Personally I think a large part of the lack of outrage over the first four is that no one who watched the movies had heard of the source material. People who watch Marvel movies don’t tend to read the comics, but Ariel was a Disney movie (one of the most famous of all time) remade as another Disney movie.
Correct. Nobody was bothered by Nick Fury’s change for example, even though he went from white to black. That was a wholly unknown character for most Marvel moviegoers. And Samuel L. Jackson is awesome in that role.
Actually, Fury’s always been black in the Ultimate Marvel Universe; the character and the design was actually based on Jackson so casting him for the MCU probably was an obvious direction choice.
I also had my boss, when I worked in fast food, list this as one of the issues he had with the movie, when it came out (to quote him, “he’s a white character; no offense but that’s what he is,” which was particularly galling, given the aforementioned fact).
TIL; thank you! I was aware enough of the comics to know of white Fury, but didn’t know there is, in fact, a black Fury.
Your boss is an idiot. I’m white as printer paper and would gladly let SLJ play me in a biopic. Because he’s awesome in every role he’s played. Good actors are good actors.
Turns out Jackson is also a master at reading bedtime stories…
I also had my boss, when I worked in fast food, list this as one of the issues he had with the movie, when it came out (to quote him, “he’s a white character; no offense but that’s what he is,” which was particularly galling, given the aforementioned fact).
Megyn Kelly said that stupid shit on TV 10 years ago and she is even more popular today.
Fury was white!? I think it’s one of the perfect castings, along with J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. So good that I wouldn’t be able to read the source material without picturing the actor!
He was (but not always, as I’ve learned). He first appeared in 1963 and had his own comic, Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Fury,_Agent_of_S.H.I.E.L.D.
And yes, agreed on Simmons and Jackman. Also, we obviously can’t forget RDJ as Tony Stark. An actor so perfectly cast, he basically launched the entire MCU. If it had been anyone else in that role, I feel confident in saying that it would’ve fizzled out long before we’d ever get to an Endgame.
Huh. Interesting. And yeah, totally agree about RDJ! Damn, I knew I was forgetting one of the best examples of casting so good they sort of “retro-canonically” re-cast the character in other media…
Personally, I think the lack of outrage is because the people who get outraged by black people being cast for roles that were previously white characters, aren’t concerned when it’s white people being cast no matter the source material.
“Personally, I just want to chalk this up to racism so I can be upset about it”
Name one outrage among conservatives in the US when a white person was cast for a role that was any other ethnicity in the source material. Sure, it happens on the Left, Netflix is especially accused of white washing (recent example: Three Body Problem). But, conservatives don’t give a shit when it happens the other way around.
Regardless, I truly couldn’t give a shit who gets cast for what regardless of source material. If the actor/actress is able to play the part well, I come for entertainment and couldn’t care less.
The best example I can think of where the race choices really got stupid to the point of offensive was the first “The Last Airbender” movie where the director race swapped the entire fire nation to Indian, made the water nation white when they probably should have been Innuit or something similar, then chose to mispronounce the main characters name to make it sound more ethnic when the source material was in English, so they knew exactly how it should be pronounced.
Then for whatever reason, people got mad that the main character was white when it was the only character animated in such a way they could be white, and the tribe was a nomadic collection of people making it somewhat possible albeit not relevant to the nation theming of the other nations.
Anyways, this triggered my annual Last Airbender rant, so sorry about that.
That poor movie was a travesty on multiple levels. Why Shyamalan was chosen to write/direct that movie, I care not to look up. My off the cuff theory was that he had kids obsessed with the animated show and he wanted to destroy something they loved after they accidentally broke his one and only Golden Globe award.
People made a big deal over Sean Connery in The Highlander, although no one was really offended. It was just another joke
There aren’t many conservatives on Lemmy. Why bother talking about what they think?
“Personally, I just want to chalk it up for people being mad for no reason so I can feel safe in my view that racism is over because Barack Obama or something.”
Could this be because people don’t tend to get mad over things they don’t know exist? Naaaaah, must be racism. Anyone who disgagrees that racism is the most likely explanation thinks racism is fake.
What is it with leftists and making mountains out of molehills?
I am a silly little ignorant guy therefore everyone else is a silly little ignorant guy, I am the very model of a modern human.
I’d pull up statistics on movie ticket sales versus comic book sales and point out that the movie outsold the comics by (conservatively) 200 to 1, but there’s no point bringing facts into an argument against a troll.
Most of the media, leading the charge on the outrage, are people who consider themselves fans of the material, and claim they aren’t racist for being upset over the change, just mad that they didn’t respect source. Then you look over their channel and there is not one single video, where they do this, when source material is whitewashed. Even though there is plenty of that, in the stuff they claim they are only upset over, because the source material wasn’t respected.
