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Sense8: Season 2 is out

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  • MrMrMeMrMrMe Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    final episode:
    the smoking expensive car gag was funny

    also true
    it hurt me to watch

    Bit sexist though. I didn't care, but then I've exploded stuff that costs a lot more so meh

  • Loren MichaelLoren Michael Registered User regular
    anyways, my overall assessment was: I loved it, want more

    gonna have to rewatch in the privacy of my own room though

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  • DracomicronDracomicron Registered User regular
    ObiFett wrote: »
    And we get to the reason some people are handling the series with kid gloves: They don't want to be labelled a bigot.

    I think its dangerous to assume people who detail their legit issues with the show are doing it because they have issues with the LGBT community.

    It scares off real critique and isn't good for anyone.
    I would love to see some real critique for the show, but most of the negative criticism has this weird tinge about it, like they're down-rating it because of minor issues for political reasons. Similarly, it is super rare for a show like this to come around for queer folks, and they may a little be over-protective.

    I would like for us to be above that shit and make legit evaluations instead of reacting just to the content. Like, I was a little confused (episode 11/12)
    About how the cluster was Visiting Riley in the hospital when she was unconscious, when you're not supposed to be able to find someone if they're KO'd.
    That's a problem with either violating the mechanics presented by the show ("he shouldn't be able to do that at all") or the explanation of said mechanics ("members of a cluster have fewer limits than outside sensates").[/spoiler]
    MrMrMe wrote: »
    I honestly wasn't a huge fan of a lot of the sexuality politics, and the consent violation of dragging
    the straight characters into the gay orgy. If this had been the other way around people would be up in arms about rape/forcing people to be straight etc. Its actually quite horrific to me
    but I can look past what they did with what they were trying to portray. That scene went on so long though I had enough time to make a couple of hot chocolates and still see over half of it.

    Complaints like disliking the
    "consent violation of dragging the straight characters into the gay orgy" seems disingenuous to me. You say that people would be "up in arms" if a gay person was "forced to be straight," but, if you recall, a lesbian was there, too, but nobody's complaining on her behalf... is it different because she's trans... or is it different because Nomi didn't seem to object, just like Wolfgang, Will, & Lito? The point of that scene was that nobody was "dragged" there. They were all in the same mental space, and that mental space was very pleasurable and they chose to stay there for the duration. I'm sure that any of them could have left the Visitation if they had wanted to. It it was like a waking dream, and dreams aren't reality. They can feel like reality, but if I were to dream about having sex with Katrina Law, star of Arrow and Spartacus, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to honestly say that I actually had scored with the Heir to the Demon.

    If anyone has a right to complain about that scene, it's on behalf of Hernando & Amanita, because their lovers were briefly possessed by a bunch of other people that they didn't consent to be with. Is that rape? In context, I don't really think so, since the physical body that they saw and felt was their significant others.


  • KashaarKashaar Low OrbitRegistered User regular
    RT800 wrote: »
    I know it's probably not the point of the show, but I like to wonder what everyone brings to the table.

    Will - Police training
    Sun - Martial arts
    Nomi - Technical aptitude
    Wolfgang - Thief's skills
    Lito - Good liar
    Kala - Medical/Chemistry knowledge

    Riley, and Van Damme don't seem to have much to contribute in terms of useful skills.

    Although Van Damme does seem to be ship's counselor.

    Y'all forget that Riley has extremely good ears. It's not pushed in the audiences faces in an obvious manner, but I thought it was pretty clear she's the reason why Wolfgang manages to crack that one safe.

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  • TofystedethTofystedeth Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    final episode:
    the smoking expensive car gag was funny

    also true
    it hurt me to watch

    I loved Will's line.
    Dude you gotta see it, it's fucked up.

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  • KashaarKashaar Low OrbitRegistered User regular
    So, I binged on this unintentionally last weekend. It was one of those "I'll just check out the first episode before I go to sleep" ... "how is it 1 PM all of a sudden?" situations. Watched 6 eps one day and the other 6 the next.

    Maaan... this show had me in tears a couple times. So heartwarming! I think the part that really touched me was how here were all these people who were functionally strangers, and they just relate and empathize with one another on such a deep level... that really hit home. This is what family should be like... what friendships should be like.

