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If you have friends who are Jews of Colour in LA or any other city where ICE is trawling through, check in on them. Ask them if they need a buddy to walk with to shul or if they need a place for Shabbat and follow through if they do need those things.

Don't leave them alone.

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the status quo of the past couple months has been that hamas makes a libelous claim, media companies parrot that lie without conscience, and then jews are murdered as a direct consequence of that lie.

shot, beaten, burned. but WE are accused of making ourselves undue victims. this is a despicable culture and a despicable time to be alive

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Happy Pride to all the yidden who aren't going to Pride this year because we don't want to be hatecrimed.

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reel took me the fuck out

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@importantanimalmemes

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https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/784181809513644032/in-fandom-racism-discussions-in-cases-where-an

Never mind that many, many of Hollywood’s most pernicious problems are in the cinematography, lighting, and editing.

I want to hear how the cinematography, lighting, and editing affect things! Can you explain or link some articles?

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Sure!

The big thing to understand about film is that there is such a thing as "film grammar", and this is a lot of how we read meaning into film.

Think of it like when comic book ladies get drawn in the broken spine pose so you can see T&A at once and some defensive clown is like "Um, um, the comic said she was the main hero! She can't be objectified meat!" But the dudes are not drawn like that. It doesn't matter what the comic said. It matters what it showed.

We know how to read that art even if we aren't consciously aware of it.

We also know how to read film.

A character looks down. We see a shot of a book on a table. We know the book is what they're looking at. A character walks out of a door. We see them in another room. We know it's just a second later and a room away, not three years later on another continent. We see a soft dissolve and we know we've gone into a flashback. How do we know? Film grammar.

The problem is that because this has not been taught in a verbal and explicit way, we often have trouble articulating why film feels a certain way.

That makes it easy for a film (show, whatever) to undercut a character while pretending that isn't happening. It also makes it easy for somebody with a few one-liners to feel huge, and no, it's not just fans randomly picking for no reason.

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The classic early concept everyone talks about is the Kuleshov Effect, a.k.a. the experiment that showed how/that montage works. Basically, if you take the same clip of a stoic-looking actor and pair it with three very different things, people will talk about the subtlety of the acting. He looks so sad when looking at the dead baby! So hungry when looking at the soup! etc.

Another important concept is that closeups of faces are where a lot of the film's story is told. It's often not the dialogue that's being spoken but some other character's reaction to that dialogue that matters.

Part of film grammar is that breaking the forth wall feels weird (i.e. looking directly into the camera and making eye contact with the audience), but looking very close to the camera is intimate, while being shown in profile is not. (Being shown from behind is POV-y though and makes us feel like we're with the character.)

Film has POV, or rather "narrative perspective". It's more complicated and more prone to changing than POV in a novel, but it's there. If you cut to a particular character's reaction to show which dialogue mattered or you cut to them having a thought and then end the scene, they're important. If you cut after they decide something or exit, they're "driving the cut" and we're "with" them. In effect, they're the POV character.

Cool, sexy action dudes with a lot of abs are hot. They punch things in wide shots. But for a single perfect tear woobie, we need a closeup. We need interiority.

This is often not granted to the characters of color or the female characters unless they are definitively the lead or are in an ensemble that primarily focuses on nonwhite characters/female characters/etc. Your MCUs and your ensemble cop shows might do a good job with everyone, or they might prioritize a particular white guy while paying lip service to the idea that the whole ensemble matters.

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A lot of us were taught to analyze writing in school and/or we've just spent way more time doing that on our own. It is therefore tempting to look at a script and make too much of it. But the staging is incredibly important. Lindsay Ellis has a video about Transformers where she shows a scene where the girl is saying plot important stuff that makes it clear her character is interesting... while leaning over the engine and being ogled by the camera. Nobody remembers the dialogue. They remember her butt.

Characters can be standing behind others in group shots. Characters can be only in group shots.

If the script tells you that all five of your ensemble are important and they all have equal lines, but only White Guy McScenestealer gets a closeup, then he is the main character, and he is the only one who matters.

Specifically, he is the one whose feelings matter.

The reason it's all of cinematography, lighting, and editing is that the editor is the one actually putting those closeups in or juxtaposing the characters in a way that highlights them... but for them to do that, the correct shot needs to exist. That shot also needs to look good enough.

Not only do a lot of racist, sexist crews fail to get adequate coverage, but many of them were also taught by people who never had to light dark skin and thus they also do not know how to light it or shoot it. This doesn't apply to all POC, obviously, but it's the kind of thing that can fuck up a shoot with good intentions. If the dark-skinned black lead's closeups are lit like shit and their facial expressions are the least visible out of everyone's in the group shots, the audience won't be able to feel their emotions or connect with them. The editor might leave out a lot of their coverage simply because it looks less professional even if they'd originally wanted to highlight that character.

The director probably has final say on the cut in an indie film, producers for TV or a lot of big budget stuff, but you know what I mean: someone made this choice at the cutting stage, and it might be going against what the script was trying to do.

Prioritizing the character of color needs to happen during all phases of the filmmaking or they're going to get shafted. Ditto filming women like leads and not pointing the camera at their butts all the time, etc. etc. (Substitute whatever minority. I'm sure you'll find the same pattern with non-Han characters in Chinese media.)

It's not that hard. Leverage managed to light for the pastiest, most light-reflecting blown-out shot nightmare and someone with pretty dark skin. The key thing to understand is that lighting well for this scenario takes a little more time than lighting two people with the same skin tone, and time is money.

Other types of choice may not take more time, but they do require a director or cinematographer who's really on top of things to go "No, don't do the stereotypical shot. That's telling the wrong story."

The camera tells us what to think, and what it is usually saying is "Sidekick", "Love interest", "Person number three who is here to infodump and whose feelings do not matter".

I made a couple of little video essays to try to explain this stuff more clearly. They both use The Losers, one to show how POV/objectification works and the other to show how dialogue and even minutes on screen are much less important than how a character is presented.

Aisha is the Object; Clay is the Subject

Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez: Human Exclamation Point

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In my experience, fandom actually does not elevate five-second randos all that often. Fandom likes the character who cried in a closeup.

Who that character is is neither random nor equitable.

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Colors I love because they are precious and ephemeral:

Robin’s egg blue, which has just a hint of teal, and can really only exist in a nest

The green of a tree’s leaves juxtaposed against the summer sky on an extremely clear day, where both the green and the blue are so intense it makes you pause just to experience it

The brown of a black cat’s fur when it’s laying in the sunlight

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Jewish culture is clinging to joy with both hands because you know how easily it can be taken away

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Friendly reminder that you simply cannot use wikipedia as a reference for anything having to do with jews, judaism, israel, etc etc

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AO3 has been scraped, once again.

As of the time of this post, AO3 has been scraped by yet another shady individual looking to make a quick buck off the backs of hardworking hobby writers. This Reddit post here has all the details and the most current information. In short, if your fic URL ends in a number between 1 and 63,200,000 (inclusive), AND is not archive locked, your fic has been scraped and added to this database.

I have been trying to hold off on archive locking my fics for as long as possible, and I've managed to get by unscathed up to now. Unfortunately, my luck has run out and I am archive locking all of my current and future stories. I'm sorry to my lovelies who read and comment without an account; I love you all. But I have to do what is best for me and my work. Thank you for your understanding.

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You ever just think how happy you are to be a Jew? Yeah there's antisemites everywhere but I know I'm still happy to be Jewish.

It may be scary sometimes but we're one big family, and we're there for each other if the need arises.

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