randomosity (and more DS9)

[kattahj]

Back from visiting my family, which included a three-day trip to Legoland with my siblings and their kids. Five adults to care for five kids, and it was still a full-time job for all of us, what with the thousands of other people around! Still, the trip was great fun, and so was hanging out at my parents' for a couple of days afterwards, with the

Comments

[lilacsigil]

Oh TVtropes, so addictive, so often faily. The "highly educated brown guy with Oxbridge accent" is a stereotype old enough to be showing up in Sherlock Holmes! They should be used to it by now!

[kattahj]

Yeah, no shit. It's ridiculous. He's English of North African descent. The show is pretty clear on that. We meet his parents. You can't get a whole lot more unambiguous.

[selenak]

The only way it's "ambiguous" is if you assume brown people shouldn't sound like Oxbridge graduates, in which case, fuck you.

That's how I interpreted this statement and started my morning by being outraged. Seriously? (Also, upper-class? He speaks standard BBC English as far as I can tell.)

Last year when Cairo Times was shown at the Munich Film Festival I linked to a recent interview with Siddig, and I think it mentions Julian Bashir was one of the few roles where he didn't have to put on an accent to conform with whatever the director's idea of what he should sound like...

[kattahj]

I think it mentions Julian Bashir was one of the few roles where he didn't have to put on an accent to conform with whatever the director's idea of what he should sound like...

That's really sad, but not surprising.

The weird thing is, Picard having an English accent? That's ambiguous. Bashir having an English accent is not ambiguous - he's English. So's his dad. (And I love that the differences in their accents illustrates the journey the character has made.) His mom presumably isn't. And no, we don't get an exact country of origin, but why the heck should we need to?

The idea that 400 years from now, countries would be populated solely by people who fit the ethnic stereotype of that country, when that isn't even the case now, is mind-boggling.

[selenak]

The thing is, being German, you grow up with dubbed tv. Even after switching to the original language versions, my default assumption for genre tv such as Star Trek is that the language we're hearing isn't the one the characters are actually speaking in, it's a translated version for our 20th (now 21st) century benefit. So Picard actually speaks French, Chekov speaks Russian, etc., we're just hearing it as German English because it's been dubbed for our convenience. :)

Going back to Bashir, though, the faily troper also seems to have missed that the show plays a bit with the English/Irish thing when it comes to Julian and Miles O'Brien.

If you absolutely want "ambiguity" in terms of the actor, not Julian Bashir the character, though, you could, I suppose, bring up Far Beyond the Stars, because Benny Sisko being not allowed on the writers' staff photo because he's black is a big, big plot point, evidently the writer played by Siddig has no such problem and thus in the fictional US of Sisko's mind or wherever that episode takes

[kattahj]

So Picard actually speaks French, Chekov speaks Russian, etc., we're just hearing it as German English because it's been dubbed for our convenience. :)

Hehehe, that's a more appealing interpretation than my "HOW COME THE TRANSLATORS ARE UNIVERSAL EXCEPT WHEN THEY'RE NOT???" gripes.

and thus in the fictional US of Sisko's mind or wherever that episode takes place is regarded as white.

Yeah, that actually bugged me quite a bit when I saw the episode. I think it shows a difference between the 90s and present time, too, in that Arabs (and biracial Arabs) have been racialized further by the political situation. I suppose it could be argued that Julius Eaton being white is no stranger than Kay, Pabst and the others being human, but it does raise some unfortunate implications.

ETA: And yes, I'd heard about McDowell. The British acting world isn't quite as incestuous as the Swedish one, but it seems to be close to it sometimes.

[wee_warrior]

Yeah, I remember being wtf about the Bashir thing, too. But I think a lot of the tropes regarding race and homosexuality are used in a careless manner - putting "but not too black" for every character whose actor is of mixed heritage for instance always seemed pretty offensive to me.

Sorry that I didn't continue talking about DS9. I'm a wee bit distractable at the moment.

[kattahj]

Reading the whole page now, there are several other examples that are questionable too (Monet? Really?) but I think I'll just stick to protesting this one, since otherwise I'll go crazy trying.

And ugh about the "but not too black". It is a problem that darker-skinned black people don't show up much in Hollywood, but shaming anyone light or biracial isn't the answer.

Sorry that I didn't continue talking about DS9. I'm a wee bit distractable at the moment.

If you want to, it's not too late. ;-)

[wee_warrior]

Exactly. In addition, it implies that a lighter-skinned or biracial actor isn't engaged for their skills but only for their skin tone, which is the same bullshit every minority being accused of simply being there to fill a token quota has to go through.

I'll get back to it soon, promise. ;)

[kattahj]

No pressure from me. :-)