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labingiThis is ramble (okay, rant) about why I may be responding as I am to Wonder Woman: 1984 (liked it okay) and Discovery, especially S3 (kind of hate it). I am socially on the left but increasingly find my responses to pop culture out of step with some of the more prominent left-leaning responses. To wit, Wonder Woman is being panned and most of the left-tube seems fairly strongly pro-Discovery. So why am I out of step? Rambles and spoilers below.
Wonder Woman: 1984
This one is easier to explain. I think my overall enjoyment boils down to I don't care about Wonder Woman. I went in with low-to-no expectations and zero background knowledge from the comics (beyond basic WW canon: jet, lasso, etc.), and so I had a decently good time.
I agree with most of the "moral" (as Jessie Gender put it) critiques of the movie. Putting Steve in Dude's body was not morally explored and that was creepy. Diana shouldn't be mooning over Steve for seventy years. Why not more Amazons and less reliance on men for meaning? Barbara was stereotypical, etc. I just found it decently fun, and here are some reasons why.
Complaint: Diana is not realistic as a role model for young women. Is she supposed to be? I mean, I guess the answer is yes, but I always assumed she was basically a goddess who could do anything and we should all just sit back and let her be infinitely better than all of us. (I know she's technically a demigoddess, but honestly, she has the powers of a god.)
Complaint: The Egypt stuff was racist. I think this gets a little conflated with Gadot's politics, but just based on the movie… yeah, there's superficiality and stereotyping. But I do disagree with one complaint: that the emir fellow was presented as an evil megalomaniac for making his "want my kingdom back" wish. He didn't mean it. It was a joke. He obviously didn't think Lord (sp? This is how much I care) could really grant him any wish, and he was clearly being flippant. And maybe that sums up the whole thing. I just didn't take it that seriously.
But one thing I really liked that no one else seems to care about: the idea that a growth mindset destroys everything. That is an absolute 100% correct diagnosis our global civilization's single worst problem and one that is, indeed, killing us, right now. The general response to this part of the film seems to be "Yeah. 'Greed is good.' It was the '80s. We get it." And, yes, there's an '80s reference, but you know what: our global rate of consumption in the '80s was astronomically lower than it is now. This not an '80s problem. This is a since-the-80s problem, and more broadly a since-Columbus problem. I would not so lightly dismiss a story for pointing it out (even if really broadly), given how little we talk about it and how swiftly it is bringing down a secular apocalypse. Yes, the film won my goodwill there.
Discovery: S3
(Note: I've had disappointments with Disco since S1, but S3 was by far the worst for me, and I'll focus on it. Here, too, it seems to be many people's favorite season?)
I think it's fair to say Disco has a lot of goodwill from the left, in part, for its generally very good swing at representation (despite a few flubs). And this always makes me nervous when I critique it. Am I unhappy with it because my closet racist/sexist/homo-/transphobic/etc. inner self is coming out? I mean, maybe in part: I can't authoritatively say no. But that's not the core problem.
Part of my dislike for Disco (especially S3) is very like my dislike for S7 of Buffy, and I was comfortable with representation in Buffy. It was about empowering middle class white women, i.e. my folx. I disliked S7 (enough to publish an essay on it) because I felt it put its political message before good storytelling. Its message was that spreading the empowerment of women is good. That's fine. Its story (to me) was a mess of internally inconsistent, shoehorned in plots and characters. I'm not going to get specific because it was almost 20 years ago, and I don't remember the details. But I felt like we (the audience) were supposed to applaud for the Scoobies and Slayers doing stupid things because "girl power." But being stupid is not empowering. Being stupid is disempowering. A bad story sends a bad message.
I feel similarly about Disco. I feel like it puts the message of empowerment-through-diverse-representation ahead of good storytelling, and I am expected to applaud because "representation." I feel like I'm supposed to be aglow because Disco has given a strong black female hero protagonist. But she's poorly written—execrably written—and that can't be good, not for black women, not for anything.
Burnham is just the most prominent example of the same move over and over. I feel like I'm supposed to applaud because the core crew of Discovery has saved the day again when I can't suspend my disbelief for it because it is all so unbelievable. The idea that they figure out the Burn in less than a year when the galaxy hasn't been able to for over century or something—unbelievable. The idea that Osyraa would be stupid enough to end up in hand-to-hand combat with Burnham after being spun up as a multidecade strategic genius—unbelievable. The idea that By-the-Book-Federation Guy thinks Loose-Canon Burnham should be captain—unbelievable. And I could go on, but I won't. I'm sure there are infinite disagreements over what counts as "plausible" in space opera. My parameters are mostly character/psychology based (vs. science, etc.).
