Zombie boyfriend needs more stew.
The Magical TV Bubble
Dear Fandom,
I live in a magical bubble.
Usually, I forget that I live in it. I watch my shows; I read my books and my webcomics; I play my video games; I occasionally catch a movie. And then someone writes about how there are no interesting/three-dimensional/realistic female or queer characters in mainstream media. And then I look around my glittery pink bubble and remember how nice it is in here.
I don't consciously set out to consume media that features characters other than straight, white, conventionally attractive, non-disabled, conventionally-masculine-acting males. It's more, if all the featured and well-developed characters are normative, I am far more likely to be bored and stop watching. I don't watch the first episode of a new show and go, "Oh, white dudes again, no season pass for you." The thought process is more like, "Nothing is hooking me about this show. I started playing with my phone during the second commercial break and never stopped. I watch enough goddamn TV as it is. No season pass for you." The correlation is not perfect: this is what happened when I tried to watch Battlestar Galactica (new) both times, despite several neat female and non-white characters. But that was, like, five years ago already, and it's literally the only time I can remember having this particular reaction to a show that wasn't all white dudes all the time.
So I live in a magical bubble where women and queers and cognitive minorities are all over my TV [1]. I will get hooked on mediocre shows because they suit my bubble. Make It or Break It is ridiculous, especially if you watch as much actual elite gymnastics as I do [2]. But it's about female athletes who act recognizably like girls and are also competitive and aggressive, and it eroticizes the male bodies of love interests while treating female perspectives as the in-show default. Alphas has a tortured and trite internal mythology and inconsistent writing. But Gary is such a great creation: a man whose Asperger's Syndrome shapes his personality and behavior, as well as his superpowers, but does not define him or reduce him to a punchline.
When a video game enters the bubble, customization is increasingly my friend. As I think I have mentioned a few times, I am a little obsessed with Diablo III right now. I realized somewhere around the end of the second act of the game that not only can you choose a non-white female character to play, but you can choose to play a game with few or no normative white dudes in the fight. You can play any character class as female; all characters are equally underdressed and eye-candyish at the beginning, and equally well-armed and badass as the game progresses. There are three options for an NPC sidekick; two are (interesting) white guys, and one is an (equally interesting) woman, the enchantress Eirena. In the third act, the three other major NPCs are two women, Leah and Adria - both kick-ass sorceresses, and Leah is good with a bow and arrow - and Tyrael, a brown-skinned fallen angel voiced by an African-American actor. The great thing about current video games is they allow people like me to play within the bubble; the less great thing is that they allow everyone else to ignore the opportunity for Witch Doctor/Eirena girlslash headcanon.
My gaming choices draw attention to how much of my bubble is a matter of selective attention. I'll fixate on queer/female/cognitive-difference aspects that people outside the bubble don't notice. Teen Wolf has a non-white leading man and two endlessly fascinating secondary female characters, but I love even more that Stiles is a canonically ADHD and sexuality-questioning sarcastic smartypants underachiever. It's one of the few times I've looked at my television and seen my sixteen-year-old self. I tell people that I watch Revenge largely for its bisexual geek sidekick, and there's always a beat before people realize I'm talking about Nolan.
Revenge is also full of interesting, distinct women, as well as female-gaze man candy and f/f hoyay, but that causes some viewers to downgrade it to soap opera. I think that's how the "no interesting women on TV" claim often begins: there's a pre-supposition that media narratives about women are either designed as or descend into domestic drama and romance. But Revenge owes far more to Batman than it does to Beverly Hills 90210. The narrative focus is mostly on scheming, ass-kicking, and Shamu Cam surveillance. You're engaging in some seriously selective fast-forwarding if you read Revenge as a show about love triangles, parties, and outfits.
A lot of my other favorite texts get dismissed from the argument for similar reasons. The Good Wife is either not genre enough or too legal procedural or the exception that proves the rule. Girls is (legitimately) too white and straight [3]. Lost Girl is apparently somehow too sex-positive. The Hunger Games gets downgraded to cheesy romance for tween girls. Four of the last six Survivor winners have been women, but that's just reality television.
What this ends up boiling down to is, people like me can list counter-examples until we're blue in the face, and the answer is always, "But I don't like that show." And it's all right not to like that show, or any show, but after a while I start to wonder. It seems to me that a lot of geeks unconsciously, secretly, and/or hypocritically prefer texts about normative people. If a text features anything but a straight white dude, it's excluded from their bubble. And that's, you know, I can be friends with people who like different shows from me. But we're definitely not going to be friends if you don't own that shit. And we're double definitely not going to be friends if you tell me that every piece of media I currently love doesn't exist.
[1] While most forms of non-normativity make me more likely to get into a show, these are the three that make the most difference for me personally because I identify as queer, ADHD, and more or less female. [back]
[2] This argument applies to the sports I follow, too. In addition to the fact that artistic gymnastics is very focused on the women's side of the sport, the two best men on the US team are Latino (John Orozco and Danell Leyva), and then there's Josh Dixon. Figure skating is full of interesting women and more and more comfortable with its gayness. The NFL is, well, the NFL, but it has tremendous ethnic and class diversity and a number of players who talk honestly about cognitive differences like dyslexia, ADHD, and traumatic brain injury. [back]
[3] But also says things about white girl privilege that most media avoids addressing. There would have been ways to make the show's first season less white and straight, but they also would have made the show less realistic. This is uncomfortable, unpleasant, and painfully reflective of my experiences with young artsy overeducated people in New York. In short, it's a paradox too big to fully address in this post. [back]
Dear Fandom,
I live in a magical bubble.
