It's useful every once in a while to realize that your enemies are not entirely crazy, and you have the capacity to think like them if you're not careful.No, this is not some piece about whether Thanos or Eric Killmonger were not entirely wrong in their thinking. It's about those internet trolls who have problems with female Ghostbusters and Asian Star Wars heroines.
If I say an ounce of their thinking has crept into my own, please read on to understand what I mean and how I'm fighting against it.
I don't for a moment think that the straight white male is an endangered species. That's ridiculous. However, I can't help but notice that when something entirely excludes the straight white male from the way it does business, it rankles me a little bit.
One of the podcasts I listen to is the Slate Spoiler Special. This is one of many offshoots of the Slate Culture Gabfest, and I mightn't have gone out of my way to listen to it except that they plop it in the same feed. Besides, I'm interested in hearing people gab about and spoil movies I've seen.
When the show first started -- or, I should say, when it was resurrected maybe a year ago, as it was something they used to do and then stopped -- it was hosted by the Slate film critic, Dana Stevens. Dana was joined by two other Slate staffers, possibly two men, possibly a man and a woman, usually not two other women but probably a couple times. After all, they practiced the typical aspiration of representing both genders on the show, and beyond that, looked for people who were qualified to discuss the material in one way or another.
After maybe six or seven episodes, Dana slowly receded from her hosting duties -- which shouldn't be much of a surprise given that she's writing a book and certainly has plenty of other things to occupy her. The hosting now seems to shift to any number of other people, many of whose names I don't actually know. They're part of the Slate family, whoever they are.
Another thing happened around this time. The show stopped featuring straight white males.
Entirely.
By far the show's most common configuration of three (sometimes four) was three (sometimes four) women. In fact, I think I listened to something like five or six episodes in a row in which not a single male voice was heard. I noted also, because they told me, that some of them were lesbians, and others were of Asian or African-American heritage.
When they let a man back on the show eventually, he was gay. I noted this, because he told me. In fact, as far as I can tell, they have a rotating series of several gay men potentially appearing on the show.
This is fine. Nay, this is good. Way too many podcasts (including my own, for most of its existence) are two or three white men. Representation is a serious problem on these shows and it needs to be addressed.
But I have to admit it rankled me a bit that every straight white male Slate staffer who had appeared or could potentially appear on this show seems to have been permanently disinvited.
Some of these shows certainly warranted their all-female composition, or their homosexual component, based on a perceived relevance of the movie or TV show being discussed to either women or gay men (or gay women). In fact, it kind of seems like they are actually choosing movies to spoil not because they are The Sixth Sense and require that their secrets be kept, but because they are relevant to some kind of representational minority. Much as I love it, is anyone really worried about Crazy Rich Asians being "spoiled"? How many different ways could that movie actually end?
I've joked with some friends that this show should actually be called Slate Plot Synopsis, as the structure of the show usually involves going through the plot, point-by-point, as though describing what happens in the movie is more the ambition of the show than talking about what happens and whether it's good. They have this hilarious enslavement to making sure they remember the correct sequence of scenes, as people will hand each other the baton in continuing through the synopsis, then ask for help from others to remember if they are getting the order correct. They do comment as they're going, but it feels a bit more surface level. Maybe it should be called Slate Movie Live Tweeting. So the actual format of the show is a bit disappointing.
The composition of the hosts shouldn't be. But I have to admit I have gotten to the point where I am almost hate-listening to the show, just so each new time I can note that there is no person like me giving his thoughts.
This is bad. But here I am, telling you about it, so I can attack the tendency in myself to be annoyed by it.
I suppose the difference between me and some internet cretin is not that I have these feelings, but what I do with them. That other guy goes on to a chat about Star Wars and says racist things about Rose Tico. I write what I hope is a thoughtful blog post examining these feelings.
There's no doubt that events of recent years have given straight white men their share of guilt. Even if you personally did not sexually harass women, or deny opportunities to minorities, or march on Charlottesville about hating black people, you feel a certain responsibility that a person superficially like you did. And you feel that other people could think you're capable of doing that.
As a straight white male film critic, I feel like I've had specifically tailored accusations pointed at me and those in my profession. There's a growing conversation about whether white male film critics can really give a fair criticism of films that are not aimed at their demographic, and whether we should actively seek to reduce their input into the film conversation. Of course I agree that minority critics of one gender or race or another should have the same platform, and that they should naturally have to take some of the same spots occupied by white men, seeing as how there are a finite number of those spots. I just don't want it to be me. Also, I don't want to have to say I liked one of these other demographic movies more than I actually did just to prove my subjectivity does not enter into my judgment. I hated that I didn't love Black Panther, believe me. (And it was a huge relief to love Crazy Rich Asians.)
Partially to help with diversity issues on my podcast, and partially just because she's qualified and knows what she's talking about, we introduced a woman onto my own podcast. We were three straight white men, but for a while we had a straight white woman as well. Hey, baby steps. There were never more than three of us on the podcast at a time, with one exception, but one person would take the week off each week in order to accommodate our new four-person size. Unfortunately, she left the country for a year, reducing us back to three straight white males. And since then we've all been so busy, in some cases with our own international travel, that we've only recorded a handful of episodes anyway.
On my own podcast I had conflicting thoughts about this. For one, she was a great addition and I was glad to have her. She's great on film and she helped make our podcast a better representation of the way the world looks. On the other hand, it made me recognize that my own white maleness was part of the problem we were trying to address, and unfortunately, it was something I couldn't do anything about. I was stuck with it.
So I guess listening to the Slate Spoiler Special again raises this problem for me, reminds me of my own podcast. I am the very person that Slate, by taking this stand, has decided it needs to scrub from the process.
What I need to remember is that this is just one of many Slate podcasts. Many if not most others have white males on them. White males are not actually losing ground to anybody, or if they are, it's the right amount of ground. It's the ground they should be ceding because they never should have had it in the first place, if we lived in a better world that had better representation from the start. In fact, good on them for taking this stand on at least one podcast.
Which is why I write a blog post like this. So I can address my thoughts in an attempt to expunge them. So I can get them down in words instead of leaving them stinking up my head. So I can one day permanently banish them.
However ... I wouldn't mind if at some point, any point, in the future history of this podcast, I do hear another non-gay male voice again.
Until then, I'll try just to listen, and not hate listen.
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