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beccaelizabethI need to hunt up a reference for this, but it's past 11 at night, so I'll just make a note of only pub chat accuracy:
One thing I've read about for cultural studies is that any show that has one or more clearly sexist, racist or homophobic characters, for either comedic or dramatic effect, will have people watching it and agreeing with their every word.
The show will, for them, be about enjoying the sexism, racism or homophobia that confirms all their existing prejudices.
And this will persist even if there are other characters consistently calling out the prejudiced ones, and even if as far as the writers are concerned the point of the show is to have someone fight against sexism, racism and/or homophobia.
To put it another way, if a show is half misogyny and half a feminist woman fighting it, then some proportion of the viewers, possibly a depressingly large one, will be there to see the misogyny.
If the show just has women be awesome whilst surrounded by other awesome women, possibly in a setting where women are legally permitted to be equally awesome, then there's nothing for that particular crowd to latch on to.
Which will make it popular with a slightly more restricted range of people.
Setting a show somewhere safely historically distant so you can blame all the prejudice on it being the past, and then showing a whole lot of prejudice? Even if you show them getting beat every time, there's ways that's cool, but...
One thing I've read about for cultural studies is that any show that has one or more clearly sexist, racist or homophobic characters, for either comedic or dramatic effect, will have people watching it and agreeing with their every word.
The show will, for them, be about enjoying the sexism, racism or homophobia that confirms all their existing prejudices.
And this will persist even if there are other characters consistently calling out the prejudiced ones, and even if as far as the writers are concerned the point of the show is to have someone fight against sexism, racism and/or homophobia.
To put it another way, if a show is half misogyny and half a feminist woman fighting it, then some proportion of the viewers, possibly a depressingly large one, will be there to see the misogyny.
If the show just has women be awesome whilst surrounded by other awesome women, possibly in a setting where women are legally permitted to be equally awesome, then there's nothing for that particular crowd to latch on to.
Which will make it popular with a slightly more restricted range of people.
Setting a show somewhere safely historically distant so you can blame all the prejudice on it being the past, and then showing a whole lot of prejudice? Even if you show them getting beat every time, there's ways that's cool, but...
no subject
Date: 2015-01-08 07:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-09 08:25 am (UTC)