Civil rights violations in the US today doesn’t look like the bad cops on TV, it more often looks like the good cops on TV
How many times in your favorote cop show have they kicked in a door and searched a home without a warrant?
How many times in your favorite cop show have they questioned a suspect without their lawyer present and after the suspect has clearly stated they don’t want to talk?
Special question to fans of Criminal Minds: how many times have the BAU purposefully taunted the unsub in a standoff to the point that they become agressive and the agents then shoot the unsub?
By the way, to be clear on the door kicking thing, I am very specifically talking about the following line I’ve seen countless times:
”Hey, did you hear screams/smell drugs inside?”
And like it’s always shown as a flimsy excuse, yet, still the right and good thing to do
The one where they make the suspect talk without a lawyer is so common it’s actually ridiculous.
Or the one where they get mad at a perp for having a shitty attitude/mocking them and end up losing their temper and using unnecessary force is always framed like the police had no other choice. Because the perp insulted their wife or dead colleague so obviously they deserve some brutality
also when the cops maybe don’t do anything wrong, but the show frames it as “if only we could violate human rights a LITTLE, then we could solve the case!” or even that the law is preventing them from doing their job. e.g. the stodgy old judge won’t give them a search warrant, the arrogant psychiatrist won’t hand over their patient’s information, the team has to do things by the book this time(!) because the FBI/internal affairs/the media are watching them.
the number of times the police stalk someone because they’re “sure” they’re the culprit, even when they have no evidence and their captain tells them not to, but it’s justified in the end because they wee right of course, looking at you SVU.
What to do when you’re not the hero any more
What to do when you’re not the hero any more
The rage that white men have been expressing, loudly, violently, over the very idea that they might find themselves identifying with characters who are not white men, the very idea that heroism might not be particular to one race or one gender, the basic idea that the human story is vast and various and we all get to contribute a page – that rage is petty. It is aware of its own pettiness. Like a screaming toddler denied a sweet, it becomes more righteous the more it reminds itself that after all, it’s only a story.
Only a story. Only the things we tell to keep out the darkness. Only the myths and fables that save us from despair, to establish power and destroy it, to teach each other how to be good, to describe the limits of desire, to keep us breathing and fighting and yearning and striving when it’d be so much easier to give in. Only the constitutive ingredients of every human society since the Stone age.
Only a story. Only the most important thing in the whole world.
The people who are upset that the faces of fiction are changing are right to worry. It’s a fundamental challenge to a worldview that’s been too comfortable for too long. The part of our cultural imagination that places white Western men at the centre of every story is the same part that legitimises racism and sexism. The part of our collective mythos that encourages every girl and brown boy to identify and empathise with white male heroes is the same part that reacts with rage when white boys are asked to imagine themselves in anyone else’s shoes.
“…because when you’ve been used to privilege, equality feels like prejudice.”
and also
“Capitalism is just a story. Religion is just a story. Patriarchy and white supremacy are just stories. They are the great organising myths that define our societies and determine our futures, and I believe – I hope – that a great rewriting is slowly, surely underway.”
^^^^ YES. This whole thing is glorious.
Isn’t it funny how the media is determined to paint us the fans as delusional, one-track-minded suckers, and yet apparently all they can think to ask Martin Freeman, one of the most well-known and successful actors currently working, is when was the last time he spoke to Benedict Cumberbatch; something that has nothing to do with anything and that frankly no-one (including Martin) cares about.
And by ‘funny’ I mean ‘dumb as shit’.
The Damning Data That Quantifies Inequality In Film | ThinkProgress
The Damning Data That Quantifies Inequality In Film | ThinkProgress
From the article:
The numbers are, to say the least, damning. A few highlights (lowlights?) from the study:
• In the top 100 films of 2014, female teenagers — 13-to-20-year-olds — were equally as likely to be shown in “sexy attire,” as in, with exposed skin, and were equally as likely to be referenced as attractive by another character in the movie, as women aged 21-to-39.
• Of the 30,835 speaking characters evaluated in all 700 films, only 30 percent were female.
• In 2014, zero female actors over 45 performed a lead or co-lead role. Only three of the female actors in lead or co-lead roles weren’t white. None was lesbian or bisexual.
• Some more zeros for you: Of the top 100 films of 2014, 17 had no black speaking characters. More than 40 had no Asian speaking characters.
• In 2014, out of 4,610 speaking characters, only ten were gay. And out of that year’s top 100 films, 86 had no LGBT characters at all.
• Off-screen is not much better: Out of the 779 directors responsible for the 700 top grossing films in the study, 28 were women, 45 were black, and 19 were Asian. Women of color fared the worst, with three black female directors and a single female Asian director since 2007. The numbers for writer and producers follow similar patterns.
The Fan Meta Reader: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Sherlock, by professorfangirl
The Fan Meta Reader: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Sherlock, by professorfangirl
This morning concludes our look at meta through the lens of Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze with a fantastic piece by our own professorfangirl. Enjoy!
Ooh, I loved this.
Thanks, bb!
Oh I’m reading about Mulvey and the male gaze this week in my film class (taking race and gender in american film). Bonus material for me 🙂
Wow, OK, I had kind of conceptualized that Joss Whedon post along the lines of “here are some random thoughts that I’m gonna store behind a cut in case a few people are interested,” not expecting so many people to reblog it. But since there was so much interest, I ended up thinking about it more. And the direction my thinking took me in was this: what is it that women find attractive in male and female characters, and to what extent does this match up with what men assume that women find attractive in these characters?
adult’s movies: sex, explosions, yelling, cheap love story
kid’s movies: deep heart-wrenching death, moments where you question your own values, humor, adult jokes splashed in, the secret to the entire universe, sometimes explosions too
“I dunno man, kid’s movies are just kinda dumb”
have u ever watched a good adult movie or did u just watch transformers and think, ‘yep this is as good as it’s gonna get’