    A lot about this show is about showing what things should be like. I love the show's "politics", in that I believe it's impossible to publish anything in the media without it being political - like, not challenging the status quo of the media representation of LGBT people is as much a political decision as challenging it is. As a person with the "progressive" convictions (more like, common sense if you ask me) that I have, this is how things should be. Diverse cast, well-written and acted queer characters, and all of this treated as normal, not as a sensation.

    My main point of criticism is that too many threads are left dangling at the end. This season finale would be much better as a mid-season finale for traditional broadcast TV... So many plots are still begging for a conclusion. I also felt like the mechanics of how all that stuff works were still a bit confusing, and I vaguely hope that they're cleared up in the next season - or that we're at least getting some more coherent handwaving. I'm always willing to give writers the benefit of the doubt in these things though, since from my experience as a role-playing GM, having a coherent answer to all questions ready is much less important than asking interesting questions... so we'll see. There's also the part where none of the people who explain how things work are completely without a doubt reliable.

    I did not like the villain very much... I thought he was quite weak. All that conspiracy stuff was pretty vague anyway, I felt like there was quite enough drama in everyone's story without bringing in that external threat so heavy-handedly.

    Mildly spoilery stuff (full season):
    Fuck, Riley's flashback scene was intense. How does that girl still function after such trauma? I mean, fuck.

    The scene between Lito and Nomi in the museum was the best. I cried a little and needed a hug after that.

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  • TomantaTomanta Registered User regular
    I just have to say: Lito and Hernando are the cutest couple ever.

  • StraygatsbyStraygatsby Registered User regular
    Binged this over the weekend. I really enjoyed it, mostly because so much of it was so beautifully shot and scored, and I totally dig how much of a non-issue it made of it's own progressiveness (that's a mouthful). I'm pretty sure it wasn't a very good TV show just in terms of actual execution of the primary plot (them vs. Whispers). I don't know that the idea of framing a sort of culturally recognizable trope as a framework for each story worked or was as clever as they thought it was (and trope may not be the best term here). For instance, I thought the Telenovella and Euro Heist settings were wonderful but the Bollywood and Cop Procedural super bland.

    I sound like I'm down on it, but I'm really not. I'd like to see this kind of more expansive programming be developed for streaming networks. I gotta imagine this was bitch all expensive, though, even with the Netflixian directorial decree of "make the vast majority of your scenes two people talking so we don't have to pay the whole cast to stand around every shooting day."

    This also made me realize we need more Wachowskis! Bummed Jupiter Ascending tanked so incredibly hard.

  • TransporterTransporter Registered User regular
    edited June 2015
    Like, my only actual complaint was that Nomi was such a blatent Lana Wachowski self-insert that it kind of distracted me a bit from the story telling.

    But it's not like post-op transgendered people are exactly POPPING UP EVERYWHERE in television, especially when you also get a post-op person to PLAY the part, so it very obviously get's a pass, and when her arc ended she started playing more of a supporting role the character really shined.

    Also, I have a feeling this show is going to get overlooked from a directional standpoint. They did a TON of neat fucking tricks with the character switching gimmick that had to be a pain in the ass to film, and more importantly, edit to be coherent.

    My favorite one though was when Sun took a puff of Hash and Riley was the one who exhaled.

    Transporter on
  • redxredx I(x)=2(x)+1 whole numbersRegistered User regular
    edited June 2015
    There's a ton of potential operations that may or may not be part of a person's transition.

    Normally when I hear 'post-op' I think feminizing genitoplasty, which from the various fucking seems unlikely.

    Otherwise you have the sort of kinda cliché and inaccurate lesbians getting of by grinding on each other, which I found kinda disappointing in the first ep before I realized the trans thing.

    This...is kinda a ridiculous thing for me to be posting about...

    :(

    redx on
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  • SeidkonaSeidkona Had an upgrade Registered User regular
    edited June 2015
    Like, my only actual complaint was that Nomi was such a blatent Lana Wachowski self-insert that it kind of distracted me a bit from the story telling.

    But it's not like post-op transgendered people are exactly POPPING UP EVERYWHERE in television, especially when you also get a post-op person to PLAY the part, so it very obviously get's a pass, and when her arc ended she started playing more of a supporting role the character really shined.

    Also, I have a feeling this show is going to get overlooked from a directional standpoint. They did a TON of neat fucking tricks with the character switching gimmick that had to be a pain in the ass to film, and more importantly, edit to be coherent.

    My favorite one though was when Sun took a puff of Hash and Riley was the one who exhaled.

