and because they don't go to the internet you can't just tell them "google X"

[cimorene]

I've noticed a distinct pattern in some fannish people I know IRL, which is that the ones who don't Go Here in fandom never know when people and movies are canceled or on notice and usually haven't even heard a hint of why they're problematic, leading to hundreds of instances of this conversation:

THEM: I saw [media thing associated with a controversy].
ME: Yikes...
THEM: It was so good!

Explaining the controversy isn't that difficult if it's just something like "Actually it turns out that the director/writer went on a bigoted rant/has been accused of sexual harrassment" or "The role of X was whitewashed". But in the case of the well-meaning but clueless social-justice-supporting white people - initially mostly my parents, but a few members of my generation who just happen to also be Luddites - they never seem to notice cultural appropriation, white savior narratives, fridging, or unfortunate political ramifications, and the repetitiveness of this same consciousness-raising conversation with its small list of curated reference links starts to feel uncomfortably didactic, especially because the more awkward I feel, the harder I have to work to explain coherently.

The temptation is strong to just say nothing about it to escape this, but it seems a bit shady to not even indicate I was put off by something about it, if they were engaging me in fannish conversation in good faith.

Comments

[zenolalia]

I wish I had advice for this situation. In the end, a lot of these well meaning people in my own life decided that I am just overly negative/live to complain, and stopped discussing things with me at all. I try, now, to be more polite about it, more welcoming or neutral, using the kinds of techniques people recommend for con-crit (compliment sandwiches, etc), but... Man, I dunno. Basically, you have my deepest sympathies.

[cimorene]

Yeah ... I mean if it was their favorite movie or book, I probably would do something like that, but particularly when it's a movie I don't want to see because of X, or one that I saw and hated (sooo many versions of this with The Help), coming up with a good lead-in can be tricky. Plus that feels uncomfortable too, if I'm reaching too hard - it feels like internally condescending, like I'm treating them like a child or something...

Although if the people in question have already voiced the thought that you're just a humorless feminist SJW buzzkill, then some dumbing-down is probably necessary. But with someone who hasn't done that and is pro-SJW but just not as educated, I feel bad if I assume bad faith.

[buddleia]

Oh, this is so familiar. And there are a couple of really lovely friends who love to share certain things with me because they know I like some genres or types of material and of course I’ve already done the milkshake duck rollercoaster *because* I’m a fan.

[cimorene]

milkshake... duck... rollercoaster?

I mean I am sure I understand your comment so this basically makes sense in context, but.

[waxjism]

I've now explained milkshake duck to cimorene, carry on.

[ghost_lingering]

I have a script for this!

"I haven't seen it because, I heard [x] happens in it and that kind of turned me off because [it seemed sketchy / it makes me sad when things like that happen / etc]. Was what I heard true? What did you think about that part?"

And then I let them respond.

[ghost_lingering]

(Or, "I saw it, but wasn't fond of [x], because ...")

[cimorene]

This is probably the smart thing to do and I should just rehearse this until it doesn't feel awkward.

[ghost_lingering]

It took me a long time to stumble into doing it, but part of why I started was that there were situations where the people advocating for the works I'd pre-cancelled weren't always just the white straight well-meaning types. Part of why I like it now is that fandom can sometimes be an echo chamber and this introduces me to more points of view and thus more nuance-- particularly when talking media with coworkers who tend to be pretty diverse and well-versed in media. It also goes over better with my parents who ARE well-meaning straight white folks. I often stick with my first impression but going in with questions rather than answers has yielded only positive results

[phosfate]

I had to disconnect with my local group because the ingrained racism and sexism was just made me tired. My favorite example being when the first photos from TNG came out, and a guy lost his shit because A BLACK KLINGON??? God knows what he thought when Voyager started.

[cimorene]

Oh, now I'm kind of curious about what Those Guys DID say when Voyager started. I'm sure some of it is preserved on newsgroups somewhere...

[phosfate]

It's a real-life group, and their facility with digital media was not, last I looked, the best. Black Klingon guy occasionally started a blog, which would consist of one or two deeply emotional posts about friendship and then stop. Another's hobby is posting eulogies for dead actors. I was on the same DS mailing list with another, who specialised in gossip and fabrication, but it was so huge (like 50 pages a day, remember when that could be a thing?) that it was easy to avoid her. We were all deeply fucked up in our own various ways, and the only genuine villain bailed early, but I was very happy to make much better friends later on.

I still wonder what Black Klingon guy was expected. I mean, did he think Worf was going to say "jive turkey" a lot?

[msilverstar]

Not just out of fandom: I had to blacklist the Chris Evans movie Red Sea Diving Resort because the moment I heard about it, I saw it as a White Savior movie. And critics agree. There may have been discourse and/or wank about it but I couldn't bear to watch anything about it.

[cimorene]

If there hasn't been a noticeable wave of discussion about the problems going on in online culture which they're ignoring, then it's not quite the level of the people this post was inspired by. The people in question who haven't ever heard of the current pop culture controversy usually do also belong to the larger group of people who don't notice problematic tropes on their own, though, so they have that in common with some [many, many...] people in fandom. But watching media with a critical lens that is also educated about the relevant societal issues needed to spot these things is somewhat understandably not a universal skill, and I'm far more used to running into people who don't have it than to conversing with people who haven't heard any of the recent media-related news online.