An article in the Wall Street Journal profiled the women writers behind the hit AMC drama Mad Men, where they make up the majority of the staff. Such a writers’ room is a rarity; more often seen is a writers’ room composed entirely of men. But the world of television is a utopia of diversity in comparison to the feature world. Try this little test: think of all the contemporary Hollywood directors you can name. Now think of all the women on that list. I like to think I’m well versed in these things, and I barely need more than one hand to count the number in the second category.

There are two questions that revolve around this issue: Why is there such a lack of representation of women in Hollywood, and why is television slightly more diverse than features? It’s especially interesting in this historical moment where the Sotomayor nomination revealed quite a bit of rhetoric with the unspoken assumption that the white male was the standard of unbiased neutrality. There has been a mountain of writing on this very topic, but let’s try to sketch some points out.

It goes without question that the majority of what comes out of Hollywood is saddled with some sort of inequality of representation. My favorite of these tests: think of the last dozen films you’ve seen, and think of the most prominent woman in each one. Now how many of those women are more than a wife/girlfriend/sex object/love interest? (The only genre in which women are strongly represented is romance, for obvious reasons. Pursue that line of inquiry and you just get into wheels within wheels, so I’m just going to recommend that you watch The Celluloid Closet for that.)

Some of this lack of representation in front of the camera stems from a lack of representation behind the camera, and both shortcomings come from an inherent bias somewhere in the chain of production. This bias is largely inadvertent, because most filmmakers aren’t going around saying, “We can’t put a black/Latino/Asian/female person in this role.” But I have to say “largely” because in some cases, that’s exactly what they’re saying:

“There’s sort of an accepted myth that if you have two black actors, a male and a female, in the lead of a romantic comedy, that people around the world don’t want to see it,” [Will] Smith told the British paper, the Birmingham Postwhile promoting the flick [Hitch] overseas. “We spend $50-something million making this movie and the studio would think that was tough on their investment. So the idea of a black actor and a white actress comes up—that’ll work around the world, but it’s a problem in the U.S.”

So in Hollywood logic, a black woman won’t do well overseas and a white woman won’t do well in America. So let’s split the difference and cast a Latina! Not exactly cinema’s finest hour, but it shows that most of the skewed representation isn’t because of some malicious atmosphere but because of a drive to chase the bottom line—movies are a business after all, and so the studios pander to the biases of their audiences. Another way this is seen is in the conventional wisdom that women will watch films centered around men and male themes but it doesn’t work the other way around.  So in Hollywood’s Barnumesque logic, catering to the shallowest and most narrow-minded among us will lead to maximum profit.

That explains part of it. But shouldn’t women be able to direct all kinds of films? Kathryn Bigelow tells us yes, but look at the rest of the films out there and the evidence is scant.  Just as how a number of U.S. Senators thought that white males are free of the racial and gender bias that Latina women apparently carry with them, the Hollywood assumption is that men can do your standard chick flick rom com as well as women can, plus everything else to boot.

Again, this is (largely) absent of any active malice. Few people would say that men are inherently better scientists than women (except for Lawrence Summers and look where that got him) and few people would say that men are inherently better musicians than women (except for the Vienna Philharmonic). And yet when orchestras started hiring via blind audition in which the performer was hidden behind a screen, there was a corresponding increase in the number of women hired.  Some biases are just too subtle, too ingrained, and too subconscious; and the smallest things can tip the balance in hiring.

Few people would say that men are inherently better writers and directors than women. But you can’t hire directors and writers behind a blind screen. There are no objective criteria in this industry; it’s all about personality and reputation. Once again, the focus is the bottom line: on a feature, one director and one script hold everything together. The studios want proven performers to fill those roles, known quantities from a select list that can turn out a good product.  Right now, most of the names on that very short list are men; those demographics may shift in the future, but it looks to be a long and slow process.

What about television? The Journal article notes that 23% of television writers last year were women, a clear minority. However it’s far better than the 12% of feature writers that were women. What makes the difference?

A theory I heard once was that feature directing and scriptwriting was about self-aggrandizement, competition, and dominance. Television directing and writing, on the other hand, was about consensus-building, collaboration, and long-term planning. Features were full of “daddies” and television shows were full of “mommies.” While this was quite possibly one of the stupidest things I had ever heard, it sounds like the type of conventional wisdom that some executive somewhere would believe.

A more plausible take on the situation is that features are generally larger in scope, more visual, and more action-oriented. Television on the other hand tends to be more intimate, more dialogue-driven, and more focused on character and relationships. Along with this, feature audiences are male-driven and television audiences are female-driven. Combine those two bits of wisdom and view them through the lens of subtle gender bias, and it seems like those in charge might think that women are better-equipped to handle television (but not enough to bring them toward any sort of equality).

But to me the strongest element seems to be one of risk. Hollywood is a business, and everyone wants to maximize profit while minimizing risk. The sad fact is that the conventional wisdom says that hiring a woman anytime and anywhere is a risk compared to hiring a man. The difference is that in a feature, hiring that woman as the sole director or the sole writer puts everything at risk. The episodic nature of television means that you only put a small part of the larger whole at risk when you hire a woman. And that makes the risk acceptable enough to do it.

