S1E6: Problematic Faves

Welcome to unpack this where academic misfits unload their shit. This is our episode on problematic faves. And I am Joe Hsu. One of your hosts

and I am Constance Bailey the other host.

So I guess we’re going to check in, we haven’t talked in a bit, so how are you doing, what are you up to?

Yeah, so yeah, I was just going to say, like, what have you been up to.

Probably based on like our editing and release schedule. People may not know that there’s going to break. I think October is probably, or arguably the busiest month for academics. And we could probably debate that. I think I postponed like two weeks. I was like, okay, I can’t do this week. And it can’t do next week, but I’m directing someone’s dissertation and I really needed to get them some feedback.

And. There were a couple other, um, like conference CFPs. And I’m always trying to have some like experiential component to my courses. So I was trying to do some budget stuff to get funding, to take my students to an HBCU because I’m teaching this class and the black collegiate in popular culture. And, you know, I waxed on about how great and wonderful homecoming is.

And so we’re not going to homecoming by. You know, I did want to have that, you know, I just wanted that experience to be a part of the course. It’s really important to me that they’d be able to juxtapose what it’s like for a black student at a predominantly white institution versus a historically black college and university.

So yeah, it’s been, I mean, it’s just a busy thing and parenting things, of course. Um, I always, you know, like your pet parents, so if you also have their ebbs and flows, but lots of doctor’s appointments and in life things. And so yeah, I had. My, I want to say imminent return to group fitness yesterday, but it really wasn’t very, I wasn’t going to have like social media and like return of the Mack and like really awesome music and be like, yes, Constance is returning to group fitness and.

Hey, I’m doing a class Sunday night. You can sign up if you want. It was very underwhelming. The return. Yeah. What have you had going on with, I’m excited

for you though, returning to movement. I remember after surgery, just getting to move again was nice, even though it was underwhelming entirely, but I’ve been so speaking of like really busy times for academics, it’s conference season ish, like at least for the fall conferences and everything I’m doing is still online.

But last week, I co-facilitated a workshop with some scholars who I really admire on storytelling and racial justice. And I also was invited to do this workshop with the. Asian-American solidarity, collective, where we also talked about Asian-American experiences and storytelling, and the ways that thoughtful strategic storytelling can participate in coalition building.

But I really love spaces that are not exclusively academic, where I get to talk about some of my academic. Things, but really we’re talking about the ways that, that applies to people outside of universities who are still, also interested in how language functions. Um, it’s I don’t know. It’s, it’s cool to be in rooms where I don’t have my professor hat on necessarily.

Yeah,

no, that sounds awesome. That sounds amazing. Yeah, I forgot. I did. I’ve have done a couple talks, maybe. I don’t know. Um, but I definitely got to talk about, I kind of dabble in African-American food ways. And so I was giving a talk about Toni Morrison’s beloved, and I think that is so interesting, right?

I, I, one of the things I would want. I identify myself as a food waste scholar, but I think some people think of me in that vein, but I think it’s just because when I have to teach undergraduates, it just becomes so eye-opening for them that something that seems very innocuous to them. And it’s very it’s.

I mean, it’s just a part of our everyday life, the ritual of eating and consuming food. And it’s something that people don’t think about, like how it reflects social class stratification and how it can enforce. Boundary maintenance in terms of, you know, group membership and just all sorts of things, right?

The regional aspects of it that are very interesting. I don’t know nearly enough about it. And I never try to pretend that I do, but it’s interesting for a novel. Um, many of Morrison’s novels are very much food is integral to thinking about them. And in a lot of the protagonist are cooks and domestics and food preparation becomes a.

Like an integral part of the novel and beloved certainly has lots of food moments that the students were like, wow. If what my friend tells me is true, her students had not thought about that. So I was like, well, I’m really glad. And yeah, I hope that it was cause sometimes it feels like. Throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

No. That it

sticks to get feedback that something stuck. For sure.

So, yeah, but that sounds really cool. I wish we had more time. Right. Then we could be a fly on the wall, like when you’re talking about storytelling, because I think we do really interesting things in that we don’t get enough. You know, opportunity to talk about that.

