this gallery is inactive

hey all!!

ive been thinking abt this for a while, but im going to try to get off social media, and tumblr in particular. ive been on this website for….six years? yeah like six years and thats ridiculous

(i really wish id thought ahead and made my art blog a side blog BUT alas) 

hey anon,I’m not gonna kill you. I did say on that post that I wouldn’t answer questions on this, but at the same time I feel like I should give you and my followers something real to think about. To be honest, I suspect that you don’t believe The Zoo was a problem based on the way you phrased the question, and in that sense I may not be able to change your mind. But I do have a following on this blog which is mostly composed of younger people and kids, and in that way I have some responsibility to ask that my followers see this and give it genuine thought. I hope you will, too.

There are lots of posts by more concise and more studied people than me already going around, and lots of discussion and breakdown in general on SU’s persistent racism problem. If you’re feeling genuinely invested in understanding, I’d recommend some simple google searches on the very /recent/ history of human zoos and the propaganda produced by colonists and white people to justify their existence and dehumanize the (mainly) black people who were forced to live under those conditions for white amusement, and to uphold the delusion of white superiority which allowed (and still allows) the abuse of black people to happen on an institutional level. 

SU is ultimately attempting to tell a broad, epic narrative about resisting colonization, and in doing so takes on the basic responsibilities that come with the tremendous cultural power of fiction. The very simple scratch of the surface is that human zoos existed, racism is built fundamentally into our culture and social structure, and those two facts alone should have meant that this episode was never produced, or even conceived. 

It’s a much more complex topic than what’s here, of course, but there’s plenty of discussion to consider and plenty to think about in terms of fiction and context. My personal take on it would be reiterating the analysis of everyone who broke down this episode already and it would probably be redundant, so reading what others have already written is important if you want to understand the issue and the context that comes with it. But a factor in what makes the Zoo such a disgrace that I haven’t seen much specific discussion of - and one that’s personally very important to me - is that artists (and audiences) often don’t recognize or don’t consider the huge amount of impact that popular fictional narratives have on culture and social mindsets. It is critically important for artists to understand the impact of their work and to introspect on what it means to tell a story to hundreds, thousands, possibly millions of people.

Fiction is often a blind spot in the critical eye because most people go into experiences of fictional media with their guard down, making themselves intentionally open and vulnerable in order to really experience a story. There is very little acknowledgement or respect for what that kind of impact means and the responsibility that each artist is obligated to consider when creating for a broad audience.  At the risk of being cliche but honest, creating in the public eye is in and of itself a privilege, and with all power comes responsibility - especially if you already have privilege that you haven’t given real thought to, and ESPECIALLY if you are creating for children and families on a wide scale.