George Zimmerman was today acquitted of all charges relating to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Did the jury make the right decision? Yes and no.
(Update: it's been revealed that one of the six jurors believed Zimmerman guilty of second-degree murder and two thought him guilty of manslaughter. For what it's worth, I think manslaughter would have been the correct verdict... but I don't live in Florida.)
With the information presented to them, within the context of the legal system of Florida, and the US more broadly, perhaps they made the only decision they could make. That is not the same, however, as justice being served. Zimmerman appears to have acted in a way that is fully in accordance with Florida law. So the real question is: What the hell is wrong with a state, or a country, that deems this to be legal?
While the exact details are disputed, here's what most of us can agree on in the case:
Zimmerman sees Martin walking through his neighbourhood, and believing his behaviour to be suspicious, follows him. Zimmerman is armed. Martin becomes aware he is being followed, quite understandably freaks out, and probably attacks him. Zimmerman shoots Martin as he feels (justifiably or otherwise) that his life is being threatened.
Of course, the same logic could be used to apply to Martin; if he attacked Zimmerman, it was because he felt threatened, as a teen, by an older man following him down the street. In other words, we have two people defending themselves against each other. I don't know if that is an actual thing.
Guilty or not, this incident could not happen without two highly problematic pre-existing conditions: the assumption that a young black man is by definition suspicious and threatening, and the right for a person to bear a deadly weapon and use it whenever they feel threatened.
It has been pushed by certain sections of conservative America that Trayvon Martin was indeed a dangerous thug, who probably was looking to rob a house in that neighbourhood, and whose attack on Zimmerman was in line with his thuggish personality. These are things we cannot know.
Likewise, some on the left have pushed the idea that Zimmerman had a racist grudge against black people. Again, I don't think that's something we can really know.
But let's ask this question: if a white male teenager was walking through that neighbourhood, stopping occasionally to look at houses, would Zimmerman have deemed it sufficiently threatening to "tool up" and pursue him?
That's debatable of course. But the big question for me is this:
If Zimmerman was not armed, or does not live in a nation under the sway of the gun lobby, does he even confront Trayvon Martin at all?
I say no. The gun George Zimmerman carried played a larger role that merely defending its holder. It defines the whole episode.
The gun gives the courage to play big-game hunter, and stalk the young man who he deemed to be threatening. The gun means that Zimmerman is more brazen about his pursuit than he would have otherwise been; he is indiscreet enough for Martin to spot him and confront him. And the gun means that when Martin confronts or attacks Zimmerman, Zimmerman does not feel the need to defuse the situation, or turn and flee.
Unfortunately, both lived in a place that gives legal justification for vigilantism, in a way that other Western nations do not. In any other Western country, someone worried that there is potentially dangerous teenager - so scary as to put you in fear of your life - roaming through the neighbourhood does not go confront that teenager, alone.
George Zimmerman instigated a situation which he had no business being in, then resorting to deadly force as soon as the situation looked bad for him.
Florida allows this kind of thing. Below is Florida's self-defence statute (emphasis mine):
A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
No duty to retreat. That passage makes it different from most other self-defence statutes around the world, which tend to treat violence as a last resort, to be used only after all other reasonable options have been exhausted or impossible.
Just say I'm in Florida, I'm armed, and I have the confidence that comes with carrying a gun, knowing that I can pull it out if I ever feel threatened. Where is the disincentive for me to avoid conflict with anyone I could potentially have a disagreement or altercation with?
This is an extremely dangerous legal precedent, especially now that this case has acquired so much publicity.
If you don't think there's something sick about the US justice system, have a look at these recent cases:
The remake of The Lone Ranger is out, and this picture tells you all you need to know about why I'm not going to see it, and why you shouldn't either.
I have nothing against Johnny Depp. He's a fine actor. However, Tonto is specifically a Native American character, and Johnny Depp is not Native American.
If this were a movie made in the 1950s, you could look back today and say, "Yeah, that's kinda racist and stupid, but that's just what it was like back then, just like how they got John Wayne to play Genghis Khan and so on." But this is a movie coming out in 2013. I cannot believe that no one involved in the making of this movie did not see the huge problem with this.
"Oh, but he's part Native American," I hear you say.
Listen, the dude is maybe 1/16 Native American or something. Maybe. He thinks his great-grandmother was Cherokee. I'm not an expert on what qualifies someone as Native American, but fuck it, I'm drawing a line - Johnny Depp is not Native American.
Now, hypothetically if Native Americans were some sort of extinct race of people like the Neanderthals and thus we had no Native American actors alive capable of representing what a Native American looks like, then I'd say fine, why not, let Johnny Depp play a Native American, 1/16 is about enough.
But there are a lot of Native Americans still out there, and some of them are actually actors trying to make it in the business. In that context, no, he's not sufficiently Native American.
Yes, there are Native American actors out there. None of them are big names on par with Johnny Depp. But then again, when they can't even get roles playing Native Americans, how are they meant to become big names?
There were a whole bunch of dudes in Twilight who would make a decent Tonto. I'm not talking Taylor Lautner, because his Native-ness is about as dubious as Johnny Depp's, but sheeeeet, he at least kinda looks the part so I'd even take him and his washboard abs at this point.
There's also Benjamin Bratt (Law and Order, Miss Congeniality), who's part-Peruvian rather than Native North American, but that's still a whole lot better than Johnny Depp. Plus he's kinda hot.
"But the film needs a big star," I hear you say, "and there's no Native American actor who is a big star comparable to Johnny Depp."
Hold up, the titular role in the movie is being played by Armie Hammer. Who the fuck is that? I had to google him, and it turns out that he's been in one movie that anyone's ever heard of (The Social Network). No disrespect to him, I'm sure he's a good actor. But let's keep it real here: no one, apart from those within Hammer's circle of family and friends, is going to be all, "Oh snap, we gotta go see The Lone Ranger, because Armie Hammer is in it!"
So think on this: the producers of this movie would be happy to give a huge break to a relatively little-known actor in the title role of The Lone Ranger, yet were not willing to give a similar break to a Native American actor in the other lead role.
You want a big star? Cast Brad fucking Pitt or someone like that as the The Lone Ranger, and give a Native American actor who people haven't really heard of a breakthrough role.
"But Johnny Depp is a great actor," I hear you say, "so shouldn't it be about who can give the best performance, rather than race?"
In that case, imagine if they gave the role of Abraham Lincoln in the movie Lincoln to Chow Yun Fatt, or Morgan Freeman, rather than Daniel Day-Lewis. Sure, that would be ridiculous, but those are two pretty fucking awesome actors right there, and that's all that counts, right? Right? But everyone just accepts that only a white guy is going to play Lincoln. And I totally agree with that, not just because Lincoln obviously was a white guy, but the whole narrative would not make sense if he was played by someone who wasn't white. Even if they pretended to be white by use of makeup and traditional white clothing.
In racial terms, there are two types of roles in film: ones where the race doesn't matter, and ones where race does matter. You could take the movie Flight and replace Denzel Washington with Tom Hanks, and it wouldn't really make any difference. But you couldn't get Tom Hanks to play the lead role in Malcolm X. (Though let's be honest, I'm sure someone in Hollywood would try.)
The role of Tonto is pretty much defined by him being Native American. Casting a white guy - even a slightly exotic-looking white guy with distant Native ancestry, maybe - is downright insulting.
There are very few roles available to Native American actors in the movie business as it is. No one is asking that any such actors be elevated to Will Smith-status if they don't deserve it. But in the one blockbuster flick in pretty much forever to feature a Native American lead character, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski had the opportunity to do something that wasn't even boundary-pushing, just logical... and they fucked it. With a stick. So fuck them.
So that's why you should not go and see this piece of shit movie. That, and the fact that it's got a 22% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
By the way, if you think the questions in this argument are ones that I just imagined, go read the comments here.
With the huge (and largely Piratebay-assisted) following that the HBO series Game of Thrones has gathered, has come increasing critique across the interwebz about its problems of representation. Namely, that it is racist, misogynist, and I've heard homophobic thrown out there as well. How justified are these criticisms?
