No one is questioning my characterization of the one dimensional characters in the show. I've never said the show had to cater to white men exclusively, I merely pointed out that the show had a depiction of racial / gender roles that was very politically charged, and anti-cis/white people, and men in particular. Seriously, the only positive male figures in that show were FN men, and there were no examples of negative figures that were FN. The only minority woman that was presented in a slightly negative way, was the asian nurse -- who was still competent at her job, even if she was portrayed as greedy and self-centered. The non-FN men didn't even get to be competent, they got to be incompetent, stupid, and/or villains.

Like if you wanted to add some depth / nuance to those characters, without being so one sided? Have the resentment that you're expressing here, made manifest in the FN people in the show. There's a very brief exchange at one point early on in the series, where I think Harry shows up at the res unescorted, and the FN people there basically stonewall / ignore him. It's glossed over in like 10 seconds, and then they act like it's all good. Asta's abandoning of her daughter with a healthy and supportive home life is a story element that's really forced. Have Asta's backstory altered so that it's not some deadbeat white guy trailer trash that she hooked up with as a kid -- have it be that she had a regular teenage cis white guy as a partner, one who could've just moved out of town. You could've had him die in an accident off screen, and potentially made the doctor who came back to replace Harry (briefly, before getting sent to Area 51 to get ass raped by the govt or whatnot) be the guys older brother, but make him less of a condescending fop. Asta realising who he was later on, especially given how nonchalantly she and the town shrug off his disappearance, and what comes out about how his life went afterwards, would add depth -- like those two kids basically had that guy's life ruined as an afterthought, with pretty well zero remorse or curiosity from ppl in town -- and the audience is encouraged to empathize/forgive the evil chick in the govt that did it, because she had some daddy issues that she wanted to time travel to fix. You could justify Asta giving her daughter up because she felt strongly that her family on the res wouldn't accept a white guy / baby (you don't even need to make it an explicit rejection, just one she internalised / acted on based on the lowkey resentment towards white people). Keep a passive aggressive dialogue structure between the FN people and the white people that Asta brings on to the res -- cause generally, in reality, they're tolerated but not accepted, because of all that history/resentment (that we're seeing even in this generally neutral commentary on the show). Have that resentment be more explicit in any dialogue with older FN. Keep Asta's grandad as a more neutral positive progressive figure who's just a hard workin guy, who values his culture/traditions, who loves his daughter and accepts her no matter what, even if some in the community still harbour all this resentment. He could even have more complex relations with the band, if he'd been made aware of the reasons for Asta giving up her daughter after the fact -- a backstory component where he'd realised the constant simmering racism on the res had hurt his daughter and cost him a direct relationship with his grand-daughter, and while he recognised/accepted the anger felt he had to move past it by opening the diner outside the res and integrating more with the town. He could basically have a vested interest at that point, for being a role model for the youth on the res, putting him respectfully / politely at odds with the more racist older folks on the res. His relationship with Harry could've been far different too, if he'd first viewed him as a potential 'new' white-boy suitor that his daughter was interested in -- that'd even provide comic opportunities, as he'd be completely thrown by Harry acting in an alien fashion / unpredictable fashion compared to what he expects of a white guy, causing him to question his own preconceptions even further, at least until he finds out the truth. From what I recall, the way they handled this stuff in the show, it really didn't make sense why Asta would've given up her daughter - and it especially didn't make sense given how they portray all the people in the community / family around her as being ultra/unequivocally supportive. It isn't all light in reality, for an adult-theme oriented drama you need to have some shades of dark to make it more interesting / engaging and insightful.

