More on Once Upon A Time

Once Upon a Time is really grew on me. It rewards thought. Moreover, I'm beginning to think that a lot of the things I originally took as flaws to be gotten past were deliberate choices trying to convey a message.

( Spoilers for season one. Seriously, friends who are watching it, don't read this )

I am not entirely convinced the show is doing this intentionally. It is awfully subtle. On the other hand, several of the writer/producers are affiliated with Whedon shows (and one director started on The Shield), and the show's three biggest characters are all women. Exact Bedchel test passing rate depends on whether how you count a 10 year old boy as a conversation topic, but even when they're talking about men, the focus is on the women. With the exception of Rumplestiltskin, the male characters are plot objects, ciphers, and refrigerator occupants. And even if it's not strictly intentional, it may be consistent enough that I can enjoy the show by applying my own interpretation, like Glee.

The two worst traits continue to be the child's lack of trauma over his evil queen mother (did you know evil queen is a pop-psych type of narcissist?), and the protagonist's complete and utter willingness to trust everyone, in the face of both genre savvy and a life that should have left her anything but. These both annoy me.

If I had to pick two themes for OUaT, it would parental love and acceptance of one's fate. I cannot tell you the number of times a character has struck a bargain with someone clearly untrustworthy, and justified it by "I don't have a choice." I don't think I need to bring back the spoiler tag to protect you all from the fact that this doesn't work any better than going double or nothing in blackjack. If the characters simply accepted how bad things were, that fixing them would be slow work, and certain things were irreplaceable, they would ultimately be happier.

I don't know how much I have to say on the parental love thing, because I have nothing to add to it. It's very well done, in an area that, for all it's importance, gets a lot less attention than romantic love in media.

Kids say the dardnest things

Since leaving tiny ninjas, I've been teaching biology at a school for sick children and their siblings. The school is really there as a support system and to keep their brains busy, which is good, because the biology program is in terrible shape. I didn't get a textbook until this week, and it is terrible. There is no curriculum, and I'm completely unqualified to teach a real biology class. But I am reasonably qualified to show two kids things I find interesting and show them how to follow up on their own interests. It took me four weeks, but I finally got them to ask questions so I could start opening their minds to the wonders of science.

Unfortunately, what they want to know about is the genetics of racial differences.

They're asking innocently. They used the same tone when asking about the biology of zodiac signs, whether their red hair meant they were angrier, and if the doppelgangers from Vampire Diaries could actually exist. But it puts me in a tricky position. There is a lot of horrible psuedoscience used to support racism, and I don't want to lend credence to it. On the other hand, I don't want to teach them that questions with potentially unpleasant answers shouldn't be asked. Some day they may be doing medical research. Back on the first hand, stereotype threat is a real problem and truth is not an ultimately defense when it is involved. Also, I would like to not get in trouble.

What I told them at the time was: most people talking about genetic differences between races are evil and also bad at science (bonus: they're young enough I can shock them by swearing!), there are often substantial differences between small populations, but two distinct Asian populations look as different from each other as they do from a European population. I threw in a bit about how the classic racial categories just are not biologically true, but maybe not enough. For homework I assigned them articles on sickle cell anemia and lactose tolerance, on the theory that malaria and pastoralism are neutral ways to talk about differences in environment applying selective pressure. I dream of ultimately finding one of those racist fact sheets and eviscerating it with them, which would be both anti-racism and pro-science, but we are not there yet.

The problem is that a neutral reporting of the facts is not enough here. There's reasonably good statistical evidence that Ashkenazi Jews are slightly smarter than Europeans from the same geographic areas. There's super interesting speculation as to why*, and I have in fact discussed that speculation is detail with a very socially conscious Jewish friend. But if all I tell the kids is "Jewish people are smarter", I risk reinforcing some really horrible stereotypes. Luckily, the story of the selective pressure is intimately tied up with persecution and bigotry, so it's easy to bring up. If I talk about rice farming selecting for mathematical aptitude or poor hygiene in Europe selecting for a better work ethic, relative to south Asia, I risk reinforcing some really horrible stereotypes. But the things that would counter those stereotypes are outside the scope of a biology class.

It'd probably be much the same if we cover reproduction (not guaranteed- kids are only here for a few months and I'm letting them choose the topics). In a world where kids learn all about enthusiastic consent and masturbation and queer sexuality, I could teach them the biology of reproduction and move on. In the current world, teaching reproduction reinforces the undeserved primacy of straight, cis, PIV sex.** But I don't thing I can assign What You Really, Really Want as part of biology class.

I'm open to suggestions here, on both the meta issue and on specific examples I can explore with them.


*Short version: the risk of spontaneous attacks by Christians rewarded medieval Jews for keeping forms of wealth that were easy to travel with and hard to seize. Farm land was the opposite of this. Gold was pretty good. Intelligence was perfect.

**I have a BA in biology and the only time I ever heard vaginal wetness discussed in college was a psychology class, where they explained that arousal experiments were done primary on men because they were easier to measure.