#its nice to flex my close reading muscles lmao can you tell i miss being in film classes?

[dashiellqvverty]

i am... so sick of y'all pretending that Jade not putting up with Nate's unsubtle power plays is racism because you think it makes you look progressive. misogyny doesn't become suddenly okay because it comes from an awkward brown man

bro i was asked why i don't like jade and i answered idk what to tell you. sounds like you don't like the nate/jade relationship either though so i guess we're in the same boat there!

you're clearly not interested in like actually thinking about the show on a deeper level BUT for the sake of anyone who is, i do think this topic warrants a little more discussion than i gave it the first time, because i was answering a question about my personal feelings and figured ppl would take that for what it was.

so to be absolutely clear about this: i do not believe jade was intentionally written as a racist character. i do not think the way she is rude to nate is MEANT to read as racist in any way. to be honest, i wasn't thinking about it that way when i first watched it. but these are not real people and everything they do is a choice made by writers, and the way it was written WAS racist. even if you don't want budge on your opinion of jade and how she specifically is written, if you don't see any behind the scenes racism in the way nate shelley and his storylines were written over the course of the show then i don't know what to tell you.

but lets get into it. (under the cut because i have quite a lot to say)

as i said, i didn't initially interpret jade's treatment of nate as racist. when i got to s3 and she showed up again, i remembered NATE being mean to HER and not liking her very much, so i was mainly thinking "why would he want to get with her, and why would she want to get with him?" but, after reading other people's (specifically fans of color) interpretation of the storyline, i went and revisited the episode, and realized that, yeah, she's shitty to him for no reason, in a way that can definitely come off as racist. WE as the audience know nate has been being a dick all season - she doesnt! so what she sees is, as you said, an awkward brown man coming into the restaurant and stumbling through asking for a reservation. now, maybe it's just my own difficulty with social cues, but i don't see anything in that first scene that i would call an "unsubtle power play" - maybe you're talking about the "sorry i was waiting for you to ask if i needed anything," which, imo, is a stretch. i understand where you might be coming from, but... how is this any different than how he might have behaved in season 1? like, i'll admit that i do read nate as autistic which can affect my interpretation of certain things but like... to me thats just him voicing like "ah, sorry i'm being awkward, here's an awkward over-explanation of why." and then the "i know roy kent" thing is DEFINITELY not a "power play", it's him being desperate for something that might work to get the table he wants. like the point of this scene is not to portray him as some kind of power-drunk asshole, it's to show that he's an awkward bumbling idiot who can't be assertive and hates himself for it. i honestly, genuinely, do not see anything in that scene that comes off as misogynistic.

honestly, i don't personally think jade is too awful in this scene, it seems like she's also a bit awkward and not really performing the expected social conventions as a hostess, and if it weren't for the larger context this might not have been so bad. but there's a couple things going on here, for one the look she gives him when he asks for the window table, like he's an idiot for even asking (and please don't argue that he technically doesn't "ask," he says he really wants to make sure he gets it then says its important to his parents. seems like a pretty fucking normal thing to do imo). and then to have her say "okay we can reserve a specific table - in the back corner - but we CANT reserve the window table. we could for someone else, but not for YOU" is like.

again, the point of this scene is to make nate feel bad about himself, and media doesn't exist in a vacuum. the ted lasso writers may like to pretend they're colorblind, and that misogyny is the only problem in the world and racism only exists when its the Topic Of The Day (and never affects nate, apparently) but we live in the real world and can see that nate is a brown man, and in fact the only one on the show. it would be naive, i think, to say that this has nothing to do with nate's arc in s2. given how horribly his arc is executed on almost every level, i doubt this was the writers' intention, but intention isn't everything. the handling of nate's storyline is a topic for its own post, but it makes a lot of sense that nate's race and experiences of racism play into his feelings of insecurity and emasculation (for lack of a better term) as he is being ignored and overshadowed by white men - in fact, it goes a long way to explain a lot of his underwritten motivation. so here he is, walking into a restaurant and being looked at and spoken to by white people as though he doesn't belong, in a scene that is DESIGNED to make him feel bad. even if jade herself isn't intended to be racist, this is part of a LARGER PATTERN of how nate is treated both by the narrative and by other characters.

but wait, i imagine you arguing back, this is only the first sequence, before he decides to go back and be more assertive! what about spitting on the mirror! what about when he makes DEMANDS? what about THOSE misogynistic power plays?

well, jade doesn't push back against those, does she? in fact, she seems to be impressed, as she sort of smirks and goes "okay" in a satisfied voice and gives him the table. the lesson of this episode is that nate being a dick WORKS for him. his problem, we are told, is not that he was a being misogynistic or something, it's that he was too awkward, and if only he stopped being awkward and "made himself big," he would be respected.

on that note, i don't want to gloss over the scenes with rebecca and keeley either. i won't pretend he DOESN'T say anything that is or could be construed as misogynistic (but, be honest with yourself, he's not the only character in the show who says misogynistic things, he's just the only one who's not allowed to be forgiven, apparently). there's the comment about, "oh maybe some of those groupies would be nice haha" (which he immediately feels awkward about and apologizes for), the "dithering kestrel" thing (which is him overcorrecting after being told to be assertive). this is a larger trend with nate, where he is definitely written as making these kinds of comments more often, but it always seems to be something he's trying to do in order to perform a certain kind of masculinity in order to be accepted or respected (not that that would justify these things in real life, but it's important context to keep in mind). and rebecca is like... such a jerk to him in this scene too?? like on top of talking down to him, there's the moment where he's like "well it's different for me" (and does not explain what he means by that, so we are left to assume that maybe he just means because he's small and awkward?) and rebecca is like "well things are hard for me as a woman so i just feel my power girlboss my way through :)" and its like. why can we explicitly acknowledge that she specifically has to earn space and respect as a woman but never acknowledge the situation nate is in as a brown man???

if this was the real world, and these were real interactions between real people, it might be fair to say that hey, we can't dismiss someone's misogyny just because they are also marginalized. but this is not the real world, it is a fiction created by writers, so perhaps you should be asking yourself WHY THEY ARE WRITING THE BROWN MAN LIKE THIS

(i'd be remiss not to link this post again as it definitely informed a lot of my initial thoughts on this subject)