Politics – Shoshana Kessock

Nostalgia Warriors And The Backlash Against Progress

April 25, 2018 by Shoshana, posted in Feminism, Geek Culture, Not Ready To Make Nice, Politics, Speaking Out

I recently saw a video online taking pot-shots at an academic whose studies included deconstructing the representation factors in older roleplaying games, specifically Dungeons and Dragons. The video by Michelle Malkin is a screed against the supposed politically correct ‘party poopers’ intent on ruining games like D&D by bringing ‘social justice warrior’ politics into the picture. I won’t link the video itself (because it’s from a Facebook channel that’s pretty horrendously conservative) but I think the tag below it on Facebook…

Social Justice Warriors are the biggest party-poopers on the planet!

Is there no realm safe from the diversity police?!

… that really says it all.

It’s no secret the last few years have seen an ongoing march towards progressive creation in the creative arts. The fight for better representation in comics, film, television, toys, and games have sparked debates that have reached from the smallest communities to the largest stages of media coverage. You can tell how big the discussion is when films not yet released are dissected for their representation of minority groups and feedback is received by companies immediately from consumers. And whether you like this immediate feedback loop or not, it’s clear the days of companies simply producing material without considering the economic ramifications of a growing progressive demographic are over.

Still, in the face of such creative evolution and representational progress, there has been a significant backlash by those who believe progressives are trying to ‘ruin fun.’ People calling for better representation in creative fields are labeled ‘liberals’ and ‘social justice warriors’ and far worse terms. They’re called crybabies, party poopers, people out to turn everything into a political debate rather than just letting others have a little harmless fun. (Clearly, they never ascribed to the idea that everything is inherently political, but that’s a debate for another time). Instead, their response is to decry any discussions about progressive feedback so we can all just sit back and have a good time without interrogating what we’re enjoying.

The funny part is by making this very discussion, they’re doing exactly what they rail against: they’re looking critically at the material they’re being presented with and making an opinion on its content. They ARE questioning the politics of their media. They’re just choosing a different response than progressives. They’re choosing a different view, an opposition to growth, which I’m calling protective nostalgia. They put down ‘liberals’ for being social justice warriors when they’re taking up their own warrior mantle themselves. These ‘traditionalists’, these ‘conservatives’, are what I like to call Nostalgia Warriors.

Picture it with me: a new game hits shelves, and the hordes are attacking. They come with their banners of ‘Better Representation Now!’ and chants of ‘What About Us?’ They bury fun new products in political discussions, drowning out the chance of escapism with constant reminders of blah blah representation and blah blah stereotyping and blah blah blah. The noise distracts from the chance to just sit back and have fun, like in the days of yore, when no one assaulted the fun! When it was just about basements and friends, sitting together and enjoying without complications or political rhetoric! Yes, these fun times and beautiful memories are under assault by the SJWs and are in need of defending!

And lo, the defenders arive, with their cries of ‘Party Pooper!’ and ‘Can’t It Just Be Like It Was?’ Their shields are the memories of times gone by, when things were simpler, and media was just fun. They are the Nostalgia Warriors! Ready to tell you you’re wrong for having progressive opinions! Ready to insult, degrade, and dismiss any idea challenging the status quo! And all armed with the greatest cry of all…

These Nostalgia Warriors stand on their ramparts, zealously protecting new media in the name of what’s come before. They use the happy memories they have of simpler times, when people didn’t talk about the politics of media creation so actively, as proof that such conversations are ruining fun now. After all, they had fun in the past with their TV shows and comic books without these silly discussions about race and gender representation, why would it be needed now? In fact, looking back at the media before and criticizing it only defiles the memory of their beloved favorites. And how dare those pesky Social Justice Warriors go after their favorites, entwined so deeply with the sugar-coated memories of the past.

To take a step back for a second, I don’t want people to think all nostalgia is bad. Nostalgia can be a good thing! It gives us a chance to look back over our lives and see the good things amid the bad, the positive experiences we had cleaned up so they provide bright spots in otherwise complicated lifetimes. It lets us hold up things we find beautiful, things we find important to our identity, and present them with all the love we had for them when we were younger. Nostalgia can be beautiful, our memories can be beautiful, and the way they formed our fundamental years is a testament to experience building the people we are today.

To my people, those who hold fondly to the television shows and comics and films of the past with love and true nostalgia, I embrace you as brothers and sisters! The past gave us amazing, wonderful, fantastic things that should be cherished. This argument isn’t here to dismiss or attack all Nostalgia, or all media in the past that is important to people or beloved.

But.

It’s hard to accept that our pasts are as fraught as our presents and that our futures are going to be just as hard. So we shine up our best experiences and hold them up as examples that in the past, everything was better. Everything was easier then and our precious favorites had no problems, or else those problems didn’t matter, because we loved them. And they gave us joy. And no one can assault our joy without assaulting a fundamental part of ourselves.

This progression into nostalgia defense is when nostalgia slips into toxic territory. When defending our sacred cows becomes a roadblock towards creative evolution.

It’s no secret to anyone paying attention that our society is evolving away from shitty behaviors we once found acceptable in the past. I think most middle-road Nostalgiacs (new word again!) would recognize things like systematic slavery, for example, is an institution we thank god destroyed over a hundred years ago. Most would even say things like the civil rights movement, the evolution of the rights of women, all these things were great. Heck, most would say going across the ocean to punch Nazis and stop their genocidal reign of terror was a good thing! These were all examples of Good Progress.

So why is it when talking about the continued progress of our society in media, we see such a vicious backlash, even from people who would otherwise say Big Issue Progress (like those listed above) is a good thing?

This is where Toxic Nostalgia comes in.

(Sure, there are people who would question whether these were good events. They’re called Ultra Conservatives, Neo-Nazis, Misogynists, Racists, Bigots, and all around Backwards Problem Children. And this article isn’t going to find a solution for them, so we’re just going to move the heck on from THAT giant problem. Instead, to them I say this).

Look, change is difficult. Change makes people look at themselves and the world around them with a critical eye and makes them question what they really believe. It makes them wonder if they’re complicit in big bad things like racism and intolerance, in systematic oppression and institutions of privilege. It makes people feel like they might be the bad guy, or part of a bad group, make them feel vilified and ashamed and attacked.

And when the whole world seems to be talking about rectifying centuries-old systems of oppression, people start taking a good long look at where they are on the power pyramid and all these complicated feelings start coming up. They have to ask ‘am I really profiting from oppression?’ They get defensive, responding: ‘But I can’t be privileged! My life is hard, I suffer too!’ They bring out words like reverse racism and tout the suffering of the white lower classes, of the nice guys being ignored by ‘militant feminists’ and cry about how ‘All Lives Matter.’ And this is in response to the Big Issues being brought up across the media, across the internet. It’s everywhere they live. They can’t get away from it. They have to consider it.

And then, just when they’re sure they’ve had enough attacks on their identity and their status quo, the progressives come for their fun.

And so they cling to the last shreds of safety, the last places where they felt they were comfortable and could forget the politics of progress for a little while. When they watch TV or a movie, when reading a comic, they don’t want to think about the Big Issues. They want to escape for a little while. But unbeknownst to them, the progressives are looking at these media and questioning loudly whether the status quo was representing them well or at all. Whether the people whose representation was always there have taken a look at their privilege lately. Progressives are asking for equality, and to the Nostalgia Warrior, that is a challenge to the last bastion of escapism they’ve got.

And so, the backlash begins. The outright dismissal and attacks against those calling for critical analysis of media has been unbelievably harsh. But what’s worse is it’s often without substance too. Instead of engaging with the Big Issues being presented in the context of media critique, Nostalgia Warriors deny the need for discussion outright and banish anyone trying to have a dialogue with labels like ‘party poopers.’ And to those who agree with them, it’s the best defense, because who wants to have party poopers around? No one! So get rid of these SJWs and their party pooper ways, ignore them! There’s no need to have an actual conversation about issues! We can just label them with names you’d throw at kids on a playground and call it a day.

Because that’s all the conversation is to the Nostalgia Warrior: a throwback to days gone by, when you could talk about fun things with the simplicity of school age name-calling and maturity. Why be an adult when talking about play? Simply regress to those childhood feelings and defend your stance with the same playground mentality. Hold tight to your play as the last vestiges of childhood you’re allowed and don’t let anyone damage that with talk about Big Issues. Because that would require the adult in the Nostalgia Warrior to have to face change and its complexity.

Some of the worst offenders in this progressive backlash in entertainment have unfortunately been creators whose work is being critiqued. Whereas these creators, still relevant and important to the evolution of their mediums, could join the new generations of artists and contribute in new and fun ways, they often doggedly cling to the work of the past, defending their creative choices against critique and driving away new thinkers with their derision. What they fail to realize is their defensiveness about their nostalgia, fed by fear of being vilified and becoming irrelevant, is driving them TOWARDS irrelevancy as their mediums march on towards a progressive future. Simply put, the harder they cling to the past, the easier the future and their part in it slips through their fingers.

The sad part about the backlash against progressive thinking by Nostalgia Warriors and conservative thinkers is the ultimate damage it does to creative evolution. Creative mediums have come a long way since the days of cave paintings, Shakespeare, the Rennaissance and even the beatnik generation. Every wave of creation builds upon what came before, informed by the politics and social movements all around them. The fact that each generation has also participated in the see-saw of progress towards greater equality has informed said artistic creation, and to ignore those influences in favor of nostalgia only stunts the growth of new ideas and new forms of art.

They say there are no new ideas under the sun, only new ways to express them. Yet if we’re only ever looking back to those so-called ‘better days’ thru the lens of willfully ignorant nostalgia, we’re cutting new creative expressions off at the knees. People yawn at remakes and rehashes of the old, asking for new movies, new television, innovative creations, and then complain when those new expressions involve evolving social thematics.

You can’t have it both ways, Nostalgia Warriors. Either you want new ideas or you want things to stay the same. And I have some bad news: things won’t stay the same, no matter how much you shout about it. Progress happens. The world moves on. And your sacred cows lose their shine under the scrutiny of the future. The only question is: will you put aside your blinders and accept the complexity of media and the critical analysis around you, or hold on stubbornly to the past?

The battle for progress continues across all mediums. And wherever people believe fun is under assault, the Nostalgia Warriors will be there, ready to refute every claim with childish rhetoric and nay-saying. And all the while, they don’t even realize they’re already involved in the political conversation: they’re just not doing a very good job at it.

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Fandom Behind Trauma: DC’s Crisis On Earth X

November 29, 2017 by Shoshana, posted in Politics, Television

When this week started, I didn’t think I’d be writing about the Holocaust. In the current political climate with actual Nazis walking the streets of our country with impunity, it seems to be coming up more and more. Still, I didn’t think when I sat down to watch four of my favorite TV shows do their yearly crossover that I’d be confronting this particular historical nightmare.

I should have realized. I should have been prepared. For weeks now, the CW’s four DC Universe superhero shows – Supergirl, Flash, Arrow, and Legends of Tomorrow – have been advertising their once a year, four-episode crossover. I’d seen the commercials where commandos in uniforms reminiscent of the old SS of yore crashed the wedding of Barry Allen and Iris West, with all their superhero friends in attendance. “I hate Nazis,” said Arrow, Supergirl, and Flash in the commercials, before the epic ass-kicking began. I knew the crossover was going to feature Earth X, an alternate reality where the Nazis won and subjugated the entire world. I just didn’t know how far the show would go, or how much it would affect me.

