sovay: (Haruspex: Autumn War)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2014-11-19 04:25 am
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There's a land to burn out everything that you've learned

Internet! I am looking for a good database and/or personal recommendations of science fiction media foregrounding characters of color. My father was expressing his disappointment in the latest season of Doctor Who tonight and he is quite right (among other complaints) that reverse-fridging a male character reads much less cleverly and much more sketchily when the male character is black. I should like to be able to recommend him some antidotes.1 More than one person of color in the cast preferred—who are not the canaries in the coal mine or the sacrifices on behalf of the white characters, if there are any white characters; there don't need to be. Bonus points from my perspective if there are women with agency and queer characters. (I should just hand him Janelle Monáe's back catalogue, right?) He is a hard sell on animation and does not play games, but enjoys things that are not in English. I can do this a lot more easily with books.

1. It is not like my father has never seen science fiction with protagonists of color; he followed Eureka for a while just because it contained Joe Morton. I just know there's always room for more. A lot of room.
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[identity profile] handful-ofdust.livejournal.com 2014-11-20 02:24 am (UTC)(link)
As I've said before, Defiance does do the "aliens are people 'of colour' but mainly played by white people" thing people complain about, and rightly. That said, the guy playing Alak Tarr is actually East Asian, his human wife is Hispanic, her father is First Nations (he's Graham fuckin' Greene, man), there's a really great black character, and many, many women with incredible amounts of agency. Actually, it's one of the only SF shows I can think of currently that has genuine gender parity in terms of its cast.

If he hasn't seen Sunshine, I'd also recommend that, in terms of representation. That's a genuinely international-looking crew on that internationally-driven space mission. Oh, and weirdly, Z Nation is doing well on the POC front, especially now that Roberta Warren is the main heroic leader type. Even 10K, the guy who wants to shoot ten thousand zombies, doesn't look purely white to me, and the two girls he's crushed on thus far have been maybe-Filipino and definitely-Asian.

[identity profile] handful-ofdust.livejournal.com 2014-11-20 02:47 am (UTC)(link)
Orphan Black too, obviously.

[identity profile] handful-ofdust.livejournal.com 2014-11-20 02:57 am (UTC)(link)
Steve puts in a vote for Babylon 5, which I haven't actually seen, but which does seem to be pretty great in terms of gender, queer representation and some major POC with agencied storylines, from what I've observed.
sovay: (Sydney Carton)

[personal profile] sovay 2014-11-20 03:17 am (UTC)(link)
Steve puts in a vote for Babylon 5, which I haven't actually seen, but which does seem to be pretty great in terms of gender, queer representation and some major POC with agencied storylines, from what I've observed.

Hah. Babylon 5 is actually one of my father's favorite television shows. Looking at it now, I think it could have had more women and more characters of color and JMS was capable of truly clunky dialogue when he felt like it, but it also gave me a queer Russian-Jewish major female character in space and a universe full of deep time and a lot of morally complicated characters to love (and occasionally scream at) and I was in high school; I imprinted. I can still quote stupid amounts of that show.
sovay: (Haruspex: Autumn War)

[personal profile] sovay 2014-11-20 03:05 am (UTC)(link)
Actually, it's one of the only SF shows I can think of currently that has genuine gender parity in terms of its cast.

Okay; it's on the list.

If he hasn't seen Sunshine, I'd also recommend that, in terms of representation. That's a genuinely international-looking crew on that internationally-driven space mission.

I think he has, because I believe we've talked about it, but I'll double-check. Personally I think that film fell off a cliff in the third act, but I loved the first two, slow and inescapable as the sun filling the sky.

Oh, and weirdly, Z Nation is doing well on the POC front, especially now that Roberta Warren is the main heroic leader type.

You know, for a show that started out as an unapologetic rip-off of The Walking Dead, Z Nation sounds like it's doing some interesting things.
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