Media Criticism - Tumblr Posts
Inara is such a misrepresentation of prostitution, she is shown as having choice over her clients, buying nice clothing and respect for her “job”. This is far from the reality of prostitution. The other women on the ship are being shown as envious of her and her ability to apparently live lavishly and buy herself nice dresses. Firefly is propaganda promoting how great prostitution is, even when nearly all of Inara’s “clients” end up insulting her in some way. She is even trained to be a prostitute, which is the ultimate male fantasy: institutionalised prostitution. Skills to please men is just disgusting.
No matter if she is a high class call girl or a street walking prostitute, she has to sexually please men for money. She would otherwise not sleep with them. This is sexual and gender inequality.
Larry Clark engaged with child 🌽 and critics and men call it “controversial” as opposed to disgusting and hateful. I will never understand how men can get away with making media like this, and it being rewarded with a Palm d’Or. He has photos of nude teens and has filmed them engaging in real sex acts. I just cannot believe his films are hailed a “cult classics”!
... You can, in fact, do both.
You can love a work of art for the things it has to say, for its emotional impact on the audience or just for the fact that it talks about specific things you care about, WHILE ALSO recognizing it's not immune to harmful cultural bias. You can recognize that a piece of art was really well made, and enjoy it for that, and love it for what it is for itself or for you with all your heart, while also going "that thing it casually throws into the scene is actually kinda fucked up and maybe says something really concerning about our society".
(... Which is also, coincidentally, exactly my opinion on book of Mormon the musical.)
Oh you love that musician that wears a strait jacket in a music video?
Oh you love haunted house attractions that are 'insane asylum' themed?
Oh you love that horror movie where the villain is portrayed to be psychotic?
But do you respect and care for mentally ill people who have been restrained because they were a danger to themselves or others?
But do you respect and care for people who are constantly in and out of psych wards, or have to live full time in psychiatric facilities?
But do you respect and care for people who have psychotic disorders, especially if they are poc and/or homeless?
Do you see us as real people, or do you just like the aesthetic of our suffering for your entertainment?
"I don't want to read this" is totally valid.
"This is disgusting to me" is totally valid.
"I don't want to read this because it is disgusting to me" is totally valid.
"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.
"I don't want to read this" is totally valid.
"This is disgusting to me" is totally valid.
"I don't want to read this because it is disgusting to me" is totally valid.
"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.
too many movies have been ruined by not casting ugly people
i've made a few posts about the Clone High reboot before but something specific that i think it gets wrong are the way they handle their celebrity cameos. the original Clone High would sometimes bring in these popular celebrities to appear in the show, usually to influence the clones and push the main anti-moral of the episode. since Clone High was made in the early 2000s, these appearances got really dated really fast. but something that counteracts that is the way they're characterised. for example, i have no clue who tf Mandy Moore is, but i still really enjoyed her appearance in the Snowflake Day episode because of the way she's characterised and satirised. she's portrayed as this homeless girl who happens to be attractive and look suspiciously like Mandy Moore who's obviously trying to hide the fact that she's a popular celebrity by playing the role of Joan's guardian angel. she leads Joan on into thinking she's this magical angel when she's actually just stealing everyone's stuff and replacing it with spices, and it works really well because 1. her insistence that she isn't a celebrity was really funny and 2. she works on her own as a solid character to push the story along and set up jokes. they put a twist on the whole "hi i'm [insert celebrity here] and i'm here to talk about [insert psa here]" by turning it into a joke of itself and adding on extra traits that make the characters entertaining to watch.
the reboot, however... just does the "hi i'm celebrity" bit with full sencerity and doesn't really satirise the celebrities in any way. they don't make fun of them or add commentary or critique them in any way, they just appear to send a message and then dip, just like they would in the same teen dramas Clone High was meant to parody in the first place. for example, in the episode where they get hunted down by the Heebie Jeebie monster, its revealed at the end to be that guy from Sharknado who's just kinda like "hey i'm trying to send a message about the importance of teenager's mental health, here's a hotline, i'm sharknado dude btw" and then just kinda... dips? i don't like this because there's no joke there, it's literally just a celebrity coming on, saying the message out loud, and then leaving. there's no criticisms, there's no making fun of the character, there's no commentary on the fakeness of bringing on big celebrities and actors delivering a message that big stars like them could's possibly care less about to influence a vulnerable and impressionable group of people like teenagers, there's nothing there. i'm not saying the message of mental health is dumb or bad or anything, i'm just saying that the celebrity appearances aren't handed the same criticisms the original show was written to have, and i think that takes away the reboot's spirit as being connected to Clone High. it's not a satire anymore and i feel like i can't enjoy it because of that. it has become the very thing the original saught to mock, and like, that's kinda funny in a fucked up ironic way, but it's also really not. the reboot just doesn't have that same spark that made me fall in love with the original series and i feel like i can't like it because of that, among the multitude of other issues it has.
yall wtf are you guys talking about everyone uses median for average income. Nobody's including billionaires, that would be stupid. I just looked up median income and it's abt 68K. 24k is barely liveable, that's just straight up not possible
as much as carmen sandiego, spop, and hh/hb frustrate me, they’ll NEVER infuriate me in the way this book did
“yeah i just feel the way gwen was towards miles wasnt okay-”
“WHAT IF YOUR MOM WAS DEAD AND YOUR BEST FRIEND WAS DEAD AND YOUR DAD POINTED A GUN IN YOUR FACE AND EVERYONE HATED YOU AND YOU WERE JUST A GIRL, GET BACK TO ME WHEN YOU’VE GONE THROUGH ALL OF THAT”
Serious little add on, I am so sick of being told “get back to me when you’ve been through x, y, z,” as a response to critiquing a fictional character on the internet.