For the super smart outspoken muslim girl, you've literally got stories in the news frequently about muslim women being killed by their families for having tiktok on their phones and/or being too western minded. The show's got her out running around in the middle of the night with a young boy with no supervision, while still pretending like she's a devout muslim girl. Dig into that more. Lots of muslim women present a devout/submissive image to their parents, but at school they are far more liberal / westernized -- I'm sure I'm not alone in having known girls in HS who would change out of their religious garb for class, not because they'd get bullied or anythin, but because they wanted to be free to express themselves. Women in Iran, before the religious dictatorship took over, happily dressed in western styles while still following the general tenants of the faith / thinking of themselves as muslim. There's lots of talk in the media about how school shouldn't narc on kids for things like pronouns, but the religious stuff is also part of that conversation -- given that the boy she's running around with, is also the son of a teacher (or was she the principle? I don't remember atm, sorta moot) at the school, you could've played with that theme a bunch. Even if the parents may be accepting if she were to discuss it with them directly, she could still have inner turmoil/conflicts about it all. Heck, you could've even pulled a story practically directly out of the news and worked it in for "why she came back" to town after goin off to a prestigious school -- her mother could've been mis-appropriating a FN identity to get scholarships/funding to go to that program, she could've been exposed, and the kids scholarships cancelled as a result. She could've ended up with more interesting internal conflicts/character, by being conflicted by both the unethical behaviour of her parent towards FN, but also at being denied the opportunity just because she wasn't the 'right' minority race. Presenting that kid the way they did in the show, is a disservice to the struggles of many muslim women -- and there's likely a lot more material there that could be presented in far more interesting ways, even in a weird pseudo-comedy such as this show (I still say the premise/direction and overall flow of the show was disjointed/weird).

I don't have a problem with shows catering to demographics I don't associate with directly. Like I said, I did watch 3 seasons of this thing, even though I recognised early on what it was,. But the writing was one dimensional and lazy, and it got worse and worse as the seasons went on. I'm all for stories that are FN centric, but those stories deserve better writing and presentation than what this show was offering up.

[–] dilroopgill@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

They did sahar terribly as an indian kid who grew up with indian and muslim kids, they always do us dirty, she is an active annoyance who tends to be wrong, itd be one thing if she was a know it all whos right, but shes usually wrong and they gloss over it. Also max is nice to her and shes actively an ashole to her friends. Also we are rarely up our ass religious as kids, you'll always hear my parents told me to, more realistically her parent comes to class explains her culture not her doing it herself. When we did it ourselves we were wrong af looking back (but they wont showcase that in a show) somehow brown kids can never be wrong, but are always wrong, insufferable knowitalls, shes a great actor btw!! Fantastic at playing the shitty role they gave her.

[–] dilroopgill@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I hate when ppl say its accurate and its someone who does not share the lived experience lol

[–] dilroopgill@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

I will never have representation (bend it like beckham was pretty decent actually), instead mindy kaling type white washing or extremists in the other direction

[–] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 0 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

So you think it would be better for stories about Muslims to focus on the negative aspects of their religion? And it would have been better for FN people to be portrayed as racist cheats? I'm not sure if you realize how gross you're being or if it's on purpose, but never criticize other people's writing ever again.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 0 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

It's more realistic and engaging, and it isn't 'wrong' to "speak the truth" about what goes on in those communities, or within those minority groups. I also made sure to highlight that you'd want to have variance in the characters to provide a broader context, with an eye to making it clearer to viewers that these demographic groups are not a uniform monolith, and that each person should be viewed as an individual. Putting out a show where all the white people are negatively type-cast, where all men who aren't FN are type-cast as incompetent morons, and where FN are all type-cast positively, is bad writing. Just like how back in the 1950s or whatever, when all women were type-cast negatively and all FN were type-cast negatively, it was bad writing. If you think that an adult audience is too stupid to understand that this shit is bad content, I need do little more than point to the shows cancellation as proof that it had gone to crap and detached from its audience -- if the writing was good, it would've/could've had more seasons. The production quality overall was decent.

To pretend there's no racism in FN communities is absurd, as the evidence is pretty blatant. And as for your comment, I didn't say anything about FN people as cheats, that's your bias again showing through. That sort of bias -- you thinking that all critics of FN must think FN are cheats, a potentially 'internalised' and imagined victimhood that taints your interactions with others -- ought to be represented on screen, with the negative repercussions put on display for discussion. The authenticity, or the relative authenticity of the characters matters.