Hi, I’m Shoshana, and I’m the granddaughter of a survivor of Auschwitz. And this is how Crisis on Earth X gave me an epic anxiety attack.

[[Please note: This article will include spoilers for all four episodes of Crisis on Earth X, as well as have discussions about the Holocaust and its atrocities that may be triggering. Read on with this warning in mind.]]

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a huge comic book fan, so it’s no surprise I’m an avid follower of all four of DC’s CW shows. I’m a firm believer that in an age of grim-dark reinterpretations of superheroes, the DC TV shows have retained the joyous, adventurous flavor of the original comics while still being innovative for a new modern TV audience. It stands as a nuanced set of shows that go from light-hearted and fun (Legends of Tomorrow) to often dark and brooding (Arrow) and even politically conscious and reactive to today’s real-world issues (Supergirl). Flash is the show I turn to on my worst weeks to find a ray of humorous, heartfelt hope, bolstered by the camaraderie of Team Flash and the exuberant performance of Grant Gustin as Barry Allen.

Yet when I heard this year’s massive crossover would handle the Nazi-focused Crisis on Earth X story arch, I was hesitant. For years, Nazis were the ubiquitous punching bags of media, right alongside zombies. Hell, I think people felt more emotional connection and empathy for the undead, who truly had no say in their unfortunate plight. Nazis are a representation of everything corrupt in the world, the choices made by portions of mankind to sink to depravity through fascism, bigotry and disregard for empathy and human life. The cookie-cutter, two-dimensional Nazi became an easy punching bag in comics, movies, and video games, an easy antagonist to point to as the ultimate evil so no consumer would have difficulty with blasting them out of existence. Or punching them in the jaw.

In today’s political climate, however, it seems the sentiment of ‘punch a Nazi’ has become a controversial one for some reason. With the rise of fascist thought in America, the struggle to embrace a ‘live and let live’ mentality has brought some to talk about Nazism as if it was an acceptable philosophy rather than an abhorrent one. Articles like the recent on in the New York Times profiling the everyday Nazi have been steps, inadvertently or otherwise, towards normalizing fascists living in America today. When ‘alt-right’ leader Richard Spencer was decked in the face on live television by a masked anti-fascist activist, beneath the cries of support there was an undercurrent of actual sympathy. Nazis have become, to some part of the population, sympathetic. (By the way, if you’re having a bad day, just watch this gif a few times, it always gives me some joy).

Now I trusted the progressive writer teams of the DC shows to take on the issue of Nazis well. Of every show on television right now, Supergirl has come out as the most reactive to the horrors of the regressive Trump America, going so far as to almost directly referencing issues going on (such as taking up the term “nasty woman” with a stare-into-the-camera defiance I love) and include more inclusive, progressive storylines with gusto. I wasn’t worried about their handling of the material.

I was worried about me, as a viewer. I was worried it might be too much.

As a little girl, I grew up on stories of the Holocaust. It was almost impossible to miss them in the Orthodox Jewish community where I grew up. Everyone was only one or two steps removed from a Holocaust survivor. They are our neighbors, our family members, people in our synagogues, working in businesses. They are grandparents, just like mine were. My grandmother Nora survived Auschwitz while my grandfather, who died before I was born, survived Treblinka. And in our community, there is a saying: never forget. To us, it isn’t a slogan, but a way of life.

And so from an early age, I heard stories, unimaginable stories, impossibly horrific stories. I saw films. I read books. I went to museums and saw evidence first-hand of the nightmares. I read first-hand accounts. And I met survivors. I talked to my own grandmother and watched her have nightmares. I learned about the twenty or so family members she lost, the life she left behind. She tried to shelter me from the worst of it, but it was impossible to avoid.

I started having nightmares after seeing Holocaust films the first time I saw Schindler’s List. I was staying at a friend’s house and went to bed after the film only to wake up screaming. I had those nightmares after seeing several other movies, and after going to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Israel. After watching the first episode of The Man In The High Castle I couldn’t sleep properly for three days. Though the show seemed well done, there was no chance I could watch. I avoided ads for it. I grew furious when someone in their promotional department thought decorating an entire New York train car with the Nazi symbols to advertise the show was a good idea. I wasn’t avoiding the issue of the Holocaust. Far from it. The stories lived so far under my skin they’d rooted in and become a haunting I couldn’t shake.

There is an idea when discussing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder called secondary trauma, which is defined as “when an individual is exposed to people who have been traumatized themselves, disturbing descriptions of a traumatic events by a survivor or being exposed to others inflicting cruelty on one another” (Source: Wikipedia). There have been discussions of how the horrors of WWII have continued to pass down their traumas to the next generation and how many people are carrying these secondary traumas into their lives. So it’s no surprise when I mentioned these nightmares to a therapist that she told me this was a form of secondary trauma, one I carried from my family’s history.

And in a way, strangely, I was okay with it. I believe forgetting the past means we can’t help but repeat them, and as our political climate has shown, we’ve got to be vigilant. Sure I’d love to avoid waking up shouting, but it isn’t a consistent problem. I’ve taken my joy at shooting the hell out of Nazis in the last few Wolfenstein games, and love seeing Indiana Jones punch the hell outta Nazis in his movies. But every once in a while, something comes along and pushes the wrong button. And then there’s a tightness in my chest and an anxiety rolling through me I can’t deny.

I sat down to watch Crisis on Earth X and suddenly, I was having a serious problem.

The first two episodes of the crossover, Supergirl and Arrow, went off pretty well. The wedding of Barry and Iris (FINALLY) was something I’d been looking forward to for a while. Seeing all my favorite characters coming together and even talking about their problems (Felicity and Oliver’s relationship drama, Alex’s recent break-up with her girlfriend Maggie Sawyer, and Kara’s loss of her boyfriend Mon-El) were all awesome. Supergirl herself Melissa Benoit flexing her fantastic singing voice during the ceremony scene was a brilliant call-back not only to her time as a Glee star but to the Flash/Supergirl crossover musical episode from earlier this year.

Then, of course, the Nazi’s attacked and it was time for some super-hero ass kicking. And make no mistake. The fight scenes were incredible. The shows really blew out their special effects budget to make every single character have a moment to shine, even taking special time to highlight the non-powered characters using their talents to add to the fights. But as time went on, something started to creep into my skin, especially when the super-powered Nazis showed up. It turned out the general of the Nazi armies, Overgirl, was none other than an alternate world version of Supergirl, and the Fuehrer himself, inherited after Hitler died in 1994 on Earth X, was none other than the doppelganger Oliver Queen himself. Both fought our heroes, emblazoned proudly with the SS emblem on their chests, and that’s when my stomach started to clench. Hearing actors I adored playing evil versions of themselves spouting horrible bigoted, ethnic-cleansing level shit was difficult.

But nothing was as hard as the end of the episode of Arrow and episode 3 of the four-parter, where our heroes were transported to Earth X.

There are images that haunt me from the Holocaust, images people seem intent on resurrecting in every movie and even on memes across the internet. The image of people behind barbed wire, their hair shorn down, skinny and starving and wearing those striped uniforms with those horrifying Stars of David on their chests. And in the episode of Flash, our heroes end up inside one of those very pens alongside emaciated, terrified people. They stand in their super-suits alongside people being held for cleansing in a concentration camp, large as day on my TV screen.

And that’s when I started to panic. My chest got tight. My face got warm. And I really, really wanted to turn off the TV.

Screenshot from *Crisis on Earth X* episode 3

The show does nothing to hide the horror of the plight of the prisoners. Jackson (one half of Firestorm from the Legends) asks a prisoner what the pink triangle on his clothing was all for. The prisoner (later discovered to be freedom fighter The Ray) replies, “I loved the wrong person,” intimating the pink triangles marked queer prisoners. Stars, not shown on TV until later in the episode (presumably for effect), indicated Jews. All held together, all in those damned striped uniforms.

I paused the episode three times before I could get through those scenes. As the heroes talked glibly about escaping, the doppelganger of Detective Lance, now a high ranking SS officer, comes in and confronts White Canary, his daughter from another earth. When he asks her why she’s in the camp when she is the epitome of blonde hair/blue eyed perfection, she tells him she is gay. He says he cleansed his own daughter for just the same “deviance” before ordering the heroes taken out, presumably to their deaths.

There are some images like I said. One is the mass graves of Europe, the pits where prisoners were lined up and shot and left for dead by the hundreds. And this doppelganger SS Lance led the heroes to the edge of the same kind of pit and lined them up to face their end. This is about when I had to nope out for a few more minutes once more. Because this was a scene out of my nightmares, and it was happening to characters I loved in a comic book TV show.

I got up. I took a walk around. I drank some water. I wanted to get through this episode. I wanted to see how my favorite heroes would kick the hell out of these Nazis and show them just what fascist mass-murderers got. It was vicarious, it was meant to be, and I wanted to see it to the end. But there was an off-note to me, something not sitting well in my stomach – something besides the obvious secondary trauma.

It was the glibness. When put beside these images of ultimate horror that haunt my dreams, the superheroes I love looked tawdry and disrespectful. They seemed oddly unaffected by the horrors around them, disregarding the human suffering by focusing on their own objective. Few moments showed a real connection to the enormity of the nightmare around them in these scenes. The heroes looked uncomfortable, but their dialogue was removed, the lofty pronunciations of writers trying to gloss through an unbelievably traumatic moment with blase pronouncements of how humanity has harmed one another throughout history in the worst ways.

Even Professor Stein, a character who the writers have gone out of their way to show is Jewish, and Sarah and Alex, both queer characters whose sexuality is prominent in the series, only get moments to address the nightmare of what they’re witnessing. And then they’re off to save the day with grim determination and square-jawed heroics, never once truly interacting with the prisoners around them. In their escape, they leave behind a concentration camp full of people surely soon to be murdered who are used as nothing more than props to make a point.

And there, I discovered, was my problem with the episode and with the intended emotional moments. The Holocaust was used as a prop. It felt cheap. It felt out of sync, out of step, out of place, and not nearly as respectful as it was trying to be.

A single moment made the show all the harder to watch. Heroic Oliver Queen pretends to be the Fuehrer to sneak into the Earth X base and is tested by SS Commander Lance for his identity. They bring out a prisoner: Earth X Felicity Smoak, Oliver’s love on Earth 1 and a known Jewish character. And this, folks, is when I finally had to nope for a while. Because seeing one of my favorites Felicity, in the pajamas with the yellow star of JUDE on her chest, on her knees about to be executed by a Nazi, was too much.

When he called her a “Jewess” I paused to take deep breaths. This was painful. This was triggering. And in my mind, this was over the top. Felicity talks about being taken prisoner for sharing her bread with kids in the camp. “They were starving,” she cries, as the writers ignore the fact that there needs be no excuse for why an SS commander would hold a gun to her head. In reality, she’s a Jew. Nazis needed no excuse to execute Jews. They were missing the point. And they were using a serious trauma to do it.

There were moments of real emotion, real connection. When the rebellion leader, doppelganger of Supergirl’s Wynn, talks about saving his earth, the actor gives a surprisingly emotional performance, hammering home to the heroes who want only to return to save their earth that he must protect and save his earth, where people are dying in the same conflict their grandfather’s fought. And Felicity’s declaration to the Fuehrer on Earth 1 that her grandparents didn’t survive the Holocaust to see their world fall to Nazis was, though short, impactful.

