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copperbadge:
tyrannosaurus-trainwreck replied to your post “I’m doing a small White Collar rewatch”
Would you mind elaborating on why White Collar disappointed you? Was it the basic premise poisoning the well, or did the show start burning accumulated goodwill during later seasons?
So….there are issues with the basic premise that I’ve tried to talk about before semi-unsuccessfully (they are the same issues I see with Psych – which I love, don’t get me wrong – and The Mentalist and a couple of other shows where an “illegal” operative helps law enforcement to achieve things they otherwise wouldn’t be able to) but honestly that’s a sideline. It’s important, and I think people are talking about it more now, but I was willing to overlook it because it’s a very common narrative and White Collar was a really good story.
But in addition to the issues with the valorization of illegal behavior within law enforcement, the more unique issues with White Collar are attached to my strong feelings of solidarity with Judaism and, honestly, poor writing.
White Collar had two really, really great seasons. And I respect Jeff Eastin’s love of cinema and his desire to base every episode on a cinematic classic. But that only goes so far before I have to acknowledge that his love of cinema overrides a certain basic concern for actual human beings.
We in White Collar fandom spent so much time, in those first two season, writing about the ethics of art theft and contrasting it against art looting. Several of us addressed the issue of Nazi looting, and how art theft is, while still criminal, fundamentally different from the wartime looting committed by the Nazis, a war crime so infamous that works stolen by the Nazis are still missing today. If you read my White Collar fanfic you come across references, again and again, to the idea that Nazi looting was different from art theft and repugnant even to thieves like Neal Caffrey. Art theft by the Nazi regime was a part of the cultural genocide of the Holocaust, and it deserves a weighty and respectful treatment.
And Jeff Eastin just plain….didn’t fucking do that.
At the end of season two, Neal and Mozzie steal what amounts to a hoard of Nazi loot, and they don’t repatriate it, they don’t give it back, they don’t even appear to feel guilty about it. They profit from it. Deliberately and knowingly, they profit from blood art.
The outcry of the Jewish community against Jeff Eastin resulted in an ADR’d line by Mozzie in season three saying that the art was “clean” because it was stolen from Russian museums, which is not only a shallow fix for a deep problem but also failed to address the idea that the Nazi attempt to conquer Russia was part of their organized genocide. In White Collar, a deliberate attempt at genocide was treated like a minor military maneuver.
In essence, Jeff Eastin prioritized fiction above the lived experiences of Jewish people. I am not Jewish, but I saw how hurt and betrayed my Jewish friends felt, and inasmuch as I could, as a lover of art and a student of the looting of WWII, I was hurt and betrayed with them. I felt that Neal Caffrey himself had been betrayed, as well, because I felt that anyone who loved art the way Neal did could not countenance the most egregious looting the world has ever seen.
That admittedly left a sour taste in my mouth, but I kept watching, because – along with many Jewish fans – I charitably thought, well, he’s just kind of oblivious, and he still tells a good story. But at that point, in season three, he also just started….not writing very well. From about mid season-three on, his storytelling wasn’t very good, to the point where I stopped watching because the quality of story was not sufficient to override my disgust at the show’s treatment of ACTUAL REAL HISTORY as if it were a movie the show wanted to pay homage to.
It’s hard to know how much to blame any one person for what happened with White Collar. It’s hard to know what actually did happen. But what came across, in the superplot of the show, was the idea that this fictional story, this love of cinema, was more important than telling the story of an actual facts genocide.
I never watched the final season. I have only very hazy memories of the season before it. I still do love those first two seasons; I think they were brilliant, and as groundwork for a serious examination of the politics of war looting and modern anti-semitism they were second to none.
But they weren’t, actually, any of that in the end. They were just build up to a story that wasn’t really worth telling – a story that ignored Jewish experience, Russian experience, and the real tragedy of what happens when art falls victim to violence.
In the end, White Collar wasn’t about the love of art or the tragedy of what happens to art in war, or art theft, or fraud, or anything of meaning. It was just about a couple of white dudes who didn’t give a shit about anyone but themselves.
And that’s not a very interesting story.
