There's a land to burn out everything that you've learned

[sovay]

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.

Comments

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

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.)

[sairaali.livejournal.com]

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 :(

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

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.

[sovay]

(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.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

There is a character in Summer Wars (2009)

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