A pet peeve about military representation

RobertBMarks 2022-12-09 19:14:40 UTC #1

This is a long-standing pet peeve of mine, and I think it is worth sharing here:

If you are going to write about the military, women in it, or strong women in general, contact your local veteran's association/legion and SPEAK TO A F-CKING VETERAN!

I did my Master of Arts degree as a civilian student at the Royal Military College of Canada between 2008-2011, which was right in the middle of our involvement in Afghanistan. And, because a graduate degree was a requirement for promotion past Captain, most of my classes had officers who had served at least one tour of Afghanistan, and quite a number of the officers I met who were Afghanistan veterans were women. So, I've met my share of actual strong women - women who have known more peril and horror than I will ever face or know.

And it is so bloody obvious that the people writing the media claiming to represent this stuff haven't a clue about any of it.

No flag officer of any sex would ever conduct themselves in the way that Admiral Holdo does in The Last Jedi. That role was written by somebody without any understanding of leadership in combat, or, I suspect, leadership in general. An actual flag officer would have shown up in uniform (or at least changed into one at the earliest opportunity), and would have immediately communicated to everybody that there was a plan, that everybody would be briefed on their role in it shortly, and stressed that maintaining resolve was of the highest priority.

Star Trek Discovery has repeatedly demonstrated that it doesn't understand how militaries work or how wars work. It has the two ranking officers (neither of whom have any experience in engineering, much less bomb disposal) attempt to defuse an unexploded torpedo, for f-cks sake! And as far as I can tell, when it tried to implement its all female bridge crew, it dramatized the sexist complaints levied against the idea of integrating women into the sharp end from the 1990s. I've met female serving line officers - they don't spend time in the middle of a crisis discussing their feelings about it, they just get the job done like any other professional officer would.

There are a lot of other examples, but I think I've made my point. If you're going to write this stuff, do your research. Actually speak to the people who have been there - quite a lot of them will be happy to give you the benefit of their experience (I still remember a female artillery officer's eyes lighting up as she recounted being able to finally do a full barrage just like she'd read and heard about in WW1 and WW2). They are not going to be like what you see in a lot of depictions on the screen right now, and frankly, considering how much they sacrifice so that we don't have to go through what they go through, they deserve proper representation too.

MaxFF 2022-12-09 23:16:09 UTC #2

I haven't seen too much of Discovery so I can only partially judge it, but the officers do seem less professional compared to TNG era that I am most familiar with. On the other hand Gene Roddenberry often claimed Starfleet was not a military organization, although I don't know if anyone watching the show actually believes that. I do agree that doing proper research is a good idea.

powerplantanimations 2022-12-10 00:02:10 UTC #3

I remember hearing a statement about this scene where the writers don't understand authority... which makes sense if you look at what they've worked on previously. Yet they try to be Mass Effect (I remember Rich Evans from RLM being like "THEY'RE COPYING MASS EFFECT 3... AND IT'S NOT EVEN THE GOOD ONE!!!").

By the way, slight tangent, I'm still shocked they made a Rick & Morty-inspired cartoon series about a series where Gene Roddenberry wanted to portray an optimistic future. I feel bad for Star Trek fans.

I still don't understand why they don't take Beyond's direction. That supposedly balanced everything out well (I loved the Sabotage scene). What happened?

Btw regarding Star Wars, I do get your frustration. Especially since other Star Wars media (specifically the kid's cartoon) focuses on strategy. Everything plays out like a chess game. Even the LEGO Star Wars game makes fun of the situation where a LEGO Stormtrooper flatout says "Hey why don't we just shoot them down? What's taking them so long?". People could say it's "fantasy" it's "make-believe", but I remember people getting pissed off by the light speed thing since it made so many battle strategies meaningless from all sorts of auxiliary media.

RobertBMarks 2022-12-10 01:43:29 UTC #4

The unexploded torpedo scene was particularly bad for two main reasons:

Unqualified people poking at unexploded ordinance is a pretty much guaranteed way to make it explode.
The two people involved are the captain and the admiral...in a multi-ship battle...where the captain was the senior ranking officer after the admiral.