    If you believe the interviews on it it was JMS who wrote that character to be transgendered and not Lana Wachowski.

    While Lana did take her and write some of the stuff for her I never really felt like it was too egregious or a self-insert.

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  • DeansDeans Registered User regular
    Yeah "post-op" and "pre-op" are pretty bad terms to use, since they assume that all trans folk want bottom surgery, if they can even afford it. A big thing to keep in mind is that you don't need surgery or even hormones to be transgender. You can be transgender from they day you're born, or just decide that's how you want to identify yourself.

    Also how much do you know about Lana Wachowski's life? Why do you think Nomi is a self-insert of her? Isn't it ideal for a real transwoman to have input on writing a transwoman character?

  • Phoenix-DPhoenix-D Registered User regular
    redx wrote: »
    There's a ton of potential operations that may or may not be part of a person's transition.

    Normally when I hear 'post-op' I think feminizing genitoplasty, which from the various fucking seems unlikely.

    Otherwise you have the sort of kinda cliché and inaccurate lesbians getting of by grinding on each other, which I found kinda disappointing in the first ep before I realized the trans thing.

    This...is kinda a ridiculous thing for me to be posting about...

    :(

    Various fucking is quite possible after vaginoplasty thanks so unless she was using her dick or you saw the bits there isn't much to go on :)

  • TofystedethTofystedeth Registered User regular
    In the first episode we definitely saw what Amanita was using.

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  • redxredx I(x)=2(x)+1 whole numbersRegistered User regular
    Phoenix-D wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    There's a ton of potential operations that may or may not be part of a person's transition.

    Normally when I hear 'post-op' I think feminizing genitoplasty, which from the various fucking seems unlikely.

    Otherwise you have the sort of kinda cliché and inaccurate lesbians getting of by grinding on each other, which I found kinda disappointing in the first ep before I realized the trans thing.

    This...is kinda a ridiculous thing for me to be posting about...

    :(

    Various fucking is quite possible after vaginoplasty thanks so unless she was using her dick or you saw the bits there isn't much to go on :)

    Well, some of the positions kinda don't work with one, and like the absence of a strap on wasn't left to the imagination.

    They moistly come out at night, moistly.
  • TomantaTomanta Registered User regular
    In the first episode we definitely saw what Amanita was using.

    This.

    It was very.... colorful.

  • TransporterTransporter Registered User regular
    Deans wrote: »
    Yeah "post-op" and "pre-op" are pretty bad terms to use, since they assume that all trans folk want bottom surgery, if they can even afford it. A big thing to keep in mind is that you don't need surgery or even hormones to be transgender. You can be transgender from they day you're born, or just decide that's how you want to identify yourself.

    Also how much do you know about Lana Wachowski's life? Why do you think Nomi is a self-insert of her? Isn't it ideal for a real transwoman to have input on writing a transwoman character?

    Yeah, mental flub, I honestly meant "post-transition" but I was rushing the post on my phone and didn't think for a second.

    What I mean by "self-insert" isn't the idea of having a transwoman having input on a transwoman character.
    It's that Nomi's arc was sort of the "main" arc and focus for a good portion of the series.

    And she's cool and she has an awesome girlfriend and she's was/is a superhacker and has an incredibly bigoted parent(which isn't much of a stretch as the other things, honestly).

    But the biggest problem was that she didn't really....catch on? to the Sense8 thing until REALLY late. She just thought she was crazy for WAY too long without actually experimenting with what was going on(like Supercop did to great effect pretty early) and was, for a great deal of the story, a damsel in distress.

    Dudes can get in trouble and need saving too!

    Which was ultimatley addressed I feel at the end when the focus shifted off of her and she could freely interact with the other sense8's and not be the damsel.

    Also Supercop being next season's Damsel is a GREAT thing

    Basically it was an 8 person show and for a good amount of time she was the driving "main" conflict, and it was....handled. I can't say it was handled well in my opinion. But it wasn't awful either.

    It was perfectly whelm.

  • TransporterTransporter Registered User regular
    Phoenix-D wrote: »
    redx wrote: »
    There's a ton of potential operations that may or may not be part of a person's transition.

    Normally when I hear 'post-op' I think feminizing genitoplasty, which from the various fucking seems unlikely.

    Otherwise you have the sort of kinda cliché and inaccurate lesbians getting of by grinding on each other, which I found kinda disappointing in the first ep before I realized the trans thing.

