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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34509 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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There is a phenomenon i notice in media but never hear named. Call it, "Representation As Inherently Problematic."

Examples: There are no mentally handicapped people or trans people on shows that are not specifically about these topics. The reasons for this for mental disabilities are fairly obvious: mental handicaps are considered intrinsically undignified. If you show a mentally handicapped person doing or saying something dumb on a show, this counts as mocking a protected group. Thus: total absence.

Similarly: If you have a trans person on a show you need to make it clear to the audience they are trans, which either requires it to be a plot point (making it a sort of Very Special Episode) or making the trans person not pass (which is undignified and thus opens the writers up to criticism.) Thus: total absence.

Similarly, morbid obesity is undignified, and the morbidly obese are close to being a protected class (being as it is a physical disability). Thus, having them on a show is undignified and opens up the writers to criticism. Thus: total absence.

Another example: land o' lakes mascot, a native American woman, gets criticism for being stereotypical, which is synonymous to being visually identifiable as a native american. So she was removed from the labeling.

Another: Dr. Seuss gets criticism for visually identifiable depiction of a Chinese villager; book gets pulled as a result.

A similar-feeling phenomenon is This Character Has Some Characteristics Of A Protected Group, Which Is Kinda Like Being A Standin For That Group, Making That Character's Poor Qualities A Direct Commentary On That Group. Examples: criticisms around Greedo and Jar Jar Binks being racist caricatures; criticisms of goblin representation in Harry Potter as being anti-semitic caricatures.

There are certainly trans characters in left-coded media. You just have a normal looking woman, have them say “oh btw I’m trans”, and then move on. Very easy way to score representation points without having to deal with questions of passing or other thorny trans issues.

FTM representation is even easier, as they tend to pass quite well in real life.

Got any examples? None spring to mind for me. Though you are right, "trans as informed attribute" would be a (ham handed) way around this.

Bridget from the video game series Guilty Gear is a recent high-profile example.

In earlier entries in the series from the 00s, he was a femboy whose androgyny was played for laughs. For the newest sequel, I surmise that the developers decided that his character was too politically fraught to be left as is, so they threw in a brief scene where he comes out as trans.

Don't know the games but that's butchering their own lore, given that Bridget was named that in homage to Brigitte Lin, an actress who has played breeches roles (e.g. in the Swordsman II movie, and the movie regarded as a sequel to that, The East is Red which I only saw in a poorly-translated, hacked-to-pieces edit but whoo boy - playing a man who transforms himself into a woman in order to attain martial arts skills but who still has 'male' thinking and behaviours, including a female lover, and being totally kickass while she/he is doing so, as well as having the male lead confusedly attracted because he's not sure if she's a boy or a girl):

It was common for women to cross dress as male characters in Chinese movies and operas. And Lin is particularly well known for her androgynous roles, her earliest being Jia Baoyu, the male protagonist of the 1977 film adaptation of Dream of the Red Chamber. In Peking Opera Blues (1986), she was a guerrilla revolutionary and in Royal Tramp II (1992), she was the leader of the Heavenly Dragon Sect, both of whom were women characters dressed as men. And in Ashes of Time (1994), she played twin brother/sister duo Yin and Yang. However, she is perhaps most well known for her role as Dongfang Bubai in Swordsman II (1992). Swordsman II marked the peak of her career in terms of box office earnings for which she was listed among the 10 greatest performances in cinema of all time, by Time magazine."

Gotta agree with Time there.

Swordsman II:

Dongfang Bubai had castrated himself in order to master the skills in the Sunflower Manual, and his appearance has become more feminine, even though he is now a formidable martial artist.

Linghu Chong meets Dongfang Bubai by chance without knowing his true identity, mistakes him for a beautiful young woman, and falls in love with "her".

Swordsman III/The East is Red:

At Black Woods Cliff, Gu Changfeng discovers that Dongfang Bubai is still alive in disguise as an elderly woman, and manages to convince him to return to the jianghu.

Dongfang Bubai unleashes his fury and starts a bloodbath in eliminating all those who impersonate him. He discovers that Xue Qianxun has been pretending to be him, and seriously injures her in anger. Consumed by his desire for power, Dongfang Bubai decides to continue his ambitious plan to unite the jianghu under his rule and dominate China.

Gu Changfeng realises that Dongfang Bubai has gone out of control so he leads the Ming imperial navy to fight Dongfang and his Spanish and Japanese allies. In the ensuing naval battle, all the warships are destroyed and Dongfang Bubai emerges victorious after defeating and killing Gu Changfeng. However, Xue Qianxun loses her life in the process. Dongfang Bubai realises his mistake and embraces his dead lover as he retires from the jianghu again.

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