Of course, the fact that one of the best shows on television is written mostly by women means that all your conventional wisdom is bullshit.

Let’s be honest, not many corporations have qualms about doing business in China from a moral standpoint. The global recession has seen to that. Why Google would throw down the gauntlet in this way baffles my business sense—though there was a brou-ha-ha when they set up within the Great Firewall, it soon died down and people went back to pirating images and searching for porn with as much ease as before. We love Google—it makes our work so much easier, why not just turn a blind eye to their toadying to the Chinese government? Yahoo reported human rights activists to the Chinese government, Microsoft happily censored MSN.com, and MySpace ditched politics and religion discussion groups when they set up in China. Ethics are ethics, but a Chinese cash cow is a Chinese cash cow.

One would ask why the sudden change of heart, when Google has been happy to censor their content up to now. Why do they suddenly notice that Chinese hackers are using their skills to access sensitive material? Did they not expect this? For a company that prides itself on its access to information and the intellect of its employees, this seems like an obvious oversight.

Is this really an issue of censorship?

The Chinese government ensures that any corporation wanting to set up in China needs to do it through Chinese people and Chinese channels—there’s little room for companies to exert their own policies regarding employee training or sourcing. Playing the human rights card just helps to make them look like the good guys, and not a profit-driven corporation. (Which they are, by the way.)

Baidu claims that Google is trying to cover up what has been a rather embarrassing market failure, largely due to its relatively sparse Chinese-language content and English-language bias. “Would Google top executives still proclaim that they would ‘do no evil’ and quit China if they had taken 80% of China’s search market?” said Sun Yunfeng, chief architect of Baidu. This market failure, I have no doubt, has been partially engineered by the Chinese government, and a Chinese-based, government-approved search engine has done very nicely because of it.

Once again, opinion is polarized. The East says Google is failing in China, and is retreating to save money—the “human rights” card is a red herring to curry favor with the West. The West seems to think Google is doing well in China and is taking this stance to set an example to other companies pandering to Chinese law.  The activists involved have gone on record saying they’re used to their accounts being hacked—why all the kerfuffle? I think the Google execs know why they’re taking this “stand.” And if their bonuses are anything to go by, it’s unlikely to be an entirely principled one.

This is more a case of China looking out for Chinese companies: simple protectionism. And we Westerners really hate protectionism, unless, of course, we’re practicing it ourselves.

—

Fenwick Smith

The execution of Akmal Shaikh has shocked the West, and Europe has vociferously decried this apparently ruthless treatment of a foreign national by the Chinese government.

Legally, Shaikh was treated no differently than a Chinese offender—possession of even 50 grams of heroin is a potentially capital offence in China, making a 4 kilogram payload an open-and-shut case in the eyes of the Chinese judiciary. In fact, the long stay of execution and access afforded relatives would suggest a certain level of special treatment, as most Chinese offenders convicted of a similar crime would be rushed from customs to cell to grave in a matter of weeks or even days. China’s zero-tolerance policy on drugs is a holdover from the Opium Wars, when the foreign-brokered narcotics trade destroyed China’s teetering economy and brought the Qing empire to its knees. The death penalty is liberally applied to drug offenses, as it has been for over a hundred years. It is overwhelmingly supported by the Chinese populace, who consider drug offenses almost tantamount to rape and murder in its potential to ruin lives. You won’t get clemency from the Chinese for drug smuggling, no matter what mental illness you suffer from. Our land, our laws.

Nevertheless, the world seems to feel Shaikh deserved clemency. Whilst I have no doubt his family felt his unstable mental state reason enough to commute his harsh sentence, I am much more skeptical that Shaikh’s mental condition had anything to do with Europe’s attitude to the execution. The reaction from European politicians is simple indignation disguised as moral outrage. We’re not surprised that the Chinese execute people for drug smuggling. We’re surprised at their audacity in executing an EU citizen.

Westerners are accustomed to special treatment while abroad—police turning a blind eye to our misdemeanors and at worst extraditing us with a slap on the wrist and a temporary travel ban. The very idea that a foreign country would actually execute one of us is anathema, and maybe twenty years ago it would have been unheard of, outside of war zones or the fog of revolution. Consequently, gay Europeans have traveled to Tehran with little fear of a government who regularly hang their Iranian counterparts, and British students have happily puffed away on cannabis in Malaysia whilst its citizens convicted of drug possession are publicly flogged. One law for locals, and another for tourists.

Not so in 2010, when China has finally realized it no longer needs to listen to what the West says. Like SkyNet becoming self-aware, China now appreciates just how powerless other countries are to influence its domestic affairs—look at the brushoff Obama’s human rights entreaties received from Chinese leadership, or Wen Jiabao’s neat sidestepping of China’s Copenhagen commitments. Priorities wise, being seen by its own people to treat criminals with equal severity is way above keeping the EU placated. China is scared of its own population, not foreigners.

It is nigh impossible to dredge any positivity from Akmal Shaikh’s sad story. But the lesson for all of us is that playing by China’s rules has surpassed economics. The Chinese have fired another palpable shot in their struggle for global supremacy, and all Europe can answer with is hot air.

