The official position of the Republican Party is that 1.4 million transgender Americans should be forced to use restrooms that do not match their authentic gender expression. The official position of the Republican Party is to put 1.4 million Americans at risk of arrest, imprisonment, psychological harm, and physical/sexual assault EVERY TIME THEY USE A PUBLIC RESTROOM.
If you vote Republican, you are actively supporting the oppression and dehumanization of 1.4 million of your fellow Americans.
If you FAIL TO VOTE DEMOCRATIC? You’re doing the same thing, but passively. Yay?
Register. Vote. Win. Be on the right side of history.
I hate all those “writing tips” posts where it’s like “don’t do this with your character because it’s bad” and “when a character does this it’s bad” and “don’t write like this because it’s bad.” That’s not actually giving tips, that’s just someone trying to tell you the right or wrong way to write, except there actually is no right or wrong way to write anything. It just screams of egomaniacal amateur writers who think it’s okay to be condescending toward other writers just because they think their own work is perfect.
Jurassic World, Mad Max Fury Road, and Little Girls
For her birthday, we took my soon-to-be six year-old to Jurassic World. Prior to that, she had watched a bootleg copy of Fury Road with me after I had confirmed that it fit the levels of violence I consider acceptable based on what I know of my daughter.
The most interesting thing to me was her reactions after each film.
After watching MMFR, she talked incessantly about it. (She had talked during the film as well, making observations, etc.) Her name was suddenly changed to Angry Cereal, mirroring two of her favorite characters. She made a new Sims game, spending more time than she ever had before perfecting the characters – and giving them all pets. A Lego car set was turned into a crazy car that could fit into the Mad Max world. Barbies were now the Wives and her dad’s Diablo figurine was now Immortan Joe. It’s been a little over two weeks and she still talks about it.
When the credits rolled on Jurassic World, she said, ‘Can we go see another movie?’ –And that was it. The only other comment vaguely related to the movie was her assertion she liked dinosaurs. Nothing else. No elaborate recreations, nothing.
I had thought with MMFR that my excitement had rubbed off on her but that doesn’t seem to be the case. After Jurassic World, I was excited, encouraging her to talk about her favorite parts. She asked for a Happy Meal. When we went to spend a gift card at Toys-R-Us the next day, I pointed out all the Jurassic World toys. They had Blue! She barely gave them a second glance.
It didn’t jive. She had tons of dinosaur books. Why was she infinitely more interested in an adult movie that was pretty much one big car chase rather than a movie about dinosaurs? Was it because despite the differences in ratings, Jurassic World had frightened her more? Maybe. But when she picked out a new stuffed animal to buy with her gift card, she informed us the little owl’s name was Splendid.
And that was it.
She had watched Fury Road in almost complete silence until the first shot of all the Wives. Then she turned to me and said, “There’s so many girls!” That was her takeaway from MMFR: there were lots of girls! All the girls were fighting together against the bad guy! The girls were the heroes! That was important to her, seemingly even more important than it was to me. Maybe because she’s just getting her first taste of playground culture where boys and girls are separate and the two don’t mix often and it’s been confusing. Maybe because she just really liked seeing girls on the screen. When I ask her, she just shrugs and says, “I don’t know, mommy, I liked all the girls. I liked Toast.”
As an adult, I’m aware of issues with representation. I don’t remember consciously noticing it as a child but I remember Leia and Uhura and Janeway being my favorites. I remember dressing up as Dana Scully. As a mom, I watch my daughter gravitate to girls and women on screen. A movie I thought would a sure thing because DINOSAURS! became a total miss because for her, there was no one on screen that she left the theater wanting to dress up as. There was no incentive for her to change her name to mimic favorite characters. I left grinning because holy shit, raptor squad! She left wanting a cheeseburger.
Children know when they’re being marginalized. They might have no idea what they word marginalized means, but they can still tell, instinctually, when they’ve been misrepresented in and/or excluded from the story.
Potter has done too much for me for me to ever want to shit all over it. I’m never going to say: ‘Don’t ask me questions about that’. I remember reading an interview with Robert Smith from The Cure. Somebody said to him: ‘Why do you still wear all that makeup, don’t you feel a bit past it?’ And he said: ‘There are still 14-year-olds coming to see The Cure for the first time, dressed like that. I’d never want to make them feel silly.’ It’s a similar thing with Potter. People are still discovering those books and films. It would be awful for them to find out the people involved had turned their backs on it. Though sometimes, people do come up and say ‘I loved you in The Woman in Black,’ which is really sweet. That’s them knowing that it matters to me that I’ve done other stuff.
Real characters are almost more important to me. If I was writing something called “Moonbase 67,” then the cook would be a main character and the man in charge of oiling the airlocks would be a very important character, rather than the bosses in their silver wigs.
