Talkin about Tumblrs, man

15152545657246

Comments

  • Odradek said:

    Justice42 said:

    it seems to me that this is a good example of people assuming that other people guided by subtle cultural forces are actively aware that they are perpetuating harmful images/stereotypes/ect.



    which is something that seems to happen a lot



    it kinda reminds me of that one dude with the blog saying that the Nolan batman films deliberately supported a facist worldview.


    I remember Odradek posting some person who basically read the Nolan films as basically extolling the virtues of the white aristocracy.
    http://jacobinmag.com/2012/07/the-dark-knight-is-no-capitalist/?
    Ah, that was it.
  • I would really need more context here before I could definitively determine what she meant.

    I'm not even sure where this was said or what prompted it. She seems pretty angry in that gif and you'll note that people tend to not choose their words well when angry.

    I'm not entirely certain context would change much.
  • Justice42 said:

    I'm wondering where this is taking place. I'm guessing she isn't at some sort of wrap up party for the films...I'm thinking she's some where where this a bunch of other minorities who are angry about portrayals in the media and is trying a little to hard to jump on a bandwagon.

    That seems like a rather presumptuous guess to make.

    Naney said:

    part of the gifset just showed up on my dash again and there was a very interesting response to it


    image

    I am Chinese, I grew up in Guangdong and now live in Beijing. My surname is Yang (杨/楊 in simplified/traditional Chinese characters). And allow me, a born-and-raised-and-live-in-China Chinese, not so humbly inform you: Both Cho and Chang ARE Chinese words pronounced in the Cantonese dialect (the major dialect spoken in Guangdong and Hong Kong), and they are written as 秋 (or any homophones) and 张/張 in Chinese characters. Ask any Cantonese-speaking Chinese, and they’ll tell you this. And SURPRISE: both Cho and Chang can be used as first name AND last name in Chinese.

    To sum it up: The girl speaking in this gifset clearly has NO knowledge at all of Chinese language, and is acting very presumptuous about it. And to me, that is a case of racism.

    EDIT: Quoting from wikipedia, “Chang is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese surname 常 (Cháng). It was listed 80th among the Song-era Hundred Family Surnames” and “is also the Wade-Giles romanization of two Chinese surnames written Zhang in pinyin: one extremely common and written 張 in traditional characters and 张 in simplified characters and another quite rare and written as 章 in both systems.”



    Fair points I suppose. 

  • Kexruct said:

    I would really need more context here before I could definitively determine what she meant.

    I'm not even sure where this was said or what prompted it. She seems pretty angry in that gif and you'll note that people tend to not choose their words well when angry.

    I'm not entirely certain context would change much.
    context is the most important thing in the whole world.
  • READ MY CROSS SHIPPING-FANFICTION, DAMMIT!

    i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
    That seems like a rather presumptuous guess to make.

    Possibly, but I'm not sure where else you'd just start talking about this especially since it seems she may not know what she's talking about?
    Odradek said:

    By now, you already know: the new Batman movie is fascist propaganda,

    Welp...No where to go but up! 
  • Naney said:

    part of the gifset just showed up on my dash again and there was a very interesting response to it


    image

    I am Chinese, I grew up in Guangdong and now live in Beijing. My surname is Yang (杨/楊 in simplified/traditional Chinese characters). And allow me, a born-and-raised-and-live-in-China Chinese, not so humbly inform you: Both Cho and Chang ARE Chinese words pronounced in the Cantonese dialect (the major dialect spoken in Guangdong and Hong Kong), and they are written as 秋 (or any homophones) and 张/張 in Chinese characters. Ask any Cantonese-speaking Chinese, and they’ll tell you this. And SURPRISE: both Cho and Chang can be used as first name AND last name in Chinese.

    To sum it up: The girl speaking in this gifset clearly has NO knowledge at all of Chinese language, and is acting very presumptuous about it. And to me, that is a case of racism.

    EDIT: Quoting from wikipedia, “Chang is the pinyin romanization of the Chinese surname 常 (Cháng). It was listed 80th among the Song-era Hundred Family Surnames” and “is also the Wade-Giles romanization of two Chinese surnames written Zhang in pinyin: one extremely common and written 張 in traditional characters and 张 in simplified characters and another quite rare and written as 章 in both systems.”

    image


    Well then.
  • i'm rereading the Jacobin article and while the logic seems flawed in places

    There’s that whole rich guy handing out helpings of extrajudicial brutality thing, which is the entire Batman schtick.

    the more i think about this, the more problematic it seems.
  • edited 2013-04-14 18:33:47

    Gotta find more things to get mad about!
  • i mean, it all works in the context of the movie, but is the message that imparts really one that we want to make?
  • Well, the entire idea about Batman, and superheroes in general, is that we're supposed to trust that they have the moral right-of-mind to be allowed by us, the readers, to hand out that justice.

    Whether or not the films follow that I can't say. I've never seen them, but it is a problem I have with comic book superheroes in general, among many, many other problems.