J.R. Siegel

The educational system in China focuses on the century of humiliation—in particular the devastation wrought by the introduction of opium by the British. The Communist Party ties its legitimacy to its ability to lead China toward a new, post-humiliation stage of history in which the Mainland reasserts its rightful place as the leading power in Asia and beyond. Thus the execution of Akmal Shaikh in Xinjiang last week should be understood as a domestic signal that a strong China will not allow brook the introduction of drugs on the Mainland by foreigners—especially the British.

Following the execution the Financial Times reported that it did not expect Mr. Shaikh’s death to undermine the political and economic ties between Britain and China. Although the British protested mightily, they were unwilling to take any retaliatory actions that might have imperiled British access to Chinese labor and markets.

The logical underpinning the British response of loud talk and no action mirrors the policies that the West has adopted vis-à-vis China since 1989. The West will condemn China, but when a confrontation erupts that might imperil Western access to China and its 1.3 billion potential consumers, the West invariably backs down. We saw this in Copenhagen, when China refused to allow international monitors to enter the country and blocked an agreement that would have set international emissions targets for 2050. China has come to believe that if it stands firm, the West would rather meet its demands than risk losing access to the Mainland.

While I am not suggesting that the execution of Mr. Shaikh was the opportune time for the West to begin standing up to China, I do believe that the time for action is rapidly approaching. As the Chinese grow more confident on the international stage, it is imperative that the West stand up for some of the principles its represents: human rights, democracy, and free trade. Indeed, the time has come for China to revalue its currency and thereby help bring the international economy back into equilibrium. If the United States needs to impose a tariff on all Chinese goods until Beijing takes such an action, so be it.

“Bucks for Belchers” will simultaneously introduce and fund four interrelated policies:

• The government will provide significant tax deductions to coal-fired plants that install post-combustion capture retrofits. Retrofitting all of these plants will reduce CO₂ emissions from the coal power sector by 50 percent. The highly respected Electric Power Research Institute estimates that around 59 percent of the coal-fired plants in the US are suitable for these retrofits.
• The government will offer generous tax deductions for investments that increase the efficiency of the remaining 41 percent of coal-fired plants. Upgrades that enhance the steam quality in a plant will reduce its CO₂ emissions by 5 percent.
• The EPA New Source Requirements procedure should be streamlined for all plants that apply to the Program so that businesses are not penalized for trying to become more energy efficient.
• The Program will provide $20 billion in financing for demonstration projects that integrate American-made renewable energy technologies into the portfolios of existing electricity providers. The renewable energy brought on-line by these projects will be subsidized so that electricity from these sites does not cost consumers more than the electricity coming from entirely fossil fuel burning sites.

The cost of this program cannot deter action. According to a recent study, the government could create two million new jobs by investing $100 billion in programs that support renewable and efficient energy use. This $100 billion is less than one-fifth of the amount of revenue earned by listed companies on climate-change-related business last year. Moreover, government backing for the renewable energy sector in Germany has nurtured an industry that employs more than 200,000 people and has had revenues of more than €20 billion ($29 billion) from the erection and operation of plants last year. Renewable energy is going to propel the world economy for generations—and the United States can’t afford to remain woefully behind.

“Bucks for Belchers” has the potential to stimulate green energy investments in all 50 states and help the U.S. become the leading user and exporter of green energy technologies. In the three months after the “Cash for Clunkers” program was passed, 98 percent of the $3 billion dollars earmarked for rebates was approved for payment. Government and the private sector can do amazing things when they work together—and in the wake of the Copenhagen debacle, there has never been a better time to announce that the U.S. is ready, willing and able to lead once again.

Neither country has an ideal health care system, but that is where the similarities end.  According to the Associated Press, the Chinese government is injecting $124-billion over three years to shore up the health care system, focusing on:

- Improving health services, in part by building 2,000 county hospitals and 29,000 township hospitals and ensuring that each of the country’s nearly 700,000 villages has a clinic.

- Expanding state health insurance from 70 to 90 percent of the population, or an additional 200 million people — equivalent to two-thirds of the U.S. population.

- Reducing drug costs by controlling prices for medications deemed essential.

It is an ambitious goal, if not entirely feasible, but it throws into stark contrast the sluggishness with which American health care legislation is being debated.  (For anyone who has quit paying attention, the Senate and the House have both passed health care legislation but have yet to reconcile their respective bills.)  This is the inherent disadvantage of democracy, further complicated in America by political obscurantism and entrenched corporate interests.  Oligarchy can lead to terrible decisions, but at least they’re quick.   China’s problem has never been promising things, but rather keeping that promise.   From the same article:

The central government has laid out a broad strategy but left specifics to local officials. The result is a series of experiments. While learning by doing is fine, there appears to be little formal evaluation of these trials, which may make it difficult to pinpoint what works…

China is using the same strategy that they used to test special economic zones—promulgating a goal and working backwards to find the best strategy that can be applied to the whole country.  But even if the government ends up meeting just a quarter of its goal, it will have given more people health care than are without it in the United States.

