VVC 2007: Gender and race!
Aug. 23rd, 2007 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
springgreenBecause 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) ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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 likedjarrow272'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...
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...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-24 09:38 pm (UTC)Oh, that's interesting! I keep being so conflicted about Spooks.
On one hand... LOVE! Danny! Plotlines about racism! Talk of immigration!
On the other hand... SPOILERS through Spooks 5x07 greyed out: white male lead replaced with other white male lead. Only one POC in the ensemble cast. That one POC replaced with another POC (Zaf). I am happy that they did replace Danny with another POC, but I am sad that all the replacements feel approximately similar (white male for white male, white woman for white woman, etc.) because it means the racial dynamic of the cast stays the same. And I have been really sad that Zaf has gotten almost no meaty storylines at all.
And I keep being leery of the fact that most of the POC we see are "the bad guys." I do think Spooks does a really good job in bringing this to our attention and in problematizing it, and like you say, I think it says some incredibly interesting things about race and gender and ethnicity.
I don't know. I am conflicted because I love Spooks' storylines and Danny and the politics, but I also wish there were a POC lead. Or more than one POC in the cast.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-24 10:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-24 10:18 pm (UTC)Also, a major plot point in Sleeper Cell was that the undercover FBI agent was also a Muslim (a convert, but I don't think that matters). That was a huge part of what made him such an effective infiltrator of the cell.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-24 10:31 pm (UTC)I would probably have carried on watching Sleeper Cell if it wasn't for all the explicit sex scenes, but that's a different my issue in that I';ll generally ignore, change the channel or fast forward to my hearts content, but seeing (pretty much all of the) Muslim characters sleeping around just brings out my conservative sensibilities.
It'd be nice to have a show with Muslims (women, even!) just living their lives and not be all ZOMG!!Terrorism all the time.
* I'm a Muslim myself (a woman, even!). I always assume people know.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-24 10:46 pm (UTC)I know! I keep watching and thinking of the title of But Some of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men (I so need to read that).
WOC! We actually exist...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-24 11:00 pm (UTC)And that guy who's obsessed with class issues. What if one were say, working class, black and female
and muslim, even? Suddenly who suffers more isn't such a big deal.But Muslim women apparently don't. That's how people can talk about how misogynistic and oppressive towards women Islam is/Muslims are without a care in the world.
Spoilers for Spooks S5!
Date: 2007-08-24 11:18 pm (UTC)Oh, but it's all about class, really, so you should focus on that! Because it is so easy to choose one oppression!
My eyes roll forever.
Oh man, yes about Muslim women. The S5 episode with Zaf in a terrorist cell was so problematic with the whole "We will lure the converted Muslim guy to our side with sex! With his old white girlfriend! Who will be killed by another Muslim man!"
OT: Maybe I should write about this in my own journal?
Date: 2007-08-24 11:39 pm (UTC)Sometimes I feel like television writers don't understand religious convictions?
Or this is that thing where tv tries to tell us that sex > all.
It pisses me off so much! in class we read about Malinknowski and how he wrote diary entries about all the 'natives' he studied being savages, and everyone else in the lecture excused him because a) he's brilliant and b) everyone back then thought like that. But I'm pretty sure that the Trobriand Islanders themselves didn't see themselves as savages, and I don't understand why they're not included as part of 'everyone'. Which is my roundabout way of saying that Muslim women (in general) don't hate women. Muslim women don't oppress 'their women', and it's clear to me that when the subject of Muslims comes up, I'm neatly excluded as the property of a Muslim man, not as an independent being.
Re: OT: Maybe I should write about this in my own journal?
Date: 2007-08-25 12:03 am (UTC)It was pretty cheap and sleazy. I liked that the show realized this, that it wasn't the entire team behind that decision, and that a female agent was running the op. I vaguely remember Zaf questioning the decision with something like "You think he'll fall for that?" but I may be completely imagining that.
Even so. It still played right into a ton of stereotypes.
Muslim women don't oppress 'their women', and it's clear to me that when the subject of Muslims comes up, I'm neatly excluded as the property of a Muslim man, not as an independent being.
Definitely. And I am so leery of how it always seems to be "black people are misogynistic" or "Asians are misogynistic" and not "white people are misogynistic" when talk turns to feminism within the US (and I presume the UK?).
Re: OT: Maybe I should write about this in my own journal?
