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Supernatural Season 3: Is this just me, or ...?
I haven't really posted much about Supernatural lately. Overall, I'm enjoying this season, and "Bad Day at Black Rock" was one of my favorite episodes to date; I loved getting an episode that was, for the most part, just fun for the sake of being fun, very much a throwback to the aspects of the show that made me fall for it back in Season 1.
However, I'm starting to have a problem with SPN that is threatening to overcome my enjoyment of the show. I'm not in SPN fandom, and I poked around idly on LJ trying to figure out if this is just me or if other people are having this problem too. Basically, all I'm seeing is squee for last night's episode, so maybe it is just me, which is a discomfort-inducing thought all by itself. And I did have squee for the episode, really I did; it's just that I also had ... issues.
*takes stick, pokes beehive*
Okay, here's my problem. The way that SPN deals with race is starting to make me squirm.
I'm generally pretty "easy" when it comes to genre TV. I mean, I'm not unaware of the ongoing problems with the way that these sorts of shows typically handle race and gender; it's just that I can tune in and out of the part of my brain that notices this stuff, and go ahead and enjoy it anyway. Not that it doesn't enhance my enjoyment when shows do it right, or at least try -- and I honestly think quite a lot of the shows I've been watching lately are at least making a good-faith stab at it. (Not that some of the criticisms aren't justified, but still.) SPN seemed to be doing so, too, in the beginning.
But lately ... like I said, it's making me squirm. It's not just one thing, it's a whole lot of little things. It first started bothering me at the end of last season when Jake (that was his name, right? stupid swiss-cheese brain) turned out to be the one to go psycho, and the way that the show lovingly dwelt on his psycho-ness, with lingering closeups on every little detail of him stalking and killing Sam, then the Winchesters basically having to put him down. It did make me uncomfortable and I wished they'd gone a different route with the allocating of the powers and roles between the YED's chosen children. But it was really just one, well, two episodes, and Jake was a fairly complex character, and we saw the YED seducing him over to the dark side, using his family against him -- at the end of the arc, I was a little uncomfortable but reasonably okay with how it had been handled.
But then, coming rapidly on the heels of that, we had Isaac's particularly horrible death in the season premiere, and then Gordon's storyline which basically played out the whole thing with Jake again -- psycho stalker trying to kill Sam, with lavish camera closeups, eventually dying in a particularly gruesome and graphic way (and horrifically lynching-reminiscent, to boot). What made "Fresh Blood" extra-creepy to me was the boys walking away bantering in their blood-splattered clothes when Sam just tore off someone's head with his bare hands. I couldn't really get into the brother moment at the end because I was too busy being deeply, deeply skeeved out.
The thing is, it does make sense in terms of Gordon's characterization that he'd act the way he did. He sees vampires as unredeemable monsters, so when he becomes the beast, he acts like the beast -- and that's a logical outcome. But it's the show, its writers, that set him up that way and put him in that position, that took a character who could have been fascinating and complex and sympathetic (and in fact, used to be) and made him a one-note psychopath. It's the show that converted him, the show that stuck him in a roomful of tied-up, blond white women and then had him dismember them, the show that let his psycho-ness play out in an almost pornographic way.
And, honestly, it's also true that the lifestyle the Winchester brothers lead is a bloody and violent one. Dean, at the start of "Fresh Blood", hacking up a woman with a machete while she pleads for mercy, or Sam ripping off someone's head -- in their brutal world outside the law, where everything is trying to kill them, these aren't entirely unjustified actions. But they're the actions of anti-heroes, not heroes -- and I don't feel at all comfortable going from scenes like that, to scenes of humor and pathos where we're supposed to be 100% on the Winchesters' side. I'm not at all comfortable with the idea that the show is encouraging me to cheer on Sam as he strangles someone to death, especially when the casting in that scene is uncomfortably reminiscent of some of the more horrible historical baggage that we're carrying around in this country.
