This post discusses episodes 13 and 14 of the first season of Veronica Mars.

“I thought being a private eye was about shooting dudes and making out with sexy widows,” Wallace teases Veronica in “Lord of the Bling,” the thirteenth episode of the first season of Veronica Mars. “The widows come later,” Veronica promises him, but these two episodes of the show are about what happens when people refuse to conform to the tropes that they’ve been assigned to. First, there’s Bryce Hamilton, the son of Percy “Bone” Hamilton, a hip-hop producer, who sets up an elaborate scheme to prove to his father that being good at science doesn’t mean he’s “soft.” And in the second, there’s Carrie, “the gossip queen of Neptune High,” who uses her acute understanding of the high school rumor mill to take the brunt of a student-teacher relationship scandal for the girl who really got pregnant, an act of courage that demonstrates how Veronica, who normally keeps her detective’s toolkit sharp and clean, succumbs to bias when her own social milieu is the subject of an investigation that rubs up against her own sore spots.

“Lord of the Bling” traffics fairly heavily in stereotypes, but it gets away with its cliches with some deft attention to the extent to which stereotypes are useful to the people that embody them and to code-switching, and by making those stereotypes the subjects of the case itself. “You know that boy could stand to get hit in the head with a dodge ball or two. Toughen him up,” sighs Percy when we first meet him, signing a waiver that will let Bryce get out of physical education so he can pursue an independent study in science. “How did a man like me end up with National Black Velvet and Urkel?” Percy’s identity, as we’ll learn throughout the episode, is a creation rather than a natural outgrowth of his personality. “He didn’t advertise the fact that much of his success was due to his comfortably upper-middle-class Jewish attorney,” Mr. Bloom tells Keith Mars. Later, Yolanda, Percy’s daughter, whose disappearance is what prompts Percy to seek Keith out to look for her, explains that she’s disgusted by the way her father treated the drive-by shooting that left Mr. Bloom using a wheelchair. “You let everyone believe you ordered it because it gave you cred,” she tells him, after running off with Mr. Bloom’s son. His wife even teases him in the opening about his insistence that Bryce isn’t tough enough. “And the street was tough and you lost a lot of homies. But this is Neptune,” she tells her husband, suggesting that Percy is clinging to a trope that may have outlived its usefulness for his family.

But clearly, Percy’s attachment to that stereotype has done real damage to Percy’s family. Bryce—though he turns out to be the architect of the ransom demand for Yolanda—is bitter that his father is resorting to a private detective, rather than calling the police, a gesture he believes is meant to protect Percy’s reputation as not cooperating with the cops, rather than to expedite the search for Yolanda. “He’s been in jail a third of my life, but I’m the embarrassment? State science fair winner three years in a row but I’m the one that’s soft,” he tells Veronica, in what turns out to be the motivation for his hoax. When Veronica and Keith catch Bryce and march him back to his father to explain, Bryce tells Percy, “You can be mad, Dad. But you can’t call me soft.”
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Last week, a controversy exploded over a new Mountain Dew ad created and directed by the rapper Tyler the Creator, one of the most visible figures in the hip-hop collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, which Syracuse University professor Boyce Watkins—who is himself black—suggested was one of the most racist bits ad spots he’d ever seen:

If anything, I think the ad is nominally anti-racist. The cop initially tries to steer the victim to identify a black man in a do-rag as her attacker, which seems more like criticism of him for getting it wrong than an embrace of the idea that black men are criminals. And the entire joke of the spot is that a goat in a suit is much more threatening than a lineup of large black friends. I don’t think necessarily think it’s reasonable for Tyler to expect viewers of a Mountain Dew spot that’s aimed at a broad audience rather than at Odd Future’s core audience to know that the men he cast in the lineup are his friends, or that the goat is, in fact, Felicia The Goat, a bit of ongoing schtick. Even without that, I think the text of the add is reasonably clear, and while not that racist, it’s not particularly uproarious, either.

But what it does provide is an interesting exercise in interpretation and intergenerational communication. Tyler, in a long and intriguing interview with Billboard, said that he believed his differences with Watkins, who later said he believed Tyler’s intentions had not been malign, stemmed from a generation gap. “The things that he had to experience with racism and stereotypes and being a black man in this country, is different from mine,” he told Billboard. “I grew up in a generation where there’s white kids listening to rap and black kids playing hockey, breaking the norms and everything.” And he suggested that he was disappointed by Watkins’ negative interpretation of his work, in part because he believed that it would make it harder for black artists to get access to the kinds of opportunities that Mountain Dew gave him:

He has to realize that it’s a different generation now. He’s way older than me; he’s old enough to be my father. So I totally get why he would think that, but I also don’t understand why in life are you trying to point out the negatives. It’s a young black man who got out of the ‘hood and made something of himself, who’s now working with big, white-owned corporations. Not even in front of the camera acting silly, but directing it. I’m trying to be one of the directors. But instead of looking at the positivity from that, he’s trying to boycott Mountain Dew. Now that he’s doing that, not only is it messing up opportunities for me, but also maybe opportunities for another young black male who maybe looks up to me and wants to do that in the future. It’s ludicrous.

