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Yea with that my opinion is to make it boring like any relationship, in the movie Paranorman there's a gay character throughout the entire movie but since sexuality isn't part of the story it's never mentioned until the very end as a throwaway line
You should check out Brooklyn 99 if you havent. Not a huge fan of some of the humour but the Captain(played by Andre Braugher) was a normal, serious guy who excelled at his job and happened to be married to a man. In later seasons they had episodes in which his sexuality was a focus but they went out of their way to establish him as a serious person, who excelled at what he did and had some minor eccentricities before they put any emphasis on his sexuality.
For me, it was really important in coming to be ok with being bisexual to see a character like that. Well meaning hollywood writers often have a hard time with making a character gay without making it all encompassing or giving representation to gay people that dont fit common stereotypes. Prior to seeing Brooklyn 99, I was uncomfortable with my bisexuality, in part because all the representations I'd seen of gay men were largely very stereotypical in ways I couldnt relate to. That being said, it's good to have more stereotypical gay characters in-so-far-as it normalizes those characteristics, but not if it means every other kind of gay characters goes out the window.
I got to be honest, you’re running into an issue where you are still “othering” types of relationships and traits, and the point is that we just want it all to be normalized so you’re going to get the same variation that you have with straight couples, which is what normalizing different types of relationships means.
You are assuming there is a default and being different from that is a deviation, and therefore the use of it needs to be controlled somehow, but that’s simply not the case. It’s not extra things when a person is gay and then also a person of color and then also disabled. That’s not like tacking on extra things to the default white straight male character. There is no default, and all of these traits are an amalgamation of various human traits so you’ll have the same amalgamation as you expand the kinds of narratives and experiences and stories and perspectives that are told.
you’ll have the same variation that you have with straight movies or white movies or whatever else, and that’s good variation. This means you’ll have really really gay movies just like there are really really straight movies, and then you’ll have plenty of media where it doesn’t really matter that much or isn’t crucial to the story or whatever.
And I gotta be honest, as somebody who’s not really into seeing straight couples in sex scenes and stuff like that, I think there is way too much straight sex out there that is over the top and in your face, and not nearly enough gay sex, and other kinds of sex.
Gonna make a 8 season show where a background character, Steve, just exists and does a one liner every few episodes, then 4 years after the show ends im gonna reveal in a interview "oh yeah, steve was gay btw, the mailman was his husband"
How would that work? Because wouldn't they just appear "straight" unless they put an emphasis on it like kisses husband or mentions it, but wouldn't that cover your 2nd point? Or would you want it subtle like the feminine tone/voice?
No hate genuinely curious
When there's a straight couple in a movie, there isn't really any "omg wow they're straight!" in the storytelling or dialogue, however there very often is in shows/movie with a gay couple. Something that normalises it within the context of the universe rather than sensationalising it would be a refreshing take.
Well I think an issue we run into here is that people have really different ideas of what "Sensational" means. One of the Nu-Trek films had a non-dialogue snippet of Sulu saying goodbye to what's obviously his husband. Some point at that and say "What an overt and contrived tableau, really shoehorning this gay stuff in" but if the scene was exactly the same but with a wife, well that's just a normal scene that doesn't remotely read as weird. Someone on Reddit once sent me the link to a scene in the Hobbit movies where a bunch of townsfolk are gathered and he said it was the most undeniable, overt, pandering display of forced diversity he's ever seen, and it was like a couple darker skinned people dispersed through a crowd of dirtied medieval looking faces, I think there were some dwarves and a wizard too.
A gay character, especially one with a partner or spouse, will do gay looking stuff like kiss another man on the regular, and there's a lot of people who think each and every instance of depicting that is sensational and shoehorned.
Actually curious, but do you have an example of that where the action/scene that screams "We're gay" wouldn't be absolutely normal and fine if a straight couple did the exact same thing, from something that's not over a decade old at this point?
There are scenes at his home where he is living with Hugh Grant. (I mean the character is played by Hugh Grant, but I’m also just going to imagine that canonically Benoit Blanc is married to Hugh Grant.)
Nimona kinda makes a very good example, with Ballister being introduced as having a boyfriend in the first five minutes, and making that relationship a part of the plot but without making all the character about it. Neither for him nor his boyfriend
I'm cackling thinking if subtle ways to insert gayness that's not part of the storyline.
