VVC 2007: Gender and race!

[springgreen]

Because I am insane, I decided to try and do a tally of race and gender in this year's VVC Premieres, as seen from my DVDs. Even though I generally try to pay attention to these things, I don't think I really noticed gender or race things while watching the VVC 2006 DVDs. This time round, I paid more attention because a) laurashapiro has been showing some older vids so I have a better sense of the vidding world outside of Random Things I Download, b) the discussion afterward about "Women's Work" and "300," and c) laurashapiro talking about her Sekrit Feminist Vidding Agenda.

It was rather odd watching the 2007 premieres because they're different from most of the vids on my hard drive -- a lot more male-centric shows, for one. I didn't quite realize till now just how much I self-selected when it came to vids and TV shows. I tend to like things better when there are female protagonists or several women in the ensemble, and I tend to focus on the women more, which means I seek out vids on women more.

I am too lazy to link individual vids so I point you to: VVC 2007 Premieres first half | second half

I tallied 32 vids on the DVDs. For the male/female divide, I was a little strict. Things counted as "F" if there was a female POV and there wasn't too much about men. I counted "F/M" for vids that seemed to have fairly equal weight between the men and the women, though in some of the ensembles, the weight skewed more toward the men. I also separated out ensemble vids from romance vids. I counted "M" for vids that were from a male POV and was mostly about men.

For the POC count, I basically counted any vid in which a POC appeared on screen, so it's divided between "blink of an eye" POC appearances (just a few clips, even if it's a fairly main character of the show) and "main-ish" POC appearances, in which the POC seemed to have a fairly significant number of clips (aka, anything more than 3).

M: 13
F/M: 11
F: 9
POC: 17
Total vids: 32

M: Moons of Jupiter, It's Not Over, Seven Nation Army, I Remember, Cathain, Bankshot, Spiriti, Sick Cycle Carousel, Lifetime Piling Up, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Tamacun, The Trouble with Poets, Woodstock

F/M: My Happy Ending, Rodeohead, Men in Black, Signal to Noise, Head over Feet, Want, West of Her Spine, The Loyal, Nothing New, Another Sunday (We Built This City), Southwood Plantation Road

F: (Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay, Synthesizer, Women's Work, Falling from the Sky, The Adversary, Cold as It Gets, Cosmia, Dreams Are Not My Home

POC: Moons of Jupiter, Rodeohead, Signal to Noise, Bankshot, Want, Lifetime Piling Up, The Loyal, Women's Work, Falling from the Sky, Tamacun, Cold as It Gets, Another Sunday (We Built This City), Cosmia, Southwood Plantation Road, Woodstock

As you can see, I was really pushing the categories for a few. I also got more and more tired toward the end, which is why earlier vids with one woman count as "M" (Seven Nation Army) and later vids with one woman count as "F/M" (SGA).

This looks pretty good at first. But for the F/M breakdown, 4 are ensemble casts, and three of the four are weighted toward men (Firefly, Torchwood, SGA -- fourth one is BSG). "Rodeohead" is less weighted toward men than "Men in Black" and "Another City," but it's still largely Mal's POV, with a few River POV/starring-River sections in it. Four more from F/M are romances (My Happy Ending, Head over Feet, Southwood Plantation Road, Nothing New), one of which is male POV (Nothing New).

The last three of the F/M category are Want, West of Her Spine and The Loyal, which are very nominally F/M. I stuck Want in F/M just because of the female singer; most of the actual clips are of men, and I've seen the Yellow-Eyed Demon referred to as male online. So I'm not sure if there is any F in the F/M, but I stubbornly stuck it in there anyway because I like to pretend it is about the demon's predatory female gaze on Sam and Dean (as you can probably tell, I don't watch SPN).

The Loyal is also a problematic fit in the category, since it's mostly male POV and the main female character first appears naked and pregnant among cows. I was a bit squicked by the race bit as well, but will touch on that later. I haven't seen Children of Men, so I have no idea what it's about. But it seems like the woman is holy because she's had a baby in a land with rampant infertility and the guy ends up protecting her and hi! The problematic just writes itself! Again, may be completely misreading the source, but that's what I got from the vid.