He’s not necessarily wrong that seeing creatively challenging partnerships attract negative attention may make it harder for artists to work with large corporations in the future. But one of the things I find intriguing about Tyler’s arguments is that they reflect a generational gap that I don’t think he’s acknowledging. Watkins may have experienced more direct racism that Tyler has personally. But it might also be that Tyler is less skeptical about corporate interests and corporate power than older people, and more willing to view corporate investment as a sign that racism is irrelevant or non-operative in this case. Making money is nice, but a corporation’s willingness to write a check to a woman or a person of color isn’t necessarily proof positive that said corporation is definitively anti-sexist or anti-racist. And whatever Tyler’s intentions were in making the ad, his interpretation of what he was giving Mountain Dew isn’t necessarily the same as the corporate interpretation of what they were getting from him.

I’m with Tyler that getting more women and people of color in a position to get money from large corporate interests, in part so they can finance their own products and win more freedom from the corporations who govern their day-to-day creative lives. But I also don’t see much of a problem with asking questions about why those corporations want to be in business with certain artists and what the results of their collaborations are. Writing a check buys you product. But that money doesn’t go to the general public. And it doesn’t buy anyone the ability to opt out of the critical conversation.

The bridge is yours.

-A bell that’s been ringing since 1840.

-Characters on Game of Thrones who are better in the television show than in George R.R. Martin’s novels.

-Sympathizing with celebrities who get in trouble.

-More than a million people have registered to play Defiance online.

-Here’s the first footage for Ender’s Game, for which we get a full trailer tomorrow:

Justin Bieber has had what might be politely termed an awkward spring so far, whether he was joking about whether Anne Frank would have been a fan of his—an idea brilliantly satirized in the New Yorker by Yoni Brenner, who sketched out a vision of World War II in which the Nazis are defeated by Belieberism—and ran into trouble with his pet monkey. But as The Hollywood Reporter notes, he appears to have gotten one gesture of international cooperation right:

Amid an international tour plagued with missteps, Justin Bieber is being recognized for doing good during Thursday’s concert in Turkey. The pop star paused twice during his Istanbul performance to honor Azan–the Islamic call to prayer Muslims observe five times daily. “I’m not a Justin Bieber fan but as a Muslim, I got a lot of respect for him cos of what he did,” one Twitter user posted user after E! Online first reported the news. Wrote another, “You can hate all you want, but he earned my respect.” Later adding: “Muslim performers don’t even do what you did.”

There’s a lot of talk about a culture war without the boundaries of the United States itself. But American culture—or in this case, hybrid Canadian-American cultural products—is also a powerful export internationally. If Woodie Guthrie’s guitar was a machine that killed fascists, teenybop pop can produce earworms that transcend religious practice, national origin, and gender. Bieber’s gesture of respect is a proffer of sorts, a suggestion that religious practice and pop music can coexist—and that Christians are perfectly capable of being respectful of the practices of people of other faith traditions—and those who say it can’t are putting quarrels in the mouths of Western artists. If there’s an international culture war underway, a side that offers both the possibility of devotion and opportunities for pleasure may have one up on a party that shuts many participants out of both.

Last week, the news broke that Downton Abbey, the British drama about the titled residents of a major country estate and the people who work for them, will be adding its first black character: the London-born actor Gary Carr, who has a long British television resume, will play a jazz singer named Jack Ross. This is a notable development for Downton Abbey, which through three seasons has remained resolutely—if appropriate to its time period and setting—monochromatic. But the show’s decision is also part of a larger trend of overwhelmingly white shows that have made the decision to try to broaden their casting and their subject matter. And Downton Abbey can learn from Lena Dunham’s HBO comedy Girls, which responded to a firestorm of criticism over its whiteness by adding a character named Sandy (Donald Glover), a black Republican love interest for the main character, and AMC’s Mad Men, which in its sixth season has added two African-American characters and expanded its treatment of its characters reaction to the Civil Rights movement.

Downton Abbey, Girls, and Mad Men all differ in the extent to which their settings made the absence of black characters conspicuous or uncomfortable. A relatively secluded English country estate, close to a small town rather than London, would be less likely to have black British or immigrant residents than the capital itself, particularly in 1912. Mad Men has somewhat less excuse than Downton Abbey does, and a number of analysts have suggested that the version of Madison Avenue series creator Matthew Weiner and his collaborators have presented on the show actually suggests that women and African-Americans had made less progress in the advertising industry than they really had, particularly at the firm BBDO. And Girls, which was maligned as racist for having four white main characters, did better than its harshest critics suggested and worse than might have been realistic. The show, set in contemporary Brooklyn, did give its main character Hannah Horvath (Dunham) an Asian coworker at the publishing house where she was a long-time intern, but also relied on stereotyped portrayals of non-white secretaries and nannies, and gave its privileged characters a small, monochromatic social circle. Whether or not that was realistic, or whether or not that was a wise choice on Dunham’s part was a matter of how alienating an individual viewer found the decision, and how much one believed that relatively privileged Oberlin graduates might only have close friends of their same race.

