, support, and explaining her to people who just don’t get her. Because if it was a full-on genderswap, two women, then great, we have a supergenius woman, but once again we have a woman in the role of providing emotional support. Just once, I want to see a woman be the genius who can’t be bothered with the petty shit, and a man be the one who gives her emotional support and logistic backup. I’d even be okay with him rescuing her, physically, from time to time, as long as it wasn’t every time and as long as she was shown as not completely useless in a fight… because every wizard needs fighter-class characters to protect him or her, but that doesn’t subtract from a good wizard’s badassitude.
So yeah, this is great, and a step in the right direction, and I want to slap any woman who is whining that you can’t swap Watson because what about the HoYay? Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick, people, there is no shortage of stories in which two equally badass men, or a badass man and a supporting man, have such a close relationship there might as well be sexual tension. But how many damn stories are there, actually, where the woman in the couple is actually the narrator, the POV character, and one of the two stars of the story? That isn’t *about* a romance? I mean, I got X-Files, and Dark Angel, and… and… drawing a blank here, people, help me out…
But it’s not enough. Watson’s role is one we already see women in. (CF X-Files; if Scully wasn’t Mulder’s Watson, I’ll eat my hat. The furry one.) There are *no* stories in media with female supergeniuses who are also assholes, who have *men* backing them up. (I actually don’t know of any in novels, either. Well, ok, Mad Skillz, but she wasn’t an asshole so much as her mind was too advanced to get along with other humans.)
Alara Rogers,
There’s Bones, actually. Like, right down to the letter, you’ve described the show Bones – she’s a genius anthropologist who doesn’t get people and finds general social interaction frustrating and tedious, he’s a laidback ex-Marine FBI agent who keeps having to explain how people think to her and how she thinks to other people. They fight crime!
(I mean, in practice I find the show to be a badly written, formulaic, neo-conservative pile of crap, but it’s something, and theoretically someone more talented than the Bones people could use it to pitch a better show running on the same idea)
Tristan J,
Besides Bones, I think In Plain Sight has a dynamic of “main character is a woman and the story’s from her POV and she’s got a male companion/sidekick/right-hand-man”. I think another USA show called Fairly Legal has that dynamic as well but it’s a lot more problematic since the main female character is white and her emotional support is a black guy so they’ve got an iffy master/servant relationship.
Alara Rogers,
I want to slap any woman who is whining that you can’t swap Watson because what about the HoYay?
Besides, Watson was married for much of the run (Mary Morston from the Sign of Four). It would be nice to see an adaptation that remembered her – whether she gets genderflipped along with Lucy Liu’s Watson, or is still a woman.
Casey,
I can’t watch Fairly Legal because I’m studying mediation in college and I’m instantly caught up in “mediation does not work that way!” (Even more scarily egregiously than CSI is about forensic science.) But from the few episodes I saw, her secretary wasn’t registering as the same type of emotional support guy that you get on Bones or In Plain Sight– he just tries very hard to keep her schedule.
I *love* the way the dynamic is done on In Plain Sight, though! They actually got very explicit about it in something like the fourth episode, when Marshall told her that he felt like he was the keeper of a large dangerous animal and spends half his time protecting her from the world and the other half protecting the world from her. (That episode also featured him being shot and her having to do most of the gun-wielding that eventually got them out of there.)
Oh well I suppose it’s not as bad as I thought it was, the commercials for the show just left a bad taste in my mouth and I’m sick of how generic all the USA “original” programming is; they all tend to bleed together to me, besides Psych and Burn Notice, at least. Plus I’m sick of how thin and generically attractive most of the main female characters are on those shows, I saw a mash-up ad for In Plain Sight and Fairly Legal and all I could think was “THEY’VE GOT THE SAME FUCKING HAIRDO”.
Ara,
Though I wasn’t thrilled with the last season of IPS, I’m sad that this is the last season of IPS. I love Mary and Marshall, and I love that she’s clearly the lead and he’s clearly the support.
sbg,
I haven’t seen the last season yet (I’m at a school which has three TVs on the entire campus; my TV watching is somewhat intermittent), but from the commercials I could tell that it got kind of odd. The other thing I really loved about IPS besides Mary and Marshall was the interplay between Mary and Eleanor (I’m sad they got rid of her!), because Eleanor was unwilling to put up with Mary’s behavior, but neither of them let that animosity get in the way of actually accomplishing stuff. And it’s really rare in shows featuring someone like Mary for anyone not designated as a villain to call the lead out on the crazy behavior.
I’ve been thinking about it, and The Closer also has that female eccentric genius/male emotional support dynamic. The program consistently shows that Brenda is a difficult person to get along with, but that she’s more or less tolerated because she gets results. Lying to get what you want is a great trait in an investigator, not so much in a coworker or a friend.
However, Brenda has several men who interface between her and everyone else: her underling Sergeant Gabriel (especially in the first season), her boss Chief Pope, and her boyfriend/husband Agent Howard. I wonder if spreading that role out across two or three people was done on purpose to avoid making them seem like sidekicks? I don’t want to say “emasculation” because overall the show’s fairly non-sexist, but perhaps the writers realized that the emotional support character is typically viewed as weaker.
Idea for a possible column/topic someday, ASSuming that it’s not been done elsewhere on the web already (or even on this site): the differences between homages, appropriations, and outright theft from other cultures. As an aspiring writer/artist who’d like to use not-Western ideas/myths/people/things/ect. in her work, I’d like to know where the lines between proper usage and wrongful appropriations are when I do the research to figure out cultures (and people/sexualities) that aren’t my own. In other words, a roadmap telling me where the political landmines and ethical quicksand pits are located would be appreciated. Or if such a thing’s already been done, telling me where it’s at so I can look it up myself.
Coudtigress,
You know, I haven’t seen it, and I personally wouldn’t feel qualified to attempt to spell it out for everyone. But this would make a great open thread, and I’ll put it together soon. Because I’m thinking there are a lot of nuances – for example, what if SW had featured some Asian actors in prominent roles as a sort of acknowledgement of the source material? I’m not sure that would’ve helped, but it’s an example of sort of a far-out way to at least, I dunno, give your stolen material a constructive purpose (i.e., employing Asian actors in a movie that’s not about The Issue Of Being Asian or pseudo-karate). It would be really interesting to have a free for all discussion where we brainstorm like that – so long as everyone, particularly white USians, is prepared to see their ideas shot down.
Great suggestion!