These are the people who stoke this outrage, they often started as straight fan media, but found out ranting about people of color, and gay people, being in media made a lot more money. Communities centered around the fanbase, for these things, are hotbeds of this behavior. There is no way you can make this argument, about these people. The people introduced to the media, by the movies, get mad because of these people.
I don’t know how you can not know this, and claim enough familiarity with audience statitics to make your argument. So I agree with others saying you are likely going out of your way to make this seem not racist.
Personally, I think you are correct, but the person you replied to might also be correct. One likely amplified the other.
I dunno. It always felt weird to me that someone named Raz Al-Gul was an Irishman, or that a traditional Buddhist monk looked like a soccer mom that went all in on yoga.
Eh, plenty of people voiced issues with the racial (and gender) recast of the Ancient One when Doctor Strange came out.
Tilda Swinton is great btw.
Most people realized it was done mostly to skirt the Chinese market. I think the major problem with the other groups is the lack of major starpower. I don’t think I can even name a Romani actress.
This is a good point. Casting a genuine Tibetan actor would cause the house of mouse to lose all that sweet china money.
They could’ve still got someone vaguely Asian.
No I think people would have been more angry if they got someone Asian but not Tibetan to play the character. Changing an Asian Male character to a White Woman makes it more obvious and direct.
I don’t think anyone had an issue with Benedict Wong as one of the head monks so I think your theory is bad.
Supporting character
They have talked about that, and said they fucked up. The went with a white chick because they didn’t want to make it seem like Asian is just interchangeable
that’s a self-reinforcing problem
I suppose, then again it appears the main reason race was changed is to increase star power in a prominent role. Which is not the case in The Little Mermaid, as Halle Bailey is not a star. Doesn’t matter much now since the movie is bad.
I don’t think I can identify a Romani phenotype. Which just goes to show how little representation they get on mass media.
I thought they were just slavicish. I know Romanian is different but the archetypical gypsy in my mind is a black haired slavic woman.
From what I read, there’s a North Indian ethnic component, especially their language. But that’s what I remember from reading Wikipedia years ago, so 🤷♂️
Considering most Americans lose their shit at the slightest hint of an accent, it’s not really surprising.
I think that this is making fun of the people who were upset at Ariel being black in the remake. The people this is making fun of don’t care about recasting race until it’s done from a white character to a black one. It’s pointing out hypocrisy.
True, but it is not done in a very genuine way. Each role had people complaining about the changes, the only real difference is the few times a white character is casted black the movie ends up being bad anyways.
only real difference is the few times a white character is casted black the movie ends up being bad anyways.
Shawshank Redemption. In the source novel, Morgan Freeman’ character was a white irish guy. The reasons nobody complained were probably that a. there was no Xitter when the movie hit theaters and b. nobody knows it’s an adaptation anyway.
Same with Samuel L. Jackson playing Nick Fury or whatever The Boys is doing with characters. When the adaptation is good no one really cares.
I have a feeling Hollywood companies intentionally do this to stir discourse and interest in the film when they know the script is weak. You never hear about these things when the movie is good, only when it’s the Ghostbusters reboot or The Little Mermaid.
Ultimate Nick Fury came first and was openly based on SLJ, so people actually liked it.
I’ll say that when people notice the white character is recasted as black, it generally means the source material was absurdly popular and any follow up is likely to be pretty meh. The live action disney adaptations. of their biggest animated properties have been generally bad.
Rinse and repeat for almost any reboot/remake of some iconic movie or show. The chances of getting it at least as right the second time around are slim. Even slimmer than bolted on sequels that generally do poorly even with the benefit of the original creative teams at the helm.
They could have preserved the race of every character and it still would have sucked.
You’re probably correct, however I believe Disney and everyone else knows this and are choosing to cast black actors in order to claim the movie failed due to racism and not a weak script.
I’m fully onboard with the “mean people are offended” smokescreen when they produce bad product that also is very visibly “progressive”. It also works because a lot of people do fixate on that when it’s the least of the problems in a reboot/remake.
Wasn’t it not just the casting of one character, but that they recast the movie to be all black? When I see something that looks like “recast the movie to be X”, I don’t expect very much and usually don’t bother watching. If this was one my favorite movies, I can see being upset that they would remake it just for race or gender (although now that I mention that, it could be hilarious to remake for gender)
That includes “recast the movie to be white”, now that we’re getting lots of well done videos that don’t start as white.
