Hobbits Are (White) People Too

I was avoiding my midterm the other day, absently reading over the boyfriend's shoulder as he avoided his final, when we came across the following headline: Race row erupts over 'Hobbit' casting. I made him back up and let me re-read the article, and there truly was a row, or fight as we say here in the Colonies, over the race of hobbits.  Apparently, a (former, cuz that bitch was sacked) casting director turned a Pakistani-heritage actor away at the door, telling her that she was too dark-skinned to be a Hobbit extra.

Yes, you read that right. Too dark-skinned. To play a hobbit.  Which, yes I know, is a creature that does not exist.

Did J.R.R. Tolkien wax poetic about the creamy complexion every hobbit has in common? Even if he did (he didn't), is that really integral to the story that Peter Jackson is trying to tell? Somehow I highly doubt it. Somehow I think Peter Jackson is more concerned with slow motion 360-degree pans than with creating a sea of miniature, furry Aryans.

This is just another situation in a long, long list of situations in which a person associated "neutral" or "regular" or "without a message" with "white." I could have said white person, but I think the social brainwashing goes deeper and has a farther reach even than that.  Even my generation, twenty-somethings born in the 1980s, grew up coloring with light tan crayons called "flesh." When I type the word nude right now, you think of a color, and it is not dark.

The film industry is notorious for perpetuating this stereotype.  Granted, we do not live in a color-blind world, and for some reality-based films to reflect anything otherwise could be a great disservice to the viewing public, and the characters whose stories do revolve around race.  But that is not always, or even often, the case.  And let's be honest; The Hobbit is not going to be a reality-based film.  The Hobbit does not even take place on Earth as we know it.  So why does it matter what color skin these creatures have? It's all in how this casting director, and many, many other people, see the world.  Hobbits are white. Why? Because they are. Because they always have been. They're just white; white is what they look like.

The casting director said it herself, in her own so-called defense, "We are looking for light-skinned people. I'm not trying to be- whatever. It's just the brief. You've got to look like a hobbit."

I'm not trying to be... whatever.  Just because you don't say it loud doesn't mean you aren't.  Racist. 

Sent a shiver up your spine, didn't it? That word; scary word. True word.  Be aware of the world around you, lady, how small it is or isn't, and why that might be.  That's the first step. The second step is don't put your foot in your mouth like a doofus.  The third step is don't get fired from Peter Jackson's The Hobbit because you are that unaware of your own ignorance.

Brace Yourselves, Girls: Bar Politics

I was recently in a bar with one of my best friends and former roommate of four years, innocently enjoying our beers and catching up, when a drunk guy approached us. This is not an unusual occurrence, given our surroundings, but what he said to us was. Taking in our answers to a few random questions he posed (yes, we lived together, and yes, we actually were just discussing adoption) he assumed we were a couple. We did not try hard to deny this, mainly because that saved us and him a lot of time and energy if he was looking for a hookup. It did occur to us that he actually may have been, in his drunken stupor, convinced that if he kept talking to us and buying us drinks that we would make out, but we knew that was not going to happen so we judged him to be essentially harmless.

He ranted and raved in our favor, going on and on about how we should be allowed to marry and adopt and we cheered him on. And then he stood up and announced, “I should be allowed to marry this pole if I wanted.”

Pause.

I pointed out that has nothing to do with gay marriage. He continued as if I had said nothing, and went on a gleeful diatribe on how anyone should be able to marry whoever and whatever they want, regardless of the other party's ability to consent. Farm animals, inanimate objects, whatever. And at this point we were both chiming in, mainly for the benefit of the rest of the bar patrons, all of whom were now watching us intently (and as I later learned, taking bets as to whether or not my friend and I were truly a couple), saying over and over that allowing gay marriage is allowing two consenting adult human people to marry and gain all the tax, medical, and next-of-kin benefits married people possess. His passionate entreaties to the government to allow anyone to marry a pole or a Great Dane did nothing but relegate gay people to inanimate objects and pets, and we were increasingly uncomfortable. Unfortunately, we were also unable to leave due to the beers we’d enjoyed before he intruded on our perfectly lovely friend-date.