And West of Her Spine, which is probably the most problematic of the three. I knew about the vid coming in, and I love how creepy it is and how it nicely gets the viewer expecting one thing and then skewers the expectations. I also like it as a commentary on creepy love. On the other hand... the only reason it's in F/M instead of M is because of how much screen time the women get. Unfortunatley, most of that screen time is on the women as objects of desire or as literal objects, chopped up, stuffed in refrigerators, tied into parcels. This bit is creepy, but intentionally so, so while the images bug the heck out of me, the vid doesn't at this point. What does bug me is that a vid that initially comments on violence against women and women's bodies and literally making women into inanimate objects ends up focusing on the relationship between two men. And that's the part that I don't think is intentionally creepy, so it disturbs me much more.

Also, for the F/M vids, we're largely missing relationships that aren't M-F romances. There's friendship and mutual sparring in Another Sunday and Signal to Noise (yay Teyla!), and brother-sister in Rodeohead. I read the Torchwood vid as having a lot of romance, but that is me just gathering things from the vid. But there seem to be very few vids focusing on non-romantic male-female relationships in this set. Is that normal? One of the reasons why I liked jarrow272's Club Vivid vid so much was that it is about friendship! Between both sexes!

Of the 9 F vids, one is Women's Want and the other is The Adversary, which I stuck in F because... I was tired. It is not really F. It is more F/M. Or plain M and dead F. I think? I have not seen Twin Peaks. But eight vids focusing solely on women, yay!

For the POC vids, 9 out of the 17 were "blink" vids. Aka, blink and you'll miss the POC! These include: Moons of Jupiter, Men in Black, I Remember, Want, Lifetime Piling Up, Women's Work, Falling from the Sky, Tamacun, Cold as It Gets. I know Martha's a big part of Dr. Who, but she's barely in Moons of Jupiter, and while I think the Asian woman is part of the ensemble in Torchwood, she's barely in Men in Black. Vids with POC as part of an ensemble were: Rodeohead and Signal to Noise. I'm not sure how to classify The Loyal. As mentioned, the black woman does play a fairly large role in the vid, but the vid is largely from the whtie man's POV and I am still disturbed of the image of her dropping her clothes while standing among cows! Though I am glad that there were other shots of her laughing and being normal instead of being a holy mother. (ETA: notes on the movie here and here)

The four vids with a fairly strong POC presence were Bankshot, Another Sunday, Southwood Plantation Road and Woodstock. Of these, Bankshot had a good deal of the black man (Denzel Washington?), but he's one POC among... everyone else (ETA: notes on Bankshot). Woodstock also has a black man, but the main character of the vid seems to be the white man (I have no idea what their names are, sorry). (ETA: notes on Woodstock) Even so, I was actually startled to see those two vids and was like, "Hey! POC!" I like Another Sunday not just because it has sparkly disco effects and bouncy music and literal vidding of the lyrics but also because it has scenes in which only Teyla and Ronon are on the screen! Imagine! Just POC in a few shots! And I liked that Jescaflowne meant it as an ensemble vid; the few SGA vids I've seen tend to focus on the two guys who keep being slashed together. As in, pre-SGA-AU-fic-debate, given what I saw discussed of SGA online (and not in deadbro, I would not have thought there were POC in it at all. And Southwood Plantation Road seemed to be pretty well balanced between Marth and Ten, as opposed to Bankshot and Woodstock, where you could tell the focus was on the white people. Also, Martha is hot.

Finally, there is Cosmia! One vid out of 32 that has a POC as the focus of the vid! (ETA: notes on the problematics of Ofelia as POC)

In conclusion, I should probably do this with my VVC 2006 DVDs for comparative purposes, but I am too lazy to. Also, hopefully I will get around to posting vid impressions sometime...

