The Tradëscan Codex

So, the actress who played Mezoti (the Borg little girl) on Star Trek: Voyager? Apparently played "Girl Student" in Serenity. Which, if you remember, was also the name of the role played by Demetra Raven, aka Jenny Grimaldi, aka the baseball girl from "Chosen," the Buffy series finale. What, did Whedon only hire extras for that scene if they had the appropriate geek credentials? (Except not, because the actors playing the other kids don't have anything interesting to be said about them.)

(Also, !Mezoti's IMDB page picture? Guh, although not exactly subtle. If only there were a way to AU canon enough to get aged-up Naomi/Mezoti. But Naomi's accelerated aging would be a pain in trying to get that to work, not that canon ever really remembered that detail anyway, not to mention that when the relevant subpart of canon ends, they're in opposite quadrants of the galaxy. Maybe one could abandon the pretense altogether and just write Scarlett/Marley RPF. I don't know, at a con or something. Whatever.)

(And Demetra's web site makes me wince. Just, no. Please, God, no. Jenny Grimaldi would have better sense. And also be too busy fighting vampires and/or playing baseball.)

(Now I really want to buy Scarlett's EP, because, I don't even know why. I do love one of the reviews, though: "I must say that she isn't well-known here in germany and the place where i live." Yeah, and everywhere else on the planet where people don't have encyclopedia knowledge of Star Trek: Voyager. Well, either Star Trek  or Reba. So pretty much everywhere.)

Rescuing myself from the parentheticals, this reminds me that Mesektet (aka White Room Girl) from Angel is the star of the new remake of Fame, the one that Stacey Shirk claims "is better" in her song "Ten Dollar Solo" from Commentary!: The Musical. (I learned this when both the old and new versions of Fame showed up in my Netflix suggestions.) And also apparently the Fame remake "was directed by Kevin Tancharoen, brother of [Commentary!] co-creator Maurissa Tancharoen." Who is in the new season of The Guild.

(My embarassment squick caused me to pause Guild 5x01 about two-thirds of the way through, so I haven't seen it yet. Am sad that the season probably won't have any Venom/Riley content in it, though. Can they get a spin-off? I really just want to watch Michelle Boyd and Teal Sherer play evil bisexual gamers now. Because, yeah, awesome.)

(And somehow I've landed myself back into the land of the parentheticals. Boo.)

Also I have the vague recollection that Mesektet turned into one of those ubiquitous Disney Channel starlets, and that her older sister dated Sam Winchester?

There's some metafandom-ed posts about Supernatural and class, and at least one flocked post on my flist thinking about it in the abstract, and it's gotten me to revisit my thoughts, because class really does color the way I view fictional characters quite deeply. Well, maybe not class per se, since I've said things like that in the past and been forced to take them back, but classed markers certainly, even as I'm still not at all sure the distinction makes any sense. (Not gender per se but gendered markers? Not race but racialized markers? What are gender, race, and class except a set of markers? Is there such a thing as class essentialism?) Education, idiolect, certain values, cultural capital--things like that--with the archetypal example being high-school student Buffy Summer's ability to make topical allusions to Arthur Miller or Samuel Beckett. (So admittedly it is a very narrow set of classed--and raced and gendered, but especially classed and raced--markers that make me interested in a fictional character.)

Now, the thing I'm still struggling with is how problematic that fact is. It seems acceptable to say "I'm not interested in watching a show about working-class characters" in a way it would never be to say "I'm not interested in watching a show about women" or "I'm not interested in watching a show about characters of color." But as a person of immense privilege, the fact that it seems acceptable may be no more than an indicator of how far I still have to go--the way that replacing "white" and "black" for "men" and "women" in a certain situation can make it much clearer how problematic it is, as in this comment to a languagelog post:

In general, though, I would say there is clearly much more public tolerance in the US for prejudice against women and misogynistic speech than there is tolerance for racist speech. This was most clearly illustrated to me in a story a professor of mine in University told of an administrative meeting he attended where one of the speakers was discussing a vote that had taken place and in relation to that made a joke about how giving women the right to vote had been a mistake, and was met with genuine laughter. He noted, truthfully I think, that this would have been met with awkward incredulity if it were instead about African Americans or some other racial group.

Of course, the degree to which this works will depend on just how "real" one considers sexual difference to be, as evidenced by all the people who disagree with me on whether there will be gender-segregated bathrooms in the feminist utopia. (Of course, insofar as the point of gender-segregated bathrooms is to keep the other sex out, I'd argue there's something hugely heterosexist as well as sexist going on there.) (And if we look at the way racial difference went from seeming quite real to the idea being almost absurd, I don't see why the same process couldn't play out wrt gender.)

Still, it seems to be natural and unproblematic to say "it's better to be rich than to be poor" (even though what I'm really interested and invested in has nothing to do with income except insofar as hip-hop music has something to do with race or skirts have to do with gender) in a way one can't even say, say, "it's better to see than to be blind." (Not that I'd want to say the latter, mind you--I've learned better--but I think it's still intuitive for a lot of people.) And I can only doubt my privilege so much.

In the end, I suppose it comes down to the fact that while the "reality" of sexuality difference is more or less irrelevant to gender inequality (by which I mean that having a penis doesn't convey in itself any real power), and thus the semiotic power of gendered markers are able to function more or less independently of that reality, and the reality of racial difference (none at all chromosomally) is in some ways more and some ways less divorced from racial inequality, Not having a penis is only a lack once you've read Lacan. Similarly with not being white. Not having money, on the other hand--well, obviously this too is a lack which is in large part semiotic, since currency doesn't have any intrinsic value, as you can't eat or drink it--not having the stuff which money can buy to satisfy one's needs and wants, however, represents a real imbalance in power which is not present in the raced or gendered scenarios. And "classism" as a superstructural system of injustice where the rich think the poor are ignorant trash and the working-class think the upper class are pretentious twits sort of operates above this base.

Except that now I sound like some cross between a Lacanian, a classical Marxist, and a metaphysical realist (what is this "real" of which I speak?) and--perish the thought. And ultimately, this distinction does seem to be bogus. The phenomenology of women's lived experience under systemic injustice is that of a "real" lack, no more or less than the one that comes from not having money to spend. All the money in the world won't help you if your boyfriend won't let you out of the house to spend it.