Still, it was during the course of the somewhat convoluted storyline that I discovered problem two with the crossover. Because at the end of the day, we know the heroes would win. That’s how these stories go. They’d go home, they’d defeat the Fuehrer and the General (they did), and they would share a wonderful ending (which I won’t spoil because it is great). But once again, Earth X is put in their rearview mirror, while those background characters would continue to be slaughtered while the resistance fights on. The Ray returns to help, but otherwise, our heroes return to their regularly scheduled broadcast. And I was left with a hitch in my chest, some nightmares on the schedule for that night, and an odd taste in my mouth.

Because punch Nazis all you want, but Holocaust victims and their memories are not props to drive home an agenda. And that’s where this episode went.

In the end, I watched the end of the crossover. I crowed when the heroes kicked the hell out of the Nazis with beautiful special effects style. I loved every second of watching the ending. And frankly, the payoff felt strong despite my issues. The fact that the Nazis are annihilated by a team of diverse heroes including people of color, Jews, and queer heroes was not lost on me, and the show worked hard to nail that home over and over. But by the end of the night I came out feeling shakey, and while others I spoke to seemed excited by how thoughtful and well-done the show had taken Nazis in general, I was left unconvinced. Hell, I was left with the need to work off some anxiety. I stayed up late. I wasn’t really okay.

The message of the Crisis on Earth X crossover is a relevant one and an important one today in our world: Nazis can rise and we must face them no matter the cost. The show does not baulk at the message and instead stands firmly with our heroes united against this unholy threat. But where I’d been concerned about nuance being lost, I found those concerns justified. Did the show need to take the heroes in their lavish costumes to a concentration camp? No. Did they need to put Felicity on her knees and call her Jewess? No. And did they need to leave behind Earth X as an after-thought, left to its perpetual war without regard for closure for the audience? No.

There were, in my eyes, other ways that would have felt more compelling, more complete, and less exploitative. And while I credit the team for trying very, very, hard to get this right, I think they missed the mark by just a little. Or at least it seems that way for me, someone who didn’t sleep well last night.

Your Progressive Media Needs Criticism

August 4, 2017 by Shoshana, posted in Film, Geek Culture, Politics, Speaking Out, Television

I unfriended someone on Facebook the other day. That might not sound like such a big deal to some, but to others you might be going “oooooooooh” right now, because it takes a lot to get defriended from my Facebook. Something fairly monumental. And this wasn’t a stealth defriending either, a “I knew you in grade school but now you’ve become a Trump supporter so bye Felicia” kind of defriending. This was a digital face-to-face over a thread, telling the other person “It’s been fun, but goodbye.”

And it was over, of all things, Twin Peaks.

170203_10_093_RGB(2).JPG — “I’ll see you again in 25 years.”

Folks might not know, but I’m a huge fan of Twin Peaks. Been watching for years. I must have seen the original show three or four times over, plus read the books, and absorbed so much of the lore around the show I’ve got theories that have already proven true. I’m such a big fan, I’m planning a tattoo for the next time I get the chance saying “Fire Walk With Me.” I’m THAT big a fan.

But that doesn’t mean I’m immune to the criticisms I’ve got of the show, particularly about women characters on Twin Peaks. And while the show is meant in many ways as a parody of both itself and melodramatic television and 1950’s small town culture, therefore offering it a strange and unique space for characters to be archetypes rather than entirely characters all their own, there are issues with the treatment of women in my eyes and always have been. And I’m not the only one. Reviews and articles coming in about the new Twin Peaks have echoed a lot of my feelings, from The Wrap, Refinery29, Bustle and, of all places, Haaretz. They all say what I’ve been saying too: David Lynch has a woman problem in his work, and in Twin Peaks it is glaringly obvious and very, very sad.

So after one particularly egregious episode in Twin Peaks: The Return (Episode 10), I put up a single line text about how much I love the show, but how it had a serious sexism problem. And within a few minutes, I was under attack. Not a “I disagree with you” friendly debate. I love those. But a full knock-down gaslighting, insulting, mansplaining, nightmare, complete with “you just don’t understand the series” and “do you even watch the show?” nerd checking. The person in question was clearly agitated, posting rapidly and pointing out how Twin Peaks was full of archetypes (yes, it is), how it is part parody (yes, it is), and if you think that David Lynch is sexist, he can’t be, because he included one of the first trans characters (thank you, yes, not the point) and is asexual himself (um, okay, sure… what?).

It turned out over the course of this bizarre conversation that the truth came out: this show had deep sentimental value to this person, who felt because of that it needed defending. And when I pointed out that their attachment didn’t make it immune from criticism, the comments got nasty. So I said goodnight to a person I’d known for seven years, and unfriended them. Simply put, I don’t need that negativity in my life.

But it brought up an interesting series of thoughts from me, which culminated last night after seeing The Dark Tower. Because boy, do I have a lot of feelings about that movie.

(And here is where I post about a new film in a spoiler-free way. If you don’t want to read about The Dark Tower movie at all and want to see it cold, you might want to stop reading.)

There are few things I’m a bigger fan of than Twin Peaks. X-Men. American Gods. Buffy. The Dresden Files. And then, there’s The Dark Tower. I’ve read the entire book series three times, along with nearly every Stephen King book out there. I’ve seen almost every Stephen King TV show and movie, even the bad ones, multiple times. I’ve tracked the connections between King’s other works and The Dark Tower series and waxed on for HOURS about theories and possible other connections. I’m planning another tattoo, and yes, it’s of the Dark Tower and the words “There are Other Worlds Than These.” Every time someone would talk online about rumors that The Dark Tower was becoming a movie, I’d flip out and wait. And wait. It took years to get the series to film, so when they announced it, I bought tickets the day they went on sale. I was ready.

I watched everyone flip about Idris Elba being cast as Roland because of the color of his skin and rolled my eyes. They made a great choice there, I thought, choosing a man of color for such a traditionally Clint Eastwood, square jaw white guy role. He would rip a hole in the scenery with Matthew McConaughey as The Man In Black. He would be the iconic man on his way to the Tower. He had the perfect gravitas. I would recite the Gunslinger Creed over my popcorn bucket and watch him do the reloading trick and be so happy. I got my friends together, those who were big fans and who weren’t, and I made a day of it. As I said to my friends, to a fan like me, it was like going to church.

And then. I went to the movie. And I walked out so mad. So. So mad.

The Dark Tower movie is bad, y’all. It’s really, really is.

I won’t go into specifics, but other than a few pieces of nerd-dom tossed in that made me satisfied, the film was a run of the mill, fun urban scifi-fantasy film that could have been original if it was anything but named The Dark Tower. It harkened back to the comic book adaptations of the 80’s and 90’s in its surface-level-only understanding of the material, a slick transmogrification of a complicated, gritty, compelling series into a shiny action film full of hackneyed dialogue and atonal characters. Idris Elba, the man who brought you such nuanced, intense performances as Luther was wasted on this movie, and scenes where he and the powerful McConaughey, seemingly ready to flex his muscles but tragically held back by the weak writing, fall positively flat. The two, along with the rest of the cast, are given no room to move in the too-quick, badly edited rush to cram a huge amount of material into a tragically short hour and a half film. An hour and a half for a seven book series ‘sequel’ which reads like a comic book spin-off one shot gone horribly wrong.

I walked out of the film, furious. I sat down with friends afterwards and listed the myriad ways the movie had failed not only Dark Tower fans, but folks in general. My friends who didn’t know the books said it came in as a solid ‘okay’ action movie without the context of the original material, which I suppose gives it some salvation. But for a fan like me, it was like watching someone piss away the opportunity to make a new Lord of the Rings. Give me a Peter Jackson three movie trilogy, each three hours long, where you have to race to the bathroom in between scenes because you’re sitting so long watching it. Give me the depth of Mid-World, the Tet Corporation, the Gunslingers of Eld. Give me the epic battle between titanic forces I’d been waiting for. Instead, I got a cartoon.

deadpool-2-domino-zazie-beetz-twitter-01-480x520 — She looks awesome and people were complaining about her hair. That’s some coded racist BS there folks.

I went online to put up a single lined comment on my Facebook: “This movie has forgotten the face of its father.” A lament to what could have been. And I got the most curious response to a friend in private messenger. It said I shouldn’t complain, because at least the movie cast a man of color as the lead. That made it important. To which I agreed yes, it did make it important. Actually, in the age of white washing roles, just days after the internet flipped its collective trolling shit over the awesome Zazie Beetz, a woman of color, being cast as the traditionally comic book pasty Domino in the upcoming Deadpool 2, seeing a man of color playing this iconically white as heck role was powerful. I mean, Roland Dechain is meant effectively to be the descendent of Arthur Eld, the King Arthur of his land. He carries guns made of Excalibur. He is THE iconic hero. Choosing a man of color for the role was a great, progressive move.

It didn’t save the film, however, from a) just being bad and b) from sucking in other ways regarding progressive representation. For example, towards women. It’s not like the original material was super amazing towards women to begin with. I’ll tell you there’s some shit about fridging women in it that could make your hair stand on end, and some sexual violence that’s way, way unnecessary in my eyes. The film flinches away from a lot of the worse stuff because of its shiny, not-too-violent-but-cartoon-violence veneer, but it fails the Bechdel Test and the Fridging Tests like a kid who didn’t study for finals. It found its way to progressiveness in one way, and flunked it so epically in others.

And you know what? That’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay that it failed. It’s not okay that the movie overall was a colossal disappointment.

It’s okay to look at a film like The Dark Tower and point out that while it was progressive in one way, it failed epically in others in terms of representation.

Because just because a piece of media is progressive does not make it immune to criticism. Even, and especially, if it’s your favorite.

I had my own run-in with what I call Favorite Bias when reviews for Wonder Woman came in. On the list of things I’m more of a fan of than Twin Peaks is Wonder Woman. I’ve read almost every Wonder Woman comic up until the New 52 run (which I forgoed because I felt it betrayed the character on pretty much every level). I was planning, you guessed it, a Wonder Woman tattoo (you see a pattern here). I have Wonder Woman t-shirts. I have every graphic novel I could get my hands on. I think I remember more about Wonder Woman comics than pieces of my childhood because, hey, that’s how the human mind works. So when the movie was announced, I was ready to be disappointed. I was nervous, ya’ll, that we’d have another Catwoman on our hands, another Elektra, and that movie execs would use its flop as an excuse to say “Women led comic book movies will fail!” even when women-led movies with kickass protagonists were doing work at the box office (say hey, Furiosa and Katniss).

And then Wonder Woman came out. And it was a joy.

Sure, it had its problems. Heck, I went over its problems in a long, long article. I laid out all the issues it had and why, in many ways, it had come short of true greatness. But all in all, I sat in the dark opening night with tons of my friends and bounced with joy when I saw Themyscira. Once again, take me to church, silver screen. I was home.

593ff1b91d00002900cc2ac9 — They couldn’t give Artemis any lines? Really?