You do not know me and you do not know what I have been through, and I feel that is such an incredibly rude internet norm. Idk, I might just be cranky and sleep deprived :/
“yeah i just feel the way gwen was towards miles wasnt okay-”
“WHAT IF YOUR MOM WAS DEAD AND YOUR BEST FRIEND WAS DEAD AND YOUR DAD POINTED A GUN IN YOUR FACE AND EVERYONE HATED YOU AND YOU WERE JUST A GIRL, GET BACK TO ME WHEN YOU’VE GONE THROUGH ALL OF THAT”
Hate when the Gwen Stacy stans are like “i stand with my canceled wife shes just a girl” NO SHE IS NOT she is a deeply hurt and traumatized individual who severely needs help and therapy so that she can stop unintentionally hurting and getting unhealthily attached to the people she cares about in her life
I’ve expressed this before in my pinned post, but I wanna make its own post for this;
It’s so disappointing for Gwens character that she “falls in love” with the first guy she befriends after swearing off friends. Genuinely hoping to see her heal and evolve from her unhealthy attachment to Miles in btsv
i could make some very inflammatory statements comparing these two characters and how one, despite coming from a different time, was a much better representation of a traumatized teenage girl…but i think i will not, ill be well-behaved today
Should Gwen be with Miles in the end? If not, then please state your reasons. (I don't think she should honestly.)
Hi! Thank you so much for the ask, and on one of my very favorite subjects!! For this, I’ll be focusing specifically on the in-story reasoning I have, and not talking about how I feel narratively they weren’t set up correctly (I definitely have posts on that as well lol)
My two biggest points are as follows (in no particular order)
1. Gwen is not mentally well right now and one of the last things she needs is a romantic relationship. She has a lot of work she needs to do on herself before she could ideally get into a healthy one, especially with Miles, as during their time apart they both idealized and put one another onto pedestals that neither could really nor should live up to. Rose-tinted glasses and all that.
2. Miles trust in Gwen has been undoubtedly broken by the events that unfolded at the Spider-society. Yes, it wasn’t entirely Gwens fault, and yes she didn’t actively betray him, but Miles still reaped the consequences of her actions against him and I’m tired of people not recognizing that.
And a 3rd point for funsies, I just personally don’t buy them working as a couple. Friends? Yes absolutely! I love friends! But their personalties as a couple? Eh :/ and that’s not even getting into Gwens lack of boundaries.
Thank you so much for the ask, and I hope you have a lovely October day!
hello! please remember that representation will not magically solve all problems in media!
🔹 Someone else's fiction cannot cause you physical harm.
🔹If someone else's fiction is causing you emotional or psychological harm, or distress, you can put it down and not read/watch it.
🔹Your emotional well-being is not the responsibility of fiction writers.
🔹Someone else's fiction is not about your personal trauma.
🔹When reading or watching fiction, you always have the power. You can always stop. You are never reading fiction without your own consent.
🔹Fiction writers are not responsible for other people's mental health.
🔹The content of a piece of fiction does not reflect on the morality of its author.
🔹Just because someone writes about bad things happening, doesn't mean they want those things to happen.
🔹Don't like? Don't read.
FYI Authors and artists love Good Criticism.
"Was this made by AI?" is not Good criticism. It is an accusation based on everything that seems "off" and "bad" to you.
Believe it or not, humans are NOT perfect creatures. We are completely capable of making shit media without a machine doing all the work. Every work has notable flaws and accusing every flaw as "AI" does not highlight them. If anything, it's not even stating the flaws in the work at all, it's just well...
Blaming everything on a Machine that doesn't exist!
Stop accusing everything you don't like/that isn't perfect as "AI". It undermines the flaws we have as humans and how we can fix them.
So it's just not me right?? Like there is no genuine portrayals of teenagers in the media, it's either innocent baby nerd or bad boy delinquent
I mean don't make teenagers cinnamon rolls and stuff but like don't make them out to be characters in euphoria.
The way people portray teenagers in regular media and fanfiction confuses/annoys me, the only semi accurate portrayals seem to be in PJO.
But as an example in fanfiction, Tom Holland's Spider-man is treated so oddly in fanfics. By Homecoming he's 15, and i get that some people have him younger but to have him act like a five year old seems weird. I mean, no teenager I've ever met would refuse to swear or snuggle up to practical strangers or giggle constantly. And I think its fine, people can make whatever they want and its not my place to shame them for it, that sort of thing isn't ok. It just irks me that almost every SM fanfic is Spider baby and Irondad, and sure sometime they're very sweet, but Tony treated him really toxicly in canon homecoming so idk, i just wish we could have a fifteen year old spidey that swears constantly (like most fifteen year olds do) is actually sassy and actually gets his inspiration from Uncle Ben instead of Tony.
i am not a fan of book banning for almost any reason (and even then it should be centered more around letting people use their discretion to say “um maybe kids shouldn’t be reading erotica” than “this topic is ugly and opens the door to too many questions so we just shouldn’t talk about it”) but so much of book banning revolves around this very idea, that if a book so much as mentions a difficult topic, we shouldn’t talk about it, rather than the way the topic itself is handled
"this work is problematic because of how it handles [subject]": reasonable premise for media criticism
"this work is problematic because it depicts [subject]": do not pass go do not collect $200 this is, as a general rule, a functionally reactionary and conservative argument