(Your picture was not posted)
copperbadge:
tyrannosaurus-trainwreck replied to your post “I’m doing a small White Collar rewatch”
Would you mind elaborating on why White Collar disappointed you? Was it the basic premise poisoning the well, or did the show start burning accumulated goodwill during later seasons?
So….there are issues with the basic premise that I’ve tried to talk about before semi-unsuccessfully (they are the same issues I see with Psych – which I love, don’t get me wrong – and The Mentalist and a couple of other shows where an “illegal” operative helps law enforcement to achieve things they otherwise wouldn’t be able to) but honestly that’s a sideline. It’s important, and I think people are talking about it more now, but I was willing to overlook it because it’s a very common narrative and White Collar was a really good story.
But in addition to the issues with the valorization of illegal behavior within law enforcement, the more unique issues with White Collar are attached to my strong feelings of solidarity with Judaism and, honestly, poor writing.
White Collar had two really, really great seasons. And I respect Jeff Eastin’s love of cinema and his desire to base every episode on a cinematic classic. But that only goes so far before I have to acknowledge that his love of cinema overrides a certain basic concern for actual human beings.
We in White Collar fandom spent so much time, in those first two season, writing about the ethics of art theft and contrasting it against art looting. Several of us addressed the issue of Nazi looting, and how art theft is, while still criminal, fundamentally different from the wartime looting committed by the Nazis, a war crime so infamous that works stolen by the Nazis are still missing today. If you read my White Collar fanfic you come across references, again and again, to the idea that Nazi looting was different from art theft and repugnant even to thieves like Neal Caffrey. Art theft by the Nazi regime was a part of the cultural genocide of the Holocaust, and it deserves a weighty and respectful treatment.
And Jeff Eastin just plain….didn’t fucking do that.
At the end of season two, Neal and Mozzie steal what amounts to a hoard of Nazi loot, and they don’t repatriate it, they don’t give it back, they don’t even appear to feel guilty about it. They profit from it. Deliberately and knowingly, they profit from blood art.
The outcry of the Jewish community against Jeff Eastin resulted in an ADR’d line by Mozzie in season three saying that the art was “clean” because it was stolen from Russian museums, which is not only a shallow fix for a deep problem but also failed to address the idea that the Nazi attempt to conquer Russia was part of their organized genocide. In White Collar, a deliberate attempt at genocide was treated like a minor military maneuver.
In essence, Jeff Eastin prioritized fiction above the lived experiences of Jewish people. I am not Jewish, but I saw how hurt and betrayed my Jewish friends felt, and inasmuch as I could, as a lover of art and a student of the looting of WWII, I was hurt and betrayed with them. I felt that Neal Caffrey himself had been betrayed, as well, because I felt that anyone who loved art the way Neal did could not countenance the most egregious looting the world has ever seen.
That admittedly left a sour taste in my mouth, but I kept watching, because – along with many Jewish fans – I charitably thought, well, he’s just kind of oblivious, and he still tells a good story. But at that point, in season three, he also just started….not writing very well. From about mid season-three on, his storytelling wasn’t very good, to the point where I stopped watching because the quality of story was not sufficient to override my disgust at the show’s treatment of ACTUAL REAL HISTORY as if it were a movie the show wanted to pay homage to.
It’s hard to know how much to blame any one person for what happened with White Collar. It’s hard to know what actually did happen. But what came across, in the superplot of the show, was the idea that this fictional story, this love of cinema, was more important than telling the story of an actual facts genocide.
I never watched the final season. I have only very hazy memories of the season before it. I still do love those first two seasons; I think they were brilliant, and as groundwork for a serious examination of the politics of war looting and modern anti-semitism they were second to none.
But they weren’t, actually, any of that in the end. They were just build up to a story that wasn’t really worth telling – a story that ignored Jewish experience, Russian experience, and the real tragedy of what happens when art falls victim to violence.
In the end, White Collar wasn’t about the love of art or the tragedy of what happens to art in war, or art theft, or fraud, or anything of meaning. It was just about a couple of white dudes who didn’t give a shit about anyone but themselves.
And that’s not a very interesting story.
(Your picture was not posted)