And then I got home, and started talking to other folks, looking at Facebook, reading reviews. And the one thing I noticed over and over were comments about the representation of people of color in the film. Specifically, how nearly all of the non-white Amazons had non-speaking or servile roles. The film, it seemed, had managed to pass the Bechdel test with some flying-ass colors while leaving its representation of POC way, way in the dirt. (And for more on this, check out Harper’s Bazaar’s piece as an example of the conversation out there). A lot of people were lauding the film while commentators, especially POC, were citing the problems the film had. And they were getting a lot of responses saying what I said about The Dark Tower: while the film achieved progressive aims in some ways by being a hella strong representation of a powerful woman on the big screen (and at the box office), it was a massive problem for its intersectional representation.

When I first heard those criticisms, something kicked in my stomach. A nagging rationalization crawled up out of me, saying, “But look! It’s Wonder Woman! It’s a hell of a progressive film! Look at Themyscira! Look at it! That’s woman paradise! The warriors, the culture, just look!” And then I did look. Harder. And I saw the way women of color were being represented. I listened to what people were saying, what women of color were saying. It wasn’t a woman’s paradise. Not for all women. Pretty much just for the white ones.

I shut up. I listened. And (I think) I got it.

These experiences echoed an old fight I had with a friend over Star Wars years ago on my birthday. Star Wars, to him, is his Take Me To Church, a deep abiding nerdy kind of love that nigh transcends understanding. So when I made the mistake of pointing out the shortage of women in the original Star Wars universe during my birthday party one year, I nearly ended a friendship. Because that was his Sacred Bunny, just like Twin Peaks had been my ex-friend’s Sacred Bunny, and Wonder Woman was mine. And though each one of these pieces of media expounded on some serious progressive ideals, it didn’t make it less regressive in other ways.

Plato's_Stepchildren_kiss — We forget this was mind-controlled, y’all.

Did the original Star Trek‘s progressive moments, such as the famous interracial kiss between Uhura and Kirk, erase the fact that it happened on an episode where they were basically mind controlled into having the kiss, making it a product of unwanted sexual attention? Nope. Did the great trajectory of Mako Mori in the plot of Pacific Rim take away from the stereotyping she received as both a woman of Asian descent and as a woman in general? Nope. Did the great representation of queer characters on The 100 let us ignore the tragedy that was the destruction of its most stable queer relationship in the tradition of the Killing Queers trope, ala Buffy‘s Tara? Nope. Did the unbelievable awesomeness of the John Wick series ignore that the protagonist’s wife is (spoiler alert) Fridged for his story to have emotional trajectory (and y’all, it’s not all about the dog)? Nope. And don’t get me started on the Orthodox Jewish banker stereotype from John Wick 2, just don’t.

It is okay to like something and find it problematic. But moreover, it’s okay to recognize that a piece of media can be progressive in some ways and deeply problematic in others.

In fact, I’ll go one further. Progressive media should not and cannot be immune to criticism. By allowing ourselves to be caught up in a piece of media’s progressive moves in some areas, while blatantly ignoring or downplaying the places where it fails in intersectional representation, we let ourselves be lulled into the false ideology that progression can only occur slowly and that representation is a battle fought for in drips and drabs, as individual causes whose battlefronts often cannot intersect for fear of scaring the conservative whole.

We look at a film which supports a single minority group or underserved population and laud its achievements and sweep under the rug its failures, afraid to rip apart a one-step-forward kind of progression that has clawed our media representations to where they are now. “What, you want it to be everything?” we say, not realizing it echoes the snide comments by alt-right conservatives, who sneer about how the next big movie will replace their tried and true white male protagonist with a queer disabled woman of color just so it can be politically correct. (And yes, that’s some of the bullshit the conserva-trolls online say). We say things like, “We’ve got this far, what else do you want?”

I guess the answer is: more. I want more.

I don’t see why we can’t shoot for the moon, for a movie that not only excels in a single area but serves a better view of the world by being progressive in all intersectional ways. I want movies that have people of color in positions of power, forget just speaking rolls. I want queer representation presented as normalized, for trans characters to have visibility and recognition as part of the world as it is without qualifiers. I want women to have power and agency and representation and for disabled characters to comfortably exist. I want religious diversity and body diversity. Yeah, I want it all. Maybe that makes me a greedy liberal media nerd, but that’s what I want.

But when a piece of media fails us in those ways, when it only comes in second or third in its representation, when it soars to the moon and only lands among the stars, giving us one or two of those representations and lacks the others, I want us to be able to look at it and recognize that fact. I want us to say, “yes, but” rather than “yes, and let’s take what we can get.” It might be infuriating, and to conservatives outside it might look like liberals being divisive within their own camp. But if progressive action in media is not intersectional, just like in other forms of progressive action, then it has not truly achieved its aims. And we can only learn how to improve by recognizing those places where pieces of media, and indeed those places where we creators have failed in our own media, have fallen short of a better, more ideal form of representation.

Despite all this, I’m still going to be a giant nerd for Wonder Woman. I’ve come to embrace Star Wars as a huge part of my geek life thanks to better representation in the new era of films, books, and toys. I watch John Wick with my friends, and love the shit out of The Dark Tower books. I’ve lauded the movements of comic books and comic book films and television to be forward thinking on its representation, loving on my Kamala Khan and Captain Marvel and new, better Wonder Woman storylines while still criticizing the places where things fall through the cracks. I put forward my own work to others and take criticism too, because if I don’t practice what I preach as a creator of media, I’m just a hypocrite. I like my problematic favorites, like Game of Thrones and Walking Dead. I still turn on Twin Peaks every Sunday night, even though I groan into a pillow over some of the choices David Lynch makes.

I’m still a fan. But these days, I expect more. And I’ll keep saying so, until it’s not necessary anymore.

Gal Gadot And The Hope Of Jewish Representation

June 8, 2017 by Shoshana, posted in Comics, Criticism, Film, Geek Culture, Not Ready To Make Nice, Politics, Speaking Out

Candles hold a special place in my heart. In my mind, they’re a symbol of serenity, peace, focus, and prayer. They’ve stood as a testament to the flame one holds in their heart for a connection to the divine since I was a little girl. For as far back as I can remember, my mother would stand before the candles on Friday night, her hair covered and face solemn, as she covered her eyes and recited the blessing to invite the Shabbat into our home. I remember standing with her, or in the home of a friend on Friday night, all the women standing before the candles, covering their eyes to say the prayer.

‘Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha‑olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat.’

‘Blessed are You, LORD, our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to light Shabbat candle[s].’

The blessing of the Shabbat candles has stood out to me as one of the most humble, beautiful, and soulful practices of the Jewish faith. It ties Jewish women to a tradition meant for us alone, a task meant to usher in the twenty-six hours from Friday to Saturday evening when the family dedicates themselves to take time and rest, just as God supposedly did after the six days of creation. I grew up knowing that Jewish women for generations, going back into time immemorial, have been standing before similar candles the world over on Friday nights, putting their hands over their eyes to welcome in the Shabbat every week. I remember standing with my mother to learn how to say the prayer, covering my hair just like her, knowing I was a part of a long chain of tradition, held by the light of the candles and my faith.

It’s been years since I was what you’d consider very religious, but the ceremony of lighting Shabbat candles has stayed with me. It’s so important in fact that I chose to write a Larp about it for my contribution to the War Birds anthology by Unruly Games. Keeping the Candles Lit tried to capture not only the importance of traditions like the Shabbat candles, but the relationship of passing those traditions down from one generation of Jewish women to another. I tried to capture that importance, that beauty, when explaining it to non-Jewish players, or even my non-Jewish friends.

And every time, I wasn’t sure I could. The practice couldn’t have the same meaning, and most of my friends had no cultural context, no experience with the practices I grew up with. And that was normally okay: I love the diversity of the people I know, how we come from such disparate backgrounds. But every once in a while, I wished my closest friends could understand that feeling the candles inspired in me, and understand my culture with the same familiarity I’ve been forced to understand Christian culture.

Living Jewish In A Christian World

By virtue of living in a predominantly Christian oriented society, I’ve become intimately familiar with the trappings of the religion. It dominates popular culture, the iconography of everything from our holidays to stores in which I shop. I know the story of Christmas and all the songs as they’re blasted over the airwaves every year, every year getting earlier and earlier. I know the story of Jesus, of the Apostles. I know about some of the saints, how they go marching in, and the difference between different Christian groups. I hear conservatives scream about wars on Christmas and how Christian values in America are being challenged every day. And I snort, because I was at least raised to believe America was a land for all, not one with an official religion.

I also grew up being told to keep my head down when I tried to voice those ideas. My grandmother once told me one Shabbat, “Non-Jews won’t want to hear that from you. They’ll put up with it, with you, but don’t forget – they don’t understand.”

I remembered that lesson as I grew up, and watched every game, every TV show, every movie, and its implicit western Christian bias. Its morals baked into every piece of art, every bit of our society. I remember wishing I could share my favorite music growing up with my non-Jewish friends, and realizing they wouldn’t understand a lick of it. I remember realizing when I heard music and it talked about faith, or God, or losing their religion, they weren’t talking about my faith. The icons were always of a man with his arms spread out, a lonely look on his face.

I remember being confused and a little heartbroken when I was told The Chronicles of Narnia was a Christian story and Aslan, one of my favorite characters, was really Jesus. I remember the Jewish holiday of Purim being called “the Jewish Halloween,” as if that represented the beautiful tradition at all. I remember being told The Ten Commandments was an Easter story, even it was literally the story of Passover being shown over that very holiday.

ten_commandments-moses — Literally where the holiday comes from, folks. Moses did this, and we walked through some water, ate some really dry matzah and got away from that pesky Pharaoh.

Most of all, I remember the Shabbat and lighting the candles, and realizing so few people even understood what the Shabbat really was. And this was among those people I knew, forget about in the media.

And then, there were the exceptions. The beautiful, beautiful exceptions.

Finding Your Heroes

Claudia Christian playing Susan Ivanova on Babylon 5, who lit the Channukah candles and sat shiva for her father, all while being a commander on a 23rd century space station.

Felicity Smoak on Arrow answering her friends asking what she was doing on Christmas with, “Celebrating Channukah” and sharing cultural understanding with Ragman, a gay Jewish boy wearing an ancient, nigh sentient Egyptian burial shroud.

Rufus on Supernatural telling Bobby Singer he couldn’t dig up a dead body yet, because it was still the Shabbat. (Okay, and maybe taking advantage just so he wouldn’t have to dig).

Jews — **Chanukah shared by many of Marvel Comics’ most famous Jewish characters including The Thing, Shadowcat, Sasquatch, Songbird, Wiccan, and Moon Knight.**

Kitty Pryde in the X-Men wearing a Star of David and proudly declaring herself Jewish, comparing the discrimination against mutants with the discrimination faced by Jews.

Magneto, a Holocaust survivor, standing tall and villainous against the bigotry that ended his family’s lives so long ago.

Willow Rosenberg on Buffy straddling the line between growing up Jewish and embracing the Wiccan inside to become one of the most powerful magic users in the Buffyverse.

And yet these were characters on TV shows and in comics, amazing and affirming as they were. I was looking for real life media figures who could tell me that Hollywood wasn’t just full of stereotypes of Jews. We weren’t all Woody Allen or Barbara Streisand. We weren’t comedians and nerdy people, known for lack of athleticism and a cynical, dry wit. We weren’t The Nanny and Annie Hall. I kept looking for more Ivanovas, more Felicitys, more Willows. I found Natalie Portman and discovered Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan were both Jewish. With some Googling, I found a list of Hollywood actresses who were Jewish.