Which begs the question: does democracy in the United States protect people’s rights or has the political system become so broken that it actually does the opposite?  The Communist Party is by no means an enlightened despot but its ability to effect widespread, relatively-fast change is undisputed.  Whether it’s investment in infrastructure after the financial crisis, mobilizing rescue crews after the Sichuan earthquake, or spurring research in green energy, its quick thinking and unilateral decision making in those cases has helped the lives of its citizens.

Its track record of implementation, however, has not been as strong.  Corruption at lower levels of government is still rampant and pollution plagues the country partly due to skirted regulations.  This is where America typically has the advantage.  Staggered levels of courts and watchdog groups usually ensure that unprovocative legislation is enforced.  But after this year’s bailouts, public confidence in whether interest groups actually follow or are held accountable by the law has been shaken.

So what does this say about the future?  Which country will prove to be more responsible toward its citizens?  Outlandish as it might seem, it is arguably easier for the Chinese government to ease their hold on power than it is for the American people to reclaim theirs from the hands of corporate/political/religious interests that dominate American government today.  What’s sad is that all of Washington’s human rights criticisms are in danger of becoming painfully hypocritical if China gives its citizens universal health care before America.  At the end of this first decade in the twenty-first century, in terms of giving all its people access to affordable medical care, China and America have more in common than they realize.

Chloe Wang, China's next big thing?

Chloe Wang is an American in every sense of the word. She hails from Chicago, her father is Chinese, and her mother is white. She didn’t speak a lick of Mandarin and knew little of China until the Beijing Olympics. This did not stop U.S. manager Peter Coquillard from packaging the seventeen year old’s first single for the Asian market. Chloe shares the producers of her first album with Madonna, Britney Spears, and Miley Cyrus, and launched her first single in both English and Chinese.

(Sidenote: I wrote an article a few months ago about exploiting Asian-American talent for global audiences. Looks like this boat is taking off!)

Chloe Wang, despite her abysmal Chinese, has had a positive reception in China. And why wouldn’t she? She’s beautiful, sexually charged, and half-white. She has a dedicated, growing fan base and is quickly being idolized in true pop fashion.

Lou Jing, the mixed-race singer creating a stir in China.

Take now the case of Lou Jing, a struggling singer who was featured on an American Idol-esque show in Shanghai. Lou Jing was born in Shanghai to a Chinese mother and African-American father, whom she has never met. She is a Chinese citizen and speaks perfect Chinese. But unlike Chloe Wang her reception on the show has been anything but glamorous. Angry netizens have gone so far as to say she should “get out of China” and that she “never should have been born.” Those who watch the show surely do so not for her talent, but because of the color of her skin. She has been dubbed “chocolate girl” and “black pearl” by the hosts. I find it difficult to believe that a show in America could get away with similar behavior without being universally crucified.

I am not one to sound off against trolling netizens of any country. But these two cases clearly display, if not overt racism in China, undertones of what racial identity means and the implications of skin color in a country whose population is 90% Han Chinese.

One implicit difference between these two girls is the race of their fathers. Chloe Wang has a Chinese father. Does this mean something to Chinese citizens in comparison to Lou Jing’s African-American father? In my opinion it does, at least on a subconscious level. Chloe Wang is a product of a Chinese man hooking up with a white woman. That’s pretty cool if you’re Chinese. But to Asians, Lou Jing is a product of an African-American man having an illicit affair with a Chinese woman. The father is nowhere to be found. In this scenario Lou Jing becomes a symbol of Western imperialism, the loss and “rape” of Chinese culture—something unnatural, and shameful.

Another difference is the way white and black people are perceived in Asian culture. Pop culture, media, politics, history and a host of other things cultivate these perceptions. The bottom line in the minds of many Chinese; it is at least commendable (if not a step up) if you have a relationship with a white person, it is a step down if you go black. There is a very real mindset in China and many colonized nations of the idea of emasculation, of a colonial power not only raping the country of resources but also of women. To many the fact that a Chinese man and white woman marry is a sign of modernism. For some Chloe Wang serves as a representation of an upwardly mobile, confident, new, and modern China. Lou Jing perhaps is viewed in a backwards, illicit, shameful light. A step forward, a step backward.

Lu Xun, China’s foremost modern author, perhaps best captured Chinese attitudes towards foreigners:

Throughout the ages the Chinese have had only two ways of looking at foreigners. We either look up to them as superior beings or down at them as wild animals. We have never been able to treat them as friends or to consider them as people like ourselves.

'No Offend Chinese Women' a slogan used during anti-African race protests in Beijing which alleged rape of Chinese women by African students.

I am ashamed that these perceptions exist in the minds of neo-con Chinese. Not everyone in China is guilty of feeling this way and very rarely do people take it to the extremes that I have earlier elucidated. But these are cultural perceptions and stereotypes that exist below the surface, en masse. Stereotypes which are rarely vocalized to outsiders yet subconsciously influence many parts of cultural exchange and interaction.

