White males = not the norm for humanity

Or, Things that Bother Me


1. Films where the only female speaking part is a love interest. Yeah yeah, fair enough when its adapted from a book or it's a historical epic, but otherwise it just really pisses me off. Although the "token black friend" thing is annoying, it does at least occur from a desire to be inclusive of all kinds of people as worthy of being included in films in roles that are not related to their race, because, you know, race is only one small aspect of what makes a full, rounded and interesting character. I've observed non-white characters in films that were adapted from books where their characters were white, so it's obvious that the casting reflects a desire to be inclusive. I wish the same could be said for gender, although that doesn't mean I think gender is as irrelevant to a person's character as their race is.

What I'm really saying is that I wish the concepts of "femininity" and "full, rounded character in her own right", even *gasp* protagonist didn't seem to be in opposition in the majority of films that I watch.

2. More perniciously, those "evolution of man" images where the pinnacle of evolution is always, without exception, a white man.







Apparently these images are not really representative of how evolution actually occurred, because it was not a linear progression from monkey to human, but rather a more complicated set of shared ancestors, some of which evolved into species which eventually became human, some of which were evolutionary "dead ends".  Anyway, my point is, the unthinking assumption behind these that 1. humans get whiter as they "evolve" and 2. women are entirely absent from our evolution are maddeningly offensive.

Peace out.

For my next entry, I intend to write about North Korea. Friends of mine will know that learning about the "Stalinist theme park" of a country has been a small obsession of mine for a while, so I want to delineate exactly what it is about the country that I find interesting, as well as offer some predictions for what might happen over the next few years there...