Just a few links from around the interwebs …
Sady Doyle on the gifts insomnia bears:
http://rookiemag.com/2012/01/living-after-midnight/
TV and its eerie raceless world, from Salon: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/18/tvs_eerie_new_race_less_world/singleton/
Feminist Philosophers on “Push Girls,” a new reality TV show about four young women who use wheelchairs:
http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/hot-girls-in-wheelchairs/
And this is the show Feminist Philosophers are talking about:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/18/new-reality-show-to-air-a_n_1213453.html
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Also, one of the commenters at Feminist Philosophers linked to this terrific 2003 article by disability rights activist Harriet McBryde Johnson:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/magazine/unspeakable-conversations.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
Also, what did you think about the Salon article? I’m completely on board with the call for more discussion of race and privilege on television, but I wish it was be a bit more specific about how to do this well. The article’s point seems to be that conversations about race can be incorporated into TV dialogue in nuanced ways, but the only positive example Richardson cites is Louie:
“Every serious observation on race was followed by the most absurd and unsophisticated (and funny) joke. Because Louie was the one who made the mistakes, he could tell you about white male privilege. We would listen because we didn’t feel threatened … and then he would make a joke about having sex with a fat woman. In this strategic way, ‘Louie’ escaped preachiness.”
Not being preachy is great, but making jokes about fat women, not so much. This description of the show makes it sound as if Richardson is alert to some forms of privilege but willing to overlook others.
I agree that Parenthood presents a post-racial utopia that glosses over many realities of privilege while keeping white characters at its core, and I think it could be doing a lot more to acknowledge race. I just felt like parts of this argument were a bit under-cooked…