Comments

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

Interesting summary! I think you have the summary of "Children of Men" basically right, which speaks well for the vid. (I've read the book, but not seeon the movie.) Interestingly, Kee (the black female character) was not black/African in the original novel by P.D. James. But apparently the director wrote her that way in the movie, because he thought it was more resonant with the idea that human life first began in Africa, and so in the movie the global infertility epidemic ends and humanity begins "again" with an African woman. I do remember reading reviews at the time that were a little weirded out by the Kee/livestock visual juxtaposition, though.

Also, before VVC 2007, harriet_spy actually did a count of the CoC presence in the 2005 and 2006 collections, here (http://harriet-spy.livejournal.com/468051.html) and with an additional note here (http://harriet-spy.livejournal.com/468381.html).

She was counting slightly differently than you are, only tallying vids that had a CoC as the lead character, as 1/2 the pairing in a pairing vid, or a major character in an ensemble vid, but not counting minor background appearances in ensemble vids.

[springgreen.livejournal.com]

Oh, huh. I think I would have to see the movie to see what I thought about having Kee as African, because that is dangerously skirting around the "closer to earth" stereotype. But all my writeups are a little off, given that it's from the vids!

Also, thanks so much for the link, yay!

I was originally just going to count vids that had COC as a lead, part of a pairing, or part of an ensemble, and wow. By the time I was through the DVDs, I was so desperate to see any COC that I was like, "COC! Two seconds! Ok!" *facepalm* And some of the "blink" ones really are blinks -- one or two clips that show for a few seconds.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

Undertaking this kind of project is really disorienting, isn't it? I swear by the end I was giggling and yelling "LOOK IT'S MORE WHITE PEOPLES!" when yet another fine Caucasian first came into view.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't count "Cosmia" as POC because the characters and actors are Spanish/European, not Hispanic/Latino as the terms are usually used in the US, i.e., to denote people of Mexican or Central or South American descent.

[springgreen.livejournal.com]

Yeeeaaaah. I was really hesitant about counting Cosmia as POC as well precisely because of what you say. By the end of the night, I was thinking, "She is not blonde! I do not care! I just want a character of color as the focal point!"

So yes. The one POC viewpoint vid (or two, as Killa mentions below that I'm misreading Woodstock) isn't even really POC as we really count them.

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

I too was very surprised to see the character being described as a person of color. In European terms (and she should be considered in European terms), she is just as white as an Italian or a Greek. It does trouble me that she is considered a POC, or at least intrigues me, because it seems that you're defining it in almost linguistic terms (that is, Spanish-speaking, which was at one time used as a euphemism for Hispanic).

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

On reflection, I think what troubles me is the Americo-centric nature of the definition. There are a lot of ethnic groups in Spain, including the Basques and the Roma, but I would think most Spanish people would be rather surprised to discover that they were "people of color."

[veejane.livejournal.com]

What I recall thinking primarily about children of men is that it's an overwhelmingly Catholic movie. There's a scene near the end where a group of strangers almost literally falls at the feet of the black woman, worshipping her for her ability to have a child. So, I positioned her character in the same ambiguous place -- powerful, but maybe for facilitator reasons rather than her own self -- that Catholic doctrine positions the Virgin Mary.

(I'm not sure what to think of the race issue; a bare description of the role implies a vast potential for insultingness that did not come across on the screen. Also, she was one of two black characters, the other played by my secret boyfriend, Chiwetel Ejiofor. Whom I did not glimpse in that vid.)

[springgreen.livejournal.com]

Oh huh, that's really interesting. I saw a clip of people falling to their feet in both the Children of Men vids; I think the clip was of soldiers doing so? I was very much reading Virgin Mary into it, but I wasn't sure if I was reading wrong or not, given that I have zero context.

Second black character! I am not sure if I saw him in the Children of Men challenge vid either, but I only saw it once a few days ago.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

At first, The Evil Cabal was pretty horrified by the potential for the bad in COM based on Kee's character, but we were all pretty satisfied w/ how it actually came out.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

The other thing I would suggest is that you include all premiering vids on the DVDs, whether they were in the Premieres show or not. (That is, some vids premiere in Club Vivid, Nearly New, or individual vid shows.) I think that they will do nothing for the overall percentages except drive the percentage of women and COC down, but it's worth noting and spreading around the list of vids with women and/or COCs. So one thing that gets left off is "Sugar," which is about a woman played by a mixed-race actress, although I am told within the show the character is treated as white (both her parents were played by white actors and there's never been a mention of adoption).