And this bring me to my core problem with Disco. It's not dialogic. It's anti-dialogic.
Dialogism, a term coined by Mikhail Bakhtin, is a narrative practice in which the characters, have their own "centers," their own backstories, concerns, agendas, lives, etc. that impinge on each other as the story unfolds. In a dialogic story, characters will act like people, even if it's not convenient for the plot, even if it troubles simple morals and straightforward closure. To cite one of Bakhtin's paradigmatic texts, Ivan Karamazov will spend a long chapter talking to his brother about this poem he never wrote because that is the sort of thing he would do, and his brother will listen very nicely because that is the sort of thing he would do.
The other main narrative strategy is based on assigning plot roles. There's a protagonist, and then there are people whose purpose is to help propel the protagonist's story: antagonist, love interest, foil, mentor, etc. This can make a great story, see Star Wars (the original trilogy). And it's not mutually exclusive from dialogism at all. Star Wars actually has a lot of dialogism: check out Leia's response to being rescued. Conversely, The Brothers Karamazov has a sort-of protagonist (Alyosha) and a sort-of antagonist (um, Smerdyakov? Ivan??). But when the plot functions take over from the characters as people, two things happen:
1) The characters feel like cardboard.
2) It feels very dehumanizing. (More on this soon.)
Disco is this kind of story. Its narrative structure is based on plot functions. Burnham is the protagonist. Book is the love interest. Osyraa is the antagonist. Saru and Georgiou are kind of mentors. Tilly is the sidekick, and overall the crew are the faithful band of merry men. And, yes, it's more complex than that. But on the whole plot function dominates.
This kind of narrative structure dehumanizes the characters because it manipulates their personhood in order to make them fit their plot function. (No, not always.) For example, no one objects to an ensign (Tilly) being made acting captain, though that move promotes her over many people's heads. No one objects because the narrative wants to say she's awesome and everybody loves each other. Stamets and Culber instantly decide they've always wanted a teenage child as soon as they meet Adira because the narrative is supposed to be that they make a cute non-traditional family. Detmer is set up in the start the season as having some weird reaction to their time jump and then has an outburst that is totally unhinged, and then it just stops because I guess there isn't room for that story? Adira suddenly and dramatically announces that they are non-binary despite our having no exploration of what this means because the narrative needs to represent non-binary people but can't divert off Burnham enough to do the work. Burnham is always superhumanly brilliant at everything because the narrative does not want you to forget she is the hero. Stamets is angry at Burnham for not letting him go rescue Culber and Adira, but then gets over it in two seconds because the narrative needs the ending to be 100% happy. And so on. And yes, there are exceptions: Georgiou, Saru, and sort-of Book are usually exceptions.
I think the fundamental reason I love the dialogic and loathe the plot-function approach is that I have always known I'm not the hero. From the time I was old enough to be aware of peer groups at all, it was very clear to me that in the plot-function model, I was an extra. I was off on the periphery of the camera while the focus was on the extroverted blonde girl who was good at flipping on the bars or something. See, this style of storytelling really is dehumanizing because it really says that 95% of all the people only exist to make the hero heroic. We are all ultimately resources to be used up in their story. It is storytelling for the 1%, not the financially richest 1% maybe, but the cutest, toughest, loudest, smartest, Burnhamest 1%.
And this especially grates on me in a narrative that purports to be all about inclusion. Because it's hypocritical. It's not inclusive. It's exclusive. It excludes real exploration of Adira's gender identity (or Trill identity, which was barely touched on). It excludes Detmer's mental health. It excludes By-the-Book-Federation-Guy's feelings about the importance of following regulations. It excludes anyone's normal resentment about having a junior officer promoted over them. It excludes the intelligence of everyone in the galaxy who can't figure out in over a century what the Disco team can in a year (and no, it's not all about being able to travel fast, not across that big timeframe). It excludes any exploration of who Burnham actually is because she can't stop being heroic for long enough to have a coherent, psychologically realistic personality or arc. Because ultimately this structure backfires on the hero too, just as abuse hurts the abuser.
Now, to be clear, there have been lots of times Disco hasn't done this, especially in S1 and S2. It's done some good stuff with the Klingons. It got some interesting nuance out of Tyler. Burnham's Vulcanness was initially interesting. Spock was a good character (though he ain't my Spock). Pike was a win. Both Georgious have been good. My complaints about Saru are minor. I love Disco's Amanda and its Sarek is good. Stamets and Tilly are both good characters when they're not being pushed around plotlines. It is by no means an all-bad show for me, even in S3.
