Something in the water?

[graculus]

What's with all the fail this year? Seriously, has someone put something in the water supply that's making folks act like asshats (more than usual)? Midsummer madness of some sort?

The whole SGFail business where Token Lesbian gets to be on the receiving end of a bodyswapping rape scene... (and it just rumbles on - sheafrotherdon is probably your best source for ongoing informantion)

The Mammoth Book of Sci Fi Writers Who Are Awesome Just Like Me (and the rest of you are just jealous!) fail...

John C Wright gets to have a fail all his own...

The latter has certainly lost some sales over this - I had one of his ebooks, which I've now deleted unread and that's his chances of sales from me out of the window. I doubt he cares, but it makes me feel a little bit better after reading his tedious vitriol.

So, can you separate asshattery from artist? Or does knowing something about someone in the public eye make you run away from what they produce? Personally, if I never see another Mel Gibson movie it'll be a thousand years too soon, and the same goes for Tom Cruise - I'm not all that tolerant of either anti-Semites or crazy Scientologists. And then there's Orson Scott Card...

Comments

[obelix]

I'll add to your list Sean Connery and RTD ;-)

I know there are others but those you named and the ones I added are the ones that are high up on my list of no frelling way will I ever buy, watch or read anything from them.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

Too much fail to be going into. I doubt RTD is going to be as much of an issue in the future... ;)

[obelix]

Oh yeah. Can't do much about it except rant and basically stop giving them my money which I'm glad to do ;-)

RTD does seem to have gone quiet for a bit anyways but then I'm sure we'll get him to hear him whine again if there is a S4 of Torchwood or if he gets a series onto a US network. I doubt he's going to disappear that easily a bit like the B@B they keep coming back with more asinine moronic plots and get more shows. I'm so not watching SGU!

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

The rule I go for is that I try to boycott anything that said asshats will directly profit from. So, long-dead racists and misogynists and homophobes, I'm ambivalent about, because they're not getting my money - and if I recommend their work, it's with the caveat of: "This person is also an asshat." For living people, I tend to stay away from their work altogether because I will have lost the ability to lose myself in their work; I'll be peering at every characterisation, thinking, 'What does he mean by that?' But if it's something that I really have to read despite despising the creator, buying second-hand is my usual solution.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's pretty much where I'm at as well - now I doubt that Mel Gibson is hurt much by my not seeing his movies or buying his dvds, but a mid-list writer? Another matter completely.

There's so much good stuff out there by people who I don't have a jaundiced view towards, I doubt there's going to be a time when I have to read stuff by asshats.

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

There's so much good stuff out there by people who I don't have a jaundiced view towards, I doubt there's going to be a time when I have to read stuff by asshats.

Good point - and ditto, at least now that I'm out of school. I ran into this quandary recently when I had to have a copy of Ender's Game for a Young Adult Lit class.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I wonder whether I also have more tolerance for people whose now-dodgy views are consistent with their time period, when everyone would have felt the same way?

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

Honestly, that's a fine, zig-zaggy line for me. Some things I can let slide and some things I can't, and sometimes that changes depending what kind of mood I'm in. Because the fact is everyone didn't feel that way. For one thing, the people who were themselves regarded dodgily didn't feel that way - and in even the most vile of time periods, there was a minority (or sometimes a silent majority) who believed in the rights of others.

*coughs* Long story short, my mother's family is Native and I get bristly when people use this excuse about, say, the Little House on the Prairie books, because I know darned well there were plenty of people writing respectfully about the First Nations in that time period (or at least not making things up entirely in order to make Indians look bestial and stupid) - and knowing that it was written a long time ago didn't make it hurt any less to hear my Grade 3 teacher cheerfully read out, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian!"

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

What was Wright writing on his LJ? The link there had some weird stuff going on, so I couldn't read it (it was tiny tiny off to the side).

[graculus.livejournal.com]

The gist of it was how the homosex lobby were making the poor SciFi channel capitulate to them (doubly ironic in the light of SGFail!), describing gay people as having 'serious psycho-sexual malfunctions' and equating homosexuality to 'sado-masochism, pederasty, necrophilia, bestiality and other sexual neuroses'.

Apparently expecting the tv to treat gay men and lesbians as human beings is contributing to moral decay, don't you know? ;)

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

Bu-wha-... is stunned into silence

[xochiquetzl]

Hal Duncan has a masterful smackdown for Wright here.

[sg1jb]

Strewth! What an eloquent explanation of the ethics of empathy. (and, oh wow, that's a whole lot of 'e's there)

Thanks for posting the link. That was an an excellent read.

[nialla]

2009: The Year of Fail.

GateFail has so much fail contained in one episode, I think it broke several laws of physics.

Sadly, knowing this is episode 16 and bodyswapping is apparently a regular event in the series, makes me wonder what other horrific fails await the unwary viewer.

I was already done with the franchise and there wasn't an actor that I just "had" to see (sorry, Lou Diamond Phillips, but I can't do this for you), so it's not affecting me as a viewer, but as a human being, I keep watching the train wreck in progress. And that's even before it's on the air!

[graculus.livejournal.com]

The thing that gets me is the whole lack of consent = moral dilemma line they seem to be taking. Nope, lack of consent = rape. No dilemma there at all.

Meanwhile, I'd always wondered if they were somehow going down the 'Springtime for Hitler' route and deliberately making the worst show they could, just because they could... how many people can we offend in one series?