And I want to believe that I shouldn't be paying attention to this stuff, that it really shouldn't matter that Jake and Isaac and Gordon are all non-white -- I mean, certainly the show ought to have non-white villains and victims too, and most of the guest stars end up being one or the other. But it's just ... the way it's done, the roles they get, the fact that, as far as I can remember, Jake and Isaac and Gordon are the only non-white guest stars (aside from Tamara, obviously) that we've had lately, and two of the three have been super-strong, bloodthirsty psychopaths, while the third had one of the most appalling death scenes in a more violent-than-usual season. I just want balance. I don't want the show to stop casting characters of color; I want them to cast more of them, and bring Tamara into the recurring stable of guest stars and bring back Hendrickson (who makes a really fun antagonist because he's got a lot of "right" on his side, too) and just generally give us more to work with, not less, so that every time we see a person on the show who isn't white they don't turn out to be a psycho.
I certainly don't think the writers are playing it the way they are on purpose. However, at best, I feel like they're completely ignoring all of this unpleasant historical baggage that we're stuck with -- the problem is, we are stuck with it, and it has to be taken into account, and trying to ignore it and go on with the show as a happy-go-lucky road trip story is ... discomfort-inducing, to say the least. I suppose I'm throwing this out there to see what other people think, if I'm over-thinking this and making a mountain out of a molehill, or if other people are having similar problems to mine.
However, I'm starting to have a problem with SPN that is threatening to overcome my enjoyment of the show. I'm not in SPN fandom, and I poked around idly on LJ trying to figure out if this is just me or if other people are having this problem too. Basically, all I'm seeing is squee for last night's episode, so maybe it is just me, which is a discomfort-inducing thought all by itself. And I did have squee for the episode, really I did; it's just that I also had ... issues.
*takes stick, pokes beehive*
Okay, here's my problem. The way that SPN deals with race is starting to make me squirm.
I'm generally pretty "easy" when it comes to genre TV. I mean, I'm not unaware of the ongoing problems with the way that these sorts of shows typically handle race and gender; it's just that I can tune in and out of the part of my brain that notices this stuff, and go ahead and enjoy it anyway. Not that it doesn't enhance my enjoyment when shows do it right, or at least try -- and I honestly think quite a lot of the shows I've been watching lately are at least making a good-faith stab at it. (Not that some of the criticisms aren't justified, but still.) SPN seemed to be doing so, too, in the beginning.
But lately ... like I said, it's making me squirm. It's not just one thing, it's a whole lot of little things. It first started bothering me at the end of last season when Jake (that was his name, right? stupid swiss-cheese brain) turned out to be the one to go psycho, and the way that the show lovingly dwelt on his psycho-ness, with lingering closeups on every little detail of him stalking and killing Sam, then the Winchesters basically having to put him down. It did make me uncomfortable and I wished they'd gone a different route with the allocating of the powers and roles between the YED's chosen children. But it was really just one, well, two episodes, and Jake was a fairly complex character, and we saw the YED seducing him over to the dark side, using his family against him -- at the end of the arc, I was a little uncomfortable but reasonably okay with how it had been handled.
But then, coming rapidly on the heels of that, we had Isaac's particularly horrible death in the season premiere, and then Gordon's storyline which basically played out the whole thing with Jake again -- psycho stalker trying to kill Sam, with lavish camera closeups, eventually dying in a particularly gruesome and graphic way (and horrifically lynching-reminiscent, to boot). What made "Fresh Blood" extra-creepy to me was the boys walking away bantering in their blood-splattered clothes when Sam just tore off someone's head with his bare hands. I couldn't really get into the brother moment at the end because I was too busy being deeply, deeply skeeved out.
The thing is, it does make sense in terms of Gordon's characterization that he'd act the way he did. He sees vampires as unredeemable monsters, so when he becomes the beast, he acts like the beast -- and that's a logical outcome. But it's the show, its writers, that set him up that way and put him in that position, that took a character who could have been fascinating and complex and sympathetic (and in fact, used to be) and made him a one-note psychopath. It's the show that converted him, the show that stuck him in a roomful of tied-up, blond white women and then had him dismember them, the show that let his psycho-ness play out in an almost pornographic way.