And yet, in their interviews, in press junkets, I didn’t hear anything about their identities. While other celebrities thanked Jesus non-stop, I didn’t hear anything so outward about these women. In the age of social media and celebrity openness to the world, these women’s media image was so devoid of anything indicating they were Jewish I had to go Googling to find notable Jewish women in Hollywood. And that was okay, because their choices were their right, and their right to privacy was absolutely valid. But still, in a world saturated by the Christian identity, I yearned for something I could identify with.

And then, I saw an Instagram photo of Gal Gadot.

Representation Matters

In the photo, she stood in front of a pair of candles along with her little girl. Both of their hair was covered as they prayed before a pair of Shabbat candles.

Gal Gadot, who would be Wonder Woman.

They say representation matters in media. They say it’s important for people to be able to see those who look like them in the media. For a Jew, that issue can be a complex one, as many Jews of Eastern European descent largely blend into the overall white population. And though Jews were not considered as white until very late in the US and world history (we’re talking somewhere between the 1940’s and the 1970’s), we receive the same advantages in many ways as those who are perceived as white by the population at large.

Instead, Jews face different oppression based on our religious backgrounds, called anti-semitism, which has remained a constant and insidious form of discrimination throughout history. But at the end of the day, those Jews of largely Ashkenazi descent (meaning those whose ancestors migrated during the Jewish diaspora to Europe and got way, way pastier than our brethren who settled elsewhere) are perceived as and grouped into being white, with all the baggage and privilege and advantage that comes with it.

Still. Representation matters. And we all want to see someone in our media who is like us. As a little Jewish girl, I wanted to see characters in things who were Jewish. I cheered when I found out there was an Israeli-Jewish super hero in Marvel Comics called Sabra, a kickass woman super-soldier who defended Israel against her enemies. I worshiped the character of Susan Ivanova as a model for a strong Jewish woman on television. And I looked for actresses who showed me you could be Jewish and be a media star and still have a proud, public relationship with your culture.

And then that photo. Gal Gadot, in front of the candles, with her daughter.

Gadot’s Jewish Identity And Controversy

I remember my eyes filling with tears as I read a quote from Gadot, stating:

“I was brought up in a very Jewish, Israeli family environment, so of course my heritage is very important to me,” she said in an interview with Totally Jewish. “I want people to have a good impression of Israel. I don’t feel like I’m an ambassador for my country, but I do talk about Israel a lot — I enjoy telling people about where I come from and my religion.”

Here was an Israeli-born woman of Ashkenazi descent (her family was from Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Austria), who was proud of her heritage. She spoke openly about her religion, her culture, her home. And yes, that included speaking up about Israel and her feelings about the politics there. That has drawn heat from many pro-Palestinian groups, including BDS, who have called her out for supporting the military actions of her home country and for serving in the Israeli military.

(I would point out that military service in Israel is mandatory at the age of eighteen for everyone who is able. Gal served her two years as a fitness instructor, teaching gymnastics and calisthenics).

Many have called for boycotts of the Wonder Woman movie because of her pride in her homeland. Many have pointed to the Wonder Woman movie as being fairly white washed and lacking in diverse representation. And while those issues are very, very valid (I’ll point to this article expressing some very serious issues about the lack of or poor representation of women of color throughout the film), I’ll point out there is one minority who did get to be represented in Wonder Woman in a real and fantastic way.

Shattering Records and Expectations

You’d have to be living under a rock to have missed it, but Wonder Woman has defied the Hollywood trend of bad women-led comic book films. It has come away with critical acclaim and a massive fan response. And it has catapulted Gal Gadot from little known actress into a household name all in the span of a few weeks. This insta-fame has brought much of the aforementioned controversy into the limelight. And though I’m all for discussing political questions and issues of representation, I’ve had a foul taste in my mouth when looking at the way Gal Gadot’s actions and media presence has been scrutinized. In the end, the only thing people have been able to find to diss her portrayal is that she served her country as a soldier in mandatory service, that she looked like a model, and that she is part of a film which has sadly stereotyped people of color and other nationalities.

And while I acknowledge all those issues as valid to discuss, I also acknowledge that a film can have problematic issues and still have a supremely important contribution to the representation of another group. In this case, Jewish women. And that contribution is profound and important and cannot be ignored.

Because somewhere, there are little Jewish girls able to point to Gal Gadot in her tiara and silver bracelets, holding her sword and shield and lasso, and say there, there is our Jewish warrior, there is the ashet chayil (in Hebrew a “woman of valor”) we sing about every Shabbat. There is a powerful feminist actress who is proud of her heritage, passing down our traditions to her own daughter, who trained to fight and did her own stunts in both Wonder Woman and the Fast and the Furious franchise. Here was a woman who is proud of her heritage and who is representing our people, an often forgotten minority group, as one of the world’s most recognizable and lauded super heroines in a film that has shattered movie release records in its opening week.

Wonder Woman is a hit, and Wonder Woman’s actress is Jewish. My inner little girl is so proud I can barely express it. Because when I point to the screen during Wonder Woman, I can say now: see, see there, we aren’t all the yente and the nag, the funny girl and the nerdy weakling, the shady lawyer and money grubbing business person, the Jewish American princess and homely intellectual. We aren’t the hidden, overlooked group, our celebrities laughed at when they go to a Kabbalah Center or talk about their kosher cooking in public. See, in that woman, an ashet chayil at last, a proud, powerful woman, standing tall on the screen.

And somewhere, little girls can see that and believe they can be proud Jews, standing tall to be whatever they want to be while still being part of the traditions of our people. Representation matters to Jews too, and Gal Gadot has given us that representation, complicated as it might be in terms of politics and other problems with the film. And from everything we have seen in the media she is a positive role model both as Princess Diana and in her own life, a true ashet chayil in so many ways.

I am proud to be around to see my comic book idol played by such a woman of valor. Because I’ve finally seen representation that gives me hope that we Jewish women can be seen, really seen, in all our facets and strengths and traditions at last.

And all it took was one Instragram photo to instill that hope, that pride in me too.

We Live With the Unimaginable

March 2, 2017 by Shoshana, posted in Politics

Recently, I flew to Europe for the Nordic Larp conference Knutepunkt. I spent a week in Oslo learning more about game design, speaking with some of the brightest minds around about larp design. And of course, as I knew it would, the current political situation in the United States came up. For me, speaking about something is a means of coping with its existence, so I was glad to sit with people from Europe and explain how I saw the rise of the current administration. Yet two things struck me during this conversations.

The first was the reactions from people. During one conversation, where I was having an in depth discussion about the hypocrisy of politicians who won’t stand up to Trump, some folks came in. They were drunk and having fun, but when they heard we were talking politics, one of them hissed like a vampire being repelled by garlic and they all fled. It was funny enough at the time, but I found it annoying after a few moments.

It’s easy for you to run, I wanted to say, this is my reality. I get you don’t want to talk about it, but maybe we want to. Maybe we need to.

The second thing that struck me was the reaction by people I was talking when I was explaining the politics of America these days. I was used to people being horrified by the state of our politics. But the sheer level of emotion on their faces cut me to the bone. They were stricken, not only for the rest of the world in the wake of an unstable American government, but for us. Europeans were afraid, upset, angry, frustrated, hurt, for us. And their empathy broke a dam I didn’t know was inside me.

You guys: I’m not okay. We’re not okay.

Trump’s presidency, the state of our country, is an emotional weight on our shoulders. The ever-present specter of bigotry, intolerance, and rising fascism looms large in our every day lives. And though many fight to rally against the current administration, though we shout and rail and put on buttons that say RESIST, we must also look at the other side of the coin. For every person who is raising a fist, for every angry tweet and furious Facebook post, there is a quiet, numbed resignation sliding into place over so many, a pall brought on by hopeless fear.

We are a nation under siege by an administration intent on hammering home so many horrible executive orders and bills in such a short period of time it is demoralizing. And for some, there is only so long you can hold onto that rage before the emotional labour is too much to bear. We burn out. We go silent. We bow our heads and say “enough, please, just enough for a little while.”

It’s okay. It’s okay to be sad. Your feelings are valid. They always are, of course, but now even more so. It’s important to recognize what we are facing, how we feel, and not to trivialize the importance of understanding our feelings. Trump’s America is depressing. And for those feeling depressed now, I think we need to start recognizing those feelings and offering support as much as we can. Actor James Franco recently came out publicly stating he’s become depressed because of this administration. This narrative should be shared. If any narrative should be normalized, it’s talking about this, so people can seek help without shame.

sadness-quote-2-picture-quote-1 — It’s okay not to be fine.

This level of depression may be new to some folks. To those who live with mental illness, where chronic depression is a part of their lives, the current political climate is a dangerous landscape full of triggers that might trigger that depression full force. It’s going to become important that we look after one another, doubly so perhaps for those already pre-disposed to depression, anxiety, and other forms of mental health issues.

This phenomenon of depression in the face of tyranny is not unusual. It’s important to note that we’re joining a long tradition of depression already in progress. For every person from a marginalized group facing oppression that raises their fist, there is the creeping miasma of depression, the helpless feelings that come from facing an institution that harms you and your community. Trump’s administration has just brought that situation to the glaring forefront for many who have never faced administrative oppression on such a level. In other words: minority groups have been dealing with this way, way longer than most of us from non-privileged classes. Depression in the face of tyranny is not new. It’s just new to many of us.

But whether you’re new to depressive feelings, struggling with mental illness on a regular basis, or else part of a group who has been in this position for a long time, this is a time when we can stand together. Not to raise flags or banner signs. There’s time for that too. But we can stand together in empathy to offer aid to one another, to comfort and support where needed. We can say “I understand where you’re at. I hear you. Your feelings are valid. And you’re not alone.”

We are living with what is for many a horror we didn’t ever think could happen. And it’s going to be a marathon, not a sprint, to continue fighting for what is right in the face of the Trump administration. To keep up fighting, to keep healthy during this time, we have to acknowledge the sadness around us, practice self-care, and tend to one another with understanding, empathy, and compassion. And maybe if we do stand together, we can work to push away the unimaginable.

We Are Not Your Holocaust Meme

March 2, 2017 by Shoshana, posted in Politics, Speaking Out

Okay folks, it’s time for some real talk. And this ain’t going to be the nicest talk either. It started out as a rant on Facebook and I’m transferring it here to capture a sentiment that’s been burning inside me now for months. So here we are, folks. Real talk, from one New York Jew to the rest of the world.

I recently read a fantastic article put up on Medium entitled Dear Non-Jews: We Need To Talk and I felt like I could raise my hand and sing praises to a higher power. Here was someone else as angry and as pissed off as me about the current state of affairs for Jews. And the article coincided with a confluence of memes I’ve been seeing online. In the face of the horror show that’s been the Trump administration, some folks have been using pictures from the Holocaust for just about everything. Concerned about the Muslim registration? Put up a picture of people with numbers on their arms. Worried about internment camps for refugees and immigrants? Slap some clever words on an image of Jews behind barb wire fences in Auschwitz. Warning about the Nazis? Use pictures of emaciated Jews staring out of concentration camp bunks, barely recognizable as human in their extreme malnutrition.

It seems in the face of the nightmare of Trump’s America and the rise of things like the alt-right and blatant white supremacy in the White House, we Jews have become a watch word for the current injustice. But you know what never gets mentioned when people toss up those memes?

