Artemis Sighs

Take a facet of crime, and then look at television shows/movies that feature those criminals as protagonists.

White mobs.

White pirates.

White serial killers.

White political corruption

White drug dealers

I mostly want to talk about this as a TV phenomenon, but pick a crime, any crime, and Western media has probably made a movie/TV series/play/etc. with a white person that romanticizes the criminal activity. No matter what, a white person can do whatever terrible crimes and still have a TV/movie fanbase that loves them.

When you see black or brown people committing crimes on screen, you are to see them thugs and criminal masterminds and people to be beat down.

When you see white people committing crimes on screen, you see a three-dimensional portrait of why someone might commit that crime, how criminals are people too, and how you should even love them for the crimes that they commit because they’re just providing for their families or they’ve wronged or they’re just people and not perfect. This is particularly a luxury given to white male characters, since there few white female criminals as protagonists.

If and of the above shows were about black or brown folks, there would be a backlash of (white) people claiming that TV and movies are romanticizing criminals and are treating them too much like heroes and that it will affect viewers and encourage violence and “thuggish” behavior. And yet fictional white criminals get to have a deep fanbase who loves these white criminals, receive accolades and awards, get called amazing television that portray the complexities of human nature. Viewers of these characters see past the atrocious crimes and into their humanity, a luxury that white characters always have while characters of color rarely do. The closest that mainstream TV has come to showing black criminals as main characters is probably The Wire, and even then, the criminals share equal screen time and equal status as main characters as the police trying to stop them.

Repeat after me:

penisennui:

(via Justin Jorgensen) “In 2007 I worked with photographers Williams + Hirakawa to create a concept piece of me sleeping on a sheet cake. I though these cakes looked like pillows, and there’s the obvious play on ‘sweet dreams.’

I wondered if I could fall asleep on a cake and have sweet dreams. I didn’t. It was pretty gross really and wasn’t easy to wash off.

A few years later, outtakes from the shoot were sold to Getty Images as stock photos. I didn’t know this until 2011 when one of those photos made #13 on the wildly popular Buzzffed.com list of “60 Completely Unusable Stock Photos.”

Into 2014, the Getty Image photo continues to make the rounds on Facebook and Tumblr.”

god, probably: “great! that’ll be 18 dollars.”

this is what happens when you name your pokemon before you know what it evolves into.

“I’m a therapist and keep this poster in my waiting room, apparently it’s saved a few lives.”

I don’t like the phrase “a cry for help.” I just don’t like how it sounds. When somebody says to me, “I’m thinking about suicide. I have a plan: I just need a reason not to do it,” the last thing I see is helplessness.

I think your depression has been beating you up for years. It’s called you ugly, and stupid, and pathetic, and a failure, for so long that you’ve forgotten that it’s wrong. You don’t see any good in yourself, and you don’t have any hope.

But still here you are: you’ve come over to me, banged on my door and said, “HEY! Staying alive is REALLY HARD right now! Just give me something to fight with! I don’t care if it’s a stick! Give me a stick and I can stay alive!”

How is that helpless? I think that’s incredible. You’re like a marine: trapped for years behind enemy lines. Your gun has been taken away, you’re out of ammo, you’re malnourished, and you’ve probably caught some kind of jungle virus that’s making you hallucinate giant spiders.

And you’re still just going, “GIVE ME A STICK. I’M NOT DYING OUT HERE.” “A cry for help” makes it sound like I’m supposed to take pity on you, but you don’t need my pity. This isn’t pathetic. This is the will to survive. This is how humans lived long enough to become the dominant species.

With NO hope, running on NOTHING, you’re ready to cut through a hundred miles of hostile jungle with nothing but a stick, if that’s what it takes to get to safety.

All I’m doing is handing out sticks.

2. No voice but you hear it

3. The handle struggle

4. Hijab & Shoulders