Contra my hope that Disney’s announced Star Wars Episode VII would draw storylines from the Expanded Universe—I’ll just have to hope for a Rogue Squadron television show, someday—it sounds like Disney’s going to start from scratch. As E Online reports, “‘It’s an original story,’ a LucasFilm source tells me. In other words, forget the Star Wars novels. Forget the graphic novels. Forget everything you think you know about what happens to Luke Skywalker. According to my sources, Episode 7 will literally be nothing you’ve ever seen or read before from the Star Wars universe.” The Guide To The Star Wars Universe stone-cold nerd in me will admit to being somewhat disappointed (though I still don’t think this means they scrap the continuity for sure—it could just mean they spin out to a different era or part of the galaxy). But I still think it’s worth thinking about what made both Star Wars and the Expanded Universe so addictive, and what could distinguish this franchise from the other ones in play in the media landscape.

One possibility, which I wrote about in Slate today, is that the franchise could jump ahead of its competitors by focusing on the female characters that have always been one of its strengths: Read more

Alysia Abbot has a fascinating critique of the rise of gay fathers on television in The Atlantic today, pointing out that the most interesting gay father in media this fall isn’t a sitcom character, but an activist in a documentary:

The most vibrant gay man you’ll see on a screen this fall won’t be found on TV but in David France’s filmed history of the ACT UP movement, How to Survive a Plague. Bob Rafsky quit his job as a PR executive at Howard Rubenstein (he’d represented Donald Trump before going on disability for AIDS) in order to become an activist. In a New York Times op-ed he wrote, “There’s not much to do except to keep fighting the epidemic, and those whose actions or inactions prolong it, until I get too sick to fight.”…Rafsky was also a dad. Among the most affecting scenes in an already affecting movie are those between him and his young daughter, Sara. We see them celebrating birthdays and dancing together in his sunny New York apartment. Rafsky’s face beaming, he tells us in voiceover: “It’s the only really successful love affair of my life.” This love is made more poignant as we see him deteriorate over the course of the film.

Rafsky’s best known for a moment in the spring of 1992, when he heckled candidate Bill Clinton at a campaign rally in New York City,”What are you going to do about AIDS?” Clinton responded, “I feel your pain.” The televised exchange led to AIDS becoming an issue in the ’92 election. During the Clinton administration, protease inhibitors were developed, transforming AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable disease. These advances couldn’t save Rafsky, who died of AIDS in 1993, but his story illustrates the legacy of political activism, a legacy to be proud of. At the time of his death at age 47, he was writing an autobiography about his work as an AIDS activist tentatively titled A Letter to Sara.

The gay fathers on TV today can make us laugh, but can they inspire? If they can’t inspire can they at least not embody embarrassing stereotypes? Thinking about the latest crop of gay dads on television I can’t help but recall a popular chant from the Act Up demonstrations whenever someone was arrested or harassed: “The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!” The irony is that, too often, the world wasn’t watching then. But now, thanks to these primetime characters, people are definitely watching. They just aren’t seeing much of the truth.

Or maybe to put it another way, we aren’t seeing much of gay parents other than their gayness. It makes sense that stories about gay couples who are starting families would involve characters who are confronting their expectations for what their sexual orientation meant for what they could and couldn’t do in their lives. That’s an important conversation, but it is a limitation on storytelling, and on building out other facets of these characters. It’s one of the reasons I like Julie White’s character on Go On so much. In addition to the fact that she’s one of the only lesbian moms on network television, her character already had children with her wife, so that conversation is over and done with. Instead, we get to see her anxieties about dating and sex as a widow, her crankiness, or even be surprised by the fact that she turns out to be a lovely, accomplished dancer. We need stories about gay people reckoning with their own gayness. But equality means that not all stories about gay people should have to be about their gayness, just as straight people get to blow things up, and have wacky roommates, and go to terrible bachelor parties, and wear latex without implications for their sexual orientations.

The bridge is yours.

-A look at the independent black TV landscape.

-I cannot wait to see Jayma Mays on The League.

-A visual history of the decimation of New York.

-Emily Yoshida gives “Glad You Came” the most generous reading of all time.