And, honestly, it's also true that the lifestyle the Winchester brothers lead is a bloody and violent one. Dean, at the start of "Fresh Blood", hacking up a woman with a machete while she pleads for mercy, or Sam ripping off someone's head -- in their brutal world outside the law, where everything is trying to kill them, these aren't entirely unjustified actions. But they're the actions of anti-heroes, not heroes -- and I don't feel at all comfortable going from scenes like that, to scenes of humor and pathos where we're supposed to be 100% on the Winchesters' side. I'm not at all comfortable with the idea that the show is encouraging me to cheer on Sam as he strangles someone to death, especially when the casting in that scene is uncomfortably reminiscent of some of the more horrible historical baggage that we're carrying around in this country.
And I want to believe that I shouldn't be paying attention to this stuff, that it really shouldn't matter that Jake and Isaac and Gordon are all non-white -- I mean, certainly the show ought to have non-white villains and victims too, and most of the guest stars end up being one or the other. But it's just ... the way it's done, the roles they get, the fact that, as far as I can remember, Jake and Isaac and Gordon are the only non-white guest stars (aside from Tamara, obviously) that we've had lately, and two of the three have been super-strong, bloodthirsty psychopaths, while the third had one of the most appalling death scenes in a more violent-than-usual season. I just want balance. I don't want the show to stop casting characters of color; I want them to cast more of them, and bring Tamara into the recurring stable of guest stars and bring back Hendrickson (who makes a really fun antagonist because he's got a lot of "right" on his side, too) and just generally give us more to work with, not less, so that every time we see a person on the show who isn't white they don't turn out to be a psycho.
I certainly don't think the writers are playing it the way they are on purpose. However, at best, I feel like they're completely ignoring all of this unpleasant historical baggage that we're stuck with -- the problem is, we are stuck with it, and it has to be taken into account, and trying to ignore it and go on with the show as a happy-go-lucky road trip story is ... discomfort-inducing, to say the least. I suppose I'm throwing this out there to see what other people think, if I'm over-thinking this and making a mountain out of a molehill, or if other people are having similar problems to mine.
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I just went over and read your post on the episode, and my thoughts when Gordon was "turned" were similar to yours -- I was hoping (and, to some extent, expecting) that we'd get a lot more moral ambiguity and story possibilities out of it than we did.
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Personally, I'm even more disturbed with how SPN treats women than I am with how it treats race, but I very much agree with everything you've said here.
I watched "Fresh Blood" with a friend who is very, very much into the fandom (well, more very into fanning SPN, since she's in a little non-Wincest corner of the fandom itself) and she was really, really into it for the Sam and Dean parts and I was getting skeeved by not how much we were glossing over the drugging/killing of all these Hollywood-beautiful blonde girls (and how much it didn't phase the boys) and Gordon going...well, over the top (even if it did fit his character).
So, yeah, it is hard sometimes to enjoy while ignoring the rest. But you aren't alone.
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It frustrates me, because I really want to enjoy the show without obsessing on this stuff, but it's just so in-your-face at times -- I can't not notice it.
It's nice to know it's not just me.
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i am sorry you are having a problem with it though
((hugs))
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Given that Sam and Dean will always be in a position of power, whoever you put up opposite them, in any of these roles and especially 1-3, will have a somewhat iffy portrayal. Jews, for instance, have up to now played the roles of 1-3, unless Bobby is Jewish, in which case he's the kind that uses crosses as wards. (Thinking about this actually led me to thinking that in the SPN verse, anyone who discovers the world of demons will have a hell of a time keeping their faith if they aren't Christian, given that crosses and holy water and Cristo all actually work, and I'm fine with that.)
Anyway, back to what you were talking about - I do understand what you mean about being disturbed, especially in this episode. I do remember some sympathetic black characters - Dean's first love Cassie, and Missouri from S1, for example - and I hope they do better in the future.
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Actually, there are a couple other categories: supernatural creatures/monsters, and non-hunter allies (like the law enforcement officer who let the boys go when Hendrickson caught them).
