Last TV series you watched and your rating

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more heat than light
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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by more heat than light » Sat Sep 22, 2018 7:43 am

Vermilion wrote:
Pedz wrote:Pretty sure I saw Friends described as Sexist, Transphobic, Homophonic and racist.


:fp:

If they said that about Friends, god knows what they'd make of Blackadder.


It kind of is though. It's still great, but there are scenes and jokes that make uncomfortable viewing in today's climate.

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by Tafdolphin » Sat Sep 22, 2018 8:06 am

more heat than light wrote:
Vermilion wrote:
Pedz wrote:Pretty sure I saw Friends described as Sexist, Transphobic, Homophonic and racist.


:fp:

If they said that about Friends, god knows what they'd make of Blackadder.


It kind of is though. It's still great, but there are scenes and jokes that make uncomfortable viewing in today's climate.


Yup. I went through the first 7 seasons of Friends earlier this year and there's a buuuuunch of sexism in there, not to mention zero (literally zero) significant black characters and a large part of Chandler's backstory is 'lol his dad is a woman now.'

It hasn't aged well.

Also, Ross is a complete twat. I do not know how I missed that the first time round.

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by more heat than light » Sat Sep 22, 2018 9:18 am

The 'zero black characters' thing doesn't bother me to be honest. It's entirely plausible that a group of white friends hang around with white people and have solely white families. At least you can't accuse it of tokenism.

The gay jokes are obviously not great, while watching I just tend to not laugh and move on. I don't think any of it is overly nasty, it's just a bit insensitive and wouldn't even be considered these days. I was watching an episode the other day where Joey's girlfriend is beating him up and everyone mocks him about it, which was pretty gross.

The show is still great though, I think a lot of it holds up really well.

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by Vermilion » Sat Sep 22, 2018 9:29 pm

Tafdolphin wrote:not to mention zero (literally zero) significant black characters


This is the second time i've seen you comment on a production being too white (the previous being Notting Hill), and i find it rather bizarre.

It would be like me watching Fresh Prince, only to comment that there's a lack of significant white characters (which is something i'd never do).

Just seems kinda odd. :|

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by Tafdolphin » Sat Sep 22, 2018 10:06 pm

Vermilion wrote:
Tafdolphin wrote:not to mention zero (literally zero) significant black characters


This is the second time i've seen you comment on a production being too white (the previous being Notting Hill), and i find it rather bizarre.

It would be like me watching Fresh Prince, only to comment that there's a lack of significant white characters (which is something i'd never do).

Just seems kinda odd. :|


So, I suppose my response is twofold:

a) Why do you think it's odd? This is a genuine question.
b) The Fresh Prince example is something of a false equivalency.

The first is self explanatory, but I'd like to delve into the second.

The representation of white and African-american cultures is not equal in Western media. The vast majority of programming and movies were and are based around white cultural tropes, and more often than not positions white people as the main focus of their narratives.

Because of the domination of white cultural representation in media, citing an example of one counter example is not divesting the majority of western media from its inherent bias towards white representation. When you set a sitcom in the midst of the most diverse city on the planet and 100% of the returning cast are white, that's not the same as having a sitcom explicitly about a black family and stating there are no white characters.

The Fresh Prince, by having a narrative hook that focused explicitly on a minority family, was entirely about representation, representation of a neglected cultural viewpoint. Therefore, stating there were no white characters in a sitcom specifically geared towards the representation of a non-white demographic is, I feel, a moot point and certainly not comparable to Friends' lack of diversity and, say it one more time, representation.

more heat than light wrote:The 'zero black characters' thing doesn't bother me to be honest. It's entirely plausible that a group of white friends hang around with white people and have solely white families. At least you can't accuse it of tokenism.

The gay jokes are obviously not great, while watching I just tend to not laugh and move on. I don't think any of it is overly nasty, it's just a bit insensitive and wouldn't even be considered these days. I was watching an episode the other day where Joey's girlfriend is beating him up and everyone mocks him about it, which was pretty gross.


