Self-Plug: Privilege Undermines Disney’s ‘Gargoyles’ Attempts to Explore Oppression

People who regularly read this blog, I have betrayed you. I have written about Gargoyles for a place that is not here.  Fortunately, thanks to the magic of the internet, you too can enjoy this fine post I have written on how privilege undermines Gargoyles‘ attempts to tell its story–a topic that should be familiar to my regular readers–over at the fine site Bitch Flicks. It goes something like this:

…Gargoyles is also a fantastic showcase of what can happen when creators possessing privilege write stories about the oppressed without their input. Weisman and his staff had good intentions, and yet that didn’t stop them from writing “Heritage,” a perennial contender for the award of Most Racist Story That Tried Not to Be Racist (Television). In the episode, Elisa essentially tells the chief of a failing First Nation village, whom she’s only just met, that he’s performing his identity wrong, and is proven correct by the narrative. While that episode is an outlier, it is not alone — despite the show’s attempts to be about oppression and about being the Other, it falls down in multiple and consistent ways featuring more than one episode where the message they wish to send is not the message they are actually sending.

Yay me! Once you’re done, there are also many other fine posts by awesome writers about various films and TV shows for you to read, so please give those a look. Thank you!