Its been NINE YEARS and i still dont think anyone knows exactly why teen titans was cancelled
Same reason Young Justice and Green Lantern The Animated Series were canceled: Girls liked it. Bruce Timm finally up anâ said it out loud in an interview a while back when he was asked why in the hell GL:TAS had been canceled when it was doing so well on every front; DCâs animation department has institutionally decided that feee-males donât/canât/shouldnât like superheroes, so even if a show is drawing in great viewership numbers and has great toy sales, once they find out that itâs popular with women and girls, they pull the plug on it. Cartoon Network loved Teen Titansâ two million viewers for new episodes will do thatâ and wanted a Season Six, and the production staff was already in the planning stages for it; they were going to have a big arc about Terra and why she was Living Normal, and do a lot more with the extended Titans team members.
This is so fucked up.
To elaborate on this point a bit, the reason this happens is that modern television merchandising aims for total market segregation.
In a nutshell, itâs much more efficient to sell things to people if you can divide them up into tightly defined subcategories that have no interests in common; that way, you never risk accidentally competing with yourself.
This is why childrenâs toys (and toy sales channels) are actually much more strongly gendered these days than they were forty, thirty, even twenty years ago: one of the basic market segregation splits theyâve decided to use is âboys versus girlsâ.
Ever wonder why you see Avengers t-shirts that leave Black Widow out of the group shot, or Guardians of the Galaxy action figure lines with no Gamora? Thatâs market segregation in action.
The upshot is that shows with crossover appeal can actually be cancelled for being too popular with girls; theyâre viewed as âstealingâ the female market from the specifically girl-targeted media that rightfully âownsâ it.
This is the sort of thing folks are talking about when they say gender roles are socially constructed, by the way. The gender split in media merchandising? Itâs not just artificial, itâs deliberately imposed as a top-down marketing strategy. When folks try to justify it by saying âthis is the ways itâs always beenâ or âthis is just what the market wantsâ, theyâre lying through their teeth - this is, in fact, the merchandisers dictating to the market what it wants in order to sell stuff more efficiently.
(Interestingly, the reverse isnât always true: if a specifically girl-targeted show unexpectedly becomes popular with boys, sometimes rather than being cancelled, its merchandising will shift to court the male collectorâs market. TV execs are so sexist, even their sexism is sexist.)
In particular, 1865 was a moment when reparations and land reform were actually feasible. Late in the war, some of Lincolnâs generals â notably Sherman â had mitigated their slave-refugee problem by letting emancipated slaves farm small plots on the plantations that had been abandoned by their Confederate owners. Sick or injured animals unable to advance with the Army were left behind for the slaves to nurse back to health and use. (Hence âforty acres and a muleâ.) Shermanâs example might have become a land-reform model for the entire Confederacy, dispossessing the slave-owning aristocrats in favor of the people whose unpaid labor had created their wealth.
Instead, President Johnson (himself a former slave-owner from Tennessee) was quick to pardon the aristocrats and restore their lands. [3] That created a dynamic that has been with us ever since: Early in Reconstruction, white and black working people sometimes made common cause against their common enemies in the aristocracy. But once it became clear that the upper classes were going to keep their ill-gotten holdings, freedmen and working-class whites were left to wrestle over the remaining slivers of the pie. Before long, whites who owned little land and had never owned slaves had become the shock troops of the plantersâ bid to restore white supremacy.
Along the way, the planters created rhetoric you still hear today: The blacks were lazy and would rather wait for gifts from the government than work (in conditions very similar to slavery). In this way, the idle planters were able to paint the freedmen as parasites who wanted to live off the hard work of others.
I grew up in the south, in a rural community where slave-holding plantations were the center of the economy for most of the 19th century, and reading this was like puzzle pieces snapping (loudly) into place. This so accurately describes the community and mentality even now.
And it reinforces what Iâve always believed and told others: for many in the south, the Civil War never ended. If you want to see how little time changes anything, go live in one of these small, Southern communities. 150 years ago is a blink. Itâs nothing. And it doesnât change nearly as much as you would think or hope, cell phones and flush toilets notwithstanding.
Itâs amazing how an idea can blossom into action. Â Today was one of those days, where, I needed to channel my anger and frustration about went down in McKinney, Texas into something productive. Turns out, today ended up being a fascinating social experiment that confirmed what I didnât want to acknowledge, but already knew.