But I suppose it’s white privilege that I never saw an issue with most of these (but wtf, Johnny Depp?). They’re close enough and generally the character is not written overly specific anyway. Ms Marvel must be correct because the entire movie was based on her culture, ethnicity, history. If the movie was written about “generic American teenager” declared to be something other than white, would we care? Should we? Meanwhile, who cares about Scarlet Witch? Aside from”European”, there was nothing in the movie to make her anything specific. From the post about the comics, the source material is horribly muddled
I also thought Liam as ra’s al ghul was a really bizarre pick during the movie, too. But I guess I got over it quickly enough, because Liam Neeson.
Am I the only one who thinks the Ra’s Al Ghul in the Arrow series was perfectly cast?
She’s great in The Boys too.
“You will not replace us!” shouted the white supremacists after centuries of erasing a multitude of other cultures, histories, and societies.
It has always been about power.
Really shows you that their worldview leaves no room for multiculturalism lol. As soon as brown people are let into their country’s borders, bam, suddenly their whole identity and culture ceases to exist somehow, despite still being the majority.
Multicultural is different from multiethnic. One is clothing and holidays and norms, the other is just skin.
In fairness to Tilda Swinton, they decided to entirely rewrite the character to be a Celtic woman instead of a Tibetan man. This was probably to avoid being censored in China, but getting away from the racist 1930s, “oriental mysticism,” trope was probably a good idea. It’s certainly a lot better than letting Jonny Depp pretend to be a Native American because he’s one-eighth Cherokee.
I remember reading he was one third German and sometimes I cannot sleep at night because I am trying to figure out the math. This has been like 15 years ago and it still bugs me.
Sprinkle in a little incest and we are good to go.
I also have no idea, I thought it was all halves of halves.
You can get some odd fractions by two parents having similar lineages. Like, if your mother is Irish, and your great-grandmother on your father’s side is Irish, you would be five-eighths Irish. I’m having trouble finding a combination that gives you thirds, though.
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Gotcha. Three-eighths is roughly one-third, so I guess that? One-quarter German on one side, one-eighth on the other?
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It is a rounding and reduction of genetic markers.
21/64 Germanic markers equals 1/3 German in speech because everybody hates the twenty-one sixty-fourths German guy.
If you really want to get into the weeds, you get one half of your chromosomes from your mother, and one half from your father (most of the time, oh boy!), which should start the train rolling on the 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16… BUT there is a chance for crossover events, where the chromosomes can, well, cross over each other and exchange parts of themselves. So your dad should be passing on 1/4 of your genes from his mother, and 1/4 of your genes from his father (and even that isn’t 100% true, the only certain one would be if you’re a male, you’re going to get your grandfather’s Y gene, you could get 23 of your grandmother’s chromosomes and none from your grandfather), but he might pass on 52/106 of your grandmother’s genes (not chromosomes, to those of you counting along at home… and I’m not saying you only have 106 genes, good lord) to you, and 54/106 of your grandfather’s genes.
And that’s just getting started on genetic funkiness.
If it makes you feel better, “one third” is realistically a reduced precision approximation of something like 23/64 (from a genealogical perspective) or near 33% of certain markers on a genetic panel.
I mean I guess that’s what they referred to, some approximation, but it still breaks my brain every time I think about it
Just like I once watched a video titled something like “this boy did the unthinkable” and then he did something very thinkable (he just ate someone’s face) and I am still mad about that
Liam Neeson is also like Samual L Jackson.
I don’t give a shit was race the character was originally, the character is about to be transformed into a next level badass.
I have mixed feelings about Liam Neeson in that role. His performance is great, and given that they got rid of the whole, “immortal genius from the Islamic Golden Age,” backstory, I guess the character’s race is less important. It feels very strange that an Irish guy is somehow the leader of a group of Asian ninjas, though.
The Sam Jackson/Nick Fury story is pretty hilarious. When Marvel created the Ultimate Universe in the comics, they changed a lot of characters’ backstories. One of those changes was making Nick Fury black, and one of their artists started drawing him looking a lot like Sam Jackson. Jackson talked to his agents, and Marvel was basically like, “Well, instead of suing us, would Mr. Jackson like to play the character in any future projects?”
It feels very strange that an Irish guy is somehow the leader of a group of Asian ninjas, though.
I don’t think League of Shadows are Asian only. It’s an organization founded by an Arab, is headquartered in Himalayas, and uses techniques from Far East Asia. It’s clear it’s a diverse cult of terrorists.
That’s definitely the impression I got in the third movie. In the first one, we only see the Himalayan headquarters, and it seems like there’s a white guy inexplicably in charge of an all Asian team of ninja assassins (although I think I remember one black guy being there when they burned Wayne manor).
Well, the Ariel thing is basically the same kind of ‘rewrite’.