But yes, true; I've thought about this too, since the show is a horror show at heart, and nearly everyone we see is going to be either a victim or a monster. Which is why I'm generally not too bothered by the show's treatment of women, though I realize it's an issue for other people; it kinda goes with the territory in a show like that, and they're not half bad about offsetting the female victims with male victims and women who are cops, etc. I'm okay with things being a bit problematic with some characters if they're offset by other characters who aren't -- it makes it more evident that the problems are inherent in the specific situation, not in the way the 'verse is constructed.
The idea of Bobby being Jewish is really cool! And there's no reason thus far why he couldn't be; sure, he uses crosses as wards, but since in the SPN-verse they do actually work on actual, physical demons, he'd be practical enough to go ahead and do it. It would be playing a character against type in a way that the SPN-verse doesn't really do, but from a fan perspective, I'm very intrigued by that, as well as the sort of crises of faith that he might run into while being a demon hunter. (No! Do not need more stories to work on now! Help!)
On the one hand, I think it's rather nice that the show doesn't consider Christian theology untouchable while mining other religions for ideas ... the way the Stargateverse seems to. (I suspect that pigs will fly before SGA has the episode in which Jesus turns out to be a descended Ancient....) That SPN doesn't consider it sacrosanct for storytelling purposes is kind of nice. On the other hand, it does set up a universe in which Christian theology, at least some of it, is literally and obviously true, and I hadn't thought until right now that this raises all kinds of interesting issues for the people who "live" within the SPN world.
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Oh, interesting. I don't know why I've never thought about this with SPN (or even Buffy). (and, okay, I'm having trouble remembering seeing any Jewish characters - but SPN canon seems to leak from my brain a lot).
I wonder if other religious protective charms also work in the SPN universe. I suppose a non-Christian hunter could perhaps argue that those symbols (holy water, crosses, etc) were able to repel demons long before Christ and were incorporated as holy symbols into the Christian faith because of their demon repelling power (since Christianity did tend to absorb a lot of the religions/cultures around it as it was growing and developing).
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It's there, though Isaac bothered me--more than Gordon, far more. And the women. Shoot, I'd far rather have more of Tamara than Ruby or Bela. But Ronon and Teyla have always been second-class and soemtimes third class citizens on SGA. Why are all the smart, educated heroes white on that show? Why does "alien" equal "dark-skinned, exotic"? Dr. Who's treatment of Martha is incredibly problematic when you step back and look at it through this kind of lens. It's a problem with TV in general, with each show having their own particular skewing of the issue. Like the whole "women can't be normal they have to be skinny blonde goddesses" thing.
Then again, this could just be my brain on drugs. :-9
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Doctor Who is really a whole other pile of meta, because while I can see what the reasoning is, and I can see why people had the problems that they did with the show, it's hard for me to vex about it when the show created such wonderful, fascinating characters in Martha and Mickey, and then really dealt with them and had them grow and change and mature. As genre TV goes, Doctor Who actually has a much defter hand with race and gender than most other shows ... in my humble opinion.
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Regarding Dr Who.. again, not something that had ever occured to me - I would never have thought to relate Martha's race to her development/portrayal on the show. I can certainly see your point now you've explained it (below) but, as Friendshipper says, I see the issue being Rose, not Martha's skin colour. If anything, I would have looked at it from the opposite perspective - compared to Rose, Martha is better educated, has a better job/career, her family are better educated and move within a higher social circle (seriously, can you imagine Jackie or Mickey being invited to, never mind fitting in at, a black tie event?). I would even say Martha is more intelligent that Rose. The way she and her family are portrayed is, in this way, positive. The issue with her mooning over the Dr is one a lot of fans have and I feel is nothing to do with her colour, and the suggestion that she is inferior to Rose is entirely about the Dr's deep feelings for and difficulty in letting go of Rose.