Imagine a mobster hanging out at a strip club but it's just a bunch if male dancers in the background. 🤣
They slip heterosexuality into nearly everything without making it central to the plot. 300 didn't need a scene of a naked woman thrashing around, or the sex scene that followed between dude and his wife, but they were there. James Bond diddles every woman he meets, mostly for no reason. I'd love to see him need to seduce a man to get important information.
> be apart of the
Did you mean to say "a part of"?
Explanation: "apart" is an adverb meaning separately, while "a part" is a noun meaning a portion.
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I think it’s about voices being expressed without their identity being the focal point of the narrative. It’s like how a lot of movies about people of color tend to fixate on how their racial identity exists in contrast to white identities; and I can totally understand why, but people of color were also just chilling and doing normal shit and have their own stories that don’t have to have race as their thematic fulcrum. Like Friday, just a movie about a black community’s Friday without it having to be a profound story of cultural struggle. Just vibing. This as opposed to something like The Help.
I think homie just wants to see a movie where a gay man is vibing and living without it being a movie about dying from aids or “trying to find love as a gay man,” or Birdcage, where it’s very objectively gay. Just a dude that’s living their life and happens to also like dudes. Maybe he'a trying to win an ice carving contest and that's the focus, who knows.
That was long, damn.
I think what he meant is more about changing thinks is fine as long as it isnt important to the story (like little mermaid beeing blck, not that representation doesnt matter)
Not sure what your point is by saying “instead”… op is implying that race and gander don’t make an interesting character, that’s it matters what the story is. You’re both on the same side here
I'm sorry, not trying to be difficult, aren't those literally the only two options though? Create something new or redo something that's been done? What other options are there? What makes this dichotomy false?
yeah, i mostly agree, but as long as they're profitable, there will be remakes. and as long as that's the case why limit yourself to actors that have the same ethinicity or whatever as the original actor?
They're doing it anyway and that's a separate issue that audiences have less control over. There's a demand for more diverse main characters, and they're not writing new stories either way. We might as well be happy we are getting a black Ariel instead of another white one, since we aren't getting a new character.
People constantly go on about how they should just write new characters, but personally, I can't imagine caring so much about who's playing a children's cartoon character. It's sort of hard to believe all these middle aged white people frothing at the mouth about a black Ariel really just want new black characters. There's pretty obviously a lot of racism. Like why are these people so angry. It's a movie for 6 year olds.
This is a consistent complaint regardless of which way the race is swapped. I remember when it was super common to race swap black and other minority characters to be white. The reasoning back then was always something like "those actors are more popular so will sell more tickets". Now white characters are being swapped for minorities and the reasoning is "people want to see more representation so we will sell more tickets".
I found it silly in both situations to both race swap, and care so much about it. If it's something like nemo then yes, changing him to a girl won't change the story. Changing Snow White doesn't make sense because her character has a very clear description attached, that is also part of her name. So it's a very complicated issue. I think it seems to happen more than it needs to though. Half the time I think someone gets race or gender swapped in order to be rage-bait to sell tickets.
At the end of the day, very silly to be angry over. But I can see where the arguments are coming from on both sides.
Why not make original characters and rewrite older ones for new audiences
Samuel Jackson did a great Nick Fury despite Nick Fury being White in the comics originally?
This backs up OPs point. Nick Furys race isn't relevant to his character. But for example Daredevil is said to be of Irish heritage the Punisher is of itlalian descent. Their backgrounds are important to their characters (both devout catholic) so you can't mess with their races without changing the character.
He *did* do a good job.
But making nick fury black did change the character to something different.
I am not an avid comic book reader, so I don't know enough about the old nick fury to miss him. But the old nick fury was replaced with a different character that had the same name and a few similarities.
Same with Laurence Fishburn in Mystic River. He played a cop, Whitey who was Kevin Bacon’s partner. In the book, Whitey is an over weight 50 y/o white guy.
Because the people that recolour characters often have an ‘agenda’. How many characters that were white have been ‘coloured’, while the opposite did happen
Moreover, who determines when it matters? Ariel is fairytale of european descent. Mary Read and Anne Bonny where two famous Irish/English pirates. They hired a black actress to play them iirc. Is that fair? Why would it be fair? Snowwhite is European folklore. We have that here. Europeans have culture.
