As you may have heard, Netflix is cancelling Sense8. Netflix bid them a fond farewell and sent a show with lots of LGBT and people of color packing right at the start of Pride Month.
Hey, Netflix: I know you probably didn’t do that on purpose, but not great timing guys. Just saying.
LB’S NOTE: Yes, it’s true that Monday is usually my poetry day. However, all kinds of things, including a mysterious visitor from my past, omens of good fortune and fair trade, and an overcrowded schedule mean that the next epic from yours truly can’t be here today but absolutely will be online June 19th, in honor of Father’s Day.
As we used to say on Hawaii Five-0 (the real one), “Be there!”
Meanwhile, Kate Graham graces us with her insight once again:
Maggie & Nicole!
—SPOILER ALERT—SPOILER ALERT—SPOILER ALERT—SPOILER ALERT–
Supergirl is back, and with it Alex Danvers and her hot cop girlfriend, Maggie Sawyer. Last week’s episode featured Maggie a lot more prominently than before: and it is one of the best of the series so far.
This month, Ghost in the Shell will be released with Scarlett Johansson, a white actress, cast as Japanese character: Major Motoko Kusanagi. This is a process known as ‘white-washing’: Hollywood’s long-standing racist practice of casting white actors as characters of color.
In the 1930’s, we had ‘yellowface’: ‘Predictably, Asian Americans actors would spend most of the war years cast as sinister Japanese, often in films now viewed with some embarrassment. There were still “good Asian” roles being written–but they were restricted to Caucasian actors while Asian Americans played the villains.’
In 2017, we have white-washing, which is not the same thing, but still casts white people in roles that should have been Asian roles. The result: there are almost no roles for Asians on screen even in stories where the characters in the source material were Asian.
Ethics of Storytelling at ClexaCon: Continued from Part 1
About that writers’ room, how does that factor into ethical storytelling? What is the role of a showrunner? How much do an author’s intentions and opinions matter? And is anyone on TV writing queer female characters ethically?