-Louis C.K. on SNL:

Given what seems to be some surprise that’s greeted the revelation that I am a total Star Wars Expanded Universe nut, I was drawn to another essay by a woman about why she loves a franchise that’s still, oddly, considered something that only men could get extremely attached to. Deborah Lipp’s video essay about growing up loving Bond girls is fantastic:

I wrote about this a little bit in a piece I have going up at Slate today about the women of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. But I think one of the things that’s interesting about female action characters is that we still end up with vexed relationships between those women, their strength, and their sexuality. For James Bond, seduction is part of his tool kit, but we’d never see him literally fuck a female enemy to death,, as was the case with his one-time adversary Xenia Sergeyevna Onatopp. So often, femme presentation and sexuality (which are presented as if they’re inherently linked) are part and parcel of what makes a woman lethal. Part of what makes Catwoman dangerous, for example, is those high, sharp heels–though Christopher Nolan did a nice job of playing with the idea that Selina Kyle manipulates the idea that femaleness makes her vulnerable and hysterical as a means of positioning herself strategically. It’s not just that you can shoot a gun or snap a neck, and in high heels and perfect red lipstick, too. It’s that those heels and that lipstick are precisely what make it possible for a woman to pick up that gun and possess that power.

For that reason it’s always interesting to see female action heroes who take on or put off extreme femininity, whether it’s Angelina Jolie deliberately shucking off her housewife uniform and pick up a big gun in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, or Starbuck putting on a dress and shocking the hell out of Lee Adama in Battlestar Galactica. If we could disentangle sexuality and femininity from the core of female action heroes’ power, stepping aside from the idea that those elements are the source of physical and intellectual influence, we might actually be able to think more clearly and creatively about sex and beauty as tools and assets–things that women have choices about and use strategically, just like Bond, and in some cases, the Bond girls.

If you want to know what it looks like when male artists show solidarity with women and women’s issues, the Dublin hip-hop group Original Rudeboys just provided a great example of it, turning down a chance to open for Chris Brown:

A member of the group Sean Walsh said: ‘Even though it’s a huge opportunity to play in the O2 with a major hip hop star and a substantial fee was offered, we are completely against Chris Brown’s assault on Rihanna.’

The group also claimed they didn’t want to mislead their own fans as their latest single ‘Blue Eyes’ is about domestic violence.

Sean said: ‘In addition, with our latest single ‘Blue Eyes’ being about domestic violence it goes against everything we are about as a band and supporting Chris would send out the wrong message to our fans.’

It’s one thing to talk the talk, and another to take an actual financial and long-term growth hit in order to stay consistent with what you believe—or, like John Scalzi, to spend actual time and energy arguing the good fight instead of simply saying the right thing when you’re asked and it’s convenient to do so. I hope this comes back for them in all the best ways. And while it’s a little hard to track down good streaming audio of their stuff, I’d be up for hearing more of this:

On a related note, the argument’s been made, I think effectively, that some of the reaction to Chris Brown has been racialized, making a black man a scapegoat for domestic violence while famous white men with even worse records get to continue on their way. I do think that there’s an extent to which Brown appears to be trolling people who are dismayed by his behavior, since disapprobation seems to have hardened support among his core fans, as is the case with his decision to dress up as a jihadi stereotype for Halloween.

But I do think that there are racial differences between the response to Brown and the response to white men of a certain profitability behaving badly. And I can’t think of a better example of that than how quickly a silence descended around FX’s decision to work with Charlie Sheen, and to stay in business with him after the first ten episodes of Anger Management, and the fact that when the news came down yesterday that Fox had struck a deal to syndicate the sitcom on nine affiliate stations, that it went relatively uncommented upon. I’d like to think that the news that more Fox divisions are getting into business with a guy with a long record of violence against women is news. And if equality is what we’re after, I’d like to see the same kind of pressure on Sheen to behave constructively and respectfully towards women if he wants public approbation that’s being applied to Brown.

Well, this is one music industry biopic I’m actually excited to see, and that has some chance of not disgracing or white-washing the person being portrayed: Benedict Cumberbatch is set to play Brian Epstein. Per The Hollywood Reporter:

Todd Graff wrote the screenplay, whose focus is not a story about The Beatles from Epstein’s point of view but the story of Epstein himself. Sometimes called the “fifth Beatle,” Epstein signed the band in 1961 — before Beatlemania hit — and died in 1967 from an accidental drug overdose. He was a closet homosexual and suffered from gambling and drug addictions — and was many times the glue that held the band together. The producers describe the project as the story of “the man who threw the biggest party of the 1960s but ultimately forgot to invite himself.”

Further signs of optimism: Graff wrote and directed the excellent Camp. And Tom Hanks is going to produce through Playtone, a decision that produced the excellent and mysteriously underrated That Thing You Do.

That movie looked at an American band in the same era as the rise of the Beatles, and told its story through the perspective of the band’s drummer, a late addition to the group, rather than primarily through the perspective of their manager, played by Hanks. But it had a nice, deft sense of what it takes to wrangle young men who are just getting famous, and of the commercial structure that elevated promising bands in the era. Hopefully, this look at Epstein’s life will have those same nice grace notes, and get away from the Lennon-McCartney cliches, without wallowing too much in Tragic Gayness.