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May. 22nd, 2006 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI followed a bunch of links and ended up on a page that complains about how the movies depict albinos. Always they are being the bad guys.
Okay, fair enough, can see their point.
But they include on the list characters that I wouldn't call albino. They are very pale, yes, but that would be on account of being, for instance, dead. Ghosts or vampires or assorted zombie like thingies. Or they're underground creatures like Morlocks. They aren't pale because albinos are associated with evil, they're pale because dead dudes walking around is well creepy, and dead people go a bit pale. (And then manky colors, granted, but zombie movies got that covered.) Plus there's the thing where some characters are just excessively goth (which loops right back to the dead things bit).
I'd guess that the association chain goes dead dudes = creepy, dead dudes = pale, pale = creepy. Not just jumping in and assigning moral qualities to albinos.
Which isn't to say it isn't dumb. Pretty dumb. People happen in many varieties, and outward signs very rarely much to do with inward being. Exception being tattoos, for those are usually self chosen and meant to be representative. Though of what takes much investigation.
If I ruled the world, I would make a Watcher TV series. It would be set after the First Evil had a go at the Watchers. So a lot of the surviving Watchers would be disabled, or scarred, because of the attacks, or in some cases since before the attacks but the personnel shortage brought them out of retirement. I skimmed past the idea in RFJ0. I can actually only think of one disabled actor (the guy my mother persisted in referring to as 'Mr No Legs', who played Joe in Highlander), but there's got to be bunches more than that. Then instead of scars representing evil, it would be a bunch of people faced with particular challenges but getting it done anyways. Extra heroic.
Also I have planned in the 'Ripper' series stuff that I got to via metaphor for disability.
I mean one thing that pissed me off when Spike was a ghost was all those people around him, with the fancy science labs and all, did not lift one finger to help him with rehab. They got annoyed at him for pushing the glassware around, instead of, oh, getting him appropriate exercise equipment. They didn't produce a single bit of assisstive technology, and since he was visible to machines he could have done tons of stuff with a decent computer interface. They just left him wandering around all ghosty. And he spent the whole time trying to get back to what he was, focused on the idea of violence=power and just trying to learn how to hit people again! (Okay, there was some nice willpower stuff in there too, but.) Little bit of psychological counselling, pointing out that just because his life is over doesn't mean his effective interaction with the world is, change his whole outlook.
I don't think the series writers were seeing it from the disability angle. But to me its the most obvious thing.
So I'll write ghosts, and werewolves, and part demons, and I'll be thinking metaphors as I go.
Okay, fair enough, can see their point.
But they include on the list characters that I wouldn't call albino. They are very pale, yes, but that would be on account of being, for instance, dead. Ghosts or vampires or assorted zombie like thingies. Or they're underground creatures like Morlocks. They aren't pale because albinos are associated with evil, they're pale because dead dudes walking around is well creepy, and dead people go a bit pale. (And then manky colors, granted, but zombie movies got that covered.) Plus there's the thing where some characters are just excessively goth (which loops right back to the dead things bit).
I'd guess that the association chain goes dead dudes = creepy, dead dudes = pale, pale = creepy. Not just jumping in and assigning moral qualities to albinos.
Which isn't to say it isn't dumb. Pretty dumb. People happen in many varieties, and outward signs very rarely much to do with inward being. Exception being tattoos, for those are usually self chosen and meant to be representative. Though of what takes much investigation.
If I ruled the world, I would make a Watcher TV series. It would be set after the First Evil had a go at the Watchers. So a lot of the surviving Watchers would be disabled, or scarred, because of the attacks, or in some cases since before the attacks but the personnel shortage brought them out of retirement. I skimmed past the idea in RFJ0. I can actually only think of one disabled actor (the guy my mother persisted in referring to as 'Mr No Legs', who played Joe in Highlander), but there's got to be bunches more than that. Then instead of scars representing evil, it would be a bunch of people faced with particular challenges but getting it done anyways. Extra heroic.
Also I have planned in the 'Ripper' series stuff that I got to via metaphor for disability.
I mean one thing that pissed me off when Spike was a ghost was all those people around him, with the fancy science labs and all, did not lift one finger to help him with rehab. They got annoyed at him for pushing the glassware around, instead of, oh, getting him appropriate exercise equipment. They didn't produce a single bit of assisstive technology, and since he was visible to machines he could have done tons of stuff with a decent computer interface. They just left him wandering around all ghosty. And he spent the whole time trying to get back to what he was, focused on the idea of violence=power and just trying to learn how to hit people again! (Okay, there was some nice willpower stuff in there too, but.) Little bit of psychological counselling, pointing out that just because his life is over doesn't mean his effective interaction with the world is, change his whole outlook.
I don't think the series writers were seeing it from the disability angle. But to me its the most obvious thing.
So I'll write ghosts, and werewolves, and part demons, and I'll be thinking metaphors as I go.
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Date: 2006-05-22 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-23 12:28 am (UTC)... which might be why I find so many stories the lit equivalent of fast food, lacking chewy content ...
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Date: 2006-05-23 12:31 am (UTC)