But although it does occur to me that at some point we should do an episode on food. That’s a fun through line, I think in both folklore and in rhetoric that we get to do these things for students, we get to have these discussions with students about how this everyday seemingly innocuous thing is actually deeply into fused with cultural meaning and, you know, flows of power.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Anyway, problematic tubes for

today. Yes. Problematic phase. So yeah, that was, I don’t remember whose idea it was, but we can both take credit for these great ideas. It’s

probably phrasing is definitely you. I think that was you.

Okay. All right. Well, anyway, so yeah, so problematic phase, I guess.

Why now? Right. And so I was going to ask you, what is one of your problematic phase, but I guess I should even just say it in terms of why now? I think one of the reasons that it feels full time with, to me, it’s because. I am a scholar. I do write about African-American comedy and humor, and Chappelle’s a Netflix special.

The closer has had so much attention, um, good, bad, and otherwise, and is best been provocative. And I’ve read some really great think pieces. And I think. Let me see Roxanne gay. I think you skate, shared an article. I want to say it might’ve been Danielle Quintus Morgan who wrote that piece and I’m a fan of her work.

And then I think poets, psyche Jones, there there’ve been a lot of pieces that won’t even try to enumerate them, but they all have slightly different takes. Right. But all it takes it. I respect and that I. Probably wholeheartedly agree with, since people know that I do write about African-American comedy and humor, I’ve been asked about my take and I always try to preface and say, I haven’t seen it, but here’s what I can say.

And so here’s what I know to be true. And so it’s really been interesting that conversation. So I think just the Chappelle thing and also this. Conversation about cancel culture more generally. I think that people have been having, is that even a thing, right? Because on the one hand you have people saying accountability for one’s actions is not, that’s not canceled culture, like actions have consequences.

So I guess I just kind of wanted her to take more generally, like why now? And then, then what is one of your problematic phase?

Okay. So yeah, a few things to footnote real quick. I want to also mention among them any takes on this. Mr. Jones of trans lash, podcasts and media, and canceled me daddy, a podcast that I quite enjoy.

I did a crossover episode where Mara Jones went on to it’s three trans people, one black woman of color who does one black trans woman of color, who does a trans media specifically talking about, uh, Dave Chappelle. And I think that’s a really important conversation for folks who are actually interested in diving into the nitty gritty of this, um, and the other.

Response I wanted to have about cancel culture is that I think my problem with that term is that it’s a giant umbrella term for a whole host of different reactions to a whole host of different situations that can’t quite capture all of the nuance of what’s happening. So, so you can have a situation where say a very famous, very wealthy, very influential person is being told on Twitter that they said something harmful to a marginalized community and that’s okay.

Pretty much never actually canceling that person ends up still being very rich, very famous, very influential. They just happen to have a bunch of people on Twitter, yelling at them for awhile, or maybe, you know, their one talk at this one place got canceled or something, but nothing really is being taken away from them.

And there are also instances I shared this article that was actually pretty heartbreaking. So there’s a short story. That was a big deal in, in the small transplant. It was in, Clarkesworld a longstanding scifi publication. And it was titled I sexually identify as an attack helicopter, which is reappropriating that meme, that circulates on the right to make fun of trans and queer politics.

Gender is made up. Haha. Um, it was written by a trans woman, but she had written under pseudonym because she wasn’t out. And for this brief initial moment, readers were mostly positive about it. It’s artfully written and in my view, Pretty readily as a critique of the surveillance and regulation of gender, but because the author was anonymous, some people started suggesting, you know, what, if this title is actually trolling, trans people.

So Twitter did its thing and people who hadn’t even read the style, the story piled on, including some very famous Saifai writers and beyond just attacking this story. People were saying that the author, that they were claiming that the author quote had to be assistant or man, because no woman would write this way.

Right. The author. Wound up asking that the story be taken down. She had already been struggling with her mental health and all of this very understandably threw her into a dysphoric spiral and she wound up checking herself into a psychiatric ward. Emily Bender weapon box has this very well-written extensive piece on it.

And she has this quote from the author that’s that stuck with me. So she said that after these events, uh, she saw the story as a sort of peer review of her own womanness. And, and this makes it seem like she failed, which is not true. We failed her or at least the discursive environment that our story entered, failed her in this inability to listen.