As for muslims, why shouldn't the moderate muslim have a voice? Why shouldn't we tell the stories of what many of us have seen with our own eyes, and what many people living in western countries have gone through themselves? Why shouldn't we expect an adult show to tackle adult themes, rather than treat their audience like a bunch of immature, cattle-brained morons who can't understand nuance?

If you always had to portray characters/cultures in a positive light, without digging in to the conflicts and inner turmoils of individuals, pretty well every good show in the past two or three decades would be 'bad'. And I'm being very conservative with that time frame. Imagine Shakespeare, without any social commentary -- like Othello, where you can't broach the racial components of it. It would be utter drivel without that nuance. Good art / fiction tackles these sorts of concepts directly, messily, and puts it out there as authentically as possible for the audience to engage with. I encourage you to expand your perspective.

[–] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Oh, you were talking about somebody misusing a FN identity they didn't have. My mistake. It's still a bad story idea.

You talk about "speaking the truth" about how you view minorities while bemoaning that white men, a group that has never ever done anything bad (/s), are portrayed negatively. If you don't realize it, let me inform you that sort of thing comes off as pretty racist. Defending it by saying it's more realistic or better writing in a show with talking octopuses doesn't change that. If you do realize it, you're an awful person.

I've reached the end of my patience for that particular type of bs with you and will be blocking you. Do better.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 hours ago

I assume I'm blocked, but for anyone who's bothering to read this far --

The FN identity story angle is, quite literally, pulled out of Canadian news cycles and is 100% a pertinent, modern/contemporary story related to FN issues and identity: me referencing it is quite literally me saying in a very explicit fashion that we should've had more FN stories / content in the show, though the other poster seems to consider that racist or boring or something, without bothering to explain their dislike at all. The "Gill" sisters, Indo-Canadians who's parents immigrated over from the UK -- their mother appropriated a FN identity and secured hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants/money from the government based on that identity, getting her two daughters top tier educations and setting them up with an online business selling FN-inspired products. Once the identity fraud was revealed, the mother, who'd committed other frauds earlier even, took full responsibility to save her kids any jail time / punishment, but those daughters still had to drop out of things like law schools that they'd gotten into under false pretenses. The kids have since gone to the news, and lamented their situation, as they're relegated to basically being safeway cashiers or something along those lines.

Putting that sort of real life trauma on a screen, interrogating it, showing the characters on all sides as humans, and finding a way to get a laugh from the audience as you do it -- is the sort of thing good writing ought to be doing. Doing so not only helps people think about the situation critically and engage with the topic in less 'charged' ways (discuss the fictional version with the alien, rather than the real life one with tangible victims, but still talk about the issue!) -- but it'd also help people like the other poster learn about what it's like for FN people in some areas of the world.

And I never said white people should be spared flaws/faults. I just said that to stereotype all the white men, and all men who aren't FN, and pretty well all the white women on the show as negative / deplorable sorts, is racist. To say that "Some white people historically did bad things, so they should all be typecast as dumb incompetent evil people on TV" is racist. It's as blatantly racist as white people used to be towards non white people. Failing to recognize that, and failing to engage with the repercussions of it, is one reason there's increasingly animosity between the different demographics / groups, and there's an increasing rise in White-supremacist groups -- things left in the dark, tend to fester more. People need to be able to talk about those things openly to move forward, and Art is traditionally a primary vehicle for that very thing. That sort of racism, we see play out on line and in this very thread, the show should've actually confronted it head on if they wanted to maintain more character authenticity, and to keep the attention of the audience longer / get people engrossed in the characters. Walter White would've been boring as shit without his dark flaws.

But the writing fell off, made things into 1 dimensional bland virtue signalling snooze fests, and people moved on. It earned its cancellation.

As for the other person 'noping out', it's more realistically that they just realised they were wrong and wanted to try and save some face. I feel like my patience and attempts to explain / get through to the other side is made plain within this thread -- and that nothing I've written is in any way wrong or racist: it isn't racist, to call out racism in other races, just like it isn't fascist, to call out fascists.