Also Ariel isn’t even “white”… she’s a mermaid
Well, I think it’s a bit different. The Little Mermaid takes place in an unidentified kingdom on the surface (it seems vaguely Italian or Mediterranean, I guess?) and an underwater Atlantian kingdom, so race doesn’t matter. The original Dr. Strange comics have all sorts of uncomfortable racial and religious tropes; it’s about a white guy who finds magical order Tibetan monks, not only learns their magic, but becomes even better than them at it, and moves to New York with an Asian man-servant named Wong who serves him tea. Changing up the races and backstory on that one isn’t just acceptable, it’s advisable.
Exactly Ariel is basically fish,
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Yeah, but they did that specifically because Disney convinced the Comanche to adopt him before the movie came out. He certainly wouldn’t be a member of that tribe if he hadn’t been cast as a member of that tribe.
Why can’t Disney be the company we thought they were when we were kids,
Thank you for sharing this. I never know why I feel so annoyed at people who are mad about it, but this is it.
This is why “All lives matter” makes no sense
“All Lives Matter” is like a Narcissist trying to bring the spotlight back to them. They can’t stand not having the attention, and will do anything to get it.
Marketing does matter. For whatever reason, they interpret “all X matter” as “only X matters”, and “X matters too” is not a memorable phrase
We have a movement in Canada called “Every Child Matters” due to indigenous history. The most annoying thing to experience is the same idiots who complain about BLM commenting on this one. “Black Lives Matter? What the hell dude, ALL lives matter!” then 5 minutes later saying “Every Child Matters? No shit, what a stupid movement name!” Can’t win with these folks.
I like to think of it like a broken bone. Yes, your overall health is important; no one is questioning that. But if you go into the ER with a broken bone and the doctor tells you that they’re going to ignore your injury in favor of telling you to take your vitamins, they’re an asshole who doesn’t care about your pain or healing your injury.
Systemic racism is the broken bone. No one (except, perhaps, assholes and billionaires) disagrees that all lives have value. Saying “all lives matter” in response to “black lives matter,” though, is saying “let’s wilfully ignore the problem because I am clearly okay with the status quo.”
Edit to fix typo.
My favorite analogy for this, and the one that really made me ‘get it’, was posted on Reddit a number of years ago, and was something to the effect of:
Imagine you’re sitting around the dinner table with your family, and your dad is passing around a bowl of mashed potatoes. However, instead of handing it to you, it gets passed right by you to your sister. And you speak up and say, “I should get some, too!” Your dad looks at you and says, “Everyone should get some,” and the family continues passing the bowl around as before. And you’re thinking, yes, that’s true - everyone should get some, but only one of us is not getting any right now and pointing out that everyone should get some doesn’t make me any less hungry.
Those people will tell you they’re not racist, that’s why there is no systemic racism. They think you are being racist for singling that out when there was none. Could it be a large part denial, lack of awareness? Or is that just a claim to explain their outrage?
Some folk annoyed you posting, I hope they have a mildly bad day scrubbbles.
Most of the people who say “all lives matter” in that context don’t actually think that black lives matter.
To be fair casting for both Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One and Johnny Depps as Tonto were both criticized when the movies were released. Probably not to the level Halle Baileys casting was, or by the same people, but both were definitely seen as whitewashing.
Its also likely The Ancient Ones casting got as much attention as it did due to the political nature of the change (seen as to appease China over its history regarding Tibet).
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Only if it turns our he is a distant cause of Black Panther or has ties to so.e super rich people. Disney does not care about the poors.
So what is white if Romani isn’t? I really do not understand the American concept of race, for me they are all humans.
Hating Romani is more a European thing.
I’ve heard plenty of the usual stereotypes passed along by americans. When it comes right down to it, most people are happy to repeat what they’ve heard about any ‘others.’ It really takes someone special to fight against that by trying to not have ‘others’ in their life (i.e. by accepting all as their in-group).
Whiteness, at least from a racist perspective, isn’t really about skin color, it’s more like a club for ‘approved’ ethnicities. There’s many Italians with darker skin than Mexicans, but Italians are considered ‘white’ and Mexicans are not. Same for large parts of the Middle East and Asia.
Romani are white skinned Europeans, but they’re not ‘racist approved’, so they make up rumors they’re actually from Egypt and omit them from the White Club.
The determination for what counts as white is highly inconsistent. Before the 1700s Germans were not considered white. Before the 1800s Irish were not considered white. For a time in the 1900s Finnish people were considered Asian (while many Finns were striking for better working conditions, what an odd coincidence). Italians weren’t considered white until about a hundred years ago. It goes on and on.
Roma people have historically been very persecuted because of racism and ethnocentrism. Case in point: the holocaust killed up to 500,000 Romani people, but the actual figures are not known. Roma people are among the groups that are rarely talked about when the Holocaust is mentioned, despite losing up to 50% of their total population at the time.
Arab and North African folks are usually considered white on the US census but that isn’t really an accurate picture.