Actual Jews. Or anything about the current plight of Jews in America, in Israel, or around the world. We’ve become a convenient meme, a historic warning to others. We have become the haunting photos of people whose deaths were so horrific and needless, so tortured, they chill anyone with a soul to the bone. They are the faces of what true hatred can wrought on this earth. Yet when their descendants, the survivors’ children, are in peril from the very hatred given form once more, there’s a disturbing lack of concern going around. And it’s been bugging the hell out of me enough that I may have finally lost my temper.

So here’s what I have to say about all this. And like I said, it ain’t going to be pretty. There will be foul language. You are warned.

Dear The Rest Of The World:

It’s been a rough few weeks, hasn’t it? Since the inauguration of President Nightmare-Given-Form Trump, we have seen what amounts to the beginning of America’s slide into fascism. With a flurry of rapid executive orders, backing from cowardly Republicans and ineffective action by the Democratic Party, we the people have seen an unprecedented targeting of safety, liberty, and justice for some of the most vulnerable populations around.

It’s a terrifying time to be any minority group, from Muslims to refugees, queer folks to latinos, the disabled and the poor, people of color and native populations. Out of the woodwork we’ve seen white supremacists raising to power, with the most prominent being Steve Bannon as second-in-command to the president himself. People are literally having conversations now about whether it’s okay or not to punch Nazis. This is the world we live in. And if you think it’s getting any better elsewhere, you’ve got no idea what kind of right wing fascist bullshit is on the rise in countries like Britain, France, Sweden, and more. Hatred is taking root all over.

And in response, the resistance has arisen. People who are not willing to see this country and this world slide into darkness. I’m one of those people. I’m proud to say it. I’m all about rallies and political action. I’m doing what I can to contribute. But while I’ve been doing that, I’ve noticed something odd. In conversations about the rise of the alt-right, about populations targeted by their hate, I’ve seen support for a lot of groups except for one in specific. I’m talking of course about my people. Jews. And it’s starting to piss me the fuck off.

In the same week that I’ve seen people using memes about the Holocaust to talk about refugees, I’ve seen articles denying the right of Jews to have our own identity, to practice our religion, to have our own homeland. Denying Jews their heritage and pushing us aside as if we came from nowhere, sprung whole from cloth and denied our right to exist as a sovereign people while those same articles spout so-called progressive ideas.

These articles not only go so far as to gloss over the rights of Jews to have our own identity that is respected and accepted like other religious and cultural groups, we as Jews must suffer the ignobility of having our identity maligned because of the difficulties going on in Israel. It’s a constant refrain: bring up anti-semetism, and someone will point to the political and military issues in Israel. Point out that Jews deserve a homeland in the land of their forefathers, just like anyone else, and you’re called a bigot against Palestinians.

People point to the awful situation in Israel that the majority of us Jews have NO CONTROL OVER – a situation MANY of us hate and stand against too – and use it as a reason to deny our heritage. More than that, they use it as a reason to demonize all Jews, no matter our connection to Israel, and ignore the staggering vulnerability our population has in the current hostile environment. Our names are a watchword for other people’s suffering now, while speeches about the current political climate time and again leave out the growing horrible anti-semetism going on around the country.

How many articles talked about the bomb scares at Jewish community centers and schools nation wide that have happened THREE TIMES since the inauguration? Swastikas painted on buildings? Attacks are happening on campuses. Letters left in student dorms telling kids they’re going to be sent to the ovens under Trump’s regime. Media outlets outside of Jewish newspapers and blog sites have been strangely silent. Go to rallies and protests lately and there’s no mentions of Jews as people also being targeted by the rising neo-Nazi hatred in this country. In the same breath as using pictures of Jews in concentration camps as fucking memes on Facebook, modern Jews are pushed into silence.

Everyone’s supposed to be supporting one another in this resistance. That’s the purpose of intersectional movements, right? So here’s my question: why am I hearing fucking crickets whenever anti-semetism is mentioned. People are quick to use pictures of the most horrible instance of anti-semetic genocide in history, but talk about modern hatred against Jews and suddenly everyone’s got a bad case of ghosting.

Well, let’s get one thing straight: We Jews are not your fucking memes. We’re people. And in Trump’s America, we’re on the chopping block here too.

anti-holocaust-memes-8 — See this? This shit is unacceptable.

Progressives, if you supposedly stand against Nazis, think about the people they were fucking murdering. Don’t All Lives Matter us about the Holocaust by saying so many other people died. We know. Our people were there, among them, getting shoved into damn ovens. We heard the stories constantly growing up as the descendants of those who barely escaped with their lives. We lost so many people our nation is still recovering. So don’t think you can sweep that shit under the rug by changing the narrative, reframing it to remind everyone of the other people who died every damn time we bring up Jews being slaughtered. We don’t put up with that crap when people try to reframe away from violence against people of color in America, where do you get off trying to do that to the history of my nation?

And make no mistake, by the way, we are a nation, not just a religion. We are a culture and an ethnicity and a nation, and we are never treated as such. We don’t forget the horrors done to people in Russia during the soviet cleanses, or the Romani people who were murdered alongside us during WWII. We don’t forget the hatred Muslims get in places like France today alongside Jews. Yet we get painted with the broad strokes of the awful decisions made against the Palestinian people in Israel, as if to reframe the entire narrative of Jewish life as that of child-killing soldiers. How is that any better than perpetuating the stereotype of every Muslim being a terrorist?

Broad strokes make it easier to simplify a narrative, and when the chips are down, it’s easier to see Jews as baby killers than victims of systematic violence. People will raise their hands and point to atrocities against Palestinians, but stay mum when men storm synagogues in Israel and hack up Jews at prayer with meat cleavers. When neo-Nazis attack an old Jewish woman and nearly beat her to death on the streets of Brooklyn.

So many of us who care about Israel also hate and revile the disgusting decisions being made there to marginalize and harm Palestinians. So many stand up to be counted for reform, for peaceful co-existence, for a shared future. One can support the right for Israel to exist and still demand reform in its treatment of Palestinians. But we’re talking about Jews here, not Israel. And the realities of the Jewish people are NOT just about Israel. Just like not every criticism about Israel is inherently anti-semetic. Ours is NOT just a narrative of shared oppression and destruction, but a story of self-determination in a land to which we also have claim, and a history of murder of our people which is ignored in the face of making the whole thing less complex for outsiders with very little personal skin in the game.

And it’s not better from those who supposedly stand up for Israel and Jews either, by the way. Many are incredibly well meaning, and actual real honest to god allies. They are jewels, gems, the absolute best. But then we have bullshit allies like the Republican right. The religious right uses Jews for their own Christian religious and political gain. And on the other side, the left demonizes us while pretending to be progressive and all inclusive. Where then do we belong? Where do we stand? Among the well-meaning and the secretly hateful. Among the manipulative and those who will just sweep us under the rug. Among the true friends and allies whose voices are swept under by a tide of bullshit that is predominant in the narrative of Jews today.

This afternoon, there’s a rally in New York City organized by Jews who are standing with all those in the resistance to say refugees should be protected, immigrants protected. Jews have been a part of standing against inequality in America and the world over for generations. Yet the one-sidedness of that fight isn’t lost on me. Jewish support is taken for granted, useful when it’s needed, and forgotten by fair-weather friends when it’s convenient. We stand, we fight, for people who regularly and casually throw us under the bus whenever it’s politically convenient.

We stand for what’s right: who will stand with us? Who speaks up for us?

I’m tired of standing up for the right of others to hold their heads high in regards to their identity while being pushed down at the same time for my own. I stand up and walk proudly as a Jew and defy anyone to tell me I don’t have that right. Yet where is that right anything but a target? Nowhere. Not even in the most progressive circles. Not even in supposed safe spaces we help fight for.

Oh, and to those among my own people who have forgotten that we have struggled, we do struggle, and we should stand up for others who struggle? Who think isolation and hatred are the answer? Yeah, fuck you. Seriously, fuck you. You’re one of the reasons hate against us lives on. You are part of the reason we are still reviled. I’m disgusted by your inability to see the similarity of struggles in the face of the difficulties we face. I understand your rage, but we need to be better. We have to be. And if you can’t see that, if you spread hatred just like the people who revile us? Then fuck you indeed. I have got no time for you Trump supporting Jews, the I-got-mine Jews, those Muslim-hating Jews. Fuck you. You are part of the problem.

With the current political climate, being a Jew in America – in the world – does not feel safe. It never truly did. There was always that feeling the other shoe would drop, the neo-nazis would climb out of the woodwork. While friends denied Nazis were a problem, I saw people in Brooklyn get hate-bashed by guys wearing swastikas when I was a kid. I was called a dirty kike on the train by a guy who threatened to rape me to death. I watched a young Chassidic man surrounded by a bunch of guys who spat on him, knocked his prayer book to the floor. They weren’t white supremacists. The hate comes from all sides.

I never had any presumption Nazis were gone. They never went away. They were just never YOUR problem before. You spent years punching them in video games and watching Indiana Jones battle them on the big screen. You made Hitler jokes. It wasn’t a big deal to you. It wasn’t real. But it was to us. It was never a joke to us. Now with them on the rise out in the open and more brazen, no place feels safe. And with people slamming Israel, the only place in the world that wants Jews, that determines we have a place where we belong, it seems to me we’re expected to have no place at all. We can’t have our own homeland, people say. And no nation is safe or truly welcoming. So where do we go? Where do we belong? The answer, seemingly, is nowhere.

Lately, I’ve had to say this line too often, and with no small degree of bitterness. To the right, and the left: Jewish blood is cheap. Until they need us to justify their political agenda. Or to be a meme. Then pictures of our emaciated dead people stare out at me from Facebook with haunted eyes. And I realize intersectionality has forgotten Jews, transformed our story thru the lens of external forces the way it has for generations, turning us into Shylocks and blood libelers and money-grubbers, rather than people with our own story, our own right to a cultural identity.

There is rage in me, rage in this article, and a sadness that I’ve heard this story for my entire life. That I keep asking why Jews can’t be seen as equals, can’t determine our future, and people point to us and use the same language they have for millennia, casting us as the perpetual bad-guys, scapegoats, unwanted. I said I’d grow up and people would see, we’d have equality, that’s the American way. And my parents and my relatives and my grandmother would shake their head sadly at my naiveté. I didn’t believe that sad head shake. I believed we could help build a better world.

But lately? I look around and realize with a sad head shake myself that maybe, just maybe, the world doesn’t want us after all and never will.

So until you guys can find a way to fight for us alongside other groups, to remember us on the podiums and during speeches, in your news coverage over hate crimes and intersectional safe space creation, get the faces of my dead relatives off your Facebook page. You haven’t earned using their faces for your memes.

the-holocaust_o_196669 — What the hell does this even mean? Fuck you rooster. I give up.

The World Turned Upside Down

November 9, 2016 by Shoshana, posted in Not Ready To Make Nice, Politics

The sky’s grey over Jersey City. And I woke up from a good dream to a nightmare.

I fell asleep in exhaustion last night after watching the results of the election until 2AM. I sat with friends as we went through the stages of horror and grief right in their living room. We drank, ate pizza, and watched democracy deliver our country into the hands of a hate-filled demagogue. I went home and had a beautiful dream.

