Re: Commodification and Responsibility
Sep. 14th, 2020 09:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI guess what I’m trying to say with all of this is that there is real shit going on in the world right now. People are still dying in a pandemic, Black people are still getting evicted and being shot at, and enormous parts of the country are literally on fire because of climate change that has not abated even a little despite major social shifts. It’s extremely distressing to see people devote so much attention to bullshit that doesn’t matter.
So why in the fuck are we still getting upset about Noelle Stevenson.
I don’t often talk about my experience of being homeless or my experience with police and the prison system. Maybe one day I will, but let it suffice to say that I have an intimate personal understanding of the fact that the issues the BLM movement has been trying to bring to wider attention are serious and affect everyone. The possibility that we, as a society, might be able to effect real change within the next few months is incredible, and I do not give a shit that a cartoonist made a stupid joke that was relatively harmless by itself but inappropriate to the context in which they made it.
It’s not that I don’t think people deserve to be upset about feeling misrepresented or underrepresented in media, and it’s not that I don’t think people have the right to demand that people in positions of relative power do better. I have been upset about this for the past twenty years, and I just recently added my own voice to a small branch of this conversation two weeks ago at a tangible cost to my professional reputation.
But the way individual people are bullied on social media is so fucking petty, and I don’t think it accomplishes anything but tearing down people who are actively trying to do better. I used to follow Noelle Stevenson on Twitter, and all they fucking did was to promote creative people from diverse backgrounds while maybe posting one of their own drawings every few months. They’ve also been very open, in their professionally published collection of autobio comics, about how difficult it’s been to do the right thing and support people in marginalized positions while working for DreamWorks. Again, I’m not saying people don’t deserve to be angry, but Stevenson isn’t coming from a place of aggressive ignorance and bigotry.
Because this is something I’ve studied and published about, I think it’s fair for me to say that the animation industry in the United States is extremely male-dominated, and it’s still much more difficult than you’d think it would be to be openly gay. There’s a ridiculous amount of both atmospheric and directed pushback against BIPOC artists and writers that’s even more striking given the racial and ethnic makeup of Los Angeles and the people who come there looking for work in the creative industry. This is a very real and very serious problem.
But instead of forcing Netflix to think about this, or instead of holding Dreamworks responsible for a majority-white staff, everyone has decided that the best way to use Twitter as a platform is to go after an individual person who is doing their best but made a dumb mistake.
Stevenson responded in what I feel is an appropriate way, by hiring specific people to join their staff as writers and consultants, but they would have responded that way even without their apology having gone viral on Twitter. Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, the media corporations involved haven’t taken similar action or responded to this at all, and the portion of media fandom that went after Stevenson hasn’t done anything to boost the voices of the high-profile activists – like, the entire fucking NBA – who are trying to address these matters at the corporate level.
I just don’t think this sort of scapegoating is an effective exercise of social justice. It’s exhausting, and it’s not helping anyone.
Also, Twitter bears a large portion of the blame for facilitating this sort of mess in the first place. If I could say one thing to young activists and socially engaged creative people, it would be to take care to use the platform while not being used by it. Sharing your voice on Twitter is empowering, but you can’t let Twitter take advantage of your anger to compel you to do meaningless work in order to increase consumer engagement with the app and website.
I’m writing about this because I saw the effects of this sort of discourse on Hillary Clinton, and now I’m starting to see it with Joe Biden. Neither Clinton nor Biden is blameless, and we all deserve better, but that’s just how American politics currently works, unfortunately. These politicians aren’t and shouldn’t be treated as religious icons; they’re imperfect building blocks that we can use to build a more perfect system. When I see the sort of discourse surrounding Stevenson and Biden on social media, and I think about all the shit we’re living with right now as a result of the 2016 elections, I just get so fucking angry.
Like, can we do a Netflix Sign Five BIPOC Showrunners Every Month 2020 Challenge. Can we play a fun Inktober style game where we tweet art and memes directly at our representatives every day for a month to reform the electoral college because it’s the fucking twenty-first century already.
