Thoughts on Race and the Vidding Community
I'm using my happy Mr. Bubble icon here because this is a light-weight post on what can be a very fraught topic; I have no political/social agenda, I'm just in a cheerful and somewhat noodly mood, writing from within my own little bubble. For the record: I am Mexican-American.
A few days ago, laurashapiro posted about vidding characters of color and about vidders of color, in conjunction with International Blog Against Racism Week. I was super-pleased to see a couple of recs for my recent Psych Gus/Shawn vid (YAY!!!), but what interested me most was when she talked about how she was putting together a documentary about vidding and realized that she had only one vidder of color in the mix. These paragraphs in particular made me pause:
I know I could have done a better job of recruiting more vidders of color to the project. I could have done more outreach, worked harder to find people of color in fandom who might know vidders of color. I didn't go wide enough with my initial announcement, and I believe the documentary suffers as a result.
It's another one of those situations where I remind myself that my particular community doesn't represent all of fandom, let alone all fans; the vidding community I happen to hang out in isn't THE vidding community, it's only one community. And at the moment, that community is really really white.
And I said to myself, "Huh. It's true. The vidding community as I know it is really really white." And you know, the fact that it's taken me this long to realize this tells me that it never bothered me much. The vidding community I know is via Livejournal: vidding and vividcon and fandom-specific comms like sv_vids. That's it. I do not venture off of LJ. I don't even have a non-LJ site for my vids, unless you count YouTube or Imeem. I find LJ to be quite comfy, and I find that I can identify with a great many of the vidders I've encountered here. I've been to Vividcon two or three times now, and I admit that I have felt a sense of alienation at the con, but here's the thing: I'm a geek. I'm a sometimes socially awkward geek, so I am bound to feel alienated no matter who I'm with, persons of color or no. I'm used to being on the outside looking in: as the class nerd, as the fat girl, as the poor girl. Maybe, maybe my mixed race status had something to do with my feeling like an outsider, but it was far less distancing than my own introverted-ness (I don't even know if that's a word, but I like it).
So, if someone approached me to participate in a documentary as a "vidder of color," I would feel strange. I don't identify myself as a "vidder of color." I am a slasher first and foremost, and I happen to find vidding the medium that allows me to fulfill my slashy fantasies. Vidders are my people not because we are of the same race, but because we are of the same tribe: the tribe of the Geek. We laugh at the same jokes, we share the same obsessions, we perv on the hot boy on boy action. United through porn, we stand strong!!!
A few days ago, laurashapiro posted about vidding characters of color and about vidders of color, in conjunction with International Blog Against Racism Week. I was super-pleased to see a couple of recs for my recent Psych Gus/Shawn vid (YAY!!!), but what interested me most was when she talked about how she was putting together a documentary about vidding and realized that she had only one vidder of color in the mix. These paragraphs in particular made me pause:
I know I could have done a better job of recruiting more vidders of color to the project. I could have done more outreach, worked harder to find people of color in fandom who might know vidders of color. I didn't go wide enough with my initial announcement, and I believe the documentary suffers as a result.
It's another one of those situations where I remind myself that my particular community doesn't represent all of fandom, let alone all fans; the vidding community I happen to hang out in isn't THE vidding community, it's only one community. And at the moment, that community is really really white.
And I said to myself, "Huh. It's true. The vidding community as I know it is really really white." And you know, the fact that it's taken me this long to realize this tells me that it never bothered me much. The vidding community I know is via Livejournal: vidding and vividcon and fandom-specific comms like sv_vids. That's it. I do not venture off of LJ. I don't even have a non-LJ site for my vids, unless you count YouTube or Imeem. I find LJ to be quite comfy, and I find that I can identify with a great many of the vidders I've encountered here. I've been to Vividcon two or three times now, and I admit that I have felt a sense of alienation at the con, but here's the thing: I'm a geek. I'm a sometimes socially awkward geek, so I am bound to feel alienated no matter who I'm with, persons of color or no. I'm used to being on the outside looking in: as the class nerd, as the fat girl, as the poor girl. Maybe, maybe my mixed race status had something to do with my feeling like an outsider, but it was far less distancing than my own introverted-ness (I don't even know if that's a word, but I like it).
So, if someone approached me to participate in a documentary as a "vidder of color," I would feel strange. I don't identify myself as a "vidder of color." I am a slasher first and foremost, and I happen to find vidding the medium that allows me to fulfill my slashy fantasies. Vidders are my people not because we are of the same race, but because we are of the same tribe: the tribe of the Geek. We laugh at the same jokes, we share the same obsessions, we perv on the hot boy on boy action. United through porn, we stand strong!!!