Representation is so important. I am so happy Hidden Figures celebrates the story of brave, brilliant African-American women in STEM.
And a soapbox side note: If any of you are still trying to figure out what you want to do with your life and like science and tech, give computer science a try! It’s a myth that you have to be a genius to do it- anyone can code. I will be more than happy to talk to you about it or give you advice (I’ve worked at Google and start-ups).
I’m in a google chat hangout with some other editor/writer types and there’s one guy in there just furiously jacking off to the importance of suffering in narrative and I’m one more “I just think it adds depth to our humanity” away from mailing him that 50 gallon drum of lubricant on amazon because jesus god my dude give it a rest.
This just got linked in the chat, and it’s totally gone over his head. He’s now talking about how comedians are some of the most depressed people ever and that’s why creative people are so depressed because we see humanity for what it is and I swear to god if he was wanking any harder to his own genius he’d be on fire.
I just tried to very patiently tell him that maybe his view was a little skewed toward pessimism and not an actual reflection of reality and he just told me not everything in the real world is safe spaces, sunshine and rainbows and if I’d ever known suffering I’d understand that.
It shouldn’t be possible to feel 5 other people separated by several thousand miles worth of distance pull back from their screens and brace for impact and yet.
”Thank you, for making an assumption about my character based on my refusal to agree with your belief that suffering is the pinnacle of human experience. I’ll be sure to keep your good opinion in mind literally never.
As for “if I’d known suffering” I’m not going to get into a personal pissing contest with you, but I will point out that there are two cancer survivors in this chat, and someone who lost a loved one recently, and would thank you kindly to refrain from further invalidating their concept of pain and strength with every single comment you make. You literally told one of them they hadn’t gone through enough in life to understand your perspective of the world, presumably based on that time a girl said no to you and how it reflected the overall narrative arc of your life wherein no one seems to realize the true genius of your mediocre shallow depths.
And if you think that was rude and I hurt your feelings I’d tell you I’m sorry but if you think about it, I’m really just helping you reach the highest form of human experience according to you. You’re welcome.
I’d also like to thoroughly refute your idea that our capacity for pain is our defining trait as a species, and instead politely argue that the true narrative intent behind exploring suffering is to point out our inherent capacity to survive it. More than that, to recover from it.
War is hell, people commit atrocities and death is inevitable and yet we hope.
Hope is a survival instinct. It is one of the purest, most human things
we will ever experience and it’s fundamentally rooted in our DNA. We
hope the dawn will come, we hope the branch will hold our weight, we hope the tiger will not eat us,
we hope the rain will come and water our crops, we hope tomorrow there
will be work so we might feed our families, we hope, we hope, we hope.
There will always be those who run toward danger, not to face their own morality, but to spare others from theirs. But it’s the people waiting on the other side to offer care and compassion who piece the world back together again.
We take pictures of sunsets and blue skies and make up stories about gold at the end of rainbows and if you don’t think creating art is a means of creating safe spaces with which to experience the full gamut of human experience and emotion through healthy and safe means, then myfriend, we have a lot more to talk about than I currently have the patience for. But I’m willing to try if you are.
Secondly, your portrayal of grief in your narrative is not “the most accurately human” as you put it when C____ suggested it felt a little wooden. Which leads me to believe you really have no idea what the emotion feels like beyond a shallow passing acquaintance with the inconvenience of someone experiencing it. Otherwise you’d know people don’t only cry at funerals, but they also laugh. They tell jokes, they comfort each other through the darkness because that’s what we as a species have always done. We look into the dark never ending night of reality and hear the wolves howling at the mortality of the cosmos and we light fires and tell stories about the coming of the dawn and just generally stick together and hope tomorrow will be better.
And just while I’ve got your begrudging attention: the dark brooding loner hero protagonist you’re so in love with because you believe it in some way represents your superiority above others, is nothing more than the male equivalent of the “I’m not like other girls” trope. Discuss.”
This is important content cuz it touches on one of the more overlooked aspects of the recent altright encroachment: a lot of it is about doing it “for the lulz”. Making traditionally marginalized groups angry or reactive is a form of entertainment for some, and the fact that happens to work towards reclaiming white male supremacy for them is more of a secondary bonus. That’s what makes it so difficult to logically or “correctly” combat it; the most forward face isn’t an ideology or philosophy, so to speak, but rather a form of indulgence. It’s not a grand mission, it’s a game they play.
It continually baffles me that Elementary isn’t mentioned very often on tumblr. It’s like four seasons of televised, well-done Sherlock Holmes fanfiction. Just for starters:
It casts the criminally under-appreciated Lucy Liu as the show’s version of Watson
The show’s creator has been holding the line for four years that Sherlock and Joan will NOT hook up because “it’s too easy,” and the show “doesn’t need it.”
