I have been afraid of speaking out or asking things of men in positions of power for years. What I have experienced as an actress working in a business whose business is to objectify women is frightening. It is the deep end of a pool where I cannot swim. It is a famous man telling you that you are a liar for what you have remembered. For what you must have misremembered, unless you have proof.
This is the lived experience of so many women even far outside of Hollywood, and for women of colour, for trans women, for queer women, it is only worse.
Men hide behind screens or one another – their cowardice is like a beacon in the fog of their narcissism. All women – and men, too – deserve to be free of it.
Cis men, both men of color and white men, seem to be the ones most keenly aware of how bad call-out culture is for our world. So eager to educate us all. Which seems strangely aligned with the fact that they are often the ones being called out.
I can say this. Calling people out is uncomfortable. It isn’t something that should be taken lightly. It does not bring me joy. I don’t think it is a solution for everything, but I do think that is is a perfectly rational, logical response to a culture that is still more likely to call a woman a whore than a man a rapist.
Silly question, right? If you define aging as a process that stops at death, the only way we’ll ever be the same age is if I die first. If you don’t, then we’ll never be the same age. Every time you age a year, I also age a year. Since our ages increase at the same rate, you will never catch up to my head start. We have achieved a total equality of aging, but that does not change the permanent inequality of our age.
Okay, say I have a million dollars and you’re completely broke. If we both get a dollar a day, how long will it take you to catch up with me?
Now, this one’s even sillier, because if you have no other resources, your dollar a day is going to be eaten up by basic living expenses that it doesn’t quite meet, and I have an excess of money that can be spent on money-making opportunities that pay off far better than an additional $365 a year. I could literally burn the dollar I’m getting as part of our Totally Equal Income and still make more money in a year than you do just by sticking my money in the bank.
But still: both of us getting a dollar a day is totally equal, right? It means we’re being treated exactly the same.
And now, final problem:
If we have a world that contains structural inequalities, systemic imbalances, disproportionate danger faced by some, and unequal access to resources and opportunities, is “treating everyone the same” really going to result in equality?
Show your work.
I may have reblogged this already but I don’t care it’s important.
I heard a few of the ecstatic cries of “Delphine lives!” that
echoed ‘round the internets back in June, before I knew who Delphine was
or had any concrete plans of ever watching Orphan Black, so when I dove in a few months later, I was already aware of the following:
there was somebody named Delphine
at some point, she would appear to die
except not
I
wasn’t there for the Great Fandom Mutiny that erupted in the wake of
the season 3 finale. From where I was sitting, Delphine was only gone
for like two days, and there was never any doubt that she was coming
back. I can imagine how it might have felt to be left wondering about her fate for fifty-one weeks, but I can only imagine. The disappointment, the anguish, the sense of betrayal? I never got the chance to feel any of that.
Furthermore, there’s the issue of representation, which I like to think I
understand, but being a member of the most over-represented demographic
in the history of American/Canadian television, I’m aware that my
understanding is limited by the fact that it isn’t something I can experience.
I can denounce the constant killing of wlw characters on TV, both as a
trite, lazy cliché and as a harmful way to represent a marginalized
group, but I can’t know how it would affect me to have prime-time dramas
repeatedly reinforcing the idea that stories about people like me can
only end in tragedy. So I acknowledge that even if I had been there from
the beginning, Delphine’s shooting wouldn’t have had the same impact on
me that it had on much of the fandom.
All right, I’ve got the
disclaimers out of the way, now on to the point: in the debate over the
showrunners’ true intentions in the infamous parking garage
scene–whether Delphine was actually meant to die or not–I lean towards
believing the official line, which is that they planned to bring her
back all along. From a storytelling standpoint, it just doesn’t make
sense to have such a fan-favorite character die off-screen between
seasons, and then leave her fate unaddressed for so long. Confirming her
death nearly a year after she was shot–after so many viewers had given
her up for dead–would have had no real plot-twist value; it would have
been the very definition of anticlimactic.
