Let’s rant about bigotry in media and fake allies.
.Look. I get it. You want to believe that your cartoons, media and celebs are completely perfect darlings that can do no wrong, but let me be frank. I don’t care how much you don’t want to talk about it. I care about the creators who keep inviting the discourse their way through their idiocy. Whenever a creator gets in trouble for doing shit like making jokes about slave hats on a live stream, or including a blackface caricature in an art book, or killing off their gays the very episode they come out or are introduced, there’s always a subset of people who say shit like, “it was a mistake, they didn’t mean it. It kinda gives us as a leftist community a bad name when we keep attacking each other like this”.
Let’s dismantle that. And let’s break this down in three basic points I’ll use throughout. 1. It is not your place to accept an apology that was not for you, especially when in regards to racism, sexism, anti-LGBTA+ bigotry, and anti-semitism. 2. We need to stop lumping in actual criticism with alt-right idiots being shitty about marginalized groups existing, because ultimately, infighting is not the end of the world, and disagreements are not inherently bad. They are a fact of life. 3. Most importantly of all, just because these people claim to be allies, that does not mean that they are. Because make no mistake. CARTOONS ARE NOT ANY LESS EFFECTED BY THE BIASES OF THE ENVIRONMENTS WHICH PRODUCED THEM THAN ANY OTHER WORK OF ART.
Now. Let’s break down that shit completely.
1. I used those examples as a jumping-off point, but in general, this shit always happens. A creator fucks up, they get criticism which was unquestionably earned, they get rightfully dragged, and the creator uses the backlash to garner sympathy from their audiences and paint their critics in a bad light and whine about Cancel Culture. NOW, I already talked about that in another post, but basically, it doesn’t exist, and is used as a weaponized shield from criticism.
Thing about all of that as well is when the creators keep bringing up how they didn’t mean it like that. Most people would answer this with, “doesn’t matter, what matters is what you did”, but there’s something else that people don’t talk about. This is usually a bunch of white people excusing this shit. Or otherwise, a bunch of people who weren’t actually affected by the latest controversy. And therein lies the rub. Allies, let me put it this way. WHEN THE SUBJECT OF THE CRITICISM IS ABOUT THE PORTRAYAL OF MINORITIES IN MEDIA, YOU ARE IN NO POSITION TO EXPECT SAID MINORITIES TO FORGIVE THOSE CREATORS WHEN YOU WERE NOT AFFECTED BY IT.
Remember the Lana Del Rey controversy, where her dumbass ended up getting shit for her statement filled with venom towards other artists? Could have been cleared up if she had just accepted that she messed up and didn’t word her statement correctly, but no. She lashed out at the people who told her it was kinda racist to lump a bunch of black female artists into a conglomerate of artists who just, “twerk, cheat, have sex, and get money”, and dismissing feminism as needing to accommodate women “like her, who were more delicate”, perpetuating inadvertently to the idea that black women are less delicate, white women are petite, demure, and need to have a place above the others. AND LOOK, it’s how she responded that sealed it. Accusing her critics of being the actual racists, who hate women, and conflating the criticism with.....ugh....a FUCKING RACE WAR. Do I EVEN need to explain the problem with that?
The point is that it was idiotic of her to assume that she didn’t deserve the criticism because she “technically didn’t mean it”, when ultimately, she wasn’t the victim, she wasn’t the one who ACTUALLY got hurt by all of this, and that most of the criticism WAS NOT ANYWHERE NEAR as vitriolic as Lana accused it of being. And people do this to minorities all the fucking time. Where the praise for the work is what matters, but then they’re just upset and looking to be upset about things when they....sorry, when WE have shit to say about the fuckups. Constantly, minorities are expected to praise bare minimum bullshit lest we have self proclaimed “””””allies””””” get pissy that we aren’t playing along. Well, sorry, but, I think it be time to stop with that shit. It doesn’t matter how pure you think that person is. If the people who are the actual part of the controversy have shit to say about it, MAYBE LISTEN TO THEM instead of trying to force people to accept the apology that wasn’t even yours to accept, nor was it for you to shove in our faces to shut us up. And if you dislike that I’m saying that, just know. That’s exactly what you’re doing when you pull that shit.
2. As simply as I can put it, complaining about how a trans person is portrayed badly is not the same as complaining ABOUT the presence of a trans person, and to lump that shit onto the other pile is dishonest and willfully ignorant. When we keep getting upset about the tone, or upset about, “WAAAH, they said a me-no-like”, and lump that in with the actual facists looking to erase us from the history books, we are doing half of their job for them, and normalizing shit like what I saw the other day, where on Twitter, some asshole complained, “Anime is supposed to be an escape from reality. Adding black people to it kinda ruins the point.”
I’m gonna talk about it in the next point, but for now, understand this. NO ONE says shit like that just out of the blue without having it come from somewhere, and that attitude is all too prevalent.
