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thevalleyisjolly · 4 years

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Hi there! If you feel up to it, would you be willing to expand a bit more on the idea of white creators creating poc characters who are ‘internally white’, especially in a post-racialized or racism-free setting & how to avoid it? It’s something I’m very concerned about but I haven’t encountered a lot of info about it outside of stories set in real world settings. Thanks & have a good day!

Hey, thanks for asking, anon! It’s a pretty nuanced topic, and different people will have different takes on it. I’ll share my thoughts on it, but do keep in mind that other people of colour may have different thoughts on the matter, and this is by no means definitive! These are things I’ve observed through research, trial and error, my own experiences, or just learning from other writers.

The first thing I guess I want to clarify is that I personally am not opposed to a society without racism in fiction. It’s exhausting and frankly boring when the only stories that characters of colour get are about racism! So it’s a relief sometimes to just get to see characters of colour exist in a story without dealing with racism. That being said, I feel like a lot of the time when creators establish their settings as “post-racial,” they avoid racism but they also avoid race altogether. Not aesthetically -they may have a few or even many characters with dark skin- but the way the characters act and talk and relate to the world are “race-less” (which tends to end up as default white American/British or whatever place the creator comes from). Which I have complicated thoughts on, but the most obvious thing that springs to mind is how such an approach implies (deliberately or not) that racism is all there is to the way POC navigate the world. It’s definitely a significant factor, particularly for POC in Western countries, but it’s not the only thing! There’s so much more to our experiences than just racial discrimination, and it’s a shame that a lot of “post-racial” or “racism-free” settings seem to overlook that in their eagerness to not have racism (or race) in their stories.

A quick go-to question I ask when I look at characters of colour written/played by white creators is: if this was a story or transcript I was reading, with no art or actors or what have you, would I be able to tell that this character is a character of colour? How does the creator signal to the audience that this is a character of colour? A lot of the time, this signal stops after the physical description - “X has dark skin” and then that’s all! (We will not discuss the issue of racial stereotypes in depth, but it should be clear that those are absolutely the wrong way to indicate a character of colour).

This expands to a wider issue of using dark skin as a be-all-end-all indication of diversity, which is what I mean by “aesthetic” characters of colour (I used the term “internally white” originally but upon further reflection, it has some very loaded implications, many of which I’m personally familiar with, so I apologize for the usage). Yes, the character may not “look” white, but how do they interact with the world? Where do they come from? What is their background, their family? A note: this can be challenging with diaspora stories in the real world and people being disconnected (forcibly or otherwise) from their heritage (in which case, those are definitely stories that outsiders should not tell). So let’s look at fantasy. Even the most original writer in the world bases their world building off existing things in the real world. So what cultures are you basing your races off of? If you have a dark skinned character in your fantasy story, what are the real world inspirations and equivalents that you drew from, and how do you acknowledge that in a respectful, non-stereotyped way?

(Gonna quickly digress here and say that there are already so many stories about characters of colour disconnected from their heritage because ‘They didn’t grow up around other people from that culture’ or ‘They moved somewhere else and grew up in that dominant culture’ or ‘It just wasn’t important to them growing up’ and so on. These are valid stories, and important to many people! But when told by (usually) white creators, they’re also used, intentionally or not, as a sort of cop-out to avoid having to research or think about the character’s ethnicity and how that influences who they are. So another point of advice: avoid always situating characters outside of their heritage. Once or twice explored with enough nuance and it can be an interesting narrative, all the time and it starts being a problem)

Another thing I want to clarify at this point is that it’s a contentious issue about whether creators should tell stories that aren’t theirs, and different people will have different opinions. For me personally, I definitely don’t think it’s inherently bad for creators to have diverse characters in their work, and no creator can live every experience there is. That being said, there are caveats for how such characters are handled. For me personally, I follow a few rules of thumb which are:

Is this story one that is appropriate for this creator to tell? Some experiences are unique and lived with a meaningful or complex history and context behind them and the people to whom those experiences belong do not want outsiders to tell those stories.

To what extent is the creator telling this story? Is it something mentioned as part of the narrative but not significantly explored or developed upon? Does it form a core part of the story or character? There are some stories that translate across cultures and it’s (tentatively) ok to explore more in depth, like immigration or intergenerational differences. There are some stories that don’t, and shouldn’t be explored in detail (or even at all) by people outside those cultures.

How is the creator approaching this story and the people who live it? To what extent have they done their research? What discussions have they had with sensitivity consultants/readers? What kind of respect are they bringing to their work? Do they default to stereotypes and folk knowledge when they reach the limits of their research? How do they respond to feedback or criticism when audiences point things that they will inevitably get wrong?

