More on the Castlevania audition process #richardarmitage
Here. And yes, Adi Shankar calls this made by fans for [people who are already] fans. Sorry, chicks, we’re not wanted.
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To be fair though he does say the positive reaction from people who had no idea of the original game is “amazing.”
I don’t doubt that there is a lot of sexism with video games/gamers/makers and a lot of that mag be directed at women who are becoming fans because of Armitage. But basically I’m going to take a Trevor Belmont approach to that faction – “Bastards” 😊
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yeah, “blow them off” is a good attitude. But I’m still going to write about them.
I guess what bugged me about this was his whole “I’m an immigrant, I don’t think about sexism” attitude in the end of the article (well, it’s nice that you have that freedom, isn’t it?) along with the way he was trashing celebrity fandom culture the previous day (see previous post to see what was sticking in my craw). It must be a real consolation to him that he’s so much purer than the rest of us [sarcasm].
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I think part of the issue is that ever since I encountered Peter Jackson, I’ve been hoping to find Peter Jackson again, and I just haven’t. I don’t know if we’ve talked about this at all. I don’t admire what I suspect his politics to be, but I loved how he managed to combine fan service and speaking to broader audiences. Of course, a lot of Tolkien fans despise him, so …
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Chicks not wanted? Too late. Tough!
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Yeah, I plan to keep watching. Although his first major plot move was to burn a woman publicly in an obvious Christian metaphor (forgive them, Dracula, for they know not what they do). Much of Armitage’s work has been Bechdel questionable anyway.
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I guess Ocean’s Eight won’t be!
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Good point. I might get to have my feminist and my straight woman preferences all fulfilled at once!
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Hopefully it’s not too silly!
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True dat. Pilgrimage isn’t full of great women either… But Castlevania does have Sypha! Shankar even says in this interview, “So, you know, Sypha is the only reasonable character in the show, who has her s*** together. I feel like that’s a pretty accurate representation of my experience with most women.”
It would be nice to see more like her, though, and not have all strong kick-ass women be burned at the stake…
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So how is that statement not condescending? Thank you oh so much, Mr. Shankar, for saying that women have their shit together. I mean, if we flipped it to be about some category that he is in?
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I really didn’t see that as condescending. But I do agree that the series in not so great with women. One is dead and the other, despite being kick ass, still needed a man to wake her up. And at the end when Trevor was fighting with Dracula’s son (I forget the name), I kept on wondering why Sypha never steps in… I guess, Trevor just has to be the hero above all else.
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For me (perhaps not for you): people in general have various degrees of having their shit together. Women don’t need to be singled out as special for that reason, like that’s some big deal, oh, look, women are just as competent as anyone else. I’d like to imagine that most people working at a high level in any profession are relatively competent. “I respect the people I work with” gets the same idea across without having to add the wow factor of oh, indeed, women have their shit together. So I thought it was a mildly jerky thing to say. (Plus, frankly, I don’t see why being an immigrant gets him off the hook for dealing with the problem. Presumably there’s sexism in Calcutta as well, or the other Asian cities in which he spent some time growing up.)
re: the woman quotient — that happened to be not something I needed from this; it seemed very much a story written by boys about boys and there were a few women in it (and, as a discussion somewhere else in the last few days suggested, the material is really detailed). I suspect that was why he was asked the question, on a sort of sub-rhetorical question, insofar as the hostility of gamer culture to women has been front and center in the US for the last few years, in the wake of Gamergate. I think, though, that I feel very much like an outsider to this universe, this story, and the core fandom that is appreciating it and a geat deal of that relates to the gender question. In that sense a “patch” (like the Tauriel insert so there’d be a woman character) seems awkward because everything about it seems so male to me.
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Didn’t need the ‘woman quotient’ either but when women are on there, I do always hope they won’t be simpering misses.
I’m wondering whether there is a cultural difference between you and me on how we react to this issue, because I see nothing really wrong with singling out women like this. At least not when I read it like that, Maybe if I heard him say it and he said it in a certain tone I would feel it was denigrating.
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And, too, the comments about celebrity culture involve a kind of veiled sexism, insofar as most celebrity fans are women.
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Somehow as I’m reading what Shankar has to say I’m finding him hard to relate to… and he comes across as really young (younger than 32) …. or maybe I’m just getting old.😃
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maybe that’s what’s bugging me. A lot of these male YTers are teens or young adults (twenties) and I tend to cut them slack for that reason. I hadn’t looked up his age — it’s true, he doesn’t seem 32.
And yes, we are getting old 🙂
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he’s got a lot going for him in the sense that he seems to have beat the white prejudices of Hollywood — he gets his stuff made and he’s not a blond white guy. Good for him. Just that’s as far as his thinking seems to go.
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Yeah, I don’t begrudge him his success, but I found Warren Ellis’ interviews and original production blog more insightful.
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Ellis: I didn’t look at the production blog; i thought the interview was interesting. The take on religion is a turn-off for me, though, in terms of consuming any of his further work, although I will definitely watch the second season of Castlevania.
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Hmm, I didn’t read it like that. Yes, it was intended by fans for fans of Castlevania but he continues on to say; “So that fact that people who haven’t played the game and tangentially heard about it are fans, that’s amazing.” And before that he says: “I was pleasantly surprised that it crossed over the way it has”. So, it doesn’t sound to me like he’s not appreciating the new fans. But yeah, he is mostly concerned about this being true to the games for Castlevania fans. I can understand that too.
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After reading what he said earlier during the week (see other post), it was pretty much impossible for me to draw the conclusions you did. I’m left with a mild but abiding feeling that he’s a slightly condescending jerk. It’s for fans, nice that the rest of you came along, and whatever, women? Not my problem.
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The condescending tone, I got a bit of that vibe as well, but then I get that from a lot of people that I read and are passionate about what they do.
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Hmm. I agree they sometimes coincide. But they don’t necessarily belong together. So I appreciate passionate artists who don’t condescend, but I have issues with people like Shankar, who do.
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And here we are again:
http://www.businessinsider.com/castlevania-netflix-new-hollywood-2017-7
I guess what I don’t get is how he somehow made a series that appeals to non-fans by insisting that he was not appealing to non-fans. And the reviews show, whatever he thought he was doing, that plenty of fans (although definitely not all) see the fan service as somewhat lacking.
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