Date: 2007-08-25 12:16 am (UTC)It's particularly common among liberal types - who aren't racist or anything - but don't appreciate the backwards, non-liberal tendancies of [insert ethnic group].
The religious thing annoys me most coming from Christians who sincerely seem to believe that The Church as an institution has been better about women than Islamic governments. But it's really not my agenda to stomp all over the Christianity, so I never know quite what to say.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-25 08:25 pm (UTC)Crazytalk!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-25 11:50 pm (UTC)And people looked at me like I was crazy when I said the niqab could be a valid fashion choice (it really brings out your eyes).
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-26 12:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-26 12:49 am (UTC)... I like my boundaries. I probably have more boundaries than most British people, so I must be crazy. Everyone knows that (middle class, white) British people have everything just right, so deviating from that standard is unthinkable.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-24 10:55 pm (UTC)I do also vaguely remember a Middle-Eastern-looking man being detained as a terrorist in S1, even though he was innocent, but that is really nowhere near enough to counterbalance the parade of Muslim terrorists.
And I wish there were other POCs on the cast as well, so exploring and debunking things like "Middle Eastern = terrorist" wouldn't be "Look, here is a POC whose life is all about his POC-ness" because hopefully then there would be other POCs to balance it out. And it would be good to have more commentary on how there are non-Middle-Eastern Muslims as well, aside from the little bit we got in one S5 ep.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-24 11:06 pm (UTC)Plus I'm black AND a woman. They don't know what to do with me!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-24 11:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-24 11:40 pm (UTC)Re: OT: Maybe I should write about this in my own journal?
Date: 2007-08-25 08:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-24 10:16 pm (UTC)On the one hand, I see how replacing a woman with a woman or Danny with Zaf feels like tokenism, but on the other, I feel that Zoe, Fiona and Ros have been such different characters, and I understand them wanting to keep a balance between male and female leads/characters. That just strikes me as a different issue than race/ethnicity.
And I keep being leery of the fact that most of the POC we see are "the bad guys."
I understand, but to my memory, that's mostly in the context of characters with an ethnic background in the middle east, and it would be hard to do any kind of realistic show about terrorism these days that didn't explore that. I think Zaf was created to provide a kind of balance and show the other side, and there have been occasional guest characters (Alexander Siddig) that show the complexity of it too.
No easy answers, sadly.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-24 11:10 pm (UTC)Just given politics and demographic percentages, I am guessing that POCs are poorly represented in security services
On the one hand, I see how replacing a woman with a woman or Danny with Zaf feels like tokenism, but on the other, I feel that Zoe, Fiona and Ros have been such different characters, and I understand them wanting to keep a balance between male and female leads/characters.
Ooh, yeah, sorry, I was sloppy about the gender ratios. You're right, I don't feel the tokenism for women as much, because as you mention, we've gotten a lot of very different women who have almost all gotten very good and very different storylines. I am still a little bothered by just how many times they recruit the girlfriend/wife/lover of their target to bring him down and how she often ends up dead, but it's a lot more balanced out by having many cool women in the main cast. And! Older women! More than one! I cheer.
And I'd rather have a character of color replace another character of color than have no characters of color, but I wish they'd replaced some of the women with women of color, or something. Because I do think keeping the gender balance is also important.
I understand, but to my memory, that's mostly in the context of characters with an ethnic background in the middle east, and it would be hard to do any kind of realistic show about terrorism these days that didn't explore that.
*nods* Yeah. And I do think Spooks generally does try to look at things like immigration and larger racial politics. Where I get the mental disconnect is in the main cast. I cling to Zaf! I am admittedly biased here, because I have been dying to have more Zaf, but I feel he's really underutilized. So is Jo, but since other women have gotten meaty parts and continue to get meaty parts (Ros!), it is not as large of a problem, though it is still a problem.
I have to admit, I totally yelled at the Adam as Circassian Muslim decision because I wanted Zaf to actually get to do something. Like, we know a good deal about Adam and his angst and Ros and Harry and Fiona and Danny and Zoe and Tom, but right now, most of what I know about Zaf is... he asked Jo to be his roommate. I keep feeling like they have this huge awesome storyline potential with Zaf and terrorists and commentary on stereotyping and looking Middle Eastern while in the security services, and it keeps skirting around it and never quite going there.
/gets off soapbox. Sorry! You have hit two seasons worth of Zaf whining from me in one giant comment! ;) also he is really hot and i want to see zaf in angsty manpain!