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I was going to say this, too. There's a Shepherd Book vid in the Challenge show, for example, and also the VMars vid "Martina", which is about as women-POV as you can get. I loved "Sugar" as well.

[springgreen.livejournal.com]

Heh, yeah, I probably should, except I am lazy ;). I ended up not doing Club Vivid just because I'm not the biggest dance music fan, and sheer laziness kept me from doing Nearly New.

I remember watching "Sugar" and having an argument with myself about Lana Lang and Kristen Kreuk in my head! I think by and large I was trying to count actors of color as opposed to characters of color, but that was thinking of Ronon and Teyla from SGA. But I did end up mentally counting Helo of BSG because I think the actor is American Indian? At least that is what I recall from discussions at Wiscon.

And yeah. It will be interesting to do a count of all the premiering vids with a much stricter set of guidelines like I had for women (even then I got a bit futzy near the end). I think my rationale for counting the "blink and you miss them" vids was to see how many were all white (15!) and to try and see how many vids could have focused on POC. For the SPN ones, obviously, it'd be hard to, but for Moons of Jupiter and Men in Black, there does seem to be a POC in the ensemble cast/part of a pair, and I was really startled to see how little of Martha was in Moons of Jupiter.

Also, I didn't put it in the post, but almost all the POC I IDed on screen are either black or Asian; I can't think of a Latino/a character off the top of my head, save Ofelia, which is really pushing the definition as you pointed out above.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

That's correct. Lana Lang was depicted with white parents and there's been nary a mention that she might be anything other than white at any time.

[killabeez.livejournal.com]

Thanks for doing this -- I'd been thinking about trying something like this myself to satisfy my own curiosity (and in the context of a multifandom vid I'm thinking about making).

I found it interesting that you said, Woodstock also has a black man, but the main character of the vid seems to be the white man. That's true of the show (which is called Jeremiah, after Luke Perry's character) but Kurdy (Malcolm Jamal Warner) is actually the POV character of that vid. I don't know that I'd disagree with you, it's just interesting.

I really wanted Woodstock to be as universal as possible, but the show is weighted toward male characters, unquestionably, despite having a number of fascinating and strong female characters played by excellent actresses. I consciously tried to use Theo (the black woman) and Erin (the blonde woman) in a few key places to help balance that.

[springgreen.livejournal.com]

Kurdy (Malcolm Jamal Warner) is actually the POV character of that vid. I don't know that I'd disagree with you, it's just interesting.

Oh, cool! I will watch again! My reading's probably also influenced by the fact that Woodstock is the last vid of Premieres. Aka, I was so tired at that point that my reactions were largely: "Hey look! POC! Ha. White guy introduces vid" and influenced by my knowing that all the shows vidded to had white main characters/white ensemble leads (and usually white male ones).

Ok, wow. I completely did not realize that Jeremiah was Luke Perry. I fail on visual id!

[untrue-accounts.livejournal.com]

I really wanted Woodstock to be as universal as possible, but the show is weighted toward male characters, unquestionably, despite having a number of fascinating and strong female characters played by excellent actresses. I consciously tried to use Theo (the black woman) and Erin (the blonde woman) in a few key places to help balance that.

springgreen and I were actually talking offline yesterday about how we love that you don't just vid the standard pretty white men, but also women and POC and multiracial or multigendered ensembles. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the vids are also narratively and technically wonderful. :)

I've watched the vid a few times already and I didn't get that it was Kurdy's viewpoint, either; I thought it was an omniscient vid using Kurdy as the entrance into the show universe. I will have to look for the POV indicators early on in my next rewatch.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Umm, the gentleman you refer to as possibly Denzel Washington in your post is Ian Lester and he is the actual lead of the tv show "Hustle" (Bankshot vid). IMO, he doesn't look at all like Denzel, but I guess your views vary.