To date, China’s treatment of ethnic minorities has been appalling. Especially entrenched are racist attitudes towards those of African descent. In 1988 a Christmas party in Hehai University in Nanjing spurred an all out race riot against Africans studying in the city. The incident was sparked after two African men escorting two Chinese women were involved in an altercation with security over correct identification. The resulting fight left 11 Chinese students and university employees injured. A false rumor was spread thereafter that an African had murdered a Chinese student. That’s when the Chinese took to the streets.

Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times recounts on December 31, 1988:

…on Thursday, more than 130 of those African students remained confined to a Government guest house in Yangzhou, 80 kilometres north-east of Nanjing, to protect them from angry crowds that earlier in the week screamed for the “black devils” to face punishment.

With them were a handful of dark-complexioned Nepalese and Pakistani students, who also were threatened by Chinese who, in some cases, had only a hazy idea of what an African looked like.

“Firmly support American Blacks in their righteous struggle!”

This past summer’s Urumqi riots in which the government and many Han Chinese violently quelled unrest and protests by the ethnic Muslim Uighur minority is indicative of the racial tensions still prevalent throughout China.

I find it difficult to imagine that China will make sweeping reforms in the way race and culture are perceived unless their society becomes less homogeneous. The question I ponder is if one day China, as a premier global superpower, will embrace a cultural and racial definition of itself as amorphous and diverse as America’s.

Lastly I return to Chloe and Lou Jing to proffer a possible explanation for the difference in reception between the two that has nothing to do with race and everything to do with media. An explanation that may confirm that the Chinese are quickly becoming more like America than we give them credit for. Chloe Wang enters China as prepackaged, glamorous, and ready for consumption by the prevailing Chinese pop machine. She has the support of an American record label and one of China’s most successful producers on her team. Lou Jing does not. She is just another reality TV contestant, no publicist or multimillion-dollar record label backing her. Could this have made the difference for Lou Jing? Picture for a moment Lou Jing, marketed as China’s Beyonce, her video and single released with all the pomp and circumstance that such a title entails. I can definitely see her being loved, accepted, even mobbed by Chinese. Maybe it was never her race that was at issue, maybe it was just a question of “packaging.”

]]> http://www.thehypermodern.com/2009/12/22/race-relations-in-china/feed/ 3 http://www.thehypermodern.com/2009/12/20/%e2%80%9cpop-ate-my-heart%e2%80%9d-lady-gaga-her-videos-and-her-fame-monster/ http://www.thehypermodern.com/2009/12/20/%e2%80%9cpop-ate-my-heart%e2%80%9d-lady-gaga-her-videos-and-her-fame-monster/#comments Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:27:49 +0000 Oscar Moralde http://www.thehypermodern.com/?p=2093

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, better known to the world as Lady Gaga, has had a meteoric rise in the world of pop music with the release of her debut album The Fame. With her catchy lyrical hooks and slick electronic beats, Lady Gaga may not necessarily break any significant musical ground; she beats her critics to the punch and says that “My music isn’t me jerking my dick off all over a piano trying to feel something. I make soulless electronic pop.” But that electronic pop is an excellent springboard for a rich output of visual media, including not only music videos but also short films as well. Throughout it all, one can detect a singular vision that expresses a consistent visual style and explores a tightly-knit set of questions and themes. By examining her videos and films, one can see that Lady Gaga is trying to be a different kind of pop star. She’s an auteur in the truest sense of the word, claiming ownership of her visual output as a slice of a larger mode of artistic expression.

It is often difficult to locate a sense of authorship in the popular music world, much of which is manufactured by committee and corporate dictum and bears more than a little resemblance to the Hollywood studio system. Not every pop musician can claim authorship over his or her work; in fact, few can. Before one can examine Lady Gaga’s body of work for an authorial voice, one must justify that the body of work belongs to her in the first place. What separates Gaga from most other pop singers and musicians that we can even begin to ask the question, “What is Lady Gaga’s authorial signature?”

Continue reading at The House Next Door.

The central plotline of the episode is dominated by Serena: the stresses placed upon her love affair with Trip, its dissolution, and her car accident. Apparently Gossip Girl was not content with the Kennedy parallels by the fake Chappaquiddick earlier in the season that they had to have a real one: Trip crashes his car after being accosted by three wolves (really?) in the middle of the road, and he and his wife try to cover up the incident by making it look like Serena was driving the car or something similar. Ignoring the fact that this was a plotline used in the comedy Arrested Development, and that there is a huge bloody indentation in the passenger-side windshield, the problem is that this is putting Serena into the utterly cliche “girl in peril” role. The answer to all the dramatic conflicts in this episode is “Serena is hurt, let’s all rush to the hospital!” The Jenny-Eric conflict fizzles out with a rather weak justification about family, considering all the horrible things they’ve done to each other this season — they seem to be setting Jenny up for the even-more-insipid plotline of “Jenny is a drug dealer!”

The events turn the rather bland character of Trip into a scumbag rather quickly, but he seems schizophrenic (as a politician usually ends up seeing, true), another hodge-podge of plot necessities that only exists to create artificial conflicts. It also places Nate conveniently in the role of protector, voice of reason, and hero, finally punching out his own cousin. (The quality of a season of a Josh Schwartz show can be judged by how frequently someone gets punched out. Season One: a punch in the pilot and in almost every other episode. This season: it took twelve episodes for the first K.O.)