    This...is kinda a ridiculous thing for me to be posting about...

    :(

    Various fucking is quite possible after vaginoplasty thanks so unless she was using her dick or you saw the bits there isn't much to go on :)

    Yeah, as I said...my bad
    I'm 97% sure Nomi isn't like, POST-OP, just post transition.

    She did a....a thing when her an Amanita were cuddling that you would not do if you uh...didn't have the necessary equipment.

  • TofystedethTofystedeth Registered User regular
    edited June 2015
    Deans wrote: »
    Yeah "post-op" and "pre-op" are pretty bad terms to use, since they assume that all trans folk want bottom surgery, if they can even afford it. A big thing to keep in mind is that you don't need surgery or even hormones to be transgender. You can be transgender from they day you're born, or just decide that's how you want to identify yourself.

    Also how much do you know about Lana Wachowski's life? Why do you think Nomi is a self-insert of her? Isn't it ideal for a real transwoman to have input on writing a transwoman character?

    Yeah, mental flub, I honestly meant "post-transition" but I was rushing the post on my phone and didn't think for a second.

    What I mean by "self-insert" isn't the idea of having a transwoman having input on a transwoman character.
    It's that Nomi's arc was sort of the "main" arc and focus for a good portion of the series.

    And she's cool and she has an awesome girlfriend and she's was/is a superhacker and has an incredibly bigoted parent(which isn't much of a stretch as the other things, honestly).

    But the biggest problem was that she didn't really....catch on? to the Sense8 thing until REALLY late. She just thought she was crazy for WAY too long without actually experimenting with what was going on(like Supercop did to great effect pretty early) and was, for a great deal of the story, a damsel in distress.

    Dudes can get in trouble and need saving too!

    Which was ultimatley addressed I feel at the end when the focus shifted off of her and she could freely interact with the other sense8's and not be the damsel.

    Also Supercop being next season's Damsel is a GREAT thing

    Basically it was an 8 person show and for a good amount of time she was the driving "main" conflict, and it was....handled. I can't say it was handled well in my opinion. But it wasn't awful either.

    It was perfectly whelm.
    Regarding knowing and experimenting
    She passed out and woke up in a hospital where a doctor showed her some pictures and told her she had brain damage.
    He saw some things that freaked him out, but were reminiscent of stuff he'd already experienced as child, and then a guy actually told him what was going on and how to use it.

    It's not like he used his inherent awesomeness.
    He had deliberate help, she had deliberate hindrances.

    Tofystedeth on
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  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    I want to talk a little bit about stereotypes, archetypes, and projection with this show. I'm going to try to avoid spoilers, if I get into it, I'm going to toss it into spoiler tags. Because I binge-watched the show, I can't guarantee which spoilers come from which episode so assume anything in a spoiler tag is a full series spoiler and thus should be avoided unless you've finished watching the entire first season (or don't care about spoilers).

    So one criticism I've seen online come up is some of the characters are "stereotypes", or that they're not very fleshed out. I would agree they can seem that way... at first. The show is slow and absolutely has pacing issues (I agree with any critic who considers the show oddly or poorly paced as a whole), but over the course of 13 episodes, every character is fleshed out and complete enough that I don't think it's fair to call any of them a stereotype. None of them really rely on archetypal shorthand to "get" who the character is, all of them have their backstories and motivations and familial lives rather thoroughly explored.

    I think the stereotype complaint comes from a place of people actually projecting on to the show and filling in the blanks (often created by that slow pace) with a story they're creating in their own head. For example, I've seen quite a few people online refer to Wolfgang as "the Russian" or "the Russian mobster".

    This is despite the fact that Wolfgang is explicitly German (his name is Wolfgang, for God's sake!), he looks aggressively German, his entire story takes place in Berlin, and every character in his story has German as hell names like Max and Steiner.

    But! (And this gets into some spoilers about Wolfgang's character so I'll stick the rest in a tag)
    When we're first introduced to Wolfgang, nobody is speaking German. Due to a translation convention of the show, everybody speaks English for the sake of the audience, despite the fact that technically they're "supposed" to be speaking their own native languages to each other. It's like our TVs have universal translators in them. This is made explicit the first time characters from different countries speak to each other. When we're first introduced to Wolfgang, what is made clear is he's a criminal who is involved in a crime family of heavily tattooed criminals.