Race is a social construct that doesn’t have clear borders. Racial categories mostly exist as a way of creating division and limiting access to resources, to flatten the diversity of individual cultures represented by a racial category… or to inflict direct and systemic violence. The experience of being a racialized person is entirely the creation of the society that a person lives within; for example, African folks usually don’t self-identify as “black,” within Africa, but that’s an important racialized experience that people can speak to in a place like the US.
Holocaust killed Russian and Jews as well, which are white. In fact I would say the Holocaust killed mainly white people.
Racism is not limited to skin color
That wasn’t the point. It’s not the suffering Olympics.
Yes, the point I’m trying to make is that people’s color is only tangent is racism (but of course it helps to highlight differences between different group of people). That’s why Roma, even if white, are still discriminated against. Sorry if I misunderstood your point, or not made mine clear
Okay well if you want to get into that, the concept of whiteness is very selective to racists. Roma, Jews, and (until recently) Russians are not considered white. The very fact that they were targeted the way they were tells us that. They may have white skin but that doesn’t matter to the concept because they aren’t in the club.
“Not white enough” would be my guess.
So what is white if Romani isn’t?
Race science is less a formal science and more a series of excuses for doing social murder and war crimes.
Romani people are Indo-Aryan, more closely related to modern day Indian people than Europeans. They typically have darker skin than Europeans as well. It’s not really an American concept either; I’ve generally seen a lot more anti-Romani sentiment in Europe than the US.
Other people have longer explanations which are great. I just wanted to point out Romani people are not Romanian even though many Romani people have settled in Romania. It’s just a coincidence.
The American concept is deceptively complex. At first it’s just literally skin color. The Simpsons meme with the cop holding the color swatches is absolutely true. Then it’s about stereotypes. So yeah your skin is light, but are you anything they have a stereotype about? Their entire concept of self relies on stereotypes being true. Otherwise they can’t be smarter just because they’re of pure European descent.
Family Guy, if it was Simpsons they’d be yellow instead of white/pink
Hah, don’t know how I switched that one up.
To me, the weirdest one was Johnny Depp as a Native American. Like I couldn’t wrap my head around it in the movie. I kept thinking the plot was that he was a delusional person who believed he was Native American.
I only watched the German version, but I never knew that the character was based on a real person.
I though he was some kind of “ally”, like a white guy that jumped the fence and joined the Native cause or raised by natives.
I also thought it was basically Jack Sparrow 2.0
Would’ve been funny
I only care when it’s stupid, like Medieval Poland being full of black people, not even modern day Poland has that many black people.
You can call me racist if you want but casting a black guy to play the president of the USA in like 1910 would be as stupid as casting a white guy to play Nebuchadnezzar.
The Witcher isn’t in Medieval Poland though, it’s in a fantasy land.
Rings of Power was far more dumb because there’s black people, but only in a few extremely important roles. Almost as if there’s some sort of reverse curse going on, where a baby pops out black, and they immediately make it their king/queen. Or more likely, they realised very late on that they’d made a very white cast, and made a few last minute changes.
The Witcher isn’t in Medieval Poland though, it’s in a fantasy land.
So by that logic it’s fine to make Wakanda full of white people because it’s fantasy land right?
Wakkkanda it is.
Sure it would, if the writers had written it that way. South Africa is full of white people, it might have even made sense.
But since they didn’t do that, and then wrote their entire storyline around having not done that, this is a poor argument.
Wakanda is supposed to be in Africa, where Uganda is irl.
It would have had a different backstory, (hiding from colonial powers), but yeah.
I mean yeah. If the writers wanted to make Wakanda have white people, that would be fine.
I sometimes think the token representation is on purpose. Riles up the “anti-woke” and means that internet discourse about your show is all about how there’s some black people, not about how shit the writing is.
Like I really don’t give a rats ass if the dwarves are brown or purple or pink. (Although the lack of bearded dwarf women is unacceptable.) The other changes in Rings of Power are actually bad.
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It’d be as bad as having people of color play Hamilton and associates!
Meanwhile middle age fantasy had black knights and it was fine.
Racists are gonna be racists is all there is.
The actual Middle Ages had black knights in Northern Europe and Scandinavians in the Middle East. Forget fantasy. That actually happened.
You can call me racist
As tone deaf as it gets.
That depends on what you’re doing with it. If Abraham Lincoln is a vampire hunter by night then I don’t think anybody’s going to care who plays the character. It’s obviously beyond reality. If you’re doing the story of Black World War 1 veterans fighting the KKK then you’re going to want representation before the NAACP starts picketing your studio.
sounds like some men in black 3 setting
Representation matters. Giving the few traditionally non-white roles that get written in Hollywood to white actors is an actual problem.