But overall it leaves me… angry, and this why: it dehumanizes people—it dehumanizes me—and expects me to applaud because it represents us.
Wonder Woman: 1984
This one is easier to explain. I think my overall enjoyment boils down to I don't care about Wonder Woman. I went in with low-to-no expectations and zero background knowledge from the comics (beyond basic WW canon: jet, lasso, etc.), and so I had a decently good time.
I agree with most of the "moral" (as Jessie Gender put it) critiques of the movie. Putting Steve in Dude's body was not morally explored and that was creepy. Diana shouldn't be mooning over Steve for seventy years. Why not more Amazons and less reliance on men for meaning? Barbara was stereotypical, etc. I just found it decently fun, and here are some reasons why.
Complaint: Diana is not realistic as a role model for young women. Is she supposed to be? I mean, I guess the answer is yes, but I always assumed she was basically a goddess who could do anything and we should all just sit back and let her be infinitely better than all of us. (I know she's technically a demigoddess, but honestly, she has the powers of a god.)
Complaint: The Egypt stuff was racist. I think this gets a little conflated with Gadot's politics, but just based on the movie… yeah, there's superficiality and stereotyping. But I do disagree with one complaint: that the emir fellow was presented as an evil megalomaniac for making his "want my kingdom back" wish. He didn't mean it. It was a joke. He obviously didn't think Lord (sp? This is how much I care) could really grant him any wish, and he was clearly being flippant. And maybe that sums up the whole thing. I just didn't take it that seriously.
But one thing I really liked that no one else seems to care about: the idea that a growth mindset destroys everything. That is an absolute 100% correct diagnosis our global civilization's single worst problem and one that is, indeed, killing us, right now. The general response to this part of the film seems to be "Yeah. 'Greed is good.' It was the '80s. We get it." And, yes, there's an '80s reference, but you know what: our global rate of consumption in the '80s was astronomically lower than it is now. This not an '80s problem. This is a since-the-80s problem, and more broadly a since-Columbus problem. I would not so lightly dismiss a story for pointing it out (even if really broadly), given how little we talk about it and how swiftly it is bringing down a secular apocalypse. Yes, the film won my goodwill there.
Discovery: S3
(Note: I've had disappointments with Disco since S1, but S3 was by far the worst for me, and I'll focus on it. Here, too, it seems to be many people's favorite season?)
I think it's fair to say Disco has a lot of goodwill from the left, in part, for its generally very good swing at representation (despite a few flubs). And this always makes me nervous when I critique it. Am I unhappy with it because my closet racist/sexist/homo-/transphobic/etc. inner self is coming out? I mean, maybe in part: I can't authoritatively say no. But that's not the core problem.
Part of my dislike for Disco (especially S3) is very like my dislike for S7 of Buffy, and I was comfortable with representation in Buffy. It was about empowering middle class white women, i.e. my folx. I disliked S7 (enough to publish an essay on it) because I felt it put its political message before good storytelling. Its message was that spreading the empowerment of women is good. That's fine. Its story (to me) was a mess of internally inconsistent, shoehorned in plots and characters. I'm not going to get specific because it was almost 20 years ago, and I don't remember the details. But I felt like we (the audience) were supposed to applaud for the Scoobies and Slayers doing stupid things because "girl power." But being stupid is not empowering. Being stupid is disempowering. A bad story sends a bad message.
I feel similarly about Disco. I feel like it puts the message of empowerment-through-diverse-representation ahead of good storytelling, and I am expected to applaud because "representation." I feel like I'm supposed to be aglow because Disco has given a strong black female hero protagonist. But she's poorly written—execrably written—and that can't be good, not for black women, not for anything.
Burnham is just the most prominent example of the same move over and over. I feel like I'm supposed to applaud because the core crew of Discovery has saved the day again when I can't suspend my disbelief for it because it is all so unbelievable. The idea that they figure out the Burn in less than a year when the galaxy hasn't been able to for over century or something—unbelievable. The idea that Osyraa would be stupid enough to end up in hand-to-hand combat with Burnham after being spun up as a multidecade strategic genius—unbelievable. The idea that By-the-Book-Federation Guy thinks Loose-Canon Burnham should be captain—unbelievable. And I could go on, but I won't. I'm sure there are infinite disagreements over what counts as "plausible" in space opera. My parameters are mostly character/psychology based (vs. science, etc.).
And this bring me to my core problem with Disco. It's not dialogic. It's anti-dialogic.
