Monthly Archives: January 2018

Episodes 1 and 2

DISCO, Reflections

Pt. 4 of DISCO, series. Contains spoilers. I am up to date, though breakdowns for episodes 1- 9 only use information from those episodes. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Ok, so the episode breakdowns start. I’m doing episodes 1 and 2 together because they are so similar in story line and have the same characters.

So who are the characters in these episodes?

Captain Philippa Georgiou and Michael Burnham. Two human characters, both main characters, in these episodes.  Michael Burnham continues to be a main character and the Klingons will also continue to appear.

While I believe different spices in the federation represent different aspects of humanity, when considering the diversity and inclusion I’m only considering characters who are human or serve on human ships because I know where human characters fit into social hierarchy. Characters of other species will have separate posts, to analyze social structures of the species. As such I will not give discussion to the Klingon characters.

Anyway, back to measuring up episodes 1 and 2. These episodes have two characters, that’s minus 2 points. But both are woman of color plus main characters, so add 8 points, 4 from each character. -2+8=6 points. These episodes have excellent inclusion and centering. Easily passes. And I don’t find it overkill, I love it.

What else do I like about these episodes? A lot.

The captain is able to listen to Michael Burnham, which I see as very positive. In our society women, and people of color aren’t listened to. The me too movement is big right now, and some women have been able to speak out and be believed, but most of the women who are speaking out are wealthy white women.  As a country(the USA), as in this show, generally the only people who listen to women of color are other woman of color. In future episodes who will listen to Michael Burnham? While it’s good to watch a show that follows the story about a smart, competent woman of color, and a character who must navigate cultures, is good, I have to ask will other characters listen to what she has to say and will we?

I like how these episodes give hope that someday Michael Burnham could be captain. Captain Philippa Georgiou sees that she has flaws, but believes that one day she will get to the captains’ chair. Unfortunately, Michael Burnham is harshly punished for helping start a war and disobeying orders. Her harsh punishment is out of line compared to other Star Trek series, which is maybe a good way in which this show pushes itself? That’s a topic for another post.

What don’t I like?

Captain Philippa Georgiou is first character to die. While this is a surprising move considering how few characters die overall in Star Trek, her death is not terribly surprising. The show couldn’t have two colored women in charge of a spaceship…

If two colored women where in charge of a spaceship that would be awesome, but considering racism and sexism are still prevalent in society, that’s not going to happen, especially on a sic-fi.

I loved these two episodes. Unfortunately, though I enjoyed the rest of the episodes, I will have harsher criticisms, just so you know. If you enjoyed these episode breakdowns, keep reading, I think the rest will be similar in analysis level.

Continue reading Episodes 1 and 2 →

A Journey Through Beta’s Mysterious Basement

Life at Western, Uncategorized

Rumer has it there’s a sauna under one of Westerns dorms. I lived there. It’s real. Let’s take a look.

Here is the entrance.

Wait no. Not that mysteririous gray door.

The other one around the corrner. We’ll go back to that one, later.

I’ll just use my specil key to open the door. Hear we are. Awwwwwwww. It’s so bright!

That’s better. Two shower stalls.

A bathroom, with another gray door. I wonder where that goes?

A trap door

And the sauna.

On the wall there are names and meseges. This one’s my favioret. NO DIVING.

OK, let’s go back to the first mysterious gray door.

It’s bike storege

and lots of pipes

and more mysteriuos gray doors. What’s behind them? Matenece. Really not likely much of a mystery. But we can’t go there, I don’t have the keys.


one of three gray doors in the bike room

Want Some other rules?

DISCO, Social Justice

Pt. 3.5 of DISCO, series

OK, literally just some more info for fun. This post isn’t really part of the series.

These cool rules to check out, similar to the Bechdel, though not inspiration for me.

Deggen’s for race, The Russo Test for LGBT, Tyrion Test for disability, The Representation Test for fighting stereotypes about females, males, race, disability, LGBT. Use it if you want, it’s fairly similar to mine, thought doesn’t take the number of characters into account, along with being a little simpler. And Roxane Gay made a list find it here.

