By David Futrelle
In these troubled times, it’s good to know that the guys at One Angry Gamer have their priorities straight. Forget police violence, forget the tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths caused by Trump’s utter mishandling of the coronavirus. The crucial issue of our time is exactly how short the shorts of Faye from Cowboy Bebop should be.
As you may know, Cowboy Bebop is a famously sexy Japanese anime show from the nineties that Netflix is resurrecting as a live-action series.
But one element of the original might not make it into the reboot: the exceedingly skimpy clothing of the character Faye. In an interview with io9, you see, show writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach mentioned that Faye’s outfits will be toned down a scootch because “we need to have a real human being wearing that.”
Naturally this has made Billy D of One Angry Gamer even angrier. Accusing Netflix of having
a certain kind of formula … which almost always undermines the original work to push some kind of subversive, Left-wing oriented message,
he laments that their version of the
Cowboy Bebop show will not be faithful to the original, especially when it comes to how sexy Faye is supposed to be dressed.
Who likes short shorts? Apparently not Netflix.
Billy is especially outraged by the idea that cartoon Faye wears clothes not fit for a real human.
So basically, wearing short-shorts, thigh-high stockings, thong suspenders, and a cropped V-neck sleeveless halter-top isn’t something “a real human being” would wear?
Well, no, it’s not. I’ve seen plenty of skimpy outfits in my day but I’ve never seen anyone dressed like Faye walking down the street.
You mean to tell me that real women have never worn what Faye has worn?
Generally speaking, no.
So the women who attend sporting events in the summer wearing cropped tops and short-shorts aren’t real human beings?
He then shows women wearing much less revealing shorts than Faye. And without the thigh-high stockings.
You mean to tell me that celebrities like Lady Gaga wearing cropped tops and short-shorts with heels are women who aren’t real human beings?
Well, no, but to be fair Lady Gaga once wore a dress made entirely of meat that has its own entry on Wikipedia. One time she wore this. And another time she wore this. In other words, she’s not really a good bellwether for “what real people wear” in the real world.
In the comments, One Angry Gamer’s completely normal readers responded in completely normal ways.
“I’m just done,” wrote one.
let this shitty society burn and let the kikes take over and let everyone go extinct
Another responded:
Nah.
lets burn the kikes instead and take BACK the society we once held dear
only this time, no more sympathy for subhumans
Huh. If I were running One Angry Gamer I’d be a little more perturbed by my own readers’ inhumanity than by the exact shortness of Faye’s short shorts.
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@Catalpa
FTFY. As I’ve pointed out, there has been literally no material improvement in the situations of Black Americans in the last 60 years. No increase in life expectancy, no decrease in poverty, no accumulation of generational wealth, no reductions in police brutality, no improvements in educational outcomes, nothing.
@Dalillama
You have? Where? I haven’t seen anything like that in this thread. Can you link me to it?
It wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case, but I’d like to be able to look at the data showing that, so that I can direct people to it in the future.
Also, I’m curious, is the “nothing anyone says about the topic is good enough unless they completely condemn everything!” vibe I’m getting from your posts intentional? I’m not sure what your goal with it is, exactly. It feels like you’re trying to shame me so that I stop engaging in the discussion, but I’m not certain that was the intent.
I can think of at least one material improvement for Black Americans in the last 60 years: interracial marriage was legalized nationwide in 1967 (53 years ago).
@Catalpa
As far as I can tell, Dalilama’s goal is to feel superior and righteous, which apparently requires denigrating anyone whose position differs from their in any way, which is especially easy because their position is very vague on anything except “voting never changes anything whatsoever, and saying that voting has any value means you think voting alone is sufficient and no other actions need to be taken.”
I think Naglfar’s example is a good indicator as to where I think people are tripping up in this discussion, which is the question of rights versus justice/liberation, i.e. slogans like “queer liberation, not rainbow capitalism”. Simply giving people rights on paper doesn’t ensure equity or even any actual systemic improvement. It can improve some people’s lives, on an individual level. In the end, though, anecdata of news outlets showing a beaming newlywed (white cis male) gay couple, or a beaming newlywed (cishet, one of them is white) interracial couple, doesn’t actually mean much in the grand scheme of things. And maybe we can keep quibbling about whether that should technically count as improvement, but when I look at history it always seems like some small thing occurs and “it’s a start” and then it just doesn’t go beyond that.
I watched a documentary called Crip Camp recently and it just struck me so hard seeing a microcosm of what society would look like if disabled people were allowed even a basic level of dignity, and then seeing some of those people fight so hard for so much less in the form of “rights” enshrined in law.
Hell, the whole point of this blog is (or at least originally was; I guess the mask has come off in many cases these days) to document the kinds of people who insist that sexual abuse isn’t a real problem, because if it were then people would just go to the police about it because sexual abuse is illegal and against your rights, and the police are there to protect your rights. But we all know the reality; even in the best case scenario where the case goes to court and the claimant wins the case and the offender is forced into some kind of consequence, the claimant still foots the vast majority of the many costs of the incident. That doesn’t even apply just to sexual abuse, but also to employment discrimination, denial of services (e.g. the wedding cake incident), basically everything, really.
That’s true enough, but I’m not certain that means it’s more accurate to completely deny the measures as pointless, either.