Going back to the “race-less” point, I think that creators need to be careful that they’re (respectfully) portraying characters of colour as obvious persons of colour. With a very definite ‘no’ on stereotyping, of course, so that’s where the research comes in (which should comprise of more than a ten minute Google search). If your setting is in the real world, what is the background your character comes from and how might that influence the way they act or talk or see the world? If your setting is in a fantasy world, same question! Obviously, avoid depicting things which are closed/exclusive to that culture (such as religious beliefs, practices, etc) and again, avoid stereotyping (which I cannot stress enough), but think about how characters might live their lives and experience the world differently based on the culture or the background they come from.

As an example of a POC character written/played well by a white person, I personally like Jackson Wei and Cindy Wong from Dimension 20’s The Unsleeping City, an urban fantasy D&D campaign. Jackson and Cindy are NPCs played by the DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, who did a good job acknowledging their ethnicity without resorting to stereotypes and while giving them their own unique characters and personalities. The first time he acted as Cindy, I leapt up from my chair because she was exactly like so many old Chinese aunties and grandmothers I’ve met. The way Jackson and Cindy speak and act and think is very Chinese (without being stereotyped), but at the same time, there’s more to their characters than being Chinese, they have unique and important roles in the story that have nothing to do with their ethnicity. So it’s obvious that they’re people of colour, that they’re Chinese, but at the same time, the DM isn’t overstepping and trying to tell stories that aren’t his to tell. All while not having the characters face any racism, as so many “post-racialized” settings aim for, because there are quite enough stories about that!

There a couple factors that contribute to the positive example I gave above. The DM is particularly conscientious about representation and doing his research (not to say that he never messes up, but he puts in a lot more effort than the average creator), and the show also works with a lot of sensitivity consultants. Which takes me to the next point - the best way to portray characters of colour in your story is to interact with people from that community. Make some new friends, reach out to people! Consume media by creators of colour! In my experience so far, the most authentic Chinese characters have almost universally been created/written/played by Chinese creators. Read books, listen to podcasts, watch shows created by people of colour. Apart from supporting marginalized creators, you also start to pick up how people from that culture or heritage see themselves and the world, what kind of stories they have to tell, and just as importantly, what kind of stories they want being told or shared. In other words, the best way to portray an authentic character of colour that is more than just the colour of their skin is to learn from actual people of colour (without, of course, treating them just as a resource and, of course, with proper credit and acknowledgement).

Most importantly, this isn’t easy, and you will absolutely make mistakes. I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that you will mess up. No matter how well researched you are, how much respect you have for other cultures, how earnestly you want to do this right, you will at some point do something that makes your POC audience uncomfortable or even offends them. Then, your responsibility comes with your response. Yes, you’ve done something wrong. How do you respond to the people who are hurt or disappointed? Do you ignore them, or double down on your words, or try to defend yourself? Just as importantly, what are you planning to do about it in the future? If you have a second chance, what are you going to do differently? You will make mistakes at some point. So what are you going to do about them? That, I think, is an even more important question than “How can I do this right?” You may or may not portray something accurately, but when you get something wrong, how are you going to respond?

Essentially, it all comes down to your responsibility as a creator. As a creator, you have a responsibility to do your due diligence in research, to remain respectful to your work and to your audience, and to be careful and conscientious about how you choose to create things. It’s not about getting things absolutely perfect or being the most socially conscious creator out there, it’s about recognizing your responsibilities as a creator with a platform, no matter how big or small, and taking responsibility for your work.

In summary:

Research, research, research

Avoid the obvious no-no’s (stereotypes, tokenization, fetishization, straight up stealing from other cultures, etc) and think critically about what creative choices you’re making and why

Do what you’re doing now, and reach out to people (who have put themselves out there as a resource). There are tons of resources out there by people of colour, reach out when you’re not sure about something or would like some advice!

Responsibility, responsibility, responsibility

Thank you for reaching out! Good luck with your work!

#the valley is posting #thanks anon!#writing advice #hope this helps! if another POC has something to add - please go ahead!

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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years

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Anonymous asked: I love your blog it’s definitely one of the most smartest and cultured ones around. Since you are a super chilled out military vet (flying combat helicopters, how cool is that?!) and also a very thoughtful and devout Christian (I think you talked about being an Anglican) I know this is a cheeky question but I’ll ask it anyway. Would you rather live in a military dictatorship or a theocratic dictatorship?

Now this is an interesting question you play at 2am and the wine is dangerously low.

I have to correct you on a couple of things. Yes, it was ‘cool’ to fly combat helicopters especially in a battlefield setting but it was just a job, like any other. And it’s never about the pilot it’s about the rest of the team behind you, especially your ground crew who make sure you go up and come back in one piece. As for being super chilled you clearly have never seen how sweaty one gets flying in high stress situations. Oh and the stink! A skunk wouldn’t last 5 minutes in my cockpit.

