Lauren K. Moody (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
anthimeria) wrote2011-10-11 07:04 pm
anthimeria) wrote2011-10-11 07:04 pm
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On Warehouse 13: Diversity, Intersectionality, Storytelling and Hope
This will make more sense if you've seen the Syfy channel original television series Warehouse 13, but can, I believe, be read without that knowledge, as I make several points that are salient to speculative fiction/sci-fi storytelling and social justice therein in general. It is also entirely my personal experience with and opinions about Warehouse 13, and I welcome alternate viewpoints.
SPOILER ALERT through the two-part season three finale, "Emily Lake" and "Stand."
So I didn't get into Warehouse 13 until its second season, which I'm convinced is a good thing. That's because this is a show that took a while to find its feet. I attempted to watch the pilot, but I was put off by two things: one, shaky plot and mediocre dialogue, and two, it was Yet Another Sci-Fi Show About Straight White People. The main cast seemed to be three white people, two men and a woman, and a Magic Negro in the form of Mrs. Fredric and her appearing/disappearing act. There was also Lena, the secondary black woman who ran the house where everyone stayed and was generally relegated to the background.
That is the definition of what I Do Not Want in my storytelling.
However, when clicking through channels I picked it up in season two and got hooked, for two reasons: one, the show had figured out what kind of story it wanted to tell and how to tell that story, and two, Myka and Lena had been joined by Claudia, geek girl and former mental institution patient, and Mrs. Fredric had become an actual person with agency and power.
Wow. Suddenly a show that the pilot episode promised was about the white guys turned out to be about a group of people who included women, characters of color, and nonneurotypical characters as actual people, with story arcs and agency of their own, who drove and moved the plot and were not subservient to the white guy's plots. That IS what I look for in my tv.
As season two progressed, we added Helena to the cast, making our main character count two black women, three white women, and two white men, one of whom was Jewish, and those characters ALSO comprised one woman who'd been in a mental institution and one who did not by any means fit the supermodel-thin body type American tv tends to demand. We met the Regents, among them an Arab man who has consistently been smart and on their side and not dead, all (sadly) incredible accomplishments for a man of color in sci-fi tv. Warehouse 13 had diversity that included intersectionality and allowed characters of many genders, races, body types and mental states agency and participation in the storytelling.
I am NOT implying that Warehouse 13 was perfect--far from it, and I'm sure in my enthusiasm for finally having a show where all these things were true has blinded me to some of its issues. Warehouse 13 also hits a number of my storytelling-related joys, in addition to my social justice joys, so I spent all of season two loving it wholeheartedly.
Which is not to say season 2 didn't have its issues.
I had then and continue to have issues with how Lena's character is handled. The show fails consistently in her regard, and I'm disappointed about that, and I believe it stems from the racist and sexist paradigms on which her character was thoughtlessly built. She's the glaring example of systemic racism and sexism in the show, and while having Mrs. Fredric and Myka and Claudia and HG around allows me to watch and enjoy the show, it also highlights how badly Lena's character was designed in the first place.
The direction the show chose to go with HG also disappointed me greatly. I felt they'd never had much idea of what to do with her in the first place--I think someone said, Let's make HG Wells a woman! And then made her the Big Bad because they didn't have any better ideas, which is just short-sighted. She's a cliché "strong female character" whose tragedy is violence against a girl, her daughter, and who "escaped" sexism by taking up traditionally masculine pastimes, and in general she's problematic and inconsistently characterized. She also seems, to me, to be depressed or in some other way nonneurotypical, and the show does not deal with that as well as I'd like--but that's at least a little bit me projecting, since it's never explicitly stated in canon.
But oh, her relationship with Myka. That she so clearly loved this other woman (whether platonically or romantically is in the eye of the audience), that in every scene they're in they are focused totally on each other, that they believe in each other against the whole world's advice--here was a relationship between women I could believe in and which passed the Bechdel test with flying colors. Both have had problematic relationships with important men in their histories--Myka's with Sam, HG's with her brother--and when they struck out on their own they found support and friendship in another woman, and this fed my soul.
