#putting any critical thought into this show and the way racism is intertwined into every aspect of it

[showoftheyear]

Personal Opinion on Screen OD’s List

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VORN5I2oJe4

First proper list of the year, although it’s from a source I’ve never heard of! Let’s get into it.

First up we have Rings of Power. I didn’t hate Rings of Power, but I feel like watching it in any proximity to the films reveals that it’s pretty shallow. I enjoyed it the way I would enjoy a CW Superhero show, I don’t think it belongs on a best of list but what can you do.

Next up is The English, an Amazon western show starring Emily Blunt. I haven’t gotten around to it yet, it has relatively positive reviews and just came out super recently. I’ve seen some people think it has awards potential, probably because Emily Blunt is such a big name, plus it’s run by Hugo Blick, whose show The Honourable Woman got nominated almost a decade ago. Have you seen The English? Let me know if it’s worth watching!

Prehistoric Planet is yet another David Attenborough nature documentary, I don’t see a lot of these on year end lists but they do really well in IMDB audience rankings. If you like this kind of show, it’s probably great!

Next up is Pachinko, an amazing show, I’m kind of surprised it’s so low here. I really hope it does better on other lists. This show was really artful, amazing performances, and some really creative episodes.

The Sandman! I loved The Sandman, although I haven’t read the comics. I’m really glad to see it here, one of my favourite shows of the year. I’m glad it was updated to have more racial diversity and more queer characters, and I think the show just really sucks you in, I couldn’t stop watching. So excited for Season 2.

WeCrashed is a show I didn’t get to watch, and it got pretty negative reviews so I’m surprised to see it here. Let me know if you liked it and if you think it’s worth watching.

The Gilded Age is very, very similar to Downton Abbey. I wasn’t a huge fan, but I would probably watch anything with Audra McDonald, Christine Baranski, and Carrie Coon.

Night Sky is a sci-fi drama on Amazon, I don’t know anything about it beyond that it stars JK Simmons, who is always amazing. Let me know your thoughts if you’ve seen it!

Heartstopper is here at number 14! I’m so so happy to see it, it’s a show and comic that are very special to me. I’ve never felt catharsis the way I did getting to see the love story between Nick and Charlie blossom, and I’m so happy it’s getting so much critical attention. This is the gay romance I’ve been waiting my whole life for.

The Bear is a phenomenon and honestly has one of the best episodes of the year with Episode 7, a tight, 20 minutes in real time look into the chaos of the kitchen.  Jeremy Allan White and Ayo Edebiri have such intense coworker chemistry that it’s always electrifying to watch them.

Very surprised to see Doctor Who here, but pleasantly surprised as I heard the regeneration special was fantastic. I’m way behind on the Whittaker/Chibnall era of the show, but this makes me excited to catch up.

Better Call Saul is, for me, the best show of the entire year, and putting it all the way down at number 11 is a bit criminal. The final season was so innovative, and the way it intertwines itself with Breaking Bad is like nothing else I’ve seen on TV. Like every other season, Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn hold the show together with they’re heart pumping romance, but Giancarlo Esposito, Jonathan Banks, Michael Mando and Tony Dalton make the other side of the show just as intense. Heartbroken that this is over, I really hope it gets the recognition it deserves.

House of the Dragon is number ten and I know it’s going to do really well here but it’s not a show I’m very fond of. I’m a bit tired of the Game of Thrones “fantasy must be historically accurate but only when it comes to misogyny/racism/homophobia” model and this show hasn’t done much to assuage that. This article does a better job of explaining it than I could, but often HotD and GoT both go out of their way to make things even more misogynistic. This show is going to do amazingly at awards shows and on the year end lists, but I’m tired of it already.

Stranger Things is here at number 9, I was a bit mixed on it but I loved the use of Running Up That Hill, one of my favourite songs, and I thought the plot twist was pretty effective.

This is Going to Hurt is a show I keep meaning to watch, it’s an adaptation of a book about a doctor struggling to work with the underfunding of the NHS, the United Kingdom’s public health care system. Even though I haven’t watched this yet, I’m cheering for this show, both because the lead character is gay and because I like to see shows produced outside the US get recognition.