He has a prominent place in Bankshot, setting events into motion and interacting with the rest of the cast (including Stacy - a female character who does some nifty things in this vid) but, again IMO, his is the dominant focus and POV.

[springgreen.livejournal.com]

Heh, I fail at visual ID! I had thought for some reason that Hustle was a movie -_-;;. I didn't realize he was the lead, that is cool, and that plus the caper-ness makes me want to pick up the show.

I was debating on counting Bankshot as F or F/M because of Stacy; my tallying of F/M vids is pretty varied (and by "varied" I mean "completely subject to personal whim"). I think I was also influenced by the context I was watching the vid in -- before sitting down and counting, I had come away from my first viewing of the DVDs thinking "Wow. That is very male and very white, and even though I intellectually knew that, I am a bit sad at how many shows featured in there are centered around white men." So when I saw Bankshot, my gut reaction was to look at the cast and think, "Heh. Token woman, token character of color. Why fandom? Why??" But I am glad that it does not seem to be the case in the show.

Also, I forgot to note in the post that there are so few women of color. I think I counted Martha, Zoe, Boomer, other pilot in BSG whose name I do not know, blink-and-you-miss-them women of color in SPN, woman from Children of Men, Teyla and Ofelia. And as Mely notes above, including Ofelia is being very broad with defitions, Teyla and Boomer are not human, the other BSG pilot is only in a few clips, and Zoe is part of an ensemble. Also, the only WOC who seems to get a POV in the vids is Martha.

[heresluck]

Heh -- and my response when I saw an early draft of Bankshot was to say "OMG it's Henry V!" because I suck at actor names. (I saw Adrian Lester as Henry V in London four years ago and he was AMAZING.) I would now want to see Hustle even if Zen's vid hadn't completely charmed me, which it did.

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

Ian Lester doesn't look much like Denzel. And I wouldn't say that he's the lead in 'Hustle'. Danny always seemed liked the most prominent character to me, and Mickey isn't even in the show anymore.

I've always kind of felt that Mickey and Stacey were tokens - not that the characters themselves are problematic (aside from Stacey being 'the bait' in every con ever) - , they just seemed to be making up the numbers, so to speak. One black man, one woman (no women of colour or LGBT protagonists, of course). This wasn't helped by Mickey being replaced by another male black actor.

[anoel.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for doing this! I am sorry to contribute to it with my two white men vid (Trouble with Poets) although at least there were a few blink of an eye females. I think you were bit generous (although you did say that) for POC but it does recognize who was in the vid. This would be my list:

F/M: Moons of Jupiter (Doctor POV but his companions featured heavily), My Happy Ending, Rodeohead, Signal to Noise (iffy w/o m/f relationship focus), Head Over Feet, West of Her Spine, The Loyal (iffy w/o the m/f relationship focus), Nothing New, Another Sunday, Southwood Plantation Road (10)
F: Sittin on the Dock of the Bay, Synthesizer, Women's Work, Falling From The Sky, Cold as it Gets, Cosmia, Dreams are not my home (7)
POC: Moons of Jupiter, Bankshot, The Loyal (iffy but okay), Another Sunday, Southwood Plantation Road, Woodstock (6)

Other Premires (not CV):
M/F: Ballingal Hotel, Bicycle Race, Columbia is Bleeding, Jesus for the Jugular, Never-Ending Road
F: The Tower, Sugar

In terms of the Dexter vid, that's the show and it *is* supposed to be distrubing. Rudy is a serial killer first and formost and yet wants to connect with Dexter so you have to have that end. The lack of M-F friendships is a big problem with TV in general so it becomes more normal in vids. I'd count Adversary as M because that's the pov finding the M enemy with not much focus on the females besides as the motivation for the search. I didn't even count Cosmia at all as a POC and would be hesitant to include her there.

This really, really makes me want to find a song to do a Betty vid for Ugly Betty. Sometimes it's hard to find a song to fit a character even if you desperately want to vid them unfortunatlely.

[springgreen.livejournal.com]

Icon love!