But, honestly, thinking back to it, the way Discovery handled the people it was depicting crossed the line into offensive more than once. There were two characters who appeared to be suffering from severe PTSD, which could have been great at a time when we have so many veterans (including at least one friend of mine who went to Afghanistan) suffering from it - by depicting these characters working through it, it could have been inspirational and therapeutic to thousands of veterans...and both of them were turned into plot twists. I'm not kidding. One turned out to be an undercover Klingon and the other an evil mirror universe version of the character.

And the thing is that there is a major knowledge gap. I've lost track of the number of times I've been left shaking my head and going "That's not how that works!" And then you have this self-congratulating PR where the showrunners praise themselves for strong female characters. News flash from somebody who has actually met female Afghanistan veterans: Galadriel from The Rings of Power is NOT a strong female character. She's a bad caricature of one, at best. Want to present somebody as an actual war leader? Talk to some actual veterans, people who have led troops into battle, and base your character on what you see in them.

It wasn't always this way. Want to see some great military SF? Watch the Ron Moore Battlestar Galactica - a show written by people who clearly understood how stuff works. This is a good genre depiction of what a good officer looks like when a crisis starts and they're all that are left:

I don't think I've seen anybody reach that standard of portrayal since the Midway movie a couple of years back, and that stands out as an anomaly...and it wasn't genre fiction, but a movie about an actual battle.

powerplantanimations 2022-12-10 02:22:45 UTC #5

These writers aren't exactly the "fighting-type" if you catch my drift. Most of them are from the ritzy side of California. I've been hearing common complaints with Halo.

Ordinaryaverageguy 2022-12-10 05:47:00 UTC #6

Right on & thank you.

darthmongoose 2022-12-10 09:43:11 UTC #7

Isn't this the case for literally anyone who's an expert in something or with lived experience watching or reading media by people who haven't lived that experience or done sufficient research that involves talking to people from the group they're trying to represent, though?

Like when doctors watch medical dramas, they're always like "yeah, no that's not proper procedure... aagh, no! You never do that! That's total pseudoscience babble...aaagh..." And as somebody with experience in design and coding, I hate...basically almost every computer ever shown in a movie. All of them have ridiculous graphical user-interfaces that aren't remotely realistic, and you get these computers that can parse perfect human speech patterns but then are limited in weirdly basic ways, and don't even get me started on how people do hacking in movies or on TV...oh my god... And then even on a personal level the way male filmmakers do lesbian sex scenes is.... absolutely hilarious to an actual lesbian. None of them get it right.

The problem is that writers know that the vast majority of the audience are not going to be experts in a certain field and just don't care about the few people who will watch Top Gun and say "oh my god, this guy would get court martialled like at least three times over." because they'll just be like "eh, they need to chill out!". My life is pretty much dealing with this; a big part of my day job is helping a writer who makes adventure stories with tech themes that are meant to teach kids tech concepts and basic ideas about coding, and specifically, I'm the person who tries to make sure all the tech is correct and there's enough educational stuff, or to check the logic, and I always have to be at peace with the fact that a hefty chunk of my suggestions will get handwaved as "eh, creative license" or "that's too boring and sciencey", "this is too advanced for an average child to grasp" or "That would be realistic, but it'd make the story boring".

So I can only hope that whenever the heroine uses absolutely basic pseudocode to magically reprogram a goddamn sentient robot, that people who are actual coders know... I tried. I really tried to tell them that's not how code or robots work. But nobody's ever complained about it. That's the thing, all the parents write reviews like "wow! So fun! I love all the coding themes! Now my little Daisy knows what an algorithm is!" So... I dunno, maybe my boss is right?

But seriously, I actually do think there are a lot of people like me working in media, who do flag this stuff, but then it gets ignored or shot down because it's not "exciting enough" or "requires too nuanced an understanding of a complex subject for an average audience member", like how the writer of Memoirs of a Geisha did consult a real Geisha...and then decided to spice it all up to make it more dramatic and sexy and less realistic (she did write her own memoirs, it's called "The Geisha of Gion" and it's one of my favourite books; incredible read!).

NickRowler 2022-12-10 14:13:30 UTC #8

Personally, I don't think we need to be bugging veterans when writing stories that take place in some fantasy world. It's hard to ask for realism in stories about space lasers and furry monster creatures that scream.

