Mirthlessly laughing because I realised tonight I can't change the gender markers on my birth certificate even though my state in Australia would let me because I was born in a foreign country I don't even have citizenship to, my parents were just working there.
Best I can do is like an update of details certificate.
I've been thinking about RuPaul's Drag race recently and basically 2 points that might be connected or coincidence.
Firstly you never fucking hear Cishets talking about it anymore. Like a few years back it was a thing they would always bring up when someone was gay or trans (unfortunately). Despite it being on it's 17th season and having like 20 something international spin-offs. Like that's not necessarily a bad thing, except...
Secondly the show has done a real 180 on how shitty and transphobic it was. RuPaul still sucks for fracking and other reasons (but he's only on like 3 of the shows, and no one watches to see him phone it in each week), but he's basically recanted most of the transphobic shit he said. Each season has multiple trans women or non binary performers, even one trans man has competed. The top finalists of later seasons are frequently trans, several trans women/femmes have won the show (mainline and spin-offs).
The most recent show had enormous representation in Lexi Love who was/is a complete train wreck (but still a top 4 finalist). Drag Race Canada this most recent season had Jaylene Tyme a two-Spirit First Nations and Métis Indigenous trans woman, who was a sixties scoop survivor (Canadian stolen generation equivalent).
It's lib/idealist AF but this quote from Vulture is still pretty true.
But something else that is true is that there is no other program on TV, period, on which a convicted felon can come and be celebrated for his love of his gay, drag-queen son. I also can’t remember the last time I saw a transphobic mother work so hard to overcome her biases and reconnect with the daughter she threw out of the house. Even Sam Star’s mother, a deeply southern woman who has a fearsome dedication to her child, is a revolutionary figure right now. The world is terrible, corporations around the country are dropping queer people left and right, but Drag Race still exists. It’s nice.
And guess circling back around to my first point, the show got better about trans people, and then it sort of dropped off the public's radar.
But Herge's actual involvement with the nazis was slim, when the war began he was writing about how bad the Japanese invasion of China was in collaboration with a Chinese friend (The Blue Lotus is still so fucking racist)
There's a bit in the Blue Lotus where Tintin trys to access the Shanghai international settlement (a chunk of Shanghai basically occupied by US and UK troops during the Century of Humiltation) and British troops try to stop him, they cut it from the 90s cartoon and just had Japanese soldiers, because suggesting that Anglos were once also trying to colonize China was considered poor taste at the End of History. It's so racist still. But he also locked in and put everyone on blast.
(They also cut so much of Tintin in America. Lynch mobs. Mistreatment of First Nations. It's like the shortest arc).
I saw this on my phone and said "fuck, this needs the computer" and walked to my computer.
Tintin is a real land of contrasts. Herge was a reactionary, started writing for racist publications and how much he collaborated with the Nazis is a subject of debate from begrudgingly to enthusiastically. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is anticommunist trash. Tintin in the Congo is racist trash. There's a reason they didn't translate it into English for decades because it was too fucked up even for Anglos. Those books are not worth reading.
So his works start off really racist but over time Herge shows a surprisingly level of nuance and respect for other cultures (for an early 20th century European). Like the Blue Lotus is very racist to Japanese (but they're also the villains because it's the 1930s) and it's stereotypes the Chinese badly, but it also sincerely suggests the Chinese are the same as Europeans, a proud culture with a long history worthy of respect and friendship. Chang, Tintin's Chinese sidekick is smart and heroic. Even returning much later in Tintin in Tibet.
Tintin in America straight up calls pretty much all Americans gangsters and irrational lynch mobs, who will swindle First Nations out of their lands to steal their oil at first opportunity. As the books progress non-European places (Peru, Tibet etc) get shown with at least more nuance and interest, even if there's still problems.
Also the quality just gets so much better. Like the early stories are just dogshit. Barely readable. Tintin in America is one Deus Ex Macchina after another as Tintin bumbles from one situation to situation. Tintin in the land of the soviets is a series of shitty newspaper cartoons strung together. But later works like the Calculus Affair is a tense political thriller about a spy battle over new sonic super-weapons in fictionalized Balkan states, Tintin on the Moon is a sincere and realistic story of the challenges of lunar travel a decade before the moon landing.
Tintin also over time assembles his cast, Captain Haddock, Professors Calculus Thompson/Dupont and Thomson/Dupond, as well as recurring characters Bianca Castafiore, Spruk, Chang etc. Tintin truly doesn't start until the Crab with the Golden Claw, when Captain Haddock storms on the scene "blistering blue barnacles" and all.
yes
Thanks I wasn't sure if would but then I was thinking about everything going on globally and the off chance the reactionaries tried to ban it here and remembered fuck I was born in a different country.