Admittedly,
this is not an ironclad argument. It hinges upon the assumption that
Graeme Manson and John Fawcett do not have their heads up their asses,
and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my multiple decades as a
watcher of TV, it’s that this can never be safely assumed about
television producers. Compound this with their unambiguous denial that
Evelyne Brochu would be returning for season 4, plus their tone-deaf
response to everyone who rebuked them for perpetuating the Bury Your
Gays trope (essentially “Yeah, but it was different when we did
it*”), and I can easily see where the other side is coming from. So for
those who are still angry about it, be angry; I’m not telling anyone
how to feel. If Delphine’s eventual return/resurrection was not
sufficient atonement in your book, that’s your business.
But I’m jealous. I wish I
could believe they meant for her to die. If they killed her off and
then caved to fan pressure to bring her back, do you know what that
means? It means they understand that they fucked up! It means they’ve learned that we will not stand for these shenanigans! It means Cophine is safe!
Or
maybe not. This theory, too, is dependent upon an uncertain assumption:
that the showrunners have managed to keep their heads out of their
asses ever since those heads were dislodged by the uproar over
Delphine’s apparent death. Still, I can’t help thinking that I’d be a
lot more optimistic about a Cophine happy ending if I believed Fawcett
and Manson had learned a lesson from all of this. If they always
intended to bring her back–as I suspect is probably the case–then what
lesson was there to learn?
*which, incidentally, is what all TV producers say when confronted about this
If I am perfectly honest I have never believed her to be dead and when people mourned her and I actually watched the episode all I could think was: “but we only see her getting shot, we do not see her die!!” and from a writer’s/showrunner’s point of view the only reason for that would be that there is more to the scene than her dying. Either something would have happened during or after her death that we would learn about later, returning to this scene and actually see her die OR she survives. TBH from that moment on when Evie Cho cold heartedly told Cosima that Delphine was dead WITHOUT the show turning back to this scene for further explanation of it, I honest to God was convinced it was a lie and that Delphine was alive. Because as I have said… I can’t for the life of me imagine filming a scene where a major character and fan favorite gets shot and doesn’t actually die on screen without any reason. And at this point it was clear they did not want us to, for instance, believe something wrong about the killer but that they wanted us and Cosima to believe that she is dead. And that the final revelation of the finished scene in the parking lot was that she wasn’t. As it turned out to be. However, this does not mean that they did not learn anything from the mess that other TV shows made last year. They did witness it after all, no matter what they did themselves. They could still see what happened to other shows and be smug that they did not go down this route and be ever the more convinced not to in the future….
I completely agree with all of this, which is exactly why I’m more upset about the way they handled what came after her “death” — which I consider outright bad writing (Felix forgetting to tell Cosima that he knew Delphine was alive wtf) — than with the death scene itself.
I was in the same boat with Delphine only being “dead” for 24h, being a way late bloomer within the cloneclub. I was spared the 51 weeks of pain and longing. I can understand the angst and hurt feels. Hell, I can’t stop thinking about the shot scene when walking in a car park (having a bisexual target on my back).
I agree with @seanpgilroy on theories that Delphine’s fake death could have been the original master plan all along (we *could* give them credit) OR that the #savedelphine outcry
(take note of season 4 viewer ratings fallout)
forced the execs/show writers to rethink the character and bring her back (the POWER to the fans!).
Either way, my heart just wants a happy Cophine but my brain screams: YOU FOOL! YOU’RE SETTING YOURSELF TO BE BURN!
I think that there is a bit of context that is missing from this conversation of which many people are not aware. There was a leaked photo of the OB writers’ room (distributed on Twitter and tumblr, I believe) in which notes were scrawled on a board about developing Cosima’s relationship with Shay into a full-on capital-S Ship/plot point, with no mention of Delphine. At the time, Evelyne Brochu’s popularity had begun to grow exponentially, and she had X Company happening. Rumours were also about that there were questions as to whether OB showrunners would be able to get her back at all, and that they were introducing the Shay character to be a substitute.