Dialogism, a term coined by Mikhail Bakhtin, is a narrative practice in which the characters, have their own "centers," their own backstories, concerns, agendas, lives, etc. that impinge on each other as the story unfolds. In a dialogic story, characters will act like people, even if it's not convenient for the plot, even if it troubles simple morals and straightforward closure. To cite one of Bakhtin's paradigmatic texts, Ivan Karamazov will spend a long chapter talking to his brother about this poem he never wrote because that is the sort of thing he would do, and his brother will listen very nicely because that is the sort of thing he would do.
The other main narrative strategy is based on assigning plot roles. There's a protagonist, and then there are people whose purpose is to help propel the protagonist's story: antagonist, love interest, foil, mentor, etc. This can make a great story, see Star Wars (the original trilogy). And it's not mutually exclusive from dialogism at all. Star Wars actually has a lot of dialogism: check out Leia's response to being rescued. Conversely, The Brothers Karamazov has a sort-of protagonist (Alyosha) and a sort-of antagonist (um, Smerdyakov? Ivan??). But when the plot functions take over from the characters as people, two things happen:
1) The characters feel like cardboard.
2) It feels very dehumanizing. (More on this soon.)
Disco is this kind of story. Its narrative structure is based on plot functions. Burnham is the protagonist. Book is the love interest. Osyraa is the antagonist. Saru and Georgiou are kind of mentors. Tilly is the sidekick, and overall the crew are the faithful band of merry men. And, yes, it's more complex than that. But on the whole plot function dominates.
This kind of narrative structure dehumanizes the characters because it manipulates their personhood in order to make them fit their plot function. (No, not always.) For example, no one objects to an ensign (Tilly) being made acting captain, though that move promotes her over many people's heads. No one objects because the narrative wants to say she's awesome and everybody loves each other. Stamets and Culber instantly decide they've always wanted a teenage child as soon as they meet Adira because the narrative is supposed to be that they make a cute non-traditional family. Detmer is set up in the start the season as having some weird reaction to their time jump and then has an outburst that is totally unhinged, and then it just stops because I guess there isn't room for that story? Adira suddenly and dramatically announces that they are non-binary despite our having no exploration of what this means because the narrative needs to represent non-binary people but can't divert off Burnham enough to do the work. Burnham is always superhumanly brilliant at everything because the narrative does not want you to forget she is the hero. Stamets is angry at Burnham for not letting him go rescue Culber and Adira, but then gets over it in two seconds because the narrative needs the ending to be 100% happy. And so on. And yes, there are exceptions: Georgiou, Saru, and sort-of Book are usually exceptions.
I think the fundamental reason I love the dialogic and loathe the plot-function approach is that I have always known I'm not the hero. From the time I was old enough to be aware of peer groups at all, it was very clear to me that in the plot-function model, I was an extra. I was off on the periphery of the camera while the focus was on the extroverted blonde girl who was good at flipping on the bars or something. See, this style of storytelling really is dehumanizing because it really says that 95% of all the people only exist to make the hero heroic. We are all ultimately resources to be used up in their story. It is storytelling for the 1%, not the financially richest 1% maybe, but the cutest, toughest, loudest, smartest, Burnhamest 1%.
And this especially grates on me in a narrative that purports to be all about inclusion. Because it's hypocritical. It's not inclusive. It's exclusive. It excludes real exploration of Adira's gender identity (or Trill identity, which was barely touched on). It excludes Detmer's mental health. It excludes By-the-Book-Federation-Guy's feelings about the importance of following regulations. It excludes anyone's normal resentment about having a junior officer promoted over them. It excludes the intelligence of everyone in the galaxy who can't figure out in over a century what the Disco team can in a year (and no, it's not all about being able to travel fast, not across that big timeframe). It excludes any exploration of who Burnham actually is because she can't stop being heroic for long enough to have a coherent, psychologically realistic personality or arc. Because ultimately this structure backfires on the hero too, just as abuse hurts the abuser.
Now, to be clear, there have been lots of times Disco hasn't done this, especially in S1 and S2. It's done some good stuff with the Klingons. It got some interesting nuance out of Tyler. Burnham's Vulcanness was initially interesting. Spock was a good character (though he ain't my Spock). Pike was a win. Both Georgious have been good. My complaints about Saru are minor. I love Disco's Amanda and its Sarek is good. Stamets and Tilly are both good characters when they're not being pushed around plotlines. It is by no means an all-bad show for me, even in S3.
But overall it leaves me… angry, and this why: it dehumanizes people—it dehumanizes me—and expects me to applaud because it represents us.
