The Catch just killed off a bisexual WOC after she slept with a woman. She was killed by her male love interest (he shot her, not a surprise).
The writer and co-executive producer of The Catch, Sherry White, signed the Lexa pledge less than a week ago. What does that tell you? @lgbtfans wanna help us out?
Go ask her what that is about on twitter @streelymaid. Why is the “bury your gays” trope still here and why do wlw keep dying this year? How did she have the audacity to sign the Lexa pledge?
I absolutely do think the show should be called out but I’m not sure why we’d focus on this person? She didn’t write the episode and she’s not the showrunner (who is allanheinberg on Twitter, and the writers account is thecatchwriters). Is it because she signed the pledge? But we all know that the show was written and shot before all this started, and certainly before last week so I don’t understand why that makes her the biggest target? Best case scenario, she saw the aftermath of…this spring and meant exactly what she implied, that she was going to do better. If she had waited to sign, would we have taken it as any less of a PR move?
And worse case scenario is that she saw it as a PR move to…what? Shift focus away from the show? Like I said, I don’t think we should go easy on it at all. But otherwise, if it’s a PR move for herself, how would that work? In all the deaths recently, Empire, The Vampire Diaries, The Walking Dead, The Magicians, etc, there has been no focus on the executive co-producers. If this was a PR move, it was to draw attention to herself, much of which would be negative once the ep aired. And…she’s done what we’ve been asking all these people to do, to pledge to do better? Send her tweets about the pledge if you want, but I don’t think the rest of the people involved should be ignored.
I am plenty angry about this, and discouraged and sad. You can see in my brief history of posting about the show how I slowly became more interested and invested precisely because of Felicity/Shivani Ghai, her involvement even making me like Margot. And the way it played out was awful, because the whole episode Felicity was being passed around as a pawn, not entirely willing but having to play the game, and you felt for her position. The whole point of her arc should have been her regaining her agency. At the end, she looked so vulnerable and frightened after being caught out (is Shivani at least a lead in something after having to leave? She was excellent throughout) and…so people thought the best decision was for a campy show like this–in which the last ep included the male white lead, also a con man and horrible person, fought a bunch of master thieves and killers and survived being shot–was for her to be shot in some cruel deadpan moment for comedy?
I was furious after it happened. And so tired and achey inside. I wanted to rail at Sherry White, why did you sign it if you knew this was going to happen? But…why not sign it? If she believed in the pledge, why not sign it? Because it would look better for her if she waited?? The change from everything that people are doing, including this pledge, is not going to come immediately. It never has, there are other movements that decades and centuries later are still being fought very hard. But until content creators actually try to do better, we won’t get better. There are no good reasons for these deaths, there is no reward in higher ratings, no critical praise, and yet it’s the easy go-to. Writers keep explaining away why the trope didn’t apply in their case or why they thought they were above it. For things to change, they have to not want to do it it the first place. That’s what we have to encourage, diversity in the people making media and for them to understand and want to do better by us.
I’ll probably put the show on the backburner after this (although, Samira Wiley was the client of the week in last night’s ep, so y’know) but…I don’t want to make one person the only scapegoat.