The first distinction that has to be made is between the TV show, Game of Thrones, and the book series by George RR Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire, on which it is based. 5 books have been released, there are allegedly 2 more left to come, and the TV series has ended its 3rd season somewhere in the middle of the third book. I should state that I'm an avid fan of both show and book, so perhaps I take a biased view of these things, but so be it.
It's perhaps a cop-out for book fans like myself to respond to any criticism of the series by smugly stating, "You need to read the book, then you would understand". But it's simply a reality that show-only viewers have a more superficial understanding of what's going on in the GoT world than book readers, and it's common to read critiques from people whose interpretations are at odds with what is actually suggested by GRRM's writing. Many of those criticising the show are doing so from a somewhat limited perspective. They don't have access to characters' internal points of view as written by Martin, and they don't have access to the two and a half books worth of details that the show has not covered yet. Which is an important factor given that scenes and story lines can be interpreted in different ways.
But at the same time, the show needs to stand on its own merits as an artistic creation, not as merely a supplement to the books. So it is entirely valid to critique how certain issues are portrayed on the show without ever reading any of the books; when talking about certain kinds of people are represented, how it comes across is as important as how it might be intended to come across.
GENDER
Many of the feminist criticisms of the story return to the theme that by portraying a fantasy world that is so rife with sexual violence and other forms of misogyny, ASOIAF and/or GoT is therefore misogynist itself. As one article puts it,
I also recognize that there’s a difference between displaying sexism because it’s the time period and condoning said sexism. But this IS a fantasy, not history, meaning the writers can imagine any world they wish to create. So why imagine a misogynistic one?
Well, yes, 14th century Europe wasn’t a lot of fun if you were a woman, but nor did it have, for example, dragons, or magical shape-changing witchy-woo assassins. Westeros does, because Westeros is a fantasy world. If the creator of a fantasy series can dream up an army of self-resurrecting zombie immortals he can damn well dream up equal marriage rights, and if he chooses not to do so then that choice is meaningful
The world Martin evokes in his books is a brutal one, in which the poor, weak and powerless are constantly vulnerable to the predations of those whose power comes from noble birth, or physical strength, or strength of numbers. It is these dynamics which drive the whole narrative. So in such a milieu, would "equal marriage rights" and 21st century progressive liberal values really be a good fit?
It is quite shocking to see Khal Drogo force himself on a sobbing teenage Daenerys after their wedding; many would find it just as shocking that they later fall in love. How could any woman ever fall in love with a man who rapes her? Yet, we are applying 21st century values here; in a great many cultures, women were considered chattel and had little power to make choices about how they exercised their sexuality. Still today in many parts of the world, women and children are married off against their will, and thus the concept of sexual consent as we know it goes out the window. Yet despite that, many such couples probably do come to love each other, even if it could be considered a kind of Stockholm Syndrome. Of course, if what happened to Daenerys happened today in our society it would be an outrage and a crime, yet for much of human history it was just business as usual. (I should mention that in the books, their first sexual encounter is a bit more consensual, although it still wouldn't really pass muster in a contemporary court of law.)
The threat of rape frequently hangs over the heads of many of the other female characters too, while even those women in positions of relative power are merely treated as pawns, to be married off against their will to cement alliances. Sounds rough. But it's also one of the more accurate depictions of the the lot of women in medieval life that you will ever read in the fantasy genre. In any society engaged in war or civil war of the old-school sort (see the Balkan conflict, or civil struggles in Sudan, Liberia or Congo), women are raped in great numbers. Likewise with any society without strong rules of law. Women walking around dressed however they like and remaining mostly unmolested is something that is just not possible in most parts of the world. And even in the most advanced and ordered nations in the world, women still curtail some aspects of their behaviour because of the threat of sexual violence. So while some claim that GoT seems to celebrate sexual violence, I would argue that it's just being realistic about what goes on in lawless and war-torn places.
Yes, it's different to most other series and movies that you will see, which is why I think a lot of people find it so shocking. But that's because most other dramas and fantasies take place either in modern states, or stick to the more well-known cliches of medieval fantasy - noble knights of valour and so on. The Lord of the Rings had a dichotomy between good humans, elves and dwarves, and evil orcs and goblins, but Martin's world has only humans (mostly). Yes, there are dragons and magic in his world, but compared to most medieval fantasies, those elements are very much in the background, at least at the start of the story. It's far closer to its HBO siblings The Sopranos or The Wire than it is to Merlin; it's a story about people and how they are shaped by power, violence, loyalty and self-interest. While some characters are clearly "good" and some clearly "evil", many don't adhere cleanly to either category. To quote Jorah Mormont in A Storm of Swords (book 3), “There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs.” Protagonists inflicting violence upon each other is a staple of the genre, but few fantasy works offer an exploration of the violence inherent in human nature the way Martin does.
Feminists have been trying to tell us for years, quite rightly, about how oppressive and ever-present the spectre of male power and violence is towards women. I actually think Martin should be commended for reflecting this in his books, despite some feminists seeing the books or show as misogynist. To his credit, he creates numerous compelling female characters, some of whom struggle within the roles they are born into (Cersei, Catelyn, Sansa, Daenerys), and some who break out of the bonds society places on them (Brienne, Arya, Daenerys again). Around half the major (POV) characters are female, which is noteworthy in a genre that tends to be male-dominated. And as these are women and girls in a world beset by war and turmoil, it would be unrealistic to avoid mentioning the threat of sexual violence.
Portraying a misogynist world entails depicting misogyny, but that does not equate to an endorsement of that perspective. And I fully get that for some people, that's just not going to make for pleasant viewing or reading, and thus I can't blame anyone if they decide it's not for them. As a male, perhaps my assessment of the existence of sexism is only worth so much; but I am yet to be convinced that anything in Martin's writing indicates or promotes an unhealthy view of women.
The show, however, is a different beast. The amount of nudity and sex on display is in my view excessive. I've had this argument with some other book-readers who say it is in keeping with the sort of world Martin has created, but I think they've pushed it too far. Martin's books are certainly not lacking for sexual content and bawdy language, but the writers of the TV show have seriously amped it up, perhaps in order to attract the lucrative "horny male" demographic. Which is why the SNL sketch poking fun at the nudity in the show is particularly hilarious.
I don't have a problem with sex and nudity when it's in context. But when the writers invent entirely new scenes (the ridiculous scene with Gendry and Melisandre sticks out for me), or modify scenes from the book, seemingly just to find an excuse to fit some exposed breasts into the shot, it's like they are channelling the teen sex comedies of the 80s.
Given the rich source material the show's creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have to work with, I think their penchant for portraying naked women is one of the drawbacks of what is otherwise a very good series; it's not like they need to use boobs and bums as a way to distract from a non-existent plot. As mentioned before, I don't have a problem with the show's portrayal of rape as a common phenomenon; but when this intersects with frequent rather pointless nudity, I can see why some people think it is eroticising sexual violence. The story lays bare the ugliness of patriarchy, but the visuals scream "Look! Check out the naked ladies!" Trying to have it both ways doesn't work.
RACE
The GoT world centres on the continent of Westeros, which is based on western and northern Europe, particularly Britain. But the story arc of Daenerys Targaryen, a princess exiled in the Eastern continent of Essos, raises some issues about how the show represents non-white people. Essos is something like the Eurasian landmass; the Free Cities of its western coast seem reminiscent of Greece, while the Southern coast (Qarth and Slaver's Bay) is similar to the Middle East in many ways. The Dothraki, whose warlord Drogo is gifted Daenerys as a wife, are clearly based on Central Asian pastoral peoples - the Huns, Turks and Mongols.
Dany's story arc has a smell of four ugly racial tropes that are very common in popular culture.
1. Coloured people always viewed through white eyes: The story or storyline that is set in a non-white culture, yet it has to be told through the eyes of a white person, since the audience presumably can't relate to something that is only about non-whites. Examples are Cry Freedom (about the white friend of South African activist Steve Biko) or The Last King of Scotland (about Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, yet the lead character is a fictional white doctor).