In this dream, I was living in a community together with my friends because we ran from a collapse, a societal nightmare. We came together and shared resources. We were there for one another. And in this dream, a man wandered into our community. He was starving, sick, homeless, lost. And one of my friends, a ferocious man who many find intimidating, went and sat beside the man. Shook his hand. Offered him food, warm clothing, a place to sleep. I went over and asked his name, and shook his hand. And the community expanded.

I woke up to grey skies over Jersey City and to an incredible uncertain future. I’m wishing I could go back to my dream.

When I was a little girl, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother. Nora Stern was a Holocaust survivor who came to the US after losing nearly all her family to the horrors of Nazi Germany. She survived pretty much the worst things humanity could throw at her, walked out of Auschwitz and came to the United States to rebuild her life. She and my grandfather opened a sandwich counter shop and worked tirelessly all their lives. My grandmother then had to nurse my grandfather through cancer until he died when my mother was 16. She raised two children, ran a business, and when my mother got married and brought me home, she helped look after me. This woman kept a good home, even when alone, and gave tirelessly of herself, no matter what she had gone through in life.

She also taught me one of the lessons I carried with myself all the days of my life. One day when I was helping her look for something in a closet, I found a roll of single dollar bills nearly as big as my fist. I asked her why she needed a roll of money. She told me then about the hatred this world could have for Jews, for people who are different. She told me that no matter what you do in your life, no matter how comfortable you get, you must always be ready to flee, because “they’ll always come, no matter what.” My grandmother believed that fascists would one day come for her and her family, just like they did so long ago, and she wanted to be ready.

Back then, I didn’t believe it was possible. Back then, I laughed.

I’m not laughing today.

Watching the election coverage last night was like watching a nightmare world supplant your own. I sat in my friend’s living room, unable to believe it, unable to shake the feeling that my world turned upside down in one breath. I’d spent the day listening to the Hamilton soundtrack and the lyrics to Hurricane kept going through my head.

In the eye of the hurricane

there is quiet

for just a moment

a yellow sky

As we were leaving to go see my friends, to watch the election, I sat down outside and looked up at the sky. I remember thinking in that quiet instant, this is that yellow sky moment. And my instincts said, wait for it, because this is the last great gasp of air above water before the plunge, the stomach-churning second before the rollercoaster drops you back towards the ground. I had a bad feeling, and it came true.

We watched and went through the stages of grief. I wished I could drink again. I took anti-anxiety medication. I let a friend hold me when I was scared. I was glad I wasn’t alone as I watched states tick away. As maybe I watched the future tick away, vote by vote.

I raged. I raged against every “protest vote” that gave an inch to the opposition. I raged against those too apathetic or too entitled to go out and vote, the 160+ million who stayed home and helped hand our country over to this nightmare. I raged against every person who looked at a campaign full of lies and bigotry, misogyny and hatred, and allied themselves with this regressive nightmare who’ll now be our president. I raged that after the grace of a leader like President Obama, our president will now be this man. This. THIS.

I raged that “we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal” is now no longer valid.

I raged until I couldn’t anymore. And then that pit in my stomach I thought was just the queasiness before the drop yawned open and I felt the sorrow take over. Here was the stage of grief which could swallow me whole if I wasn’t careful. The unmitigated sadness took me over and I put my head down and cried.

And then, I started to plan.

In Trump’s America, I would be considered an undesirable from so many angles. I’m a disabled woman. I’m Jewish. I’m queer. I’m an outspoken feminist. A social justice advocate. A defender of progressive ideas. So, you know, a liberal.

I wear these identifiers proudly, as I was taught to stand up for what I believe in. From my parents. From the narratives I fell in love with that inspired me all my life. It boggles me to no end that these very identifiers might now put me in the crosshairs of a regressive, damaging agenda touted by a presidential candidate… no, oh God, by the president elect. I used to believe the days when the world would tolerate such open hatred in office, especially in America, were fading into memory. I thought we were on our way to a brighter future.

Instead today, I wake up to a world where I have to be afraid about losing medical coverage because the new president wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. Where queer people will need to watch their backs, will watch all the progress made by President Obama for the LGBTQ+ community disappear. I have friends whose marriages will be in jeopardy. I worry about my Latinx friends, some of whom are closer to me than blood. To Muslims in this country. To my fellow Jews. To everyone.

I’m afraid. But the fear can’t stay here forever. I won’t allow it.

And I’m starting to go past those stages of grief into what I hope is something more productive. A transition place where I can take all this fear and worry and rage and turn it to something constructive. And what is that? What can take all this movement inside me, this churning terror, and turn it into a force to go outwards? Because I’m afraid if I don’t find something, anything, to take this roiling fear inside of me and mold it into a positive force, it might consume me alive.

So I thought back to that song again, to Hurricane. And Alexander Hamilton’s solution struck me:

I wrote my way out of hell

I wrote my way to revolution…

And when my prayers to God were met with indifference

I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance

Lin Manuel Miranda pens the answer: “I wrote my way out.” Anyone who is an artist can feel down in their bones the need to bring the power of their emotions into the world through their art. We bring our pains and our passions and our promises into being through songs and writing and games and paintings and comics. We make statements that ring true to so many more people than just ourselves because we reach them where they live through the expression of forms.

I’m a writer. I need to write my way out now, more than ever.

I’m still afraid this morning. I’m terrified of what the future will bring in a country led by a fascist. Our country may change in serious, dangerous ways in the next few weeks and months. There’s already been an instance of swastikas painted on the side of buildings in South Philly today. But instead of giving into that pain inside me right now, I’m focusing down and living inside the moment of acceptance. Not accepting for the sake of getting along, but for the sake of getting on to make decisions and plans.

Because the eye of the hurricane passed. And half of our country decided to drive us right into the face of the storm to see what survives at the end. Well okay then, but now that means we need to batten down the hatches and fight to stay standing, together.

A week before the election I wrote a post about the future we want being built by us, together. Well, half our country decided to take the history we all share and drove it to the bad place, the dark place, we all feared. And now, we who are horrified, who are afraid and angry, who are scared to see this country fall into the hands of hatred so toxic it could sweep away our liberties and even our very lives, we have to decide what comes next. And how we will help shape the narrative that is to come.

History may be written by the victors, but we decide if we let them write that narrative without dissent. And when the time comes, when we need to, we can write our way out. And act up, speak out, stand together, help one another, through the darkest of times. That’s my plan. And I’m certainly making plans, thinking ahead.

Because right now I’m working past the horror. And to quote one of my favorite TV shows, The West Wing, whose wisdom we could all use a little of right now, I say this now: “Mrs. Lanningham, what’s next?”

I love you all on this tough day. I’m with you. Let’s be in this together, shall we?

The Future Is Not Yours

November 2, 2016 by Shoshana, posted in Criticism, Not Ready To Make Nice, Personal, Politics, Speaking Out

I wrote this post a few months back, then didn’t push the publish button. I suppose I’d run afoul of one too many articles this political season that made me mad or upset and I didn’t want to add to the noise. But in light of the escalation of the events at the Dakota Pipeline and the election now less than a week away, I think it’s worth revisiting. So when you read this, know a) it’s a post about politics again, so you’re forewarned, and b) the news articles and events mentioned at the beginning are from a month or so back. From there, enjoy.

I woke up this morning restless. It’s been a problem lately for me, an inability to sleep that’s had me feeling tired all day and irritable. I’ve stayed away from reading the news, which only seems to be making it worse. Only this morning, I woke up and turned on a video by Keith Olbermann cataloguing the myriad offenses by Donald J. Trump since his rise to the candidacy for president. If there’s anything to get irritable about, it’s Trump. But the video helped lock into perspective a lot of things that have been plaguing me for the last few months.

I’m a writer. Connecting points to make a cohesive narrative is what I do for a living. So when I look at today’s media reports, I often look for a coherent narrative to give me a view on the world. It’s what we all do for context of our lives. So I looked at my items in my feed the last few days and try to contextualize.

Item: Donald J. Trump leads one of the most bigoted campaigns in history to staggering approval from right wing Republicans. His candidacy brings out those who previously hid prejudiced ideas, uniting them under his banner in their rush to blame every ‘other’ group they can for their plight in life. All while ignoring the dangerous, uniformed, erratic, terrifying behavior of the man they support for the highest seat in the land.

Item: A pipeline is being created through Native American territory in the Dakotas, drawing protestors from across the world attempting to save sacred ground holding the bones of native ancestors. While many stand with the protestors, the media at large has remained silent on the unfolding issues, including the mauling of protestors by dogs.

Item: Recent Hugo awards winner N.K. Jemisin faces racist responses after winning for her novel, The Fifth Season. Hers is only one story in a continuing narrative of barely veiled hatred aimed at progressive storytelling in the science fiction and fantasy genres, led by conservative factions that wish to return to a time when fiction was less diverse in subject material and in creators.

Item: Stories trickle in from various media outlets about “alleged” rapists like Brock Turner receiving absurdly lenient sentences after being convicted in a court of law. Comparable crimes being perpetuated by people of color get more aggressive punishments, while white male defendants are often let off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. The most recent unfolding case involves a man having sex on video with a toddler. While people outcry these deplorable cases, politicians still make statements about rape victims “just keeping their knees together.”

Item: A game organization issues a statement about not including potentially triggering content about sexual assault and rape in their game’s plots. This practice, while already standard in many organization’s policies (including my own), draws fire for constituting censorship and sparks bitter, often vicious debates, across the internet and convention spaces. The conversations become so embattled as to require admonishing posts asking people to remember that the person on the other side of the keyboard is a human being and not an invisible punching bag. This hallmarks a disturbing trend of harassment of creators for content that steps over the line from critique and conversation to bullying, exemplified by recent harassment by fans of a Steven Universe creator for supposed “queer baiting” in the show.

Item: A football star chooses to protest the rampant murder of black people by police by taking a knee during the National Anthem before a game. The incident draws a maelstrom of controversy wherein pundits and media alike try to paint the protest as unpatriotic, as an affront to our military and veterans, as worthy of sanction. They refuse to engage with the heart of the protest, namely the rampant trend of police brutality and violence against minorities across the country.

Item: Articles abound calling millennials lazy and directionless, citing their habits as killing everything from the housing market to our country’s competitive job market. Meanwhile, studies show most millennials face absurd financial burdens from student loans in an economy flooded with workers from a previous generation that has not retired. The narrative remains the same: the young are weak and directionless and ruining the world. The dialogue across generational lines goes on.

I could keep giving examples from the news. Yet here’s one from everyday life.

I was waiting on line for a prescription and chatting with my roommate. I point out how absurd it is that Hillary Clinton is being criticized for developing pneumonia while still going out on the campaign trail. I indicate how sexist the arguments against her have gotten, and how her behavior is indicative of so many women forced to work through their illnesses to survive in a male-dominated world. A man on line turns to agree with me and bemoans the chance of Trump getting into office. Yet when my roommate walks away, the man steps closer to add that Trump does have one thing correct: immigrants are stealing all our jobs, he says. When I protest that our country is made of immigrants, the man indicates his family come from immigrants too. But that “these Russians and Syrians” are the ones he means. Not every immigrant is bad. Just those.

And I’m left staring at him, as I often stare at my computer screen or at someone who tells me yet another example of unbridled prejudice running rampant in our society. From rape culture to the profiling of people of color as criminals, the blaming of millennials for society’s ills to the desecration of native people’s holy lands, to the hatred aimed at both Israelis and Palestinians from various sides, the list of things I simply boggle at is overwhelming. Because I often wonder… didn’t people grow up knowing this shit is WRONG?