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The racial subtext is more troubling, particularly because I have no idea how much of this is deliberate and how much is accidental. The fact that all three recurring african-american male characters are antagonists is unfortunate; though individually I don't have a problem with any single character choice. Henriksen makes an excellent authority figure type villain for the boys, but when he appears alongside Gordon and Jake the resulting image is...unfortunate. On one level I understand that the pool of good recurring characters is extremely small; so far we're looking at Bobby, Ellen and Jo. Everyone else is either antagonistic, morally ambiguous, or come and gone in the course of an episode. Now maybe that extreme sense of isolation is also part of some story arc, but if they are going to have at least a few recurring characters around a little balance would not hurt.
My humble opinions, as always.
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I just wanted to add that the quick shifts from violence to normal interaction can be read a number of ways. It could be just the standard TV trope where people go through horrific degrees of violence with nary a flinch, or it could be read as part of how Sam and Dean cope with seeing things that should be sending to see a psychiatrist. I'm leaning towards the later.
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Yeah, the problem that I have isn't so much any individual character or storyline, it's the cumulative effect of a lot of them. Inevitably, most of the people they meet are going to fall into either the "villain" or "victim" camps; it's just the nature of the show, and I'm fine with that! I think what I'm craving right now is balance -- some indication from the casting department that they can do more with characters of color than cast them as psychos or kill them. Why couldn't Dean's old fling and her son in the episode with the creepy kids have been black or Asian or Hispanic, for example? There are so few non-white characters on the show at all that it really stands out when the few we have are antagonists. This doesn't make them bad characters; Gordon was really fascinating, despite how he ended up, and I think Hendriksen could really benefit from being fleshed out a little more -- the Tommy Lee Jones to their Harrison Ford. *g* Characters don't necessarily have to be recurring allies to be interesting and well-developed characters; they just need to be given good scripts to work with.
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There's not a lot of room for anyone else and the few extra roles they went against the grain and cast females. Ruby the demon, and the annoying thief. At least the addition of these two women are not as just stereotypical females for the boys to have a romance with. It is still about sexual tension and while I found Joe boring, at least the latest casting has given us some pretty 'gray' extra characters.
Which leaves, bad guys, demons and psychos. I don't think the writers /producers purposely sough out non-whits to put in the role as bad guys...I just think its an IS.
If all the bad guys were all white, then would we argue then that they don't cast enough non-whites?
Maybe if Bobby was black or Hispanic that might have helped but he's not.
Maybe its just a chance over reaction? The thing is you feel this way so it doesn't mater what others think. I will watch the show with a more open-eye though after you pointed this out. It's an interesting topic.
K
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I don't think they're doing it on purpose, either; it's just that it begins to stand out, after a while, that the handful of non-white characters they've had lately are either psychos or get gruesomely killed on-camera, or both. It's not that I want them to stop casting non-white actors; it's just that I want some balance. There's no reason that Dean's old fling and her son in "The Kids are Alright" couldn't have been cast with non-white actors, for example.
One of the things that bugs me about SPN is that they generally don't "play against type" with their characters; in other words, the way they cast them generally fits the stereotypes of whatever role they're in. I realize that this is an across-the-board Hollywood thing (and SGA is often guilty too), but it doesn't stop it from bothering me. Most of the time, I'm fine with it, and then every once in a while I feel like it rears up and smacks me in the face. And they used to be better about it than they've been lately. The Roadhouse crew, especially Ash -- I loved them; they were absolutely the epitome of everything I love about this show when it's hitting the mark, and part of what was so nifty about them is that they weren't what you usually see in Hollywood. Neither is Bobby, and it really makes those characters stand out -- and annoys me that the casting lately has been such typecasting, because they can do better, when they try.
and the few extra roles they went against the grain and cast females. Ruby the demon, and the annoying thief
See, I really don't agree that Ruby and Bella are cast against the grain, at all. Both of them seem to be very standard "stock" characters to me -- Bella the suave and lovely femme-fatale jewel thief, and Ruby the martial arts chick in tight leather. (Ruby, incidentally, is a character that I immediately fell into "like" for as soon as she turned out to be a demon. In fact, I kinda missed her in this episode. Bella, on the other hand ... I think this post elsewhere (http://merryish.livejournal.com/225133.html) sums up most of the problems that I have with her.)
