This might not have been publicized as much as it could be. Indeed, I wouldn’t know for sure about this unless I both watched the show and looked up its page on Wikipedia. This show despite being relatively new to TV has already created a controversy. How? And what is it? Well, let’s delve into this.
Big Sky is a show adapted from a series of books called The Highway which might have been a better name for the show. It is set in Montana and focuses on, at first, the kidnapping of three women or at least one woman and two teenage girls. The oldest of the victims on the show is a gender non-binary character played by a gender non-binary actor. But that’s not what the controversy is about.
In reality, Montana is known for having missing people. But the people who are missing are indigenous people. On the show, the kidnapped women are white. Therein lies the controversy. They are focusing on an important issue (kidnapping) while ignoring who it happens to a lot in the show.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_and_murdered_Indigenous_women
The show could change a lot over time and how closely it adapts the book series it is based off of it unknown. But I can’t blame just the book on the issues of this show for not representing what it should be in the end. Having seen a lot of the show thus far, they have given fleeting mentions to the fact that it is largely indigenous people that go missing in that area while focusing on the cast of the show that is yet another largely white cast. While the show could evolve over time and change to be more about it, it seems to have already lost its chance to focus on real world issues more.
Therein lies the problem. If you know of a famous missing person, chances are they are or were a white girl. The media has given extensive coverage to missing people with that criteria. The show even points out that these girls in the show (the missing white girls) are more likely to be noticed as missing and have people looking for them. The term for this is missing white woman syndrome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome
Now you’d have to image that missing people should be found regardless of what race they are. You’d think that one would want to find the missing white women in addition to all of the other races and the missing men as well. But that isn’t the issue. Plus, even when people who aren’t that are focused on in the media, the often focus on their problems instead of good things about them.
Not only is the media not doing favors to missing men or missing non-white women, they also aren’t doing favors to the missing white women by always making them out to be damsels in distress and in need of help from others. While every missing person needs help (and some are capable of taking care of themselves and getting out by themselves, if they ever get the upper hand somehow), we need to know that all of them are cared for and that we are all looking for them. We need to know that it is not just the white women that we care about and want to find.
Still, the show is doing its part by always promoting a phone number to call for helping missing people and others who might be in danger. The show still has room to grow and focus more on indigenous in the future. The show does need to address this and talk about this in some way beyond just the fleeting mentions that it has gotten thus far. And it needs to focus more on the other side of how white women are focused on too much in a way. The sooner it does it, the better. Then this controversy will mean more of a focus on unfortunate commentary on life than a show just focusing on the usual clichés that could happen to people throughout time, but not offering much help beyond that.
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