I have met people who were hired on to aid in film making. And while these people are their to help make thing more realistic, the truth is these people are usually scientists or historians, not film makers. One of the people I met, worked on Fly Away Home, he was an expert on Canadian Geese. He said he was absolutely miserable and never wanted to work in Hollywood ever again. I also met someone who worked on the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. He end up using most of his time just fixing scifi tropes instead of adding anything new. He told them not to put the scientists in white lab coats, they are astronomers not biologists. Even with all his suggestion, he said he just felt the whole script wasn't good yet he wasn't really allowed to give more insight then what the astronomers wore and acted.

darthmongoose 2022-12-10 14:29:41 UTC #9

From my experience working in a similar role, I can 100% imagine this, yeah. I've seen this sort of thing happen a lot. Sometimes they do things like asking multiple experts until one of them says "eh, it's okay I guess" about the thing they want to do and using that one expert as justification, even if ten others they already asked said "that's awful, there's no way it'd be like that!" But more often it's like... there's one expert, they get consulted and then the creators just do whatever the hell they want and say "well, we did consult an expert!"

It can be a real minefield of a job, because a lot of the time, the creators don't like to think of themselves as ignorant, so if they don't know something, they'll be like "nobody knows that! That's really nerdy stuff! The audience won't care about that!" Or they'll get angry if you tell them a popular media trope from the past is now seen as problematic, like for example, "evil murderer with schizophrenia, AKA multiple personality disorder!" and if you say "woah, WOAH, mate! That's not an okay (or scientifically accurate) way to depict schizophrenia and also it's not even remotely the same thing as what's now called Dissociative identity disorder!" they'll get angry that you're accusing them of being a bad person for wanting to do that trope... and they'll say that people have been making stuff with that trope for years... and they'll say "it's just a story trope, it's not meant to be real!" and they get all pissy and emotional about it, so you have to back down or you'll be labelled as an unreasonable pedantic killjoy.

Being the person who tries to make writers care about accuracy in small details of how they depict other people often sucks, whether it's depictions of military structure and protocol, scientific information or the lives of people from marginalised communities. It's often a thankless task.

UrMom 2022-12-10 14:48:22 UTC #10

Lol right?? I don't care so much about fantasy since it's all fictitious, but as someone who was in the military for 7 years (It was just the ANG, but I still went to BMT with Army and Air Force chicks.) I have fun picking out all the issues with movies set in the military. It bothers me, but in a way where it brings me more entertainment with how awful the discrepancies can be.

CW: Child abuse, child murder

I also remember seeing a movie recently that was a modern day interpretation of Cinderella. It was a cute movie overall, but it hit the 'fantastical/escapist' point for me when the MC's aunt and uncle (Her evil adopted parents.) went to court, and she got taken away from them, for emotional abuse. As messed up as it is, irl that would never happen, CPS rarely even does anything for physical child abuse let alone emotional. Like, I've read way too many cases where the cops and CPS were called about child abuse, didn't do anything, and the kid wound of murdered by their caregivers.

This reminds me of how upset the real Patch Adams got at the 1998 movie about him came out. He believed it turned him into a clown who used pseudo medicine over actual medicine, didn't go through medical school properly and stole from hospitals. Also they turned his real friend who died into a chick love interest. Given he's a real person, who is still alive, I can see these kind of discrepancies to be really disrespectful, even defamatory. A lot of people loved that movie though, and I doubt they did any research on the real person.

NickRowler 2022-12-10 15:39:32 UTC #11

Yeah, I used to work at a job doing photo and video restitution. I find the scene from Blade Runner where he keeps zooming in on the photo hilarious.

I know I can be a weird nerd about old film cameras not having microphones yet still pick up sound. Or people pulling 8mm/16mm straight out of a camera without developing it. I know from a story telling perspective, the changes are done for continuity. In South Park, a film strip broke and all the characters were upset the film was ruined even tho film strips can be fixed with any clear tape. But I guess that would have ruined what the episode was about.

RobertBMarks 2022-12-10 15:51:42 UTC #12

I don't remember watching media twenty years ago and coming to the conclusion that the people writing supposedly strong female characters (or talking about them afterwards) had never actually met one...or a woman in general. I come to that conclusion a lot these days.

