I don't remember if you still (ever?) follow bsc_snark, but during one of the recent snarks, someone pointed out that Jessi is the little boy who cried wolf about racism. Despite the fact that the poster isn't entirely wrong on this theory, she keeps using two examples throughout her snarks of SS3 to back her theory up.
One of those theories is wrong and it's driving me insane. If you've got all these other instances of Jessi being paranoid, then for frick's sake, stop using the one instance where she's not, the one that colored her view of the town for a good long while, dammit.
The time in question is back in "Hello, Mallory" when Becca's doing her super awesome bubbles in the front yard and the kid across the street creeps over, only to have her mother yell for her to get back home NOW, with the heavy implication being "before you catch the black and I have to disown you."
The book and series have always presented that as being a case of racism. It's not cross burning in your face, but it's always struck me as one of the more realistic moments in the series because I've gotten the joy of hearing someone do that same yell. I know the look on the woman's face, the way the kid reacted, and the look on Becca's face when it happened. Ditto Jessi and even Mal.
But no, because we rarely hear about this thing again (though I'd bet the contents of my liquor cabinet that it's what's alluded to in the "some people weren't so nice to the Ramseys" section of Chapter 2) and we never see this woman or her kid again, it's just another case of Jessi seeing race where maybe it wasn't there.
I can think of a billion reasons why it wasn't spelled out again: 1) It happened in a book where Mal wasn't the buttmonkey of the series thus we handwave away most of the contents of the book aside from "friendship!" and "silly BSC tortured Mal but it's okay!" 2) The family could've moved. 3) The family is sitting there, seething inside waiting for the Ramseys to move and return the 'Brook back to proper whiteness. I assume after the Kwanzaaness of it all, the mother's head just finally exploded if they hadn't moved. 4) They figured it was mentioned again. In every Chapter 2 from then onward. :P
And so on. Someone called her on part of it and this post appeared. Sometimes I find it interesting to apply real world logic to the BSC and discuss it. And sometimes I don't and I never know which it is until I walk into the conversation. :P
Ugh, no, I stopped following bsc_snark when it became more about being mean (and ridiculing) than about being funny (and gently making fun of something you genuinely loved as a kid). I looked at those posts and ugh. It's more about being an SJW-buzzword using, haha look at how ignorant authors were in the 80s, we're oh-so-superior because we're ~aware~ of the fact that any sort of behavior can be made into an "ist" and/or pathologized. Spare me the lectures, you know? BSC, for all its cheesetastic glory, was a damn good series aimed at middle school girls that showed the value of female friendships. So it wasn't perfect. So it's dated. So the author was stuck in the 50s (I liked the point that person made about how we reference our own childhood when writing about kids, mostly unknowingly). There's more right than wrong.
I hate to be all, "you're interrogating the text from the wrong perspective," but to me, that's exactly what these people are doing - tearing apart something that was never meant to hold the values these people claims it fails at.
And yes, I agree that moment in Hello Mallory is an actual, realistic example of blatant racism and how it manifests itself in "civilized" society. I don't get what's so hard about recognizing that, or realizing how it might influence a tween in the throes of change. The time warp meant they never really matured, even if they lived their lives for 20 years on a loop.
Just - ugh. So tedious, and so very much missing the point. I miss the days when people laughed from a good place, you know?
I thought you'd jumped ship from the snark, but I wasn't 100% positive. I mostly ignore the more recent snarks because the times I don't, they tend to be mean and unfunny. Or, y'know, they go way overboard on looking at the series without accepting the context of the time or the constraints of the series. (Huzzah for the person pointing out that Watson used a lot of sitters because it's a series about babysitters.)
I still enjoy when people point out that hey, you could argue for realism's sake that Watson is a great stepfather but an awful father to his biological children and do so in a post of it's own. It's one thing to poke at the series for conversation and it's another to set the thing on fire and laugh as it burns because things don't hold up to today's views.
Loved the bit about writing to your own childhood so if nothing else, this did bring that about.
Still, I definitely prefer when people poke at the series but you can tell they still enjoy it.
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Date: 2014-06-23 11:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-06-23 03:35 pm (UTC)One of those theories is wrong and it's driving me insane. If you've got all these other instances of Jessi being paranoid, then for frick's sake, stop using the one instance where she's not, the one that colored her view of the town for a good long while, dammit.
The time in question is back in "Hello, Mallory" when Becca's doing her super awesome bubbles in the front yard and the kid across the street creeps over, only to have her mother yell for her to get back home NOW, with the heavy implication being "before you catch the black and I have to disown you."
The book and series have always presented that as being a case of racism. It's not cross burning in your face, but it's always struck me as one of the more realistic moments in the series because I've gotten the joy of hearing someone do that same yell. I know the look on the woman's face, the way the kid reacted, and the look on Becca's face when it happened. Ditto Jessi and even Mal.
But no, because we rarely hear about this thing again (though I'd bet the contents of my liquor cabinet that it's what's alluded to in the "some people weren't so nice to the Ramseys" section of Chapter 2) and we never see this woman or her kid again, it's just another case of Jessi seeing race where maybe it wasn't there.
I can think of a billion reasons why it wasn't spelled out again:
1) It happened in a book where Mal wasn't the buttmonkey of the series thus we handwave away most of the contents of the book aside from "friendship!" and "silly BSC tortured Mal but it's okay!"
2) The family could've moved.
3) The family is sitting there, seething inside waiting for the Ramseys to move and return the 'Brook back to proper whiteness. I assume after the Kwanzaaness of it all, the mother's head just finally exploded if they hadn't moved.
4) They figured it was mentioned again. In every Chapter 2 from then onward. :P
And so on. Someone called her on part of it and this post appeared. Sometimes I find it interesting to apply real world logic to the BSC and discuss it. And sometimes I don't and I never know which it is until I walk into the conversation. :P
(no subject)
Date: 2014-06-24 12:59 am (UTC)I hate to be all, "you're interrogating the text from the wrong perspective," but to me, that's exactly what these people are doing - tearing apart something that was never meant to hold the values these people claims it fails at.
And yes, I agree that moment in Hello Mallory is an actual, realistic example of blatant racism and how it manifests itself in "civilized" society. I don't get what's so hard about recognizing that, or realizing how it might influence a tween in the throes of change. The time warp meant they never really matured, even if they lived their lives for 20 years on a loop.
Just - ugh. So tedious, and so very much missing the point. I miss the days when people laughed from a good place, you know?
(no subject)
Date: 2014-06-24 02:00 am (UTC)I still enjoy when people point out that hey, you could argue for realism's sake that Watson is a great stepfather but an awful father to his biological children and do so in a post of it's own. It's one thing to poke at the series for conversation and it's another to set the thing on fire and laugh as it burns because things don't hold up to today's views.
Loved the bit about writing to your own childhood so if nothing else, this did bring that about.
Still, I definitely prefer when people poke at the series but you can tell they still enjoy it.