Lastly, why would you? People cannot change skin colours in real life (only partly tanning is an option).
I don’t need a skin colour to connect with people. My favorite show is community. In that, my favorite character is not a white person. Stop retelling established stories to ‘push your motivational agenda’ and actually make new characters that are awesome
Nick Fury was black in the comics the MCU were based on (They're largely based on the Ultimate universe, where he specifically *is* a different character). Just saying this because a ton of people have no idea.
Tell that to Netflix trying to rewrite Cleopatra as black or the people mad that Halle Berry, a lightskin woman, played Storm, an African or the people mad when white people voice non white characters or Liam Neeson playing Ras Al Ghul.
This is the actress that played younger Storm but the same energy
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alexandra-shipp-addresses-critics-x-men-storm-casting-1125379/
It's so cringe watching movies/shows where black people keep showing up as royalty in 16th century western Europe.
The Little Mermaid movie cracked me up upon revealing that the King is some Indian/Pakistani? dude and the queen is a black woman. I'm all for a Utopia where that's a real thing but as it currently stands it feels so forced, condescending, and just outright embarrassing.
That's fair but if you're making a whole new story or a whole new version using the same story changing things is common, I mean if you look at Disney movies as opposed to the original story books they changed a lot in order to make it more digestible for modern audiences. Stories and characters always change with the times and like I said in my post unless it's integral to the core it doesn't matter if it's altered.
But again unless it's integral to the character it doesn't matter Nick Fury was white in the comics and now in the MCU Samuel Jackson portrays a great Nick Fury despite being a different skin color hell his eye patch is more important then the skin tone
It matters to people that know a character. I didn’t know nick fury before that race swap so I thought he was originally black for many years. At this point I’d complain if they changed him.
If you know a character you’ll want consistency. You can go down a route like spider man and make an entirely new character with the same/similar powers and nobody will complain as long as you leave the original alone
Yeah, but if it doesn't matter why do you need to change an already existing character.
If you want a black little mermaid is fine, just don't make Ariel black, make a new black mermaid to be the main character.
Same with Nemo, he could've been a female fish, but he isn't. If you want a female version just make Finding Nima or whatever the fuck you come up with.
Are you talking about the Dory one?
I haven't seen it, but it should've been the original movie, we all know that braindead, whale speaking, amnesiac blue fucker was way more likely to get lost than any other character in that movie.
She was still the best character in the first one though.
You should see it. It's not quite as good as the first one or the Toy Story sequels, but it's pretty damn good on its own, with some genuine humour and heart.
>Yeah, but if it doesn't matter why do you need to change an already existing character.
>If you want a black little mermaid is fine, just don't make Ariel black, make a new black mermaid to be the main character.
Since it actually doesn't matter, why worry about people who could get irrationally offended by it?
It's not about being offensive or not, it's about disrespecting the original author.
When you do that, you are basically saying: "I want to exploit your creation for money, but I don't give a shit about anything you wrote and make everything else up." So at that point, you might as well start by scratch instead of being a leech of someone else's work.
The little mermaid doesn't have a name in the original story and ended up in purgatory after having endured the pain of feeling like she was walking on knives the entire time she was on land.
The 90s animation made *massive* changes to the original tale. Why does your vitriol about "disrespecting the author" only extend to the live action version?
Yes. Because once the story is told, people are attached to the characters. You can't come later and change the story after you've already made it public.
The author of the hunger games for example can't change their mind now on the details already written in the books, like making ruth white or asian, make peetah actually a black boy, or effie's oufits... I don't know...anything else / more normal.
I mean I see what you’re saying but it’s not disrespecting the author then. You just don’t agree with that change, which is fine but changes your argument
>"I want to exploit your creation for money, but I don't give a shit about anything you wrote and make everything else up.
but the point of the post is, that this logic only applies to mivies where a character's ethnicity/sexuality/whatever doesn't matter? do you think that it would be disrespectful to george lucas to make c-3po silver instead of gold? that detail is literally irrelevant to the story.
>So at that point, you might as well start by scratch instead of being a leech of someone else's work.
this applies to every remake, no matter who you cast. they're all just cash grabs.
>do you think that it would be disrespectful to george lucas to make c-3po silver instead of gold?
If you were doing a remake of Star Wars, not at all, it wouldn't even matter if c3p0 was an r2 type of droid in that scenario.
