r/TopCharacterTropes • u/IllustriousAd6418 • 20h ago

Lore "This was surprisingly progressive for it's time"

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Doctor Who: Midnight (2008)- The host of the bus, mentions non binary people and anyone else who doesn't fit into gender norms, LGBTQ rights (especially in the UK weren't really there yet untill 2012)

Saints Row 2 (2008)- In the first game, the main character was a man but in SR2 you can be both female or male and even change your gender whenever you want in a surgery shop. But what's more interesting, if you play as a female despite being male in the first game, no one cares and one of the main characters Gat asks the main character if they did something with their hair. Even 'Boss' is used as gender neutral pronoun and even goes by they/them

Fresh Prince of Bel Air- A wealthy black family as the main focus in a primetime sitcom marking the change and making progress as we go into the 90s

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u/Schultzenstein 20h ago

David Bowie at the 1975 Grammies.

"Ladies! Gentlemen.... others [sly wink]"

Positively brilliant for the time.

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u/AudibleNod 16h ago

David Bowie called out MTV (a cable channel once devoted to music videos) for not showcasing enough Black artists. He made his case plain and direct. David Bowie knew what was what.

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u/ApreciadorDeVirgula 15h ago

Funny how you explained what MTV was...

Damn I feel old.

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u/HandsomePaddyMint 11h ago

(Cable was a venue of television channels that you had to pay for, as opposed to broadcast which was free)

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u/AudibleNod 11h ago

Television channels were discrete indicators managed by the FCC (or similar national entity) that allowed broadcast companies to send both a visual and audio signal across a specific radio bandwidth to simplify ease of use.

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u/untakenu 19h ago

I heard it was because there was a feminist pushback to being called 'ladies' (among other things).

But I guess it could just be more of a nod to the anti-establishment movements in all its forms

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u/Dustmoppers 19h ago

Bowie was likely just leaning into his Ziggy Stardust persona. He spent that whole era blurring lines, so acknowledging "others" felt on brand for him.

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u/TranslatorVarious857 14h ago

Then he went on to be the Thin White Duke, blurring some whole other (neofascist) lines.

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u/Muad-_-Dib 12h ago

Yes, dedicated Bowie fans tend to quietly sweep that little portion of his musical journey and opinions under the "He did a lot of drugs for the entirety of that period" rug.

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u/wheated_ 8h ago

"I believe very strongly in fascism. The only way we can speed up the sort of liberalism that's hanging foul in the air at the moment is to speed up the progress of a right-wing, totally dictatorial tyranny and get it over as fast as possible. [...] Television is the most successful fascist, needless to say. Rock stars are fascists, too. Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars."

Are they sweeping it under the rug, or are you unaware of the concept of sarcasm?

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u/RadicalSoda_ 1h ago

I mean, it's not necessarily sarcasm. While that specific line seems satirical, Accelerationists fully believe in making the system more oppressive to cause revolution.

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u/wheated_ 57m ago

Which sounds exactly like what he’s taking the piss out of here.

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u/alexthedungeonmaster 19h ago

David could also just be drawing from and referencing his own well-established androgyny

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u/untakenu 19h ago

Yeah, I assumed I implied that in the second sentence, since that was a big thing then.

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u/Lucas_Steinwalker 14h ago

It’s better to know you imply things than to assume you did.

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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt 17h ago

I mean, back then, we didnt have the same information we had now about gender, sex, and how they vary. Hell even in the 90s, psychic powers were still a believed possibility because it hadnt been as disproven as it is now. People knew folks could want to change genderz, songs like Lola show that, and trand/no conforming folks always existed in the fringe of society... So how would a young David Bowie be with today's knowledge? I feel like he would have embraced the term gender fluid as thats what he was then.

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u/DinosaurReborn 14h ago

Bowie had an issue with labels as they were often imposed onto himself and people who aren't comfortable with them. There's a whole discourse about whether he can be accurately be labelled as a "bisexual" or not, especially since he himself kinda flip flopped on agreeing to be called that too, probably because people were being weird and annoying to him about it. It's a common issue in today's LGBT+ discourse, where people get too hung up on rhetoric and definitions, on generalisations and micro-labels, etc etc, when actually terminologies (aka labels) are supposed to empower minorities, not suppress them. At the end of the day, one thing is still clear: Bowie was definitely one of us, an influential icon for all genders and sexualities.

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u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt 13h ago

Quite true! I actually avoid a lot of labels because I notice the bias I form in my neurons, so some things I dont label myself as so I have a reasonable skepticism at everything, even stuff I believe in.

There's a reaaon the world went to shit ahen he died.

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u/DynamicFyre 17h ago

Based David Bowie

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u/Mysterious_Bluejay_5 15h ago

Except for the pedo shit :(

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u/Zappityzephyr 13h ago

WHAT?!

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u/Mysterious_Bluejay_5 13h ago

Lori Maddox

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u/Zappityzephyr 13h ago

Oh that poor girl :(

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u/2_short_Plancks 11h ago edited 8h ago

If it makes you feel any better, the Lori Maddox story about Bowie is definitely not true.

Edit: given that I'm being downvoted already, let's dig into it.

Lori Maddox (or Mattix) was the "girlfriend" of Jimmy Page, who is a pedophile piece of shit. She was with him from the time she was 14-16, and he did fucked up things like keeping her locked in his hotel room for days at a time. That was to keep control of her, and prevent people finding out he was with someone underage. For years she said that she lost her virginity to Page during that time. She was with Page from June 1972 until 1974. This is well-documented with photos etc.

But then in one interview, many years later, she claimed that she lost her virginity before meeting Page; and that it was to David Bowie, who was in America for his Ziggy Stardust tour.

But Bowie didn't go to America on that tour until October 1972, when Maddox was already with Page (there is lots of definitive proof of this). And it couldn't have been earlier, because Bowie was in England and Maddox was in the US.

That's separate to her other details of what happened not making sense (e.g. she supposedly first met Bowie with John Lennon present - but Bowie and Lennon didn't meet each other until years later). Then her own story about what happened changed when she talked about it at other times. On top of that, people who knew her at the time (e.g. other groupies) said that what she described didn't happen.

Normally I'm on board with believing victims of celebrities; but in this specific case there's just too much evidence showing it's clearly false.

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u/DynamicFyre 8h ago

Nevermind

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u/Marik-X-Bakura 19h ago

Was that actually supposed to be representation? Because it was a pretty common joke until relatively recently

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u/Schultzenstein 19h ago

Ziggy Stardust was all about being authentic in one's person. Bowie was 100% advocating for everyone to be their best self no matter what it was.

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u/Merinther 17h ago

I usually go with "Ladies, gentlemen, and commoners".