zero_spelled_with_an_ecks comments on 'Resident Alien' Canceled Ahead of Season 4 Finale

[–] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

So you think it would be better for stories about Muslims to focus on the negative aspects of their religion? And it would have been better for FN people to be portrayed as racist cheats? I'm not sure if you realize how gross you're being or if it's on purpose, but never criticize other people's writing ever again.

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[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's more realistic and engaging, and it isn't 'wrong' to "speak the truth" about what goes on in those communities, or within those minority groups. I also made sure to highlight that you'd want to have variance in the characters to provide a broader context, with an eye to making it clearer to viewers that these demographic groups are not a uniform monolith, and that each person should be viewed as an individual. Putting out a show where all the white people are negatively type-cast, where all men who aren't FN are type-cast as incompetent morons, and where FN are all type-cast positively, is bad writing. Just like how back in the 1950s or whatever, when all women were type-cast negatively and all FN were type-cast negatively, it was bad writing. If you think that an adult audience is too stupid to understand that this shit is bad content, I need do little more than point to the shows cancellation as proof that it had gone to crap and detached from its audience -- if the writing was good, it would've/could've had more seasons. The production quality overall was decent.

To pretend there's no racism in FN communities is absurd, as the evidence is pretty blatant. And as for your comment, I didn't say anything about FN people as cheats, that's your bias again showing through. That sort of bias -- you thinking that all critics of FN must think FN are cheats, a potentially 'internalised' and imagined victimhood that taints your interactions with others -- ought to be represented on screen, with the negative repercussions put on display for discussion. The authenticity, or the relative authenticity of the characters matters.

As for muslims, why shouldn't the moderate muslim have a voice? Why shouldn't we tell the stories of what many of us have seen with our own eyes, and what many people living in western countries have gone through themselves? Why shouldn't we expect an adult show to tackle adult themes, rather than treat their audience like a bunch of immature, cattle-brained morons who can't understand nuance?

If you always had to portray characters/cultures in a positive light, without digging in to the conflicts and inner turmoils of individuals, pretty well every good show in the past two or three decades would be 'bad'. And I'm being very conservative with that time frame. Imagine Shakespeare, without any social commentary -- like Othello, where you can't broach the racial components of it. It would be utter drivel without that nuance. Good art / fiction tackles these sorts of concepts directly, messily, and puts it out there as authentically as possible for the audience to engage with. I encourage you to expand your perspective.

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[–] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

Oh, you were talking about somebody misusing a FN identity they didn't have. My mistake. It's still a bad story idea.

You talk about "speaking the truth" about how you view minorities while bemoaning that white men, a group that has never ever done anything bad (/s), are portrayed negatively. If you don't realize it, let me inform you that sort of thing comes off as pretty racist. Defending it by saying it's more realistic or better writing in a show with talking octopuses doesn't change that. If you do realize it, you're an awful person.

I've reached the end of my patience for that particular type of bs with you and will be blocking you. Do better.

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[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 1 point 1 year ago

I assume I'm blocked, but for anyone who's bothering to read this far --

The FN identity story angle is, quite literally, pulled out of Canadian news cycles and is 100% a pertinent, modern/contemporary story related to FN issues and identity: me referencing it is quite literally me saying in a very explicit fashion that we should've had more FN stories / content in the show, though the other poster seems to consider that racist or boring or something, without bothering to explain their dislike at all. The "Gill" sisters, Indo-Canadians who's parents immigrated over from the UK -- their mother appropriated a FN identity and secured hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants/money from the government based on that identity, getting her two daughters top tier educations and setting them up with an online business selling FN-inspired products. Once the identity fraud was revealed, the mother, who'd committed other frauds earlier even, took full responsibility to save her kids any jail time / punishment, but those daughters still had to drop out of things like law schools that they'd gotten into under false pretenses. The kids have since gone to the news, and lamented their situation, as they're relegated to basically being safeway cashiers or something along those lines.

Putting that sort of real life trauma on a screen, interrogating it, showing the characters on all sides as humans, and finding a way to get a laugh from the audience as you do it -- is the sort of thing good writing ought to be doing. Doing so not only helps people think about the situation critically and engage with the topic in less 'charged' ways (discuss the fictional version with the alien, rather than the real life one with tangible victims, but still talk about the issue!) -- but it'd also help people like the other poster learn about what it's like for FN people in some areas of the world.

And I never said white people should be spared flaws/faults. I just said that to stereotype all the white men, and all men who aren't FN, and pretty well all the white women on the show as negative / deplorable sorts, is racist. To say that "Some white people historically did bad things, so they should all be typecast as dumb incompetent evil people on TV" is racist. It's as blatantly racist as white people used to be towards non white people. Failing to recognize that, and failing to engage with the repercussions of it, is one reason there's increasingly animosity between the different demographics / groups, and there's an increasing rise in White-supremacist groups -- things left in the dark, tend to fester more. People need to be able to talk about those things openly to move forward, and Art is traditionally a primary vehicle for that very thing. That sort of racism, we see play out on line and in this very thread, the show should've actually confronted it head on if they wanted to maintain more character authenticity, and to keep the attention of the audience longer / get people engrossed in the characters. Walter White would've been boring as shit without his dark flaws.

But the writing fell off, made things into 1 dimensional bland virtue signalling snooze fests, and people moved on. It earned its cancellation.

As for the other person 'noping out', it's more realistically that they just realised they were wrong and wanted to try and save some face. I feel like my patience and attempts to explain / get through to the other side is made plain within this thread -- and that nothing I've written is in any way wrong or racist: it isn't racist, to call out racism in other races, just like it isn't fascist, to call out fascists.

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