As for my Christian beliefs, I’ll settle for being a believing one. My faith, such as it is, is about living - and failing - by grace day by day than being fervently devout. Faith is a struggle to not rely upon one’s own strength but on divine mercy and grace.

Anyway....

Would I rather live in a military dictatorship or a theocratic dictatorship?

History has shown there's not a lot of difference between the two...

No, wait. On second thoughts maybe I would rather live in a military dictatorship as the lesser evil.

As an ex-officer in her HM armed forces, I know things will be run pretty efficiently with no dilly-dallying. So there’s that.

I suppose even if one does say it’s preferable to live under military rule rather than a theocratic one there is still the question of what kind of military rule? Every nation that has been under military rule came to power and sustained their hold under different dynamics. And of course it also depends on how mature civil society and the rule of law as well as the democratic culture really was in the first place. A lot is tied up with the brutal nature of the personality of the regime leader too. There are simply too many variables.

So one is forced to generalise. So l can’t get too serious in answering this question.

Rather than focus on the negative side let’s look on the bright side.

Just off the top of my head I can think of these reasons why I would choose to ‘live’ under military rule than a theocratic one. There are in no real order:

Beds will be made properly subject to inspection.

Families will be run like military units with the man at the head of the table.

Family meals will be taken at set times.

Public civility will make a return (e.g. no public spitting, drunken, or loutish behaviour).

Freedom of speech will more likely be censored than abolished (better than nothing I suppose)

Elections would be rigged rather than banned (but who really votes anyway these days?) 

They will most likely make the trains run on time (unless you’re British or Italian).

Military leaders often enjoy genuine popularity - albeit after eliminating plausible rivals - that is based on “performance legitimacy,” a perceived competence at securing prosperity and defending the nation against external or internal threats. The new autocrats of today are more surgical: they aim only to convince citizens of their competence to govern.

Maintaining power, for military dictators and their court, is less a matter of terrorising and persecuting victims than of manipulating beliefs about the world. But of course they can do both if backed into a corner to survive.

State propaganda aims not to re-engineer human souls but to boost the military regime leader’s ratings.

The military tend to stay out of personal lives. They have a political police but not necessarily a moral police.

Economic growth is more likely to be stable than under a theocratic state.

Military dictatorships are more likely to build vast bureaucracies to run the state - more jobs for everyone

The military put on great events. Their parades are more colourful and spectacular.

Having a sense of humour is more likely to get you imprisoned than executed for telling an anti-regime joke. It’s no joke to say that people develop a more refinery subversive sense of humour when oppressed. Take for example a famous comedian in Myanmar, Zarganar, for whom comedy is a shield and a weapon. During the time of the military dictatorship (1962-2010) he would make jokes like, “The American says, 'We have a one-legged guy who climbed Mount Everest.' The Brit says, 'We recently had a guy with no arms who swam the Atlantic Ocean. But the Burmese guy says, 'That's nothing! We had a leader who ruled for 18 years without a brain!" It was for jokes like this that Zarganar received a prison sentence in 2008 - for up to 59 years.

Military dictatorships don’t last long. They are more unstable. They tend to fall from the weight of their own contradictions.

One of the problems of living in a theocracy is how absolutist it would be in looking at life in terms of clear cut black and white according to those who rule over you. I strongly suspect in a theocratic state the morality secret police will be all over you looking for any social or moral infraction. In a Christian Theocracy, you'll never be Christian enough - the same would be for states that were Islamic, Judaic or Hindu etc. There's always going to be some pious asshole there with another version of Christianity that is more Christian than you and you're going to lose the freedom to make your own choices.

Under theocracies, unlike other authoritarian regimes, the rulers are the moral authorities that legitimises and fuels their political legitimacy to govern. It assumes its own moral correctness married to its political destiny to rule over others. As C.S Lewis memorably puts it, “Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.”

Finally, I’ll go with the military dictatorship with the hope that there might be some way of bringing the system down with a bit of logic and rationality. Hell knows that wouldn't be possible in a theocratic system!

I agree with Margaret Atwood when she said, “If you disagree with your government, that's political. If you disagree with your government that is approaching theocracy, then you're evil.” There’s more wriggle room with fighting against a military dictatorship because it’s usually against an asshole tyrant - or a ruling oligarchy of a military junta - and not a pernicious idea soaked in theological bullshit or an entire ideology divinely santificated by God himself.

A more interesting question is not to ask is why many people are so readily drawn to be ruled under a military rule or a theocratic one and especially a benevolent dictatorship (like Lee Kwan Yew in Singapore or Paul Kagame in Rwanda) but why increasingly more people in the Western world look to authoritarian figures to rule and shape their lives?

Why do Silicon Valley titans like Peter Thiel and others like him think fondly of ditching democracy in the name of some utopian hyper-capitalist vision of ‘freedom’?

