Slash: The sound of white men fucking
Jan. 13th, 2004 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhThis is one of those times I wish ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angiej was around more. And I'm actually going to text msscribe about this, because I don't want to be completely all alone out here.
If you couldn't tell from the above, this is about race. Which I have to say, I rarely specifically write about, certainly rarely complain about--it's just there, in the background, like gender or class. I was put in mind by a recent discovery that just furthered my current pet peeve: Keira Knightley.
Let's look, shall we, at the two female leads in Bend It Like Beckham, Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley. Before she did the film, Knightley had done a few small film parts as a child, some television, and one teen movie. Before Nagra did the film, she had mostly worked in television as well. After, Knightley was Lara in Dr. Zhivago, Elizabeth in Pirates, Juliet in Love Actually, Guinevere in King Arthur (this is the bit I just found out) and she has two more films in pre-production, plus the Pirates sequel. And Nagra has done . . . ER, which we all can agree is past its prime, and a part in Ella Enchanted, where I assume she's not a stepsister but I really can't tell.
I was commenting to someone recently that I did think it was important to maintain the ethnicity of the few ethnic characters we DO have in HP when making icons (not that they didn't mean to; it was an honest mistake too complicated to explain here), and I started saying, well, there aren't a lot of icons with ethnic characters since--
--Everyone in The OC is white.
--Everyone in Buffy is white.
--Everyone in Pirates is white.
--Everyone in Lord of the Rings is white.
--Everyone in Smallville is white except Pete who is a pretty lame character anyway.
--Everyone in XMen except Storm is white, and don't remember seeing a lot of Storm icons.
--Everyone in the West Wing is white except that page guy (which is interesting since in the movie The American President the Alison Janney character was black)
--Everyone in Harry Potter is white--well, that people actually make icons of (that would be Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Draco, Sirius, Severus, Remus) .
(Parenthetical #1: Yes, before you say it, I know that only the US book 1 says that Dean is black, but I would argue that JKR thought that by implying he was from West Ham she was implying he was black, something the US reader would likely never pick up. After all, she never says Cho Chang is Asian or the Patils are Indian; she just names them. She never says Lee Jordan is black; she just gives him dreadlocks. So no, I actually do not think she was pandering to Americans by "making" him black.)
(Parenthetical #2: in which I would quote Eb's post about LotR, except it seems to have vanished, which is 100% too bad as she was right.)
Around the time that 8 Mile came out, someone said that they left the movie wanting to write "Dean/Draco" because of the Mekhi Phifer-Eminem relationship, and I remember thinking, well, that's at best reductionist and at worst offensive. Is it just that with slash, being gay is enough without being of color? (God forbid you're a woman, but that is a whole 'nother post.) Is "slash" really only about white men fucking? Is the reason so many would rather see Jack with Will instead of Anamaria only because of the slash, or because Anamaria isn't white? Is it just a reflection of what we are given to be slashed, or is it that subject matter is chosen for certain reasons?
(By the way, I'm only referring to filmed material here, as once you bring in manga/anime the entire thing shifts, and thank bloody hell for that.)
I remember being in that screening of Matrix II (which, let's remember, was multi-ethnic without making a big deal about it, and because of this, gained a very multi-ethnic audience, especially in this theater) and seeing an early preview for The Last Samurai and commenting, "Why do we need the short white man to tell us the ways of the samurai?" And you know, the more that I think about just my gut reaction, never mind how the movie actually played out (because of course in true Hollywood fashion, he "went native" and was better at it after only a few months than people who had been plying their craft for years; "Plays with Sushi" indeed) is that not only do we NOT need the short white man with the large box office draw, but it is offensive that he is there. Did we need him for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Indeed we did not.
So as I look at Ms. Knightley's post-Beckham projects, I think, sure, most of those parts are "canonically" white, as they are from literature of one kind or another, and sure, she marries a black guy in Love Actually, so maybe I shouldn't be quite so angry. But where are the non-western, non-white stories? And if we allow white actors to star in films that are essentially about the experience of people of color--as in The Last Samurai--what possible chance do people of color have to tell their own stories? This is not 1954, it is 2004. Has nothing changed?
