Abuse is a difficult topic to accurately depict, especially within the confines of a children’s show. That is why I am incredibly impressed with the writing of the New York Special.
Tag: film critique
And I think that a lot of the criticism that has been aimed at this show comes from the fact that even though most of the fandom are older, its target audience are kids.
The characters are from a range of different ethnic backgrounds, they have vastly different body shapes and vastly different personalities. This show represents actual people rather than cardboard cutouts of the ideal Eurocentric person.
This show is an embodiment of the progress we have achieved in terms of representation of not only LGBTQ+ characters but also characters of vastly different body types and skin colours. Each character is a unique individual with an established back story.
It wasn’t until I watched it again with my housemates that I could truly appreciate just how well crafted a movie it is. On second viewing, I wasn’t worried about whether or not it was like the first one, I knew it wasn’t because I’d already seen it. All I did on my second viewing was just enjoy it for what it is.
This movie is not light-hearted. It punches you in the gut just when you think you’ve seen all the bad there is to see. The only thing that makes it worthwhile is its stubborn ideal that good will overcome evil. Despite all of Ransom’s efforts, he failed. And he failed in the way that he didn’t realise that Marta would always choose to do the right thing even if it meant her being arrested and her mother being deported.
The vast majority of comedic films dealing with women’s sexuality, hell the vast majority of romantic comedies have a penchant for disregarding female autonomy. Whether that be via The Nice Guy trope (where a woman is shown to not know what she wants until a guy harasses her into going out with him) or by straight-up slut-shaming side characters for their sexuality. The vast majority of mainstream romantic comedies have a thinly veiled layer of sexism. The idea that a woman doesn’t know what she wants until she is told or shown it by a man runs rampant in the film industry.
