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sexynbabyarethesmartones · 5 months ago

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Okay, so I have been conversating with myself as per usual, and I have a thing to put out there.

So, my YT feed over the last couple of days has given me some interesting videos of shows/movies I have not seen, and the one today got me started on this train of thought. Seeing clips of the movie "Cruella," there was one that showed Anita. And I thought to myself how interesting it was that as a people, we have decided to look at some characters and go "they are definitely Not White." Anita in particular went very quickly from a slim, red-haired, white woman to an average-sized, curly-haired, black woman. Which works way better for her character imo. And yesterday, a YT video on the show "Velma" came up on my feed. It was someone breaking down what that show got wrong compared to another one, but in this case, the choices for the characters' ethnicities gives me Opinions. So first off, we have Shaggy. Shaggy in "Velma" is black, which was probably chosen because of him being a laid-back stoner from a middle class or poor (I believe, can't quite remember for sure) family. Bad stereotype much? I think of Shaggy as a character is definitely a middle-class kid from a white, HOA member, suburban family who never had to worry about much and got into cannabis as an extension of that. Later on, in canon, he comes into an inheritance from a distant relative who comes from generational plantation wealth. What part of that screams Black American? Shaggy funds Mystery Inc because he's happy not to have to work a regular job, and he gets to live with his best friends. As for his money, I assume he has Daphne take care of it because she does come from old money. The reason she doesn't fund their adventures is because her parents have 4(?) other daughters as well; they've got bills to pay. And speaking of that old money part, Daphne is also of European descent imo. Maybe more Mediterranean instead of English, and you could probably make a case for Indian if you wanted. "Velma" has her as East Asian. That feels to me like they were looking at a checklist and realized they forgot one. Velma herself as a character has such a distinct personality, that you could probably make her just about any ethnicity and have it work. She might be a little short for a Samoan, but I think it could work. And that brings us to the other major stereotype character. Good ol' down home nice boy Fred. People looked at this Chad himbo frat boy engineer and decided he would forever be white. No. For this sweetheart with his super special interests, may I recommend that his next iteration be a bear of an autistic black boy. He is socially awkward, only smart in the stuff he cares to be, and is absolutely delighted to be living with his chosen family and doing fun things. Ya know, now that I think about it, he could be Samoan instead of Velma XD. Or another indigenous ethnicity as well.

But my point still stands. People look at these older characters from a specific time period and decide that what they were imagined as originally doesn't always work for their personality, and we can do better with much more interesting backstories; and that is beautiful.

#scooby doo #scooby gang #velma dinkley #fred jones #daphne blake #shaggy rogers #cruella de vil #movie tropes #changing characters ethnicities #my opinion #my take #my understanding of things I am talking about here

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uncommon-etc · 3 years ago

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5 Reasons The Strip nz is... not that bad actually

While media discourse on here tends to just about straddle the divide between the snobbish purity culture of ‘you can only enjoy quality programming’ and ‘let everyone be guilty-pleasure-loving trash’ there do exist a handful of shows and films which we can all collectively agree aren’t great (whether through bad acting, low-quality cinematography, low-budget set-design, lazy story-lines or all of the above) but which have plenty of redeeming features.

I’ve seen posts claiming that The Strip deserves to be lost media (at the time of writing it exists virtually nowhere on the internet, you can watch the first and twelfth episode for free, but the rest of season 1 is only available on vimeo and season 2 may well be lost to the world) but like a lot of shows from the 00s which are routinely mocked for being kind of trashy, it doesn’t deserve to be condemned to the great cultural dustbin.

If you find yourself skipping large chunks of it, or you don’t like the characters, or you cba with the frequent romantic subplots, that’s fine. But there are five reasons The Strip actually deserves some credit:

1. It’s one of the only shows whose narrative continually rewards women for setting reasonable boundaries and calling out men who break them.