Right. Structurally vulnerable people have many good reasons to be suspicious. But in this case, that suspicion was weaponized against someone who did not come to harm, who was actually looking for recognition from her communities. To put events like this, where a marginalized writer is not only silenced, but harm to the point of checking herself into a mental health care facility and deciding to pull the rest of her submitted writing from other publication venues to put this beside rich famous folks, using their didactic platforms to complain about being publicly disliked by some people.

Cancel culture just captures too many different possible reactions in the public sphere. It’s, it’s often used to flatten difference and sometimes to dismiss the very real grievances of a marginalized group and that same phenomenon can’t be lumped into when it is used to actually disenfranchise vulnerable people.

If that makes.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And that’s a really good point. I really hate that. I’m glad that for a writer who is vulnerable and whose identity like that, they, that they are able to publish anonymously, but the way I get then interpreted, and I often think about the consequences or not even consequences, but we as academics.

And I guess in some ways we’re now venturing into public intellectual space and the potential for backlash or the potential for. Things to be misinterpreted or the way in which vitriol can be publicly directed at us while I am concerned. I also think that because we are one we’re attached to institutions that in some ways we are representing or an extension of, but also.

I think that it helps in terms of building and establishing an audience that we do have our names and our in our public personas, whatever good, bad, or otherwise, whatever they may be that can sort of help help establish the podcast in terms of getting, what has the metaphor like something about getting on the ground and running I’m betraying the proverb.

But anyway, there are real puts into a risk also, and that’s unfortunate, right? It would be nice if. Twitter and, and these public platforms were places where you only have constructive criticism and conversations that are positive and that encourage you and that are generative. And I’m reminded of that.

It was an animated movie. I don’t know, maybe record route for some. Then I took my kids to see like probably 10 years ago now. Cause time is doing some weird vortex or something. It feels like it was two years ago. It probably was tan. But anyway, the point was there was this character, you know, there was this social media something and the person became so obsessed and the way that academics become obsessed with a one negative review, even if you got 200 glowing ones, we hyper-focus, and the character says it to her or him, you can’t read the.

You can, and it’s easier said than done, like for this writer, you know, who’s struggling with mental health issues or all of the things that you’ve mentioned. It’s not that easy. Although for us, I think it is that easy. Cause I will put on our Twitter feed. Like I will block, like whenever I actually actively use our Twitter, I’m not, can’t entertain the negative energy, but everybody doesn’t have that luxury.

Right. And so,

yeah. And we’ve said that I don’t have Twitter and one of the reasons I don’t have Twitter or haven’t yet I might end up, I keep needing to use Twitter for research. So. Despite the point. Um, the reason, part of the reason being that Twitter, I think folks have said it before is where nuance goes to die.

I think it’s Michael Hobson has said lots of things about this, that Twitter has a very important usage, especially in the age of hashtags where it allows structurally marginalized people to express outrage on mass in a way that didn’t wasn’t easy before the internet, but also. Eh, when you circulate arguments in 124 characters or whatever it is that you have, you necessarily erase a lot of nuance.

And then it becomes like this game of internet telephone, right? Like in the example of that story, where lots of people who hadn’t even read the story, just presumed. Author was transphobic rather than asking maybe she might’ve had other reasons for hiding her identity. And maybe you putting her read of femininity or womanhood on trial is exactly the thing that would perpetuate this author’s, you know, need for anonymity and fears, right.

About being public. So anyway, I’ll let us to say that, uh, cancel culture is, is a very. Imperfect term that I try not to use because I think it collapses a lot of important distinctions. Similarly, I actually don’t like the term problematic every, every time one of my students uses it. I write what do you mean by this?

Because it is also used as like, I think I feel icky about, but don’t actually Kevin fully articulated why I feel like he about this thing, you know, um,

a great term,

right? I mean, it’s particularly not helpful when you’re writing an academic argument and he’s like, you’re a rhetorician analyze. What is the thing that you’re trying to identify, but.

No, it’s totally a hold over from grad school. Where, when I couldn’t think of what I wanted to say, I just said it’s problematic. So it’s super imprecise and it becomes this umbrella term for many things. But to your point, what is the thing? What is the actual issue or what is the concern? Are you objecting?

