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Mar 22, 2009 22:28

Reading the reviews of the BSG finale on my friendslist, I have seldom been so glad that I bailed on the show back in season 2. Technology bad, patriarchal colonialism good? THAT was your big message ( Read more... )

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elspethdixon March 23 2009, 05:33:16 UTC
Technology bad, patriarchal colonialism good? THAT was your big message?

Don't forget the part where the series villains are femmbots. That was where I bailed on it, just upon hearing the promotional info.

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tavella March 23 2009, 06:25:16 UTC
And apparently femmbots were pretty much the only female characters that survived to the end, and non-white characters didn't fare much better (though I suppose you could count Olmos, even though he's coded white on the show.)

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surfing in from friendsfriends shadowhuntress March 23 2009, 06:47:55 UTC
Hope you don't mind. ;-)

that's doing better than the Latino front, where I'm not even sure there has been anyone who wasn't a drug smuggler, crime kingpin, or gunrunner.

The undercover police lady in 2x02 was Latina, Esai Morales played the store owner Michael helped in 1x07 (though yeah, the villain was a Latina, too), and David Zayas was a good guy in 1x01. While I love the show, they definitely need more diversity in their recurring characters. The latest casting news does help a little bit, though.

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Re: surfing in from friendsfriends tavella March 23 2009, 07:01:03 UTC
Yeah, I spoke a little too fast on them *all* being drug dealers or gunrunners, but it still seems a little lacking in *Miami*. But yes, the monocolor of the recurring characters does not help. What's the latest casting news?

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Re: surfing in from friendsfriends shadowhuntress March 23 2009, 08:11:13 UTC
What's the latest casting news?

I heard that Moon Bloodgood (who is part Korean, I think?) is going to be a cop in a multi-episode arc next season. So that's finally one recurring character who is not completely white, but there's still plenty of room for improvement overall.

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zdashamber March 23 2009, 06:49:44 UTC
I've thought about Burn Notice race, too. Seems to me that they try very hard to keep all the villains from being minorities, which is nice, but they don't try hard enough to get Mike more minority clients.

For good hispanic guys, there was the shop-owner who wanted Mike to clean up his neighborhood, and the DEA undercover agent lady. For black guys at all there was the rap star with the sleazy white guy helper, and I guess Mike's black client in that episode.

But 90% black or hispanic I hadn't realized, and yeah, they're clearly falling down on the job. I wish some of the reocurring secondary characters like various other agents or criminal contacts or love interests were minorities. And extras yeah.

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tavella March 23 2009, 07:07:35 UTC
Many of the Hispanics are early-wave Cuban-Americans, who often look quite white (if not precisely Anglo), so it probably looks a little paler than than 90 percent might indicate, but there's a lot of brown in there too.

And I had forgotten about the accountant -- that's an excellent counterexample of someone whose role wasn't coded black. That's why I wouldn't say they have skanky race issues, they are putting *some* effort in. But it would be nice if the reoccuring characters like the money launderers, etc, weren't quite so pale.

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carneggy March 23 2009, 14:42:29 UTC
Miami actually has less black residents than many of the major cities (heck, even Boston has a higher percentage of black people, Miami's only around 20%), but yeah, it's hugely Hispanic by any standard.

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elspethdixon March 23 2009, 15:50:11 UTC
Washington, D.C. is over 50% african-american. I've yet to find a network television show set in DC that reflects that (I love you, NCIS, but could you stick some more non-white faces into your supposedly-DC-but-actually-filmed-in-some-other-city crowd scenes, please? Bones, you could stand to do so, too).

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mumblemutter March 23 2009, 12:43:06 UTC
i have not watched the bsg finale la la la *scrolls past*

but! burn notice! i think dexter is also set in miami? and wow with the difference! you'd think america was in fact not utterly all white all the time! madness!

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tavella March 23 2009, 16:27:30 UTC
Does Dexter have a better balance? I haven't seen it, not a fan of serial killer shows.

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mikkeneko March 23 2009, 12:45:19 UTC
On the race front, they white-ify the shit out of Miami

Ask me about the Avatar movie. Actually, don't.

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tavella March 23 2009, 16:16:21 UTC
Oh, I've heard. That's definitely skanky! Turning *Avatar* into "noble white people oppressed and exterminated by the Evil Brown Empire" is um, special.

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