I strongly agree with you that the skin color doesn’t really affect the acting or the story in general. I believe that the last Lord of the Rings show on Amazon actually did a spectacular job at it. It was probably the best fantasy show that I’ve seen in awhile. However, I can also understand it from a Lore perspective that I feel the other guy is trying to to point out. If there are other ethnicities of Hobbits (which there are actually three), then at least explain why they are there. Did something bring them together? Your not wrong that by just changing the skin color of a character doesn’t really affect the story at all, but when you want to understand what’s behind the story, you really need to look at and consider everything.
[As an interesting aside. It turns out that the Harfoots are actually a dark skin type of Hobbit, and the Fallohides are taller and fairly light skinned. I just wish the show explained that more and perhaps provided a reason as to why those two groups merged. If they did, I must have missed it. I would love an excuse to go back and watch that show…]
Like, if we were writing a script about a tribe in Malaysia, or about a K-Pop group in Korea, it would be really jarring to see a white or black guy play any of those rolls in effort to avoid a “diversity problem”. Like…will it affect the overall story if the script and acting was the same? Honestly, probably not. But I’m still going sit there the entire time and ask why is famous actor Whitey McWhiterson playing the lead role as a singer in a K-Pop boy band.
The point I’m trying to make is that yes, I agree that race does not affect a story at all, but to be frank, including every race for diversity’s sake (take many of the new Disney Star Wars shows, for example) is colorblind, and I feel antithetical to racial justice in general. It’s denying that these people are different. I don’t care what the skin color of someone is, but I would at least expect there to be some sort of explanation as to why things are the way they are. It just feels lazy, political, and shoe-horned in.
That kinda strikes me as weird, though. There’s not really a justification that I need for why peter parker might be black, and not white. I don’t really need to justify why he’s white by default, anyways. I understand where you’re coming from in terms of like, yeah, if they’re black, or indian american, or whatever, make them actually be that race, you know, make them have that culture. It’s a common sentiment. At the same time, there are many people, mostly your second or third generation immigrants, that are going to basically have a relatively “normal”, or whitewashed, upbringing. There’s usually still an amount of discrimination happening, you might still have a mild amount of cultural traditions passed down, and a feeling of being pulled between two different worlds is pretty common, much like what happens with multiracial people. But for most external observers, these groups will tend to externally show many of the same traits as a white person. That’s all also kind of moot, for a lot of stories, where the point is less, like, character exploration of a personal identity, and the point is more about like. Something else. So, there’s not really much of a reason, in my mind, why a writer might need to explain why someone’s black, or whatever.
I brought up previously in the thread, “what if we made superman black”, and I still don’t think much would have to change there, for that story, cause that’s just kind of what superman is. Well, beyond the normal superman critiques of like, why doesn’t he just solve all the world’s problems and kill the ruling class or whatever, but comics has a kind of suspension of disbelief eternal stasis that it has to enforce in order to keep a perpetual narrative going forever. I’m also not sure that in terms of a meta-critique, what the people “need” is a like, pure kind of power fantasy, that portrays their own politics as entirely correct, but maybe people do, I dunno. This is all getting a little off topic though.
So, back on it, you can kind of understand why it’s a weird question to ask, right, “why are you (insert ethnicity/race here)”? Especially when I put it like that, right? Certainly, it’s not something I would ask a white character, which is kind of the core problem there. If we had a total opposite, where everybody’s a kind of racial stereotype, and is forced to be the kind of platonic ideal ultimate representation of their culture, and justify their own existence and role in the story, mostly except for white people, that also seems bad, and also, kind of seems like what we’ve been doing for forever. Minstrelization. I dunno. I get the sense that a lot of people are seeing it as something that’s shoehorned in because they’re not used to non-white people taking more central roles in their media. If you even just had proportional representation, that would be a pretty huge step out of what the norm has been, for a lot of years.
I also don’t think anyone’s really been asking for like, more diverse casting in terms of historical works. Maybe in some flanderized and inaccurate historical dramas, I might be able to see where they’re coming from, but I still haven’t really seen that critique. If anything, the critiques I’ve seen have mostly been about portrayals of historical periods focusing more on white characters, or casting lighter skinned actors, or white actors (see: colorism), in roles where, historically, that doesn’t really make any sense. This applies more broadly to all works of fiction, and I’m basically just talking about whitewashing, actually. Less of a problem more recently, but it still comes up sometimes, like with that ghost in the shell movie which is probably super old hat by now.
I also won’t say that it’s not the case, that disney and other fucking companies have been trying to wear identity politics as a way to be on the “right side” of the culture war and appeal to squishy liberals. But I can still hate the corporate bloodsucking, power centralizing, IP buying, underpaying disney machine, while recognizing that, if companies feel the need to do this, in order to stay appealing, that’s probably not a bad thing at all, and this being done, in general, isn’t a bad thing.
Yeah. I get what your saying. There is sort of a grey area in my argument when it comes to, “What if we made X character Y race?”. Because I totally agree that it doesn’t provide any sort of bearing to the story (unless race actually pertains to the story, somewhat). For example, the recent Little Mermaid movie, was totally fine. No issues with any of it. I’d write more, but work calls.
There arent two sides here. Theres normal people, and theres racists making up tissue paper excuses for why they dont want to see non white people in stories.
There is nothing political about being black.
If you think there is, sorry! Youre just being racist. Youre assuming white is default, so black is a statement. Thats racist, honey.
I get it, you dont like addressing that you are kinda racist because your whole life youve been taught racism = bad and you dont want to think of yourself as bad.
So get a therapist and root it out. But its got fuckall to do with politics.
