does fannish engagement constitute endorsement?

[cimorene]

Even though I haven't WATCHED Glee or White Collar, I have read enough of people's intelligent and highly legitimate political criticisms on race and gender lines (you can find most of these posts via metafandom, probably), and in light of them, seeing a marked proliferation of those bookmarks and recs popping up in different places makes me sad - not in the specific, but in the general, about fandom's trends and what they say about its tastes.

Do new fandom reccing trends really indicate what fandom's general watcher-response pattern was? You can't say that with 100% certainty, of course. But a clearly observable upswing in fannish enthusiasm for a source text at least means people are forgiving it, even if they are still critically observing its flaws, and choosing to write about it.

One could charitably assume a motive of textual healing.

In practice, though, my observations have been that the problematic aspects of the text are usually reflected in the body of fanon, even when a strong critical discourse is emerging in non-fiction posts on the topic (a prime example: Uhura meta after Reboot release, versus Uhura treatment in early Reboot fanon, which was so bad that it led to a second wave of critical discourse... this time aimed at the fanon).

My possibly over-cynical view is that in general, a blossoming of sudden fannish engagement does tend to amount, in the fanon meta-text that emerges, to a reinforcement if not an endorsement of the flaws in the canon.

Comments

[zvi]

Hmmm. Of the FBI agents we've met on the show who we would expect to be recurring, there's the main character Peter, who is white, and his boss, who is also white.

But the new transfer to the White Collar unit is Lauren Cruz, played by Natalie Morales.
His "junior" agent Jones is played by Sharif Atkins, who is black.
His "rival" in Organized Crime is played by Kirk Acevedo, who I believe is Hispanic. (Wikipedia says Puerto-Rican/Chinese.) (IMDB doesn't currently show him scheduled for additional episodes, but it only appears to reflect the first 7 or 8 episodes, I don't know how many were ordered.)

IMDB also shows an Evan Forlidas having a two ep role as "FBI Agent" in two episodes that haven't aired yet. He looks white from his IMDB picture, but who knows?

The pilot featured his probie Diana, played by Marsha Thomason, who is black. Per IMDB, she was only in the pilot, and the actress now has a role on a soap opera, so I doubt she'll be back.

There are other white, male FBI Agents, but so far, none of them have been more than bit parts or extras who don't appear to be recurring, so I'd be very interested in the analysis that has them worse in their representation than most FBI shows. Do you remember who? Metafandom's been pretty dead lately.

[isilya]

All the major characters are white -- Elizabeth, Kate, Peter, Neil, Peter's boss, Neil's sidekick. The exception is the Diana/Lauren character.

In many procedurals, they would have made Peter's boss a woman of colour and/or Neil's sidekick a man of colour.

EDIT: I had forgotten about Jones because I've only seen him speak about three times.

[zvi]

Hmm, I would say that the show is pretty white, but the FBI within the show didn't strike me as that white. (Frankly, not having Neal's criminal sidekick be a man of color works for me.) So, yes, the overall effect is Yet Another Show About White People.