2. Barbarians and proud warrior races: The non-whites are defined as "barbaric" or "primitive", rather than regular people with a range of normal motivations and feelings (this is in too many movies to count), and often belong to a "warrior race" which prizes strength and fighting prowess as the only way to earn honour and respect. See the Klingons in Star Trek (who tend to be played by black actors) and the title aliens of the Predator movies. Even within that series there are humans from warrior races too; Predator and Predators respectively have a Native American guy and a Japanese guy who stop fleeing and stay back to take on the aliens in single combat with a bladed weapon. (Of course they die, but at least they were "honourable".)
3. Mighty whitey: Taking the white-centric story even further... the white person finds themselves amongst a strange exotic culture, yet learns their ways and eventually manages to become respected by them, often becoming their leader or most awesome warrior. Examples include The Last of the Mohicans, The Phantom, Avatar, Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, and Tarzan.
4. White man's burden, or white saviour: In which white people, out of the goodness of their hearts, save non-white people from the terrible situation which they couldn't have got out of themselves. Examples are The Help, The Blindside, Gran Torino, Dangerous Minds, and the sitcom Different Strokes.
While you could argue that all tropes are at play here, I think it's also a little more complicated than that. To address those point by point:
1. Coloured people always viewed through white eyes: Danaerys is Westerosi, but has grown up around the Free Cities, and then her journey takes her further east into cultures she has never experienced before. All the cultures are presented as strange and exotic, and we never really get any insights on the inner life of these people, despite spending a lot of time around them. The focus is all about the white princess. They are permanently "Othered". Except that the series is not really about them. Like it or not, the story is primarily about Westeros, and the people of Essos are very much a peripheral feature. This makes it different to Cry Freedom or The Last King of Scotland, which are films about black people, but told from a white viewpoint for no apparent reason. The way Martin structures his narrative - each chapter presented from the point of view of one of the main characters - means that any other culture will seem strange, exotic and perhaps barbaric. The show to an extent has to reflect that. Daenerys is a young woman sold off against her will into a culture she knows nothing about that is very different from her own. To portray the Dothraki, Qartheen or the Ghiscari as being "just like regular folks" would not make sense in this context. In contrast to the Westerosi who speak the Common Tongue (aka English), most people on the show from Essos speak imaginary languages (Valyrian, Dothraki, Ghiscari), which again clearly defines them as different not only from the Westorosi characters, but from us, the viewers. But this is unavoidable, really, unless you want everyone in the show to speak made-up languages, which is just not feasible.
2. Barbarians and proud warrior races: The Dothraki are horse nomads who seem primarily occupied with fighting each other and plundering the settlements on the edges of their plain. They are referred to everyone else as barbarians and savages, and many of their customs celebrate violence and seem primitive by most standards. They like having sex beneath the open sky, only like doing it doggy-style, are quite frank about raping as one of the spoils of war, and consider it good entertainment when deadly brawls erupt at weddings.
Let's not forget: the people who are the obvious inspiration for the Dothraki (Huns, Turks, Mongols) made their mark on history through conquest. These are warrior cultures. Of course they weren't entirely that; throughout most of history, Central Asian nomads probably spent their time with rather un-warlike pursuits such as taking their livestock to graze, and making fermented horse milk beverages. But these weren't what led to them conquering everything from China to Baghdad and Hungary. The nomads were brilliant at the art of war, and also employed tactics that were considered utterly foreign and frequently dishonourable by the "civilized" nations they fought against, and were renowned for their cruelty and terror. And unlike Europe of the time, the nomads lacked the stratification between warrior, peasant and artisan classes; most able-bodied men became soldiers in times of conflict, and thus the warrior ethos was more prevalent throughout their culture. It's also come to light recently that 1 in 200 men in the world have some genetic link to Genghis Khan and his family; let's assume this is more likely to have come through rape than Genghis being some kind of Casanova.
Martin does exaggerate these "savage" elements, to be sure, and the show does so even more - the line "There is no word for thank you in Dothraki" takes this too far as far as I'm concerned. But should a fictional people based on some of the most feared and ruthless armies in history be treated as more well-rounded? I'm not sure, considering that they do not actually play a large role in the story. If not for their fierce war-making ways, they would have no place in the story at all since Daenerys' brother would have no need to offer her to them in exchange for an army. And at the end of the day GoT is not really about the Dothraki. If you want GoT to be about non-white people, of course you will be disappointed, but it doesn't claim to be that. Instead, go watch something like Sergei Bodrov's (admittedly impressive) 2007 movie Mongol, which portrays Genghis Khan as a great fighter, leader and romantic with no nasty side whatsoever. Martin writes from his own area of expertise - medieval Western Europe - and those outside that milieu are have only fringe roles to play. I think wanting to see a bigger and better-explored non-white presence in this story is a bit like wanting to see equal marriage rights and gender equality; that's just not what this world is meant to be about. It's like criticising The Sopranos because it didn't have any main characters who were Chinese. If you want to read that story, then maybe you need to go and write that story yourself.
Their portrayal as "savages" also depends on who they are being compared to. As mentioned previously, Westerosi society is portrayed as incredibly oppressive and cruel. To be sure, it professes nobler values, much as the West does today. Rape is regarded as a heinous crime... yet unguarded women are never safe. Slavery is considered an abomination... yet most of the nobility treat peasants like property anyway. The character of Sansa Stark seems to represent the readers' belief in the traditional fairytale fantasy notions of chivalry, charming princes and noble knights, until she is dealt a hefty dose of reality. Westeros has its own white "barbarians" too... the Iron Islanders, loosely based on the Vikings, do take slaves, and define their existence through their love of rape and pillage. They are actually worse than the Dothraki, since cities in Essos can mostly avoid Dothraki attacks by paying them in gold and slaves; the Ironborn's whole culture revolves around killing. And let's not forget that in the same episode which introduces the Dothraki, we see Dany groped by her brother, and Jaimie Lannister push a child out of a window after being caught in the act of boning his sister. If the most shocking thing you get from that episode is how "primitive" the brown people look, maybe you are paying attention to the wrong things.
Also regarding the Dothraki; I've read some criticism that rather than being portrayed as a homogeneous population, they seem to be played by "miscellaneous brown people", which might encourage the view that all non-whites are basically the same? For example, while the book-Dothraki are described as having copper-coloured skin and almond-shaped eyes, Jason Momoa who plays Khal Drogo is Hawaiian, while the rest of the Dothraki look mostly like they are from the Middle East, while there are even a few people who are clearly of African origin in there as well.
What struck me initially as a lazy misstep is actually quite plausible on reflection. The Dothraki population absorbs a lot of slaves acquired from cities on the fringes of their domain, and many of those cities themselves acquire slaves from other regions. Even the Central Asian populations on whom the Dothraki are based were far from homogeneous. Given that the nomad way of life spanned such a huge swathe of the Eurasian continent, and was by definition likely to spread into new territories, the empires that arose incorporated a mix of East Asian, European and Southwest Asian phenotypes. A look at the people in modern Afghanistan or Xinjiang reveals this diversity. So while I don't know if it was by design or laziness, the casting of Dothraki as "miscellaneous brown people" is not as odd as it might initially seem. In any case, Jason Momoa as Drogo looks exactly as a Dothraki should, to my mind.
3. Mighty whitey: In some ways, Daenerys does fit this trope; as she travels through the foreign cultures of Essos, she acquires an army of non-white followers who revere her as the Mother of Dragons. But unlike Avatar or Dances with Wolves, she never really becomes accepted into any of the cultures she interacts with. She becomes khaleesi of the Dothraki, yet is abandoned and threatened with death after her husband dies. Indeed, everyone who doesn't become one of her followers seems out to kill her for the destruction she wreaks everywhere. Those who do follow her are mostly outcasts and freed slaves who don't have a lot of better options.
