Being Rude, employment, and ism fail
Mar. 5th, 2009 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI just realised something that has been bugging me about something said at Redemption.
Advice to newbie scriptwriters (or wannabe scriptwriters like most of us), my notes version:
Become a social being, observing humans. [In the process of that you will] Learn not to be rude. [Learn how to meet someone from a TV show and not start with talking about how bad it was.] Know how to talk. [Being polite to producers in bars.]
/notes
What I got from that is you can either crit a show or make an industry contact that might help you get in to a career. I made this connection partly because someone said on another panel that he's stopped doing crit because he can't crit his friends and patrons.
The connection I've made is not the thing they said. Should be clear about that.
But this is what was bugging me.
Why this bothers me? I've been reading metafandom. Right now the idea there's rude things you shouldn't say seems really complicated.
There are some people who, if I meet them, I have quite a lot of stuff to say to them. And I admit a ton of it is Comic Shop Guy 'worst ever!' type fan stuff, or stuff that's more like fanfic where I Have This Great Idea but I know full well it don't work for non-fanfic. But a lot of it is about the big deal categories, the cultural studies stuff that we have meta conversations about a lot. Gender, race, ethnicity, religion, class, sexuality, disability, and whatever else I'm forgetting right now. Stuff that matters.
The idea that saying that kind of stuff might be categorised along with 'being rude'?
This bugs me.
The idea that writers might stop making this kind of analysis on the very people they're in the best position to talk to? Bugs me a *lot*. Crit your friends and patrons! Someone has to tell them they've got no clothes.
If it's a choice between telling people they've written something of gender/race/disability Fail and getting something of mine made... Well, my journal is public, pretty sure I've done the telling part already, and will continue. But how I try to do it lately is 'This was fail, and here's the script that explains why and fixes it.'
That's why I write.
It would kind of suck if that's incompatible with paid employment.
Advice to newbie scriptwriters (or wannabe scriptwriters like most of us), my notes version:
Become a social being, observing humans. [In the process of that you will] Learn not to be rude. [Learn how to meet someone from a TV show and not start with talking about how bad it was.] Know how to talk. [Being polite to producers in bars.]
/notes
What I got from that is you can either crit a show or make an industry contact that might help you get in to a career. I made this connection partly because someone said on another panel that he's stopped doing crit because he can't crit his friends and patrons.
The connection I've made is not the thing they said. Should be clear about that.
But this is what was bugging me.
Why this bothers me? I've been reading metafandom. Right now the idea there's rude things you shouldn't say seems really complicated.
There are some people who, if I meet them, I have quite a lot of stuff to say to them. And I admit a ton of it is Comic Shop Guy 'worst ever!' type fan stuff, or stuff that's more like fanfic where I Have This Great Idea but I know full well it don't work for non-fanfic. But a lot of it is about the big deal categories, the cultural studies stuff that we have meta conversations about a lot. Gender, race, ethnicity, religion, class, sexuality, disability, and whatever else I'm forgetting right now. Stuff that matters.
The idea that saying that kind of stuff might be categorised along with 'being rude'?
This bugs me.
The idea that writers might stop making this kind of analysis on the very people they're in the best position to talk to? Bugs me a *lot*. Crit your friends and patrons! Someone has to tell them they've got no clothes.
If it's a choice between telling people they've written something of gender/race/disability Fail and getting something of mine made... Well, my journal is public, pretty sure I've done the telling part already, and will continue. But how I try to do it lately is 'This was fail, and here's the script that explains why and fixes it.'
That's why I write.
It would kind of suck if that's incompatible with paid employment.