HG and Myka were everything every three-guys-and-a-girl formula sci-fi told me I couldn't have, and yet here was Syfy's top-rated original tv show, doing it and succeeding and flourishing.
Here were Mrs. Fredric and Claudia, talking about the Warehouse and their work and their pasts. Here were Claudia and Myka, teaching each other their different ways to fight. Here were Claudia and Artie, adopted father-daughter chafing and fighting and still hugging at the end of the day. Here were Myka and Pete, straight opposite-gender partners who cared deeply about each other in a completely non-romantic way. Here were Lena and Mrs. Fredric, taking care of each other. Here were a multitude of caring, complex relationships that sci-fi told me I couldn't have, between people sci-fi had refused to tell stories about.
Is it any wonder I fell in love?
Season three, coming on the heels of the terrible HG-apocalypse storyline, carried on and for the most part continued to capture all the reasons I fell in love with Warehouse 13 in the first place. HG wasn't gone, she was just elsewhere, still appearing in the occasional episode, still orbiting Myka and being orbited in return. And, to fill the gap in our cast, Warehouse 13 did something fantastic: they added an out gay character to the cast.
Yep. Warehouse 13: diversity, inclusivity and intersecionality, all FTW. Steve, our new guy, was a white guy who ended up partnered with Claudia (making both of Warehouse 13's partner teams opposite-gender and non-romantic--for someone as tired of tv romance cliché breaking up good opposite-gender partnerships as I am, this was a TRIUMPH). They were a little shaky at first but they bonded over their various outcasty ways pretty quickly, and looked to be on the road to becoming as important to each other as Pete and Myka were. We got somewhere with the older character's romantic relationship (yes, the older characters on this show were allowed romance!). Myka put Sam's ghost to rest (not literally). The cast continued to throw awesome dialogue at each other, everyone got plots and agency, and there continued to be other issues with the show that did not stop me from loving it for everything else.
And then there were the last few episodes of season three. There were some good guys doing bad guy things, which didn't please me and definitely didn't please other good guys, specifically Steve. Now, I can't talk about this without mentioning that I saw this arc coming from the moment it began: Steve supposedly got "burned" by the Warehouse for refusing to torture a woman on Mrs. Fredric's orders. He's really undercover, and I called that from minute one.
The Big Bad went down in a two-part episode, and in the first it's finally revealed to Claudia (who believed in Steve the whole time) that Steve was undercover. They go to stop the Big Bad and spring Steve.
Now, stupid me didn't see this coming until the last possible moment, because I trusted Warehouse 13. But I made a comment that this Big Bad had a habit of killing people the instant they were no longer useful--and Steve had just finished the job the Big Bad hired him for. Needless to say for those of us familiar with how minority characters get treated in fiction, the main cast arrived too late and Steve was dead. End episode.
Fuck.
I spent the rest of the second part on tenderhooks, waiting. This is science fiction--death isn't always (or even often) permanent, not even when there's a body. Steve couldn't be dead. Warehouse 13 couldn't have introduced a queer character only for him to die to forward the main, straight cast's plot arc. Any other show, I would totally buy it, but not Warehouse 13. Right? Right?
Big Bad continues to go down, steamrolling our good guys and leaving a bodycount in his wake. The episode is winding down. Steve's still dead. Then Claudia discovers an artifact that can make the dead live again, and outright states that she's keeping it for Steve. I'm dubious--reanimation doesn't often go well in sci-fi, and I don't want to see Steve dragged through that mudpit--but before I can decide what I think about this possibility, the Big Bad succeeds. Yup. Destroys the Warehouse. HG gives her life to save Pete, Myka and Artie, and Mrs. Fredric dies with the Warehouse (HG doesn't fail to save her, Mrs. Fredric is the Warehouse--it's complicated). Which means our main character body count for this season-ender is 3: Steve, queer; HG, who loved Myka; and Mrs. Fredric, kickass black woman.
I was paralyzed with shock. This couldn't be happening. Warehouse 13 couldn't do this to me. No.