4. White man's burden, or white saviour: The final scene of season 3 did come off as clumsy - the lily-white Daenerys being hoisted above an adoring crowd of swarthy freed slaves. Real white saviour stuff; saving all those brown people from the other brown people, it was the sort of thing Americans who advocated invading Iraq and Afghanistan would be proud of. To me it was a major misstep, but again it brings us to a difference between show and book.
The books make clear that the slaves in Yunkai are drawn from all over the world, and are white, black and brown skinned (inspired by the slave trade of ancient Rome and the Middle East, which took slaves from anywhere they could). It doesn't look that way in the show. Logistically, one can understand why; most scenes in Essos are filmed in Morocco, thus the extras would be expected to have a fairly North African look. But even then, they seemed darker than I'd expect from Morocco, and it can't have been too hard for the directors to round up some white folks from the crew to diversify the crowd if they'd wanted to. At to that the drab brown clothing of the slaves, contrasting with Dany's pale skin and hair and blue outfit, it just doesn't look good.
Which makes me wonder if it was deliberate move by the producers, because for them to see that scene and not see what's wrong with it either means they are oddly deluded or they want it to be that way. Anyone who has been following the show knows that George RR Martin likes to subvert the traditional cliches of fantasy fiction, often setting up premises only to knock them down. The first season sets up a typical righteous hero, Eddard Stark, as the main character, until he is beheaded; a huge shock to the audience who presumed he would escape. Logically, we expect his son Robb to seek vengeance, which seems inevitable... until he meets a shocking end at the Red Wedding. So is it another case of the show's writers setting up a cliched premise (the white saviour) that we've all seen before, only to knock it down? *Mild spoiler alert* For those who haven't read the books, things don't all go to planned after Dany liberates the slaves of Slaver's Bay. In fact, the Iraq and Afghanistan analogies are not far off. In many ways, it's an argument against well-meaning foreigners meddling in a country's affairs.
Another key point for me is that the "white man's burden" trope also relies on the white saviour being "good". No doubt Daenerys is one of the most popular characters, and she is seen by many followers as having the qualities of a just ruler that have been so lacking in Westeros. But is she a morally "good" character? Certainly, she tries to stop the Dothraki warriors from raping women, and becomes embroiled in the politics of Slaver's Bay due to her compassion for the masses of slaves. But at the same time, the trail of death and destruction she leaves behind is comparable to the legacy of Tywin Lannister (who is definitely not a "good" guy). Mirri Maz Duur understands the potential cost of Dany's ascendancy, and takes steps to prevent it; Dany burns her alive, proof that she can treat those who cross her with a ruthlessness that would do Tywin proud. And all this in order to satisfy her massive sense of entitlement (she constantly reminds everyone how she is blood of the dragon, and demands they respect her), in regaining the throne her father lost because he was an insane murderous tyrant. She no longer has any right to the throne (she's never even been to Westeros), if you consider that the Targaryens once took power by force and eventually had it taken from them by force. I think readers and viewers are smart enough to see that despite Daenerys' beauty and awesome girl-power appeal, she's someone who is motivated primarily by self-interest.
But whatever the intention, the show certainly peddles an image which is at very least racially uncomfortable, and not truly in keeping with what is suggested in the books. Reading them, I didn't get the feeling that there was some stark ethnic difference between Daenerys and the people she encounters in Essos. But fiction is like an ink-blot test in many ways; how we read it often says something about our own perspectives.
The deeply cynical view of human nature espoused by Game of Thrones is a hard one for a lot of people to handle, especially those who are used to more traditional fantasy. Humankind's capacity for cruelty in the quest to attain power is the central theme of the story, even if it may play out in different ways in different cultures or have varying degrees of openness. The raider-cultures (Ironborn and Dothraki) are fairly open about their penchant for sexual violence and slave-taking, while the urban/agricultural societies claim a higher set of values yet do not keep to them. To me, it's reminiscent of how we define the difference between our "Western" values and everyone else's. Our values are, at least in theory, more progressive and modern than we believe most of the world's to be, in the same way that the Islamic world, for example, sees its values as morally superior to the decadent West. But is either belief system any more than a thin veneer that masks all people's capacity for both nobility and brutality?
("Learn some manners.... stick that up your mother's c**t." Oh the irony.)
And this one a month ago...
A lot of people will use these sorts of clips as proof of what a racist country Australia is. But I think it's important to view these things in context. Drunk or mentally unstable underclass types on buses are not really representative of mainstream Australia. Of course, that doesn't make it any easier to bear if you subjected to this kind of aggressive racist tirade. Is it fair to draw links between this sort of behaviour and broader systemic examples of racism? To an extent. But it's a complicated picture.
What bugs me in these videos is the relative lack of bystander intervention. It's understandable to a certain extent that a lot of people don't want to draw the ire of someone who is in an aggressive mood and thus potentially dangerous. But it's the silence that these types of people interpret as agreement. It's notable that the first action taken by the driver in the first video is not to warn the woman who is spewing invective, but to ask the target of her rage to sit down. I'm not sure how they operate on Sydney buses, but I've never known standing up on a bus to be a significant societal transgression. Unless perhaps you are the wrong ethnicity.
European football's governing body seems to be taking a hard line on racism in the game. A good idea? Of course... you'd think. But I'm not sure UEFA has their priorities sorted. From Football365:
Players who are found guilty of racist offences will be banned for a minimum of 10 matches under new UEFA proposals. The Football Association is to be urged to follow this lead and bring in a minimum suspension for any player found guilty of racism. UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino confirmed the European body is to double its sanction from next season and that all national associations are to be asked to follow suit. In the two high-profile cases of racist abuse by players in England, John Terry was banned for four matches and Luis Suarez for eight games and Infantino confirmed that UEFA now believed those sanctions were not tough enough. Speaking at the Soccerex conference in Manchester, Infantino told reporters: "We are saying that it should be 10 matches - it has been five matches and we will double it. "We will also submit to the whole of UEFA's member associations asking that all our members employ the same measures as well at national level. "The fight against racism is something that's very serious and we have to make sure that there is correct action and not just words." The UEFA chief also said there would be partial closure of stadiums for a first incident of racist abuse by fans and a full closure for a second offence. The UEFA sanctions will affect all matches in European competition from the start of next season. Infantino added: "We have to have sanctions and they must have a deterrent effect and what we are proposing is if a player or official is convicted of racism they should receive a 10-match suspension at least. "If supporters at a club are found guilty of racist abuse the first sanction will be a partial closure of the part of the stadium from which the racist abuse took place. "For a second offence there will be the full closure and a minimum fine of 50,000 euros."
Now, I think the deterrent measures for crowd racism are a fantastic idea. The biggest racism-related issue in European football is crowd behaviour, particularly in Eastern Europe, and finally UEFA seem to want to tackle this. But this has been such an obvious issue for a long time, and precious little has been done about it, I'm sceptical about how well the new regulations will be implemented. It's easy to do nothing about it; the powers-that-be at clubs are experts at not noticing racist crowd behaviour unless it is directed at their own players, and it's a lot to ask referees to keep an eye on it during the game. And what constitutes a severe enough racist incident to incur punishment for the club itself? Perhaps a sole hooligan throwing bananas at black players does not warrant closing the stadium, but what about a section of the crowd making monkey gestures? The officials will have the difficult task of determining at what point racist behaviour goes beyond the realm of individual punishments and warrants collective punishment. Under these circumstances, there may well be an incentive to underplay the extent of it. Then there is also the task of interpreting what exactly constitutes racism, which brings me to the next point.
The proposed heavy ban against players for racism might sound good in theory. But the two examples of racism from the English Premier League recently show how problematic this can be. Both Luis Suarez and John Terry were shown to have used racially-charged language towards black players, but the contexts of each incident have enough ambiguity to make their guilty verdicts quite controversial, and show that a blanket punishment is not really the right path to take.
Chelsea captain Terry was shown to have called QPR's Anton Ferdinand a "f***ing black c**t", during trash-talk between the two during a game. Seems straightforward? Terry's account of the incident went something like this... (these are not the exact words, I'm just summarising) Terry: [something unclear] Ferdinand: "What, did you just call me a f***ing black c**t?" Terry: "Say what? Are you saying I called you a f***ing black c**t? No I didn't say that."