    To a lot of American audiences, the stereotypical shorthand in fiction for that is "Russian mafia", especially the kind of outrageous back of the head tattoo that Steiner has. But they're not Russian, at all. They're Germans, who have a lot of tattoos for the same reason a lot of criminal types tend to have a lot of tattoos.

    So it leads to people filling in the blanks there with projection. They project on to Wolfgang "Oh, he's Russian mafia", because he's a blond, tattooed European criminal involved with other tattooed European criminals in some kind of familial capacity.

    They've put the character into a stereotypical slot by way of projection without stopping to go "wait, that's not even accurate, the character's not a Russian mobster, he's a German safecracker involved with other professional jewel thieves", which is a completely different thing?

    And I think it's the same for a lot of other characters that people are calling "stereotypes". They're not really stereotypes, but they become them if you don't pay attention to the characters in the actual show and instead fill in details with a different character you made up in your head and project what you think that character is onto the show. Which, until you know more about the character, is really really easy to do and once you've done it, is hard to shake off even when you're given conflicting information.

  • ObiFettObiFett Use the Force As You WishRegistered User regular
    edited June 2015
    The thing is that the characters do feel like they start off as stereotypical archetypes:

    - Subserviant Asian Woman
    - Male Cop who just wants to do the right thing
    - Hacker type on the fringe of society
    - Excited African waaaay too into Western Culture
    - Eastern European dealing with a crime syndicate
    - Hispanic Actor doing incredibly cheesy Telenovella
    - Indian woman being pushed into arranged marraige
    - Punk English chick with a broken past


    I mean these aren't anything new and are pretty trope-y. BUT, if someone watched the entire show, they would realize that while the characters may start off feeling stereotypical they flesh out in really interesting and non-stereotypical ways that also breaks down stereotypes of the region they are at. If someone only watched a single episode, I might give them a pass on thinking that the characters are just tropes. If anyone who watched the whole series still thought that way, then they clearly didn't pay any attention.

    ObiFett on
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    edited June 2015
    ObiFett wrote: »
    The thing is that the characters do feel like they start off as stereotypical archetypes:

    - Subserviant Asian Woman
    - Male Cop who just wants to do the right thing
    - Hacker type on the fringe of society
    - Excited African waaaay too into Western Culture
    - Eastern European dealing with a crime syndicate
    - Hispanic Actor doing incredibly cheesy Telenovella
    - Indian woman being pushed into arranged marraige
    - Punk English chick with a broken past


    I mean these aren't anything new and are pretty trope-y. BUT, if someone watched the entire show, they would realize that while the characters may start off feeling stereotypical they flesh out in really interesting and non-stereotypical ways that also breaks down stereotypes of the region they are at. If someone only watched a single episode, I might give them a pass on thinking that the characters are just tropes. If anyone who watched the whole series still thought that way, then they clearly didn't pay any attention.

    except those reads aren't even factually correct half the time

    - Kala's marriage isn't arranged. This point is made explicitly and repeatedly clear the first episode she's introduced and comes up almost every time her marriage is talked about
    - Germany isn't Eastern Europe, Wolfgang isn't Eastern European
    - Riley is Icelandic, although she lives in London she has an Icelandic accent rather than an English one and nothing about her broken past is even implied in her first episode beyond she clearly has emotional issues? Even if you can't tell she's Icelandic from her first appearance she's clearly not English
    - Nomi's past as a hacker is introduced independently of her other character traits, and really has nothing to do with her status as a minority

    But this is exactly what I'm talking about. They don't start off as stereotypical archetypes. You have to make them that way. You have to invent traits and fill them in and project stuff that's not even true because you assume these things and continue to assume them even in the face of conflicting information.

    Pony on
  • ObiFettObiFett Use the Force As You WishRegistered User regular
    Right, I was making a point.

    That's how it comes across until you get more than an episode in.

  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    ObiFett wrote: »
    Right, I was making a point.

    That's how it comes across until you get more than an episode in.

    But they shouldn't come across that way in the first place unless you make the mistake of projection.

    This is the audience's fault, and the people making the mistake of doing this are the ones who are doing it.

    Like, if you do this, you are the one stereotyping. They do not come across as a stereotype. You are stereotyping. You are projecting. The show absolutely has pacing issues but the fact that someone might go "Well, clearly Wolfgang is a Russian mobster" is not a problem with the show.