In cartoons especially, criticism of the NB lizard from She-Ra is not being bigoted towards non-binary people, because the use of a fucking lizard to portray them is the ACTUALLY bigoted thing. And to lump in criticism of that with the criticism of She-Ra not being conventionally attractive enough for men to masturbate to the fucking minor is only going to long-term HARM any discourse. Because having these conversations as well as discussing these issues and educating each other about them is how we AVOID THEM. Criticism is not just a vector for asshole conservatives to be pissy about your existence. It’s also a veritable TREASURE TROVE for how not to fuck your shit up. And when we all get it, we learn. I get it, you don’t want to do shit wrong, but when you do, as everyone will, the backlash will burn itself out, and once you’ve fixed it, people will be very forgiving. Because, and it’s gonna sound mean....THAT’S HOW AUDIENCES WORK. THEY WANT TO FORGIVE YOU FOR WHEN YOU DO SHIT WRONG. So just...fix it. And listen. Yeah, you’ll get called stupid, you’ll get called “moron”, but you will have saved yourself from getting that shit ten times worse later on down the line. BEAR IN MIND, THOUGH, any of you already typing about how that’s enabling cyberbullying under the guise of critique, IT’S NOT. There’s a wealth of difference between the two, and trying to distract from the point with that is just a red herring. So stop with that.
And now....for the biggest one of all.
3. See...here’s the thing. About that anime douche. That doesn’t happen in JUST anime. It’s been around for decades, and has been a thing to this day. The WoW community got upset about womz being in power for the past 15 years, and have gotten on their high horse about black people being in the game, stating that if they were around sooner, maybe it wouldn’t, “SEEM TOO POLITICAL”, with that Asmongold jackass trying to start a second wave of GamerGate because one of the people at Blizzard said, “Black Lives Matter”. Fantasy as a genre has been so rooted in racism, that the inclusion of goblins for the most part is synonymous with anti-semitism towards Jewish people. Captain Marvel was pilloried for the past two years because the mean lady said that shit needs to change and wasn’t too nice, and also, me don’t like her too much. Basically, tone policing over a personality that we still give Howard Stern a platform for. In cartoons, the inclusion of black people is seen as an inherently political opinion. The rumors of Gen 6 Apple Jack possibly having a black voice actress prompted comments such as:
“The thiing with AJ is clearly anti-white/conservatist as a response to Trump America. What is opposite of country redneck female? Of course, and urban black woman.”
“It’s the fact that she’s black that bothers me.”
“Killing a blonde freckled Southern character for some political agenda is the last thing I want to see.”
The news of Velma Dinkley being gay was immediately pounced upon with shit about a homosexual agenda, and constant bullshit about how it was so forced, or whatever. This shit always happens, and is gonna keep happening. You know why?
Because the entertainment industry is not ready to accept minorities. The games industry is not ready to accept minorities. Cartoons are still not ready to accept minorities. They accept them for a moment, until those minorities challenge someone’s ego. Fans embrace a character until they’re a woman, or a POC, or on the spectrum, or LGBTA+. The existence of us is denigrating to these idiots’ escape, not from reality, but from us. It’s bad enough that they have to put up with us in the real world, but even worse that they have to see us in fictional shows that aren’t real.’ Us merely BEING AROUND is a bad thing, and to ask for some improvements is met with bemoaning about agendas.
Supposed allies begin and end their support with how much money we put in their wallets and how much we stroke their egos about how woke they are, and actual allies are lumped in with actual offenders. If we get upset that a show they’ve posited as so enlightening is actually the utter pits and not in any way healthy, they get upset. Tell a Reylo they’re shipping something toxic and dangerous, they’ll get upset and yell racial slurs at John Boyega for sitting next to Daisy Ridley. Say, “Fuck Arthas”, people get upset jump down your throat about how you hate forgiveness. Tell people that the Grinch ought not to be forgiven, people get upset you’re strawmaned about how you hate forgiveness.
They just don’t understand, or care about the essential fact about all of this. As I said earlier. The environments which produce the worst of offenders in these fields, and the problems we hate seeing so much are in no way less affected by the biases that they were cultivated by. And media has never been any more ready to accept minorities as people and as worthy of being portrayed as people than literally anywhere else right now. And speaking up about that is what gets these fake allies mad, especially when they LIKE the media. What makes these people so mad is not the troubling portrayal of POC, or women, or minorities. Not that we are routinely ostracized for existing in cartoons, not that this shit happens at all. They don’t give a flying fuck about any of that. It’s the thing that they have to put up with as a result of that that makes them the most upset.
Criticism. And they don’t like that.
And no matter whether or not these cartoons are made by bootlickers, or this movie was made by a TERF, or if this creator has a history of blackface, racism, or has made garbage statements about women, if you aren’t nice and considerate enough towards their feelings, you’ll make them, and us, the allies, feel uncomfortable. NO DWAMA, just not too divisive feedback that’s ultimately worthless as it was made purely to try to appease idiots and the people most affected by these issues at the same time, meaning it had to be watered down past the point of no return in order for us to factor it in with our jaded mindsets and worldviews that are the direct cause of the problems we complain about, yet keep exacerbating through our ignorance and unwillingness to change.
If you aren’t like that, and don’t believe you should be lumped in with that, don’t behave as if you are that sort of person. But, even then, if you aren’t...listen to the actual experts. Stop listening to some white guy’s idiotic hot takes about black rep, and actually listen to black people. Listen to trans people instead of some cis white chick with no understanding of trans issues. Stop platforming the worst of offenders within these communities as the bestest ever. And most importantly....
remember that horses don’t exist.