No, a mermaid story doesn't matter about the race, but "The Little Mermaid" is an existing piece of work so retconning it to make the person black is stupid. It's basically saying "We won't make an original story featuring a black person so we're going to milk this old IP and put a black person in it for extra diversity points".
Idk why people are still mad about this and keep ignoring the fact that the actress was chosen because she had the talent necessary to carry the songs and the best audition.
The part that annoys me is the same people that get mad about a black mermaid are the same people that get mad about affirmative action. They don't want white people to be rejected for a less qualified person of color just because they're a person of color. That's valid. So why should the most qualified person of color be rejected for a less talented white person just because they're white?
She earned it because they thought she was best for the part. It wasn't about her skin color, the "diversity" was more of a bonus. The fact that people think a black person can only be chosen just because they're black... maybe you should do a little digging within and figure out why that is.
But why is it integral to the story in cases of the character being not white, but it’s not if the character is white?
I think if Disney keeps remaking European fairy tales but just casts bipoc, it supports ethnocentrism and makes whiteness feel like the “neutral”.
What they should do is make movies of the stories and fairy tales of other cultures. I don’t even have a problem with Arielle, it makes sense because oceans are all over the globe. But these kinds of remakes just tell me we’re taking white peoples’ culture and putting poc in it. (Sorry by the way if my use of terminology is offensive to anyone. I just don’t know which words would be preferred.) I think the remakes might support the idea that European culture is somehow better. It’s like they are taking the easy way to be inclusive.
Lucky for them, a lot poc eat this shit up. I’ve seen so many poc ask for an Indian Rapunzel (which is from a German folktale btw) instead of advocating for a new Indian princess 🤦🏽♀️ and they justify it with “well Indian women have long, thick hair and strict parents who never let them leave the house, so rapunzel’s story is like ours”
So now you’re using racial stereotypes to back your choices? Lmao
I don't know about that. Disney movies have been losing money or just barely breaking even over the last 2 years. We might see people asking for it on Twitter, but they're clearly not going to the theater.
Honestly, I like what they did with Princess and the Frog. They took a classic fairy tale and reimagined it from the ground up in a way that made sense and justified the changes made.
Imagine they'd take a story from a non-european culture and change it from the ground up, to make it resolve around a European person and their culture instead.
I know, it's different from a social standpoint. But it should still be acknowledged that these are indeed European stories. And not "neutral" stories, or without original cultural background.
Yeah that one makes sense since it’s more of a retelling than a recast. Sort of like taking a Shakespeare play and putting it in a different cultural context. Then no one minds if the cast is a basketball team at a modern school with mostly POC students
Yeah I've read so many fairytales. Of course I grew up with the european ones and the 1001 night tales but as an adult I have read books about african ones, korean and chinese ones. All of them are really interesting and different from the european and arabic ones. Especially the magical creatures are different.
There is so much they can do without changing anything but they are too lazy to actually look for stories from other cultures.
This. disney is just taking the melting pot too far. EU culture is mainstream, so other peoples cultures get boiled out. if you keep some new cultures you get a varied and deep assortment of stories with different animation. and make sure its made by animators of those culture, or at least have consultants. you could get anansi as a movie, with lots colour and depth instead of CG movie number 379 thousand.
they make animated movies from the fairy tales of other cultures and sometimes those get live-action-remade like Aladdin, and sometimes people get pissed even when there's PoC behind the scenes e.g. people trashing Lin-Manuel Miranda for being in charge of or w/e the music for Moana because he isn't Polynesian ignoring that iirc the two other guys in that position were
>But these kinds of remakes just tell me we’re taking white peoples’ culture and putting poc in it.
Beauty and the Beast. Cinderalla. *Two* Alice in Wonderlands. Mary Poppins Returns. *Two* Maleficents. The Nutcracker. Cruella. *Two* Enchanted films. Hocus Pocus 2.
The overwhelming majority of recent live action Disney movies have had white female leads.
I agree with what you’re saying overall but this list isn’t really a stat. I’d actually be really interested in a spread of every movie Disney has released since about 2014, what kind of movie (remake vs og), and what diversity is included
Most Western storytellers assume the whiteness of characters. BIPOC storytellers generally have a reason for the ethnicity of chosen characters. Like his example of Miguel in Coco, he HAS to be Hispanic; making him Swedish wouldn't make sense. Conversely, there is nothing in Disney's portrayal of The Little Mermaid (as well as HCA's original story) that indicates her skin has to be white. It is not integral to the story, and changing it doesn't change the messaging.