I hear murmurs of the same talk when I interact with corporate colleagues and high net worth individuals I hear it around dinner tables about how democracy is bad for business and profit. Often it’s accompanied by praise for China's ability to "get things done." I just roll my eyes and smile politely.

I think - outside of the legitimate concern of the decay of civil discourse, the corruption of politicians, and corrosiveness of crony capitalism - it’s because democratic politics is hard. Damn hard.

Moreover democratic politics does not have a "right" answer. There never is.

In our Western societies it is the playing field (or market place?) where our values compete. Surely, you say, there is a right way to get the job done: to fill in the potholes, build the roads, keep our streets safe, get our kids to learn reading and math. Ah, but look how quickly those issues get contentious.

Whose potholes should get filled first? Do we try to keep our streets safe through community policing or long prison sentences? Should teachers be given merit pay, are small classrooms better, or should we lengthen the school day? These issues engender deep political fights, all - even in the few debates where research provides clear, technocratic answers. That is because the area of politics is an area for values disputes, not technical solutions.

One person's "right" is not another's because people prioritise different values: equity versus excellence, efficiency versus voice and participation, security versus social justice, short-term versus long-term gains.

Democratic politics allows many ideas of "right" to flourish. It is less efficient than dictatorship. It also makes fewer tremendous mistakes.

The longing for a leader who knows what is in her people's best interests, who rules with care and guides the nation on a wise path, was Plato's idea of a philosopher-king. It's a tempting picture, but it's asking the wrong question.

In political history, philosophers moved from a preference for such benevolent dictators to the ugly realities of democracy when they switched the question from "who could best rule?" to "what system prevents the worst rule?"

But clearly democracy is buckling under pressure in our torrid times. Populism - the logical end consequence of a purer democracy - is chipping away at the edifice of democratic norms and conventions. Increasingly inward looking nativism and nationalism fuel passions beyond the control of reason.

Perhaps it is time we went back to the tried and tested example of a monarchy, a constitutional one that is.

A revitalised monarchy in Britain needs a Head of State that can provide a personal identity to an impersonal State, and a collective sense of itself. A Head of State who does not owe his or her position to either patronage or a vote can more properly represent all the people. Consider that a President who has been elected, often by a minority of a minority of the electorate, cannot adequately speak for the people who did not vote for him or her. It is even worse if the President has been appointed, because then he owes his position to a small clique.So, the accident of birth is the best means of appointing a Head of State. Someone who has no party political axe to grind, or special favours to repay to a vested interest. Someone whose allegiance is to the people. Not just allegiance to the people who voted for him or his political party, but allegiance to all the people of the country equally. Far from being "incompatible" with democracy, a Monarchy can thereby enhance the government of the land.

The Monarch is a national icon. An icon which cannot be replaced adequately by any other politician or personality. This is because the British Monarchy embodies British history and identity in all its aspects, both good and bad.

When you see the Queen you not only see history since 1952, when she took the throne, but you see a person who provides a living sense of historical continuity with the past. Someone who embodies in her person a history which extends back through time, back through the Victorian era, back into the Stuart era and beyond. You see the national history of all parts of our islands, together, going right back in time.

As Edmund Burke, Roger Scruton and Michael Oakeshott would say, the monarchy is a living continuity between the past, the present and the future.

With its traditions, its history, its ceremonial, and with its standing and respect throughout the world, the British Monarchy represents a unique national treasure, without which the United Kingdom would be sorely impoverished.

If you value national distinctiveness, you should be a Monarchist.

If you are anti-globalist you should be a Monarchist because Monarchies represent the different national traditions and distinctions among the nations.

The desire to secure, strengthen and promote your own distinct national icons, whether your Monarch, or your own unique national identity, should be your concern, whether you live here in St Andrews, or whether you live in St Petersburg, or whether you live in St Paulo.

As the global financial system rushes us all towards a world intended to eradicate all local and national distinctions, the Monarchy stands out as different, distinct and valuable. Constitutionally, practically, spiritually and symbolically the Monarchy is a national treasure, the continued erosion of which would change the character of Britain, and not in a good way!

I’m speaking as a High Tory now, sorry. And so of course I only see it working for the United Kingdom....and the Commonwealth (slip that discreetly in there for you India, Australia, Canada, and Africa).

Still, if you want egalitarianism then look at Norway and the Netherlands - both highly "egalitarian" societies, and both monarchies.

Everyone else will just have to jolly well do without or ask us politely to come back (I’m looking at you my dear American colonial cousins, all will be forgiven).

The best of all worlds? Time will tell.

At your service, Ma’am....

Thanks for your question.