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As for the handling of race, you're not alone. The race issues in a lot of my shows bother me to the point that I do my best not to think about them. (In all honesty SGA freaks me out even more; have we ever even seen a black scientist? Hell, I'm still trying to figure out why Teyla seems to be a different ethnic type from her people. Or why we see all-white worlds, or mixed-ethnicity worlds; they've pretty much never been to a world that's a non-white ethnic type. Which biologically/anthropologically speaking makes no sense, considering the worlds do not seem to be interbreeding regularly. They should be, but they're not. Umm, yes, returning this to the box of 'Not Thinking About It'...)
(...though I gotta admit, with all this really obvious creepy stuff in other shows, I don't understand why Martha Jones is ultimate proof of Dr. Who's racism. There is definitely some race weirdness going on with Who (they're in London all the time and see how many Indians?) but Martha herself seems to be a mold-breaker. I guess that's why she's proof? Or something? I'm so confused...)
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I actually think Doctor Who is much better with race issues than any of the other genre shows I watch. It's certainly not perfect, and I can also understand why the show's critics make the points they do; I just don't agree with most of them. (However, I might come around a bit depending on how Martha's departure is dealt with in the first few episodes of the new season. Speaking of which ... new season SOON! And I watched the Children in Need special this morning. OMG TOO CUTE.)
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I think as separate individuals, Jake, Isaac and Gordon are all interesting characters validly portrayed whatever the colour of their skin happened to be. And I don't think that Isaac was an unsympathetic character - he just died horribly (killed by a bunch of white people possessed by demons). I actually have more of a problem with Hendrickson because I find him more of a caricature and his "single mindedness" seems almost "unprofessional" to me.
The only black character on the show whose skin colour was actually an issue (that I can recall) was Dean's ex-girlfriend Cassie. I do know that a lot of the fandom hates her, but I don't think she was all that badly portrayed and she wasn't killed off horribly either.
A lot of the bad guys and horribly killed schmucks on the show are white too. And yet, I totally admit that when it happens to a black person I do notice it more.
So honestly, I believe that it shouldn't matter, but unfortunately it does. And if I had a say in the casting, I would point out that they really shouldn't run the risk of sending the wrong signals in this area.
And personally, I wish they'd cast more ASIAN characers. They shoot in Vancouver for Christ's sake! But that could be my own racial issues coming to the fore... ;-P
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And yes! they do need more Asian characters! And people of every stripe, really. Since the Winchesters travel all over and they usually have several new guest stars every week, we ought to see a whole lot more variety on the show than we actually do, in pretty much every way: racial, economic, geographic, etc. I really liked the way that so much of the recurring guest cast in earlier seasons was drawn from the working class, because that's something you don't get too much on TV; the Roadhouse in particular was nice to see. Lately it seems like they've been reverting back to middle-class yuppiedom, but I can still hope ...
People didn't like Cassie? Oh, that's too bad! I really liked her; I wanted her to show up again. (And what the heck happened to Ellen this season, anyway? That one's especially puzzling to me; she just ... vanished.)
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(Anonymous) - 2007-11-23 11:16 (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
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I've never really been into schlock horror, but neither does the gore offend me (then again, my job involves cutting up body parts sometimes, so I'm not exactly your average member of the viewing public). In some ways, it doesn't register much with me - so I'm free to go straight for story and characterisations, both of which I've been very happy with for most of the season.
I'm on cloud nine with all three of my fave North American shows this season. SGA, Numb3rs and Supernatural are all churning out episodes that both entertain me and gave me the character moments that I crave. And for each episode that I had an issue with, there was something else to compensate (eg. Fake-Little-Dean annoyed me somewhat in The Kids are Alright, but the creepiness of the overall storyline and the emotional punch that some of the supporting guest stars gave their roles had me enthralled).
So, I'm mostly just celebrating some fantastic TV before it all gets put on hold due to industrial relations disputes.
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But what I really like about SPN is that I'm not sure where it's going. I don't know how far they're going to take Sam down the "dark" road, but I'm reasonably sure that they're not just going to push a reset button and have him back to normal. And that's really nice to have.