This morning, I was sitting at my desk, furious about the video I had seen on YouTube, and I yelled down to my friend YahNe Ndgo. Â She ran upstairs, thinking I had seen an animal (haha). Â Anytime either of us has a good idea, the other will give it a go, just to see it to its logical conclusion. Â Well, this was a good idea that gave us both the opportunity to be creative, while working out and working through some very complex emotions about what we saw in the video.
When we finished hanging the banners, I sat back and watched. Â Some people on foot or either in their cars stopped to look, react, talk, sign, and to be photographed. Â Others, on foot, or in their cars, just kept it moving. All of it was a moving experience for me, because it confirmed for me how powerful words are, and how they can bring us together or divide us in an instant.
I sat on the porch all afternoon, in the hot, heavy and hazy sunlight, chatting with old people, young people, black people, white people, men, women, children. Â We talked about power, black on black crime, how seeing so much violence leaves us numb and unable to feel sometimes. Â One young lady, in particular, was so angered by the police that she admitted that her feelings were on the verge of turning into pure hatred. Â She despited how she, an educated black woman, could be so easily disrespected by the very people that swear to serve and protect her.
White people (and some black people, too, like the older gentleman who stated calmly that âpolice brutality is part of Americanâs past,â to which I replied, âthat doesnât mean it has to be part of our future.â) need to understand that feelings are raw and volatile and running red hot like an iron poker, emerging from fire, unshaped and unformed and completely unpredictable
As I stated in the FB post I wrote today, time is running out. Â What are we going to do? Â We canât continue to wait and allow incidences of police brutality to run rampant in our communities. Â We canât continue to turn a blind eye, thinking that it canât ever happen in our own communities because we live in a gated subdivision or whatever.
***No Justice, No Peace (5/3/15): ***The police cracked down on late night protesters, imposing a curfew that only seemed to be in place in black communities across Baltimore. With dozens arrested, even more pepper-sprayed, the mayor buckled to the pressure and finally ended the curfew, effective immediately. #staywoke #farfromover
before today, i hadnât heard of ârough rides,â and thereâs a good chance you havenât either. basically, a ârough rideâ is a horrifying process in which âa handcuffed man or woman is put into the back of a police van or paddy wagon, without being buckled in or secured. The vehicle then drives recklessly, making sharp, dangerous turns and sudden movements in ways that throw the passenger violently around the vehicle.â
hereâs the evidence: rather than take Freddie Gray the short 2 minute drive from the arrest site to the police station (see left), he was deliberately driven recklessly for over 40 minutes (see right)Â around Baltimore, handcuffed and in the back of a police van, with no seatbelt, until his spine broke.
the terrifying thing is that this seems to happen a lot. earlier today, two more people came forward to testify that they were put through rough rides at the hands of the Baltimore PD. a 43-year-old man was charged with âpublic urinationâ and given a rough ride that resulted in a spine fracture that rendered him quadriplegic for the rest of his life. five years ago, a former Baltimore police officer admitted that rough rides are an âunsanctioned techniqueâ in which police vans are driven to cause âinjury or painâ to unbuckled, handcuffed detainees. rough rides are very much a Real Thing.
in case it needs repeating: Baltimore police deliberately drove recklessly with a cuffed, injured Freddie Gray in the back of a van with no belt â a 40 minute ride for a destination 2 minutes away. his spine was severed, and it killed him.
When I was arrested during the RNC in 2000, this also happened to me though I was cuffed at both my wrists and my ankles. Itâs more common than you thinkâŚ
He left on a stretcher, no word if heâs still going to be arrested or not.
if this isnt the most obvious example of white privilege and whats going on in baltimore right now then i dont know what is
THE SMILE ON THAT COPS FACE PISSES ME THE FUCK OFF HES HAVING FUN HURTING THIS MAN⌠Thatâs disgusting Iâm going to throw up. I really hope this guy is ok.
A collections of texts/articles/books/movies that may help you understand the howâs, whyâs, and whatâs that are going on in Baltimore. All with links and sources.Â
IMMIGRATION OFFICER FATALLY SHOOTS UNARMED 19 YR OLD BLACK MAN 10 TIMES DURING BALTIMORE RIOTS.An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed 20-year-old Terrence Kellum, Monday afternoon on Detroitâs northwest side.
Police say the agent â part of a fugitive task force involving ICE and officers with the Detroit Police Department â was attempting to serve an armed robbery warrant at a home in the 9500 block of Evergreen near W. Chicago when the shooting occurred.
âI am told there was no forced entry into the residence, that they were allowed inside,â said Detroit Police Chief James Craig. âAnd Iâm also told that the agent may have been faced with a threat, and it was at that point when he decided to use deadly force.â Craig would not talk more specifically about that alleged threat.
