sebastian n°1 fan

The Pitt doesn't do this. Its core characters are almost all deeply fucked up. But it is diverse enough to not have each of those characters be the only person of their particular group represented on screen.

For example, Samira has some major flaws as a doctor - caring but very slow, orders too many tests, can't take feedback, isn't a team player. But that's clearly not because she's an Indian woman. Have you seen Shamsi? She's efficient, bad ass, a little mean. Have you seen Victoria? She's young and smart and figuring shit out. They have flaws but their flaws are different. This helps show they aren't meant to be flaws of a group but flaws of a specific character. Samira's flaws are because she's a complex character. They aren't because the show is pushing a narrative that Indian women make bad doctors.

Did Baran continue to work an entire shift while having seizures then almost start driving? Yes. But are we meant to look at that and say people with disabilities have bad judgment and can't be trusted. No. So clearly not. We see Caleb, Mel, Becca, multiple characters with disabilities on screen. And we understand Baran to be a capable and compassionate doctor, the show goes out of its way to show us that. But it also shows her coping with shame about her disability and how that's complicated by the ways she has to navigate the workplace as a woman and as an ethnic minority. She's meant to be a complex character. We're not supposed to look at her and say people with disabilities, women, or people from the SWANA region are incompetent. If someone thinks that's the right reading here then it's time to go back to go back to elementary school literature class.

Likewise, Robby, a Jewish man with severe mental health conditions, should be allowed to be a complex character. Does he sometimes do things that are sexist? Yes. Is he falling apart and lashing out? Yes. And I think people have grasped that this isn't a statement abou5 how people with depression or PTSD are bad. There are other characters with PTSD, Abbot most notably, who handles his PTSD very differently. So we can see Robby's struggle as his own, as a complex character. But when it comes to the fact that he's Jewish, even though there are multiple other Jewish characters on screen, including Lena who is a caring death doula and nurse, and multiple Jewish patients from different racial and class backgrounds, somehow Robby becomes a justification for a whole load of antisemitic tropes to be dragged into the conversation.

I hate that the Pitt fandom sometimes makes me wish the show didn't make Robby Jewish. I want to be able to watch a show where a character is Jewish but isn't a paragon of virtue. I want to not have fans bringing antisemitic tropes to every conversation of this character or the actor who plays him.

I want to be able to see complex female characters and complex character from all racial and ethnic backgrounds and characters with disabilities represented on screen and be able to see them fuck up and be deeply flawed and struggle just like we've seen messy fucked up white characters on screen for so long.

Also we (fandom/audiences/anyone who's discussed the importance of representation and diversity in media over the years) LITERALLY fought and pushed for this kind of culture/show - this was the GOAL!!! (and my god did it feel impossible at times).

But THIS is what was pushed for: a show that doesn't tokenise its minority characters, so they don't have to Be their representation and nothing else, so they can NOT have their stories and arcs revolving around/constantly circling back to them as the queer character or the disabled character or the Jewish character - they can just be characters/people with flaws and interactions and arcs that are not all about one element of them, and so they don't have to represent an entire community on their own, they can just be individuals.

We (as fandom/audience) HAVE to let this happen! We HAVE to stop analysing things with the same perspective and language and attitude that we did in the 2010s because: things are actually finally changing and improving and going where we want and we have to go with them!!! We asked things to change: they changed! Now we have to change with them.

We asked for a show/time where every character could be analysed essentially the same way you would a cishet white guy (which is to say as what was considered the 'default' neutral base that was only influenced by backstory and current story bc he didn't have to be the weight-bearing pillar of an entire community desperate for representation)- and I am about to start begging y'all to imagine/do this unironically, because we are in serious danger as a fandom of undoing what's been done and actually projecting old biases that are trying to evolve and change back onto the things we watch.

What do I mean by this? Okay, solid example: I saw a LOT of fans arguing/complaining that the scene with Baran at the end of season 2 where she breaks down in her car after her shift and realises that she's not safe to drive due to her worsening disability was: all about Robby/that 'Robby made her cry'/that this was her realising that 'Robby was right' and it was 'vindication for Robby'. That right there? That is NOT something the show did. That is something the FANDOM did. That is misogyny perpetuated by the fandom.

The show: had a deliberate gap of multiple scenes/time to distance from Baran and Robby's conversation. The show also very deliberately took her/showed her: OUT of the Pitt/the ED/Robby's in-show domain/place where he still was (which it very very rarely does - this was an exception and a very deliberate and important one) so that she would be in a 'neutral' space/in her OWN space (her car) and in privacy/by herself so this was not being done by or for anyone else, or even so anyone else could witness it - this was a private moment purely for and about her and her coming to terms with her disability and the realities of her situation. It could not have been written/filmed/set-up to be more purely about Baran, and yet...

The FANDOM: made it about Robby. The fandom made a woman's scene and a woman's disability and a woman's story arc about a man. Because fandom is trying so hard to find instances of misogyny and bias (especially from Robby and/or Noah Wyle) that they are creating them where they do not exist/where the show has gone out of its way to avoid forging that connection/where that connection: does not exist. But y'all made it exist anyway. Because it's more important to some of you to have things to get mad at than it is to see and respond to what is actually there. So you see what you expect to see. You see what you WANT to see. And tragically what you want to see is the same thing we've been begging to get the fuck off our screens for YEARS now.

