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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   38229 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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Representation in the Last of Us

Because this show is highly popular and ongoing, I’m just going to coat everything in spoiler tags.

TLoS has been carefully, even neurotically manipulated in representation. HBO has a clear vision of what the perfect casting and screen time should be for every race-gender-sexuality stat of a person. The result has been lauded in the media. But there are serious problems in how they went about representation.

As has been the trend, every villain is white, despite the casting otherwise being meticulously modified to include every kind of person. HBO simply considered it acceptable to make every negative character straight and white. We have had sympathetic Native Americans (wise and peaceful), a plot line of a black father who is doing everything for his son’s safety, a black woman who runs a communist Utopia, a Chinese captain of a military base, all of which are coded good. We have also had four onscreen female love interests, and three of them have been black women — a carefully chosen decision to increase the SMV of a statistically less desired cohort. (This leads to bizarre patterns, like both the protagonist and his brother marrying black women.) On the flip side, we have had evil military soldiers, executioners, bandits, and in the latest episode a raping pastor, all of which are coded bad. The pastor was particularly egregious, as the writers found it necessary to code Christianity as negative: the actual act of preaching and talking about God was psychologically linked in the viewer’s mind with the worst kind of hypocritical evil.

The problem with this, is that having good white people in your show does not make up for representing all the evil as white. Because our mind makes implicit associations based on risk. If 100% of the evil people are white, and 50% of the good people are white, the takeaway in the mind (especially for a young viewer) is that white people are more likely to be evil. If representation is to mean anything at all, you need to diversify representations of evil, otherwise you are participating in the most harmful form of slanted representation.

Here are some examples that should explain this concept. If a child has 10 good experiences on a plane, but watches 1 horror movie of a plane, a phobia can develop regardless of the positive experiences, because that 1 horrible experience (seen through media) creates a fear reaction. If you get sick drinking vanilla-flavored whisky, you have a high chance of becoming disgusted from smelling it, and it doesn’t matter if you had 5 good experiences with vanilla-flavored whisky. The relevant factor here is “% of bad experience”. We see the inverse, where if people have a very limited exposure to a foreign culture which is positive, they may “fetishize” the culture and value it, despite this experience not making up a high number of sum total positive experiences. We see this with K-Pop, where the manufactured positive valence has led some young American women to fetishize both Koreans and Korea, hence the explosion in female tourism in Korea. The relevant calculus is something like “% great experience of cue X / sum total experience of cue X” but more strangely “% bad cue X / sum total experience of all things bad rather than cue X”.

There are other problems to explore. The idea of “Christian influence in America” is debunked, because only a pastor and his church could be represented so negatively in media — no other group would let this fly. Because we do not yet know how homosexuality develops, the focus on gay love stories (two whole episodes so far out of 7 episodes) could be ruinous for the younger generation, as they may be learning implicitly that this is the “correct” sexuality to have — effectively groomed by media. There is evidence this can happen, because boys who are abused by homosexuals are more likely to become homosexuals themselves, and the distance between physical and media grooming is not so dissimilar as to forbid discussion.

I'll admit that I'm typically pretty sensitive to these sorts of things, and while they are obvious in this show, the show is good enough that they're ignorable.

This show is really good. I think towards the end of The Walking Dead, there was this idea that audiences simply didn't have an appetite for zombies anymore, and that's why people were so hard on that show. No, actually, it's just that TWD became horrible.

I will say that everybody on that show seems to be a lot gayer than is statistically reflected in society, and while I love to complain to my wife about how annoying it is that writers will just lazily make characters gay as a way of making the story more dramatic, I ultimately don't care.

My thoughts on the most recent episode: I actually didn't pick up on the CW angle of the rapey cult leader. I know plenty of of protestants who seem about a half a step away from fitting into that archetype.

The Handmaid's Tale is really noticeable for this. About 75% of the relationships among the heroes are interracial, gay or both. Really feels like it's being shoved down my throat.

