Things that excite me

[oyceter]

• Christopher Judge of Stargate: SG-1 fame has a new show! He had me at "the earthly adventures of the angel Gabriel and his nemesis Lucifer."



• I want to find a recording of this! Raza Jaffrey from Spooks! Or I want to find the TV production that inspired it, because Parminder Nagra! Gender-bending! (Am a little eye-rolly at the exclamations on how mysterious and magical India is, but still. Mostly Indian cast!)



• The second POC SF Carnival is out!



• ABW is doing TV Corner week and has posted on shows like Heroes!



• rilina and shewhohashope are evil and getting me to watch dramas, which I have successfully avoided after eight entire years in Taiwan and pretty much everyone I know there watching them. But really! No one pimped cross-dressing, gender-bending dramas or Korean food porn dramas to me before, I swear. Also, everyone in the comments in my last Tramps Like Us post have convinced me to watch the drama as well. Come to think of it, I should put more Bollywood Indian movies (ETA: took out "Bollywood" after reading this) in my Netflix queue and look for more Southeast Asian movies and shows.
  
  The thing is, I know the gender roles in dramas and manga and anime can suck like whoa, and often do. But sometimes I just want to watch or read something in which Asian-ness is the norm, not the exception, in which Asian people are in lead roles and have romances and angst and actual storylines. I hate that so often I have to pick between the two: feminist and all white, Asian and non-feminist. I think I need a new icon reading: "Women of color! We exist too!"



• One more month till visiting rilina YAY!

Comments

[anoel.livejournal.com]

OMG that show sounds awesome. I will definitely check that out. Glad he got the lead role :)

[oyceter]

I know! I was like: POC lead! ANGELS AND DEMONS!

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Stargate always kind of bugs me for tapping into EVERY one of my dorky secret crush fantasies at once (goofy boyish smart geek, blonde butch shorthaired girl, sort of obnoxious older guy, quiet built black man, it's all so awful). I didn't think they could make it any worse on me but then Claudia Black (voluptuous brunette) was on for a while. I am always relieved when the paunchy balding commander guy is onscreen and I get sort of a break.

[oyceter]

Hee! I've never actually been very into it myself; I seem to bounce off of most outer space SF shows. But I loved what I saw of Jack.

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

That article is interesting! I've always differentiated between Bollywood and Indian cinema, because Bollywood has come to represent certain types of films (Hindi language, mostly made in Mumbai, it's own tropes and history). "A specific film industry with its own stars, styles, and institutions; a distinctive culture of film spectatorship; and an easily-recognizable 'brand name'", as the article calls it.

But then Abhishek Bachchan says it is so, and he is convincing. I guess it's Hindi cinema? 'Indian cinema' is too all-encompassing.

[oyceter]

Yeah, it was interesting! I don't know much about "Bollywood" films and the specific tropes and styles of it and Hindi cinema or Indian cinema; must watch more.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Thanks for linking the article about the term Bollywood. I hadn't realized its history. I always thought it only referred to the song and dance type of Indian movie. And, since I've seen other types (horror movies, art movies, super hero movies, etc.), I know there's more to Indian cinema than that. Food for thought.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I haven't seen many Indian movies at all, Bollywood or not.

It gets better!

[mayaluna.livejournal.com]

Even better -- Michael Shanks will be playing Lucifer on the same show! Seehttp://www.scifi.com/sfw/interviews/sfw16718.html about 2/3 of the way down.

Re: It gets better!

[oyceter]

Cool! I don't actually watch SG-1 so I'm more excited about having a show with a black lead, but I am happy for the SG-1 fans out there who get a show with two of the old SG-1 cast.

[cryptoxin.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link to the article on the term 'Bollywood'.

I always enjoy your manga reviews, so I'm hoping that you'll get inspired to do some drama reviews as well. The gender stuff definitely leaves me feeling very ambivalent, but it's also complicated. There's a great book by Koichi Iwabuchi called Recentering globalization: Popular culture and Japanese transnationalism which includes a detailed discussion of the reception of the early-'90s J-dorama Tokyo Love Story in Taiwan. In brief, the heroine Rika was admired by young viewers for her independence and assertiveness, as a powerful modern role model, in contrast with the more traditional femininity represented by her romantic rival.

I've seen other dramas that have similar character types -- including my all-time favorite, Long Vacation -- which leave me feeling (hoping) that dramas are an important place where gender can get actively negotiated and even contested, rather than simply reproducing stereotypes. Of course, there are limits, but I think it's possible to enjoy dramas (and anime -- I don't read enough manga) critically and appreciate the moments of gender subversion as pleasures in themselves.

[oyceter]

Oh that book sounds awesome! Also, it talks about Jdrama that were hugely popular when I was in high school, how funny! My entire class loved Long Vacation as well.

I think it'll be fun talking about dramas on LJ; one of the reasons I can still read a lot of gender-sketchy manga and whatnot is because I know I can take it apart here, which makes me feel less like I'm unthinkingly adopting the stereotypes.