[ SECRET POST #2929 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2929 ⌋

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

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.


__________________________________________________



11.


__________________________________________________



12.















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 088 secrets from Secret Submission Post #419.
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

[arcadiaego]

I'm not sure why people don't just say racist/sexist/whatever. It's not like those who use it want to be fair and balanced.

[(Anonymous)]

Because "problematic" used to mean something else, something really useful.

Take the characterization and language around Jim in Huckleberry Finn. Can we call it racist? No, not really. It was extremely progressive for its day, and indeed Huck's stand against slavery is one of the single greatest moral epiphanies in American literature. Can we call it not racist? No, not really. It's still drawing on a lot of the thinking about black people that prevailed at the time, and there's no denying that the constant use of the N-word is pretty alienating to modern eyes. So "problematic" developed as a useful way of acknowledging elements of a work that might draw on racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive tropes and thinking, but are not themselves intrinsically or deliberately offensive. Like talking about the femme fatale archetype in noir fiction does create powerful female characters with agency, but also limits them to traditionally feminine forms of power, and usually punishes them at the end.

Unfortunately, the word has now been stripped of all meaning, and is used as a synonym for racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. And what's worse is if we came up with a new word for what problematic used to mean, it'd get ruined too. Like if we said that the word for it is "hambaltic", then in two weeks on Tumblr folks would be saying "Oh my god, how could you call me hambaltic, that's even worse than calling me racist."

[(Anonymous)]

+1

[arcadiaego]

I know what it's supposed to mean, but as you say, it's usually not used in that context now.

[(Anonymous)]

This is how I still think of it, maybe because I didn't get into fandom until after I was using it for lit theory. In my head it's much more like "There are interesting and conflicting things here! I wanna pull it apart and play with them and turn them over and think about why!" Because that is the way I have fun with a show/book, the way other people have fun RPing or cosplaying or whatever. And I have to try really hard to remember other people see it as much more aggressive.

But I don't think I've ever said just "This show is problematic," which is vague and not very conversational. But to me there's a difference in saying, idk "I find the treatment of some female characters on show X problematic--for example, when whosit did this, blah blah" and "This show is sexist."