Encouraged by our earlier positivity and disregarding our very sudden and severe change of tone, he continued to spout half-liberalisms, thinly disguising a vast ignorance that forced me to wonder just how many people in the world consider themselves forward-thinking simply because they discharge these snippets of liberal foil, barely covering a whole casserole of ignorant, backward ideologies. And then I guess we were friends by now, because he moved past his faux-pro-gay cheerleading and brought out the big guns. Assuming, at this point, that we were Super Liberals (what does that even mean?) with a steadfast We Are The World mentality, he decided to really test us and asked our opinion on miscegenation.

Don't... read it again. Just, trust that you read right.

We gaped at him. And he kept. Talking. Quickly covering his tracks(?) and saying the following: "Of course you love diversity, right? I love diversity. Well if you mix the races there will eventually be no more diversity so you're losing that thing you love so much. What will you do in the future when there's no diversity? What will you love?"

At this point all our words were gone, vanished, vamoosed from our brains and mouths. I wish I'd been able to speak, because I would have at least been able to tell him that what he said doesn't even make SENSE, and that more genetic mixing leads to more diverse people, and less genetic mixing leads to the Hapsburgs. To my credit, that particular night I was completely unprepared to get into such a political debate. You know, the kind that spirals so completely and immediately out of control that it ends up in racist drivel. And the worst part about all of it is that this guy thinks he's forward-thinking. He thinks he's really well informed on all the hot-button socio-political issues, and he's out there, talking to people, making decisions, filling the collective unconscious with his burbling, bumbling ethos.

What I'm really saying here is that they're out there. Those people exist, and they are out there, and they are at the bar, waiting for you to get tipsy so they can babble at you for four hours straight when you where just trying to have a nice night out with your friend. It's real, girls.

Brace yourselves.

Depués de Raza

Awhile ago, AZWiner wrote an upbeat post criticizing the pervasive claim that America has progressed past race as a concept. He disagreed with the assertion that after the Obama administration had been elected to office America officially became "post-race." Of course, he's correct - the suggestion that hundreds of years of othering and oppression imposed by the erroneous concept of "race" has suddenly been resolved simply because America has voted in our first African-American president is absurd.

In fact, it's practically insulting, certainly infuriating - even if you hail from not-necessarily-pasty, white, middleclass-dom (as this Gentleman admits he does, not that there's anything wrong with that). Was Obama's indoctrination a big moment? Absolutely and without a doubt - whether you supported him through the election or not (I didn't - deal with it, hipster fan base). Was it THE big moment? Not just yet, Gentle Readers. Although, I must say that I have no actual clue what the representative moment will be. But, I think I've decided we'll be getting close when society stops using the phrases "latino" or "hispanic" to apply to all representative persons with origins below the Mexico/Texas border (and surrounding areas).

There isn't, nor has there ever been, a latino race. What the term covers instead is a group of people from over 20 countries with different cultures, histories, and anthropological backgrounds. Even in the harsh, cold, badlands we call science there probably exists far more genetic variation than one could traditionally expect between most races - latinos included. This, of course, is probably thanks to a concept we call "traveling." You may have heard of it - it's the notion where someone or something moves from point A to point B for a given distance, regardless of motive or cause. Except, here someone moves from point A to point B, looks along the way and says, "Well, hello gorgeous. Fine weather we're having, isn't it? What do you people do for fun around here?" Then, after a mandatory waiting period, they discover the one thing human beings have been doing for fun since before we could stand upright, an act with consequences momentarily forgotten (or not, in many circumstances), which leads to the discussed "racial blurriness." Had fellow Gentleman Matt Lindeboom ignored his tarot reading, thereby dating and impregnating a Thai woman during his travels, we would have a living example in the flesh, so to speak.

What's perhaps more important than genetic identifiers is our penchant for making race a cultural determinant. We build assumptions about backgrounds and upbringing based on external characteristics out of a need to differentiate the "other" and to have some form of "racial consistency." We create an "us-them" dynamic and then we like to think our assumptions about "those" people are correct. The best representative example that I can think of, at this point, is the claim that rap/hip-hop music is indicative of black culture or that rock is white. Or that all latinos are catholic and speak Spanish at home. The media and Hollywood build on these stereotypes and steadily reinforce them through television, movies, and music. Think about all the spanish-speaking persons you see in film. How are they portrayed?

