Tablesaw!

I'm trying to write a thing about stereotypes, but it's hard because I haven't been writing for a while. While procrastiresearching, I started asking my (non-Latina) girlfriend whether she thought "Mexicans love Morrissey" was a stereotype. She had never heard anything like that. She wanted to know, in response, whether "Mexicans love Mariachi music" was a stereotype.

What I'm trying to get at (in the other piece, the one I'm still not writing) is the way in which stereotypes aren't generalizations, but ideological statements that justify the hierarchical positions of different social groups. "Mexicans are lazy" and "Mexicans are hard-working" are contradictory, but each works to justify Latin@s being stuck in labor-intensive jobs without promotional paths in the United States. But "Mexicans love Mariachi music" doesn't quite get at that directly.

What I wanted to say didn't quite crystallize until I saw Bankuei's post/tweets:

Marginalized folks are punished for their cultural markers, appropriators are rewarded for using other folk’s cultural markers.

It really doesn’t even matter WHAT the thing is being appropriated, it’s really about appropriating as a means of reinforcing the power structure about WHO is allowed to take and WHO is expected to be taken from.

"Cultural marker" was precisely the concept I was looking for. It's not just that Mariachi is a form of music from Mexico, it's that it's one of the cultural markers used in the United States to stand in for "Mexican/Latin@/Spanish-Speaking Brown Person", along with "cactus," "sombrero," "poncho," "tequila," "mustache," and "Cinco de Mayo." In fact, if you're looking for the cultural markers for Latin@, just go to a "Cinco de Mayo" "celebration" by white people, and you'll see "Mexican" neatly packaged. Identifying any of those trite markers is a reminder of how Mexican culture is marginalized by its differences, and various other Latino cultures are erased through homogenization. "Mexicans love Morrissey" doesn't fit anywhere on that ideological map of the dominant group.

But "Mexicans love Morrissey" still feels kind of stereotypy to me; why would that be? Well, looking at my own definition, it must have an ideological grounding that resonates with me. Perhaps that's because I'm also a Mexican-American who also likes Morrissey and listened to him in high school.(It also clearly resonates with others, like Rio Yañez, whose graphic is at the top of this post, and has used Morrissey as a muse several times.) And it is ideological, it runs counter to (or at least parallel to) the status quo.

I don't know that there's quite a word for that kind of non-dominant stereotype. They're around, but they don't get reproduced by the dominant culture in the same way, and you're not going to hear about them unless you're part of a group, or at least have actual positive interaction with that group. "Black don't crack" strikes me as one as well (with revolutionary messages of both beauty and resilience).

I don't have an ending, so here's a clip of Matt Smith comparing a Japanese fighter to Eeyore and Morrissey.

STEPHEN GREENBLATT: When I was writing the glosses for the Norton Shakespeare, I remember doing the glosses for Much Ado About Nothing and I came to the line in which Claudio says, I would marry her "were she an Ethiope." So I had to explain what "were she an Ethiope" meant, and I said in the marginal gloss, "Ethiope, i.e., black and therefore, according to the racist Elizabethan stereotype, ugly."

Now, someone criticized me for being too politically correct by saying "racist stereotype." But if you're actually faced with the practical question of how you're going to gloss the thing, you have to say "Ethiope, i.e., Ethiopian, i.e., black," that is clear. But if you're saying I'd marry her "were she an Ethiope," you have to explain what that means, and you could say "i.e., black and therefore ugly," but what does that mean if you're writing a book for a contemporary audience? You have to acknowledge that the values have drastically shifted.

You could also point out, if you were doing a fuller account, that Claudio was actually a very unpleasant character and that happens to therefore qualify this, but it isn't the whole story. The whole story definitely involves a broader, not just the defects of Claudio's character, but a certain set of broader Elizabethan understandings that Shakespeare routinely draws upon, often to make paradoxical effects. He loves this black mistress, the dark lady, and he makes much of the fact that he loves her despite the fact that she's dark and therefore violates the canons of beauty. But you can't begin to understand this if you don't understand something about the values of Shakespeare's time and also recognize that they're not necessarily our values.

—Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University

Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing comes out tonight, and I wanted to quote this passage because this very racist line is included in the film. It didn't have to be, filming or staging Shakespeare means cutting a lot of dialogue (unless you're Kenneth Branagh and want a movie with an intermission). What's more,an anti-semitic line in the film was pointed cut (Benedick saying, of Beatrice, "If I do not love her, then I am a Jew").

In the film, this line is framed very pointedly. As Claudio speaks it, a black woman is framed in the background, making it particularly clear who is being slurred. This deliberate shot is abrupt and unsettling, which contributes to it becoming a laugh line for most audiences. (The audience I saw this with was mostly white; I don't know the makeup of other preview audiences that have reported laughter.) In defending this shot, Whedon has compared this to something that might happen in The Office (interview)

But while it might seem similar on the surface (close enough to encourage laughter by recognizing the form) there are some very important differences. The Office features several characters of different races, all of whom are characterized as having complex lives that overturn the tokenism that American corporate bureaucracy (as embodied by Michael Scott) wants to reduce them to. In contrast, all of the speaking roles and a wide majority of the extras in Much Ado are white. The black woman in this shot isn't seen before or after, and isn't particularly in focus while Claudio speaks either. She exists only to be slurred by one of the leads.