And this is where this all comes into practice in a very real way.

I'm going to guess here, and apologies if I'm wrong, that you're a white, straight man. None of these issues, casual homophobia, lack of diversity and representation, affect you personally because you are a part of the dominant culture in western society.

People who identify as homosexual, people of colour, trans people; all are less likely to be able to simply ignore these jokes, or not be bothered by them, because these are jokes at their expense.

It is your privilege as a white, straight man to be able to state that the jokes don't bother you. Instead what we should be thinking about is whether they bother those people less represented in this culture in which we have won the genetic lottery.

Finally, I'm not saying that Friends is the worst. I'm not saying that every black or gay person who watches Friends would immediately be offended. All I'm saying is that some jokes have aged badly, and the lack of representation is different to what we'd expect today and I do not think there's anything odd in pointing this out.

Apologies too for singling you both out, Vermillion and MHTL, you were simply the closest examples to hand! For what its worth, I do exactly the same as you MHTL and just plough through the rough parts. I still think it's important to recognise how this is very much a luxury however.

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by more heat than light » Sat Sep 22, 2018 10:44 pm

Of course, I completely agree with you for the most part. I'm super glad there is more diversity in TV these days, but I personally don't sit there watching Friends going 'man, I wish there were more black characters'. You're probably right that this is my white privilege talking, but it would be disingenuous of me to say it bothered me if it didn't.

I kinda feel like we will eventually reach a point where society in general will not give a gooseberry fool what people are, so we won't need to make sure that every race, gender and sexuality is represented. Until we reach that point there will always be a balancing act between actual diversity and making sure every box is ticked. I don't think a show featuring an entirely white cast necessarily means that the creators of that show are racist.

EDIT - this was going to be a longer, more detailed post but it's late and I'm tired. :-)

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by Pedz » Sat Sep 22, 2018 10:49 pm

Tafdolphin wrote:
Vermilion wrote:
Tafdolphin wrote:not to mention zero (literally zero) significant black characters


This is the second time i've seen you comment on a production being too white (the previous being Notting Hill), and i find it rather bizarre.

It would be like me watching Fresh Prince, only to comment that there's a lack of significant white characters (which is something i'd never do).

Just seems kinda odd. :|


So, I suppose my response is twofold:

a) Why do you think it's odd? This is a genuine question.
b) The Fresh Prince example is something of a false equivalency.

The first is self explanatory, but I'd like to delve into the second.

The representation of white and African-american cultures is not equal in Western media. The vast majority of programming and movies were and are based around white cultural tropes, and more often than not positions white people as the main focus of their narratives.

Because of the domination of white cultural representation in media, citing an example of one counter example is not divesting the majority of western media from its inherent bias towards white representation. When you set a sitcom in the midst of the most diverse city on the planet and 100% of the returning cast are white, that's not the same as having a sitcom explicitly about a black family and stating there are no white characters.

The Fresh Prince, by having a narrative hook that focused explicitly on a minority family, was entirely about representation, representation of a neglected cultural viewpoint. Therefore, stating there were no white characters in a sitcom specifically geared towards the representation of a non-white demographic is, I feel, a moot point and certainly not comparable to Friends' lack of diversity and, say it one more time, representation.

more heat than light wrote:The 'zero black characters' thing doesn't bother me to be honest. It's entirely plausible that a group of white friends hang around with white people and have solely white families. At least you can't accuse it of tokenism.

The gay jokes are obviously not great, while watching I just tend to not laugh and move on. I don't think any of it is overly nasty, it's just a bit insensitive and wouldn't even be considered these days. I was watching an episode the other day where Joey's girlfriend is beating him up and everyone mocks him about it, which was pretty gross.


And this is where this all comes into practice in a very real way.

I'm going to guess here, and apologies if I'm wrong, that you're a white, straight man. None of these issues, casual homophobia, lack of diversity and representation, affect you personally because you are a part of the dominant culture in western society.

People who identify as homosexual, people of colour, trans people; all are less likely to be able to simply ignore these jokes, or not be bothered by them, because these are jokes at their expense.

