[ SECRET POST #2795 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2795 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[Law & Order: Criminal Intent]


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03.
[Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers]


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04.
[Jeeves and Wooster]


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05.
[Yahtzee/Zero Punctuation]


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06.
[Markiplier]


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07.
[Jackie Chan Adventures]


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08.
[The Parent Trap]


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09.
[Alexander]


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10.
[Starsky and Hutch]











Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 012 secrets from Secret Submission Post #399.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: OK, I actually opened the book

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, it's heckling, but I think it's a little weird to discount what the guard's heckling him about, i.e. his racial make up. Even if you restrict heckling to just looks, there's plenty of things the guard could've chosen, the most obvious being levels of attractiveness. But the guard chose race.

More importantly, you have to ask yourself why if it's "just heckling", we need to see the conversation. What's the importance of it? Hint: the importance is that Gaiman is showing us obliquely what Shadow looks like. There'd be no need to include random, trivial conversations, otherwise.

Re: OK, I actually opened the book

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Because it shows how Shadow was treated in prison, his nonviolent reactions to being heckled, his large amount of patience, the way he's passive when confronted?

Those were what stuck out to me as important, not his race.

Re: OK, I actually opened the book

[nyxelestia]

Same, here.

Re: OK, I actually opened the book

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I agree, it does those things, too. And it also serves as a physical descriptor with a clue about Shadow's race. You might not think it's important, but it's a rare novel that doesn't describe the main character's physical traits, and there's no reason to assume that Gaiman wasn't intending that exchange to do just that.

Re: OK, I actually opened the book

[(Anonymous)]

+1

Seriously, that scene is at its heart a more sophisticated and original version of all those scenes in which the POV character looks in a mirror so that the reader knows what s/he looks like.

Re: OK, I actually opened the book

[inkdust]

Exactly this. That exchange is intended to indicate that Shadow's racial appearance is ambiguous. White is not ambiguous.

Re: OK, I actually opened the book

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly. On a purely technical level, it's just Gaiman trying to avoid the cliche of "Shadow examined his features in the mirror, his olive-dark skin and and sunken eyes blah blah blah". There's only so many ways to tell people what your character looks like. You can tell them directly, have the character see themselves, or see how other characters see the character. This is what Gaiman chose. Not only it is a deliberate choice, it's also a scene that performs multiple functions... which really, all scenes should do if you do them properly.

So saying that it's not about race? Yeeeeahhh, no. It is. It's not only about race, but it's silly to behave like Gaiman meant it to be about xyz and just happened to have race as the topic.