Then Artie pulled a pocketwatch, an artifact, out of his pocket, and I practically MELTED in relief. DO-OVER. THANK AN OMNISCIENT DEITY FOR TIME TRAVEL!
Mind you, the season ended with Artie pulling out the pocket watch and making a vague foreshadowy statement, but c'mon. I'm a writer and a genre geek: he's talking about undoing everything. Thing is, the timepiece got introduced after Steve died. So I'm worried they won't undo his death. But he has an alternative--the reanimation artifact Claudia found--so I'm not completely giving up hope.
Nevertheless, I was wrecked. I walked away from this season ender shell-shocked and dismayed. I gave Warehouse 13 my heart, and they took a cookie-cutter to my chest and ripped it out.
Now, I'm choosing to believe that the next season will open with their quest to undo all the terrible things that happened, to make everything that tore my heart to tiny shreds heal. There will probably still be tragedy, but I'm hoping it will be tragedy that doesn't kill three beloved characters. I'm choosing to have faith in Warehouse 13--because there is a way to look at this that makes my shell-shock worth it.
Read in a certain way, and of course depending on what subsequent episodes look like, Warehouse 13 may in fact be positing that this is the worst thing that could happen. If this is well-written, if they are acting in good faith as storytellers, then they intended to rip my heart out and will follow through with a glorious payoff on the order of Steve, HG and Mrs. Fredric not only not being dead, but continuing to be main characters and kicking ass.
Warehouse 13 may be arguing that it is the ultimate in unacceptable to kill a gay man, a fat black woman, and a depressed woman, and will literally unspool time in order to bring them back, because they are so important.
That is what I hope.
Because if I have acted in good faith as an audience member, as someone who has unabashedly loved their stories, then I expect to be treated in good faith and with true and good storytelling. I am terribly, terribly afraid right now, because these three character's lives are on the line, and they are characters I do not get to see in my stories--they are characters I've been told stories cannot be written about, and yet they were there, having stories. If Warehouse 13 does not come around and declare that these characters are important enough to hit the reset button, if Warehouse 13 decides it can do without them--
--well. In that case, Warehouse 13 will have to do without me.
For now, though, I have hope. And I have three seasons of show with these people who proved that science fiction can tell everyone's story. No more excuses. It's time to step up.
SPOILER ALERT through the two-part season three finale, "Emily Lake" and "Stand."
So I didn't get into Warehouse 13 until its second season, which I'm convinced is a good thing. That's because this is a show that took a while to find its feet. I attempted to watch the pilot, but I was put off by two things: one, shaky plot and mediocre dialogue, and two, it was Yet Another Sci-Fi Show About Straight White People. The main cast seemed to be three white people, two men and a woman, and a Magic Negro in the form of Mrs. Fredric and her appearing/disappearing act. There was also Lena, the secondary black woman who ran the house where everyone stayed and was generally relegated to the background.
That is the definition of what I Do Not Want in my storytelling.
However, when clicking through channels I picked it up in season two and got hooked, for two reasons: one, the show had figured out what kind of story it wanted to tell and how to tell that story, and two, Myka and Lena had been joined by Claudia, geek girl and former mental institution patient, and Mrs. Fredric had become an actual person with agency and power.
Wow. Suddenly a show that the pilot episode promised was about the white guys turned out to be about a group of people who included women, characters of color, and nonneurotypical characters as actual people, with story arcs and agency of their own, who drove and moved the plot and were not subservient to the white guy's plots. That IS what I look for in my tv.
As season two progressed, we added Helena to the cast, making our main character count two black women, three white women, and two white men, one of whom was Jewish, and those characters ALSO comprised one woman who'd been in a mental institution and one who did not by any means fit the supermodel-thin body type American tv tends to demand. We met the Regents, among them an Arab man who has consistently been smart and on their side and not dead, all (sadly) incredible accomplishments for a man of color in sci-fi tv. Warehouse 13 had diversity that included intersectionality and allowed characters of many genders, races, body types and mental states agency and participation in the storytelling.
