sovay | 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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...Yes, sort of, for jdramas and kdramas; the ones I have seen often have their own terrible issues with racism, just not the same issues as US tv.

The black woman cop in Person of Interest is indeed great. Not sure whether her manner of leaving the show makes the arc recommended (my heart hurt, anyway); I find it difficult on gender grounds as well as race and socioeconomic class, in context of smaller character arcs on that show (the lawyer who heads the main opposition group in S3, e.g.). Um, pedantry: the actress of Iranian/Spanish descent has her own arc that begins well before the other actress's departure, so "replaced" isn't quite right.

I'm not sure it's possible to find media that doesn't have issues with race.

The lawyer arc in S3 of POI was really upsetting, but I haven't quite figured out if it was terrible because of writers who were too cowardly to really go into the political ramifications of what they were writing (or at least, what I was reading in the subtext) or if it was terrible because of unexamined racism.

Yes, Shaw and Carter overlapped some. That doesn't mean that the writing room didn't say "Shit, we're writing out a female character and we need to have another woman ready to jump into the team" or alternatively "We really like Sarah Shahi but damn, can't have two women on the show. That'll never sell ads." It really felt to me like Shaw was meant to replace Carter.

The lawyer arc in S3 of POI was really upsetting, but I haven't quite figured out if it was terrible because of writers who were too cowardly to really go into the political ramifications of what they were writing (or at least, what I was reading in the subtext) or if it was terrible because of unexamined racism.

So is there a point with Person of Interest past which I should not watch/recommend other people watch, like, try the first two seasons and then just don't bother hurting myself with the lawyer arc and the disappearance of a major female character of color? Or do the later seasons have redeeming features that are worth gritting my teeth against those plot developments for, and warning my father the same?

I mean, I thought S3 was worth watching, if only because Jim Caviezel and Sarah Shahi are both really beautiful people, and also, it provoked a bunch of interesting ~~conversations~~ ~~debates~~ conversations with M. It really depends on what you want to get out of your tv watching, and how attached you are to show after the first two seasons. I'm not at all caught up on S4 right now, so I can't say if it gets better after the profoundly stupid lawyer arc.

I still watch Person of Interest and enjoy it quite a bit. Yes, I miss Taraji Henson, but there's also Sarah Shahi and Amy Acker, as characters who are (respectively) a neuroatypical, kick-ass WOC and a potentially neuroatypical, brilliant, completely morally complex woman, both of whom are pretty damn queer for each other. (I don't think it's shipteasing anymore if one person literally says, at a moment when they think they're likely to die, "If I don't come back, tell Shaw...", to which Harold Finch says: "I think she knows.")

As for the whole "written out and replaced with a light/passing actress" thing, well--Sam Shaw is literally SamEEN Shaw, identified as such several times, so sorry, I don't think they're denying Shahi's background so much as actually working it into the character. Do I think there could be more women? Hells yes. More POC? HELLS YES. But let's not misrepresent the people who are there, please.

Edited 2014-11-20 02:55 (UTC)

I didn't say she was white. I said she is light and passes. Both light skinned privilege and passing privilege are real things.

Fair about PoI.

The reason I queried jdramas and kdramas is the category issue, in fact--every kdrama I've seen that gives lines to characters of mixed ethnic heritage marginalizes them, usually to the extent of killing them, and there is separately an odd love/hate relationship with white American characters that may be awkward for some Americans to watch. That's without the erasures of who is never cast/written in yet present (and linguistically competent) in the contemporary population. Perhaps I'd notice it less if I weren't part of the impersonal exclusion. (Half-Korean women don't exist in kdramas; it's only the men who, like pale half-Japanese men in jdramas, are automatically uselessly pretty and/or secretly evil.)

I'd love to see good k-tv SF, at any rate, but haven't met any yet. For jdramas, Tenchuu comes to mind for strong protag/etc., but it only has an unresolvable temporal ambiguity, not a SFnal basis. (Blogged it a few months ago but can't summon link easily using phone.)

Good point about j- and k-dramas. I don't actually watch them -- my language skills aren't up to snuff for listening, and I typically only watch tv when I'm knitting or folding laundry or otherwise occupied with something that makes subtitles hard. (I have irrational objections to dubs.) I just know they exist and have seen friends squee over them, and I felt weird about letting international media go overlooked.

Half-Korean women don't exist in kdramas; it's only the men who, like pale half-Japanese men in jdramas, are automatically uselessly pretty and/or secretly evil.

Ew. I'm sorry :(

I definitely concur with the support of international media! It seems to me that one ought to know what one's getting into in each category in terms of production trends, is all. For my part I have such limited exposure to Bollywood that nearly anything is interesting, even if it also slights some perspectives. :/

Ew. I'm sorry :(

Eh, no worries.

For completeness--Tenchuu post link.

(Half-Korean women don't exist in kdramas; it's only the men who, like pale half-Japanese men in jdramas, are automatically uselessly pretty and/or secretly evil.)

Feh.

There is a character in Summer Wars (2009) who I'm told is half-Japanese, half-Korean and he is neither useless nor evil—he's an estranged computer genius who designed an AI that endangers the planet, but he's also part of the communal family effort to defeat it—but it's a Japanese animated film, so I don't know how much that helps, statistically.

For jdramas, Tenchuu comes to mind for strong protag/etc., but it only has an unresolvable temporal ambiguity, not a SFnal basis. (Blogged it a few months ago but can't summon link easily using phone.)

Thank you! My knowledge of kdramas and jdramas is zero except for the reviews I read on DW.

There is a character in Summer Wars (2009)

Thanks--that's good to know. (Sorry I missed the comment notification earlier!)

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