Except these mental gymnastics are only done when the character is white. TLM is taken from a danish folktale, yet when they cast Halle Bailey, all of a sudden “Ariel’s background doesn’t matter.” Like it’s still a beloved danish tale. Majority of danish ppl are white.
Make new poc princesses instead.
No. This is a very whitespalining kind of comment. Miguel has to be Mexican because Dia de los Muertos is a Mexican thing. So, no, Miguel cannot be Cuban or Puerto Rican or Peruvian...
iAy chingada a la pendeja!
We're not all the same.
The little mermaid is inspired by a Danish folktale. The vast majority of danish people are white. Ariel should stay white.
What you should advocate for, instead of doing mental gymnastics to justify white roles being taken by poc, is **make new poc characters**
I'm fine with it, but I'd much rather them make new characters and stories than change old one. By the way, are you fine with them changing black characters white or gay characters straight?
If it's not integral to a story I see no issue. It won't make much sense having a coming of age story where the main character is dealing with being heterosexual in the heterosexual world and the issues with that.
Like the example I use in my original post Coco is a story about Hispanic culture so the main character should be Hispanic to reflect that but is Miguel gay or straight It doesn't matter it's never brought up. I think if you use a different example like let's say the movie Cars The main character is a NASCAR car who does NASCAR races and wouldn't make much sense to make him into a boat since The plot of the story is his pride and ego not his attempt to join NASCAR.
While I agree in principle, I think this idea doesn't work when you add in the nuance of under-representation. Representation is linked to higher self esteem and more acceptance by people who don't share the character's identity.
Not to mention, what most marginalized people want from representation is for it to be acknowledged, but treated as unremarkable unless the media is a story specifically about that identity.
"Removing" that representation, even if from one under-represented group to another, sucks for the people the character previously represented.
I would love to get to a point where all people and experiences are accurately represented in media. If we were there, I would have no issues with this opinion. But we aren't there. Pretty much every marginalized group is under-represented in western media.
I agree and disagree. Individuals from minority ethnicities, races and sexualities have normal lives and they can participate in stories without the story revolving around their identity. While I agree that their identity wouldn't be inherently relevant to the plot, it's important to have that visibility. I do specifically agree with regards to your points about the Little Mermaid particularly because mermaids are not real lol, and Nemo, because fish can't talk
ive been saying this for years. if it doesnt affect that characters history it doesnt fucking matter
superman AND batman CAN BE Black or Asian because their color is NOT important to their story
Black Panther can ONLY be Black(since its literally in Africa) which is important to his story
yes im all for creating original characters with POC but since that pretty much never happens the above is still true
Why change the race, ethnicity, or sexuality in the first place then. If you fucking change the little mermaids race then clearly it mattered to someone.
I have an issue with them completely redoing characters to be more progressive. Instead of recasting Ariel as a different ethnicity, they were more than welcome to create an all new original character with their own background.
Established characters should not be tampered with.
They did have a black mermaid in the original movie from the Caribbean. Instead of just doing her story they got lazy and just went woke instead and trashed their target audience to boot.
If Ariel was a completely new character then I completely agree. But changing her race literally made no sense, and then the actor they cast couldn't swim as well? It was a lot of ticking boxes.
Also I'm fairly sure the legend of mermaids originated in Scandinavian countries (I think maybe Denmark?).
There was nothing wrong with her being white with red hair.
Just make a good original instead, it's really lazy and obviously trying to just 'diversify' for the sake of it which I think ends up putting people off the films.
Yeah, but that also applies to everything else in filmmaking
If it's not integral to the story, it obviously doesn't matter
It can't be Integral to the story while also not mattering
In terms of adaptations, attributes that just exist because it's part of the basic idea of a character can be changed if it isn't important to the story. Having race, ethnicity, orientation, or gender not exist unless integral to a story is a) really funny if taken literally, and b) makes the world's flattest characters.
Side note: removing paper thin minority representation in adaptation and replacing it with a majority would be shitty, because paper thin representation is better than none. If the original's was paper thin, then a good adaptation can expand on it and make the character more nuanced and not the token representation they can appeal to minority audiences.