I actively dislike Terry as a player and a man, but I'm not sure he was really guilty here.
Liverpool's Luis Suarez is another player a lot of people hate (due to propensity for underhanded tactics), but again, I'm not sure he is really deserving of the punishment he received. His racist comment was made during a heated exchange with Manchester United's Patrice Evra, a French player of Senegalese descent. Suarez is Uruguayan. So bear in mind that both players are conversing in English, which is not their native language. Suarez allegedly called Evra "negrito", meaning "little black person" in Spanish, but this term is not regarded to be especially offensive in South America. To throw another element into the mix, Suarez himself has a black grandparent himself. While Evra's and Suarez's stories do differ slightly, it seems very possible that Evra construed "negrito" as the rather more offensive "nigger".
Again, enough ambiguity to make Suarez's 8-game ban problematic, in my opinion. Words cannot be defined as racist simply on their own; their context determines how offensive they actually are. Which is why mandatory set punishments are a bad idea.
This is in Twin Waters in Queensland, right near where I just moved to. No doubt it will cause great consternation to the zero Muslims who actually live there. Unless of course it is out of concern that the Muslims will hurt themselves by jumping and diving.
My latest post for Peril Magazine questions whether racist abuse and aggression is strictly a lower-class phenomenon in this country.
It is common, and not illegitimate, to look at racist incidents as part of a broader spectrum of attitudes towards race and culture in Australia. So you could, for example, find commonalities between an aggressive incident on a bus, and our history of dispossessing Aboriginal people, and our previously discriminatory immigration policies, and the current consternation over asylum seekers. But by the same token, incidents of racist aggression can also be viewed as part of a broader spectrum of anti-social behaviour, be it drug-related crimes, drunken brawls, and other kinds of domestic or street violence. And while there will always be plenty of exceptions, these occurrences are far more likely to be perpetrated by people from a certain strata of society. The reasons primarily stem from living or growing up in an environment with lack of opportunities and role models for success.
This has got a lot of buzz in my networks. From Slate's "Dear Prudence" column:
My wife, who is infertile, and I have recently decided to have children—we’d like eventually to have three—using an egg donor. (We decided against adoption because we would have no biological connection to our children.) We have just settled on this option but it has thrown open a whole new dilemma for me. I am white and my wife is East Asian. Her race isn't a problem for me and I would have had no difficulty raising mixed race children, but frankly, now that I have the choice, I’d prefer my kids to be white. We live in a fairly homogeneously white area and at the end of the day I want my kids to look like me, their cousins, and the kids they'll go to school with. I don't think my wife has ever experienced racism, but I think she might understand my point of view. Then I think I maybe I’m just convincing myself about this. I really could use a second opinion before I broach the subject with her.
—Want To Be a Dad
You can read Prudence's response to this dude at the link above.
Now, if the wife is fine with this, then whatever, although that raise issues of its own about her. There's a lot of stuff that people are free to do in this world, but in doing so it reveals them as being messed up in the head. You gotta question the guy's thought process about this. It's so important for his child to look like him - which it will - but he doesn't consider that his wife might want the child to look somewhat like her. With a white child, it will be obvious throughout her life that she is raising a kid that is not genetically hers. That may not be a big deal, but it's an additional layer of scrutiny from onlookers that she may find difficulty to deal with, especially as some women might feel inadequacies (or have them projected onto them) from not being able to conceive naturally.
It's possible that he is actually genuinely concerned about half-Asian kids being the brunt of racist treatment in an all-white area. But is racism against half-Asians really such a huge area in this day and age so as to make their very existence worth negating? I've experienced a bit of racism here and there as a half-Asian, and some minor identity crises, but all in all those problems are far outweighed by the good things. Being half one thing and half another is pretty cool. Unless "Want To Be a Dad" is living in Klansville, Mississippi or something, his half-Asian kids shouldn't have too much to worry about. His line about "I don't think my wife has ever experienced racism" is also strange. Has he never spoken to her about it? For an Asian-American woman to never have experienced even a small amount of racism is unusual indeed.
It's almost like his wife's East Asian-ness is an inconvenient fact. Or it's something he can handle in small doses, but no more than that. Perhaps he can take comfort in knowing that a lot of half white, half East Asian kids pass for white quite easily, and raised in a predominantly white environment, will likely turn out fairly white in their mentality. But perhaps that's not enough. I wonder if it's a kind of narcissism at play. One of the things people love about their own kids is that each child partly looks like themselves, as well as being reminiscent of their partner. Perhaps this guy wants to go the whole hog and have the kids look like as much as him as possible, and now he has the opportunity.
But it's also a reflection of the reality of some interracial relationships: an unhealthy intersection of appreciation for the person and appreciation of the race that they belong to. Some fetishists are attracted to a partner because of their race, while some others are attracted to a partner in spite of their race. Neither is healthy. No person is merely the sum total of their racial composition, but neither is it a trivial detail that the letter-writer seems to hope it can be.
This video has gone viral, revealing the ugly racist underbelly that exists in Melbourne, which generally prides itself on being a multicultural and cosmopolitan city.
It occurred on the bus from Mordialloc to Caulfield a couple of weekends ago, on a warm day when a lot of folks had been out having a good time. Some French backpackers at the back of the bus, probably after a few beverages, were singing a song in French. While this is something that most people consider at worst mildly annoying, clearly some people saw it differently.
The man who filmed this on his phone is Mike Nayna, a local comedian. Nayna is of Mauritian heritage, which explains the racist tirade about black people.
You can listen to a radio interview with Nayna about the incident here; there is also some entended footage, although there are so many bleeps it's hard to hear what is going on.
Some comments have popped up around the place saying that the French woman instigated the whole thing by singing in French. To which I would argue that the proper response if you don't like someone singing on the bus is to politely ask them to keep it down. Making sexually violent threats involving a knife and smashing the bus window is probably not the standard way to deal with that situation.
Particularly not when you are pushing a pram and your young son is right behind you. Perhaps those children are the biggest victims here.
Just to show that this sort of mentality is hardly restricted to Australia, check out the parallels with this case in Britain.
Few things are as fascinating to me as the behaviour of the barbarians who walk among us, and to that end, this story makes a great case study. See how many chav-indicators you can tick off on the checklist of chavdom:
Amanda Lowe, 26, was caught on camera stamping on Khuram Nisar’s head after calling him a ‘terrorist’ in Piccadilly Gardens. Lowe left her four-month-old baby girl and her eight-year-old daughter to launch the racially-aggravated assault. The baby’s father Wesley Earls, also 26, and her cousin, Daniel Wray, 21, then joined in the sickening attack. The group were later arrested by police in nearby Oldham Street. Lowe’s conviction for assault was her fourth in six years.
But she was spared jail at Manchester Crown Court after Judge Lindsey Kushner QC told her it would have had an ‘enormous impact’ on her children. The judge told Lowe – who is pregnant with a third child: “Your record is terrible for violence given that you are 26 years of age.
With the added benefit of seeing some other articles, I counted:
Drinking in the park with kids
4 convictions for assault since becoming a mother
Stamping on someone’s head is considered acceptable
Smoking while pregnant (while leaving court)
3-on-1 attack is considered acceptable
“F***ing Paki” and “terrorist”
Said those things in front of her kids
Attacking someone in front of her kids
Attacking someone while pregnant “the baby’s father” who presumably is not the father of the 8 year old
If you are interested in an Australian story that ticks some of the same boxes, while not being anywhere as barbarous in terms of its violence, look here.
Ah, the wonderful world of Eastern European football, where the favourite way for supporters to display their passion for their team is by racially abusing black players. That this happened in Serbia is completely unsurprising, but let me also point out that similar incidents have occurred recently in Croatia, Russia, Spain and elsewhere. (This same weekend, the Danish team complained to FIFA about racist chants during their World Cup Qualifier against Bulgaria in Sofia, directed at Danish defender Patrick Mtliga, who has Tanzanian heritage.)