And, I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of people with personality disorders involving a lack of empathy have gotten into key roles in the creative industry and spent a lot of time convincing others that their lack of empathy is normal. It's not. The idea that you can't understand or write somebody who does not look like you/is not of your gender/sex/sexuality/etc. is utter bunk. That is the literal function of empathy, and just about everybody has it. Research is sometimes needed to dial it in, but it is part of the basic package of "human being." But, if you do get convinced that it's not possible, then I guess it becomes really easy to justify not even trying to get the basic personalities right.

Hollywood has always had problems of this sort. The problems of not listening to the experts they hire are so pervasive that there are shows and movies parodying it. But that doesn't mean that we can't do better...and I think it behooves us to make the effort to do so.

UrMom 2022-12-10 16:55:36 UTC #13

Oh man! I think stuff with film funny. I don't remember what show it was, but ages ago I saw a glimpse of this episode where a guy cut up some film to ruin evidence for something. I remembered you could just tape it back together, and thought the guy was a dumbass, but I guess you wouldn't have that drama if things were realistic. Same with a lot of the issues in military movies, especially comedies, you wouldn't have the plot or funny antics if it were accurate.

darthmongoose 2022-12-10 18:05:23 UTC #14

As a woman who was eighteen twenty years ago, I can't help but respectfully disagree. I remember coming across plenty of media back then that was bad. Have you considered the possibility that:
1. Twenty years ago you had less developed critical thinking or empathy regarding female characters and so examined the media you consumed less than you did now, and particularly the depiction of women?
2. The media from twenty years ago that hasn't fallen into a pit of obscurity and largely been forgotten since then contains mostly just about the best 10-20% of the media created back then, so we only remember the best ones?
3. Due to your favourite genres being military fiction, sci-fi, fantasy and seinen manga/anime, genres which tended to have a lot fewer female characters back then, and in much more limited roles, like "nice love interest lady", "serious motherly authority figure who doesn't get much screentime", "protagonist's angelic sister who needs rescuing/protecting", you are exposed to a lot more female characters now than you used to be, and often in roles where they have enough screentime and character flaws/traits to annoy you (like Admiral Holdo, who has a lot more screentime and personality than a comparable character from the original trilogy, Mon Mothma)?

I personally don't really see a change in empathy of writers these days. A lot of them are the same writers as 20 years ago... and I'm not sure I agree with your theory that Hollywood has been infiltrated by sociopaths at a time when it's come out that there have been people like Harvey Weinstein in there for years, or when reading stories about the treatment of child stars back then compared to now.

But yes, I agree that writers do have a duty to try to have empathy and to make an effort to understand people with different experiences, and to do research or talk to people to make an effort to depict others from a place of understanding and respect for shared humanity.

RobertBMarks 2022-12-10 18:52:19 UTC #15

darthmongoose:

As a woman who was eighteen twenty years ago, I can't help but respectfully disagree. I remember coming across plenty of media back then that was bad. Have you considered the possibility that:1. Twenty years ago you had less developed critical thinking or empathy regarding female characters and so examined the media you consumed less than you did now, and particularly the depiction of women?2. The media from twenty years ago that hasn't fallen into a pit of obscurity and largely been forgotten since then contains mostly just about the best 10-20% of the media created back then, so we only remember the best ones?3. Due to your favourite genres being military fiction, sci-fi, fantasy and seinen manga/anime, genres which tended to have a lot fewer female characters back then, and in much more limited roles, like "nice love interest lady", "serious motherly authority figure who doesn't get much screentime", "protagonist's angelic sister who needs rescuing/protecting", you are exposed to a lot more female characters now than you used to be, and often in roles where they have enough screentime and character flaws/traits to annoy you (like Admiral Holdo, who has a lot more screentime and personality than a comparable character from the original trilogy, Mon Mothma)?

I'm a mental abuse survivor with probable C-PTSD, and our lot tends to have increased empathy as a whole (and I say that with the backing of the research on the subject and the literature), so I think number 1 is pretty much out of the question (also, 20 years ago I was 26). Numbers 2 and 3 are definitely possible, though (although I would add that I only came into watching anime in any serious way in the last 3 years, despite the best efforts of a couple of friends back in university to convert me to the local Anime Liberation Front).