    That's a problem with them.

  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    pick a side, geth

  • BSoBBSoB Registered User regular
    In the first few episodes the cast felt like the burger king kids club, where minorities are like trading cards and the goal is to have exactly one of each.

    But as the show went on and each was developed, that quickly went away.

  • ObiFettObiFett Use the Force As You WishRegistered User regular
    edited June 2015
    Pony wrote: »
    ObiFett wrote: »
    Right, I was making a point.

    That's how it comes across until you get more than an episode in.

    But they shouldn't come across that way in the first place unless you make the mistake of projection.

    This is the audience's fault, and the people making the mistake of doing this are the ones who are doing it.

    Like, if you do this, you are the one stereotyping. They do not come across as a stereotype. You are stereotyping. You are projecting. The show absolutely has pacing issues but the fact that someone might go "Well, clearly Wolfgang is a Russian mobster" is not a problem with the show.

    That's a problem with them.

    First, I think we both agree that the characters are not stereotypical or tropes. I feel like we are tangentially arguing about the same point, which is weird.

    Second, I disagree with what you said above. If the large majority of the audience projects, then the show didn't do a good enough job preventing them from projecting. Especially since they throw new characters at the audience every 30 seconds as new people are introduced. Its not unusual or even wrong for the audience to try and put those characters in boxes with as short of time as they have to process them. Our brains do that automatically every day for a large number of things.

    Here is why I don't think its a problem, though. I think it was done this way on purpose. I think the show is meant to trap people initially and expects them to project. Then as they flesh out the characters more, the audience realizes that they were projecting or wrongly putting any given character into their preconceived boxes. This lets the audience experience the same thing the sense8s are experiencing: an awakening of understanding people in new and different ways.

    ObiFett on
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    BSoB wrote: »
    In the first few episodes the cast felt like the burger king kids club, where minorities are like trading cards and the goal is to have exactly one of each.

    But as the show went on and each was developed, that quickly went away.

    ...wut

  • jakobaggerjakobagger LO THY DREAD EMPIRE CHAOS IS RESTORED Registered User regular
    edited June 2015
    Wolfgang and his family are Germans, but the name Bogdanow and the Orthodox funeral does suggest that they have some sort of Slavic roots. Which would make sense given that they're from East Berlin. Travel internally in the East Bloc wasn't unheard of.

    I enjoy when it gets more muddled like that - see also, how not all the Indian characters are Hindu (even Kala's own family might be mixed - apparently the dish her father makes is traditionally a Parsi dish (Parsi are ethnically Indian Zoroastrians)). Or how Riley isn't at all a traditionally Icelandic name, but it's because of a favourite song of her father's.

    jakobagger on
  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    ObiFett wrote: »
    If the large majority of the audience projects, then the show didn't do a good enough job preventing them from projecting.

    I can understand this happening with people in general. But if someone is purporting to be a critic, I expect them to actually pay attention to what they're critiquing

  • ObiFettObiFett Use the Force As You WishRegistered User regular
    edited June 2015
    Quid wrote: »
    ObiFett wrote: »
    If the large majority of the audience projects, then the show didn't do a good enough job preventing them from projecting.

    I can understand this happening with people in general. But if someone is purporting to be a critic, I expect them to actually pay attention to what they're critiquing

    If they watched more than one episode, are a critic, and still complained about stereotypes in Sense8, then yes I would agree they are a bad critic.

    If they only watched one episode, I'd give them some leeway for reasons explained in the rest of the post you quoted.

    ObiFett on
  • jakobaggerjakobagger LO THY DREAD EMPIRE CHAOS IS RESTORED Registered User regular
    They're not really 'minorities' in the societies where they live, though (apart from the queer characters. Although I guess San Francisco is one of the placess in the world where being queer is least unusual).

    If you want to tell a story about Nairobi, making the main character black isn't a marked choice.

  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    Also halfway through episode 10
    I don't know what exactly is going to happen, but African warlord repeatedly shouting "LIKE A MAN" while Sun is probably more pissed off at men ever in her life is gonna be an amazing pay off.

  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    ObiFett wrote: »
    Quid wrote: »
    ObiFett wrote: »
    If the large majority of the audience projects, then the show didn't do a good enough job preventing them from projecting.

    I can understand this happening with people in general. But if someone is purporting to be a critic, I expect them to actually pay attention to what they're critiquing

    If they watched more than one episode, are a critic, and still complained about stereotypes in Sense8, then yes I would agree they are a bad critic.