A New Rule To Rule Them All

DISCO

Pt. 3 of DISCO, series

As I examine how good the show is, how well it meets my expectations, it is extremely use full to hold it up to a ruler—to use a test. The Bechdel Test is a great start, but it’s just a start. It fails to examine all the diversity, incision and centering I expect in a modern TV show.

Before explaining what my ruler is, let me explain some terms and abbreviations.

ATP– all the power. A character who is male, white, strait, cis, non-disabled, and what mid-20’s to mid-50’s? IDK what the “ideal” age range is exactly.

Diverse aspect— an aspect of a character that provides much needed diversity to shows. If a character is wildly outside of the norm age range, is a person of color, is queer, is female, has a disability, or and has a mental illness.

Tokenism— This is when a character is a walking talking stereotype. The character who is included just so the creators can say the show is diverse. The black guy who is the only person of color in a movie filled with white guys. Yeah, he’s only there so the movie is “diverse”.

Show—I use this word as an umbrella term for a movie, a TV show, a play, even a book… any form of story telling with, for my rule, human or humanoid characters who represent humanity. A story about an alien race living on a planet with social structures, that is an imagination or examination of a dystopian, utopian or realistic human society is referred to as a show.

Character—when I write the word character, I mean a character who talks, has flaws, and is key to the plot. A figure who walks on screen and works at work station is not a character. A security guard who shoots a few shots and then dies is not a character. A person who talks and gives advice to a main character and never appears again is not a character. In TOS these are Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, Scotty, and later nurse Chapel

 Main character– is a character who talks and appears on screen at a high frequency as well as being key to the plot.  A main character is also classified as a character. In TOS these are Kirk, Spock, and Bones.

Frequent character-is a character that talks less, appears only for a few seconds (or possibly a minute or 2) per episode at most and is usually not essential to the plot. Who is a main character and who is a frequent character can change by episode, though tends not to. For example, if a frequent character is featured in an episode, that character becomes a main character for that episode. In TOS these usually are Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, Scotty, nurse Chapel.

Red shirt— is a character who appears in one episode and usually dies before the end of the episode. The term comes from original series’ very minor characters who wore red uniforms, and though Scotty had a red uniform, he is not a red shirt, dew to him not dying, having a name, lines, flaws, and plot importance.

All right. We got enough terms to get started. What you’ve been waiting for my new rule- dubbed the Ewald ruler-after its creator—me!

Here’s how it works: a show is rewarded one negative point for each character, and it gains points for including diverse aspects. Each diverse aspect of a character gains the show one point. If the character with a diverse aspect is a main character, then the show gets one extra point for the character. For example, Michael Burnham from Star Trek: Discovery gives her show 4 points: one for being a person of color, another for being a main character AND a person of color, one for being a woman, and another for being a main character AND a woman. In order to “pass”, show should gain back at least half its points. A character with a disability? Add a point! That character is also a person of color? Now we’re at 2 points! A show with 10 characters should aim for about -5 points. 0 points is better. Positive might be overkill. It might be excellent.

However, when a show has a token character, the show does not earn a point. Glee, for example, doesn’t earn many points because a lot of the characters are token characters. This exemplifies how diversity does not often equal inclusion.

Notes:

  1. To be clear, this rule doesn’t ask for shows to represent the population of the USA, nor does it in any way prohibit white characters or even APT’s. I’m just asking for inclusion of diverse characters in shows. It’s a simple rule to measure diversity and inclusion, and I’ll be using it in future posts to measure up DISCO, episode by episode!
  2. Only diverse aspects gain points for this rule! See definition.
  3. I don’t mean for this to be absolute, like a “meet it and the show passes, don’t and there is only failure.” There are good reasons a show might not reach half the points lost. It is only probably extra awesome to reach 0 or exceed it, but it might be overkill to reach or exceed 0, even without token characters.

Continue reading A New Rule To Rule Them All →

Star Trek Discovery Has Huge Shortfalls

DISCO, Reflections

Pt. 1 of DISCO series. Contains spoilers.

DISCO is a series of posts, containing my commentary on Star Trek: Discovery. The first few are general notes, then I have episode breakdowns.