(They'd better not kill Bobby, though! I love seeing him, but I'm all tense every time he shows up; I'm so sure he's going to die this season.)
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But - when it comes to the issues of how race, gender, or even religion is handled in shows - in my personal opinion, I think many people's reactions to it tend to be either exagerrated or nit-picky. I'm not saying that there are not issues or that people's issues with a show are not valid. Personally, I've always had issues with how religion is treated in shows (they try to be unspeicific as to whether a deity exists, but have a way of making a religion come across as a negative thing) It's just that there have been shows where people are saying that there are these issues, especially with race, but I'm not really seeing it. SGA, for example. A lot of people have been getting after it for not being diverse enough, while to me it's an incredibly diverse show compared to other shows I've seen that have been barely diverse at all. Although that does kind of come down to each of us seeing the same thing in a different way. Maybe there's something I'm not seeing, or maybe there's something others are looking at too deeply, I don't know.
The thing is, I think it all comes down to trying to please everyone and not being able to. Years ago, shows that were ethnically and racially diverse were rare. Now we have tons of shows that are quite diverse, yet issues still remain (people of color being cast as sidekicks instead of leads, not enough people of this race or that ethnicity, priests and ministers being bad guys instead of good guys, and so on.) Try as a show might, toes are still going to be stepped on (Ex. a show may have an excellent African-American character, but doesn't have a character who's of this other race or of this particular religion, and some people don't like that.)
I think SPN a good example of stepping on toes with what they're unintentionally doing. It's been mentioned in the other comments that, this being a two-main character show, it gets hard when it comes to casting. The show wants to be racially diverse, but the majority of it's characters tend to be bad-guys, so characters of another race end up as bad-guys more than good-guys. I also think it's something that the writers are probably going to end up rectifying, either because they'll become aware of it or will be made aware.
Anways, just my thoughts. Hope I didn't offend anyone as that was not my intention.
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I think that being aware of the problems with what I watch (and read) helps me avoid those same problems in my own writing. Again, I realize that you can't please everyone, nor should you try; on the other hand, I think that writing a diverse and multi-dimensional cast is just ... the right thing to do, for a whole lot of reasons. It's more accurate, for one thing! When I look around me, my world and town and workplace aren't composed entirely of white 30-somethings, so it's silly for me to write about such a world.
I also think it's good for those issues to be brought up, because sometimes the writers may not notice or may think they're giving the fans what they want when they're actually not. (Not that me griping in my LJ has the slightest influence on what the SPN writers do, of course!)
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Although writers can and do exercise control over the characters by writing them, those characters can be changed throughout production by a number of things, notably casting. I agree that casting directors have to be open-minded when auditioning people.
I have to admit that when someone said that we want to see more characters (and actors) of more diverse ethnic backgrounds on the screen, we have to consider a few things. I had a discussion similar to this with a friend from Singapore awhile ago, where we discussed why there are so few Asian characters on TV (and actors in mainstream work). We saw it as a cycle: There are fewer Asians on TV/film, thus Asian who might like to be part of the industry decline to do so because they perceive that there are fewer jobs (and the same people keep getting them); and because there is a smaller ethnic community represented in the wider acting community, fewer people from that minority community are cast.
I don't know the facts and figures, but it sounds like Vancouver has a fairly large Asian community. But what is the size of its Asian acting community???.
At the end of the day, it is the role of the casting director, director (and sometimes writer) to make a choice as to which actor (as an individual) best embodies a character. While I believe it is important to recognise that TV and film vastly under-represent minority communities both in casting and in crew positioning - and to CHANGE that - we as audience members and the show's production want to see the best performance of that role. Affirmative action, yes; inappropriate/inadequate casting based on ethnicity, no.
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Yeah, you're absolutely right, and it's overly simplistic to say "They ought to cast more [x]" or to blame the writers for what we see onscreen when there are a huge number of factors going on behind the scenes. You can't put a black or Asian actor in a role when none showed up or the only ones who came were wildly unsuitable for the character...
I agree that casting directors have to be open-minded when auditioning people.