    If they only watched one episode, I'd give them some leeway for reasons explained in the rest of the post you quoted.

    If any of them got the idea that Wolfgang is Russian, Sun is subservient, or Nomi is a hacker I am absolutely fine saying they're bad critics because those ideas are explicitly shown to be untrue.

  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    ObiFett wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    ObiFett wrote: »
    Right, I was making a point.

    That's how it comes across until you get more than an episode in.

    But they shouldn't come across that way in the first place unless you make the mistake of projection.

    This is the audience's fault, and the people making the mistake of doing this are the ones who are doing it.

    Like, if you do this, you are the one stereotyping. They do not come across as a stereotype. You are stereotyping. You are projecting. The show absolutely has pacing issues but the fact that someone might go "Well, clearly Wolfgang is a Russian mobster" is not a problem with the show.

    That's a problem with them.

    First, I think we both agree that the characters are not stereotypical or tropes. I feel like we are tangentially arguing about the same point, which is weird.

    Second, I disagree with what you said above. If the large majority of the audience projects, then the show didn't do a good enough job preventing them from projecting. Especially since they throw new characters at the audience every 30 seconds as new people are introduced. Its not unusual or even wrong for the audience to try and put those characters in boxes with as short of time as they have to process them. Our brains do that automatically every day for a large number of things.

    Here is why I don't think its a problem, though. I think it was done this way on purpose. I think the show is meant to trap people initially and expects them to project. Then as they flesh out the characters more, the audience realizes that they were projecting or wrongly putting any given character into their preconceived boxes. This lets the audience experience the same thing the sense8s are experiencing: an awakening of understanding people in new and different ways.

    I don't agree that the show intended for you to think that Wolfgang was Russian or generically "Eastern European", that Riley was English, or that Kala's marriage was arranged

    In the latter case it went out of its way to make sure you knew that wasn't the case

    You may have seen the characters as not very deep at first because of the rapid fire way they tossed them at you, to be developed later, and in doing so some (Capheus, for example) took a bit to get real character development going

    I don't think "Allow the audience to project weird half-made-up stereotypes now, disprove them later" was an intentional device of the show, no. And given that I've seen these half-made-up stereotypes continue to be clung to in some online discussions of the show regardless of whether or not they get disproven, I don't know that this was effective either.

    Like I said, if you project and stereotype characters based on information presented to you, especially when it's wrong and conflicting with the information you're given, that makes the fault kinda yours?

    One review of the show, for example, decried Nomi's confrontation with lesbian feminists at Pride as ridiculous and unbelievable bullying for no reason... because the author of the review doesn't seem to know TERFs are a thing that exist and wasn't really paying attention to the dialogue that made it clear why those women were being garbage towards Nomi? They were just projecting on to the show and didn't let pesky things like what the show was telling them get in the way of their own narrative.

  • ObiFettObiFett Use the Force As You WishRegistered User regular
    Quid wrote: »
    ObiFett wrote: »
    Quid wrote: »
    ObiFett wrote: »
    If the large majority of the audience projects, then the show didn't do a good enough job preventing them from projecting.

    I can understand this happening with people in general. But if someone is purporting to be a critic, I expect them to actually pay attention to what they're critiquing

    If they watched more than one episode, are a critic, and still complained about stereotypes in Sense8, then yes I would agree they are a bad critic.

    If they only watched one episode, I'd give them some leeway for reasons explained in the rest of the post you quoted.

    If any of them got the idea that Wolfgang is Russian, Sun is subservient, or Nomi is a hacker I am absolutely fine saying they're bad critics because those ideas are explicitly shown to be untrue.

    Man, I don't know what people are saying they characters are stereotypes of.

    I had a hard time doing it myself because I watched the whole series its hard to separate what I knew only in the first episode from what I know now. I was trying to purposefully be wrong even though I knew the characters aren't stereotypes. I just know that after the first episode, the characters did feel kind of typical to me.

  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    Sun you amazing, amazing woman

  • ObiFettObiFett Use the Force As You WishRegistered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    ObiFett wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    ObiFett wrote: »
    Right, I was making a point.

    That's how it comes across until you get more than an episode in.

    But they shouldn't come across that way in the first place unless you make the mistake of projection.