  • edited 2013-04-14 18:34:52
    READ MY CROSS SHIPPING-FANFICTION, DAMMIT!

    i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
    For one, most batman villains are brutal killers for the most part. It's not like he hospitalizes desperate shoplifters.
  • SF_Sorrow said:

    Gotta find more things to get mad about!

    if you need to search you are doing it wrong


    this is the internet, if you truly believe in yourself and tap your heels together three times you can become mad about anything.
  • SF_Sorrow said:

    Gotta find more things to get mad about!

    :/
  • READ MY CROSS SHIPPING-FANFICTION, DAMMIT!

    i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
  • I think the Nolan Batman films are so phenomenally good in so many areas it overshadows any possibly problematic elements.

    ALSO

    Can we stop using the word problematic to hide the fact that we don't know what the actual problem is?
  • READ MY CROSS SHIPPING-FANFICTION, DAMMIT!

    i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
    Are you saying it's problematic that we may be misusing the word "problematic"? 
  • Kexruct said:

    Can we stop using the word problematic to hide the fact that we don't know what the actual problem is?



    you don't see the problem with "rich dude beats people up because he thinks he knows better than the police"?

    I mean I'm not saying I agree with whatsisface here, but the fundamental issue he has with it is, I think, pretty understandable.

  • Justice42 said:

    For one, most batman villains are brutal killers for the most part. It's not like he hospitalizes desperate shoplifters.

    yeah definitely, so the moral makes sense in the context of the story, but when you take it into other situations...
  • Not misusing, overusing. It's a weasel word.
  • My dreams exceed my real life
    Justice42 said:

    For one, most batman villains are brutal killers for the most part. It's not like he hospitalizes desperate shoplifters.

    Well obviously in the world of DC comics Batman doesn't do that, but someone like him probably would IRL.
  • Kexruct said:

    Can we stop using the word problematic to hide the fact that we don't know what the actual problem is?



    you don't see the problem with "rich dude beats people up because he thinks he knows better than the police"?

    I mean I'm not saying I agree with whatsisface here, but the fundamental issue he has with it is, I think, pretty understandable.

    It was more of a general statement, really. 

    Also, Batman works with the police. He's not more aggressive or ruthless than them or anything like that. At least, not in the Nolan films.
  • you know what this reminds me of?

    Wuxia films.


    Like, if you watch Hero or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, there are very strong authoritarian and conformist moral lessons respectively.
  • edited 2013-04-14 18:42:09
    READ MY CROSS SHIPPING-FANFICTION, DAMMIT!

    i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
    It's usually a staple of Batman that either the Police are so damn corrupt that they're basically an extension of the various crime families operating in Gotham and/or the Villains are so heinously evil their guilt is pretty apparent because they're running around in costumes leaving clues about how they robbed this or that or murdered whomever. 

    I mean, I can see how the premise of Batman is sort of up for debate, but in practice there's usually not much to debate as the Joker is trying to gas a room full of people and it's sort of silly to debate the morality of Batman punching the Joker's face in in that situation.
  • you know, the Jacobin site is really pretty.
  • More people have said that and been killed than there are thorium decay products.
    Here is the source of all this Cho Chang stuff; I encourage everyone to read it without bias and try to see it from her view, even if you don't entirely agree.

    https://www.facebook.com/notes/rachel-rostad/to-jk-rowling-from-cho-chang/523060277739525
  • Here is the source of all this Cho Chang stuff; I encourage everyone to read it without bias and try to see it from her view, even if you don't entirely agree.

    https://www.facebook.com/notes/rachel-rostad/to-jk-rowling-from-cho-chang/523060277739525

    ...yeah, that doesn't change much.
  • edited 2013-04-14 18:55:40
    More people have said that and been killed than there are thorium decay products.
    Also she has been made aware of her mistake regarding the name. I would link to her blog but I fear the possibility of drama. Cross-site drama is not an alien thing to this forum.
  • READ MY CROSS SHIPPING-FANFICTION, DAMMIT!

    i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
    There's a pretty big difference in not devoting a great deal of page time to minorities and actully being racist.
  • More people have said that and been killed than there are thorium decay products.
    This is true. She is just expressing discontent at playing another marginalized minority.
  • This is true. She is just expressing discontent at playing another marginalized minority.

    I wouldn't describe Cho as marginalized. She's one of the more important side characters.
  • I think it's rather presumptuous that she assumes that she'd have been a role model if the character had been written differently.

    In the end, I feel that her anger is justified in some respects but not others, and I'm still not sure what prompted this rather out of the blue outburst. Also the Dumbledore thing is just way out of line, but that's been discussed before elsewhere. It's pretty weird that straights think that Dumbledore was somehow supposed to be "identifiable" as gay in the books themselves when he wasn't in a relationship at that point.

