Wow, well. 2019 was certainly… a year. And 2009-2019 was certainly a decade! While we’re packing away our end-of-the-year lists and end-of-the-decade memorials (and 2016, shudder), it’s time to start looking to the future. Maybe even comparing notes. Did we get everything we wanted for 2019? Nah. But there’s always something to look forward to!
But FIRST, a little heavy lifting and contemplation. As 2020 sets its claws on us at last, here’s a few things I’m trying to skip right past in the “new year, new us” decade.
1) Nostalgia and the “loss” of our faves
We’ve actually been trying to get rid of this behavior for a few years now, but the recent pieces bemoaning the loss of old school feminist blogosphere giants and the turmoil over a certain young adult fantasy author have led me to believe you all aren’t quite there yet. And we need to let it go, and… move on.
When we look at the past with heavily rose-tinted glasses, we only see the good… but remember, some of us were there for the bad. It makes me sad that we’re losing our chroniclers of how things really used to be. Our web historians, archived websites, even older shows in syndication that revealed the ugly and beautiful truth of what nostalgia has clearly wiped from our minds.
You’ve probably heard pleas from internet denizens to let your problematic childhood figures go; it’s true. We should. There’s no need to defend bigoted behavior just because you liked a movie! But when people attempt to practice the death of the author, they think the work disappears. It doesn’t. You can still enjoy that book, you can still listen to that album. You don’t need to advertise it to us. But ask yourself, is that distant celebrity figure paying you to shadowbox Twitter hashtags for them? Ask yourself honestly: do you want to die on this hill?
2) Cancel “culture”
Let me preface: I don’t believe in cancel culture, call-out culture, outrage culture, or anything of the sort. I fully support calling out every single villain in this world with reasonable, clear evidence to back up that they are, indeed, the truly worst among us. I deeply question the notion of a culture built solely around throwing accusations willy-nilly.
So… if I don’t think cancel culture is a real thing, then what do I want to pass on in 2020? Well, the self-fulfilling prophecy of cancel culture. There are things to critique about who and what gets a call out. But just as people are too eager to plug their ears up about the truth, there are just as many people out there eager to escort a celeb on out of here based on flimsy evidence. The message has become so deeply confused. “Canceling” as a valid concept has become a phantom lurking in Twitter hashtags, largely in part due otherwise privileged people who have jumped on it and wrenched it away from the folks who truly need it.
Sound familiar? Look, if cancel culture worked, do you think most of these abusive Hollywood moguls would still be in power? No, the only thing that has worked is effectively shutting out marginalized voices with no other route to justice. I’m over it. You should be over it.
3) Fake inclusivity
Ah, if I could go back to the middle of the decade and tell myself not to get my hopes up… I wouldn’t do that to me, but boy did we flub the mission on inclusiveness.
Things got better for sure, but they also stayed rather status quo. More Asian roles? Great, give them all to Scarlet Johansson. Increased focus on disabled roles? Kind of. More LGBTQ+ characters? Yes, but only if they’re white, young, and otherwise attractive, thus perpetuating all the negative stereotypes of queer culture. Oh, but what about Pose? Great show, important show, doesn’t exist without the distressingly troublesome Ryan Murphy. It’s a good start, but someone else needs to grab that baton. The baton that was handed off by Pariah, by the way.
It’s all been very sigh inducing. I don’t blame those of us who have given up already. Fighting the good fight when we’re regressing, after all, is very tiring. The lesson, for 2020 and as always, is to hard pass on the people paying us dust and focus on the people out there doing the work in real time. Actively seek them out! They are waiting for your support!
4) “Save Our Show” campaigns
Not to be a Deborah Downer, but I think it’s time we all got a little more realistic about how hashtag campaigns really affect show cancellations and renewals. And the dark truth no one wants to admit is that… they don’t.
Much like our calls for better representation on our screens going in one ear and out the other, these fandom marches seldom ever make it to the execs. The only thing that does is money, and this time it’s not our money! It’s the network’s!
Shows take money, time, and effort to produce. Not everything is a win. Historically, very little actually wins. Yes, it sucks. Yes, it does seem to disproportionately affect certain shows. And of course there is nothing wrong with a strong show of fandom support. But in recent years, there has been a little too much emphasis on these campaigns as a viable strategy rather than the community building they’re meant to be. Take it from someone who wrote their senators to give Firefly another season: television is a strange beast, and most of the things that we think factor into what keeps a show afloat – ratings, castings, November sweeps, all – are either meaningless in the grand scheme of things or too eldritch complicated for mere mortals to understand. All I’m saying is greed is good, greed works, thank you.
5) Toxic fandom culture
There hasn’t been a time in modern human history where fandoms haven’t been toxic, but I think we’ve all had enough. Check any Star Wars or Once Upon A Time hashtag and I think you’ll see what I mean. And if you’re from anime or music like I am, you already know. Who do we blame? LiveJournal? Tumblr? Ourselves?
Admittedly, it may be tough to put a stop to toxicity showing up in your scene. Smaller fandoms seem to have an easier time of it, niche fandoms too. But when something you love is popular and big? A lot of moving parts to control. Still, we can dream. You can all do your part too by saving your unnecessary hot takes, your racism, your misogyny, your homophobia AND transphobia, and so on. It’s not asking a lot to let people enjoy things they like in their own way as long as it’s not harmful, is it? Okay, maybe this last item is asking too much.
Image credit: Susan Cipriano