![[Alzwards Corner] EXCUSE ME?!](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f683868d-d0bb-4c7e-83a5-4cccb60ff9ec.png){kind=link}
Look, I kinda get both sides here.
I strongly agree with you that the skin color doesn’t really affect the acting or the story in general. I believe that the last Lord of the Rings show on Amazon actually did a spectacular job at it. It was probably the best fantasy show that I’ve seen in awhile. However, I can also understand it from a Lore perspective that I feel the other guy is trying to to point out. If there are other ethnicities of Hobbits (which there are actually three), then at least explain why they are there. Did something bring them together? Your not wrong that by just changing the skin color of a character doesn’t really affect the story at all, but when you want to understand what’s behind the story, you really need to look at and consider everything.
[As an interesting aside. It turns out that the Harfoots are actually a dark skin type of Hobbit, and the Fallohides are taller and fairly light skinned. I just wish the show explained that more and perhaps provided a reason as to why those two groups merged. If they did, I must have missed it. I would love an excuse to go back and watch that show…]
Like, if we were writing a script about a tribe in Malaysia, or about a K-Pop group in Korea, it would be really jarring to see a white or black guy play any of those rolls in effort to avoid a “diversity problem”. Like…will it affect the overall story if the script and acting was the same? Honestly, probably not. But I’m still going sit there the entire time and ask why is famous actor Whitey McWhiterson playing the lead role as a singer in a K-Pop boy band.
The point I’m trying to make is that yes, I agree that race does not affect a story at all, but to be frank, including every race for diversity’s sake (take many of the new Disney Star Wars shows, for example) is colorblind, and I feel antithetical to racial justice in general. It’s denying that these people are different. I don’t care what the skin color of someone is, but I would at least expect there to be some sort of explanation as to why things are the way they are. It just feels lazy, political, and shoe-horned in.
That kinda strikes me as weird, though. There’s not really a justification that I need for why peter parker might be black, and not white. I don’t really need to justify why he’s white by default, anyways. I understand where you’re coming from in terms of like, yeah, if they’re black, or indian american, or whatever, make them actually be that race, you know, make them have that culture. It’s a common sentiment. At the same time, there are many people, mostly your second or third generation immigrants, that are going to basically have a relatively “normal”, or whitewashed, upbringing. There’s usually still an amount of discrimination happening, you might still have a mild amount of cultural traditions passed down, and a feeling of being pulled between two different worlds is pretty common, much like what happens with multiracial people. But for most external observers, these groups will tend to externally show many of the same traits as a white person. That’s all also kind of moot, for a lot of stories, where the point is less, like, character exploration of a personal identity, and the point is more about like. Something else. So, there’s not really much of a reason, in my mind, why a writer might need to explain why someone’s black, or whatever.
I brought up previously in the thread, “what if we made superman black”, and I still don’t think much would have to change there, for that story, cause that’s just kind of what superman is. Well, beyond the normal superman critiques of like, why doesn’t he just solve all the world’s problems and kill the ruling class or whatever, but comics has a kind of suspension of disbelief eternal stasis that it has to enforce in order to keep a perpetual narrative going forever. I’m also not sure that in terms of a meta-critique, what the people “need” is a like, pure kind of power fantasy, that portrays their own politics as entirely correct, but maybe people do, I dunno. This is all getting a little off topic though.
So, back on it, you can kind of understand why it’s a weird question to ask, right, “why are you (insert ethnicity/race here)”? Especially when I put it like that, right? Certainly, it’s not something I would ask a white character, which is kind of the core problem there. If we had a total opposite, where everybody’s a kind of racial stereotype, and is forced to be the kind of platonic ideal ultimate representation of their culture, and justify their own existence and role in the story, mostly except for white people, that also seems bad, and also, kind of seems like what we’ve been doing for forever. Minstrelization. I dunno. I get the sense that a lot of people are seeing it as something that’s shoehorned in because they’re not used to non-white people taking more central roles in their media. If you even just had proportional representation, that would be a pretty huge step out of what the norm has been, for a lot of years.
I also don’t think anyone’s really been asking for like, more diverse casting in terms of historical works. Maybe in some flanderized and inaccurate historical dramas, I might be able to see where they’re coming from, but I still haven’t really seen that critique. If anything, the critiques I’ve seen have mostly been about portrayals of historical periods focusing more on white characters, or casting lighter skinned actors, or white actors (see: colorism), in roles where, historically, that doesn’t really make any sense. This applies more broadly to all works of fiction, and I’m basically just talking about whitewashing, actually. Less of a problem more recently, but it still comes up sometimes, like with that ghost in the shell movie which is probably super old hat by now.
I also won’t say that it’s not the case, that disney and other fucking companies have been trying to wear identity politics as a way to be on the “right side” of the culture war and appeal to squishy liberals. But I can still hate the corporate bloodsucking, power centralizing, IP buying, underpaying disney machine, while recognizing that, if companies feel the need to do this, in order to stay appealing, that’s probably not a bad thing at all, and this being done, in general, isn’t a bad thing.
Yeah. I get what your saying. There is sort of a grey area in my argument when it comes to, “What if we made X character Y race?”. Because I totally agree that it doesn’t provide any sort of bearing to the story (unless race actually pertains to the story, somewhat). For example, the recent Little Mermaid movie, was totally fine. No issues with any of it. I’d write more, but work calls.
There arent two sides here. Theres normal people, and theres racists making up tissue paper excuses for why they dont want to see non white people in stories.
There is nothing political about being black.
If you think there is, sorry! Youre just being racist. Youre assuming white is default, so black is a statement. Thats racist, honey.
I get it, you dont like addressing that you are kinda racist because your whole life youve been taught racism = bad and you dont want to think of yourself as bad.
So get a therapist and root it out. But its got fuckall to do with politics.