Eric recently posted about a new show from CW - go read his post, then mine, because mine is essentially an extended comment/reaction/liveblogging of the trailer (which can be viewed here):
So I'm trying to play the devil's advocate...maybe the folks at CW think they are 'humanizing' the Pakistani Muslim kid?
...
Watching the trailer....*puke* It's going to be bad. It has that feel, like it would have been bad in the 80's (but at least it would have fit in).
Did they really just imply that the most shunned kid in school (who is nevertheless good-looking and smart) is ten times more acceptable and "normal" than a Pakistani Muslim kid by default? They did. Shamelessly.
I am speechless. This kind of shit really fucks with high school students who really struggle in the hell that is the high school social world.
Did they just have a student accuse the protagonist of being gay because he didn't view his sister's breasts as sex objects?
Barf.
At least now I know where the high school students I worked with last spring got all the crap they were spewing at each other.
...because it's totally natural to be freaked out by Muslims and/or Pakistanis.
"If I ordered a coffeemaker and I got a toaster I'd return that." - the mother, as a reference to unexpectedly hosting a Pakistani Muslim exchange student (rather than a tall, Nordic, blond dude).
It's almost too obvious to have to say, but: When you make a joke like that, the reason it's funny is that you just objectified a human being and made them into an object - and then rejected them. When combined with the fact that the person making the joke (except she wasn't joking) is white and the person on the receiving end is a person of color, wow! RACISM!
...One More Time:
The teacher on the first day of class: "For one year, we will be in the presence of a real live Pakistani." The catch is that we're supposed to view the teacher as backwards and ignorant, but the only reason that's in the show is that it validates the ignorance of the viewer. It doesn't really work otherwise - 'Oh, since no one else knows anything about Pakistan or Muslims, it's OK if I remain ignorant.'
Um, no.
The teacher also called Islam 'Muslimism.'
/liveblogging. I couldn't take any more.
This kind of shit leads to Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and a thousand others.
This kind of ignorance leads to fear, which encourages dominance and hierarchy of the "unknown Other," which leads to pain, violence, and death.
It also prevents the development of empathy and compassion, since they are predicated on deep knowledge of other people, and this is predicated on stereotypes and caricatures.
In other words, I'm with Eric: This show needs to be canned (and the creators fired). Now.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Stupid American Racism, Continued
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3 comments:
I couldn't finish it. I got to them playing soccer around the Alpacas, though (as a reader of Hobby Farmer magazine, six Alpacas are too many for a teen to take care of, whatthehell).
Does Raja's accent sound right? I know I'm not great with accents, but it doesn't sound right.
Anyway, this is really gross. Really, really despicable, actually. It lays out why it's so hard for even people that pass, like me and my sister, to reconcile themselves with their family ethnicity.
To me, Raja's accent sounds like it's what someone from America thinks a Pakistani Muslim might sound like.
It also sounds like the characters from The Namesake, but I suspect that's just me not able to tell the difference.
It also reminds me of The Simpsons.
I didn't finish it either. I got too mad. It's interesting how if I had seen this without Eric's setup, I don't think I would have felt as strongly. However, I found that I looked for different things in the preview than I would have without the context.
I appreciate what the CW producers are trying to do. I looked into this show because I grew up in rural Wisconsin as a gay person (therefore feeling like an alien much like the "white kid"'s character apparently is supposed to). I wanted to see how they would portray the region's reaction to difference.
I thought the region I grew up in was very tolerant (reason:no blacks) until Hmong refugees starting moving in. The 1st generation Hmong are culturally very different from rural Wisconsinites. One school district had a huge uproar because of busing for desegregation. The parents wanted the Hmong to stay in a different school.
Also, I remember that there was quite a bit of agitation annually when spearfishing season started (Native Americans could spearfish, before regular fishing season started... lots of angry people throwing things at boats with police barricades, etc.)
But I also remember that we had only two black and one biracial (Japanese mom) student in an otherwise white student body of 1300+ and there was no racism directed against them by other students, as far as I know. This is because we grew up with these kids, so they were as much a part of our shared experience as human playmates/schoolmates as anyone else.
It seems from the trailer that the series is going to go a little too far into the field of "a zany series of misunderstandings". It downplays the utter, unyielding hate some people will have for the Pakistani character just for being who he is (whether it's Muslim, Pakistani, or just "brown"). On the flip side, it also seems to say that only one high school boy will be able to have an open mind and accept the Pakistani initially. Sorry, but rural Wisconsin culture is more varied than that, and there are more open minds, even in high school.
I don't think anything in the trailer "validates" the ignorance of the viewer, though it says it's OK if the viewer is ignorant as long as the viewer is not hateful (the CW wants those ignorant viewers' advertising dollars). In other words, "we can understand that you, the viewer, could think like this teacher does, but look how absurd that is. This behavior is to be lampooned from now on." I don't think the "haters" (apparently the popular boys) will be humanized. If they are, *that* will validate the hate viewers may have for the Pakistani "other".
As an aside, I'm not in a position to be able to judge how accurately the Pakistani character represents his culture or religion. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't do a very good job, because they often don't get gay people right either. But the purpose of the show is not to give Muslims, or people from a geographic part of the world or culture a character to identify with. It's to gently "educate," using the sitcom tradition that dates back to Archie Bunker.
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