later, ask me what I think about keen little gadgets in the shape of dismembered women. (Guess.)

[brown_betty]

So the other night, more or less by accident, kphoebe and I ended up watching Criminal Minds together. I had read the one sentence TV guide blurb, but honestly I had more or less forgotten about that by the time I started watching. Twenty minutes twenty three seconds later, (by my chat log) we were on AIM together boggling at the bafflingly insensitive

Comments

[fengi]

It's beyond ugly. It's the equivalent of having an episode in which a group Jews with horns kidnap babies and use their blood for bread. They repeated every centuries old myth about Gypsies, in a show set in the present day, where the boring reality of once nomadic subcultures in America is a google away.

[brown_betty]

EXACTLY. And then said “Oh, of course this is a corruption of Jewish culture.”

WOW THAT MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER I GUESS ITS NOT HEINOUS THEN.

[fengi]

Off topic: Still chuckling over the Robert Downey thing.

On topic: when 24 makes a better conscious effort at compensating for its retrograde politics than your story, something is wrong.

[cimness]

THANK YOU. After we watched this last night with :O and D: faces the whole time, Wax went looking for reaction posts and *couldn't find anyone who even noticed that there was anything wrong*. Most of the posts she found seemed to think it was cool! She was like "...Maybe it's because they're American?"

There are less than 1,000 Roma in all of North America, which makes everything about this ep far less likely ("waves"? There would be enough WAVES of Roma in ALABAMA to *track*?). Then there's, you know, the fact that... a lot of them DON'T make their living by petty thievery! And GETTING THE NAME WRONG, which isn't like, super-esoteric info; TRY WIKIPEDIA!

Furthermore, it's not like knowledge, or at least stereotypes, of the Roma aren't around in North America! They still have books and movies and television! And encyclopedias!

So angry.

[cimness]

Edit: The really sad thing as that while perpetuating lots of nasty and weird, common stereotypes (stealing, pickpocketing, murder, baby-stealing), you can still find more sensitive (and accurate) portrayals in stereotype: I'd say the common stereotype represented in Disney and Saturday morning cartoons and Charles Dickens definitely incorporates the importance of extended family to the Roma, which can hardly be exaggerated. The shitty stereotypes would include, say, the rich ornamentation and folk art and the lively cultural life - even if they're portrayed as begging pickpockets disguised as pot-peddlars, at least pop culture gives them offensively inaccurate singing, dancing, and Magical Wisdom (which is nonetheless much closer to reality than these silent, drab, workmanlike RV-dwelling thieves).

[brown_betty]

ratcreature has a reaction post a couple days ago that I missed because I hadn't watched it yet, and it's very similar with a lot of very similar comments, so I and Karen are not the first to go WTF!?! But we're not very fannish in our CM consumption, so maybe its because we're outside the architecture of the fandom.

The other thing that pisses me off is that there's basically no profiling done in this ep, which is a big draw. It's all police-work, and first-hand accounts and stuff.

[liviapenn]

lcsbanana pointed it out as well. :(

[lirazel]

And as a person of Jewish Roumanian descent, all I can say is "WTF?"

Also, although I haven't seen the show (don't watch much TV at all), I think this story would have been far, far creepier without trying to besmirch the name of an entire culture.

I read this some years ago, and thought it was wonderful. There's no lack of info about the Roma out there.

[havocthecat]

I second that rec! I <3 that book beyond the telling.

[karenhealey]

It was particularly distressing because this is a show which has not obviously FAILed so much before. There have been problematic moments, but in the three seasons previous, there was *nothing* this blatant and awful.

[red_eft]

Ah, man. And Criminal Minds had been on my "TV to maybe watch" list. Boo. Betty, why are people so full of fail?

[brown_betty]

I think I can recommend the first three seasons, if you can consider them as seperate from this.

BUT YES. I wasn't EXPECTING THIS. It was supoposed to be SAFE.

[karenhealey]

I have been thinking that perhaps we might want to incite letter-writing to the producers? Along the "HEY, usually love your show as it is pretty clued up on race, but THIS episode oh man" lines.

[red_eft]

I was thinking that as well, as if they have some semblance of a clue, they might actually be willing to listen?