Going: “literally no material improvement in the situations of Black Americans in the last 60 years” feels fatalistic to me. It’s looking back on decades and decades worth of activism and struggle and going “yeah, all those people? They accomplished literally nothing.”
If literally nothing has been changed with the riots and protests and efforts of the last 60 years, then what chance do we have of changing anything now? How can direct action be considered more effective than voting if neither of those things has accomplished anything in the last 60 years?
That isn’t what I believe, though. I believe there has been progress, even if it has been hard fought for and ground has been lost. A difference can still be made, and a start has to happen somewhere.
And I recognize that there’s a danger of people going “hey, you’re legally equal according to the law, that means there’s no discrimination anymore”, and how fucking infuriating performative reconcilation and inclusion are. We can’t rest on our laurels just because things seem to be better than they were before. Anger and frustration and action are all important, and being aware of injustice that hasn’t changed, that has gotten worse or more insidious, is something that privileged folks need to do, and then do something about it.
But I think it’s important to look at the things that changed, too. Both in the ways in which the change was facilitated, and the ways in which the change fell short, so we can do better this time around.
But it’s possible I’m talking out of my ass here. I’m young, and I have a lot of privileges, including by white privilege. I don’t know enough about the struggles the black community faces in my own country, let alone the states.
@Catalpa
Good point, I was looking at it through too narrow of a lens. Thank you for making that post.
I do think you still missed my point though, which wasn’t that things have gotten better or worse for minorities since the 1960s, but that this stuff has happened before, and there’s a history of what’s going to happen next that we can look at. And every time there has been riots and protests in the US surrounding race that make progress there’s a been a wave of scared white people flooding the polls afterwards to vote progressively draconian. This time will be no different, and we can’t let them take more ground in the polls.
@Catalpa
Re: Numbers
Here is a primer that shows, on average, no progress. (It’s up sometimes and down sometimes, but notice that it was near about 33% at both the beginning and the end of the period under discussion). You already covered interactions with the penal system, and I’m sure you can find references for the rest on your own. Suffice it to say that this is a topic I’ve studied extensively, in and out of formal academic settings, for 20 years and counting, and the fact that I can’t instantly recall which sources particular figures are doesn’t mean that I’m wrong when I’m talking about them.
Re: the purpose here, I’m going to reshare my friend Sincere Kirabo’s words on the topic. This time I’ve bolded some parts to emphasize them:
“Reminder: The foundation of this nation was erected on stolen land, displacement, genocide, and chattel slavery.
I really hope that non-Black people recognize that to affirm Black Lives Matter is to intentionally commit to an ongoing process of divestment from a prime aspect of this nation’s founding ethos that continues to permeate every fiber of modern society.
The same anti-blackness part and parcel of policing (and the entire prison industrial complex) haunts everyday Black life multi-dimensionally. it isn’t really possible to treat one manifestation of anti-black racism without treating it all, since it manifests as a web of interconnecting, reinforcing institutions.
If Black Lives Matter is going to exist as praxis and not merely as a slogan or in superficial “reforms,” then this country must *materially* redress the white supremacist values, traditions, and policies entrenched in distant history that continues to reverberate in present political, economic, legal, healthcare, and educational systems (among other things).
There must be a reckoning. And that reckoning means fighting for a version of society that doesn’t yet exist, and looks like nothing we know now.”
In other words, what I’m trying to do is get people to acknowledge that the US is not a democracy in any meaningful sense and never has been, and that the nation’s fundamental underlying principle is white supremacy and always has been. You can believe that Black and Native lives matter, or you can believe that the Founders established a just and functional system, but you cannot believe both simultaneously. If you believe the former, you must of necessity oppose the status quo. That means, among other things, not overstating the value of votes, not considering voting to be a sufficient contribution to the cause, not letting your racist friends and family slide, calling your party on their racist bullshit instead of making excuses for them (or indeed for Republicans), and not pitching a fit about people not phrasing the above delicately enough. It also means educating yourself, not arguing from ignorance and not nitpicking the language, demands, or actions of the people actively on the front lines, including but non limited to complaining about property damage or reappropriation. Yes, I am aware that this specific thread only has some of that, but everything I mentioned has occured here, on this site, during the discussion of the current protests, by people who bloody well ought to know better.)
Fair enough, and thank you for the link.
Those are reasonable things to expect from folks, thanks for clarifying your position.
That said, that point I highlighted, about not nitpicking language. I recognize that making comments on a blog isn’t anywhere near the “front lines” of the conflict. But I do feel that it’s nitpicky to look at a post going “hey the severe police brutality has only gotten worse, here’s some information backing that claim up” and the only reply to make to it is to go “um actually you should have said that literally everything has gotten worse or at least not better”.
I’m no expert on the topic, and I don’t have lived experience to share with regard to this, but I would have preferred not to have my contributions ignored in favor of picking and dissecting the one sentence you had a problem with. To me, it sounded like “hey, you didn’t phrase your post exactly the way I wanted it, so fuck you for even trying”.
Real life shirts don’t have boob socks and you can’t rely on anime physics to censor exposure?
I’m shocked :O :O :O
Early in the comments, a couple of people said that all live-action adaptations of anime suck.
I would just like to counter that with:
*The original (not Netflix, the Japanese one from 2006) live-action DeathNote.
*Rurouni Kenshin.
Granted, those are the exceptions to the rule…