What's more interesting is that not only do we want consistency, but we seem to only allow people to have a single cultural identifier - particularly if that identifier isn't white or, at the very least, is just less typical. When discussing your cultural background, you could rattle off a slew of ethnicities, but people are going to remember the exotic one and assume that the most prevalent. It probably has its roots in the "one drop" rule - a rule of thumb dictating that if you're only part white, you're generally considered that other part - particularly if you look the part, however slight. And from there, we build associations and reaffirm our own expectations. We apply these expectations to culture, thereby increasing "otherness" and creating this concept we've called "race" for the past however many years.

With that said, there's nothing wrong with personally identifying with a particular culture or keeping in contact with your roots - far from it, in fact. If America is to be the big melting pot it is supposed to be, an element of that is not just necessary, but preferred. Diversity and unity can be celebrated simultaneously - mutual understanding between all peoples can't occur otherwise.

I suppose what I talked about here could have just as easily applied to most other "races." Do you agree? As always, Gentle Readers, post your questions, comments, and concerns below.

Post-Race

I hear we are post-everything these days. We were once "Post-Cold War," but now we're "Post-9/11." Soon, but not soon enough, we'll be "post-recession." Today, we live in the era of the Obama, but we'll be "post-Obama" one day too. A friend recently wrote on Twitter: "I'm really sick of people pretending we live in a post-homophobic society."

And of course, we claim to be "post-race."

We're not, in my opinion, but that does seem to be the consensus ideal goal: for our society to be "blind" that is, to the color of another one's skin. I'd like to believe that at least, but there's evidence that we're not nearly at that point yet. And thats okay!! We'll get there! It's just going to take time.

Are you, "color-blind"??

One sign that we are making some progress will appear in an upcoming film, "The Princess and the Frog." The Washington Post just did an article about this movie that I think is well-worth reading. In the 72 years of Disney, the Post explains, there have been eight Disney princesses that star in their own film. Two of those princesses have been non-white (Mulan and Pocahontas), the rest of them have been white. Tiana will be a first - she will be black.

Is a black Disney princess necessary in today's "modern" American society?... a society that sometimes claims to be color-blind, or post-race? These Gentlemen had a similar debate last month about the representation of minorities in the entertainment media through two essays. The first essay by John Oz discussed how writers/producers are usually white, and how that may explain why many television characters are white. The second essay by B. Graham followed Oz's article with an essay criticizing the entertainment industry for not more frequently casting color-blind. Also be sure to check out the discussions that followed in the comments section.

In my opinion, that we need to go out of our way to cast minorities in tv/film proves that we are not post-race. Do others agree?

The Washington Post team featured a series of opinion essays in their Outlook section the other week. The series was about Spring Cleaning - they compiled a list of ten things it's time for this country to toss.

The List:

• Academic Tenure
• The Term "Muslim World"
• The NAACP
• The Nobel Prize in Literature
• The Prom
• Larry Summers
• Television
• The Vice Presidency
• West Point
• The White House Press Corps

It's a fun read. One of those essays is about tossing the NAACP. It's humorous and makes some good points; the NAACP has grown somewhat archaic rather quickly. Author Jonetta Barrass suggests perhaps redefining and loosening the restrictions of "colored-people" to include more than just African Americans, but to scrap the organization altogether is to accept something I don't believe to be true yet, that we are "post-race."

I believe the NAACP still has a role in today's American society for the same reasons that I believe in having a Black History Month - for the same reasons I'm okay with affirmative action - for the same reasons I think a black Disney princess is not just a nice idea, but a necessary one - and similarly, because I believe America didn't just vote in a dark-skinned President, it needed one.

In the era of the Obama, black Americans will be in the spotlight more than any other time since the Civil Rights Movement. Let's not get ahead of ourselves though; progress does not mean instant success. We're not post-race yet, but at least we're getting closer.