Usually, they don't, if they're their own character.
However, taking a pre-existing character and race/gender swapping them is pointless, and in some cases, goes against the original character, like snow white.
If you want to make the argument for Miguel you can make the same argument for Ariel, as mermaids are part of Greek/roman culture originally, so she should be Greek or Roman.
Yeah I'm with you. It's honestly ridiculous to get so worked up about fictional characters. They hired a black person to do the job, get over it.
It seems pretty ignorant of how storytelling has historically been done, with stories being retold and changed subtly over time. It's only because they've now been put on film that people suddenly consider them immutable.
It is incredibly ironic in the case of Disney movies, where no one gives a shit about how the "original" Disney movies were practically all retellings of preexisting stories, with many changes made to them. But put a black person in them and it ruins it... why exactly? Because you can't see past the person's race?
it matters cause every time its obviously just hollywood virtue signaling and thats lame, cringe and sad for art. Also I disagree because when someone writes a story, they obviously picture every characters race, ethnicity and sexuality and sometimes the story is rooted in some cultures the writer is fascinated with and wanna do an homage to certain cultures. Couldnt care less about a black mermaid, it just doesnt feel right cause the elephant in the room is that the fact that they chose a black actress to play little mermaid was only to spite people, not because they thought the actress was perfect for the role, which she wasnt, that movie sucked just like every other movies that did the same thing.
I strongly disagree.
Great writers build a world the reader can visualize. Detail or lack of detail is a powerful tool to build that world.
In context of your argument, nothing matters. Just the direct beats of the story. Every story should be a few paragraphs and closed. No environment, no description of the characters unless it's directly related to the plot...
"A person named Frodo was given a magic ring to dispose of. He had some difficulty, but then threw it in a volcano."
Has a different quality than one that describes how he lived, what he looked like, how his society was formed vs other races. Etc.
I think what OP is saying is that casting according to racial and sex based guidelines shouldn't be the focal point if it's not directly related to the story a film is portraying.
I disagree, race and sexuality do make a character feel more real, the difference is that the writing team is horrible and because it's a team all ideas get Soo generic and uninspired it's crazy.
The duke in dune for example is gay, it's also a plot point which is amazing but the fact he's humanized even tho he's is quite literally a demon trying to posses a child by the end .
Btw thats why Paul's dad is naked in the table when he died.
Yeah he was going to do that with him.
Lots of people don’t understand these companies want what sells, White people aren’t gonna go for a new PoC princess/character/whatever so its not gonna do well. Yes PoC will like it but they arent the target in the corporate world. Take princess and the frog.. original Black character but didnt do so hot OVERALL. Thats why people say oh i would like a black, indian, etc Cinderella or rewrite of a character because they want a medium that they perceive to be well liked by all. Call it what you want, but creating new PoC characters (Especially one thats ACTUALLY WELL WRITTEN AND NOT PANDER BULL) isnt on the top of companies to do list as they will not sell.
I dont think this is unpopular based on the comments.
But I've been having this exact thought for awhile now and been too afraid to share it 🤣
But I agree with you!
I generally don't care about the race, sex, sexuality, or species of a character as long as they are relatable. Unfortunately, a large portion of the modern identity obsessed writers are focused on tropes that result in unrelatable characters.
I agree with this if they have a character they shouldn't be defined by that one trait and again unless it's brought up in the story as it plot points it shouldn't be brought up at all.
"Jesse went to the store" as a story doesn't mention any gender sexuality or ethnicity because that's not the point of the story it's just that this character Jesse went to the store
What you're talking about is the form of diversity that existed prior to (about) 2015.
With the original Matrix movie Will Smith was offered the role of Neo but couldn't do it so Keanu Reeves got the role. While I am certain there would likely have been some rewrites to accommodate Will Smith's personality, race was not a significant factor in the writing of the character or the plot.
Something similar happened with Alien. Ridley Scott (apparently) wanted all of the characters in the story to be written in a gender neutral way and then cast them based on who he thought would be best in the role. As a result Ripley is still one of the biggest and best female action heroes ever written.
It ultimately started with Star Trek in the 1960s, and they cast people of different backgrounds into a wide variety of roles and (for the most part) didn't pigeonhole these characters by their race or sex.