It is your privilege as a white, straight man to be able to state that the jokes don't bother you. Instead what we should be thinking about is whether they bother those people less represented in this culture in which we have won the genetic lottery.

Finally, I'm not saying that Friends is the worst. I'm not saying that every black or gay person who watches Friends would immediately be offended. All I'm saying is that some jokes have aged badly, and the lack of representation is different to what we'd expect today and I do not think there's anything odd in pointing this out.

Apologies too for singling you both out, Vermillion and MHTL, you were simply the closest examples to hand! For what its worth, I do exactly the same as you MHTL and just plough through the rough parts. I still think it's important to recognise how this is very much a luxury however.


I disagree, I think it really depends on the person, I know a few gay people, male and female. They love friends and have never once said it was homophobic.

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by Drumstick » Sat Sep 22, 2018 11:10 pm

Taf, I mean this in the most inoffensive and innocent way possible (because I can see how it might be taken differently), but wouldn't you find things more enjoyable by appreciating them for what they are and the era they were created in rather than pick demographical holes in them?

For me a TV show is just that, a work of fiction, and I don't require stuff like demographics to be indicative of real life. That episode of Friends where the girl keeps beating on Joey, that kind of thing does (unfortunately) happen IRL but it's just a show. I just don't get the concern.

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by Slayerx » Sun Sep 23, 2018 12:06 am

Drumstick wrote:Taf, I mean this in the most inoffensive and innocent way possible (because I can see how it might be taken differently), but wouldn't you find things more enjoyable by appreciating them for what they are and the era they were created in rather than pick demographical holes in them?

For me a TV show is just that, a work of fiction, and I don't require stuff like demographics to be indicative of real life. That episode of Friends where the girl keeps beating on Joey, that kind of thing does (unfortunately) happen IRL but it's just a show. I just don't get the concern.


This in a nutshell it's TV if your going to watch a TV show how about enjoying it for what it is instead of shaking your head at all the white male toxic masculinity/privelage.

I do worry people in the current SJW and 3rd wave feminism movements spend so much time criticising things they have no time to actually enjoy anything.

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by 7256930752 » Sun Sep 23, 2018 12:13 am

Has there been a show with more representation than Power Rangers?

Trini :cry:

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by Death's Head » Sun Sep 23, 2018 12:48 am

Never watched Friends, but are their jokes about black people? (I'm guessing not). I don't agree that we should just put in some race tokens or write scripts to include different races unnecessarily.

Has anyone seen Eddie Murphy's Boomerang (from around 1992)? Did you think there should be some token white people in it or perhaps it should have been recast for one or two whites having meatier roles?

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by Vermilion » Sun Sep 23, 2018 8:37 am

Taf, you've clearly been thinking about this stuff far too much and i think you need to lighten up a bit.

You make a lot of serious and well intentioned points, but at the end of the day we're discussing a TV show that's 20 years old, and it really doesn't matter that much.

Taf wrote:a) Why do you think it's odd? This is a genuine question.


I think it's odd because complaining about racial representation in movies/films from two decades ago makes no sense whatsover, it's like something you'd see in an episode of South Park.

Taf wrote:b) The Fresh Prince example is something of a false equivalency.


What about Bollywood? Are you upset at the lack of diversity amongst the Indian actors? Would you suggest that they bring in a bunch of Chinese characters as they currently lack representation in the genre? It sounds silly because it is, yet that is pretty much what you have been doing, and i think you need to spend less time worrying about this sort of stuff.

If there is one thing i've learned over the years, it's that getting upset at little things beyond our control does no one any good, all it does is create a lot of unnecessary stress.

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by Gemini73 » Sun Sep 23, 2018 8:54 am

There is a distinct lack of black folk in Gotham. Lots of hot chicks, though. You win some, you lose some. :slol:

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by Tafdolphin » Sun Sep 23, 2018 9:12 am

Vermilion wrote:You make a lot of serious and well intentioned points, but at the end of the day we're discussing a TV show that's 20 years old, and it really doesn't matter that much.


