Society Fail

[the_other_sandy]

So, I was planning to post a little bit about Eureka today, but I've inadvertently spent the day on the Internet reading about all the various ways people suck.

1) Gatefail

Gatefail was triggered by the following casting call that was actually sent out to various casting agencies for a guest character on SGU:

[ELEANOR PERRY] (35-40) and quite attractive. A brilliant scientist who happens to be a quadriplegic. Affected since childhood, her disability has rendered her body physically useless. However, after being brought on board the Destiny as the only person who may be able to save the ship and her crew from certain annihilation, she is given temporary powers that enable her to walk again and to finally experience intimacy.sptv050769..Strong guest lead. NAMES PREFERRED. ACTRESS MUST BE PHYSICALLY THIN. (THINK CALISTA FLOCKHART).

Sheafrotherdon has done quite a bit of follow-up on her LJ (but there's no common tag for me to link to, so I just linked to one post).

John Scalzi, SGU's creative consultant, responded here. Last I checked, he'd done a really good job of shutting down trolls, so there was some excellent discussion in the comments.

io9 also wrote a decent article encapsulating the Gatefail here. Don't read the comments if you have a tendency towards high blood pressure.

2) Culturefail

This is an older post by cereta on mens' role in rape culture, and while it's interesting, she did such a good job of policing trolls that the 26 (so far) pages of comments that follow are fascinating, sad, and unbelievably eye-opening.

3) Racefail

At a Senator Claire McCaskill town hall, several black women brought a sign with them (and were apparently booed upon entering the room). They rolled the sign up, and set it aside. A photographer approached the woman sitting on the end of the aisle and asked to see the poster. As the woman unrolled the poster for the photographer, a white man got out of the bleachers, grabbed it from her, and attempted to destroy it. Audience members, who were overwhelmingly white, cheered. The woman got out of her seat to retrieve her poster. And something like four police officers grabbed her and escorted her out of the building. The audience cheered louder.

The hugely offensive sign that the man decided to rip up, by the way? It was of Rosa Parks.

--The Curvature.

---

I think I need chocolate. Or possibly ice cream. This is just too much fail for one person to deal with all in one day.

Comments

[the-other-sandy.livejournal.com]

It was the same thing on Torchwood. Many fans, and the show itself, saw nothing wrong with Owen Harper committing date rape twice in the very first episode. The lack of consent was never addressed, and Owen was considered just a "naughty boy" nudge nudge wink wink.

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Guess I'm glad I never bought the Torchwood dvds to see what everybody was all ga-ga about. That's a definite turnoff. Geez, this is like turning Jack the rapist in General Hospital into a guy his victim married. Yech.

[the-other-sandy.livejournal.com]

Overall, I mostly liked the show, but I was always filled with great amounts of Owen hate.

Geez, this is like turning Jack the rapist in General Hospital into a guy his victim married.

Are you talking about the whole Luke and Laura thing? Or was there another one? I only heard about Luke and Laura. By the time my friends got me watching General Hospital, the hot couple was Robert and Holly. But yes, having Laura marry her rapist was unbelievably inappropriate, and it was amazing how many people were willing to forgive and forget and turn the two of them into the hottest couple on daytime TV.

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Oh sorry, yes, Luke and Laura. I remmeber the furor over the wedding!