One of the eyewitnesses, a woman, shouted at the chief as she described what she claims happened. âIt was 10 bulletsâŚand did it take 10 bullets? When he came out, they didnât have the handcuffs on him!â she said. âThey shot him! He was not able to run to do nothinâ. Yâall didnât give him a chance!â
An Investigation has been promised but we all know how that goesâŚ.
The problem of restoring police authority is not really a problem of police authority, but a problem of democratic authority. It is what happens when you decide to solve all your problems with a hammer.
Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic. The Myth of Police Reform
The real problem is the belief that all our social problems can be solved with force. (via protoslacker)
Letâs pretend for a second that this âquestionâ doesnât come off as vaguely hostile, that I didnât have to make several police reports last year about people stalking me in person to âsee if I looked whiteâ, and that I havenât received harassment or death threats based entirely on what people assume is my racial identity, as well my actual racial identity. Letâs also pretend that what I look like is some kind of secret, that I havenât posted about my racial identity openly on this blog and associated media, that I havenât spoken at events in person as MedievalPoC, and that hundreds of people whoâve read this blog havenât also witnessed my physical manifestation in the flesh, demonstrating that I am neither a ghost, nor a sophisticated Turing machine barfing out posts into the great void of the internets.
The thing about genocide, both cultural and physical, is that it erases human histories. Iâm mostly Native American, I have non-white European ancestry, and Iâm something like Âź white. And since weâre getting personal, Iâll let you in on something: I can never really know my history for sure, not in the way that many other people are able to. That disconnect is a source of constant grief and loss to me, every day that I am alive.
People of Color in the United States have been systematically disenfranchised for centuries. We are told explicitly and implicitly that we donât have histories, and/or that they arenât important. We are shown in many ways, through many vehicles, that even now we donât exist. And in turn, this deliberate destruction of history and identity is used to delegitimize us as human beings.
And if you canât parse that sentence, let me put it another way: the first time I was asked the question, âWhat are you?â I was in kindergarten, and the only answer I had then was âI donât know.â
The great thing about Medievalpoc is that my personal ideologies can be utterly ignored or removed from the content here, since it mostly consists of images, research, and text sources. I do my best to summarize or explain it in order to be accessible to anyone, not just academics. It is meant to be disseminated as widely as possible, adapted for use in classrooms, read for fun, or shared with friends and family. Additionally, I try to show others how they can do their own research, and make better creative choices.
Removing a personâs history and context drastically affects the formation of their sense of self, their sense of identity. It is an injury to their humanity. Connecting other people to this information is, for me, like replacing something that has been stolen or kept away from someone who is entitled to it. For multiple reasons, I most likely will never be able to reconnect with my own history in that way, but trying to help others feel empowered to seize their own does a little bit towards ameliorating that hurt.
These ideas arenât new, and they arenât particularly unique.
My fatherâs father was Filipino-Chinese⌠My fatherâs mother was
African American-Native American⌠My motherâs father was
German-Danish⌠My motherâs mother was German⌠I was born in
Brooklyn, New York, but I grew up in JapanâŚ
For once itâs not just
black and white. In this compelling chronicle of his journey through
life as a multicultural and multiethnic American, Teja Arboleda uniquely
and personally challenges institutionalized notions of race, culture,
ethnicity, and class. Now, in this
book, he fleshes out the depth of his experience as a culturally and
racially mixed American, illustrating throughout the enigma of cultural
and racial identity and the American identity crisis.
I am perfectly capable of seeing that the general idea behind this kind of personal attack is to delegitimize the content here by implying that I have lied at some point about who I am, and therefore am untrustworthy and must surely be capable of all manner of nefarious deeds.
And hereâs the thing. None of that holds any water whatsoever. In the end, itâs irrelevant to what this whole project is about. People will quite literally make up anything, say anything, repeat rumors and generally foment drama for its own sake. Or as a scaremongering tactic, a silencing tactic, and an attempt to derail discussions. Or just because they feel entitled to increasingly invasive personal information about me.
Theyâre not, and youâre not. So then, you might wonder, why did I bother to write this? Simply because while I know all of this is out there, you in particular decided that you just couldnât allow me to continue ignoring the frankly ridiculous wastes of time time I could indulge in if I were to seek them out. You ignored my repeated requests to respect that, came into my inbox and tried to make THEIR problem into MY problem. Also, sending someone a message like this is rude.