I am NOT implying that Warehouse 13 was perfect--far from it, and I'm sure in my enthusiasm for finally having a show where all these things were true has blinded me to some of its issues. Warehouse 13 also hits a number of my storytelling-related joys, in addition to my social justice joys, so I spent all of season two loving it wholeheartedly.
Which is not to say season 2 didn't have its issues.
I had then and continue to have issues with how Lena's character is handled. The show fails consistently in her regard, and I'm disappointed about that, and I believe it stems from the racist and sexist paradigms on which her character was thoughtlessly built. She's the glaring example of systemic racism and sexism in the show, and while having Mrs. Fredric and Myka and Claudia and HG around allows me to watch and enjoy the show, it also highlights how badly Lena's character was designed in the first place.
The direction the show chose to go with HG also disappointed me greatly. I felt they'd never had much idea of what to do with her in the first place--I think someone said, Let's make HG Wells a woman! And then made her the Big Bad because they didn't have any better ideas, which is just short-sighted. She's a cliché "strong female character" whose tragedy is violence against a girl, her daughter, and who "escaped" sexism by taking up traditionally masculine pastimes, and in general she's problematic and inconsistently characterized. She also seems, to me, to be depressed or in some other way nonneurotypical, and the show does not deal with that as well as I'd like--but that's at least a little bit me projecting, since it's never explicitly stated in canon.
But oh, her relationship with Myka. That she so clearly loved this other woman (whether platonically or romantically is in the eye of the audience), that in every scene they're in they are focused totally on each other, that they believe in each other against the whole world's advice--here was a relationship between women I could believe in and which passed the Bechdel test with flying colors. Both have had problematic relationships with important men in their histories--Myka's with Sam, HG's with her brother--and when they struck out on their own they found support and friendship in another woman, and this fed my soul.
HG and Myka were everything every three-guys-and-a-girl formula sci-fi told me I couldn't have, and yet here was Syfy's top-rated original tv show, doing it and succeeding and flourishing.
Here were Mrs. Fredric and Claudia, talking about the Warehouse and their work and their pasts. Here were Claudia and Myka, teaching each other their different ways to fight. Here were Claudia and Artie, adopted father-daughter chafing and fighting and still hugging at the end of the day. Here were Myka and Pete, straight opposite-gender partners who cared deeply about each other in a completely non-romantic way. Here were Lena and Mrs. Fredric, taking care of each other. Here were a multitude of caring, complex relationships that sci-fi told me I couldn't have, between people sci-fi had refused to tell stories about.
Is it any wonder I fell in love?
Season three, coming on the heels of the terrible HG-apocalypse storyline, carried on and for the most part continued to capture all the reasons I fell in love with Warehouse 13 in the first place. HG wasn't gone, she was just elsewhere, still appearing in the occasional episode, still orbiting Myka and being orbited in return. And, to fill the gap in our cast, Warehouse 13 did something fantastic: they added an out gay character to the cast.
Yep. Warehouse 13: diversity, inclusivity and intersecionality, all FTW. Steve, our new guy, was a white guy who ended up partnered with Claudia (making both of Warehouse 13's partner teams opposite-gender and non-romantic--for someone as tired of tv romance cliché breaking up good opposite-gender partnerships as I am, this was a TRIUMPH). They were a little shaky at first but they bonded over their various outcasty ways pretty quickly, and looked to be on the road to becoming as important to each other as Pete and Myka were. We got somewhere with the older character's romantic relationship (yes, the older characters on this show were allowed romance!). Myka put Sam's ghost to rest (not literally). The cast continued to throw awesome dialogue at each other, everyone got plots and agency, and there continued to be other issues with the show that did not stop me from loving it for everything else.
And then there were the last few episodes of season three. There were some good guys doing bad guy things, which didn't please me and definitely didn't please other good guys, specifically Steve. Now, I can't talk about this without mentioning that I saw this arc coming from the moment it began: Steve supposedly got "burned" by the Warehouse for refusing to torture a woman on Mrs. Fredric's orders. He's really undercover, and I called that from minute one.