England Under-21 star Danny Rose has called on UEFA to ban Serbia after admitting that racist abuse he suffered in Krusevac affected his game. The Tottenham defender, currently on loan at Sunderland, said he had been subjected to monkey taunts long before the violent scenes which marred the end of the Euro 2013 play-off. Sports minister Hugh Robertson today sent a letter to UEFA president Michel Platini urging tough sanctions from the governing body following the "disgraceful scenes" of racism in Serbia. Rose was sent off after the final whistle for kicking a ball in anger in response to provocation as scuffles broke out involving Serbian supporters, players and other officials. Rose told Sky Sports News: "I remember getting slapped twice and then I got ushered away. "That's when I kicked the ball - and the referee sent me off. I don't understand, the game had finished by then but he still sent me off for kicking the ball. "As I went off again there was monkey chanting, but the monkey chanting started long before I got sent off. "After 60 minutes my head wasn't really on the game. They have to be banned. I don't understand how else they can learn from it, they have to be banned." Robertson has given his full support to the Football Association, who reported a number of incidents of racism to UEFA. The minister said: "The scenes at the end of the game last night were disgraceful. "I have written to UEFA president Michel Platini, in support of the FA, urging them to investigate immediately. "Racism in any form is unacceptable and must be stamped out. We would expect tough sanctions from UEFA on anyone found guilty of racist abuse." England assistant coach Steve Wigley was caught up in the trouble and was manhandled as he made his way to the tunnel after the game.
Rose said the issues were a culmination of problems which had been brewing throughout the evening at the Mladost Stadium. The 22-year-old added: "It started when we went out for the warm-up. "They started the monkey chanting straight away. I asked the lads if they could hear it and they said they could hear it. "Halfway through the warm-up I went to 'Wigs', the assistant manager, and told him what was happening. "He said I had to try my best to get through it and they would deal with it straight away after the game. "In the first half I went down to get the ball for a throw-in and the fans started again with the monkey chants, but the first half was nowhere near as bad as the second half. "In the second half I had two stones hit me on the head when I went to get the ball for a throw-in. Every time I touched the ball there was monkey chanting again. "After 60 minutes my mind wasn't really on the game after that. I was just so angry and it was just so hard to concentrate. "I could have cost the lads the game because I made a few mistakes through not concentrating. "Then obviously we scored. After 90 minutes' worth of abuse I just expressed my emotions as soon as we scored. "Then the next thing I know all the Serbia players have run over and were all surrounding me, pushing me and a brawl broke out."
Connor Wickham's injury-time strike clinched a 2-0 aggregate success. Sunderland backed their loan player, saying they were "shocked" by what happened in Serbia. Sunderland's chief executive Margaret Byrne said: "As a club we strongly believe that the power of football should be used to promote inclusion and celebrate diversity and there is no place for any form of racism within the game of football and society as a whole. "The scenes in Serbia last night shocked everyone and Sunderland Football Club wholeheartedly backs the Football Association's stance on the matter." [Source]
Of course, despite FIFA's public stance that racism is bad, they will do absolutely nothing about this, apart from uphold Danny Rose's red card for reacting to being called a monkey for 2 hours on end. The monkey chants are clearly audible in this clip:
I've got a new post up over at Peril, the online Asian-Australian arts and culture magazine. It's about the changing nature of Australian hip-hop, and how there have been recent complaints of white racist sentiments among some sections of its fanbase.
Yet hip-hop is also a special case. It arose from black American street culture in the late 70s and early 80s, and it still wears its ethnic origin on its sleeve. It has exposed both good and bad aspects of African-American life to the world like nothing else before it. New York City remains the epicentre of global hip-hop just as it was over 30 years ago. Unlike some other black forms of music that have become mainstream (jazz, blues, rock & roll), hip-hop is still mostly a black thing. So how do “white pride” and “white power” elements come to exist in an art form that is so intrinsically non-white at its core?
If you saw the viral clip of comedian Brett Eidman getting punched in the face by an Asian guy after too many dumb racist "jokes", you might find this to be an interesting follow-up. Eidman has a clip up in which he apologises for offending people and talks about his reasoning for doing the character. It seems sincere enough I guess.
But there are some interesting issues that emerge for me here.
Firstly, one of the questions the interviewer asks him is a common one in these kinds of situations, and it seems to me to be something of a straw man. At around the 2:25 minute mark, Lisa Ann asks Eidman to address allegations that he is "a racist".
His response: "Sure... I'm not a racist, I just wanna clear that up, I'm not a racist."
Er, thanks for clearing that up, Brett.
Seriously, how does that clear up anything? Did anyone, upon hearing her ask that question, seriously think his response would be along the lines of "Well as a matter of fact, I am a racist, and I hate Asians and blacks and all the coloured peoples of this earth"? No one, aside from members of explicitly racist organisations like the Klan, is going to answer that question in any way other than the negative. So it tells us precisely nothing about anything.
What is "a racist", anyway? Let's consider these three different accusations that can be levelled at somebody:
(1) "What you said was racist." (2) "You are racist." (3) "You are a racist."
(1) refers explicitly to the behaviour. And as long as one can agree on what racism sounds like (which is a whole 'nother issue entirely, of course), perhaps (1) is something we can actually demonstrably prove. And honestly, most or all of us have said something racist at one time or another.
(2) implies that the person has thoughts and feelings that are racist, and that it presumably impacts on the way they behave. How many people does this apply to? Again, I would argue that just about everyone is racist; even if only just a little bit. What separates the "good" people from the "bad" people here is whether they allow that racism to affect the way they live their lives, and treat people poorly due to their prejudices.
(3) takes (2) and turns it into an essential feature of the person accused. Saying that someone is "a racist" seems to imply that racism is a key feature of how that person thinks, feels and acts.
As I mentioned, virtually no one will admit to being racist, or "a racist". That's because we tend to define people as being in one of two categories, racist and not racist, and if you are the former, you are a horrible person.
Some people who say they are not racist are simply lying. Some are not lying, but are too emotionally unreflective to admit to themselves that they actually do have racist tendencies. Then there are another group, which I myself would probably fall into, who know they have some prejudiced attitudes, but see racism as an inherently bad thing and thus try to make sure they don't mistreat people based on prejudice. But if you fall into that category, how do you give that nuanced answer when someone asks you a dumb simplistic question like "Are you a racist?" Understandably, most people would just take the safe option and say "No."
So is Brett Eidman right when he says he's not "a racist"?
Probably. I mean, I don't think he hates Asian people, particularly. Maybe he has some racist views about Asians, although I doubt he actually means them any harm, and he probably has friends who are Asian, for whatever that is worth.
Yet undeniably, his behaviour was racist. I mean, his "Dom Fok" character is one of the stupidest, most insensitive racial stereotypes I have seen in a long time. For him to think it is acceptable is frankly, amazing. So in the unlikely event that I would ever conduct such an interview with Brett Eidman, I wouldn't waste breath asking him "Are you a racist?"
I would ask: "What does it say about you and your views on Asian people, that you can continually perform as that character, and do it right in the face of two Asian people while hip-thrusting in an Asian girl's face, but yet be surprised when you get punched in the face for it? Would you do a similar thing to an African-American couple?"
So let's focus on the behaviour, first and foremost, rather than letting someone off the hook by asking whether or not they are racist, and acting as if it's some blinding insight when they predictably announce that they are not.
*
I got into a debate with some people online about whether or not George (the Asian guy in the video) should indeed have punched Eidman. First of all, I don't really blame George, and I might well have acted the same way myself. In fact I'm amazed that it didn't happen sooner. But my general stance is that I don't condone violence acts at all. Most of the time, when someone throws a punch, nothing major happens other than a few bruises and wounded egos. But other times, people get seriously injured or worse, and people get arrested. As it stands, perhaps this particular instance has had positive effects; we haven't heard that George has faced any criminal charges, and Eidman seems to have learned his lesson the hard way, but without more than some minor bumps and bruises. But it potentially could have been a lot worse, for either man. A conviction for assault can devastate one's career prospects, and people have gone to jail in the past for far less. Had it gone down that route, or if Eidman had suffered severe injuries or death, it would be less likely that George's actions would have been viewed as worthwhile.
