And I’m back bitching about Trump. My piece in January
was perhaps a little pre-emptive. Especially because my
no-exit cul-de-sac of blog entirely failed to change
the political atmospehere. Who’d have thought. So I’ll try
and summarise six months worth of issues as briefly and well
as I can (knowing that I of course cannot fully do this). My
Year-In-Review article this year will probably be quite a
lot of fun. That is, of course, assuming there hasn’t been a
nuclear winter come Christmas.
Let’s talk about representation. The idea that most people
(or ideally every person, but not all the time, that’s
impractical) can see themselves in the media they consume or
power structures of the city/country/state they live in. Even if
that means the ‘state’ that all other people live in is a state
called ‘Anxiety’.
So there’s kind of two things. Let’s start with the less
obtrusive one (and it’s still divisive …)
Fandom. Apparently it’s broken. How people consume media and
the characters that are in said media, and the stories that get
told ... It’s not a buffet. You can’t order specifically the
story you want to see and expect creators of a work not to
deviate from your expectations (and then send death threats if
they do …), but you also can’t entirely resign yourself to the
reality that creators will make entirely the show they want with
little or no regard for an audience. Fact is, there’s a bit of
both. Or there should be. Healthy compromise. Creators should be
able to see the things the audience want (and DON’T want) in
social media, or the news and then create products that cater to
these wants without compromising the story. You see, the problem
here is that sometimes a creator will see the way they’ve
decided to tell a story as one thing, while the audience
interprets it entirely differently. I’m talking here, of course,
about the killing off of characters that were created to be
non-conformative so as to make their stories conform to societal
expectations, or for ‘manpain’, which is meant in the most
condescending and derogatory way possible. To waste characters
designed to increase representation in these unfulfilling and
pointless deaths rightly angers the sections of society these
characters were designed to represent. There are brilliant
articles on the internet (http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/05/30/fandom-is-broken,
http://www.themarysue.com/fandom-isnt-broken/,
http://thegeekiary.com/fandom-is-broken-not/34679), so I
won’t go into too much detail because I don’t really need to.
But the second issue, y’see, is the US Presidential Race,
presumably of the egg and spoon variety. Clinton is egg and
Trump looks like a spoon, if you’re wondering.
And I think
the concept of representation could explain Trump’s popularity.
Because shit all else can explain it. Like I mean seriously;
how. And to the one guy at the back of the room (yeah, you) that
is yelling at me ‘Trump’s not actually racist and just wants to
crack down on illegal immigration’, which let’s be fair I’ve
gone on record saying it’s something that has be dealt with –
there’s the whole issue of Trump calling out a Mexican judge as
being unable to do his job properly because of his race. I
haven’t much simplified that, that’s basically it.
So here’s
what I’m actually saying. White men would rather have a white
man in office than … not. And I suppose this is the thing, and
it’s a similar point to the TV character point I made earlier;
having representation and then letting it be take away is
enormously disappointing – especially if the white people I’m
referring to are American and slightly racist and conservative.
They still have a 1 cent coin for God’s sakes. I swear the guy
in McDonalds that had to deal with us buying cheese fries and
paying entirely with 1 cent coins looked like he wanted to die.
“1 cent, 2 cents, 3 cents, fuck this shit …”
That’s not a
quote but is probably his internal monologue.
So fandom’s not broken, and the outrage the internet seems to
have is, at least in part justified. Well, it maybe is a little
broken. You shouldn’t threaten people for making bad decisions
in the name of ‘entertainment’. Disagree, fuck yes. Threaten,
fuck no. And that also extends to Trump because of that British
guy that showed up at a Trump rally and tried to steal a cop’s
gun to kill The Donald. He didn’t get very far at *all*, and I
think it’s fair to say stealing a cop’s gun is perhaps not the
best plan of attack. Like, seriously no.