#question #ask #military dictatorship #government #rule #democracy #culture #society #theocracy #army #christianity #religion #nd high net worth individuals

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classyfoxdestiny · 3 years

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Nik Dodani, Sujata Day, Kiran Deol on the evolving space for Indian-origin creatives in western cinema

Where once, being brown brought with it stereotypes and typecasting, now a new generation of creatives of Indian origin, including Sujata Day, Kiran Deol, Nik Dodani and Avantika Vandanapu, is effecting change in western cinema — with diaspora narratives and creating their own support structures

“The producers actually asked if I’m ‘100% Indian’,” recalls Sujata Day about an unfortunate audition experience for a major sitcom in 2018. The actor-filmmaker, along with four other Indian-American actors, was vying for the role of the fiancée of one of the show’s lead characters. “In response to the producers’ query as to whether or not I was ‘100% Indian’, I said, ‘My parents are from Kolkata and I speak fluent Bengali, so yes.’ But the fact that I had to defend my Indianness was very strange. I know I didn’t book the role because I clearly didn’t look ‘Indian enough’ to them.”

Also Read | Get ‘First Day First Show’, our weekly newsletter from the world of cinema, in your inbox. You can subscribe for free here

Day, during a video call with The Hindu Weekend, shakes her head as she talks about the then-and-now of South Asian representation in western film spaces. But the 37-year-old is not alone in her views of a culturally-stagnant cinema industry in the West. The industry boxed its South Asian actors and filmmakers into what they deemed acceptable. But in the past five years, creatives have continually expressed their dissent, announcing on social media, as well as during roundtables, protests and even stand-up routines that they are tired of the ‘identikit Indian’ roles.

More South Asian-origin actors, such as Dev Patel, Janina Gavankar, Rahul Kohli, Geraldine Viswanathan, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Kuhoo Verma, and Anya Chalotra, are shunning reductive roles in favour of fully-rounded characters that had long been reserved for only a few actors of colour.

For example, in Hulu’s Plan B, Kuhoo Verma’s portrayal as a sexually-curious teen who has to come to terms with the reproductive rights in her conservative state of South Dakota as she tries to purchase Plan B (morning-after pill) resonated with many women of colour. Prior to this, Indian girls were the one-dimensional personification of purity culture across western cinema. More recently, Dev Patel’s casting as the historically assumed-white Sir Gawain in The Green Knight turned the tables on the scope of open ethnicities.

Still of Sunny (Kuhoo Verma) and Lupe (Natalie Moroles) in Hulu comedy-drama ‘Plan B’ (2021) | Photo Credit: Hulu

The identity struggle is never easily reconciled. Take that episode of The Mindy Project where Mindy (Mindy Kaling) goes on a date with the ‘ideal Indian man’ but he, unimpressed by her lack of knowledge about India, says he “could never date a coconut — brown on the outside, white on the inside”. This lights a flare to the tough dichotomy the diaspora tackles every day while forging their identity; embracing their surrounding culture and holding onto tradition.

Some address this by not taking on the ‘Indian-origin’ tag. Verma identifies as a woman of colour, as her family moved to the United States from South India but, without dismissing her heritage entirely, prefers to be known as ‘just an actor’ in the industry.

Nik Dodani attends The World Premiere of ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ presented by Universal Pictures at the Opening Night of The Toronto International Film Festival on September 09, 2021 in Toronto, Ontario. | Photo Credit: RYAN EMBERLEY/AFP

Meanwhile, actors and filmmakers including Nik Dodani, Day and Kiran Deol are also taking matters into their own hands — by either creating their own support structures for South Asian actors or producing their own films and taking them to international stages such as the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

Festivals matter

Festivals have become a cornerstone for Indian filmmakers and actors. It is not just a networking opportunity but a platform for visibility. In mid-September, actor-filmmaker Deol’s short I Would Never premiered at TIFF as well as Dodani’s Dear Evan Hansen.

“Massive festivals like TIFF really help to legitimise a filmmaker and their support really helps to bring up international talent,” says Deol, who has received support from Sundance and TIFF in the past to get her short film made. “I hope that these festivals continue to be as inclusive. Big film festivals like Cannes and TIFF have been some of the places where I’ve discovered some of my favourite filmmakers, so it’s no small thing.”

Read More | Kiran Deol on ‘I Would Never’, a film for the #MeToo ages

A still from the 2020 short film ‘I Would Never’ starring and directed by Kiran Deol | Photo Credit: Kiran Deol

Meanwhile, Dodani, a deep admirer of Day’s “hustle” through the contentious industry, shares the festival circuit this year certainly feels different as well. “We are seeing more incredible filmmakers of colour; it’s a reflection of the power of our communities to get our stuff made and insert them into the conversation. The indie world has always been exciting because that’s where the films that push the boundaries exist, so we’re finally starting to see the financing start to follow the Black and Brown creators.”