Can we all just, for the next two or three months, stop wasting our collective energy on treating public figures like idols and scapegoats and start actively working to dismantle systems of injustice and inequality.
So why in the fuck are we still getting upset about Noelle Stevenson.
I don’t often talk about my experience of being homeless or my experience with police and the prison system. Maybe one day I will, but let it suffice to say that I have an intimate personal understanding of the fact that the issues the BLM movement has been trying to bring to wider attention are serious and affect everyone. The possibility that we, as a society, might be able to effect real change within the next few months is incredible, and I do not give a shit that a cartoonist made a stupid joke that was relatively harmless by itself but inappropriate to the context in which they made it.
It’s not that I don’t think people deserve to be upset about feeling misrepresented or underrepresented in media, and it’s not that I don’t think people have the right to demand that people in positions of relative power do better. I have been upset about this for the past twenty years, and I just recently added my own voice to a small branch of this conversation two weeks ago at a tangible cost to my professional reputation.
But the way individual people are bullied on social media is so fucking petty, and I don’t think it accomplishes anything but tearing down people who are actively trying to do better. I used to follow Noelle Stevenson on Twitter, and all they fucking did was to promote creative people from diverse backgrounds while maybe posting one of their own drawings every few months. They’ve also been very open, in their professionally published collection of autobio comics, about how difficult it’s been to do the right thing and support people in marginalized positions while working for DreamWorks. Again, I’m not saying people don’t deserve to be angry, but Stevenson isn’t coming from a place of aggressive ignorance and bigotry.
Because this is something I’ve studied and published about, I think it’s fair for me to say that the animation industry in the United States is extremely male-dominated, and it’s still much more difficult than you’d think it would be to be openly gay. There’s a ridiculous amount of both atmospheric and directed pushback against BIPOC artists and writers that’s even more striking given the racial and ethnic makeup of Los Angeles and the people who come there looking for work in the creative industry. This is a very real and very serious problem.
But instead of forcing Netflix to think about this, or instead of holding Dreamworks responsible for a majority-white staff, everyone has decided that the best way to use Twitter as a platform is to go after an individual person who is doing their best but made a dumb mistake.
Stevenson responded in what I feel is an appropriate way, by hiring specific people to join their staff as writers and consultants, but they would have responded that way even without their apology having gone viral on Twitter. Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, the media corporations involved haven’t taken similar action or responded to this at all, and the portion of media fandom that went after Stevenson hasn’t done anything to boost the voices of the high-profile activists – like, the entire fucking NBA – who are trying to address these matters at the corporate level.
I just don’t think this sort of scapegoating is an effective exercise of social justice. It’s exhausting, and it’s not helping anyone.
Also, Twitter bears a large portion of the blame for facilitating this sort of mess in the first place. If I could say one thing to young activists and socially engaged creative people, it would be to take care to use the platform while not being used by it. Sharing your voice on Twitter is empowering, but you can’t let Twitter take advantage of your anger to compel you to do meaningless work in order to increase consumer engagement with the app and website.
I’m writing about this because I saw the effects of this sort of discourse on Hillary Clinton, and now I’m starting to see it with Joe Biden. Neither Clinton nor Biden is blameless, and we all deserve better, but that’s just how American politics currently works, unfortunately. These politicians aren’t and shouldn’t be treated as religious icons; they’re imperfect building blocks that we can use to build a more perfect system. When I see the sort of discourse surrounding Stevenson and Biden on social media, and I think about all the shit we’re living with right now as a result of the 2016 elections, I just get so fucking angry.
Like, can we do a Netflix Sign Five BIPOC Showrunners Every Month 2020 Challenge. Can we play a fun Inktober style game where we tweet art and memes directly at our representatives every day for a month to reform the electoral college because it’s the fucking twenty-first century already.
Can we all just, for the next two or three months, stop wasting our collective energy on treating public figures like idols and scapegoats and start actively working to dismantle systems of injustice and inequality.