'I will say that everybody on that show seems to be a lot gayer than is statistically reflected in society,'

So people say this about a lot of recent shows, and that may be true, but the question is, is it true of the people currently being shown on-screen? After all, a majority of people under 30 aren't white, LGBT identification is surging among young people as well, and so on.

So yes, if you have a show centered on say, a small town in rural Iowa, there shouldn't be that many gay or non-white people. But, if you're making a show in a city in 2023, if you're even close to the demographics of people under 30 in that city, it's going to seem "woke" to anybody watching from the outside.

Now, the TLOU is a slightly different thing, but the representation that's being used was part of the original game for the most part AFAIK, so if you hated the changes to The Witcher, you should be OK w/ what's being done to stay current with TLOU.

LGBT identification is surging among young people as well

Yes, but not LGBT acts. A lot of people like to get social credit by calling themselves some sort of "queer" identity, while still demonstrating through revealed preference that they're functionally boringly straight, with a shiny coat of paint slapped on.

This claim is surprising to me and I'm unable to find survey data on it. I can find the sexlessness rates over time but if I try to add keywords about LGBT, I get survey results about support for gay marriage and similar political, not behavior, survey results. Any pointers? I did find this chart which appears to show a slight increase but haven't tracked down the paper to get clarity on what is actually being measured.

Although I guess given the great decrease in youth sex, it wouldn't be entirely surprising if LGBT acts also declined just slower.

Here's my source

When we look at homosexual behavior, we find that it has grown much less rapidly than LGBT identification. Men and women under 30 who reported a sexual partner in the last five years dropped from around 96% exclusively heterosexual in the 1990s to 92% exclusively heterosexual in 2021. Whereas in 2008 attitudes and behavior were similar, by 2021 LGBT identification was running at twice the rate of LGBT sexual behavior.

Thanks for the source with detailed data. That's pretty much in line with my expectations: LGBT behavior has increased, but not as fast as LGBT identification.

The interpretation of that data as "a lot of the young people claiming to be queer don't really mean it" strikes me as strange. I'd generally assumed it's more about Kinsey 1-2s identifying as bisexual/queer instead of heterosexual as they would in cultures less accepting of queer people. And since people have a lot more opportunities for heterosexual pairings than homosexual pairings simply due to there being a lot more possible partners, it's not surprising homosexual behavior would lag behind queer identification as queer people who didn't need to openly identify as queer to find partners were open about their identities.

After all, a majority of people under 30 aren't white

Are you sure about that? Last I heard it doesn't hit <50% until ~16.

Anyways, if the shows were going from population demographics what there would be much less of is black people and more Hispanics -- Hispanics are about 1/4, or twice as prevalent as Blacks.

Since I don't care that much, might've got the exact age wrong. My larger point stands - even a reasonable portrayal of urban America of the youth is going to involve more non-white and non-straight people than many people are going to like.

As for the African-American v Hispanic thing, that's probably more African-American's being more united as a bloc than Hispanic actors. Plus, the cheat code of their being black British actors.

even a reasonable portrayal of urban America of the youth is going to involve more non-white and non-straight people than many people are going to like.

If by "many people" you mean "literally Archie Bunker", then maybe -- but do note that even going with under-15 demographics, a typical show might have a cast of 10 -- 5 whites, 2-3 Hispanics (at least one of whom would have been "white" in Y2K), an Asian/other, and one black person. (who probably is not in an interracial relationship -- although if the Asian is a girl, it's not quite even odds she's dating a white guy).

This is totally not what we see on say, Netflix. (or even the BBC for that matter; I think British demographics are even more out of line with their shows) It seems like a very shaky foundation for a hypothesis?

My guess though 20 year after an apocalypse the number of gays would be back down to 1-2% of the population. It’s sort of a luxury belief. Todays lesbian would be grabbing onto the strongest man she can find in that environment. Bruce Jenner would be a jock again in that world.

But I simply cannot imagine any crew of hardened post-apocalyptic warriors following that kindergarten teacher voice. I can’t buy it.