Creating a community

The changes, however, are slow and not simultaneous; some generations of creatives will reap the rewards of those who have toiled for years in the murky industry. Things now could be looking up for casting as well as attention to details in South Asian roles and script. Avantika Vandanapu plays a young Gujarati high school student who is an ace coder and who, through a happenstance crush on a boy at school, discovers and nurtures talent for DJing.

Avantika Vandanapu as Rhea, in Disney Channel movie ‘Spin’ | Photo Credit: Kharen Hill / Disney

Vandanapu’s Telugu roots have seen her appear in 2015’s Brahmotsavam alongside Mahesh Babu and 2016’s Premam with Naga Chaitanya and Shruti Haasan.

The 16-year-old says her auditioning process for Spin was a far cry from the horror stories minority actors have experienced, and she owes it all to their resistance and perseverance over the years. “From the moment I saw the script, I was so glad Disney had not generalised the Indian ethnicity, but had narrowed on the specificities of the Gujarati culture,” she says. “Seeing an Indian girl written as someone who is comfortable in her identity rather than having an identity crisis was exciting.”

Of course, Vandanapu understands identity conflicts are a prevalent matter, but she hopes it is not the only narrative for people of the Indian diaspora.

Speaking on what catalysed change across the industry changing, he says, “This industry is white-dominated, and the Black and Latinx communities in Hollywood have organised and supported each other in ways that are so inspiring; we hope to replicate that. The conversation around inclusion and equity has been changing for a few years now, but has accelerated immensely after last summer. The Black Lives Movement is directly responsible for that; every community of colour in the US is benefiting from the work the activists have done over the years. The real test, if the industry starts walking the walk, is in the next five to ten years.”

Still of Evan (Ben Platt) and Jared (Nik Dodani) in Universal Pictures’ ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ (2021) | Photo Credit: Universal Pictures

On their own terms

One of the happy results of this movement is The Salon, co-founded in 2019 by Atypical and Escape Room actor Dodani, along with Bash Naran and Vinny Chhibber. “It started out as an informal way for us to connect,” says the 27-year-old. “Vinny, Bash and I were chatting and we found we all knew different folks in the South Asian film industry but not everyone knew everyone. For the first year, our goal was to just get people in the same room, to have the most basic form of community. Our vision is to help the next generation of South Asian talent.”

Read More | Nik Dodani on his cultural identity, and working on ‘Escape Room’ and ‘Atypical’

Day is not blind to the industry’s flaws either, one of the most prominent being its unwillingness to change. “Green-lighters in the film community were, and still are, slow, but now we are giving ourselves the green light,” she says.

So, the filmmaker pooled her money and directed, wrote and starred in comedy-drama Definition Please, which has been a favourite on the festival circuit in the US, having won ‘Outstanding Directorial Debut for a Feature Film’ at the South Asian Film Festival in America, and Best Narrative Feature at CAAMFest.

Told through the Indian female gaze, the indie film follows an Indian-origin woman who is living in the past glory of her spelling bee champion days while trying to move forward and dealing with her grief-stricken family. The film, which also stars Ritesh Rajan, succinctly explores themes of female friendships, familial pressures, mental health, and toxic masculinity in the Indian community.

Read More | Sujata Day on pushing through Hollywood bureaucracy and making ‘Definition Please’

Day was inspired by her long-time Awkward Black Girl and Insecure collaborator Issa Rae, explaining, “Very few people know of her first two web series; everyone thinks Awkward Black Girl was her first. But she never gave up and never let the system stop her from creating. And neither should we!”

The OTT problem

Day is currently in chats with streamers and distributors worldwide for Definition Please, and she confides with a laugh, “They feel that if they have Bollywood movies on their platform, they don’t need diaspora films. They think we are being represented already, which is wild to me because as much as I love the stars, that’s not our lives in the diaspora. We have very specific and interesting stories to tell.

During Asian-American Heritage Month (May) in the US, she noticed that streaming companies were putting out lists of Asian content on special servers and many were subtitled and foreign, but not a lot were content out of the US (or the UK). “They are handling Asian inclusion in a global sense that doesn’t make sense to folks in the diaspora. We should be able to hold them accountable and we bring these grievances up in meetings and they’re hearing us. Hopefully, they make some changes to shift their thinking.”

Money talks

Having travelled to many film festivals when it came out in 2017, Day’s eight-minute short, Cowboy and Indian (a drama-thriller about a Bengali bride who collapses in the street and is rescued by a cowboy) is now being made into a television series — made possible by a South Asian film executive reaching out to her. “It absolutely matters who’s also buying stories for production. We need representation there too!” she says.

Agreeing with her, actor-filmmaker Deol elaborates, “I feel like funding for filmmakers is always the 21-million-dollar question. This is true for folks of any colour trying to get their projects made.”