Getting mad about the existence of black characters in fiction fucking stupid. Really fucking stupid. Unjustifiably fucking stupid. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
100% agree, but what should be done would be to green light projects by writers of other races based on different cultures and folklores diversifying the pop culture space (for lack of a better term).
What is done instead is treating minorities as a checklist that needs to be checked in every piece of art even when it doesn’t make sense for them to be in that story.
Exactly. If the roles are the problem, write better roles! I’m surprised it’s not seen as an insult if a role is just token-swapped and “pity given” as some kinda EDI-initiative for culture points.
I would love to be exposed to more genuine characters that reflect their backgrounds. But I get a bit annoyed at this bizarre box-ticking tokenism that’s clearly pervading Hollywood, as if they ever gave a crap about anybody in the first place.
Stoking identity conflict makes them money. Lots of it. It keeps them relevant at the forefront of “the discussion” in a world where cultural relevance is literal currency.
The same corporations that’ll “champion diversity” with a “palette swap” on screen, will outsource their VFX from places with horrible working conditions, for instance. It’s all a big show and apparently lots of us are still falling for it.
Getting mad sure, but it is definitely a dumb creative decision to have characters be random races that don’t make sense in the historical context and it’s fine to criticize it. If it’s a purely fictional world with no basis in reality then no one should care.
No. Fuckin stop it. Its unbearably stupid.
Historical fiction has existed for a long time.
Y’all ain’t out here throwing a pouty parade when someone adds technology or magic or monsters into historical fiction.
But black people? Existing? If that’s where you draw the line, it’s really clear why. Make all the excuses you want.
Historical or alternate history fiction falls under pure fiction imo. That’s fine as long as it makes sense. If it’s meant to be some super grounded realistic historical slice-of-life then it would just make me think “when are they going to bring up the fact that there’s X type of person walking around here” for the whole story.
Not exclusive to black people. If there were a story that took place in 12th century Mongolia and there was some Nordic guy walking around I would be like “huh, what’s his story” and then be confused when it was never mentioned. That’s how I feel about a lot of these creative choices.
Except there actually were people of different cultures/ethnicities/nationalities in other places in the past, often without anyone caring that much. Sure, it was often notable but it wasn’t always exclusionary. Implying this shouldn’t be done is the real historical fiction.
“It happened” and “it is good writing” are different imo. I just want diverse characters in typically mono-ethnic settings to have a story as to how they got there. I feel like that’s just good writing.
It could be part of good writing. It absolutely isn’t required. We don’t get the background on most characters. Why should they have to give detail they wouldn’t provide for other characters just to satisfy you?
That’s literally just a longer way of saying that it’s okay if it’s magic but it’s not okay if it’s black people.
& yeah, I’ll hold my breath for people getting equally upset about white people in fiction. Any day now. I’m sure.
I can’t disapprove a hypothetical, I guess, but a hypothetical isn’t proof of anything either.
But magic doesn’t have any grounding or association with the world as we know it. Neither does aliens. We can only use the world as we know it as a frame of reference for a story.
I’d argue in lbaudia’s example that it is confusing if in 12th century Mongolia, there was some Nordic guy walking around, I’d imagine there to be a backstory of some kind. If there wasn’t, then that would definitely be an example where I’d be annoyed at white people in fiction.
I thought a great example of casting was the TV show “The Expanse”. To be able to cast someone as specific as Bobbie Draper so well - these studios have no excuse to whitewash as they do except laziness.
I’d argue that magic does have grounding in our world. Sure, we understand today (at leady most of us) that it isn’t real. For most of our history people have believed magic was real though, and attributed real events to magic. We have the word because it has a long history of people thinking it exists. If a story wanted to use “magic” to explain events, that’d be pretty realistic to the times it’s taking place in.
People made these exact same arguments about the inclusion of a black samurai in an Assassin’s Creed game.
A black samurai who was based on a real person who actually existed in history.
The game they’re playing is very obvious to anyone who’s actually paying an ounce of attention, and it has nothing to do with caring about historical accuracy.
It’s bullshit. It’s an excuse. It’s foolish. I do not suffer it gladly.
Oh the sweet voice of a reason, they don’t take well to that around here. Good on you.
“Here are three examples I made up to prove how not racist I am!”
If it’s bad to use white actors for black (or other colored) roles then it’s bad for black actors to do white roles. If it’s okay to do those switches then it’s okay for all. Forget colors it shouldn’t matter.
Having said that, Disney just did the Ariel thing ffor the “look at us being sooooo progressive, please give us your money for this utterly shit movie” instead of trying to just make a great movie
I think people need to figure out if the race of a character is culturally significant in any way in the context of the story and IRL. Like, part of Black Panther’s whole deal is he’s from Africa. Hard to budge on that character’s ethnicity. Ariel from the Little Mermaid could literally be any ethnicity and the story would remain the same. Crying about white erasure is pathetic when no actual culture relevant to white western people is being lost.