Now, rumours are rumours, and Q-ratings are what they are, but X Company was a fact, as was the writers’ room photo. These things combined to outline a scenario where OB would not get EBro back (due to her refusal, unavailability, or not wanting to negotiate and pay up for her) and thus would replace one blonde wlw character with another, as if the character itself was reducible to those traits. In which case, they would be doing wlw characters and fans a great disservice, and also just be effing lazy, as there would have been 99,000 better ways to write Delphine out and move Cosima’s character on from there. I mean, one can imagine the panic amongst showrunners at the thought of losing the popular, romantic ship (and character, in Delphine) that had become fan favourites and gotten them a lot of good press for being modern, feminist, etc., but using the old “It’s the same Darren” move from Bewitched would be treating the fans like idiots, as though all we cared about was seeing two women in general kiss.
So, with that info included, the fear/assumption that Delphine would not be back became much more realistic, and the fan reaction much more valid. Add to this the liberal doses of trolling the OB folks did to the fanbase, and I think you will understand the well of ire better. Would we like to believe the showrunners meant to bring back Delphine all along? Perhaps, although that wouldn’t excuse their dunderheaded handling of fans’ feeling on the matter. All things considered, we can’t really know. We do know, however, that they didn’t manage the situation well, and that they had Shay as a back-up plan, which they pretty much had to abandon whether they wanted to or not, once fans made it clear that one suddenly introduced love interest for Cosima was not interchangeable with another, established and brilliantly acted one. I think all this is part of what transformed what could have been a typical “whodunit/what’s next?” cliffhanger into a swell of fandom outrage. (Well, this and a lot of people reaching their limits of patience with BYG, which happened even more so with The 100.)
I’d like to underline @trylonandperisphere’s point about showrunner trolling – to me, this is the real problem. Ostensibly straight writers having a bit of ‘fun’ with their queer audience, teasing them over the possible death of a queer character – only to pull back and say, see? We’d never do that. It was deeply upsetting when Delphine was shot and whether they intended for her to die or not (I’m not convinced they had a lock on this scenario), they still toyed with their queer audience over it. They later made an ‘in memoriam’ video featuring Delphine – more ‘dark humour’ that felt like we were being made fun of. It was thoughtless and insensitive.
Doctor Who pulled this recently with Bill Potts, who was shot, killed, resurrected through ‘conversion therapy’ into a Cyberman – then ‘restored’ at the last possible second in a follow-up episode by a deus ex machina narrative. Her death was meant to shock – but all for a ‘laugh.’ If this is so funny, why aren’t we laughing? They turn our dread of this trope into a joke where only they get the punchline.
I doubt there is deliberate cruelty behind it – just an enormous amount of insensitivity toward an audience that no longer tolerates being messed with on the issue – playing the condescending patriarchal card where we really need to get over ourselves, it was just for fun, ffs.
This makes the Wynnona Earp team such a breath of fresh air – and shows the essential difference in a woke (female) team vs. an almost entirely male-run production. One laughs with us, as a friend – the other laughs in our general direction.
With all the heat Anita Sarkeesian gets for her Tropes series, you’d think it was a new topic, but Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert had a discussion on a similar theme when they were talking about the influx of slasher movies on their show in 1980.
Hollywood still has too much to atone for. The dominance of white males in that system is still largely unchallenged and we still have too many films and television programmes that cater largely to white male audiences. This dominance has always been a reflection of – and a social assist to – white male superiority in society.
So long as audiences pay to see the latest white male hero and stay away from films with diverse casting, POC, especially women, nothing changes.
Films like Ghostbusters, Hidden Figures and Get Out make in-roads, but we’re also on our fifth Jack Sparrow outing no one asked for and another Spiderman no one asked for and another Thor film, etc – will be out soon. This is the dominant form.
Go see Wonder Woman. See it twice. Tune out the hundreds of white male hero dramas on telly, support shows with diverse casting and diverse production teams. We really don’t need another James Bond or Ethan Hunt or Jason Bourne or King Arthur or Game of Thrones. It’s been done. White hero stereotypes are done. Violence against women and minorities as entertainment – backward and more than done. Move on, move forward.
Without progress, we keep spinning our wheels in the same rut and look at society – no better. Our art should reflect the depth and breadth of what we are and can be – not cater to the egotistical, sexist, racist demands of the needy few.
It’s time to stop talking about The Handmaid’s Tale like it’s futuristic dystopian fiction. The war on women is real and Republicans are trying to legislate rape culture into law.
The Doctor Is Out 