A growing space that is increasingly getting more funding is book-to-screen adaptations. Diksha Basu’s Destination Wedding, which was shortlisted for the Wodehouse Prize, is currently being adapted to a series. Meanwhile, Rakesh Satyal and Dodani have long been working on an adaptation of Satyal’s 2009 bestseller Blue Boy, which tells the story of a young gay Indian-American boy who is bullied through his school years. Dodani, who found the book to be a “full body experience” when he first read it, turns screenwriter for the film. “We’re trying to find the right home and financing for it. We want to make sure it’s done right and gets the right budget and talent,” he says.

So, while many creatives are more than happy to bid goodbye to ‘brownface’, casting appropriation and tokenism — as Deol sees it, this farewell is rather fresh — there is still a lot to look forward to and to demand in terms of inclusion.

“The changes showcase for me both how far we have come, and how far we have to go,” Deol sums up, adding, “I’d love to get to a place in representation where we have the room to tell extremely specific stories that don’t have to speak for the entire diaspora because there is enough variety in the shows and movies that get airtime, that there is a multiplicity of voices and points of view to choose from.”

It will be a frustrating wait for this level of change and some unfortunate barriers are inevitable. But as more creatives of colour vocalise their needs and rights, and also hold studios and casting agencies accountable, things are bound to change.

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suzannemcappsca · 6 years

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Reading the virtual landscape of disputes: the expanding world of digital justice

Ian Macduff

“I see contemporary patterns of disputing as an adaptive (but not necessarily optimal) response to a set of changing conditions. There have been great changes in the social production of injuries as a result of, among other things, the increased power and range of injury-producing machinery and substances. There has been a great increase in social knowledge about the causation of injuries and of technologies for preventing them; there has been a wide dissemination of awareness of this knowledge to an increasingly educated public.” Marc Galanter, “Reading the Landscape of Disputes: What we know and don’t know (and think we know) about our allegedly contentious and litigious society”, [1983] 31 UCLA L. Rev. 4, 71

At the time I wrote my previous blog, we were just a couple of weeks away from hosting the 2018 Forum on Online Dispute Resolution at the Centre for ICT Law and School of Law in Auckland. Now, a month later, that Forum has happened, the 70+ delegates from 14 countries have dispersed and returned home, and we’re left with a clear sense that this field is now bigger than the name implies, and instead encompasses a radical array of developments that will shape dispute resolution and legal processes – and the ways in which we work in those fields – almost beyond recognition. And yet, as I’ll suggest later, much will remain the same – in terms of the role of institutions of justice (albeit digitally reconstructed); the role of human intermediaries (still essential despite algorithm-directed information seeking); and the ethical challenges of living together (and disputing about it) will remain, and even become more important.

Some 35 years ago, American legal commentator Marc Galanter surveyed the ‘landscape’ of American dispute resolution, in the first decade of burgeoning ‘alternatives’ to litigation, and noted that, while part of the driving force for those alternatives was the litigious climate of modern life, it was important to note that this too was a reflection of our capacity to invent new ways to generate conflict. By way of parallel, one of the founders of modern online dispute resolution, Prof Ethan Katsh, has noted that, far from being the utopian tool for a modern connected world, the Internet has proved to be a less than peaceful place. So much so indeed, that the man credited with inventing the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, now heads calls for the creation of a new Internet ; and other key early players have offered an apology for the Internet. In these recent developments, two key features of digital life can be seen: on the one hand, the radically useful resources of data management, connectivity, communication, and access to information that online tools provide; and on the other, the equally radically disruptive, intrusive, disconnecting impact that those same tools have.

For that reason, delegates to the Forum were asked to think of their contributions in terms of two key themes: innovation and impact.

Under the ‘innovation’ heading, I’d identify two key themes from the many rich topics discussed: first, the growing significance of digital technology in the courts; and second, the potential for automation in access to legal information and resources. At the core of both of these developments was the same concern that has driven the last several decades of innovation in mediation and alternatives to court-based resolution: better access to justice. And, while courts and lawyers and mediators might never be far from the conversation, the ‘actors’ of most concern in modern dispute systems design – and the ones most likely to benefit from digital innovation – are self-represented litigants and other disadvantaged disputants.