But Ariel wasn’t white. She was a fish person. So they were free to do whatever.
A big issue here, especially with the MCU stuff, is that it’s not a skin color thing with those changes. They updated the whole character in order to make them into races that are more friendly to China. They’ve done this repeatedly and stripped identities and character traits from characters over and over again.
Every single Romani character that’s appeared in an MCU movie has had their heritage removed and replaced with generic white. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are good examples (since they’re the ones in the meme) but I don’t see any way that Robert Downey Jr is going to be able to do the complicated Romani backstory of Dr Doom very well.
I agree that Ariel was swapped for marketing reasons (and arguably specifically to cause outrage and get people talking) Ariel doesn’t have a racial heritage that plays into her life and identity… She’s a mermaid from the sea… Not a member of a group with a large history of being discriminated against.
Maybe that’s for the best? It’s a bit weird that MCU went so big on Romani people in specific. That said unless a Romani person identifies themselves, you’re going to have trouble picking them out of a crowd. They are as diverse as the regions they’ve traveled through.
At this point, I’d be surprised if there was anybody outside of China that actually watches Marvel content.
The virtue signaling just backfires. “Rainbow washing” is a thing now. Companies never gave a fuck about a progressive message, they care about trendy things to cash in on.
I get the impression Ben and Jerry’s does actually care bout progressive issues, but they are that rare exception.
It’s too bad they don’t have ownership of their company any longer. They sold B&J to Unilever and now they have a reduced platform to share progressive values. Any progressivism out of Unilever is cynical corporate pandering.
The original actress/singer for Ariel absolutely dominated that role as well, and really the whole cast was damn near perfect. It’s one of the few Disney Princess movies that should have been left alone.
Literally every single live action remake that Disney has created has been inferior in every single way to the originals. Aladdin, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, all terrible cash-grabby productions (esp. TLK, good lord it’s bad).
I enjoyed Beauty and the Beast. shrug
It’s fine. I like plenty of movies that aren’t criterion level cinema. The remakes are cashgrabs meant to capitalize on your nostalgia though.
It’s definitely a cynical move by Disney no matter how you slice it.
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“If you think we’re super woke, you go support the movie. We get money.”
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“If you hate it (because we thought a superficial change would cover the fact we barely tried), it’s because you’re a nasty racist bigotface, your opinion is disregarded, galvanizes our first crowd into giving us more money, and angry actually-racist bloggers probably hate-watch it while advertising it for free. We get money.”
Ain’t the culture wars grand (if you’re selling to both sides like a proper arms dealer)? :D
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I personally think it isn’t wise to use an actor of any race in substitute of another, if that character’s race is part of the story. The only reason I could think of to change the character’s race, gender, status, etc. would perhaps be to tell a different story, but then it should be renamed and be a different story. But if a character’s race, gender, status, etc. is tied to that character’s story, then it shouldn’t be discarded frivolously.
From what I see, I feel that a lot of the disconnect is based on whether people find an attribute (in this case, race) important or not as part of the character’s story.
I feel I half agree with you. The other half of me thinks, there’s a lot of things we change for an actor acting a character. After all, it’s an actor, playing a character. Someone called Ben can play a guy called John; your grumpiest aunt can play a sweet grandma; often we have actors in their 30s and 40s playing ternagers and 20s; and men playing women even used to be a thing.
I think you have a good point, but I also think it’s okay to have an acceptable disconnect of, this is people acting out a story, not the real thing happening in front of me.
Can I be upset at all of them? The little mermaid should probably be
DutchDanish, and all the rest should be their canon ethnicities. White Disney princesses don’t bother me because most of those stories are European folktales, but that cuts both ways.Isn’t she a fucking mermaid who comes from the ocean? Why should she be any real nationality/ethnicity?
Oddly enough, the Harry Potter franchise handled this well.
I could be convinced that mermaids should have dark backs and light bellies
Her ethnicity should be Innsmouth.
Trace her back to her origins, and she’s literally based on a Danish folktale. I can guarantee you no one in Denmark when the story first was told was thinking of her as black.
But then I think all of those examples were bad and should never have been cast that way. A black Anne Boleyn is exactly as bad a choice as a white Mansa Musa, for example.
Dutch not Danish?
Danish would be my guess
Yeah it’d be a similar reaction if Jasmine & Aladdin were recast as northern Europeans. Sure it’s a fantasy tale, but the story is set in a fantasy version of Arabia.
I absolutely remember people being mad about the first one.