A History of Representing

Ozkirbas posted last week his thoughts on the "token" characters in television and film, which, as an actress, is a subject near and dear to my heart.

The truth is, a huge portion of main characters in television and film (especially film) is white, and male. As Ozkirbas pointed out, this could simply be an issue of white, male writers (who make up a large part of the successful screenwriter population) writing what they know. Or white, male producers (another majority) funding projects to which they can relate and connect on a personal level. Or maybe it's habit.

Whatever it is, the general practice is that if characters are generic, they are white men. Females and ethnic minorities almost always have to be specified in the script before they can be cast. For the moment, however, I'm going to leave females alone because at this point in history the public is way too squirmy to consider sex-blind casting an option in most situations.

But minorities. Skin color. Now THAT is something that should not be an issue for generic casting. And I'm going to go ahead and say this before you get your hackles up, I know the world is not as yet color blind and for some things color blind casting is simply not an option. West Side Story, for example.

Which brings up an interesting point. West Side Story, when it first came to Broadway in 1957, cast actual latino actors in the Puerto Rican parts, historically the first Broadway show to put latinos onstage at all, let alone in major roles. When the movie came out in 1961, however, Natalie Wood and others (like George Chakiris, who played Bernardo) were put in brown face for the roles, and then Natalie Wood's singing voice was dubbed over. So I mean, it's not like she was cast for her talent.

What I'm trying to show here is where we're coming from. 1961 was not that long ago, although sometimes it feels that way. Producers and casting agents put onscreen what they think the general paying audience will be comfortable seeing, and that is beaming white faces with their black (or sometimes, but not often, brown) friend. Don't even get me started on where Asian and Native American actors fit in (they don't.)

Which brings us back to Ozkirbas' post. Television has made leaps and bounds in this subject within the last few years. Dexter, The Wire, Heroes (season 1), Degrassi: The Next Generation, Battlestar Gallactica, The Office and The BBC's Dr. Who are all examples of a fairly even playing field of multi-dimensional characters of many ethnicities given about the same amount of air time (equal air time is not actually true of The Office, but they make their own effort at exposing racial stereotyping so I included them.) Television is also the best place to go right now in which female and gay characters can get strong, layered, interesting, less stereotypical roles.

So, film. I'm not even picking on the Oscar nominees because most of the nominees this year were historical and thus more racially motivated. I won't even say anything about the fact that historical does not have to mean white (though it so often does); it was their subject matter to choose and some really great movies came out of it.

But really. All I'm asking is for people to start asking "Why?" and "Why not?" Would you still sing along to Mamma Mia! if Sophie and her mother were black, or latina, or dare I say, Pacific Islander? Would Jack Bauer be as badass if he was Chinese? Why is everyone in WALL-E's future so pasty? Did 700 years really go by with NO integration?

Race onscreen is an issue because it's unconscious, for the most part. It doesn't occur to people that something might be wrong with casting, so it stays the same. As Julia Louis-Dreyfus so perfectly put it as Christine in The New Adventures of Old Christine, "[I like everyone], whether they're black or regular."

So just, you know, keep it in mind.

Guest Gentleman - A Moment in Time

This is the first Guest Gentleman post - where if I receive a particularly good or important piece from someone who's not one of our regular writers I'll be posting it as a Guest Gentleman column. If you feel like you ever have something to contribute, let me know at jschlaf@gmail.com

Today's guest is Joe Musumeci with 'A Moment in Time'

'It is the day after Turkey-day, and my two closest "guy" friends (da boys…) and I head to Gettysburg, PA. This was planned for the Monday before, but I screwed it up. It is a tradition, and one that I have just been invited to join, to play "hooky" from work one day each Fall and take a cycling tour of a Civil War battlefield... but I bobble my calendar and they are kind enough to reschedule for Black Friday. I am happy enough to be far away from any store, and the day turns out to be beautiful, crisp and bright, whereas Monday had been foul as pheasant. So - score one for us.