Actually, don't answer that.
angiej was around more. And I'm actually going to text msscribe about this, because I don't want to be completely all alone out here.If you couldn't tell from the above, this is about race. Which I have to say, I rarely specifically write about, certainly rarely complain about--it's just there, in the background, like gender or class. I was put in mind by a recent discovery that just furthered my current pet peeve: Keira Knightley.
Let's look, shall we, at the two female leads in Bend It Like Beckham, Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley. Before she did the film, Knightley had done a few small film parts as a child, some television, and one teen movie. Before Nagra did the film, she had mostly worked in television as well. After, Knightley was Lara in Dr. Zhivago, Elizabeth in Pirates, Juliet in Love Actually, Guinevere in King Arthur (this is the bit I just found out) and she has two more films in pre-production, plus the Pirates sequel. And Nagra has done . . . ER, which we all can agree is past its prime, and a part in Ella Enchanted, where I assume she's not a stepsister but I really can't tell.
I was commenting to someone recently that I did think it was important to maintain the ethnicity of the few ethnic characters we DO have in HP when making icons (not that they didn't mean to; it was an honest mistake too complicated to explain here), and I started saying, well, there aren't a lot of icons with ethnic characters since--
--Everyone in The OC is white.
--Everyone in Buffy is white.
--Everyone in Pirates is white.
--Everyone in Lord of the Rings is white.
--Everyone in Smallville is white except Pete who is a pretty lame character anyway.
--Everyone in XMen except Storm is white, and don't remember seeing a lot of Storm icons.
--Everyone in the West Wing is white except that page guy (which is interesting since in the movie The American President the Alison Janney character was black)
--Everyone in Harry Potter is white--well, that people actually make icons of (that would be Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Draco, Sirius, Severus, Remus) .
(Parenthetical #1: Yes, before you say it, I know that only the US book 1 says that Dean is black, but I would argue that JKR thought that by implying he was from West Ham she was implying he was black, something the US reader would likely never pick up. After all, she never says Cho Chang is Asian or the Patils are Indian; she just names them. She never says Lee Jordan is black; she just gives him dreadlocks. So no, I actually do not think she was pandering to Americans by "making" him black.)
(Parenthetical #2: in which I would quote Eb's post about LotR, except it seems to have vanished, which is 100% too bad as she was right.)
Around the time that 8 Mile came out, someone said that they left the movie wanting to write "Dean/Draco" because of the Mekhi Phifer-Eminem relationship, and I remember thinking, well, that's at best reductionist and at worst offensive. Is it just that with slash, being gay is enough without being of color? (God forbid you're a woman, but that is a whole 'nother post.) Is "slash" really only about white men fucking? Is the reason so many would rather see Jack with Will instead of Anamaria only because of the slash, or because Anamaria isn't white? Is it just a reflection of what we are given to be slashed, or is it that subject matter is chosen for certain reasons?
(By the way, I'm only referring to filmed material here, as once you bring in manga/anime the entire thing shifts, and thank bloody hell for that.)
I remember being in that screening of Matrix II (which, let's remember, was multi-ethnic without making a big deal about it, and because of this, gained a very multi-ethnic audience, especially in this theater) and seeing an early preview for The Last Samurai and commenting, "Why do we need the short white man to tell us the ways of the samurai?" And you know, the more that I think about just my gut reaction, never mind how the movie actually played out (because of course in true Hollywood fashion, he "went native" and was better at it after only a few months than people who had been plying their craft for years; "Plays with Sushi" indeed) is that not only do we NOT need the short white man with the large box office draw, but it is offensive that he is there. Did we need him for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Indeed we did not.
So as I look at Ms. Knightley's post-Beckham projects, I think, sure, most of those parts are "canonically" white, as they are from literature of one kind or another, and sure, she marries a black guy in Love Actually, so maybe I shouldn't be quite so angry. But where are the non-western, non-white stories? And if we allow white actors to star in films that are essentially about the experience of people of color--as in The Last Samurai--what possible chance do people of color have to tell their own stories? This is not 1954, it is 2004. Has nothing changed?
Actually, don't answer that.