Because this thing is racist or sexist or. Whatever. Um, so yes, but that’s what we got for today. So,

and so often it’s because I want the students to say it wrong. I’m like name it. It’s racism. Say it right now. Um, but yeah, I, okay. So, so the question was, what is, what is one of your problematic phase? I, so we’ve said this before, and I think it’s worth emphasizing art is never perfect.

Uh, and we also should not expect art to be perfect because it creates this sort of paralyzing situation where folks might not even try it, that expression, which would be terrible for cultural production, but it also, so as a, you know, trans queer, disabled, uh, person of color, I. I get very sad sometimes that it’s very hard for me to consume media with.

You know, finding some element of myself attacked in by the thing that I’m watching. So, so my example of this is, is Lovecraft country actually, which I love as a show and I made you watch it. And so much of it is so beautifully done. And I think it’s episode four. Where they have just an awful representation of a two-spirit identity of indigenous communities.

It perpetuates a notions of indigenous ratio. It creates this, it perpetuates the narrative of the gender nonconforming body as monstrous. Uh, and it was just. Surprisingly not thoughtful for a show that was otherwise super thoughtful about its approach to representation. And I think it’s particularly from corners like that, like when I’m watching a Marvel movie or when I’m watching, you know, mainstream television, I expect it to be sort of a really flat, uh, approach to representation, but it was.

This, it was this particular show that had otherwise been so very exquisitely done in terms of its, its narrative in a storytelling that just out of nowhere for this completely, um, I don’t know, harmful reductive, regressive rendering of, of transmits of indigeneity. That’s not a community I’m part of, but still, um, It felt really wounding to me that I just, I remember the episode ended and I just sort of sat there, staring at the TV for a while.

Like what did I just, I was not emotionally prepared for this. I did not have my armor on. So I think that that’s one of the examples that comes to mind in terms of, you know, I still, I still really like the show. It’s still really good. Um, but also I would never watch that episode again, I guess is where I wound up with that.

Yeah. I remember distinctly, yes. Having those conversations and there being a discomfort on my part, but I really couldn’t name the, so I probably still would have ended up with problematic. Like you did a great job. Articulating what exactly did not sit right with you. And I just, I didn’t know. And you’re right.

The show was so well done on so many levels and it’s really heartbreaking that there is not going to be a season two, but I do wonder, you know, maybe a show that had such moments of brilliance. Maybe that’s what you do then, because if it’s an impossible act to follow, what do you do? I re I distinctly remember you saying that.

I mean, it’s hard for me when I think about pro problematic faves. I shouldn’t say, like, to know where to begin because the natural inclination, I think on some level is for me to say Chapelle, but there’ve been so many conversations and think pieces about Chappelle. One of the things that I have said.

And I don’t, I haven’t really ventured into public intellectual realism as a, I don’t publish for the most part in non-academic journals. Not because I don’t not, because I don’t think I have, you know, great ideas to contribute. A lot of it is time, but I also don’t know that I can really add anything meaningful to this conversation.

And one of the things that I have said informally is that I want to elevate black women comics and humorists, like I’m done talking about blah, blah, blah, but what I will say. And this is very much echoed in the. Danielle Fontez Morgan piece for vulture, I think. And she also recently published not come out last year.

I think laughing to keep from dying, which I haven’t had a chance to get yet, just because of some other research. But I did hear a talk that she gave when the book was launching and it was great. So I really respect her contributions to the field, but it’s. So much of my love for Chappelle is really rooted in it’s dated right at this point.

So I love what he represented or what his stand-up performances from now, probably 20 years ago. And those things are dated and they also don’t reflect his status as celebrity. And the fact that he’s wealthy and a, and they don’t reflect. The very aggressive SIS head. Like I know lots of CIS, hetero men who do comedy and they not necessarily trans transphobic or homophobic as I feel some of Chappelle’s later work has been.

And again, haven’t seen the closer, so it’s hard for me to say, like out on the one hand, I want to say yes, Chappelle is about problematic. I don’t even know if I can honestly say that he’s a fave anymore. Like I have not been one of the things that I loved right about Chappelle was his ability to make you laugh while pointing out the horrible systemic racism and, and just the ills of this system.

