Why Your Fave is Problematic Episode 55675634: Netflix's "Shadow and Bone" and the bizarre flattening of the world by american and british producers
(1/x)

a while ago, my buddy & i were talking about the russians in the us, and how they're probably one of our weakest political constituencies. the italians, irish, armenians, germans, blacks mobilized. but the russians (and to an extent, slavic comms v obshe) have a light presence

in american public life.

to some extent, many of our immigrant communities have left some kind of fingerprint in the broader concept of what it means to be american. even if it's to say "not that." but the russians (ukrainians, belarusians, poles, etc) are largely absent (3/x)

from that image.

of course, it's easy to pin this is on the uh, 50ish year conflict that dominated geopolitics following ww2. the shadows of the cold war are long and dark and that goes beyond american conservatives calling anything they don't like communisim (4/x)

so -- and i can't stress this enough -- **in theory** how great then for this moment of slavic-inspired young adult fantasy? what a way to start to sprinkle some knowledge of a world that has largely gone unnoticed in the american consciousness from behind the iron curtain? (5/x)

much ink has already been spilled about how the grishaverse and wicked saints handle their slavic lore. i agree with what's been said. the little bit of both franchises i've peeked are sloppy and, well, appropriative. it *feels* like americans playing with toys on the page (6/x)

one of the easiest ways imho that you can perform Good Representation is to let people speak in their beautiful and idiosyncratic ways.

@Sideways440 & @patrickhwillems have lovely video essays about language and its humanizing effect in film (links at the end of this thread) 7/x