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Oct. 19th, 2020 04:13 pmAnother post from the bad place that I want to keep.
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"Silence of the Lambs" (movie) and "Lovecraft Country" (HBO)
I remember seeing "Silence of the Lambs" in the theater for the first time. I'd missed it in theatrical release, and caught it at the UGA student theater. It was a packed house, and I was really into the story. Until.
Despite direct, within the narrative clarification that Buffalo Bill was not transsexual, he was queer-coded big time, and knowing that his gender performativity was meant to unsettle the audience and make him creepier, more sinister, and trigger the "eww!" reaction in the audience... I was acutely aware of being surrounded by people eating this up with a spoon, and knowing it would have social implications in my life and the lives of other trans and gender non-conforming people. It was isolating and alienating, reinforcing that I was not like "them", and that this, at least in part, was how "they" saw people like me. I still cringe every single time someone makes a lighthearted (to them) reference to lotion/hose, and feel notably less safe around people who use that.
HBO's "Lovecraft Country" evokes a similar response in me. By this point I assume anyone who cares has seen most of the show, but spoilers follow.
I've written some about this prior, but mostly from a SJW/inclusion/exclusion perspective. This time, I'm writing about it as a person affected, even if unintentionally.
The series deviates in marked ways from the book (read the book, it's great). One of those deviations is in episode 4, "A History of Violence". They invented an indigenous, intersex, two spirit person whose first appearance is naked, clearly intended to unsettle and shock the audience (another example of queer-coding). To underscore the otherness of a naked intersex person, one of the POV characters (not coincidentally a closeted gay black man), upon seeing their naked form, blurts out, "What ARE you?!"
For an invented character, Yahima's infodump was handled extremely well, and they maintained composure and dignity not offered by the characters within the series. However, at the end of the episode, the closeted black gay male character with whom Yahima is staying (to help the others in mystical research), calculatedly kills them in an attempt to keep forbidden knowledge from his son (another POV character).
To some credit, the show runner Misha Green did acknowledge she did the character wrong, but only more than a month after the episode aired, and only in a tweet. To my knowledge, there has been no further public comment on the subject. Honestly I don't expect one.
So many in the geek/media/horror fan world were OK with how Yahima was treated within context of the show. The GRRM defense was fully deployed ("It's historically accurate" falls apart in a horror fantasy setting with shapeshifting blood magic and eldritch horrors: the creators are responsible for everything they choose to include). The same people were seemingly OK with Green's less than 300 character acknowledgement of wrongdoing, as though "It's OK, she said she was sorry (newsflash: she didn't, really)" suddenly undoes the harm in creating and then treating as disposable the sole intersex, two spirit, colonially oppressed indigenous character. The apparent comfort so many have with this evokes a similar response in me to "Silence of the Lambs". I am reminded that I am not in the majority, and the people who accepted the disposability of Yahima might be telling me* how they see people like me. It's alienating, and I feel more on edge, less safe, in the geek/media/horror streams.**
*I'm not intersex, and I do not claim to speak for this community. I am trans, body-modding, gender non-conforming/genderqueer, and I feel comfortable in the assessment that many/most who reacted to Yahima and their death as intended probably find me creepy, sinister, and other, as well. Nuance is often lost on the unaffected majority.
**I understand that geek/media/horror communities arise from within the dominant society, and that all subcultures run the risk of tracking in the same poison from the dominant that these communities hate directed *at them*. Watching homophobia and misogyny rear their ugly heads in geek culture once it attained a certain power and recognition is why I abandoned going to Dragoncon over a decade ago.
*********
"Silence of the Lambs" (movie) and "Lovecraft Country" (HBO)
I remember seeing "Silence of the Lambs" in the theater for the first time. I'd missed it in theatrical release, and caught it at the UGA student theater. It was a packed house, and I was really into the story. Until.
Despite direct, within the narrative clarification that Buffalo Bill was not transsexual, he was queer-coded big time, and knowing that his gender performativity was meant to unsettle the audience and make him creepier, more sinister, and trigger the "eww!" reaction in the audience... I was acutely aware of being surrounded by people eating this up with a spoon, and knowing it would have social implications in my life and the lives of other trans and gender non-conforming people. It was isolating and alienating, reinforcing that I was not like "them", and that this, at least in part, was how "they" saw people like me. I still cringe every single time someone makes a lighthearted (to them) reference to lotion/hose, and feel notably less safe around people who use that.
HBO's "Lovecraft Country" evokes a similar response in me. By this point I assume anyone who cares has seen most of the show, but spoilers follow.
I've written some about this prior, but mostly from a SJW/inclusion/exclusion perspective. This time, I'm writing about it as a person affected, even if unintentionally.
The series deviates in marked ways from the book (read the book, it's great). One of those deviations is in episode 4, "A History of Violence". They invented an indigenous, intersex, two spirit person whose first appearance is naked, clearly intended to unsettle and shock the audience (another example of queer-coding). To underscore the otherness of a naked intersex person, one of the POV characters (not coincidentally a closeted gay black man), upon seeing their naked form, blurts out, "What ARE you?!"
For an invented character, Yahima's infodump was handled extremely well, and they maintained composure and dignity not offered by the characters within the series. However, at the end of the episode, the closeted black gay male character with whom Yahima is staying (to help the others in mystical research), calculatedly kills them in an attempt to keep forbidden knowledge from his son (another POV character).
To some credit, the show runner Misha Green did acknowledge she did the character wrong, but only more than a month after the episode aired, and only in a tweet. To my knowledge, there has been no further public comment on the subject. Honestly I don't expect one.
So many in the geek/media/horror fan world were OK with how Yahima was treated within context of the show. The GRRM defense was fully deployed ("It's historically accurate" falls apart in a horror fantasy setting with shapeshifting blood magic and eldritch horrors: the creators are responsible for everything they choose to include). The same people were seemingly OK with Green's less than 300 character acknowledgement of wrongdoing, as though "It's OK, she said she was sorry (newsflash: she didn't, really)" suddenly undoes the harm in creating and then treating as disposable the sole intersex, two spirit, colonially oppressed indigenous character. The apparent comfort so many have with this evokes a similar response in me to "Silence of the Lambs". I am reminded that I am not in the majority, and the people who accepted the disposability of Yahima might be telling me* how they see people like me. It's alienating, and I feel more on edge, less safe, in the geek/media/horror streams.**
*I'm not intersex, and I do not claim to speak for this community. I am trans, body-modding, gender non-conforming/genderqueer, and I feel comfortable in the assessment that many/most who reacted to Yahima and their death as intended probably find me creepy, sinister, and other, as well. Nuance is often lost on the unaffected majority.
**I understand that geek/media/horror communities arise from within the dominant society, and that all subcultures run the risk of tracking in the same poison from the dominant that these communities hate directed *at them*. Watching homophobia and misogyny rear their ugly heads in geek culture once it attained a certain power and recognition is why I abandoned going to Dragoncon over a decade ago.