And one of the things that I find. Quite striking is that he no longer seems to be compelled by this desire to make people laugh. And I don’t know that that’s true, but I haven’t found a lot of his later routines to be all that funny. And I feel like I can appreciate a good joke. I have no one else can, I can appreciate a good joke.

And so. I just, it’s hard to say, you know, so I grapple with that. Right. I think it’s been a while since I’ve taught an African-American comedy and humor course, but when I do teach one again, I’ll certainly teach him even in, in spite of whatever. Cause I do think he’s important in terms of thinking about contemporary African-American comedy.

I do think looking at his delivery and his, you know, what some of his early stuff, which was subversive and. You know, powerful material and great material and funny material. I do think when we think about African-American humor as a way to transport important cultural messages, while simultaneously thinking about this double entendre and this duality in the way that African-American comedy, that how that.

I can work. I just think that his stuff early stuff was transgressive even while some of them was like, you know, stoner jokes and like kind of bodily, Jos fart jokes that were half of it was kind of tasteless. But yeah. So at any rate, I don’t know. So I think now. What I want to kind of more gravitate towards is I, and I don’t even know what the genre is.

This is how out of tune I am with, you know, I’m not trying to do that. Middle-aged person thing where it’s like, I’m not cool. I don’t know what you call it. The Twitter. Like, I literally just don’t know the sub genre, but if I was going to say trap music, but it’s not even that like, so within hip hop, they are different movements and end.

So I really don’t know what I’m this new, um, It was not even all that new, I guess what I’m so, so it’s like the Meghan, the stallions, the Cardi, B’s the city girls of the world. And I just think I’m conservative. So it might be that it’s so much profanity that, um, that can be, you know, feel a little like, oh my gosh, you said.

Pussy 50 times in this song, but I love that shit. Like I like when I have to hit the road, that’s going to be on heavy rotation and maybe some, some, you know, um, throwback to little Kim, some Foxy brown, which is not to say that I don’t equally love MC like queen Latifa, uh, rod Digger, you know, other black women have, and.

KRS one big daddy Kane. I just had a versus that was just everything. It was so good. So there is my appreciation and love for the nostalgia of salt and pepper and MC light and whatever. I don’t even add. It’s not even the mass popularity of like a Megan thee stallion right now. I think it is that I love to see young black women not given a foot while we could say that.

It, at least in appearance wise, maybe the same could have been saved for like little Kim or Foxy brown. But I think one of the things that the industry has made clear, or maybe just different things that I’ve read and seen that a lot of that, a lot of their, uh, public. Representation of self was constructed by PDD or by their ma you know, by, by men.

And whereas that does not seem to be the case with this new ilk or new generation. And so, yeah, I don’t know the genre, it feels like ratchet hip hop or something, but. But I’d tell you, I was trying to almost do it lineage. I was listening to Megan, the stallion, and then I went back to gangsta, boo, who was like the first lady of the like three, six mafia crew.

And I was like, yeah, why not? I’m like, yes, yes. And it just really took me back to some of them to my undergrad days, but also just, it felt like women’s empowerment. But I think the reason why it’s sort of problematic is on the one hand, you have young women saying. No, I own my sexuality pay me, blah, blah, blah.

But on the other hand, and this is probably the somewhat conservative, I would never be a say, I’m a person who invests in respectability politics. I reject that idea vehemently, but at the same time, I’m like, wait, we’re doing, are we, are we, are we trading sex for money? But on the other hand, Okay. Sex work is a legitimate, legitimate fee in there.

So yeah, that’s probably where I want to go. It is really problematic, but it’s just a lot of profanity and I’m getting old.

I do, I have noted that I am the profane one in this pairing, so that does make sense to me. You’re the reason there’s an asterisk in our shit in the, in the title.

So yes, I frequently via texts using asterisks.

I just, I lack a sensor in, in all situations. I think, uh, both written texts and spoken out loud, probably in ways that get me in trouble more often than not. I, I don’t want to spend too much time much about, but I do. I want to say that one thing. I didn’t plan on watching a special on that. I did accidentally stumbled into the transcript of the closer and accidentally read the transcript of the closer.