It doesn’t downplay Sherlock’s (canonical) addiction to heroin, and in fact turns his recovery and continued sobriety into an issue he constantly struggles with
Sherlock’s character is well-balanced as a rude, arrogant, anti-social misanthrope who is still capable of being kind and treats those few he considers friends with respect
Likewise, Joan is intensely empathetic and nurturing to people in need, but does not tolerate bullshit (Sherlock’s especially) and is perfectly capable of beating up grown man a hundred pounds heavier than her with a police-baton
Sherlock teaches Joan cane-fighting (a fighting style he had in the books), and is an avid beekeeper (another detail from the books)
Sherlock and Joan share a pet turtle named Clyde. He paints.
The cast orbiting Sherlock and Joan are diverse, three dimensional, and exist as more than cannon fodder for Sherlock to prove his superiority at every turn.
Ms. Hudson is a trans woman (played by a trans actress) that cleans up Sherlock and Joan’s place when she’s not cohabitating with her sugar daddies
The mysteries are pretty cool and creative detective stories
Lucy Liu herself has said that a non-sexual relationship is more “dynamic” and “interesting” to play and considers the lack of romance between them a “sacred” part of the characters
The show is unabashedly practical when it comes to sexuality: Sherlock has arrangements with women that are non-romantic but respectful, and has suggested that Joan is “dissatisfied” with traditional relationships and might be more inclined to an open or even polyamorous relationship
I can’t even ruin it but just…Moriarty is magnificent
Again: a male and a female lead in a deep, significant platonic relationship based on mutual respect.
Because I have such a broad interest in Sherlock Holmes, one
which has encompassed more than half my life so far (not that big of a deal-
I’m twenty seven), I get to see a lot of different comments about a lot of
different adaptations. Some comments are
full of praise, some are very negative, and some are eyebrow raising.
When it comes to Elementary, it won’t surprise a lot of fans
that a lot of the mainstream Holmesians treat it with a derisive sneer. They have lots of different complaints and
opinions that they levy at it, but I think one of my favourites is “They made
Watson into a woman as a gimmick- and not even an original gimmick, since
Watson has been a woman before.”
The critics are absolutely right, of course. Watson has been portrayed as a woman
before. Probably the most well known
women Watsons are Dr. Mildred Watson (played by Joanne Woodward) from They
Might Be Giants and Amy Winslow (played by Debrah Farentino) from 1994
Baker Street: Sherlock Holmes Returns. There are others, of course. Many web series have had women Watsons,
including The Adventures of Jamie Watson (and Sherlock
Holmes); S(her)lock; Herlock; Baker Street; and In Hot Pursuit- which
is only the tip of the iceberg. I’m sure
there are others I’m unfamiliar with.
And then there’s non-English/non-Western women Watsons, such as Jane
Watson (played by Galina Shchepetnova) from Russia’s My Dearly
Beloved Detective and a number of actresses who’ve played Watson in
Korea’s musicals Sherlock Holmes: The Secret of the Anderson
Family and the sequel Sherlock Holmes: Bloody
Games. Watson as a woman is
certainly nothing new, and I’ve barely explored the topic. These are just the ones I can think of off
the top of my head.
The issue here is that people claim that Elementary’s Joan
Watson is a gimmick because she is woman, conveniently ignoring that she is
specifically a non-white woman. And that
is not common- it is in fact incredibly rare, if not unheard of.
I was privileged to have the opportunity to assist
@sanguinarysanguinity with her fanvid, “Something Good (Will Come From That),” which if you haven’t watched yet, you
really need to go look at it now. One of
Sang’s goals was to have as many non-white, non-male Holmes’ or Watsons as
possible, and it was partly my job to find them. While I was lucky and was able to find some
non-Western versions of Holmes and Watson that weren’t white, it was impossible
to find a non-white, non-male Watson in a Western visual medium.
(I am not going to address non-Western versions of Holmes
and Watson. There are two reasons for
this. The first is that it was hard for
me to find adaptations in non-Western media to begin with, simply because I
didn’t have language skills required, although you will note the Korean
musicals above and their women Watsons; the second is because I am specifically
going to be talking about Joan Watson from Elementary going forward, and so I
only want to compare Western medias.)
It is easy to sneer at the idea of a woman Watson if you try
to pretend that she’s unoriginal because there have been other women
Watsons. Except that we fall into the
trap, here, of assuming that white womanhood is universal. It is an easy trap to fall into, and one we
fall into a lot. Look at the way we
white women hail any media that puts women front and center, conveniently
forgetting that most of those so-called feminist films and TV shows only
feature white women. White womanhood isn’t
universal, and white women have far more representation in media than women of
color or non-white women.