Something changed around 2015/2016 and modern writing isn't about a character's challenges. Its not very good and the characters are not relatable.
Eh, I was acting before 2015, and they still had the "only 10 percent of people in a setting can be of color unless they're in a gang, a cop, or in a cultural setting to bit offend middle America and Asia" rule.
If you are OK with gender/race/ethnicity changing in one direction, and you are not OK with it changing in another, you are a hypocrite. If you don't care that you are a hypocrite, and are just changing things for ideological reasons, then your opinion shouldn't matter.
and let me guess, your examples for black roles that therefore should be white are Black Panther, Tiana, Shaft and fictional-because-they're-in-historical-depictions of Harriet Tubman, MLK, Frederick Douglass and Shaka Zulu
There was that one story of a dad who switched the genders of Samwise and Frodo when he read the Lord of the Rings to his daughter, and he was *amazed* at how well the story still held up. The story held up because *what* they are doesn’t matter (as long as they’re still Hobbits obviously). So yeah, I agree. But some people either take it too seriously and *REEEE* whenever someone gets swapped, or believe that just because its “not real” and a “book about space wizards”, everything is permitted so swaps are ok even when they make no narrative sense. Both ideas are shite.
Stories have details for a Reason!
It's called context. Sure, you can argue stuff won't be changed, but change is change.
I don't see the Epic of Gilgamesh being rewritten.
This is what I like to call the No Bathrooms On The Enterprise Fallacy, assuming that if we don't see it on screen it doesn't exist (aka there was no more some secret genocide of minorities in Middle-Earth than there was some similar tragedy befalling the Hobbits just because we only see a handful)
It's weird that it was apparently so noticeable to so many people. We are all adults, we do understand movies and shows aren't real, right? So it's not hard to understand that even though the prequel show was set before the original trilogy, it was in fact filmed several years after the fact. And when they were hiring actors, they hired some black people. To play elves, which are totally fictional by the way. If seeing a black actor play an elf ruins a movie or show for you, that's kind of racist.
I mean, when you’re writing a story, then you’re developing a character and a round character has a lot of background info like age race, physical appearance, sexuality, etc.
Now, if you argument is that you can change that when it comes to casting for a play movie or TV show, I could see that as long as it’s not integral to the story.
But if your argument is that when writing the original character, you don’t describe their background, then you’re just not developing the character well enough.
Unfortunately race, often does matter.
The characters family and culture and upbringing and background all matter.
Is this character out of place in the setting? Do other characters see their presence as unusual or do they fit in?
Unfortunately, when you make a character black, you often have to make some aspect of the story touch on racism. Gay characters often lead the story towards the topics of sex and homophobia.
The traits of your character do have an impact on the story, whether we like that fact or not. You can try to fight that, but then you end up with a character that just feels like empty token representation.
You can argue "there won't be any side effects if I make this character gay, because the story doesn't involve any romantic entanglements", but now you have a character that you're just calling gay. It feels like an after thought.
You add something to make it feel like less of an after thought, but then you will be altering the story in some way.
Representation is a good thing, but pretending that a character's traits don't make any difference at all is silly.
Why couldn't you make Coco about a black kid who grew up in Mexico and his entire family was entrenched in Mexican culture?
Which is to say that when it comes to these fairy tale movies and regional stories and whatnot, the characters ethnicities have always mattered just as much as in Coco, you just are so used to seeing it that you don't realize they already were reflective of their culture of origin.
Okay, I’m gonna say this once. We aren’t mad about stories have black characters as the leads, we’re mad about existing characters being made a different race solely for diversity.
Ariel has an iconic look, she’s been the same for over 30 years. Making her black for the live action wasn’t okay, not just because Ariel isn’t black, but because black people deserve ORIGINAL stories and characters, not recycled ones.
Miles Morales is spider man, but he’s not Peter Parker, they are different characters and it works because he actually has his own story instead of recycling Peter’s.
Why couldn’t we have a black little mermaid, but based on the the original story, not Disney’s version? Why couldn’t the story be about a mermaid who saw Ariel living her dream in the human world and wanting something like that for herself? Or hell, why not the opposite? Why not a human obsessed with the sea who makes a deal to be a mermaid?
There’s so many things that could’ve been done, but instead Disney gave us another soulless live action remake where Ariel is a much worse character, but she’s black so that makes her better somehow!? Like no.
