#please be respectful y'all there's a difference between weird (scrungly) and weird (othering)

[hotvintagepoll]

There's something serious I want to talk about before the contest proper starts. I got a lot of submissions for this contest, and I tried to include a good variety of scrungly little guys. In my head this is a tournament dedicated to the funny, odd, weird character actors, and I'm happy that we have a range of talent here from noir to comedy to horror to drama. With that said—

A few of the submissions walked a line that I felt uncomfortable with, where a physical disability or a facial disfigurement was treated as the only reason to submit someone as scrungly. These submissions made me uncomfortable—the equating of someone outside the able-bodied norm with, by one of my own definitions, a scraggly-looking opossum. It crosses a line for me to frame a person as being odd for simply......existing in a human body. That's not what this tournament is about—this is a tournament about character actors who gave us fun, weird performances, driven by their own acting choices, not an excuse to think someone strange just for the way they exist.

I define scrungle as coming from a person's agency and skill as an actor, an energy and electricity brought by the actor themself, not from an appearance. I will not tolerate any propaganda that focuses on an actor's body in a demeaning or fetishistic context. I also won't tolerate propaganda that gets weird about race or class, comments that focus on a person's look over their performance, etc. etc. And if (against my best intentions) any of the propaganda in a poll post falls into this, I hope you guys will let me know and I'll correct/remove it. Please talk to me if I fuck up.

Some of the people here overcame significant barriers against a society that did not want to see them, making the most of bit parts and sidekick roles by giving warm, funny, weird, and masterful performances. That is a wonderful thing, and a brave thing. Some of these actors never truly got to shine, because Hollywood did not want to see them as more than a stereotype. I want to honor those comedians and character actors anyway for what they did manage to do. This tournament is about highlighting all these scrungly guys for the fun, purposely weird acting they gave us, and I hope we can be considerate in how we talk about their work.

tl;dr Respect for bodily autonomy and diversity of humanity is important in this competition, and it's important to me that we don't conflate "scrungly," ie an intentional performance of weirdness driven by the actor's choices, with "I think they look weird therefore they are weird," which is gross and dehumanizing. Do not do that. I won't tolerate anyone being weird about people who are just being people.

I hope this makes sense and I used the right language! See you guys Thursday :)