That said, I think comparing Admiral Holdo to Mon Mothma in the original trilogy is a false dichotomy. Mon Mothma was a bit character who appeared in a single scene whose only role in the story is to convey information (granted, it's a scene that does prove there is more than one human woman in the entire galaxy, but that's a different matter). Admiral Holdo is a central antagonist to one of the main characters. The question isn't "Is she annoying?" - it's "Is she believable as the leader the story tells us she is?" And, she's not. Princess Leia is believable as a leader. Delenn and Ivanova from Babylon 5 are believable as leaders (hell, Delenn manages to even do it in a dress). Captain Janeway from Star Trek Voyager is believable as a leader. President Roslin in the Ron Moore Battlestar Galactica is believable as a leader. Admiral Holdo comes across as having been written by somebody who doesn't know what leadership is.

And, I would add that I think it speaks volumes that if you were to just cut Admiral Holdo's appearance in the movie to her first scene, making her screen time equal to Mon Mothma's in the original trilogy, and compare the two, Mon Mothma would come across as a credible leader and Holdo would still come across as having been written by somebody without a clue.

Roslin is a great example of a well-written female leader. There are lots of points in the series where she butts heads with Adama, and no shortage of power struggles between the civilian and military governments in the fleet. Lots of moments where it's hard to say if she's right or wrong in her decision-making, because the issues are that complex. She does one or two things things that are quite ethically questionable. But there is never any point when she is not believable as a character or as somebody who is holding her own after having been thrust into a leadership position. It is easy to believe that people would follow Roslin where she led them.

That bar was set by the middle of the 2000s. There really is no excuse for getting it this wrong in the here and now.

TheLemmaLlama 2022-12-13 09:24:01 UTC #16

Writing characters believably is about the 'theory of mind' kind of empathy, and I don't think it's something people should be shamed for lacking. It can be learnt. In fact, (wrt point 1) you being an empathetic person doesn't preclude the possibility that you (may have) lacked theory of mind wrt women 20 years ago compared to where you are now.

I think it's good to have a growth mindset wrt empathy :]

DasIstWunderblyat 2022-12-13 10:23:47 UTC #17

Agree. As if some people can choose to have empathy or not. As if they're not thought as some sort of subhuman or immoral by people who are "normal and empathetic"

People can learn and observe how people work, then hone the skill to put the results on paper (as characters and plot). It's probably rather incapability (or unwillingness) to do all the steps above. No amount of empathy can fix it if you're just a shitty writer who don't learn ~~(me)~~.

RobertBMarks 2022-12-13 16:45:22 UTC #18

I take considerable issue with this statement, because one of the defining characteristics of Cluster B personality disorders is a lack of empathy. And having been on the receiving end for decades of abusive treatment by somebody with this particular character trait, I can assure you that Cluster Bs are pretty damned immoral.

To be fair, lack of empathy does not, by itself, mean that immorality will be present. The Schizoid personality disorder is marked by a lack of empathy, but Schizoids also tend to have a moral code. Likewise, some forms of autism can be marked by a lack of empathy. However, a lack of empathy is a major enabler of immoral and illegal activity and a major warning sign of a potential Cluster B personality, and this should not be swept under the rug with the equivalent of a "well, people come in all types and we shouldn't judge."

RobertBMarks 2022-12-13 17:09:34 UTC #19

NEVER make assumptions about people.

I was one of those people at university who had lots of female friends. When I got started writing in earnest around 25 years ago, I made a point of running all of my female characters by my female friends to make certain I was getting them right. Their verdict was that, in fact, I was.

So, I have it on pretty solid authority that yes, I knew how to write female characters properly back then.

darthmongoose 2022-12-13 17:12:13 UTC #20

Not exactly true, actually. Some autistic people struggle to read facial expressions or say things which are considered socially unacceptable due to differences in communication (Autistic people believe that being honest is kind, helpful and respectful even in situations where others might consider flattering lies or avoiding the truth more appropriate), but all current research suggests we're just as, if not more empathetic than neurotypicals.

In fact, as mentioned in the above article (the linked study is very interesting), when interacting with people, Autistic people are generally more understanding and forgiving of perceived awkwardness in neurotypicals, but are not treated to the same empathy when they interact with us.