This was really interesting, and I think the core of the issue you're getting at is "representation" vs characters who are singular and human, like real people. "Representation" requires that characters be embodiments/incarnations of everything about the identity they're trying to represent, while also implicitly praising, accepting, and lionizing that identity. So instead of a real-ish person who can be gay and conservative, or traditionalist but accepting of deviation, or any other combination that suggests a dilution of the pure essence of whatever identity is being represented, you get a caricature.
It's like modern entertainment writers believe they have glimpsed the Logos of each identity group, and believe anything less than that logos is not true representation. But people aren't abstract platonic ideals, they're people.
I wonder if it's natural as a "thing" matures to start listing and labeling the ways that "thing" can "be", or if internet ad networks needing a maximum of 32 characters to describe the demographic you belong to is to blame. I would much prefer to live in a time when "things" could just be fluid and evolving.
Now that everything is mediated online, we have no choice but to pick one of the "things" to be from the too-large menu. Maybe the past was less well-defined so people felt more normal going to the restaurant kitchen and asking the cook to make something that isn't on the menu, or asking to cook their own food? Maybe this is just me thinking the grass is always greener in the past.
Aside: I just bought a copy of Happy Hour from your old article on Rose.
I've just started watching the show, after reading your recent piece on the Charity Shop. But I get it from BritBox via Prime (which has just returned to a UI which is hyper-concerned about displaying episodes divided by season) -- and they count The Charity Shop in series 1, episode 4. I'm bad with faces, so don't yet know old-Rose from new-Rose, but hope to soon.
You make an interesting observation. I think the urge to label is a gesture towards acknowledging the particular over the general, but it fails to achieve its goal as you point out: categories will always be reductive, unless there are as many as there are people, but then that would defeat the whole point of the exercise.
This was really interesting, and I think the core of the issue you're getting at is "representation" vs characters who are singular and human, like real people. "Representation" requires that characters be embodiments/incarnations of everything about the identity they're trying to represent, while also implicitly praising, accepting, and lionizing that identity. So instead of a real-ish person who can be gay and conservative, or traditionalist but accepting of deviation, or any other combination that suggests a dilution of the pure essence of whatever identity is being represented, you get a caricature.
It's like modern entertainment writers believe they have glimpsed the Logos of each identity group, and believe anything less than that logos is not true representation. But people aren't abstract platonic ideals, they're people.
I wonder if it's natural as a "thing" matures to start listing and labeling the ways that "thing" can "be", or if internet ad networks needing a maximum of 32 characters to describe the demographic you belong to is to blame. I would much prefer to live in a time when "things" could just be fluid and evolving.
Now that everything is mediated online, we have no choice but to pick one of the "things" to be from the too-large menu. Maybe the past was less well-defined so people felt more normal going to the restaurant kitchen and asking the cook to make something that isn't on the menu, or asking to cook their own food? Maybe this is just me thinking the grass is always greener in the past.
Aside: I just bought a copy of Happy Hour from your old article on Rose.
I've just started watching the show, after reading your recent piece on the Charity Shop. But I get it from BritBox via Prime (which has just returned to a UI which is hyper-concerned about displaying episodes divided by season) -- and they count The Charity Shop in series 1, episode 4. I'm bad with faces, so don't yet know old-Rose from new-Rose, but hope to soon.
You make an interesting observation. I think the urge to label is a gesture towards acknowledging the particular over the general, but it fails to achieve its goal as you point out: categories will always be reductive, unless there are as many as there are people, but then that would defeat the whole point of the exercise.