It might not be anything new, but I felt like a lot of great indie shows were being unnoticed. I listened to some of the more popular and acclaimed indie ADs to see if I could identify what may be putting them so brightly into the spotlight. To my surprise, many (not all) of these spotlight shows had disruptively inconsistent volume levels, dialogue that felt forced or unnatural, music that didn’t seem to compliment what was happening in the story, like grand triumphant for a space virus show and sound effects that sound decades old. I was confused but willing to search for what I may be missing.
Without bashing the prominent shows, I figured maybe I could bring awareness to some of the smaller shows that had good quality audio without distorting, no sudden leaps in volume, dialogue with natural rate of speech that wasn’t painfully descriptive, music that fit the narrative and most importantly a story that you could tell was intricate and not just a series of jarring events.
I took to twitter to share these gems and to follow these more successful shows to honestly take notes on their success and to reach out and connect. But what I experienced is what discouraged me the most.
The community openly speaks out against exclusion and discrimination. That made me feel pretty safe and welcome and encouraged. I would see a lot of shows being very responsive to followers and other shows. They were uplifting to each other.
A lot of these shows were being hailed as “the best” because they had explicitly featured non white, non cis, non male, characters and or cast. As someone who is Trans and Black, I’ve never felt more included/represented in entertainment. But I don’t think that’s what makes a show objectively good.
So I tried getting some of the smaller shows reviewed since I have no twitter presence and at least 2 prominent indie reviewers were only interested in featuring shows that featured more progressive casting, which is amazing, but was starting to sound like exclusion to me, someone who’s been excluded plenty. I told myself, let them do them, it’s their small business.
Then I would notice how frequently these same shows would rally a twitter mob anytime they were upset. A lot of their outcries were saying “if you’re a (race),(sexuality),(gender), then shut the fuck up... or we don’t want you here!” Over a 3 or 4 star review that was homophobic. I get it, people are shit, hurtful and delusional. But making hateful remarks against the general white cis male population, makes us look like hypocrites. I want us to be taken seriously, so I’m not going to resist homophobia with hateful reactions, and I’m not going to give a 5 star review to a show just because it validates my sexuality, race or gender. If I saw a white dudes show being inflated I would take it as a joke, not because of white male toxicity happening elsewhere, but because it just wasn’t good. How do you think we look when we say a show is “the best” because it’s gay, but the quality is whack af?
And when I hear a wonderfully gay/bi/non binary/trans/diverse show, I love the hell out of it. Not to make a white homophobe mad, but because I deserve a good show. Someone I’m mad at isn’t worth being extra over.
Refusing to interact with a show because of its sexuality , cis or not, is discrimination. Telling someone “if you’re a (race, gender, etc. stfu or leave” is hateful”, and subjective praise really drowns out objectively good work. These things are uninviting to fresh new creators and listeners.
TLDR: -Leaving 5 star reviews on a show that isn’t actually good, makes it harder for good shows to thrive.
-Being hateful in response to hate, doesn’t make us heroic, it makes us assholes.
-You’re not inclusive if you choose to only interact with people you identify with.
-This is all happening. It will turn people away.
Edit: some autocorrects
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Submitted April 22, 2019 at 12:27PM by FlatwoodsCreature http://bit.ly/2DpDcnK
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