Check yourselves. Do not get sucked in to blindly assuming everything is an act of misogyny or racism or inherent bias. Yes these things still exist, yes we need to be conscious and aware of them and call them out and shut them down: WHEN THEY'RE ACTUALLY HAPPENING. We do NOT need to create bonus instances to get mad at/prove how on the ball and ready to spot Badness we are. Sometimes: a male character and a female character can have a disagreement on screen and it does not necessarily need to contain giant vats of misogyny. Sometimes it's just: two characters have a disagreement on screen and it can be analysed with just that in mind (which is what we GODDAMN WANT!!!!!).

Apply some goddamn critical thinking please. And that means apply it to: the things you are watching, and the things that people are saying about what you are watching. Go back and rewatch the scenes in question. Fact check. Actually start with the most basic 'what is it I am actually watching on-screen now and what is it telling me'. Not 'what do I expect to see/what do I think is going to happen/what do I vaguely remember based on what people have said' what ACTUALLY functionally happens on-screen?

First I want to set up a framework. Being Ashkenazi Jewish means often being perceived as white and also being part of a racialized minority. What do I mean by racialized minority? That this group is understood in a social context as distinctly immutably other. Remember that racial groups are very much social constructs rather than facts of genetics. If this is hard to grasp, it might help to think about other groups like Latinos or Arabs and how they are viewed in America. A person in these groups might look white but when someone finds out they are part of this group they are understood to be not white. Jews are historically viewed as a racialized other in most places in the world. This is very much true in American history even if we think of Jews here as having been accepted as white. Remember back when businesses had signs that no Black people were allowed, at the same period of time there were signs all over America at those same establishments saying no Jews allowed.

For context of my experience: I’m a Jewish woman with Ashkenazi heritage who looks pretty stereotypically Jewish but doesn’t wear anything that would identify that I’m Jewish. What this means is that if I’m in a place with a large Jewish community I’m typically read as Jewish. If I’m somewhere that people have rarely met Jews before then I’m read as white.

Here are fun things that happen when your patients read you as white:

- you get to listen to them say wildly antisemitic conspiracy theories and assume you agree and want to hear it

- you get to examine your patients and find their neonazi tattoos that they seem entirely unashamed for someone to see

- you get to debate whether to tell patients that you’re Jewish or to lie. For me because I work in an outpatient setting and know my patients for years, at some point when they ask what I’m doing for Easter or Christmas, I often do tell them I’m Jewish. And then unfortunately you get to deal with a myriad of responses ranging from “oh that’s ok dear, I don’t mind,” to a patient of mine who came into their next visit and handed me two typed pages explaining why the Jews faked the Holocaust so they could take over Palestine and how Jews love murdering babies (real experience I had).

-you get to do this same dance with coworkers. You get to have coworkers you considered friends say antisemitic things and feel betrayed.

This is not an experience of privilege. This is an experience of hiding. This is an experience of wondering how many patients who seem perfectly nice actually think vile things about you. It’s an experience of calculating if it’s safe to be open with patients or colleagues.

And over the last few years it’s also the experience of having people devalue the discrimination and pain that the Jewish community is experiencing. For non-Americans, Jews experience close to the greatest number of hate crimes in this country and by far the greatest compared to the size of our population. This is of course a global phenomenon but I know the US statistics and we’re discussing an American context so that’s what I am sharing. Despite this I watched the CEO of the healthcare organization I work for send out an email condemning every other type of racism. She sent an appropriate email after George Floyd was murdered calling out systemic racism. She sent an email calling out racism against Latinos in the wake of everything our government is trying to do. But after Bondi Beach there was an email saying that gun violence was bad and never once mentioning antisemitism. And after October 7th there was silence. Being a Jew at a progressive healthcare organization has meant going from feeling like part of a coalition of people with common purpose to understanding yourself to have become many of your coworkers favorite scapegoat for all the evil in the world.

Being Jewish in America right now, as with most of the diaspora, is to feel profoundly isolated. To calculate when it is safe to disclose being Jewish to people who read you as white (or for that matter who read you as solely Black or Asian as is the experience of two of my friends who are biracial and so are never read as Jewish).

I think when people watch the Pitt they think about how being a woman in medicine or a Black person in medicine shapes that experience, how it’s complicated to have power over patients as a physician but also to have them demean you with sexist comments or assumptions that you’re a nurse or a CNA.

But I’m not sure viewers think about what it’s like to be Jewish in medicine. How you listen to patients repeatedly say antisemitic things and assume you agree. How sometimes they do know you’re Jewish and say antisemitic things to your face. How you calculate constantly how to respond when patients start talking about Jesus and ask if you believe (which they do all the time because this is America and people are so upfront about their Christianity). It’s tiring and othering and the experience of patients and coworkers being bigoted against you contributes to burnout.

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

#arms #arms #arms