Usually, I forget that I live in it. I watch my shows; I read my books and my webcomics; I play my video games; I occasionally catch a movie. And then someone writes about how there are no interesting/three-dimensional/realistic female or queer characters in mainstream media. And then I look around my glittery pink bubble and remember how nice it is in here.
I don't consciously set out to consume media that features characters other than straight, white, conventionally attractive, non-disabled, conventionally-masculine-acting males. It's more, if all the featured and well-developed characters are normative, I am far more likely to be bored and stop watching. I don't watch the first episode of a new show and go, "Oh, white dudes again, no season pass for you." The thought process is more like, "Nothing is hooking me about this show. I started playing with my phone during the second commercial break and never stopped. I watch enough goddamn TV as it is. No season pass for you." The correlation is not perfect: this is what happened when I tried to watch Battlestar Galactica (new) both times, despite several neat female and non-white characters. But that was, like, five years ago already, and it's literally the only time I can remember having this particular reaction to a show that wasn't all white dudes all the time.
So I live in a magical bubble where women and queers and cognitive minorities are all over my TV [1]. I will get hooked on mediocre shows because they suit my bubble. Make It or Break It is ridiculous, especially if you watch as much actual elite gymnastics as I do [2]. But it's about female athletes who act recognizably like girls and are also competitive and aggressive, and it eroticizes the male bodies of love interests while treating female perspectives as the in-show default. Alphas has a tortured and trite internal mythology and inconsistent writing. But Gary is such a great creation: a man whose Asperger's Syndrome shapes his personality and behavior, as well as his superpowers, but does not define him or reduce him to a punchline.
When a video game enters the bubble, customization is increasingly my friend. As I think I have mentioned a few times, I am a little obsessed with Diablo III right now. I realized somewhere around the end of the second act of the game that not only can you choose a non-white female character to play, but you can choose to play a game with few or no normative white dudes in the fight. You can play any character class as female; all characters are equally underdressed and eye-candyish at the beginning, and equally well-armed and badass as the game progresses. There are three options for an NPC sidekick; two are (interesting) white guys, and one is an (equally interesting) woman, the enchantress Eirena. In the third act, the three other major NPCs are two women, Leah and Adria - both kick-ass sorceresses, and Leah is good with a bow and arrow - and Tyrael, a brown-skinned fallen angel voiced by an African-American actor. The great thing about current video games is they allow people like me to play within the bubble; the less great thing is that they allow everyone else to ignore the opportunity for Witch Doctor/Eirena girlslash headcanon.
My gaming choices draw attention to how much of my bubble is a matter of selective attention. I'll fixate on queer/female/cognitive-difference aspects that people outside the bubble don't notice. Teen Wolf has a non-white leading man and two endlessly fascinating secondary female characters, but I love even more that Stiles is a canonically ADHD and sexuality-questioning sarcastic smartypants underachiever. It's one of the few times I've looked at my television and seen my sixteen-year-old self. I tell people that I watch Revenge largely for its bisexual geek sidekick, and there's always a beat before people realize I'm talking about Nolan.
Revenge is also full of interesting, distinct women, as well as female-gaze man candy and f/f hoyay, but that causes some viewers to downgrade it to soap opera. I think that's how the "no interesting women on TV" claim often begins: there's a pre-supposition that media narratives about women are either designed as or descend into domestic drama and romance. But Revenge owes far more to Batman than it does to Beverly Hills 90210. The narrative focus is mostly on scheming, ass-kicking, and Shamu Cam surveillance. You're engaging in some seriously selective fast-forwarding if you read Revenge as a show about love triangles, parties, and outfits.
A lot of my other favorite texts get dismissed from the argument for similar reasons. The Good Wife is either not genre enough or too legal procedural or the exception that proves the rule. Girls is (legitimately) too white and straight [3]. Lost Girl is apparently somehow too sex-positive. The Hunger Games gets downgraded to cheesy romance for tween girls. Four of the last six Survivor winners have been women, but that's just reality television.
What this ends up boiling down to is, people like me can list counter-examples until we're blue in the face, and the answer is always, "But I don't like that show." And it's all right not to like that show, or any show, but after a while I start to wonder. It seems to me that a lot of geeks unconsciously, secretly, and/or hypocritically prefer texts about normative people. If a text features anything but a straight white dude, it's excluded from their bubble. And that's, you know, I can be friends with people who like different shows from me. But we're definitely not going to be friends if you don't own that shit. And we're double definitely not going to be friends if you tell me that every piece of media I currently love doesn't exist.
[1] While most forms of non-normativity make me more likely to get into a show, these are the three that make the most difference for me personally because I identify as queer, ADHD, and more or less female. [back]
[2] This argument applies to the sports I follow, too. In addition to the fact that artistic gymnastics is very focused on the women's side of the sport, the two best men on the US team are Latino (John Orozco and Danell Leyva), and then there's Josh Dixon. Figure skating is full of interesting women and more and more comfortable with its gayness. The NFL is, well, the NFL, but it has tremendous ethnic and class diversity and a number of players who talk honestly about cognitive differences like dyslexia, ADHD, and traumatic brain injury. [back]
[3] But also says things about white girl privilege that most media avoids addressing. There would have been ways to make the show's first season less white and straight, but they also would have made the show less realistic. This is uncomfortable, unpleasant, and painfully reflective of my experiences with young artsy overeducated people in New York. In short, it's a paradox too big to fully address in this post. [back]