{"id":212,"date":"2013-05-15T13:49:29","date_gmt":"2013-05-15T13:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dave0.nfshost.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2013\/05\/15\/almost-human-race-gender-difference-and-my-6-year-old-son\/"},"modified":"2013-05-15T13:49:29","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15T13:49:29","slug":"almost-human-race-gender-difference-and-my-6-year-old-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2013\/05\/almost-human-race-gender-difference-and-my-6-year-old-son\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Almost Human,&#8221; Race, Gender, Difference, and my 6-year-old Son"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, this morning I made the moderately irresponsible decision to watch this trailer for <a title=\"Poor Mojo's Newswire: Trailer: Almost Human\" href=\"http:\/\/www.poormojo.org\/pmjadaily\/archives\/039943.php\">Almost Human<\/a> while my 6yo and I sat eating breakfast:<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DuDkOVe7ay0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nMojo&#8217;s description, and my interest in how sci-fi can help us explore racial tension, had me hopeful, but I ended up being sort of underwhelmed.  It was awful gun-shooty, and I kinda have a policy about Violence, and it&#8217;s wonderful capacity to Solve All Our Problems.<br \/>\nAnyway, attracted by the gun shots and action, my boy leaned in to watch.  When the trailer was over he went back to eating and reading, not saying anything.  After a few beats it dawned on me that I really ought to ask what he thought of it; the trailer is pretty gun violent (which is a thing I&#8217;m not cool with), and the boy would know enough to know I felt that way.  I doubted his silence signified a lack of opinion.  So I asked him if he liked the trailer.  He said yes.  I asked why, and he said it was &#8220;interesting&#8221; (which, in and of itself, was interestingly noncommittal&#8211;you can always back-pedal from &#8220;interesting,&#8221; by insisting that you aren&#8217;t *endorsing,* just showing interest.  I&#8217;m interested in the Holocaust&#8211;I&#8217;m downright *fascinated* by the Holocaust&#8211;but no one thinks I approve).<br \/>\nI asked what he found interesting.  He said he didn&#8217;t know.<br \/>\nSo we watched it again.  &#8220;Is it the music?&#8221; I asked, &#8220;Do you like the music?&#8221;  He said no, so we cut the sound.  It was still interesting.  In fact, it is the most interesting way to watch this trailer, it&#8217;s downright fascinating, because *every* thing you need to know about this show you can get just from the acting, the cutting, the framing, and the images themselves.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n&#8220;So, what interests you about the pictures.  Is it the action, the shooting?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>Yeah, that&#8217;s sort of interesting.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;What about the man. Is the man interesting?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>Yes.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;Why?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>Because he&#8217;s a boy and I&#8217;m a boy.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;So the show wouldn&#8217;t be as interesting if it was about a girl who was injured and then had trouble adjusting?&#8221;  (aside: That show would *fascinate* me.)<br \/>\n<I>No.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;Is the show interesting because he&#8217;s a police officer?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>He&#8217;s not a police officer.  He&#8217;s a detective.<\/I><br \/>\n*smiles* &#8220;Yes, you&#8217;re right.  That&#8217;s different, but daddy thinks of a detective as a kind of cop.  But it&#8217;s different.  Would the show be interesting if the man was a cook or worked in an office? Would you like that show?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>No.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;Would it be interesting if the man had a quieter cop job, if there was no shooting?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>No.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;What about his partner, the robot with the dark skin. Is he interesting?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>Yes.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;Would the show be as interesting if the robot was a girl?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>No.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;Would you be as interested in the show if the man had dark skin and the robot was white?&#8221; (aside: my boy is a pink colored human)<br \/>\n<I>Yes.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;What if they were both white, or both dark?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>No.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;Why?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>It&#8217;s interesting because they&#8217;re different.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;What&#8217;s the man like?  The white man?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>He&#8217;s . . . bad?  Or mean.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;I think he&#8217;s angry, he&#8217;s upset that he was hurt and his life changed.  It can be very hard to adjust, and he&#8217;s having trouble adjusting.  What about the black man, the robot.  What&#8217;s he like.&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>He&#8217;s . . . nice?  Or calm?<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;Is he happy?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>No.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;Why not?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>I don&#8217;t know.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;He think that he&#8217;s unhappy because he doesn&#8217;t get treated fairly, because he&#8217;s a robot, and that&#8217;s different.  Is *that* interesting?&#8221;<br \/>\n. . .<br \/>\n&#8220;Would the show be as interesting if they were reversed, if the white man was nice and the dark robot was angry?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>. . . maybe?<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;What if they were both the same?  If they were both nice or mean?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>It would be better if they were both nice. . . .<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;Why?&#8221;<br \/>\n. . .<br \/>\n&#8220;Does the white man scare you, bud?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>Yeah.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;That&#8217;s OK; sometimes people are scary when they&#8217;re angry. But this show is still interesting, even though one of the men scares you?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>Yeah.<\/I><br \/>\n&#8220;Why&#8217;s the show interesting?&#8221;<br \/>\n<I>Because they are different.<\/I>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Anyway, so, that&#8217;s where we left off, with this weird little outline of how different is *too* different, and how little is not different enough.  No huge revelation or realization here, but I needed a place to lay this all out because I&#8217;d tweeted about this conversation, and folks wanted details.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p>Holy crap! Talking about this trailer with my 6yo was *fascinating* \u201c@<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mojos_newswire\">mojos_newswire<\/a>: Trailer: Almost Human <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/FiYUOqL1Ls\" title=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/140jUw4\">bit.ly\/140jUw4<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; David Erik Nelson (@SquiDaveo) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SquiDaveo\/status\/334637315391643648\">May 15, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nIf there&#8217;s any takeaway here, it&#8217;s this: I remember seeing <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/White_Man%27s_Burden_(film)\"><I>White Man&#8217;s Burden<\/i><\/a> when I was a teen.  It&#8217;s a clumsy, laughably earnest film&#8211;and I realized that even as I sat in the theater, alone, watching it&#8211;but even though I could see it&#8217;s ham hands clear as day, it still brought the visceral reality of race and racism home in a way that good classes and discussions and books and documentaries never had.  It brought racism home to me in a way that *being a Jew for my entire life* never had.  I left the film in sort of a daze, because it was all so stupid and obvious and cornball, and yet I was silently, invisibly enraged.<br \/>\nLet that sink in: A box office flop starring John Travolta somehow managed to activate my sense of Justice in a way that growing up among Holocaust survivors could not.<br \/>\nIf I&#8217;d watched that trailer alone, I would have written off <I>Almost Human<\/i> entirely, just another ham-handed big-budget cringefest no different than that jankety-ass looking <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/sleepy-hollow-trailer-gives-the-headless-horseman-an-as-505543918\">Sleepy Hollow<\/a> business.  But I watched it with my boy, and instead wonder about the weird&#8211;and often sinister&#8211;power that these things have in our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, this morning I made the moderately irresponsible decision to watch this trailer for Almost Human while my 6yo and I sat eating breakfast: Mojo&#8217;s description, and my interest in how sci-fi can help us explore racial tension, had me hopeful, but I ended up being sort of underwhelmed. It was awful gun-shooty, and I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2013\/05\/almost-human-race-gender-difference-and-my-6-year-old-son\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8220;Almost Human,&#8221; Race, Gender, Difference, and my 6-year-old Son&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}