Julia is an HBO comedy covering the start of Julia Child’s cooking program. I didn’t know much about Julia Child before watching the show, but this show is a really excellent one to put on, relax, and have fun watching. It’s really comfy, and I think Sarah Lancashire and David Hyde Pierce are fantastic and fun actors. Lancashire really gets Julia’s mannerisms and accents. A really fun show.

The Dropout is about Elizabeth Holmes, who scammed her way into making Theranos, a biotech company. This show keeps growing and growing in my esteem as the year goes on, and I think the tension it captures is fantastic. Amanda Seyfried and Naveen Andrews are also fantastic in it, Seyfried’s Emmy was well deserved. I expect The Dropout to be a huge success in year end lists.

Welcome to Wrexham is a documentary about Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney buying a soccer team in Britain. I really don’t know anything about this one, let me know if you’ve seen it what you think!

The White Lotus’s second season is here in fourth place, and I think it’s well deserved. I prefer it to the first season, and I really love this year’s cast, particularly Aubrey Plaza. The way the whole cast bounces off each other is magnetic, I can’t recommend it enough. Hopefully it sticks the landing in its last few episodes.

In third place is Bad Sisters, a show by Sharon Horgan who created Catastrophe. In Bad Sisters, the sisters of a woman with an abusive husband get together to plot how to murder him and rescue her. It’s really interesting so far, but I’m only on episode 2. I’ve heard a lot of good things and I expect it to do really well with British critics.

Second place is my biggest and most major disagreement with this list, Ozark. I feel like Julia Garner basically robbed everyone else at the emmys (most notably Jung Ho-yeon, Sarah Snook, Patricia Arquette and Rhea Seehorn, who all had amazing performances). I’ve never really liked Ozark, it feels like a cheap imitation of Breaking Bad, but even people who liked Ozark felt that the last season was pretty awful (and I agree). Screen OD assures us that the show isn’t “one of those shows with an unsatisfactory ending”, but I’d strongly disagree. Oh well. Every list is going to have one off choice, but I really really think Ozark and Better Call Saul should be swapped, especially because Better Call Saul feels like it’s pretty much just a much better version of Ozark.

However, I cannot have any complaint about the show in first place, Severance. Severance is a fascinating look at how capitalism makes life into a living nightmare for everyone, while also just being a fantastic and compelling piece of science fiction. Every character is fantastic and so is every actor. This deserves first place for the fantastic romance between Burt and Irving all on its own. If you haven’t watched it yet, get going! Or don’t, it’s a long wait until season 2, but I have a feeling this is going to be known as one of the best tv shows of the 20s when all is said and done.

[gunshou]

This is probably a bad idea, but...

So @luna-rainbow has been posting quite a bit about the portrayal of racism in TFATWS and how it's difficult for non-Americans to understand why Sam didn't want the shield and why he didn't just explain his thinking to Bucky. I replied that I wanted to try and tackle that question, so here we go.

BIG DISCLAIMER: I am a white, middle-aged, cis woman living in the northeastern USA, so I am really in no way the proper spokesperson for this topic. I'm not going to put forth my views as truth, but instead try to explain why I think Sam was so ambivalent and why Bucky just didn't get it (and probably still doesn't even if the writers gave him a small epiphany in the penultimate episode).

Everyone knows that the US was built on the bleeding backs of Black slaves. There is no rational way to dispute this disgusting fact, but the white people who have been in power in this country since forever have done such a good job of normalizing and minimizing the ramifications of that fact that many Americans just go through their lives and never, ever, consider it. Schools teach history, but it's often sanitized and presented in a very "Oops, our bad, sorry y'all" manner that makes young students feel like it was Very Very Long Ago and Over Now. I'm a high school teacher (of literature, not history, but they're intertwined) in a school where I know my colleagues in the Hx Dept are teaching racism as a living, breathing, hideously present concept, and I still have kids tell me every day that "America isn't like that now" as if examples of racial bias and systemic oppression aren't all around them.

In my mostly white district, the few Black kids don't speak up in these discussions, and lord, I do not blame them one bit. For one, they are tired. Tired of being oppressed, tired of talking about it, tired of trying to make other people see their lives and their struggles. Second, no one wants to be the Poster Child and have to bear the ignorance and intrusive interest of their peers. I imagine Sam feels similarly, and that's why he just never gets into it with Bucky. Sam is an optimistic and positive-thinking guy, and probably wants to talk about a million other topics before he wants to educate a 106-year-old white dude about the Black American Experience, and that's his damn right, good for him.