    This is the audience's fault, and the people making the mistake of doing this are the ones who are doing it.

    Like, if you do this, you are the one stereotyping. They do not come across as a stereotype. You are stereotyping. You are projecting. The show absolutely has pacing issues but the fact that someone might go "Well, clearly Wolfgang is a Russian mobster" is not a problem with the show.

    That's a problem with them.

    First, I think we both agree that the characters are not stereotypical or tropes. I feel like we are tangentially arguing about the same point, which is weird.

    Second, I disagree with what you said above. If the large majority of the audience projects, then the show didn't do a good enough job preventing them from projecting. Especially since they throw new characters at the audience every 30 seconds as new people are introduced. Its not unusual or even wrong for the audience to try and put those characters in boxes with as short of time as they have to process them. Our brains do that automatically every day for a large number of things.

    Here is why I don't think its a problem, though. I think it was done this way on purpose. I think the show is meant to trap people initially and expects them to project. Then as they flesh out the characters more, the audience realizes that they were projecting or wrongly putting any given character into their preconceived boxes. This lets the audience experience the same thing the sense8s are experiencing: an awakening of understanding people in new and different ways.

    I don't agree that the show intended for you to think that Wolfgang was Russian or generically "Eastern European", that Riley was English, or that Kala's marriage was arranged

    In the latter case it went out of its way to make sure you knew that wasn't the case

    You may have seen the characters as not very deep at first because of the rapid fire way they tossed them at you, to be developed later, and in doing so some (Capheus, for example) took a bit to get real character development going

    I don't think "Allow the audience to project weird half-made-up stereotypes now, disprove them later" was an intentional device of the show, no. And given that I've seen these half-made-up stereotypes continue to be clung to in some online discussions of the show regardless of whether or not they get disproven, I don't know that this was effective either.

    Like I said, if you project and stereotype characters based on information presented to you, especially when it's wrong and conflicting with the information you're given, that makes the fault kinda yours?

    One review of the show, for example, decried Nomi's confrontation with lesbian feminists at Pride as ridiculous and unbelievable bullying for no reason... because the author of the review doesn't seem to know TERFs are a thing that exist and wasn't really paying attention to the dialogue that made it clear why those women were being garbage towards Nomi? They were just projecting on to the show and didn't let pesky things like what the show was telling them get in the way of their own narrative.

    I do. So I guess we'll just agree to disagree.

    And agree that anyone who thinks the characters are stereotypes clearly wasn't paying attention.

  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    BSoB wrote: »
    In the first few episodes the cast felt like the burger king kids club, where minorities are like trading cards and the goal is to have exactly one of each.

    But as the show went on and each was developed, that quickly went away.

    I'm gonna come back to this comment because it's really bothering me

    Because it comes across as kinda snidely dismissive and shitty and casually racist?

    As if having a cast that is appropriately representative of the population of the areas in a global story (which is what this was, a global story) is somehow a cheap stunt or a ploy in some fashion

    It plays into the idea that "white people are the default", and "minorities" are the variation that should only be added as an option, and doing so too much is some kind of ploy.

    Except, in South Korea, Kenya, India, and Mexico, white people are the minorities

    So parts of the story that are set there, which comprises a full half of the show, is going to heavily utilize non-white actors. That's not a marketing stunt, that's realism in fiction.

    If your instinctive response is to be cynical, skeptical, or hesitant to the presence of all these gosh darn minorities

    Maybe have a good think, yeah?

  • jakobaggerjakobagger LO THY DREAD EMPIRE CHAOS IS RESTORED Registered User regular
    The one thing I thought, mostly early on, is that if anything is being stereotyped it's places. IE. I feel like the themes explored in each setting are a bit 'what an American might know or find characteristic of [foreign place].

    Asia: business and martial arts.
    Africa: poverty, AIDS, antiquated pop culture scraps from the West, tribal tensions
    India: religious conflicts, unwanted marriage
    Mexico: telenovelas and what I suspect is a cartel connection
    Berlin: East/West tensions, Holocaust memorial, naturism
    San Francisco: gay stuff.
    Iceland: tragedy, music, elves (Hidden People).

    In other words, it felt a little bit like when an American movie set in Paris uses a lot of extra tiny cars and shots of the Eiffel tower.

    But! To be fair, these are all mostly true elements of those places, and they're well done. And also it gets progressively more nuanced along the way. And the individual characters aren't stereotypes, I think.

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