Post by burrunjor on May 20, 2024 8:38:19 GMT
The amount of people I'm seeing online saying that the absolute failure of Ncuti's series shows why LGBT characters can never lead and that LGBT entertainment will always be niche, is worrying.
It's nonsense of course. Off the top of my head Queen, Lady Gaga, two of the most popular acts of the past 50 years are both very LGBT focused. Even within the fantasy genre, Xena remains one of the most iconic series of all time and both of its leads were bisexual.
The problem with the 21st century version as always is that DW is NOT an LGBT series. No matter how much the commandants of fandom want to turn it into an LGBT only club with remarks like "why do straight people even watch DW." The character of the Doctor is fundamentally an asexual, grandfatherly, professorial stuffy Victorian/Edwardian, Jules Verne type. He can be different variations of that, one who is a bit young, one who is more bumbling, one who is more physical, but that is the character that has been built up over decades so trying to add in a Ziggy Stardust/ gender bending/flaming gay aspect to it will jar, and the obnoxious way RTD and others have gone about it has only compounded the issue.
(The same thing applied when the Doctor was turned into a ladies man too. Again that jarred and classic era fans by and large took the piss. The only reason that the revival got away with that was because DW had been away for decades at that point and so a lot classic fans were more forgiving as they were so relieved it was back, whilst a whole new generation of fans were introduced to it that way. Still it's worth noting that the most popular series of New Who featured a platonic relationship between the companion and the Doctor, series 4. Furthermore I might add that this generation of fans will also find a gay, flaming Doctor jarring as it's not the romantic, emotional, Angelesque hero that they are used to.)
Now sadly sci fi fans have a bad habit of throwing the baby out of the bath water, to be fair most people do, but still time and time again sci fi and fantasy fans will turn against a genre or style completely if it flops or is overused. We are seeing this with superheroes and the multiverse. Both great subgenres, story telling devices that are now poison to most sci fi fans simply because they've been overdone or there have been a few bad movies in either genre. I can understand thinking there are too many superhero films, but to dismiss any superhero film as so many people do nowadays just because it's a superhero film is ridiculous. It's a genre like any other, and ever genre at some point has been overdone. Vampires similarly for 10 years were also dismissed simply because they'd been overused in the early 2010s, like that obnoxious article Charlie Brooker wrote where he actually argued that vampires are the worst monsters of them all, because he didn't like a few Twilight movies.
With this in mind the string of female and LGBT led flops I worry is turning people against the idea of allowing minorities and women to lead films and tv shows. Lots of the fandom menace crowd who used to just say don't replace iconic male characters, have now slowly begun to push the idea that you should never aim any genre show at women, because they hate the genre, and that LGBT people can't lead anything as mainstream audiences will turn off something if they are in it.
Again they aren't looking at the actual truth of the situation, that things like Ghostbusters 2016, Jodie era DW flopped not because they were women or LGBT, but because they were trying to replace an existing male character or characters with distinct identities and went about it in the most obnoxious way possible. They abused or sneered at people who felt it wasn't the same characters anymore for valid reasons, threw outright abuse against white men in the story, didn't let the female characters just be, but made it the centre, cast AWFUL actresses like Jodie and Kate McKinnon (who I think got away with her shocking performance.) Meanwhile the likes of Buffy, Xena, Resident Evil, Wonder Woman, Charmed, Once Upon A Time, all starred women and in some cases LGBT women thrived in some cases more than male led shows of the time like Angel and Hercules because they were all new characters, didn't insult the male audience and were well written.
Now you might think this is unfair as it means that women can't star in bad genre shows and films without it being blamed on that and dragging their ability to lead down. I do agree that is unfair and something that needs to change with the industry, but these SJW types are not doing anything to fix that. They are just pushing shitty female led films on us. Also I might add that for years a female led thing flopping wasn't automatically blamed on that or had any effect on women in the genre. Earth 2 lasted a single season and starred a woman and wasn't seen as proof women couldn't lead a genre show. Elektra similarly was a disaster and didn't end women's chances to lead genre films. Yes there weren't many female led superhero films after, but that's because the majority of the big Marvel and DC big hitters are men.
However once again egomaniacs like RTD who want to make out that they are the modern day Martin Luther King, Sylvia Pankhurst and Quentin Crisp rolled into one, will make out that people not liking their crappy versions of things are just homophobic, racist and misogynistic. When that becomes the accepted mantra among the media, and RTD makes out that the only possible reason his era could have flopped is homophobia, well it's not surprising if a lot of out of touch Hollywood big wigs and morons think "gay stuff doesn't sell. It brought down the biggest sci fi show, let's never do that again."
Certainly when there is an alternate sequel to DW I can't imagine it having any gay characters for a long while. Sadly I can see any gay character being taken as a sign that the show is going back into RTD's disastrous run. It's a damn shame, but it shows you the corrosive effect identity obsessed idiots like RTD have on even their own causes.