We just, not the same as, as watching standup comedy, I realized, but, um, I don’t know. It’s like, like you’re saying, none of them are, none of them are jokes there. And as you know, lots of trans folks have written one being trans is hilarious. Going through a second. Puberty is all sorts of funny. Um, but also most of the jokes being made about trans people by non trans people are.

Completely. I mean, they’re mundane, we’ve heard them. They’re not funny. They’re just poking fun at trans people. Um, and you know, I think Chappelle himself has said, you know, we know the difference between laughing with us and laughing at us, and this is very much a, a laughing at, um, in a way that’s I don’t know mean, you know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t feel funny in any sort of way.

There’s this, there’s a joke where you compare as transness to black face that, uh, Is a reiteration of a joke from six and stones actually, where he compares transness to him being Chinese. And he does this pretty godawful impersonation of a trans of a Chinese man. And I was watching that cause I came across, it just popped up for me on YouTube.

And there’s no way for me to laugh at that joke without endorsing something. Assumption about transness or Chinese-ness that is inherently really harmful with that comparison for that punchline to work either the Chinese-ness he’s doing is a sort of caricature. So the, the gender that I am doing sort of a caricature or the Chinese-ness that he’s doing is authentic in some way, in which case, that is a completely insulting portrayal of my racial identity.

So anyway, uh, that’s, that’s my brief engagement with, with that. I, I am not a scholar on African-American humor, uh, though, and I have not spent a lot of time with Chappelle’s early work though. I do, I did enjoy some of the early work. Um, by the time he popped back up with all of the homophobia and transphobia, it felt like a different comic to me, uh, which might be, you know, it might be that.

I think we’ve talked about this before that for, in the academy on much lower, smaller stakes, none of us are rich and famous in that way, but when you are structurally marginalized and you spend an entire lifetime recovery career scrapping for your own survival and legitimacy, sometimes it’s hard to shift that mode, right.

And realize. Right now your voice and your platforms have a different role than they used to. And that not all directions for you are up, went in terms of punching. Uh, so yeah. Anyway, those are, those are my, like three thoughts about that.

Yeah. The thing, right? I’ve heard that there is reference to a trans friend and in the way that Chapelle used that joke about being the token black friend, it’s like, how dare he?

But I’ve had even close family or friends who they didn’t come at me on a public platform, but who inbox me or texted me. And it’s so interesting how people can sometimes get to the same place as someone on the opposite end of the political spectrum. But not see how they got there because they’re so invested in the thing.

And it’s so interesting then, because the way in which Chappelle is now becoming that thing. So like another analogy might be gun rights advocates. I have a lot of family who were either in the military or who were hunters and that they come from this gun culture. And so, you know, it’s sort of interesting that they like complete opposite sets of reasons why they’re.

I think it’s second amendment, but so I’m finding similar logical leaps in terms of the Chappelle thing. And again, without having seen it, you know what I can say? And it’s interesting too. Cause I have friends who will say some people say he’s a genius, but here’s what I see. Like I see this cognitive dissonance and blah, blah, blah.

And I said, I will die on that hill. I do think Chappelle is a comedic genius and it’s because I think that I hold them to a higher standard. And then I know that you can write. Do all of the things that he wants to do in terms of talking about structural racism and inequity, without having to throw other groups on the bus, like if it were someone else less talented and less capable, then people wouldn’t give a shit.

Right? So many people who are writing these thing pieces, we loved Chappelle. He represented our voice. In a way that you know, that we didn’t have that we were D platform or didn’t have the ability to do that. And so when a relative or when a friend said to me, what next, I guess we won’t be able to joke about disabled people or whatever.

And I was like, actually, we shouldn’t do that unless you’re a member of that group. And even then it might be questionable, but yeah, we actually shouldn’t do that. Horrible shitty thing to do. Like how can this person that I respect and often find myself agreeing with a lot of their political texts, Calkins.

And what else? I’ll say this completely to my mind, like nonsensical thing. Yeah, no, you shouldn’t do that. It’s a horrible thing. And when you know better, you do better. I was like, people like. Myself included at Eddie Murphy’s raw, which was horribly homophobic. And there there’ve been, lots of people have use.