Eric Harris, who was unarmed, died an hour later after what Tulsa, Oklahoma police officials called a âmistake.â According to several news sources, On April 2nd, the victim had reportedly tried to sell a gun to undercover cops and fled on foot as they attempted to arrest him. A video camera captured him, wearing dark shorts and a t-shirt, running up a sidewalk. Harris was quickly caught and subdued. Thatâs when a 73-year-old volunteer patrolman, Robert Bates, âallegedlyâ reached for his Taser, but grabbed âaccidentallyâ grabbed his gun instead. According to Tulsa World, Bates, who has donated thousands of dollars worth of items to the Sheriffâs Office since becoming a reserve deputy in 2008, is a Tulsa insurance company executive. He was working undercover as a member of the Tulsa County Sheriffâs Office Violent Crimes Task Force. The World reported that âBates is classified as an âadvanced reserve,â which means he âcan do anything a full-time deputy can do.ââÂ
Rather than immediately render aid, the officers held Harris down by his neck as a deputy screamed, âFuck You! You shouldnât have f*cking ran!â
As Eric Harris lay mortally wounded, face down on the pavement, he begged for his life. âHe shot me!â Harris shouted. âHe shot me, man. Oh, my god. Iâm losing my breath.âÂ
âF*ck your breath!â the officer yelled.
Capt. Billy McKelvey said the officers were not aware the suspect had been shot, despite the unmistakable sound of the gunshot noise. Bates âmade an inadvertent mistake,â he said.
The New York Daily News reported that no further investigation is planned, unless requested by the sheriffâs office.
BUT CAN WE GET INTO THE FACT THAT THIS PIECE OF SHIT WAS A FUCKING VOLUNTEER COP! WowâŚjust wow. Another George Zimmerman.
Police officers routinely act with excessive force and callous disregard toward Black people. But Black peopleâs witness of racial atrocity is never believed on its own merits. Instead, white people need to be able to pull up a chair and watch the lynchings take place over and over again, to DVR them, fast forward and rewind through them, to smother Black pain and outrage and fear in an avalanche of cold, ârationalâ analysis. Meanwhile, minds rarely change.
Q: hellooo, i saw your post where you said “historical accuracy = no creator accountability” and it was smthg you said you always referred to–can you please expand or point me to your other posts? i’d like to understand more about this! thanks :D
So, say someone makes a show set in Victorian London. There are no characters of color on the show.
Someone watches the show and says, âHey, why is everyone on this show white?â
The creators of the show, rather than accepting responsibility for 1. choosing the setting of the show in the first place or 2. their own casting choices, say, âHey! Thatâs just historically accurate, there WERE no PoC âback thenâ!!âÂ
Basically, itâs about trying to pass the buck onto âhistoryâ for creative choices they made. Like: âOH, I didnât WANT to exclude anyone, but I HAVE to be loyal and accurate to the true history!â
And everyone just accepts that as if itâs true, and as if that is a good reason to make a show that consists entirely of white people.Â
This is about dodging accountability in that they chose a setting they assumed would have only white people in it, and then made that true. And that has happened so many times that the myth just keeps perpetuating itself. Rather than consulting actual history or demographics, they base this idea on TV shows, books and movies that have already recreated some version of âVictorian Londonâ that contains nothing but white citizens (in much the same way the citizens of supposed âNew York Cityâ in countless sitcoms are inexplicably white); media from ten years ago, 20 years, 50 years, and so on.
When he was elected Mayor of Battersea, John replied to press speculation about where he might have come from with
the remark that he had been born - âin a little obscure village in
England probably never heard of until now - the city of Liverpoolâ. He
went on to declare - âI am a Lancastrian bred and bornâ.
Characteristically pugnacious, but he had been stung by reports
which, guessing wildly, said that he had been born in Rangoon or
somewhere in India. He was actually part of the already well-established black population in Liverpool.
London is and was a vastly multicultural and diverse city. Even before the 1800s and photography, surviving artworks depict a massively diverse populace:
But the point Iâm making here is that claiming your whitewashed media is somehow âhistorically accurateâ is total bunk.
If someone creates something that has nothing but white characters, it is that way because they CHOSE to make it that way. There is every opportunity and every reason to create media with characters of color in it, and trying to blame history for whitewashing is about dodging accountability.
Actually it is a jar full of chocolate covered raisins on top of a dirty TV tray. But pretend the raisins are interesting and well rounded fictional characters with significant roles in their stories.
Actually it is a jar full of chocolate covered raisins on top of a dirty TV tray. But pretend the raisins are interesting and well rounded fictional characters with significant roles in their stories.