The others not so much. The fantasy movies don’t really matter the same way as a historical movie about slavery does. The fantasy characters are even gender swapped without a problem at conventions.
And yes that means the racists who got mad about Ariel are dumb.
Yup. Characters should remain consistent if it’s important.
Tonto should not have been played by Johnny Depp. Gross.
The original Ancient One was a poor stereotype of a Tibetan person and Tilda Swinton is cool so I’m ok with this one.
Liam Neeson is a great actor with a ton of gravitas and he pulled off the role well, but yeah shoulda found a middle eastern dude. Maybe that hot Djin dude from American Gods can be the next Ras Al Ghul.
Anything to do with Scarlet Witch’s background is a retcon, she was originally introduced as Magneto’s moustache twirling daughter. Despite her tan in the referenced photo she’s more often depicted as white, but I could see her being middle eastern, but it would make sense that she’s half Jewish at least, given her father’s background.
Lastly, she’s a fucking mermaid. Who gives a shit? How many of the dude bros bitching even watched it?
I think in case of Ra’s Al Ghul in Nolan movies, the title is passed from one leader to another. He’s not a 1000 year old warrior.
I really don’t think it would have hurt to cast an Arab actor as Ra’s Al Ghul. And then you wouldn’t need a convoluted explanation like that.
That’s true. But I wonder if the creative team thought it would be in bad taste to have an Arab guy as head of global terrorist organization so soon after 9/11
In that case, maybe choose a different villain.
Bruh. Since it is a title, it doesn’t matter who is holding it. Even comics Ra’s Al Ghul doesn’t mind that considering he wants Bruce Wayne to be his heir.
Yes, again, you can come up with that convoluted after-the-fact explanation that wasn’t in the movie or you can not piss off Arab people.
I don’t think not being typecast as terrorists pisses off arabs
Good thing the character isn’t a terrorist then. The head of a cult of assassins is not a terrorist. Assassins target specific people for specific reasons, not to create terror.
Why?
For the same reason the excuse of a white character being named Mitsimu Hashimori is that it’s just a title being passed down is something people might find offensive.
I think artists can make whatever they want (within the bounds of the law) and that it’s up to the consumers to decide whether they like it or not with their wallets.
When did this become about what people can do and not about whether or not they’re being highly offensive?
It is legal to make and distribute a movie where a guy just yells the N-word for 90 minutes. I assume you would find that offensive. Most people would.
Ghassan Massoud (the guy that played Saladin in Kingdom of Heaven) would have been perfect
No, I don’t thinking would work since his daughter’s called Thalia Al Ghul, indicating Al Ghul is a family name.
Also,we don’t need to make up apologies for whitewashing.
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He literally says 'we have been around for 1000 years and since Nolanverse is devoid of any fantastical elements, passing the torch is the only possible explanation.
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Her name is Talia Al Ghul from Doylist perspective but not from Watsonian.
For all we know, she doesn’t have any last name/family name in-universe and uses the alias of Miranda when she’s globetrotting for a bit of terrorism.
- He literally says 'we have been around for 1000 years and since Nolanverse is devoid of any fantastical elements, passing the torch is the only possible explanation.
I always thought he meant the League of Shadows, not a single position.
- Her name is Talia Al Ghul from Doylist perspective but not from Watsonian.
She calls Ra’s Al Ghul her father. It may be an interpretation that Al Ghul is a name, but so is the title interpretation. And imho the name is far less of a stretch.
Yes. He is referring to League of Shadows. However, very early in the movie he says “If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, you become something else entirely” so it seems obvious in hindsight that this applies to Ra’s as well as if applies to Batman.
Hell, I always thought Ken Watanabe was Ra’s Al Ghul and the title passed on to Liam Neeson after the former died.
However, very early in the movie he says “If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, you become something else entirely” so it seems obvious in hindsight that this applies to Ra’s as well as if applies to Batman.
But that doesn’t mean Henri Ducard became a Ra’s Al Ghul or Ra’s Al Ghul became the League of Shadows. It’s like a religious thing, like christians consider themselves reborn after baptism.
Hell, I always thought Ken Watanabe was Ra’s Al Ghul and the title passed on to Liam Neeson after the former died.
I can see where you’re coming from, I’d expect some quote like “I am Ra’s Al Ghul now” or something.
Again, I can see your interpretation, but I think Ra’s Al Ghul simply being a name is far less a stretch and requires fewer assumptions.
Ra’s al Ghul translates to demon’s head. Do you still think it’s just a name?
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Wait until you tell extremist, right-wing Christians that Jesus wasn’t a white guy! Oooohhh boyyy!
Also, I think it’s important to not forget that in the internet age, a very small minority of hateful asshats can appear to have a very large voice. They are still a very small, minority group of asshats.