It's nonsense of course. Off the top of my head Queen, Lady Gaga, two of the most popular acts of the past 50 years are both very LGBT focused. Even within the fantasy genre, Xena remains one of the most iconic series of all time and both of its leads were bisexual.
The problem with the 21st century version as always is that DW is NOT an LGBT series. No matter how much the commandants of fandom want to turn it into an LGBT only club with remarks like "why do straight people even watch DW." The character of the Doctor is fundamentally an asexual, grandfatherly, professorial stuffy Victorian/Edwardian, Jules Verne type. He can be different variations of that, one who is a bit young, one who is more bumbling, one who is more physical, but that is the character that has been built up over decades so trying to add in a Ziggy Stardust/ gender bending/flaming gay aspect to it will jar, and the obnoxious way RTD and others have gone about it has only compounded the issue.
(The same thing applied when the Doctor was turned into a ladies man too. Again that jarred and classic era fans by and large took the piss. The only reason that the revival got away with that was because DW had been away for decades at that point and so a lot classic fans were more forgiving as they were so relieved it was back, whilst a whole new generation of fans were introduced to it that way. Still it's worth noting that the most popular series of New Who featured a platonic relationship between the companion and the Doctor, series 4. Furthermore I might add that this generation of fans will also find a gay, flaming Doctor jarring as it's not the romantic, emotional, Angelesque hero that they are used to.)
Now sadly sci fi fans have a bad habit of throwing the baby out of the bath water, to be fair most people do, but still time and time again sci fi and fantasy fans will turn against a genre or style completely if it flops or is overused. We are seeing this with superheroes and the multiverse. Both great subgenres, story telling devices that are now poison to most sci fi fans simply because they've been overdone or there have been a few bad movies in either genre. I can understand thinking there are too many superhero films, but to dismiss any superhero film as so many people do nowadays just because it's a superhero film is ridiculous. It's a genre like any other, and ever genre at some point has been overdone. Vampires similarly for 10 years were also dismissed simply because they'd been overused in the early 2010s, like that obnoxious article Charlie Brooker wrote where he actually argued that vampires are the worst monsters of them all, because he didn't like a few Twilight movies.
With this in mind the string of female and LGBT led flops I worry is turning people against the idea of allowing minorities and women to lead films and tv shows. Lots of the fandom menace crowd who used to just say don't replace iconic male characters, have now slowly begun to push the idea that you should never aim any genre show at women, because they hate the genre, and that LGBT people can't lead anything as mainstream audiences will turn off something if they are in it.
Again they aren't looking at the actual truth of the situation, that things like Ghostbusters 2016, Jodie era DW flopped not because they were women or LGBT, but because they were trying to replace an existing male character or characters with distinct identities and went about it in the most obnoxious way possible. They abused or sneered at people who felt it wasn't the same characters anymore for valid reasons, threw outright abuse against white men in the story, didn't let the female characters just be, but made it the centre, cast AWFUL actresses like Jodie and Kate McKinnon (who I think got away with her shocking performance.) Meanwhile the likes of Buffy, Xena, Resident Evil, Wonder Woman, Charmed, Once Upon A Time, all starred women and in some cases LGBT women thrived in some cases more than male led shows of the time like Angel and Hercules because they were all new characters, didn't insult the male audience and were well written.
Now you might think this is unfair as it means that women can't star in bad genre shows and films without it being blamed on that and dragging their ability to lead down. I do agree that is unfair and something that needs to change with the industry, but these SJW types are not doing anything to fix that. They are just pushing shitty female led films on us. Also I might add that for years a female led thing flopping wasn't automatically blamed on that or had any effect on women in the genre. Earth 2 lasted a single season and starred a woman and wasn't seen as proof women couldn't lead a genre show. Elektra similarly was a disaster and didn't end women's chances to lead genre films. Yes there weren't many female led superhero films after, but that's because the majority of the big Marvel and DC big hitters are men.
However once again egomaniacs like RTD who want to make out that they are the modern day Martin Luther King, Sylvia Pankhurst and Quentin Crisp rolled into one, will make out that people not liking their crappy versions of things are just homophobic, racist and misogynistic. When that becomes the accepted mantra among the media, and RTD makes out that the only possible reason his era could have flopped is homophobia, well it's not surprising if a lot of out of touch Hollywood big wigs and morons think "gay stuff doesn't sell. It brought down the biggest sci fi show, let's never do that again."
Certainly when there is an alternate sequel to DW I can't imagine it having any gay characters for a long while. Sadly I can see any gay character being taken as a sign that the show is going back into RTD's disastrous run. It's a damn shame, but it shows you the corrosive effect identity obsessed idiots like RTD have on even their own causes.