I'd actually say that conscious/unconscious bias on the part of casting directors is a problem ... I mean, it doesn't have to be deliberate, it doesn't have to be consciously malicious, but if your casting director's mental image of "suburban housewife" is a Hollywood-beautiful white 25-year-old, then that's who's going to get cast in the role even if a whole bunch of talented Asian actors show up, and after 50 casting calls turn out that way, it's not surprising after awhile if most of the actors who turn up are white ex-models ...
They absolutely shouldn't cast inappropriate actors simply to meet racial/ethnic parity. On the other hand, I think it's something that can't be forgotten or ignored by TPTB of the show, because otherwise they're quite likely to churn out a series of very similar guest actors.
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I do see your point though and I agree that it is certainly not intentional but that the casting and how certain characters are written or developed is certainly open to interpretation in that way. Personally - and this is probably going to sound really dumb and naive - the reason it never even occured to me to think about the above is because it honestly didn't occur to me as being relevant.. and not because of ignorance of the historical issues etc but because the colour of the character's skin honestly never occured to me as being relevant. I never thought about the implications of Gordon killing the two blonde, white girls because I never really thought about Gordon being black. To me, he's just Gordon.
I'd like to think that that is really the ultimate goal of racial equality - that colour simply isn't relevant, that we don't even think or care what a person or TV character's skin colour is - but I'm jaded enough to know that unfortunately the world doesn't work that way just yet.. and so it is seen as an issue and we do have to think about the implications of such things and how they could be interpreted.
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For what it's worth, I want to start with a disclaimer of sorts: obviously, I'm not from the US, so I don't share the same kind of historical baggage. I'm definitely not going to say that Sweden doesn't have racism - we do, because people everywhere suck, and have issues - but that it is different here. What this means is that I can be really, really dense about race issues, and what constitutes negative stereotypes and such. (I've only recently discovered that something as seemingly innocuous as watermelons and fried chicken can have seriously ugly connotations, for example.)
That said - Supernatural has made me react, in a bad way. And I have seen parts of the fandom discuss the question - that's probably part of what has clued me into what's going on. Every now and again I lurk over at
But - yeah. Ever since Sam got Gordon arrested by the cops for driving around with a private arsenal... That felt sort of - wrong. And then Jake, and Isaac, and now Gordon again... I find myself sadly lacking eloquence right now, but - even with Hendrickson, the non-white male guest stars have all been portrayed as potentially violent and unpredictable (with the exception of Isaac, who was instead turned into a victim of an all-white mob of demons), all of them hunting the Winchesters in some fashion... Um. Yeah. Especially since Jake and Gordon both needed to be "put down", as you write.
Gordon's death felt really, really distasteful (if that's the right word) to me - and like I mentioned, for me the historical baggage is a bit further removed, and so not usually the first thing I think about. But the steel wire biting into Gordon's neck like that - wow. Wrong on so many levels. And his violent slaughter of the helpless blonde girls - I don't even want to get started on that. On how they were the "daughters" of a white person, and he - I mean. Just. Someone is not thinking. At all. And it is kind of appalling, because it doesn't actually take that much effort to not suck at race. Just like it doesn't take that much effort to not suck at portraying women.
What I'm trying to say is that - no, it's not just you. This?
I couldn't really get into the brother moment at the end because I was too busy being deeply, deeply skeeved out.
This is exactly what I felt at that point.
I don't even know what to say, really. Or do. I still kind of love the show, but the massive dose of DOING IT WRONG is getting to me. At least it's not quite as bad as Heroes? Maybe? (I'm not on speaking terms with Heroes right now. Too many huge, huge issues, including both race and gender in a major way.)
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It's kind of nice to hear the same concerns expressed from your end, because not only do we see eye to eye on a lot of things, but not coming from the same cultural background, you're not as -- well, biased as I am, I suppose. And if you also see it, to that extent, it makes me feel less like I'm being overly attentive to those sorts of details.
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(Anonymous) 2007-11-23 11:30 am (UTC)(link)no subject
I think it would bother me less if they were better about diverse casting in all areas of the show.