The problem revealed by this storyline is that it shows that at this point, in order for Serena to be a sympathetic figure, she has to be a pitiable one. She has to be wronged; she has to be weak; she has to be placed in grave danger. In other words, she has to be Marissa Cooper. The Marissa Cooper Problem was seen in The O.C., where Mischa Barton’s character was a loathsome, vile creature: self-centered, over-dramatic, codependent. She always made incredibly stupid decisions, tried to make herself the center of attention with transparent cries for help, and generally ruined every plotline she was remotely involved in. Contrast this to the Serena of Gossip Girl’s first season, who was intelligent and reasonable; even though she wrestled with her past and with inner demons, she was possessed with a self-awareness and confidence that Marissa Cooper lacked. Unfortunately, it seems as the seasons wore on, Serena trended downwards toward that broken characterization like it was some kind of baseline equilibrium. I’ve mentioned similar problems with the character of Jenny Humphrey; it’s interesting that the most well-adjusted and sympathetic female main character on the show is Blair Waldorf, who also happens to be the character who hews the closest to traditional gender roles.

In fact, the only character really served by the episode and treated with a measure of dignity and thoughtfulness is Chuck Bass; it’s the anniversary of his father’s death, and the weight of that lays heavily upon him. His internal monologue is externalized as a dialogue with a ghostly vision of Bart Bass, and in those scenes the show actually takes time away from the relentless pushing of plot points to breathe in and realize one of their characters as something more than the conjunction of conflicts. Chuck continually compares himself to his father, and part of what drives his character is the indelible fact that his father died knowing him only as a wastrel and a dissipated lush. Bart Bass will never see his son be a man, and this invests Chuck with a measure of guilt, compounded by the fact he couldn’t even muster up the courage to see his father on his deathbed. It’s a powerful internal struggle, as we see Chuck deciding between whether to wall himself away from others and retreat into the exacting security of work — in other words, to honor his father by being the same man as he was — or to connect to others, to reach out and admit his own inner humanity — to honor his father by being a better man than he was.

Friday Night Lights also recently dealt with a plot arc about one of its main protagonists, Matt Saracen, dealing with the death of his father. Although the shows are diametric opposites — rural Texas versus Upper East Side Manhattan, raw and subtle versus stylized and soapy — it’s interesting to see the commonalities between the two arcs. Both seem to manifest the loss of the father as a spiritual wound; for Matt it is fresh and deep, while for Chuck, it is a dull ache, scarred over and yet impossible to ignore. Both are confronted with images of their fathers, unsure of how to reconcile the man they see with the man they knew and will never see again. Both shows meditate on how grief is a personal and supremely unique torment, impossible to share with others; and yet we do it anyway because we don’t know anything else. Without indulging in normative claims about what a family should be, both shows dramatize that we live in a society that is bereft of fathers and yet that same society will always live in their shadow. And finally, both Friday Night Lights and Gossip Girl tell us in order to heal the wounds and pain caused by the loss of their fathers, the characters must confront their own fears and misgivings about who they are as individuals. Chuck and Matt are men, not their father’s sons.

Of course, Gossip Girl is a soap opera, and it can’t escape that; it has to plant and pay off another over-the-top storyline about “Chuck’s mother didn’t die in childbirth and has been living in secret for decades, isn’t that crazy?” But let’s ignore that for now. Of all the characters’ obsessions and conflicts with their parents, Chuck’s is the most potent and the most thoughtful. And of all of Gossip Girl’s reversals and inversions over the years, the supreme one is that the most villainous and corrupt character has matured into the most nuanced and truly understandable one.

Those that scaped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie.

– William Bradford, History of the Plymouth Plantation

Gossip Girl graces its fans with a belated Thanksgiving episode this year; these episodes tend to be the bulwarks of the season, playing directly to the show’s core strengths: filial and political intrigue, incredible awkward moments, and reversal upon reversal upon reversal. This year’s episode is no exception.

The “Jenny-as-neoconservative US interests” allegory continues in full force, as somehow Jenny cannot comprehend why after exercising heavy-handed domination and humiliation over Eric and his boyfriend Jonathan why they would somehow hate her and why Eric would not want to be best buddies at Thanksgiving. Of course, once the cards come out and Eric reveals that he was behind the attempted sabotage of cotillion, Jenny promises retaliation while Eric promises never-ending war. This is part and parcel with the disparity of force brought to bear by the hegemon and the challenger. The hegemon is on the defense; the challenger is on the offense. The hegemon has everything to lose; the challenger has nothing to lose. The hegemon has to win every time; the challenger only has to win once. Most likely something (perhaps not Eric, but something) will bring Jenny crashing back down to earth, if only because turning Jenny into a permanent Blair clone holds little long-term narrative potential.