I watched a lot of TV and movies as a kid, and read a lot of books. For that reason, I grew up with a lot of those media tropes we all know and love: Be a good person. Share. Love your neighbor. Stand up for what you believe in. Be yourself. Love others. Stand up to bullies. Eat healthy food. Friendship is magic. You know, all the good stuff. And what’s more, I believed it because these messages created a framework that backed up what I believed about the world: that being a good person, not just a ‘nice’ person but a person striving to do good, is what a person is supposed to do. Not only that, looking at the heroes of both fiction and the real world, they all are remembered for striving for better goals. Advancement of the world, it seems, has come from aiming for ideas like acceptance, fairness, equality, peace, courage, and empowerment.

And then I grew up and realized maybe some folks didn’t get the same programs when they were kids. Maybe they looked around and said “this is malarky” and looked for someone to blame, to other, over their problems. Maybe they rejected the narratives of tolerance for something else, a darker look at the world where the dog eat dog mentality is the only way to survive. Their narrative is so different to me it boggles the imagination. The future they envision is not mine.

I watched a lot of Star Trek growing up. And for all its flaws (and there are many), Star Trek presented a view of the future where people of all kinds existed side by side. Where people strive for a higher goal. Star Wars presented us with a narrative of people fighting for freedom against tyranny in a galaxy far, far away. Lord of the Rings showed a band of people unlike one another gathering to fight against a terrifying despot. X-Men battle not only despots but bigots willing to murder those unlike them. Harry Potter fights the wizarding form of white supremacy along with Voldemort. Katniss Everdeen fights a regime that represses the poor for the enjoyment of the rich.

The list goes on but the fiction of my life has carried the thru-line of people fighting for a future that involved equality, freedom, peace, and acceptance.

So it boggles me when I look at the world, at people, who can imagine a world where these are not the watchwords for their future. Where their peace and security comes at the expense of the hope of others.

Theirs is not my future.

“But Shoshana,” you may say, “these fictions aren’t real! They’re just stories, and things are easier in stories! Being the kind of good guy you’re talking about is hard and in a complex world-”

Not to paraphrase Kanye, but I’m gonna stop you there for a second. First off, isn’t part of the reason we create narratives like these to inspire us? To bring us to new heights and give us examples of better things, better times, heroes that point us to the better parts of our nature and say, “See, this is possible!” We aren’t going to be Gandalf in this world and hopefully we’re never going to be tossed into a child fighting ring on national television like Katniss, but we have choices in our lives we need to make and narratives like those I mentioned help can help us aspire to do better, be better, even in the face of hardships.

Also, and I’m going to say this with all due respect: who said choices to be good were meant to be easy? Or binary? Sure, in the books it’s simple. The bad guys wear dark colored hats and everyone knows Sauron is the bad guy while we root for the scrappy little Hobbits. Everyone knows making the right choices in life is harder. But just because it’s harder doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aim for it, aspire to it. Fight for it.

There’s a concept I’ve heard before: being on the wrong side of history. It presupposes, and rightly so, that history is written by the victors in any conflict and though context will remain part of a more complex narrative, events are remembered through the lens of the dominant viewpoint that survives. Anyone studying history realizes that historical time periods are washed in the context of who survived to take dominance during that time. So I often wonder, when we look back, what this decade and our current time will reflect. And I realize it entirely depends on whose ideals take root going forward.

Whose future will survive?

I grew up on Star Wars, on super heroes, on Harry Potter. I grew up the child of a thousand stories about how the world can be made a better place if we all come together in peace. The world outside is a far more complicated place than those stories, with nuance and difficulties so complex as to be nearly Gordian in their knotting. The impulse to throw up your hands and state that the ideals of our fictions cannot be applied to the muddled, gargantuan issues of our realities is strong. Yet history shows evidence of time periods where regression led the dominant narrative, and saw the backslide of civilizations and societies. Is that the story we want people to see when they look back at this time period? Is that the future we want to build?

I’m just a writer. I don’t make world policy, or social policy, or any policy at all. What I do is tell stories. I make games for people to live in through role-play, and spin fiction for people to enjoy. And I know in my own way, I have a limited impact on what the future will look like. But I think about how I can perpetuate the ideals I hold so dear. So I pledge to try and be conscientious in my creation. I will continue to strive to create fiction that reflects the kind of world I hope to see. I will push aside concerns about being labeled ‘progressive’ or ‘liberal’ or (heaven forfend) a ‘social justice warrior’ and instead recognize that everyone has an agenda in creating, and mine is to continue forward the ideas that drove me to believe in a better world when I was little.

I will acknowledge that we are all fallible. And we always have more to learn, and ways to improve, even if we think of ourselves as on the side of progressiveness and equality. I will recognize that one can make a choice that is progressive one day and then make a decision the next that harms another, even unintentionally. I pledge to try and learn from my mistakes, to listen to those around me, and to acknowledge and make amends when I’m in error or do harm.

I am fallible, but I pledge to try.

Nobody can tell me what my narrative will be after I’m gone, when it has become the future and my actions now are the past. As a favorite musical of mine laments, you don’t get to choose “who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” But I know that in a world seemingly at tug-of-war over acceptance, peace, and equality, I want to create towards a better, more equal tomorrow.

So I can say to those who perpetuate intolerance and bigotry and hate and fear: The future isn’t yours. The fate of this country, this world, belongs to all of us, together. And that is the exact opposite of your beliefs. The future isn’t yours, because your selfish ideas don’t believe in a future that includes others, and that selfishness is the opposite of what is good and true. I know it because even conservative views say so: be charitable, be welcoming, treat others as you’d like to be treated, love thy neighbor, etc. Except when those beliefs become tinged, tainted, corrupted, by intolerance do they become conditional and become the things we must fight against. When they become, “Love thy neighbor, except if thy neighbor isn’t like you.” Except.

That future of exceptions isn’t mine. It doesn’t belong to so many out there who stand as the exceptions to conservative, myopic rules. And since we have as much right to the world as anyone else (sorry, we do!), then your future doesn’t get to overrule ours. Your future isn’t ours and cannot hold sway for us to exist. Because you can’t wish people out of existence and your hatred cannot drive our world. Good people won’t let it happen. We can’t. And those views will only put you on the wrong side of history and resign you to a life in conflict.

And hey, I know even the most bigoted, intolerant person isn’t some mustache twirling villain. They’re people with concerns and fears and the earnest right to life, liberty, and all that… as long as that pursuit of happiness doesn’t try to snuff out that happiness for others. Once you step over that line, then we got some problems. I don’t have to be tolerant of intolerance as an ideal, because by its very nature, intolerance does not afford the same allowance to others. I don’t need to accept bigotry as an ideology because it doesn’t respect my right to exist. And that is where I draw the line and say to the bigots, the intolerant: think about how things go in the stories with the best happy endings and wonder, where did the bigots end up? Do you want to be Harry Potter, or a Death Eater? Folks might think evil is a little cool in stories, but in reality, it means harming others by your choices, your actions, your beliefs. Do you choose to bring harm into this world, or strive for a higher standard for yourself and others? You get to choose.

To quote Hamilton once more: “History has its eyes on you.” On us. On what we build as our legacy, especially right now.

And if you need any evidence that such fights can be won, look at the struggles progression has won over the years. Happy endings to battles aren’t like they are in the movies, because the struggle for a better world doesn’t end. It’s just little wins, stacking up into a better tomorrow.

This is our eye of the hurricane. We stand in it every day. And the question is left to all of us, in our own lives, in our individual arenas: what will you help make the future?

End note: We’re six days to what might be the biggest elections in our nation’s recent history. And history has its eyes on all of us now. Go out and vote, and consider what you’d like our future to look like. It really is in each of our hands.

Our Hateful America

June 12, 2016 by Shoshana, posted in Not Ready To Make Nice, Politics, Speaking Out

This post originally began as a Facebook update after I woke up to the news about the mass shooting at Pulse in Orlando, Florida. It came as the first response I had to the tragedy, and I’m adding to it now. This is part of my Not Ready To Make Nice series, and the raw response of someone horrified by the devastating tragedy of last night.

460x — The scene outside Pulse on June 11 2016 (photo by AP)

There are no words.

I don’t have them, folks. I’m a writer, and a storyteller, and for once I’m out of words. Last night a man walked into a gay club called Pulse in Orlando, Florida, and shot over one hundred people, killing 53 as of the time of this writing. It’s being declared today the worst mass shooting in American history.

The worst mass shooting in American history. Isn’t that what they said last time? And the time before that? The numbers just keep growing. And every time we think that the toll can’t get worse, it’s another place where we can have our innocence shattered. A school? A college campus? A nightclub with your friends? These are our new battlefields, where we don’t take ground for some obscure cause like nationalism, but where we stand our ground to fight for our freedom to be who we are just by showing up. Where we hope a fun night out with our friends won’t end with a slur, a punch, a bullet.

Go out into the world today in America, and you see more people standing tall then ever to be who they truly are. And yet for every time that happens, you see a tragedy. Just this week, someone set a pipe bomb in the bathroom of a store that support letting people pee in peace. And a man is able to buy assault rifles legally to walk into a nightclub where people were celebrating Pride, and murdered forty people. Because of his ignorance. His hate.

Their ignorance. Their hate.

Because he’s not alone. No matter what people will say later, he’s not a ‘lone wolf’ shooting people. He’s part of an infection of ideology that lets small people try to make themselves large by turning their hate into violence. It’s a tale as old as time. A person feels small in their own life, so they hook into an ideology, one full of hate and blame for everything that’s wrong with today. And they look at someone else, someone different, and say, “They’re wrong and they must die.” They want their pain to mean something. They make it mean gravestones and tears, and suffering in the heart of our country. We remember their names when the names of the victims fall by the wayside. In a way, they win. They are the faces of the plague of hatred that has infected America, and is eating it alive from the inside out.

Only an infection denotes a sickness, something you suffer from. Hatred, bigotry, is a choice. And these people chose to end lives with their hatred. They chose to be the poster children for the worst that humans can be.

I won’t share their faces. I won’t share their names. They are small people. They are a symptom of the larger disease, the only disease you opt into and then pass on with bullets, and explosives, and excuses about rights (to guns, to religious ideas) while ignoring the basic right to life that others have. These men don’t deserve to be remembered.

These are the photos I will remember. This is the face of what needs to be held onto in the wake of such tragedy.

theorlandosentinel — Photo by: The Orlando Sentinel

There’s a line from The West Wing that was given after a terror attack on the show, and the speech its from is oddly prescient, so I’m linking to it below. But as I read about pride performers climbing out of air conditioner ducts to save their own lives while their friends hide in dressing rooms, praying not to be murdered, while patrons who came to their show lie dead on the club floor behind them, I remember this quote. “The streets of heaven are too full of angels tonight.” And its our hateful America, not religion, or belief, but the hate of men, that sent them there. Our hateful America, that which renders what could be a great country so low. We are not Great when such hatred exists.

The streets of heaven are too full of angels today. And our hateful America sent them there.

Update: Buzzfeed is compiling a list of the victims of the shooting, including messages from family and friends as well as photos. Let us remember them during this time and strike from memory the man who did this. Let us remember the victims, not the shooter.