The Big Bad went down in a two-part episode, and in the first it's finally revealed to Claudia (who believed in Steve the whole time) that Steve was undercover. They go to stop the Big Bad and spring Steve.
Now, stupid me didn't see this coming until the last possible moment, because I trusted Warehouse 13. But I made a comment that this Big Bad had a habit of killing people the instant they were no longer useful--and Steve had just finished the job the Big Bad hired him for. Needless to say for those of us familiar with how minority characters get treated in fiction, the main cast arrived too late and Steve was dead. End episode.
Fuck.
I spent the rest of the second part on tenderhooks, waiting. This is science fiction--death isn't always (or even often) permanent, not even when there's a body. Steve couldn't be dead. Warehouse 13 couldn't have introduced a queer character only for him to die to forward the main, straight cast's plot arc. Any other show, I would totally buy it, but not Warehouse 13. Right? Right?
Big Bad continues to go down, steamrolling our good guys and leaving a bodycount in his wake. The episode is winding down. Steve's still dead. Then Claudia discovers an artifact that can make the dead live again, and outright states that she's keeping it for Steve. I'm dubious--reanimation doesn't often go well in sci-fi, and I don't want to see Steve dragged through that mudpit--but before I can decide what I think about this possibility, the Big Bad succeeds. Yup. Destroys the Warehouse. HG gives her life to save Pete, Myka and Artie, and Mrs. Fredric dies with the Warehouse (HG doesn't fail to save her, Mrs. Fredric is the Warehouse--it's complicated). Which means our main character body count for this season-ender is 3: Steve, queer; HG, who loved Myka; and Mrs. Fredric, kickass black woman.
I was paralyzed with shock. This couldn't be happening. Warehouse 13 couldn't do this to me. No.
Then Artie pulled a pocketwatch, an artifact, out of his pocket, and I practically MELTED in relief. DO-OVER. THANK AN OMNISCIENT DEITY FOR TIME TRAVEL!
Mind you, the season ended with Artie pulling out the pocket watch and making a vague foreshadowy statement, but c'mon. I'm a writer and a genre geek: he's talking about undoing everything. Thing is, the timepiece got introduced after Steve died. So I'm worried they won't undo his death. But he has an alternative--the reanimation artifact Claudia found--so I'm not completely giving up hope.
Nevertheless, I was wrecked. I walked away from this season ender shell-shocked and dismayed. I gave Warehouse 13 my heart, and they took a cookie-cutter to my chest and ripped it out.
Now, I'm choosing to believe that the next season will open with their quest to undo all the terrible things that happened, to make everything that tore my heart to tiny shreds heal. There will probably still be tragedy, but I'm hoping it will be tragedy that doesn't kill three beloved characters. I'm choosing to have faith in Warehouse 13--because there is a way to look at this that makes my shell-shock worth it.
Read in a certain way, and of course depending on what subsequent episodes look like, Warehouse 13 may in fact be positing that this is the worst thing that could happen. If this is well-written, if they are acting in good faith as storytellers, then they intended to rip my heart out and will follow through with a glorious payoff on the order of Steve, HG and Mrs. Fredric not only not being dead, but continuing to be main characters and kicking ass.
Warehouse 13 may be arguing that it is the ultimate in unacceptable to kill a gay man, a fat black woman, and a depressed woman, and will literally unspool time in order to bring them back, because they are so important.
That is what I hope.
Because if I have acted in good faith as an audience member, as someone who has unabashedly loved their stories, then I expect to be treated in good faith and with true and good storytelling. I am terribly, terribly afraid right now, because these three character's lives are on the line, and they are characters I do not get to see in my stories--they are characters I've been told stories cannot be written about, and yet they were there, having stories. If Warehouse 13 does not come around and declare that these characters are important enough to hit the reset button, if Warehouse 13 decides it can do without them--
--well. In that case, Warehouse 13 will have to do without me.
For now, though, I have hope. And I have three seasons of show with these people who proved that science fiction can tell everyone's story. No more excuses. It's time to step up.
no subject
Out of curiosity, do you have any idea what the original casting calls for the roles were and who else may have gone up for them?