Meanwhile, the fallout from the Dan-Vanessa-Olivia threesome continues to reverberate; Olivia is out of the picture and shooting a new film (and possibly off the show for good?) leaving Dan to stew with the seemingly newfound feelings for his best friend. This plays off as awkward banter during the Thanksgiving dinner proper and Vanessa’s mother Gabriela bringing her perception and wisdom to the situation. It’s actually quite difficult to summon interest for this plot, because as mentioned before, Dan Humphrey is no longer our point of entry into this world. Back in the salad days of Season One, we were traversing into unknown territory, and Dan — good old cynical outsider Dan — provided our viewpoint into the world of the Upper East Side. However, his transition over the seasons has made him into as much of an insider as anyone else on the show; he’s become one of the soapy characters without any of the interesting soapy plots. Again, this is the same transition that The O.C. went through somewhat unsuccessfully, and calls into question whether there isn’t something inherently self-limiting to this narrative cycle — it’s got enough life for a couple of seasons, but trying to sustain it is like keeping a corpse on life support.

What ends up happening in this kind of narrative cycle is that we become inured to your standard soap plots; either the plotlines have to be thinly-veiled retreads of things we’ve already seen, or things have to be pushed to newer and more extreme levels, eventually creating an atmosphere and mood that is unsustainable. For example, now that we’re fully ensconced in this world, it seems that the only things that can hold our attention and have some narrative oomph are indeed the crazy soap-bubble plotlines — aka the Serena-Nate-Tripp clusterfuck. This is a plotline that was mind-numbingly boring when it was merely about Serena wondering whether or not she should sleep with a married congressman, but with the introduction of Tripp’s wife as an active antagonistic force, there is an actual sense of intrigue when played out over the course of the Thanksgiving meal. This is also complicated by Nate’s revelation of his own feelings for Serena, which seems to pose a parallel to Dan: note how Nate’s active reaching out towards Serena ends up in heartbreak, while Dan’s denial of his own feelings results in a pleasant status quo, regardless of how false it may actually be.

The French theorist Guy Debord (I told you the Situationist International would show up here sooner or later) discussed two opposing forces at work in representational culture and media: detournement and recuperation. Detournement happens when marginalized, avant-garde, or oppositional forces take a piece of mainstream culture and invert it to create a new work with a subversive quality, one that often challenges core assumptions of the mainstream. One can argue that this is exactly what happens with the centerpiece of the episode, the continual series of relationship-shattering revelations that summon a feeling akin to a boxer getting pummeled in the face repeatedly. The scene is backed by the Jason Derulo track “Whatcha Say”, which samples Imogen Heap’s song “Hide and Seek” — which any follower of Josh Schwartz’s work knows is indelibly linked with the most hilarious scene from the entire run of The O.C. (In its own way, the connection between the two may be seen to be a cry for help.)

In opposition to detournement is recuperation, in which mainstream media takes oppositional forms (for example, punk music — or the decentralized multicentric communication style of today’s youth) and repackages it in such a way that it retains or generates mass appeal while being stripped of its oppositional or subversive content. Gossip Girl exists in the grey zone between the forces, playing with mitigated versions of each. At its best, by purposefully taking a different tack from the novels from which it was spawned, the series’ self-awareness plays directly into upending its own forms; the viewers can engage in negotiated readings of the material, and the show becomes open to various form of critique (such as from a Marxian perspective). At its worst, the show abandons this course and takes the path of least resistance, only playing at a hip self-awareness while it attempts to rely on its performers’ natural charms to get through tired retreads of done-to-death plotlines.

This precise position is not exactly one of recuperation, but it evokes similar responses because the question facing Gossip Girl is whether it is relevant to its audience anymore. A recent article in The New Yorker noted that

Even before the financial crash of last fall, the sales of “Gossip Girl” books had leveled off, and since then they have declined — in part because “fans are getting their ‘Gossip Girl’ in other places,” as Morgenstern puts it, but also because the books’ milieu is less beguiling, and less relevant, than it once seemed to be. At Alloy, too, a certain weariness with brat lit has set in. “We are really a little sick of mean-girl stuff”… “More serious, angsty literature is where girls are right now. Morbid, dead-girl lit.”

Twilight is the new Gossip Girl. Perhaps it’s right that a navel-gazing focus on the decaying dead space within American culture, a twisted and somewhat sadomasochistic Nietzschean power fantasy, has replaced a cynical and self-conscious quasi-celebration of excess and style as the flashpoint in young adult literature and media. So then, what is to be done with Gossip Girl? One can almost feel this awareness of being marginalized in the series itself, and this season has been one long mission to transform and transition into a form that is still viable. Will it succeed? It’s up in the air at this point, but if a country can seriously transform a singular semi-fictional event that happens to be one of the few points in Native American relations that wasn’t wholesale massacre and oppression into one of its major national holidays, then anything is possible.

(I assume it will be covered in great deal in the upcoming episode, so I’m shelving discussion of the Serena-Lily-Dr. Van der Woodsen plotline — but let’s just say that the “identical coats” plot element was so brazenly transparent that it works. More intrigue is afoot…)

A 10-year-old Arkansas boy named Will Phillips has refused to stand up in class and recite the pledge of allegiance as he feels that gays are not allowed to get married and are not included as part of a nation that provides ”liberty and justice for all.”