While I don't blame George, I instead wish that it didn't have to reach the stage that it did. The bigger problem here is that Eidman has been doing this character for 20 years by his own estimation, and no one in that time has made it clear to him (preferably by non-violent means) that Dom Fok is some racist shit that should never have seen the light of day. As well as being a severe failure on his part as a comedian and a human being, I also wonder about all those audience members, friends and fellow comedians who saw that act and saw nothing wrong with it. If some of them had the balls to call him out on it over the last 20 years, it wouldn’t have got to the point where someone feels the need to hit him over it.
I've seen a few comments here and there about race and humour, following the video that went viral of Brett Eidman getting punched out for racially taunting Asian audience members under the guise of comedy. It's an issue that regularly comes up whenever a comedian or other celebrity says something about race: why do some people get away with race-based jokes and others don't? Why does someone like Eidman catch a beating for making fun of a particular race, while the likes of Dave Chappelle and Russell Peters have made a very lucrative living out of it?
I've written on this matter before, but I have a little more to add.
I should first state that even the likes of Chappelle, Peters and others who do it well can still cross the line sometimes, so we shouldn't look at this in overly simplistic terms. But overall, there is a difference between them and someone like Eidman, or like Michael Richards in the rant at black people that so severely damaged his reputation.
For the most part, the good guys play with the stereotypes rather than just regurgitate them; their comedy involves a degree of intelligence; they do not display contempt for the race they are making fun of; and most importantly, they are actually funny.
To a large extent, it comes down to whether the comedian comes across as a friend or a foe.
What does that mean? Think of Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock, who routinely make fun of both black people and white people, and most everyone else for that matter. But rarely if ever would a reasonable person conclude from their jokes that they don't like any of those races. Which is perhaps why their fanbase extends well beyond the black community. Likewise, Russell Peters has based his career almost entirely on ethnic stereotypes, and is perhaps best known for routines poking fun at Chinese people. Yet you will always find Chinese people in his audience.
Peters, to a certain extent, gets Chinese culture and Chinese people, at least more than the average non-Chinese observer. His riffs on the Chinese go beyond the lazy stereotypes that have been done to death. He does accents well enough that it's obvious that he has studied their nuances rather than just the superficial. It's pretty clear that Peters has hung out with a lot of Chinese people (and most everyone else he pokes fun at) and views them with respect. He is a "friend".
Other comedians, however, seem like foes. Using Brett Eidman as the obvious example, there is no love or respect for Asian people in his repulsive "Dom Fok" character. Slanty-eye glasses and a dumb "ching chong Chinaman" accent suggest contempt for Asians, as does repeating stupid, played-out lines like "Me love you long time" and "Me so horny". He comes across like a schoolyard bully, taunting someone just because they look different.
Friends can poke fun at each other about their race and culture, and for the most part it's okay because you know that joking aside, the friend still respects you and what you are. That's an entirely different thing from being a bully.
Knowing where that line is is a hard thing to know, of course. It's one reason why conservatives often don't seem to get why the likes of Rush Limbaugh is routinely branded a racist for his racial jokes, when more left-leaning comedians are let off the hook.
Check this clip of Rich Vos talking to a primarily black crowd. He's doing something lesser comedians wouldn't get away with - making fun of black people, as a group, to their faces. He's actually doing something very clever - he is making fun of black comics who make fun of white people, yet is indirectly making fun of black people in general. And apart from one dumb heckler, the crowd are on his side, and even seem to appreciate the balls it takes to say what he is saying. Why? Perhaps because it feels like there is an affection behind his poking fun, his execution is so smart. And he's funny. Being genuinely funny can help you get away with a lot.
This clip has been getting around the Asian- and comedy-related corners of teh interwebz. (Hat tip: BigWowo.) Alleged comic Brett Eidman catches one upside the head after making one too many dumb racist cracks at Asian audience members, George and Rachel. Something about it looks fake, but I think it's probably real.
Now, I'm an anti-violence advocate (seriously, that's part of my actual job), but sometimes I have to admit that getting punched in the face might be the only way certain people learn to stop being such a douchebag.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with racial humour, but you need to be legitimately funny to pull it off. Dave Chappelle and Russell Peters can do it. Brett Eidman clearly has no idea. I mean come on, "Me so horny?" "Me love you long time?" You just know the next thing out of his mouth would have been "Suckee suckee" if George hadn't put his fist in it.
Likewise, it's one thing for a comedian to give members of the audience a little ribbing; anyone sitting in the front row of a comedy gig needs to be prepared for that. It's also common for comics to ridicule hecklers. But sexually inappropriate and dumb racist put-downs to a couple who were just minding their own business... it's a dick move.
A lot of the discussion about this around the web is about whether or not it's staged. Certain aspects of it do smell a little fake. But if it's an attempt by Eidman to get some viral publicity, as has been suggested, it seems odd. There's no way this could be good publicity, surely? Unless it's targeting that lucrative demographic of people with victimised-white-guy syndrome and no sense of humour.
Thanks to the wonder of social media, we can note that Eidman has been doing that same character as part of his shitty act for a while now. You can see it in this video at the 5:45 mark, if you really must. On his Facebook page, Eidman posts the clip of him being hit, and comments:
"I took one for the team and it goes viral. Thank you, I think."
and:
"Sometimes comedy really sucks. Rest in Peace Dom Fok. Thank you for being part of my set for so many years. I love doing this character, but it’s time to say goodbye. I was told many years ago by a couple of big time comedian friends that this was the kind of bit that could get me noticed. They were wrong. I also thought the stage was the only safe place to truly express myself. I was wrong. I will heal and regroup and hit the stage again soon. I’m just glad this ass wipe didn’t have a gun. Thank you and goodnight."
The fan comments there are quite interesting to read; they actually make it sound like the Dom Fok character was some kind of noble artistic expression.
Those "big time comedian friends" of his should have had a word in his ear that not only is that bit fairly offensive, it's just not funny to anyone who is not a moron. They were right about one thing though; it did get him noticed.
Hopefully Eidman learns something from this experience.
If you happened to see episode 3 of ABC2's Dumb, Drunk and Racist, you would have noticed a particularly nasty incident that occurred while filming in the streets of Melbourne's CBD. As two of Joe Hildebrand's Indian guests go for a walk around to get a sense for whether Melbourne was as hostile and dangerous as had been portrayed in the Indian media, they are accosted by a drunken individual who swears at them, calls them racists and tells them to go back where they came from, ending with "White pride, motherfuckers!"
You can see it here from about 3:45 onwards.
It's an odd exchange that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, but is noticeable for how coolly Amer handles the whole thing. (Amer is consistently awesome throughout this series, by the way.) It certainly makes it seem like random drunk racists are just waiting to come out of the woodwork on central Melbourne's main street.
The show's website features a page that puts it in a bit better perspective, and is disturbingly hilarious in its irony. It's a written apology from the drunken racist douche, who explains that it's all a case of mistaken identity:
To whom it may concern On the way home from a night out I walked past a group of people with a camera crew who I thought, at that particular time, to be the provocative Indian comedy duo "Fear of a Brown Planet". My comments were aimed at this comedy group solely, not the people who I have recently found out were Indian tourists from overseas.At the time I had had a disagreement with my fiancé and was not in a good frame of mind and had been out having a few drinks watching a band. I said some ridiculous things which I would not normally say. I live and work in a very multi-cultural area and associate with many cultures including Indians. This incident has strained relationships between myself and my family. I do sincerely apologise for what I said and the way I acted which is very out of character. I apologise to the Indian tourists and want them to know I had no idea it was a documentary on racism and acted out of my dislike for the comedy group. I am extremely worried and stressed how I come across in the program. I am very embarrassed about my actions on this evening and am remorseful of any hurt I have caused. Thankyou.