Said 106-year-old, by the way, has literally no concept of what being Black in America means. Luna-rainbow likened him to an immigrant in his own country, and there's some merit to that, especially considering the bulk of his conditioning as the Winter Soldier was at the hands of our Cold War enemies who were invested in making Bucky see America as an enemy. But mostly, the problem is that Bucky was asleep or absent from normal life during one of the most racially tumultuous times of our history. Now, the man lived in NYC, one of the most diverse cities in the USA, and seems relatively chill for having grown up in Ye Olden Times. But he likely hasn't studied the Civil Rights Movement, and how the Whites In Charge panic-reacted to the idea of other people having basic human rights with a coordinated and systemic effort to stop that shit in its tracks while appearing to bow to the social zeitgeist. Jim Crow, Confederate statutes, voter oppression, gerrymandering, redlining -- all the things that the United States Government did (and still does) to keep those BIPOC in their proper place and whites in power -- are often big news to modern people, so of course Bucky wouldn't get it.

He wouldn't intrinsically understand that The Shield represents a government that did its GD best to keep Black people poor, ignorant, and powerless while at the same time pretending to advance them and congratulating itself on how well it tied justice into knots and r*ped that blindfolded bitch holding the scales. He wouldn't know that Sam struggles with how to best embody his hope for the country he loves while also acknowledging that his country doesn't really love him all that much. How conflicted he must be as a veteran who fights for freedom while knowing he's not free to be treated with the dignity and respect everyone deserves. That Shield is government property, Sam is told many times, and to take it up means being the face and mouthpiece of a government that does not look, act, or experience life the way he does. A government that doesn't want him to gain power and will do basically anything to keep him down while all the while denying that they're doing any such thing. Captain America may visibly punch out Nazis, but is he punching out Karens? Or racist cops? Or racist teachers? "A complicated legacy," indeed.

So yeah, there's no way Bucky could know why Sam refused the shield and Bucky took it personally, as a rejection of Steve Rogers himself. And maybe to explain that would have forced Bucky to confront that while he is still Steve's Best Sidekick(TM), Steve abandoned him to this crazy future of alien invasions and divisive politics and tiger selfies and Bucky really just cannot deal. So he just gets pissy about it.

And Sam, for his part, was not going to unpack 70 years of American history and racism because that shit is tiring, especially when he's literally living in it right the f now. So he gets rightfully pissy about Bucky's inability to let it go.

And TFATWS writers go traipsing into the sunset congratulating themselves on the buddy cop story they pounded out that has all the buzzwords and the right tone for our post(?)-BLM times without ever once delving as deep into the story as the topic deserves. And people are confused and disappointed and don't really know why. But the truth is that 200+ years of history and oppression are not easily condensed into a 6-hour superhero TV show, and maybe the writers should have given some damn thought to how much they could realistically convey with sophistication and sensitivity instead of trying to have it all. Because we deserved better, not just as fans, but as critical viewers. (On the other hand, hooray for some people having these discussions instead of just saying BuT it'S JuST FiCTioN LiGhTen UP. Because it is never "just fiction," it is a reflection of our lives and has weight as such.)

Thanks for coming to my long-winded TED Talk, please don't send me hate mail. I'm already having a panic attack at having posted this.

[billyloconsole]

*Rhetoric and Multiculturalism*

The Critical Question I will be exploring is “What is the ideology performed in this artifact, how is it performed, and how does it promote a dominate ideology in a unproductive way?” 

The artifact I will be examining to answer these questions is a photo of three individuals draping a sign over the left field wall at Fenway Park, better known as The Green Monster, during a Boston Red Sox game on September 13th. I believe the ideology being performed in this artifact is that racism will always be popular and “American” just as baseball has for over the last 100 years. The ideology is performed by the display of this banner at a nationally televised event and in front of a crowd of thousands. The ideology is promoted in a negative way because it portrays baseball as a catalyst for racism.

What is the ideology performed in this artifact?