- Fridae

My first instinct: well done, young sir! I commend your brave and principled political stand against the forces of evil. More people should be sticking up for the oppressed, especially in the so-called “Land of the Free.”

Then I read on. Gay family friends. Gay-friendly parents “allies of the gay community” who take their son along to gay pride parades. Plans to become a lawyer. “I don’t feel there’s currently liberty and justice for all,” says the ten year-old, words suspiciously scripted in tone. Ten years old. TEN YEARS OLD. Further reading (and an accompanying photograph) showed children of Will’s age and younger holding up signs for God Hates Fags, and the article spoke of their indoctrination by religious extremist parents into towing the bigots’ line. What are we supposed to think?

Liberal gay-friendly children take a stand. Yay!
Baptist gay-hating children take a stand. Boo. Hiss.

Suddenly a sickening double-standard became clear to me. I remember vaguely what it was like to be ten years old. Back then, Mummy and Daddy were gods—I’d agree with most of their viewpoints and espouse them to my friends. I even remember writing a protest letter to the local newspaper about the closure of a local arts centre (even concocting the whopping lie that my school supported my stand). I didn’t even know what the arts were back then. I was a Lego-loving, computer-addicted, Roald Dahl-reading shut-in. A politically savvy participant in democracy I was not, and my parents never attempted to cajole me into joining their political causes, despite my father being, then and now, an actively outspoken Communist activist.

“Yes, my son is 10,” says the mother of Will Phillips. “But he’s probably more aware of the meaning of the pledge than a lot of adults.” Perhaps. Or perhaps he has interpreted it in line with what his parents have told him. The pledge of allegiance does not mention marriage or the gay/straight dichotomy. Nowhere in the American constitution or the Bill of Rights are gay people mentioned as a distinct group from heterosexuals—quite simply because the distinction is an invention of 19th century anthropologists and remains hotly contested as regards to its applicability to sexually diverse being like humans.

The proud parent continues, “He’s not just doing it rote recitation. We raised him to be aware of what’s right, what’s wrong, and what’s fair.” And a fine job you did, too, Mrs. Phillips. He sounds just like you.

There is no distinction in merit between a ten year-old speaking out for gay rights, and a ten year-old volunteering for God Hates Fags. Both are tools being used by their parents to draw unnecessary legitimacy and sympathy for their causes. “Why, sure, Mary-Ellen, if a ten year-old girl can independently summon a hatred of them gays, we sure’s hell better had, too!” “My, Jocasta, if a ten year-old boy can refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance until gay marriage is legalised, then we should, too! After all, I often consult ten year-olds when forming my own political consciousness.”

Will Phillips is indoctrinated in exactly the same way as the children of the God Hates Fags crowd. Political “stands” by prepubescent children are completely devoid of any deeper political meaning. Why?

BECAUSE THEY’RE CHILDREN, FOR GOD’S SAKE. Sorry to sound like Anita Bryant, but won’t somebody think of the children?

Kids are unaccountable for crimes, including rape and murder. They are not expected to pay taxes, or to run for President. Kids can’t be indicted as war criminals, nor can they work for humanitarian agencies. Kids aren’t supposed to work, period. They’re not supposed to perform any function in a community other than that of being kids. They can’t own guns, get married, have sex, drink alcohol, teach class, enter the priesthood or drive cars. Why? Because, by law, kids under 12 ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS. So why, then, can we deem them responsible for their words?

There’s a reason kids don’t vote. Whether a child espouses liberal or fascistic morals depends almost entirely on their parents, and using a child as a mouthpiece or for any ideology is morally bankrupt. If we force our kids to support this or that, we remove their own right to freedom of thought. Speak Greek to a child from birth, they’ll grow up speaking Greek. Tell a child to wash his hands after using the toilet from birth, and blow me down if they don’t go and do exactly that. Tell a child to legalise gay marriage from birth, they’ll grow up wanting gay marriage legalised. Until we grow old enough to perceive our parents as human beings, we lack the critical faculties to distinguish between political causes and acknowledge the two sides to every story. Kids leave religions when they grow up. Kids switch political affiliations when they grow up. Some kids never change from echoing their parents views—a fact that is one of the biggest drawbacks of allowing the popular vote.  Many peoples’ politics are decided at birth, simply by the family they were born into. If we gave kids the vote we’d get the same result as if we didn’t, just with an increase in turnout.

The closing line of the above-cited article was its most damning. “Now there are countless parents who have been galvanized into action and want to ensure their kids learn to not see LGBT citizens as equal.” Is this any better than forcing kids to accept LGBT people as equal? In fact, isn’t forcing kids to believe ANYTHING an abuse of parental power? Can’t we allow them to decide for themselves? Isn’t it the job of adults to engender political change and provide an ethical and equitable world for their children? Or have we shirked this responsibility as well? Give the kids a break and let them enjoy their childhoods. Parents—from Communist, through liberal and all the way to neo-Nazi, fight your own battles and take your children off the front line. Equality begins by permitting people to form their own opinions, and to take as much time as they need—kids included.