I'm not watching this show because I didn't play the game, have no interest in the entire Culture War angle around that, and the snippets I saw of the Epic Gay Love Romance Of The Ages episode turned me off because they were such treacly romance like a Mills and Boon/Harlequin novel. But this comment makes me laugh, because suppose they follow her around precisely because she has a kindergarten teacher voice?

They've been conditioned from a young age that when Miss says "Now children, come along with me and let's all play nicely", they automatically say "Yes, Miss" and line up (hand-holding optional) 🤣

(My view on the gay romance episode was that it was too much. I don't care that it's two guys, a short reference to 'oh yeah, they're domestic partners' and then get on with the plot, that's fine. I'd be annoyed by an entire episode about a straight romance as well, because this is supposed to be apocalyptic times and who wants to watch forty-five minutes of "I wuv you" "No, I wuv you more" when what you want is zombie gore action?)

Oh come on...

It's beautiful. People living in some horrifying hellscape, and still managing to find humanity there. Nick Offerman's character made a literal refuge for himself, and eventually somebody he cared about to live in. His work, and his masculinity is what kept them safe. We need more of this, not less. I agree that it seems a little tedious to make these characters gay, but...gay people exist. Slightly autistic sexually confused (I mean because it was implied that Offerman's character suppressed his homosexuality and never acted on it) dudes are the exact type of person I'd expect that have elaborate zombie preps.

My critique for the people who think that telling stories like this is pointless: what is the point of the broader story? None of it is real. It serves no utilitarian purpose at all.

"Some dude and a kid go to Montana" - is that really the whole story? I don't think so.

It's an entire episode around a romance/relationship, is what makes me go "yeah, no". As I said, I'd be the same way if it was two straight people, two lesbians, or any combination of the genders/orientations/numbers that we are not allowed to deny are just as valid nowadays. Part of it being about Bill and Ben find love and partner up, sure, why not? As you say, that's human life for the vast majority of people: having a romantic relationship, long-term or not.

An entire "from soup to nuts" about how Bill and Ben met, fell in love, fell out of love, fell back into love, lived together, broke up, found 'can't live with you, can't live without you' and got back together till death (or zombies) did them part? No thanks, if I want that I'll go watch Pride and Prejudice or summat (which I won't, because I have no interest at all in romcoms, romances, or the likes).

I think people are objecting because it was specifically two guys and it was done for Representation. That's an entire other argument over what is "messaging crammed in to serve the ideological purposes of the day" versus "for pete's sake, gay marriage has been legal for years, are we still getting worked up about seeing two non-straight people treated the same as the conventional straight couple would be?" I do accept that there is a valid point for the second view, but on the other hand introducing two characters who are only there for the purposes of This Week's Plot and won't be seen again (if that's the way it's set up, as I said, I don't watch this show) does seem heavy-handed messaging. But one man's meat, as they say!

introducing two characters who are only there for the purposes of This Week's Plot and won't be seen again

Man, spoiled kids these days and their arc-plots. A few decades ago we had a special term for a television episode where the main characters interacted with guest characters who were only there for the purposes of that week's plot, would never be seen again, and wouldn't affect the show's setting or future episodes in any way: we called that "a television episode".

I'm not sure what changed that, exactly. There are lots of technological developments that made an arc-plot easier to follow, but the change greatly postdates VCRs and predates streaming services. At some point we went very quickly from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (where seeing the Borg again was a Big Thing and IIRC seeing Picard's flute a second time started a writer's room debate) to "Babylon 5" (where if you missed a block of episodes then God help you with the next one). But B5 was always on the verge of cancellation; maybe it wasn't until DVRs became popular that shows started safely assuming their viewers never missed an episode.

You're forgetting X-Files. They literally had a term for it: Mytharc.

Very well said. I found the Offerman episode really lovely and it fleshed out the world.

I was disappointed with Ellie's romantic backstory, but that's because it missed the opportunity to show how a teenage female friendship can be so intense and all-encompassing without having a romantic element. That's the kind of story that doesn't get shown enough.

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