And I said, but now we know better. You can’t do that. It’s not okay. It’s not cool. Yeah. We didn’t have the cultural sensitivity. Yeah. And so it’s just been so interesting in the way that it’s been politicizing public debate, and I’ve been trying to deliberately stay out of them because I want to be able to go to Thanksgiving with my family, to the extent that we can safely do so and not have a bitter, like I just avoid the conversation.

I just have to leave the room. So,

and I mean, what you said about, um, him giving a voice, I think that’s, that’s what. Uh, from, you know, my remove not being part of the black community makes me hurt for, you know, black queer and trans people in that, particularly some of those writers have written, right.

This was somebody who we felt that way about who then deliberately show. We’re not actually part of the we that, you know, he was representing at that time, which is particularly painful. Um, my I’m teaching a transgender rhetorics class right now. And. We were discussing disclosure, the documentary on Netflix about trans representation of this past week.

And it opens with. Uh, review of how trans people have been represented as the punchline for so very long in a way that actively de-humanize them in a way that legitimize violence against them. And that legitimately also translated into physical violence against them. And so. It provides on the same platform that you know is standing behind.

Chappelle provides an argument for why this has real world harmful consequences, but I I’m actually gonna use that to segue into a lighter, into a lighter, problematic fav. I just realized as we were talking. Um, I am as a queer of a certain generation attached to the outwards. It’s, uh, it is, it’s a soap opera for lesbians, basically.

And, and it, it is the, the widest version of California. On TV from, I guess the early two thousands. It also has a really awful trans character, um, who does trans masculinity in a way that, that reinforces a lot of stereotypes in ways that have been roundly critiqued or out around the internet. But also it was and think still is the only TV show mainstream TV show.

That was about a community of lesbians. Right? So at the time when I was. I don’t know it, you know, in my teens and early twenties identifying as a lesbian, it was, it was this representation that I, that I clung to, despite the fact that it was about these like rich white people in, um, LA. Yeah. I’m trying to remember what part of California there, but anyway, if you watch it now, everything is super dated.

You know, there’s, there’s. I want to say there’s very little that’s that’s at all redemptive about it, except for the fact that I am histologically attached to it. I think somebody wrote an article that was like, it’s trash, but it’s our trash, which is pretty much how I feel about it. Yes.

I love it. It’s trash, but if Eritrean.

So I’ll use that to say my other problematic fav is Kanye freaking west. Listen, let me tell you something. I have been, of course, the solution than disappointed as many people have over the years with Kanye and as much as even when he and JC were at their heyday, I was really critical. What I felt like was this thread of conspicuous consumption and their lyrics and similar artists where they were really not most black people don’t have their issues are not about basket paintings and which Birkin bag to buy they’re wealthy wives.

And so in some ways the materiality of their lyrics. Created this cognitive dissonance for me because I loved it, but I loved that. They took ownership of that. It was interesting. It’s like I’m wealthy. I don’t have the problems that you poor black people have in a way that I think is probably why a lot of academics felt like Chappelle was being disingenuous because he’s still claiming to be a voice for the masses, but you’re a voice for.

Rich black hetero, like for celebrity. And I liked that. And so one of the things that even though his career has had these crazy trajectories, I am teaching this class, the black collegiate in popular culture. And so listening to the college dropout and late registration and graduation, and then, you know, I really need to listen to Donda and I’m sure we may even have a Donda versus Montero or some other like just music episode where we talk about it.

But. I’m really as much as I don’t like the church, but I do like the churchy thing. So I love the black church aesthetic of the album as someone who grew up in the black church, I don’t largely agree with. A lot of Kanye is messaging, but I didn’t even before it, before he moved to the side, guests really he’s a self-proclaimed musical genius.

I might be inclined to agree maybe, but I really appreciate his musical evolution and the way that he keeps refashioning. Even growl. I feel like he’s garbage, but he’s my garbage or he’s angry. I just think he’s well, here’s what I really do think. And I guess we, we found this out of some years ago that he does have mental illness that is diagnosed, but maybe not treated or not consistently treated and.

