[Peter Pan icon used ironically; alas, Tiger Lily]

[lotesse]

I took the first two seasons of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman out of the library, on a whim and because I think Jane Seymour is really really hot and I enjoy looking at her shiny shiny hair. I kind of embarrassingly love it? It reminds me so much of the "benevolent" liberal rubbish I was raised on: "The Song of Hiawatha" and the Just So Stories, being encouraged to dress up as cultures for Halloween because it provided the opportunity for cultural education (so we read a bunch of books and then put on bathrobes and painted our faces and trick-or-treated as geishas. so much side eye, parents), and American Girl dolls (I had the Black one and the Mexicana one, and while I do think it's no bad thing for white girls to grow up playing with dolls of color, there's still something uncomfortably consumptive about the whole scene), and YA Holocaust novels (I had a phase. It was a shameful one).

I'm never quite sure how to feel about that particular kind of rubbish. Because obviously it's wrong; Dr. Quinn is alternatingly making me squirm with happy id satisfaction and go "impure impure impure" while making the sign to avert Nice White Racism. But I also kind of see the logic - I don't like it, but I see it - of incremental education in anti-racism. I feel like Nice White Racism helped render me receptive to Black and Chicana feminisms when I encountered them, which in turn have made me much more willing to try and ditch Nice White Racist stuff like the Tone Argument, or the fantasy of the White Savior (tho I apparently still kind of fetishize the Barbarian Lover; sexuality forms around kyriarchy same as anything else). To some degree, I maybe do it with my students, in that I deliberately never let myself be judgmental of racist ideas they communicate, because I want to keep them on my side, where I feel like I can still maybe have some effect. I try to set up easy paths for them: last semester, I started with "There was racism in the past and it was bad," which seems to be pretty easy to get people signed on to, and then did "History still impacts us now," and only then pulled the two moves together into "racism still impacts us now and it still is bad."

But at the same time, while I find nostalgic pleasure in some Nice White Racist stuff, I would feel really weird about giving it to a kid, or engaging with even fannish people about it that I didn't already know were committed to anti-racism. And I definitely don't plan on letting my own hypothetical children do cross-cultural Halloween dress-up.

Comments

[sahiya]

I was so ridiculously fannish about that show (like, I had hours and hours of it videotaped), only it was pre-fandom for me (undoubtedly for the best!). I think I tried to rewatch an episode a couple years ago and was appalled, mostly by the acting and writing, but also by the Nice White Racism. But I do think you're right in that NWR plays a role in making us more receptive to other types of discourse later on. NWR is non-threatening to white people; it lets us "other" racist white people, while allying ourselves with the Side of Good. This is obviously not a place to stop, but I do think it can be a place to begin.

[lotesse]

Clearly, your trash filter is more advanced than mine - I got no problem watching poor acting and poor writing if it hits the right id buttons! But it's interesting to figure out what to do with those beginning-places once we've moved on from them - because do you repudiate those things? Or keep them? I tend to hold on to fandoms with an unrelenting death grip, but sometimes I wish I could let go!

[ilthit]

Here is something I read before that kind of relates to this.

[lotesse]

I grok what that poster is getting at - and the example of her child's mind is totally fascinating - but the stuff I wonder about is the stuff that does make you aware of world diversity, and isn't too overtly awful in the racism department, but which still gives total narrative centrality to white people and makes POC play all supporting roles. Analogizing from gender, it's the problem of women in refrigerators - the issue isn't women dying, it's women dying in a way that makes their death part of someone else's story, rather than their own. I grew up on a lot of media that was inclusive, accurate, and inevitably placed narrative focus on white characters. It taught me a lot, but I feel like the more ideologically pure route would be to just let them be POC stories - in other words, do The Last Samurai without Tom Cruise, or Avatar with just the Na'vi.

[ilthit]

Absolutely. The White Saviour thing is so common and overdone it turns me off a story the moment it shows up. I was so pissed off when I walked out of a viewing of Lincoln (even though I didn't even pay for it).

[lotesse]

I still haven't seen Lincoln - I keep meaning to, not because I think it will be good, but because I try to keep track of current historiomyths. But I figured I should do my hatewatching in the privacy of my home, so that I can swear and storm if need be.

[ilthit]

It's a great movie if you think white saviour myths are progressive and brave in their anti-racism. Genuinely. Great performances. I was so mad at it.