Part of the reason we choose Gettysburg this year is because the new Visitor's Center is just completed, and the cyclorama (google "gettysburg cyclorama" for the fascinating and utterly American story) has been restored - so that is the largest part of our morning, after meeting for coffee and driving to the town. We watched the excellent film, see the cyclorama, which has a slightly cheese-y, but still stirring, narration and light show now, and then wander through the museum. There are genuinely moving moments: the wall of photos of young men who died that confront you as you leave, a surprisingly understated film voiced by, among others, Morgan Freeman (get it?) and Sam Waterston. A beautiful window with the text of Lincoln's address etched on its surface looks out over an undisturbed field, once covered with the bodies of children. Eric Vogel's song "The Green Fields of France," haunts me all the day long - for the stanza that asks the question "did they know why they died?" seems especially appropriate here.

I should interject two things here: 1) I am a staunch pacifist, and while I have loved (and now love) so deeply that I can imagine killing in the defense of another, I cannot imagine killing in my own, and certainly in no country's. Odd, for one who as a lad was slated to attend the USNA and be a fighter jock, until I learned my vision would limit my ability to realize that dream. People grow. I have friends in Iraq, one on his third eff-ing tour, and I pray daily for their safe return, but while I love and respect them, I cannot support what they do, even in my defense. I have wondered, often, what would get me to pick up a gun and stand a post, and take comfort that I can rarely answer the question. 2) I have been sadly underwhelmed by the recent sweeping election results that seem to signal a mandate for change – and, if the President-elect is to be believed, largely change that I believe in and voted for. But the memory of the Clinton denouement is still sharp for me, and so I have really not paid heed to Mr. Obama as I ought to have, but, rather, snidely adopted the "both your houses" attitude of the professional cynic and held my nose while I voted, afraid to seem naive again.

We ride our bikes, seemingly without end, and Chris and Mike, who are far better and well-read historians and aficianados than I regale me with tales that flesh in my scant knowledge of the three days that arguably turned the tide of this nation. It is an eerie feeling, to stand with a guide book, Matthew Brady's photos of the carnage and the dying before you, and gaze out over the SAME SCENE - for geology only winks at our passing - cleansed of the corpses, and the smell, but perhaps not of the spirit of the fallen on both sides. A quote by Chamberlain, commanding the 20th Maine, I think, stands out:

"In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear, but spirits linger..."

So we stand, and climb, we enjoy our camaraderie - the closeness of men that is really the closeness of boys,- and we take endless photos, and talk about our lives and hopes and fears. The path we trod lengthens through the days and the skirmishes of the battle, until we stand upon Little Round Top... I have seen the movie, read the books... but the cannon and the shot, the rough stones of Devil's Den and the Copse of Trees have skinned our knuckles today, and we smell the smells of the field and see the view from the same defilade as those thousands of scared boys, and we are tired, and weary and somehow elated, and I don't know why, I just don't, I don't know why until Michael says:

Well I guess this war is finally over

…and I realize that I am standing on the rock where all these boys died among other things so my friend and professor Scot can be a man and not chattel and we just elected A BLACK PRESIDENT AND I AM CRYING WEEPING AND I KNOW I HOPE THAT IF I WAS HERE BACK THEN I WOULD HAVE PICKED UP A RIFLE AND DIED IF I HAD TO.

And the 145 years between the smoke and the sulphur and today's quiet breeze all coalesce into an idea, for me, of what history is... the slow, glacial persistence of people trying to find a way to be... better. Perhaps, today, we are just a little tiny bit better as people, because those other people all died here all those years ago. I don't want it to be true, I don't want that to be the inevitable cost, the weregild of progress, but perhaps it is. And the sun sets behind the statue, and we are off for Mike's truck in a mad dash for the warmth of the heater and the bike rack and the ride home and we are changed. I hope I am better today than I was the day before that day, and that, on average at least, perhaps, the trend continues.

Lincoln's address is etched on a very plain window, but this time of year the sun slants a golden shaft like a note from Jericho through the words:

"It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom,..."

On the ride home, Michael comments that it was ironic to drive down the Mall, and see workmen erecting the scaffolds that will hold the throngs on Inauguration Day, when MLK Jr. had to face the other way all those years ago - and as a DC native, a part of me would love to be on Pennsylavania Avenue for such an historic event… But, now, I know where I want to be on January 20th.'