  • edited 2013-04-14 19:04:00
    READ MY CROSS SHIPPING-FANFICTION, DAMMIT!

    i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
    I think the problem is that she's coming off a tad more vitriolic than is strictly necessary to be taken seriously.

    If she brought this things up as evidence that Rowling should be more conscientious of  her minority characters and suggests she missed an opportunity here as opposed to falling into the trap so many have before her has, E.G. creating these characters but not really taking the time to develop them as much as she really could have, I'd have agreed. 

    Instead she sounds like she's out for blood. 
  • edited 2013-04-14 19:03:49
    I'd be more willing to sympathize if she wasn't so RARGH RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION about it.

    ninja'd
  • Thing is that this was something written on her Facebook page apparently, so I'm not sure she's really trying to be "taken seriously" as opposed to just venting,

    but then you have the gifset up there, so I have no idea, really.

  • Thing is that this was something written on her Facebook page apparently, so I'm not sure she's really trying to be "taken seriously" as opposed to just venting,

    but then you have the gifset up there, so I have no idea, really.

    I'm pretty sure that was just the transcript.
  • Well again, I still have no idea where this took place or what prompted her to go on her tirade, and trying to say "she felt [x], obviously" is itself presumptuous on my part.

    I know where I stand on this kind of thing anyway, so, w/e.

  • edited 2013-04-14 19:11:46
    More people have said that and been killed than there are thorium decay products.
    I think the problem is that she's coming off a tad more vitriolic than is strictly necessary to be taken seriously.
    I think she could stand to be just a little more tactful, yes.

    There is a point to be made, though, that as big a mainstream phenomenon as Harry Potter basically kind of met the 'minimum requirements' for diversity. Liiiiike, a few brown characters, check. An ambiguously closet gay headmaster who we have the convenience of pretending isn't gay, check. But the minorities are marginalized in that HP is entirely a story about straight white people.

    It is one of those things I really wish had been given more attention by Rowling, but I still enjoy Harry Potter anyway.
  • Well, for one thing.

    That girl  in the video that the gifsets are derived from is apparently Rachel Rostad, who was performing the thing as part of a poetry slam.

    The actor for Cho Chang is named Katie Leung, according to the wikipedia that is available to all internet-using beings.
  • Yarrun said:

    Well, for one thing.

    That girl's Rachel Rostad.

    The actor for Cho Chang is named Katie Leung, according to the wikipedia that is available to all internet-using beings.

    Well that is certainly interesting. Are you sure the character didn't have more than one actor? They did that for a couple background characters, but I don't know if they did for any major ones.

     An ambiguously closet gay headmaster who we have the convenience of pretending isn't gay, check. 

    I am curious as to how Dumbledore not constantly announcing his flaming homosexuality is "pretending he isn't gay".

    I've run into this problem a few times with my being bisexual, because people expect you to just tell them that you're bi, or at least "act" bi. As if it's somehow their business.

  • Further research has shown that Rorstad is apparently the writer of the piece as well. No one who's actually played Cho Chang was involved in this.
  • My dreams exceed my real life
    Justice42 said:

    I mean, I can see how the premise of Batman is sort of up for debate, but in practice there's usually not much to debate as the Joker is trying to gas a room full of people and it's sort of silly to debate the morality of Batman punching the Joker's face in in that situation.

    In real life, if Batman was a reactionary, he would have spent the entirety of the Dark Knight Rises blogging about how he wasn't a conservative despite agreeing with most of Rush Limbaugh's opinions, blogging about how Lucius Fox was impressed and enamored by Batman's candor in telling Fox that he was a genetically inferior human being, and making snide comments on twitter about how Bane was a puritan.
  • ^^Basically...
    1. A poet wrote a piece about Harry Potter, putting herself in the position of Cho Chung's actor (edit: I should have said the position of Cho Chung; she never puts herself in the place of the actor)
    2. Tumblr got a hold of it, and everybody assumed that it was actually written by Cho Chung's actor
    3. No one fact-checks this because Tumblr never fact-checks anything, and here we are.
  • What it looks like to me is that she is completely full of crap.
  • edited 2013-04-14 19:21:50
    Yarrun said:

    Basically, a poet wrote a piece about Harry Potter, putting herself in the position of Cho Chung's actor, and everyone here is falsely ascribing it to Cho Chung's actor herself, because this is the tumblr thread and misinformation is king here.

    ...considering she said that she played Cho Chang, I don't think that was an unreasonable assumption to make.
  • Yarrun said:

    ^^Basically...

    1. A poet wrote a piece about Harry Potter, putting herself in the position of Cho Chung's actor
    2. Tumblr got a hold of it, and everybody assumed that it was actually written by Cho Chung's actor
    3. No one fact-checks this because Tumblr never fact-checks anything, and here we are.



    then where are the gifs from 

    I'm done with this

    image

    approximately this done.

  • Because I know when I see someone complaining about a character they played, my first thought is "it's not the actual actress."
  • I've never actually seen the later Harry Potter movies, so....
Sign In or Register to comment.