On that first point – the growing role of technology in the courts and, indeed, of “Internet courts” – there’s a parallel with the trends in recent developments in “analogue” forms of ADR, to the extent that what begins as alternatives to formal and court-based litigation increasingly has a presence in judicial processes and a foundation in legislation. Substantively, digital strategies are central to the design of developments in, for example, consumer protection, commercial law, insurance claims, money claims– whether by way of platforms to enhance access to legal information, or algorithm-based decision trees and blind bidding, or platforms for asynchronous and text-based communication and document sharing. And, while these developments are central to enhancing simple, cost-effective, and timely access to resolution, it is now seen to be equally important to reconfigure courts in order to take advantage of digital resources and the efficiencies they offer to both litigants and justice systems. This doesn’t need further expansion here as earlier blog entries and a number of articles have touched on the very rapid move towards Internet Courts and Tribunals, key examples of which are British Columbia’s Civil Resolution Tribunal or the Hangzhou Internet Court and the very new Beijing Internet Court. By the time of the next annual ODR Forum, we can be sure there will be many further examples.

As an aside, and as this is a mediation blog, I need to note also that the design of digital strategies for courts almost invariably involves a mediation component, as an intermediate, and human-assisted step between a largely automated “triage” or problem definition stage and – where necessary – an adjudicative stage. Mediation is, to this extent, embedded in the design of digital justice.

One aspect of digital innovation that runs in tandem with the developments in the more conventional fields of dispute resolution involves ground-breaking work in the role of information technology in emergencies, civil conflict and disaster management [see for example, https://ict4peace.org/activities/]. There’s no space in this blog to expand on this important development; suffice to say that mobile technology, distributed decision making, access to reliable information and co-ordination are at the heart of it. And, in the same way that critical thinking in international conflict resolution has informed the field of civilian dispute resolution, so it seems will digital developments in these two tracks enhance the development of practice – and, in the end, meet comparable goals of improving life chances.

Briefly, on the second aspect of the ‘innovation’ theme, the presentations at the Forum made it clear that we’re embarking on a path that is well beyond the mere migration of one’s mediation or legal practice into digital spaces, or the use of digital technologies (tablets, mobiles, video conferencing) as additional tools, which I’m guessing is what many of you already do. Rather, we’re moving into a world of artificial intelligence, machine learning, the role of legal bots to assist research, decision making and advice, and the potential of digital choice architecture (often by way of web page design) to assist people in making choices. Cynically, of course, you know that this is already happening, but for commercial and advertising ends rather than the goals of access to justice – but at least the world of dispute systems design is now drawing on the experience gained in “nudging”, as one of the remote presenters, Dr Ayelet Sela, indicated.

Of the second key theme of the Forum – Impact – it’s not too much of a stretch to say that the discussion centred on the challenges of ethics and digital technologies and, if we were to focus even more, it’s on the question of trust. As Siva Vaidhyanathan notes in Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy, “norm-building is so much harder than technology development.” Or more broadly, the Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells notes, in his The Rise of the Network Society (p 213), all the elements of decentralisation form the new paradigm but “they still lack the cultural glue that brings them together”. “What” he asks, “is the ethical foundation of informationalism? And does it need an ethical foundation at all?” It’s clear that the development and design of digital technologies for access to justice is, and must be, informed by a parallel conversation on the same essential norms that have shaped both formal and informal dispute resolution developments: trust, accessibility, transparency, equity, accountability, legality and – of particular importance – security. [See, for example, N.Ebner & J. Zeleznikow, ‘No Sheriff in Town: Governance for the ODR Field’, Negotiation Journal,Vol. 32, No. 4, 2016,pp. 297-323; Leah Wing, “Ethical Principles for Online Dispute Resolution”, International Journal on Online Dispute Resolution 2016 (3) 1, 12]. This is a question perhaps for later discussion, but it’s also important to note that the trust we have hitherto assumed to depend on reputation, reliability, and relationships, now is increasingly to be derived from the apparent immutability of algorithm design and the security of blockchain-based transactions.

Finally, one element of the conversation that takes us beyond usual world of access to justice arises from the impact of the digital world on our human interactions. I anticipate that, just as we’ll spend more time in future looking at the rise and role of Internet courts and digital decision trees, we’ll also address the “existential” questions that now turn up in recent books such as Max Tegmark’s Life 3.0 or Jamie Susskind’s Future Politics – discussions not just on the jurisprudence of automated decision making but on what it means to be human in a digital age. In one all too brief exchange at the Forum, this came up in response to a reference to “data subjects” – that is, you and me, the human beings who are increasingly at risk of being reduced to [commercially interesting] bundles of data. The switch from the human to the digital priority is both increasingly familiar and potentially alarming. And, just as mobile phones are now practically essential tools in television dramas (along with representations of text messages on my TV screen), so will digital devices – and probably, digital deliberation – be part of future surveys of the landscape of dispute resolution.

That last part of our conversation at the Forum reinforced the recognition that the development of technologies (here, those directed towards law, disputes and resolution) cannot be separated from a discussion about what Prof Roger Brownsword refers to as the “moral community” in which those technologies emerge. [R. Brownsword, “Lost in translation: Legality, Regulatory Margins and Technological Management,” Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 26: 1321; @ 1335 [2011]]