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capri0mniDepressing:
The thing that really stings about these three examples is that I did not go looking for them -- I didn't do a Google search for "Negative attitudes about physical disability in popular culture," or anything. All I did was turn on the TV hoping for some laughs, and these things were spit in my face. Also, I'd pulled the word "fortnight" out of the air as a rough guestimate of an average. I didn't really expect it to actually be accurate.
On a cheerier note:
Three other shows I watch for laughs, and can put up with, in spite of occasional Fail: Chuck (Shutit, I like it), Castle (same), and Bones (Ibid) -- all three hit the big Red Reset Button in different ways, all in the same week. All three found logical ways within their own universes for a major reshuffling of characters' self-perceptions and for major reshuffling of relationships between characters -- and signalling to their audiences that "Big Changes are coming for the new season, but we'll keep the show going, and it will be fun."
I wonder if this timing can be traced back to the Writers' Strike, a few years ago, which was, in its own way, A Big Red Reset Button. After all, all the writing teams have been working together for the same amount of time since then, and human psychology being fairly consistant over broad ranges of people, it makes sense that several writing teams would feel a need for a change at about the same time. Also: the strike gave writers an opportunity to work on their own, for Webisodes, and in other media, that may have given them fresh ideas for how changes could be written into their stories...
I'm itching a bit to talk about each of these three big rewrites, and the details of how they fit with the overall plots, with either:
- On May 11, I wrote the following in this space (regarding the television show NCIS: Los Angeles:
". . .I would like to go at least a fortnight without being reminded by my culture that if I had any sense at all, I would kill myself." - On May 24 (one day shy of a fortnight), I was watching The Late, Late Show with Craig Fergeson, and in lieu of a musical band, he had a stand-up comic. The comic was building his routine around playing video games with his kids, and of the game Rock Band, he said he was flailing about like The Little Drummer Boy who needed to have his own Telethon -- and that got a big laugh from the audience. I was moderately entertained by his routine until then. But just .... *Sigh*. Would a similiar joke be deemed acceptible by the television censors, if it had been about race, religion, gender (at least cis gender) or language?
- I'm not going to include the Agatha Christie Mystery! on PBS the night before, where the whole plot hinged on the madness of a Hollywood Actress, who was broken by the emotional distress of giving birth to a severely disabled/retarded child. No, I'm not, because that program partly, at least, the excuse of "depicting a bygone era, and attitudes have changed now." Right?
The thing that really stings about these three examples is that I did not go looking for them -- I didn't do a Google search for "Negative attitudes about physical disability in popular culture," or anything. All I did was turn on the TV hoping for some laughs, and these things were spit in my face. Also, I'd pulled the word "fortnight" out of the air as a rough guestimate of an average. I didn't really expect it to actually be accurate.
On a cheerier note:
I wonder if this timing can be traced back to the Writers' Strike, a few years ago, which was, in its own way, A Big Red Reset Button. After all, all the writing teams have been working together for the same amount of time since then, and human psychology being fairly consistant over broad ranges of people, it makes sense that several writing teams would feel a need for a change at about the same time. Also: the strike gave writers an opportunity to work on their own, for Webisodes, and in other media, that may have given them fresh ideas for how changes could be written into their stories...
I'm itching a bit to talk about each of these three big rewrites, and the details of how they fit with the overall plots, with either:
- people who've seen the episodes, or
- people who don't watch the shows, and don't care if their ever spoilered by them, but are just interested in the different ways plotting can be done.
Let me know....
no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 10:29 am (UTC)Before we get to the part about the funny TV shows, let me just say that I agree with your first point entirely. I have spina bifida which results in loss of function in everything below the neck, and I would love it if the world would stop telling me to go and kill myself! Not only would I feel better if I killed myself, but my family would also be able to have a big party now that they are free of the responsibility of looking after me!
*Ahem*
anyway, I saw all three of these shows you mention and I watch them for pretty much the same reasons you seem to; easy laughs made by pretty people.
On Bones let me say this, after being utterly stunned when they assassinated Temperance's and Booth's relationship a few episodes ago, I was quite happy with the way they left the season finale. It wasn't the usual contrived will they/won't be nonsense, I actually believed that the characters might want to do the things that we saw them doing. Usually The Big Red Reset Button comes up with some utterly ridiculous cliffhanger completely outside of our expectations.
Is it bad of me to wonder what would happen if Booth gets injured in Afghanistan, spent six months recovering in hospital and then we have superb crime-fighting Seeley booth in a wheelchair!
A TV hero in a wheelchair! Surely not!
Nice to chat to you :-)
no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 06:03 pm (UTC)But, yes. The way they handled the "oh my god, all the relationships on this show are so stale!" problem was just great -- let them go off and have new adventures, and new experiences, with new people! Then, we can bring them back together, and won't have to keep writing the same backstory into their intimate conversations when their working cases.
I mean, that's just like real life.
Personally, though, I'd had to see the plot put Booth in a wheelchair. For one thing, he'd be yet another able-bodied actor in cripface, and for another, you know the whole b plot for the season would be all about his struggles with therapy so he "Can Walk Again," and there'd be all this angst over his lost manhood ... yadda, yadda, yadda.
Ironside was about a cop in a wheelchair, but that's because the actor needed a wheelchair in real life (and I still have bitter laugh when I watch the old episodes, because that 1960s world is so much more accessible than it was in real life -- he could wheel right in to any suspect's apartment to interogate him -- there were never any thresholds to high, or doorways too narrow). But at least he went the entire series without once uttering an "oh, woe is me!"
no subject
Date: 2010-05-30 11:42 am (UTC)I was thinking that they would be able to handle Booth in a wheelchair in a grown-up and realistic way, but you're absolutely right; it would be awful! The whole "fighting to get well" plot would actually make my head explode, that isn't hyperbole, my head would actually fill up with swearword's and then explode all over my living room... seriously.
I am not sick, I am broken; there is a difference. It really annoys me when people think that if I tried hard enough I could get well, how exactly am I supposed to recover from a spinal injury?!