Whedon is also struggling against the narrative of Shakespeare's original source, which wants to unite its opposing forces into honor and harmony. Whedon does a good job of showing Claudio's turn to the dark side, but by the time the slur comes around, Claudio has done his penance and is being redeemed. That's not a narrative that The Office generally worries about (outside of the Pam & Jim's story, which is a more traditional romantic comedy plot).

It creates a very pointed hierarchy. Shaming a white woman at a public wedding is a grievous sin that must be redeemed, but shaming a black woman at a public wedding, eh we'll just let that slide because she's not the bride (never the bride) and we're running out of time.

One reviewer argued that the message of The Office is “Yes, racism still exists, but you are not alone.” But what we see in that moment of Much Ado About Nothing is that the black woman is completely alone; she is isolated, out of focus, denied a voice, in that shot, and in the rest of the movie as well. But for the cast of white characters, well, it's a bit awkward, but hey, you know, Claudio's a good guy. He was really sad at that funeral. Besides, do you even know who that woman is? I mean, are you sure she was invited, because I haven't talked to her.

I don't know what other people think when they see that shot. I suspect that many feel, without even thinking about it, that with the tension of the moment, and the similarity to other, better, comedies about race, laughter was necessary and appropriate. But I know that what I was thinking was that woman probably spent a long time getting ready, choosing her dress, getting her hair made up, feeling really pretty, and then suddenly everyone was looking at her while the groom said black women are ugly and terrible.

I didn't laugh.

Crossposted on Tumblr)

• The Playboy Club: A show about the Playboy Club. Gone and goner, and good riddance. It wanted to be Mad Men so hard, mostly so that it could be horrible to its women characters while trying to say that they were totally equal. Disgusting, and I'm glad it's gone. (See also, "Final Insult to Injury: Before Cancellation Playboy Club Rewrites Steinem History.")
• Revenge: The Count of Monte Cristo with a female protagonist. I was only able to watch about ten minutes before I got the same "my eyes glaze over" feeling of rich white people I can't tell apart that I got from Gossip Girl. Though I do see mswyrr covering it. Recommended?
• Hart of Dixie: City doctor goes south to learn humility from "real folks." I think I lasted about three minutes before clawing my eyes out.
• Terra Nova: People in the future travel to dinosaur world because the future sucks; also kill dinosaurs. It looks pretty, but it really has no idea what there is to the show other than people looking at dinosaurs. Somebody apparently decided it should be focused on a family, but the family dynamic is really uninteresting and generates no drama. So the plots are all about dinosaurs being dinosaurs.
• Ringer: Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a former drug addict who takes over the twin's high-society life when the twin dies except the actually faked her own death. This show is terrible, but moves into the perfect place for a trainwreck by virtue of a decent cast and absurdly melodramatic story.
• Unforgettable: A cop with perfect recall solves crimes. Forgettable.
• Person of Interest: A computer genius, who built a near-omniscient Orwellian nightmare of a computer for the government, hires a hitman to be Batman on the side. This is a very slick show, but the political aspects just squick me out more than usual. Add to that the main characters are deliberately ciphers, and the whole thing feels hollow.
• The Secret Circle: A retread of The Craft where the children of a secret witch circle form their own secret witch circle in a small town full of mysteries and secrets. This from the same team as one of my current favorites, The Vampire Diaries, so I'm going to give the show a little time to get up to speed. They seem to have the style and the components in place, but it hasn't quite gotten a story going yet. <Smallville>Start challenging your relationships, PCs!</Smallville>
• Prime Suspect: A New York cop solves crimes while dealing with sexism from coworkers and others. Supposedly based on the original BBC series, though it doesn't show much relation other than a general concept. It doesn't hold a candle to the original, but it still holds its own as a solid U.S. cop drama. I think it's nailing its concept square on the head that other shows like like The Closer have shied away from, except in the margins.
• A Gifted Man: A high-powered, narcissistic neurosurgeon becomes a Ghost Whisperer. Didn't make it through the pilot of this one, either.
• Pan Am: A Pan-American Airlines flight crew experience the upheavals of the '60s from both sides of the Atlantic. This one definitely benefited from being watched after trying to watch The Playboy Club. While the show oversells the empowerment of women working at Pan-Am, it does understand that the way to show empowerment is to show women actually doing things. In the teaser of the pilot, we see our various heroines dealing with newfound fame from the cover of Life magazine, working as an activist in Greenwich Village, discussing romantic encounters with different men, and receiving instructions for an espionage mission. I don't know if I'll stick with it, because it lacks an edge at the moment, but it has a lot of promise.
• American Horror Story: A dysfunctional family moves into a haunted house. Not really a great show for synopsis, since it's a all about the horror. I watched the pilot on Hulu while working, and realized I needed to watch it again. It's very much a show about the filming and presentation. I hope it can keep the pace set by the pilot, since it was my favorite pilot this year.

SAGAL:

Your book is called "Nerd Do Well." Is there anything out there that's too nerdy even for you? Have you ever met somebody who's in some culture or subculture so weird you're like "oh my god, that's just too strange?"

Mr. PEGG:

Babylon 5.

( Why this happens. )