Note the obligatory "Some of my best friends are Indians" line he sticks in there, which is the standard disclaimer you make when you've said something racist and you want people to think you are not racist. I guess he wants us to think, "Ah, that's not so bad, he wasn't just abusing random Indians, he was abusing what he thought was a controversial comedy duo who some regard as being anti-white."
Of course, this "controversial Indian comedy duo" are not actually Indian - the Fear of a Brown Planet guys are Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan, but whatever, it's all the same, right? And considering this chap basically saw two young South Asian guys with a camera crew and immediately assumed they were FOABP and began abusing them... well, that's understandable I guess. I mean, it's an easy mistake to make, right? Why, just the other day, I went to buy some curry and naan from my local Indian restaurant, when I thought the woman behind the counter was the provocative Indian duo "Fear of a Brown Planet". So obviously, I racially abused her, as one does in those situations. How embarassing for me!
Essentially, he is giving his own answer to the question posed by the show's title; he's not really racist, he was only dumb and racist because he was drunk. Ok then.
If you are wondering about who these Fear of a Brown Planet fellows are that seem to inspire such antipathy from random passing drunken douchebags, I've blogged about them here before.
Recently ABC1 featured them on Australian Story, which each week does a somewhat mushy profile of interesting Australian people. There was also a 2 hour special on ABC2 recently which featured their whole act. The guys, Aamer Rahman and Nazeem Hussain, are a couple of young Muslims whose act focuses primarily on racism, and the experience of being South Asian and Muslim in Australia. There has been an ongoing debate going on in Australian politics about the alleged left-wing bias of the ABC (the government-funded broadcaster), and this sympathetic profile of an act that tends to make white people a little uncomfortable is more grist to that mill.
In any case this profile is interesting to look at how South Asian Muslims balance their identity with an Australian one, and how the two guys balance their humour and decidedly liberal activist views with a religion that is both rather illiberal and not especially known for its humour.
Will this incident threaten to re-ignite tensions between Australia and India again, after the "curry-bashing" attacks of a few years ago?
A cab driver was racially abused as he was viciously beaten by a gang of thugs who ambushed and robbed five taxis in separate incidents in Melbourne's west overnight. Up to six men wearing balaclavas and armed with baseball bats pulled up in two stolen cars and attacked the drivers at Sunshine, Brooklyn and Laverton North between midnight and 1:00am this morning. One victim suffered serious head injuries. The owner of the taxi the man was driving says the driver was taunted as he was beaten with baseball bats. "They hit very badly you know, abusing him, you know, saying you're Indian, go back to your country," owner Sunny Singh told Fairfax radio.
Welcome to Melbourne's "Wild" West. Interestingly, despite the "go back to your country" taunts, it appears that the suspects are a gang of Pacific Islanders. I guess violent thugs are not known for their sense of irony.
When attacks on Indians in Australia dominated the headlines a few years ago, one of the big debates was whether they were racially motivated or merely opportunistic. In truth, the diverse nature of the attacks meant that it was difficult to generalise. But this case shows an example of an attack in which racism plays a part yet was probably not the motivation. The gang appears clearly to have robbery as its primary motive, and was probably not committing robbery out of any racial motive. The taunts are part of the attack but probably not the reason for it - they are just the sort of thing that spews out of the mouth of a stupid thug as he beats someone up.
That said, it is possible that the driver got such a heavy beating due to his race. You wonder why the attackers were so brutal, when they could have just taken his money and left. Would they have been quite as violent to a taxi driver who was white? African? East Asian? Pacific Islander? Probably... I'm not seriously advancing this theory, but nonetheless I think it's something worth pondering when we consider what exactly constitutes racially-motivated crime.
Journalist and blogger Joe Hildebrand has a new series starting this week exploring the different sides of race relations in Australia - on one hand a highly successful example of multicultural immigration, yet also one frequently perceived, both here and overseas, as a sort of redneck wonderland.
I'm looking forward to it. As a frequent reader of Hildebrand's stuff, I like that he's not beholden to the dogmas of either Left or Right, and will be able to present the issue in a way that won't just go for easy answers.
Got another post up at Peril, the Asian-Australian arts and culture magazine. It's about how the being a migrant, or the descendant of migrants, doesn't necessarily give you much empathy for new migrants.
Today, manufacturing is in decline, and there are less jobs around that unskilled refugees can easily do. The Australian workforce is becoming increasingly white-collar, and increasingly reliant on technology. This is a disadvantage for someone who struggles with English or is a latecomer to the use of computers. So the Italians and Yugoslavs and Greeks who arrived 60 years ago didn’t necessarily face the same obstacles to success that new arrivals from Myanmar, Afghanistan or Sudan might face today.
So a friend of mine recently sparked an interesting discussion about the use of the word "Negro". To put it in context, some unidentified acquaintance of this friend was trying to describe a person of African extraction and referred to them using that word. My friend was wondering whether to correct the terminology used by this person, who was of an older generation. A number of other folks added their two cents to this discussion, and among the comments were several condemning this heinous racism and advising that my friend had a duty to correct it.
Me? I have a problem with that actually. In fact it's a pet peeve of mine. Now I know some of you might find something fundamentally wrong with me, a non-black person, telling people what they should or shouldn't find offensive when it comes to words referring to black people. But f#ck it, here I go anyway.
Not that I think the term should go uncorrected. But what I'm focusing on is when people are all too quick to conclude that racism is at play, when it may be little more than outdated terminology used by well-meaning individuals.
Saying "Negro" does not make someone racist, although it could of course depend on the context. "Negro" is not the same as "nigger". Virtually everyone knows that "nigger" is racist and offensive; even if, following the recontextualizing of it by hip-hop culture, some non-black folks think it's appropriate to use in ways that it's not. "Negro" on the other hand, elicits a range of responses. Some people think it's straight-up racist to call someone that, whereas some of you reading this will undoubtedly be thinking right now, "Huh? 'Negro' is racist? Since when?"
"Negro" is certainly out of fashion, and politically incorrect. But it was once a relatively acceptable term, and a lot of old people use it to this day. It is a word with Latin roots - it still features in languages such Spanish and Italian, meaning simply "black" - and thus it was long used in scientific and anthropological contexts. I've heard my grandmother - formerly a biology teacher - refer to people as Negroes, and there's no hint of malice or prejudice there. It's like when old-timers sometimes refer to Asian people as "Orientals"; some Asian-Americans consider that a racist term, but again, to my mind it is merely old-fashioned. You could label a person who talks about Negroes and Orientals as being ignorant, but calling them racist is a step too far without further evidence.
The appropriate terminology changes with time, and it's not always easy to keep up. "African American", of course, is the proper term to use, but even as someone who takes an active interest in ethnic and racial matters, I honestly can't tell you whether or not that term should be hyphenated, or if it's still okay to use "Afro-American". Or whether it's okay to call someone "Black". Or whether "Black" needs that capital letter at all. (My spell checker is telling me that "Negro" requires a capital.)
Now, this post is not intended as a rant against "political correctness gone mad", even though that is something that bugs me. Rather, it's something that anyone who considers him or herself an anti-racist should bear in mind. The more you label people racist when they are not racist, you just contribute to making the label "racist" meaningless. When it feels like anything and everything is potentially racist, we shall reach a point where people just won't care any more.
This is not say that it's not important to get the terminology right, as it shows respect to whoever is being talked about. But fixation on this kind of hair-splitting starts to get unhealthy, and it's something that bugs me about certain sections of the Left-liberal intelligentsia. Why go out of one's way to see racism where it doesn't necessarily exist? And why go out of one's way to potentially make enemies (by branding people as racist), when they might otherwise be a potential ally?
So my advice to my friend was along these lines: It's okay to correct that person, but if you do it, do it in an understanding and tactful way. Presuming they are speaking out of racial animosity is going to make things go south very quickly. If I was unwittingly using words which some people found hurtful and inappropriate, personally I would want to know, so I could reflect on it and perhaps find different ways to express myself. But if it comes across like some holier-than-thou person calling me a racist... well that never goes down too well.