Look at that list of women Watsons I put forward above. With the exception of the Korean musicals,
every single one of those women Watson are white. Even in all the web series, which are not
beholden to executive interference or marketing, have only had white women in
the role of Watson. (As an aside, it
should be noted that S(her)lock’s Watson is a transwoman.) While Holmesians have bent enough to
grudgingly accept the idea of a woman Watson, we have not yet accepted on a
larger scale a non-white woman in the role.
Enter Elementary’s Joan Watson. A Chinese-American woman Watson. The first woman of color playing Watson in
mainstream Western media. The only woman
of color playing Watson in mainstream Western media.
This is huge. You
might not think it’s huge, but it is. Plenty
of people have talked about how important representation is in media. Many Asian-American women have talked about
how important Joan Watson is to them.
Many people have talked about how important it is to have an
Asian-American woman in a lead role on a major network, and specifically a role
that everyone in the world has at least name recognition with. Elementary’s Joan Watson is important.
On a microcosmic scale, she’s important for Holmesiana,
too. Once upon a time, it was impossible
to fathom Holmes or Watson as anything other than British white men. People who questioned that status quo were
met with shock- if you look at Ellery Queen’s editorials, he notes that people
greeted Rex Stout’s 1941 speech “Watson Was a Woman” with “Holmesian horror.” Attitudes can shift, however, which is why
there are women Holmes’ and Watsons out there.
Not nearly enough, of course, but they’re out there, and generally
accepted. It is not nearly as surprising
to encounter a (white) woman Holmes or Watson as it used to be.
Which means that Joan Watson has the potential to further
break down the barriers in Holmesiana. Joan
Watson’s very existence normalizes a non-white Watson. For some people, Joan Watson was how they
came to Holmesiana as a whole. Others
will look at Elementary and then look at all Sherlock Holmes media going
forward and ask if they, too, can have non-white characters in the lead. Joan Watson is the first and currently the
only, which makes her exceptional.
I want to say that again: Joan Watson is exceptional,
and Holmesiana as a whole- the old guard in particular- need to back
the fuck off. It doesn’t
matter if you think making Joan Watson a Chinese-American woman is a gimmick. It doesn’t matter if it was a gimmick. What matters is that people
are seeing her, and she wears the Watson name.
It matters that she is a main character on Elementary. It matters that she is smart, capable,
compassionate, strong, an individual. Joan
Watson is exceptional, and it’s about time that Holmesiana sucks it up and
accepts it.
Someday, people will look at Elementary and credit it with shaping
Holmesian adaptations. Think of how the
Gillette play and silent film shaped all Holmesian adaptations after it, or the
Rathbone films’ influence, or how our three present Holmesian adaptations have
an homage to Granada in some way. All of
these adaptations did something specific that influenced everything that came
after. Elementary, and specifically Joan
Watson, has the potential to create a new trajectory, to lay a new path, to
inspire creators who come after.
Joan Watson is important, and she is exceptional, and it’s time we fucking recognize it.
So Minnesotans showed the fuck up tonight (like we do) – thousands in the street protesting tr*mp’s latest executive disorders. And guess what happened? The old proverb “What if an emergency vehicle needs to get where it’s going” came to life, and the sea went silent and parted to allow it through (swiftly…literally the truck was going about as fast as, if not faster than, it would have been if there had been cars it needed to go around).
Please share this. This was a rare occurrence where an emergency vehicle needed to go through the route of a protest, when usually they have predetermined alternative routes, and it went completely fine. Also for the love of god, have more respect for firefighters/EMTs…they know how to do their jobs. They’re ready for anything, including working around protests.
So folks can stop using that tired old argument now (not that it was ever backed up by sources anyway).
Dude, I’ve seen an ambulance move through the middle of the French Quarter down a street of partiers at a snails’ pace, and nobody was horrified but me. Protesters are better than that.
I was at that protest and I take the bus down that street just about every day, and lemme tell you that fire truck was making much better time through the crowd than they would ever have made through traffic. They barely had to slow down.
I have seen an ambulance, siren and lights going, sit in downtown traffic for twenty minutes plus without moving. That’s not even because people were being dicks, it was just because every street is a one-way, there’s cars parked on one side and buses stopped on the other, and snow piles up on the edges and makes it hard to pull out of the way.
Protesters were out last night trying to help people. We wanted to protect them and make them safe. Not only do we know better than to block an emergency vehicle that needs to get through, blocking it would be the antithesis of everything we were trying to do.
Steel Phoenix Studios 