The ideology being performed is that racism and baseball go hand in hand with both being “American” hobbies/views. Baseball has always been referred to as “America’s Pastime”, so the link to racism also being American is the ideology being highlighted by the rhetors. Goldzwig (1998) brings up Ivie’s (1993) view that symbols play a huge role in empowering us and organizing  our lives. Ivie says, “Knowledge constructed from a rhetorical perspective is about the symbols that organize our lives... war over peace, white over black, freedom over tyranny, etc.” (Pg. 273)  So many Americans, young and old, view baseball as a symbol that organizes our lives. Personally, my whole childhood centered around baseball. Whether it was watching the Cubs, playing in park-district all the way up until college, or just talking about it with my friends and family. Never once did I associate my love for baseball with racism or any similar notion. Although my perspective does not take into account other’s experiences with baseball, I do think the majority of baseball fans would not agree with the ideology being performed by the banner that was displayed.

How is it (ideology) performed?

The ideology is performed first by displaying the sign in public. However, it goes much deeper than the act itself. First off, there are thousands of people gathered at Fenway Park for every game of the Red Sox season. Not only do the people at that particular game see the ideology being performed, there are also millions at home worldwide watching the broadcast. By bringing the sign to a nationally televised sporting event, the artifact is immediately made more effective compared to if it was brought to a park or held up on the streets. Furthermore, the banner gained attention outside of the sports world and made it to the top of many news outlets articles. The ideology was effectively performed by the number of people it reached and by the attention it brought nationally to those six words.

How does it promote a dominant ideology in an unproductive way?

In my opinion, the portrayal of baseball being a catalyst for racism is unproductive. The ideology presented is one that does not base itself in any facts, but on opinion. Baseball was the first sport in America to break down the color barrier where Jackie Robinson became the first African American athlete to play in a major American sporting league. The fact that baseball was the first to do this pushes back on the ideology being presented by the banner because it shows that they were the first to think with open minds during segregation. Goldzwig (1998) brings in Glazer’s (1997) thoughts on how multiculturalism is what needs to be accepted and will what the future generations of the world will look to on how to treat one another. Glazer says, “multiculturalism is now the new reality and will continue to influence our future.” (pg. 274) 

Critical Localism Applied

Goldzwig’s theory on critical localism is very applicable to the case of my artifact. Boston has been known to be one of the more racially controversial sports towns in America. There have been multiple occurrences where players have felt unsafe playing at venues such as The Boston Garden and Fenway Park. Goldzwig’s theory on critical localism is the thought that, “[it] focuses our attention on the discourse of local communities, practice, and cultures.” (pg. 276) In other words, Goldzwig puts an emphasis on improving local communities with multicultural issues rather than trying to fix the problem abroad first. This fits the model for Boston where there has been racism involved in their sports for years. If the sporting events in Boston are brought to attention and the problem is actively being worked on, then their is more of a likelihood for progress.

Outside Source

The outside source I chose was written by Anderson (1996) titled “Racism in Sports: A Question of Ethics”.  Anderson brings up the viewpoint many, including myself, believe about sports when he says, “To many people, the sports world is a place in which none of the normal problems of the "real" world could possibly exist.” (pg. 357) This goes back to people not associating sports with racism, but Anderson would disagree. He says that racism in sports has transformed into “unconscious racism”. He explains that this racism does not come from “cognitive intentional actions” and that this form is, “more insidious because it is of the most part less straightforward, outspoken and ‘honest.’” (pg. 359) Another point Anderson makes is that people believe sports represent racial equality, but really that “sport is a reflection of society and racism is intertwined in the sports culture.” (pg. 365-66) This presents the problem of the Boston sports sphere. If the city of Boston is being portrayed by their sports, then it is safe to assume why people would associate racism with their teams.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the issue of racism we face in our country has become more and more prevalent in the media recently. People are displaying their ideologies in productive ways like the campaign to kneel during The National Anthem started by Colin Kaepernick. Other, less productive, ideologies are being presented by actions like the one witnessed at the Boston Red Sox game. The shift to a multicultural society needs to be one where all parties are cooperating fully with one another and fighting for the equal rights of all citizens. Rhetoric like the one displayed at Fenway Park is unproductive and creates negative conversations on topics that are extremely sensitive.

Works Cited

Anderson, P.M. (1996). Racism in Sports: A Question of Ethics. Marquette Sports Law Review, 6(2), 357-408.

Goldzwig, S.R. (1998). Multiculturalism, rhetoric and the Twenty-First Century. Southern Communication Journal, 63(4), 273-290. 

Artifact Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/us-sport/boston-red-sox-fenway-park-anti-racism-banner-removed-baseball-mlb-a7946141.html