That I think might be at the heart of a lot of his issues, but I do think his know sort of talent and whatever is undeniable and still, whether you like the messaging or anatomy, he just still produces really good music. My problematic faves are about music. I will outside of a work context. Shake my decrepit ass to something that is probably exploitive and might be also objectifying women.

But I, I’m not sure because maybe it’s maybe we’re objectifying ourselves. I don’t even know what to make of it, but I really. I think that a lot of my stuff is about music. So, and apparently

minor about TV shows. But I do, as I have this thought right now, that’s kind of half emerging that I’m about to talk through.

Um, and disclosure, a lot of the trans people speaking on it, talk about how they found representations of themselves. In things that were not necessarily explicitly meant to be trans for example, bugs bunny or in things that were not necessarily meant for them. Liver Cox talks about being very attached to Yentl.

Um, and the ways that people who don’t have a lot of mainstream representation have to find sort of their hope and reflections of parts of themselves, where they can, you know, and a lot of that is just not going to be perfect. And so. One of my, one of my struggles with this. And I want to really underscore that, that none of the, the major arguments about Chappelle have actually asked for his show to be taken down.

Like none of is actually about canceling him. It’s about amplifying transient presentation or acknowledging that this part of this show is transphobic. Here are some things you could watch that offer more whole comprehensive. Empathetic genuine representations of transness as an experience. So like in a world where we had equal or equitable access to representation to audiences, uh, who would hear us.

Some do ranting transphobic things wouldn’t matter, you know, in the same way that lots of people saying things about Sears had rich white men doesn’t really impact the fact that they are rich and affluent and have lots of access to leavers of power. So the problem is not inherently in this one person saying these things.

It’s those things in a system that has structurally disenfranchised and silenced other people. And so. I guess all that is to say that we find, or we hear elements of what we need to survive in worlds, where we haven’t been able to have access to all of that representation and the solution. Isn’t so much to like cancel all of the bad things so much as find an advocate for, and fight for avenues for, for more voices to offer better, better representations.

That’s a really great point. And I think it’s, so I’ll use that to segue. Maybe this might be the last point it’s so it makes me think about. Uh, Y for many people who teach undergraduates, especially freshmen and sophomores, lower division undergraduate students, we used to really like a DTS, the danger of a single story.

Right. And it’s so ironic, I think in the same way that we see each of hell, like, here’s this wonderful, no black woman writer who’s talking. Here’s the problem when you only have one narrative and that tends to dominate your perception of a group and then to Iraq unironically for this same person to then amplify transphobia in a way that doesn’t seem to be at all reflexive.

So it makes me think. That there is this myopic perspective that many, maybe everyone I don’t know, uh, has when it comes to groups outside their own privilege. And so really unfortunately, but to your point, we need more diverse representation. You so that the one doesn’t become the mini, so that one representation of trans identity or queer identity doesn’t become the default.

Yeah, I think, yeah, a call for that, which would be appropriate. Like let’s get more diverse. Not that we have any power to do that, but.

Yeah, but we’ll say it in our platform with two listeners,

listen, when we ever launch it, we will have at least 20 listeners I’m telling you.

I’m glad. I’m glad you brought that up.

Um, you know, that’s, I, I didn’t even think of that, but a DJ being my, probably my biggest heart rate in terms of Americana was my favorite novel. And it just didn’t know what to do with that. Once she started, you know, doubling down on her transphobia. You know, in the, in the spirit of, if we’re going to discuss transphobia, we’re also going to amplify trans people owning and finding power in their transness.

I also want to mention a quick, Hey amazi, who has been doing really brilliant stuff in terms of not only language and imagery and character, but also. Asking us to reimagine what writing can do in the world. Um, and so, so I just wanted to mention them as a trans, non binary writer who has been doing really brilliant work, uh, who also got in a very public spat with the DGA, but, um, who is.

Writing has, um, been a tremendous force for trans representation in,

well, yeah, I mean, that is that’s. I think we could probably go on for days and especially because for our title, we unpack things. So we work through things so we could do that, you know, forever, but I think we’ll probably stop there, but yeah, just hit us up at the unpack, this podcast, email that calm or.

On Twitter at the Unpack This podcast. And yeah, just let us know if you have questions, thoughts, comments, and we will talk to you soon.