DIS. What an awful abbreviation. No, that’s not the reason I’m criticizing the show. I’m criticizing it because I like it. I’m a huge Trekky. And I want to push it to be the best show it can be. When I heard there was a new Star Trek show coming I was so excited, finally a new progressive show, pushing 2017’s boundaries for TV. I had high standards, I expected it to throw off the tropes and stereotypes I’m tired of, and include and put at the center of the story cool, full, diverse people.

Then I heard that the show was going to focused on one character. Uh-oh, I thought. Its going to be a white guy, cis, strait, able, smart, strong… and still have flaws, areas to grow, and interesting. Luckily, my fears where lessened by the previews.

And now it’s hear. I can and will, now judge the show for myself. I liked it. I like Michael Burnham. She is an awesome character. I love, love, love the first two episodes. Just what I would expect from good story telling. I like how the story throws out suggested cannon facts it needs to. A female captain before Kirk? Oh-yeah. But it also has huge downfalls. The biggest of which is the killing of female people of color. I have others, which I will discuss in future posts.  But this is the biggest and most hurtful mistake for the show to make because it devalues the lives of woman of color. Other federation (good guy/main) characters die, but the other characters don’t have names, lines, personalities and don’t even appear in two episodes. Captain Philippa Georgiou and chief of security Ellen Landry are the only main characters to die (as of 2017), are both woman of color. This shows the creations don’t care about the lives of woman of color.

A sample of my other criticisms: the show also continues to interduce men. Why is two or three female characters enough? Why can’t there be more than one woman of color?

Keep reading to Discover a new rule to measure up TV shows and movies!

What Is Good Modern TV?

DISCO, Reflections

Pt. 2 of DISCO, series

In my last post, I discussed what I liked and didn’t like about Star Trek Discovery (abbreviated as DISCO). Now It’s time to talk more generally about good, modern TV and what regular watchers like me expect to view. I’m making a list of what I like in a TV show as a precursor to a new rule I developed to use as a lens for my discussion of DISCO.

Also, if your too time pressed to read it all, I bolded the key words😊

  • I love space sic fic. That’s a personal preference.
  • For a show to be good it should be thoughtful, interesting, and have “swallow-able” philosophy I love it when the story is well told, and my mind blows after watching it. Star Trek has generally been good at this.
  • A good modern show should have a good mix of characters. Characters who don’t identify as male who are of many races who identify with many sexualities and romantic orientations, people with intellectual and physical disabilities (also characters with mental health and chronic sickness) as well as people who have mental and physical exceptionalities, and the last big area of diversity to include to me is to have people of varying ages.
  • Also, one character does not equal diversity. Troupes and stereotypes generally aren’t cool. There’s a lot of those to avoid. I’m particularly annoyed at the “White Savior” trope. You know, the white guy who gives a helping hand to give someone with less power achieve a goal, get a leg up, achieve a dream…I hate that.
  • Characters should have different desires and flaws, and be unique, just as we are. One interesting woman is not going to have the same desires or for that matter, `story as another.
  • I don’t want diverse characters to only be in supporting and side roles. No, there has to be people in charge who aren’t usually powerful to have power. There are a few exceptions. If the show is, for example, exploring the presidency in the United Sates, then only showing men as the president makes sense because only guys have held that title up to today. However, that is not an excuse to have only male characters with power.
  • Put marginalized, oppressed, and ignored people at the center of the story, at the center of the story’s message. This is important because it does more to fight oppression, more than inclusion. DISCO actually doses an alright job at doing this. Putting Michael Burnham at the center of the story, puts a person of color at the center.
  • Hope is important. Not only does it give you a reason to keep watching, hope is also a social justice tool. Having hope, aspirations, keep you fighting for a better future. If the characters in a story who are like you, especially in a show set in the future, have hope, that helps the you, the viewer keep hope alive in you.

Of course, all of this isn’t mine. Gosh, there’s so many people to thank for all this. So, some big ones. Credit to A Michael J. Dumas’s talk “Running out of Damns to Give: Refusing Antiblackness and Settler Colonialism in the Next 25 years” especially for the importance of centering, Bridging Barriers class for a lot, especially for informing me more deeply importance of hope, Yosso’s Who’s Culture has Capital, The Bechdel Test for inspiring my new rule. Speaking of which… That’s in the next post!