one thing about hbo is that when they get a journalist coming up to them and going “man do i have a fucked up story i want to follow” they really do let that person go wild. i’ve mentioned the way the ronan farrow one really moved me emotionally and that’s just because ronan knows how to investigate and tell a story to get you righteously angry for who it is he’s defending. he’s good at his job!
but this one, quiet on the set, has genuinely made my jaw drop a few times, even if i think some of the framing could have been better in the last episode. of course i know about all the rumors about dan schneider and the abuse on set, it’s hard to have been into the teen nick scene and not notice, and it’s pretty easy to figure out which kids were being harmed through too much attention and which were being harmed through not enough attention, and there’s been all sorts of rumors floating around for over a decade!
but the build up to the drake bell reveal was well handled, i thought. i was initially skeptical because i think it’s hard to make a documentary about child sexual abuse without leaning into being exploitative in some way. and at first, where you have the actors who left early, like katrina, or who you remember but weren’t mega famous like giovannie, and they’re all saying “this set was so weird & inappropriate, i knew something was wrong but i didn’t have the experience or vocabulary to say what” it feels a little too schlocky. like, oh we’re just kind of speculating on the inappropriate nature of dan’s “friendship” with amanda bynes for two episodes? yeah it is fucked up that two pedophiles were on that set, but did they hurt anyone on set?
and then drake bell walks into the room dressed like timmy turner and says it was me. he hurt me.
i can’t stop thinking about the choice of clothes here and the way it helps drive home the point of the doc. he’s sitting there in fairly odd parents colors as an adult and can’t describe the sexual trauma he experienced as a child still, has never spoken about it, had his mom lie to his father over it because he was so screwed up. really driving home the point that he was just a kid who had a knack for physical comedy and it got him preyed on by dan, a man who should have protected him, set up and handed over to a monster who traumatized him for months and years.
but when that reporter said she got a judge to let them unseal the court documents because drake bell told her how much support peck had? my jaw dropped, like yeah this is reporting, this is someone who saw this story and finally fucking cared not about the salacious details but about who knew what and why they did nothing to stop this from happening. it’s not about forcing drake bell or katrina jackson or alexa to live through the worst moments of their life - it’s about how so many people knew what was going on and didn’t do a god damn thing to stop it. it’s about how these monsters, these convicted pedophiles, were given access to little kids to hurt and traumatize and everyone knew and didn’t just look the other way, they actively helped cover it up. THATS the story. Not that it was an isolated tragedy but that it was a clinical, purposeful environment built by people who wanted to harm little kids.
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Remember when I got into that string of fights a while back because people were exposing their lack of ethics with incredible takes like:
Uther’s persecution of magic was totally justified because magic is dangerous! It corrupts people!
Merlin had no reason to be afraid of Arthur, he was just being irrational! It’s not like thousands of lives were at stake here! He owed Arthur his private information about how Arthur has unwittingly traumatized him!
Simultaneously, there’s no way Arthur could have known that magic isn’t inherently evil because he’d ~never~ seen magic used for good (despite events going as far back as 1x04 or even 1x03)
Merlin withholding personal information from the people who were a constant threat to his life for being “born wrong” was morally repugnant! He should’ve exposed himself with the information his oppressors would kill him for, to give them a chance to change their minds! There’s totally no other way they could form different opinions!
Arthur deserved to know about Merlin’s magic, despite his condemnation of all things magic which threatened Merlin’s safety, because Arthur was kind or merciful in so many things except, noticeably, magic! Merlin should’ve trusted him!
Uther and Arthur are the REAL victims of the people who they oppress, so they have no choice but to slaughter thousands, children included!
Those were certainly times.
I remember saying at one point that if I knew someone was homophobic, I simply wouldn’t come out to them as gay, because they haven’t earned my trust in that regard. Anything they’ve done for me, they did while believing me to be straight. They likely wouldn’t treat me the same if they knew. Likewise, if a gay person had abused them at one point, it still wouldn’t give them the right to stereotype all gay people as abusive, or to support anti-gay campaigns. Homophobia has no justification. It’s just bigotry.
I said this multiple times, but every response was: “Well that’s different! Magic is actually dangerous!”
Here is what I said (paraphrased):
“If the potential dangers of magic were really the problem—and not just Uther’s excuse to justify banning it—then Uther could always just ban certain spells instead of committing genocide. Same with Arthur, really. But these characters wrongly believe that magic is inherently corrupt, because that worldview is easier to swallow than the hard truth.
“Criminalizing magic is like blaming massacres on all tools when they’re only performed with particular weapons: should whisks be considered a danger because some people murder with military grade assault rifles? Clearly, banning whisks doesn’t solve the problem. Likewise, when a sorcerer gets executed for using magic in the kitchen, Uther has effectively equated this harmless act to malicious crimes like murder. Was there ever a problem with magic itself, or does Uther perhaps have ulterior motives for banning it?
“If murder is already illegal, then banning murder by means of magic is unnecessary—all forms of murder, magical or not, are illegal by default. Making magic illegal does not prevent crimes that are already illegal; it only criminalizes innocent magic use, which means that people are prosecuted and found guilty for anything from using magic for chores to simply being loosely associated with a magical person.
“Uther’s laws helped no one but himself, because they weren’t designed to serve any other purpose. Nothing was accomplished, except that dehumanizing crimes such as trafficking and murder became legal as long as the victim had magic.”
To this, I was told that I “wasn’t understanding.”
What wasn’t I understanding? That people genuinely believe the ban on magic was okay? That they don’t have the slightest inkling of how oppression works, or how their justifications for hypothetical scenarios show their gullibility to real world bigotry? Why even bother defending a fictional character’s fictional genocide?
The ban on magic is ultimately a metaphor for the persecution of a marginalized religion (it’s literally called “The Old Religion”). To support Uther’s (and Arthur’s) claims that magic is inherently dangerous—despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary—is worrying at the least, considering the real life ramifications of fiction.
If you’re forsaking your morals to defend the inexcusable actions of a fictional character or two, then you value your entertainment more than real human lives. Likewise, you shouldn’t excuse any form of bigotry just because you like the person who is perpetuating it. If you can’t even stand by your supposed morals when it comes to fictional characters, there is no chance you will stand by them with real people. Most Arthur stans like him because they believe in his capacity for change, but this acknowledges that he is wrong and needs to change. The less like Uther he is, the better! My Gwaine-stanning is also reliant on him changing his views and accepting responsibility for them. We don’t get to make excuses for their unfair biases!
Merlin and other magical peoples are the victims of their oppressors, not the other way around. It really is that simple, and it pains me to see the hoops people will jump through to dismiss this.
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