I agree that when discussions get to this level it can definitely appear to be overthinking! I mentioned that I watched the first 7 series of Friends earlier this year; 7 series is a lot of episodes and I definitely wasn't going into each one with a mental 'black character checklist.' I was as MHTL says, enjoying them for the most part but taking note of the shortcomings.

Vermillion wrote:What about Bollywood? Are you upset at the lack of diversity amongst the Indian actors? Would you suggest that they bring in a bunch of Chinese characters as they currently lack representation in the genre?


This involves a point I wanted to get to in my original post but didn't get around to. The comparison of white culture and cultures like African-american, or Indian, or South American is (again, sorry!) a false equivalence because of one concept: the idea of domineer vs dominated.

Indian culture, same as black culture, is a dominated culture. In the 19th Century, these cultures were held in thrall to the domineering culture, this being white European culture. This set up the dynamic we have now in the Western world, that white culture is the default and that all other cultures play second fiddle. This is the reason that the idea of racism against white people is ridiculous: a systematically dominated culture is, by definition, incapable of being systematically racist against the dominant culture.

Your Bollywood example is a continuation of your Fresh Prince one. Bollywood is an industry specifically about representation, the representation of Indian culture and tropes. The US forcefully imported other cultures in its past, both as a slaving nation and as one looking for cheap labour to power its expansion west. Inversely, India was a culture that had white culture artificially forced on it for several generations and Bollywood is one response to that: an industry celebrating traditional cultural tropes that were seen as aberrant during the formative generations under the Raj. It is an exercise in representation.

Friends was no such thing. I'm in no way saying the writers were racist because they didn't include any black characters, I'm just saying that the show is a misrepresentation of the diversity of the city in which it's set because it was written by a group of people belonging to the dominant culture who lacked the diversity to even think about including a more varied representation of their hometown.

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by more heat than light » Sun Sep 23, 2018 9:39 am

Tafdolphin wrote:Friends was no such thing. I'm in no way saying the writers were racist because they didn't include any black characters, I'm just saying that the show is a misrepresentation of the diversity of the city in which it's set because it was written by a group of people belonging to the dominant culture who lacked the diversity to even think about including a more varied representation of their hometown.


Alternatively, it's a show about a group of friends who all happen to be white.

I'm on your side, Taf, but I do think there are more important things to worry about than whether a group of characters contains 'the black one' and 'the gay one'. You really are in trouble if you have to make sure your group of characters has to fulfil certain criteria to be acceptable. We should be more focused on things like why more Asian actors don't get more lead roles and whitewashing in films where it would be more culturally appropriate to cast minority actors.

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by Tafdolphin » Sun Sep 23, 2018 9:41 am

Yup, I'm definitely against tokenism and I'm deffo not suggesting the additional of token characters. I'm not suggesting any solutions, in fact! I'm simply saying that Friends was the result of a group of white people writing about a group of white people for an audience of white people, and that that sort of stuff doesn't hold up today.*

*Unless you're Scarlett Johannson.

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by more heat than light » Sun Sep 23, 2018 9:49 am

Mind you, given Friends' handling of gay and trans rights, I dread to think what the writers would have cooked up for a black friend. :lol:

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PostRe: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by Tafdolphin » Sun Sep 23, 2018 9:52 am

100%. Remember Joey's museum guide friend Rhonda? She was...yep, a sassy black woman who screamed a lot.

cringe

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PostRe: RE: Re: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by Death's Head » Sun Sep 23, 2018 12:56 pm

Gemini73 wrote:There is a distinct lack of black folk in Gotham. Lots of hot chicks, though. You win some, you lose some. :slol:
With the hottest being black or at the very least mixed race.

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PostRe: RE: Re: Last TV series you watched and your rating.
by Gemini73 » Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:25 pm

Death's Head wrote:
Gemini73 wrote:There is a distinct lack of black folk in Gotham. Lots of hot chicks, though. You win some, you lose some. :slol:
With the hottest being black or at the very least mixed race.


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