Whether or not Weiner or Dunham felt obligated to have their shows respond to their critics on race, they both did so in ways that made black characters on-screen critics of the white main characters. Dawn (Teyonah Parris), Don Draper’s secretary, who became Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s first black employee in the first episode of the fifth season of Mad Men, told a friend she met for dinner this season of her white employers that “Everyone’s scared. Women crying in the ladies’ room. Men crying in the elevator. It’s like New Year’s Eve when they empty the garbage there. There’s so many bottles.” She spoke not just as an outsider to the office but for critics of Mad Men who have found the show alienating and offputting. And Sandy, after failing to finish one of Hannah’s essays on Girls, told her “It wasn’t for me.” When Hannah protested of the essay that “It’s for everyone,” the show was cleverly flipping the script. Sandy, the black character, was saying that a piece of art didn’t have to speak to everyone’s sensibilities, unlike critics of color of the show who were upset that it didn’t address their experiences, while it was Hannah, the white character, who was suggesting that Girls ought to be for everyone, contra many white critics’ defenses that the show’s strength lay in its particularity, and that it couldn’t possibly be reasonable to demand that it serve a universal function.
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This post discusses plot points from the May 5 episode of Game of Thrones.

“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention,” the man who’s been torturing Theon Greyjoy tells his screaming victim as he prepares to flay his finger. George R. R. Martin’s project as an author has always been to mount a critique of chivalric ideals, piercing the purity that armors knights along with their plate, and revealing that behind marriages branded as love lie horrific acts of marital rape. That this episode of Game of Thrones ends with a moment of piercing happiness, as Jon and Ygritte stand on the wall together and she gets to see not just the world she’s known, but the much bigger one South of it, is particularly painful. We’re torn between wanting to believe in the happy ending, in Jon’s joy, in Ygritte’s delight that he not only was true to her, but able to gratify her heart’s desire, and knowing what Game of Thrones has taught us over three years. Believing is a sure road to agony.

This episode is full of people who want to believe, and will take extraordinary risks to pursue their dreams. “It’s a long way up and a long way down. But I’ve waited my whole life to see the world from up there,” Ygritte tells Jon as they begin what appears to be a suicide mission of climbing the Wall. “You didn’t stop being a Crow the day you walked into Mance Rayder’s tent. But I’m your woman right now. You’re going to be loyal to your woman. The Night’s Watch don’t care if you live or die. Mance Rayder don’t care if I live or die. we’re just soldiers in their armies and there’s plenty more to carry on if we go down. With you and me. It matters to me and you. Don’t ever betray me.” Samwell Tarly, whose father was a monster to him, can still sit in the forest with Gilly and her child and sing to them “The father’s face is still and strong / He sits and judges right and wrong.” Edmure Tully sticks by his belief in true love, or at least true lust. “At least I should be able to have the same choice you had,” he tells Robb. “The laws of Gods and Men are very clear. No man can compel another man to marry.” And Robb believes that he can be fair to his uncle in some way. “You’re paying for my sins,” he says. “It’s not fair or right. I’ll remember it.” Sansa is blindly excited by the prospect of her upcoming wedding to Loras, and Loras, though he isn’t sexually attracted to her, seems to be trying to convince himself that everything will be all right. “I’ve dreamed of a large wedding since I was quite young,” he tells Sansa. “The guests, the food, the tournaments. And the bride of course. The most beautiful bride in the world, in a gown of gold and green with fringed sleeves.”

But those dreams start to come apart almost as soon as they’re articulated. Gendry, who told Arya in the previous episode that he planned to join the Brotherhood in part because he’s attracted by their egalitarian governance structure, finds himself sold by them, and neither his appeals to the Brotherhood’s core values, nor Arya’s can save him. “You told me this was a Brotherhood. You told me I could be one of you,” Gendry begs Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr. “You are more than they can ever be,” Melisandre tells him, whether he wants to be or not. “They are just footsoldiers in the great war.” “He wants to be one of you,” Arya screams at her captors. “He wants to join the Brotherhood. Stop them!” “We serve the Lord of Light. the Lord of Light needs him,” Beric tells her, revealing a mix of pragmatism and dogmatism that Arya failed to see before. “Did he tell you that? Or did she?” Arya asks a man she’s come to admire, before turning on Melisandre, telling her “You’re a witch. You don’t hurt him.” But Melisandre has a response that puts Arya back on her heels with a promise of Arya’s own unhappy ending: “I see a darkness in you. And in that darkness, eyes staring back at me. Brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes. Eyes you’ll shut forever. We will meet again.”
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