Thanks for your list! Yeah, Ofelia is very problematic as a POC, and I had gone back and forth with myself several times for putting her in as one and then arguing more on whether or not I should include an explanation of the problematic bits because I didn't want to be arbiter of who gets to be POC or not. And I had debated about nationality and POC-ness and minority-ness in one country vs. majority-ness in another (I was trying to think about movie vids I've seen with lots of Asians, but always from Asian movies, vs. Asian Americans in movies, and then I got very confused).

In terms of the Dexter vid, that's the show and it *is* supposed to be distrubing. Rudy is a serial killer first and formost and yet wants to connect with Dexter so you have to have that end.

*nods* Hrm. I think part of my reaction was based on seeing "West of Her Spine" discussed online with "Women's Work" and "The Adversary" and "300" and the subversion of the male gaze or commentary on the male gaze, which may be why I was expecting a more feminist vid.

Is the show disturbing on a feminist commentary level? I mean, is it commenting on how women are preyed upon with that combination of violence and sex and how they are objectified? (actual question, as I honestly have no idea)

I don't know. On one hand, I know that vids are often an extension of the show and thereby sometimes replicate the same politics of the show. On the other, I think some can be commentaries on the politics of the show. So I think I went in thinking "West of Her Spine" was going to be a commentary, particularly because of the switch-and-bait set up (which is awesome!), but then I was disappointed because it didn't seem to be commenting on the literal women in refrigerators and how women often serve as plot points to get the men more connected with each other. I do think that it sort of started to, but because it ended up with the male relationship at the end, it felt like less of a commentary.

Um. I am not sure if that makes sense. Basically I think I was trying to read the vid on a meta feminist level, and in the end, I'm not sure if the vidder was vidding from that perspective (which is not to say that it is a wrong perspective, but that it is different).

Ugly Betty vid!!! I cheer you on!

[heresluck]

Interesting reading; thank you!

I was frankly rather surprised to see "Nothing New" in the F/M category; it's solidly male POV, gives Inara no subjectivity (especially if one is unfamiliar with the source), and in fact got discussed at VVC as an example of the male gaze, which I think is a fair, if not complete, critique of the vid. It raises the question, I guess, of what counts as "weight": is it simply screen time (in which case Inara still loses out) or is it more complicated?

But there seem to be very few vids focusing on non-romantic male-female relationships in this set. Is that normal?

Well... "normal" is such a strong word. Heh. But it's certainly typical. I have seen very few non-romantic relationship vids, whether same-sex or mixed, either at VVC or online; same-sex relationship vids, in particular, often get spun as slash regardless of vidders' intent, so the lines are fuzzy there. (geekturnedvamp was telling me that she had some trouble with this in the "Relationships Between Women" vidshow: most of the vids she could find were slashy.) Ensemble and universe vids are typically non-romantic, but by their very nature they tend to focus on the ensemble (whether as a group or as a series of individuals) or on the lead character, and not so much on a pair bond.

Part of the problem, of course, is that the number of pop songs about friendship or platonic affection is vanishingly small compared to the number of pop songs about some aspect of romantic love. It's not impossible to find pop songs about friendship; it's even possible to find songs about friendship that aren't treacly and annoying -- I'm getting ready to vid one, actually, and as you point out there's Jarrow's terrific CV vidsong, and sdwolfpup's "Moving Right Along," which fills me with glee. And of course there's the option of using an instrumental, which sidesteps that pesky problem of lyrics. So these are all solvable problems! But because for most of us the song is the thing that kicks off a vid, they're not trivial problems.

Now I want to make a Veronica/Weevil friendship vid -- heh. I'll have to keep an ear out for possibilities...

[springgreen.livejournal.com]

I was frankly rather surprised to see "Nothing New" in the F/M category; it's solidly male POV, gives Inara no subjectivity (especially if one is unfamiliar with the source)

Um. Sadly, I was so excited to see women on the screen that my category definitions got looser and looser.

Good points about romantic vs. non-romantic vids and music. I keep trying to think of things to add, except I can't come up with anything! ;) I think I will try and keep an eye out on non-romantic non-ensemble vids, and I cheer you on in your current vid and the possibility of a Veronica/Weevil friendship vid.