The show’s brand of have-it-all white liberal feminism may grate on some, understandably so, but if you’d lived through the tidal wave of misogyny that was TV when I was a kid, you’d find it refreshing too. The majority of guys (and gals) when I was growing up believed that once a woman had ‘led a man on’ enough, whether it was kissing him, getting involved with him, or letting him treat her to things, she was somehow contractually obliged to have sex with him. The view that you should settle for a ‘nice guy’ even if he was extremely flawed, because thinking you deserved better made you a bitch was also quite prevalent. The Strip tackles both of these misconceptions head-on.

2. Its portrayal of bisexuality was way ahead of its time.

We’re still fighting bi-phobia, bi-erasure, and reducing-bi-experiences-to-cheap-laughs a full twenty years on from when The Strip first aired, but the show’s handling of Glenn coming to terms with being bi, telling his ex-wife and daughter, and being open with others in his life about it, was textbook. The show even allowed him to quash common misconceptions by having him explain to a woman who thinks bi = adventurous and experienced in bed, that he’s only ever been with the woman he was married to, and the guy he was seeing for three months after they got divorced, so he’s really no more savvy than the next guy.

3. It provided work for Maori, Samoan, and other Polynesian actors.

Are some of the scenes given to the non-white half of the cast problematic? Absolutely. Adam, the head stripper, probably comes off worst, by featuring frequently in Mel’s fantasies performing the kind of animalistic hypermasculinity which comes pretty close to overt racism in these enlightened times.

But since mainstream Australian and Kiwi TV back then was so incredibly white, the primary roles offered to Polynesian actors were as miserable melancholic underdogs in social realist dramas. If, in 2002, someone had said to you ‘hey, instead of playing homeless alcoholic #5, we’ve got you a part as a series-regular in a sitcom, you’ll be working in a strip-club, but you’ll get plenty of lines, and the chance to play someone with an actual personality’ idk why you wouldn’t be thrilled. One scene even pokes fun at the white savior complex in a big way, which doesn’t excuse all the Adam stuff, but it’s progress I guess.

4. It promotes found families over nuclear families.

How many workplace comedies have you seen where the workplace consists of a divorced woman in her 30s, her teenage daughter, a gay guy, three Polynesians, a Samoan, a Maori-Jew, and an Australian who tries to out-himbo the lot of them? The entire premise of The Strip is that the conventional family unit of a well-off, successful opposite-sex couple and their kid implodes spectacularly, because it isn’t making anyone happy, while the alternative family structure that replaces it is a joy to behold.

No-one would argue that Mel’s story-line gets far too much screen-time, but, though they’re fleeting, the scenes at the club, with Jack, Samara, Adam, Clint, Mostin, Ian, and Daniel are just a straight-up delight to watch. The writers could have made a very depressing show about a group of people from various oppressed minority groups having to work at a strip-club because they had no choice, instead they chose to show them having fun, forming friendships, hooking up, and generally being there for each other. In fact, I reckon if the writers had chosen to ditch all of the main characters entirely and just made a show about Jack, Sam, and the five male-strippers it would have been a masterpiece revered to this day.

5. Not to objectify on main, but one of the strippers is played by a 26-year-old Taika Waititi, which has been reason enough for many to watch it

You thirsty hoes are still going nuts over one glimpse of his midriff 20 years later, wait until you get a load of this absolute snack:

The irony is that the writers clearly made an executive decision to cast this, then unknown, alternative comic as ‘the funny one’, which explains why Mostin gets a lot more lines than the other four, features in fewer routines, and is treated a bit like an annoying kid-brother by many of the other characters. But in his first appearance (1x07), when he and Sam perform a sexually-charged shirtless Flamenco dance following some very poorly written flirting, you can tell at least one person behind the camera let out a fanfic-worthy ‘Oh.’

On a side-note, this blog supports all male-strippers, and actors playing male-strippers, because if Taika’s ted-talk is to be believed, he started writing the script for Two Cars, One Night while sitting backstage in his g-string wondering what he ought to be doing with his life. Never let it be said that geniuses aren’t found in the unlikeliest of places.

#the strip nz #the strip #00s tv shows #taika waititi

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