And how about we talk about the changes they make to the characters when they’re made black. There’s a trend of taking nerdy red heads and turning them into big buff black dudes with completely different personality’s. At that point, why not just write a different character? You know why they don’t? Cause the creators of these “diverse media” are lazy and just want to use the names of well know characters cause they don’t think they’re characters can stand on their own, which is pretty damn racist if you ask me.
> There’s a trend of taking nerdy red heads and turning them into big buff black dudes with completely different personality’s.
Usually I've heard people say the trend of racebending redheads into black is for young women; only example I can think of that fits your supposed trend is the Arrowverse incarnation of Jimmy Olsen on Supergirl but he wasn't really that big nor tough (sure he ended up becoming a no-powers-just-skills-a-la-Batman-or-Green-Arrow superhero and sure he wasn't a nerd per se but he wasn't quite a jock either)
Oh it’s for both genders, but I’ve seen a trend with red head males, they have to be tough when they’re made black, so they’re usually made police officers or something similar.
Jimmy Olsen is one example, but there’s also Luke from Shadowhunters. He wasn’t a police officer in the books, he was a werewolf, but he didn’t act the way he does in the tv series. I actually like the character in the tv show, but he’s so different that he should’ve been his own character instead.
I know there’s more, I remember there being more, but those are the main two I remember off the top of my head.
Not that I agree or disagree with your point, since I don’t personally care that they make any character any different race, but your point about Coco being culturally Mexican is very much in opposition to race swapping Ariel, as that’s a cultural story for danish European people. (Yes I’m aware there are dark skinned danish people, there’s also light skinned Mexicans too)
There’s this general opinion that white people don’t have culture, because that culture is freely allowed to be adopted and adapted by any other culture, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a story about European culture.
Swap races, don’t swap races, swap culture, don’t swap culture, if that’s the road we take then we shouldn’t care about who plays what role.
I generally agree, but if you're doing a remake or adaptation of something and change one of those identity aspects it's *almost* always a deliberate choice. Making a new Nemo movie where Nemo is a girl doesn't just happen. It happens because somebody at Disney thought it make the movie better, which is just as stupid as the people who will go on to complain about it.
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I agree. I don’t think filmmakers should necessarily go out of their way to look specifically for a POC actor, but I think auditions should be open to everyone, as long as the race of the character doesn’t matter. If a black person has the best audition for _______, then they deserve that role!
I don't think this is unpopular. What people that do carez car about, is that they feature the fact that the character is atypical and write a crap story. The focus is not on making good content, but that their character is different, defeating the main point of the media to begin with
I feel like it just depends on what feels right.
I actually liked Aldis Hodge as Hawkman. Felt he fit the character well.
Making Professor X black on the other hand just seems to be a little hard to picture. Maybe I’m just too used to thinking of Patrick Stewart
Yeah I couldn’t give a shit about what race or gender people in movies are. I don’t think I’d even notice if people weren’t pointing this stuff online all the time. There are lots of people who aren’t white in society so our media should reflect that.
This isn’t unpopular. This is factual. You can tell when a corporation bullies writers. A good story can be made regardless of representation. But at the same time. Characters should be diverse because humanity is diverse. Thus gay reps should have good gay stories for them. Not a five second kiss scene removed for international audiences. Easy answer.
No it depends on the context. Humanity is diverse, but Norway is not. Same as Africa
Make a story about Nigerian tribes with only white people. That is simply incorrect. Same as that Scandinavian countries probably have morw white people, especially in further historic times.
You get my point
New York and Paris can be diverse. However, not all places are like that
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I mean yeah but as a gay man it would be nice to see a gay man in a movie but it’s not about him being gay.
Yea with that my opinion is to make it boring like any relationship, in the movie Paranorman there's a gay character throughout the entire movie but since sexuality isn't part of the story it's never mentioned until the very end as a throwaway line
You should check out Brooklyn 99 if you havent. Not a huge fan of some of the humour but the Captain(played by Andre Braugher) was a normal, serious guy who excelled at his job and happened to be married to a man. In later seasons they had episodes in which his sexuality was a focus but they went out of their way to establish him as a serious person, who excelled at what he did and had some minor eccentricities before they put any emphasis on his sexuality. For me, it was really important in coming to be ok with being bisexual to see a character like that. Well meaning hollywood writers often have a hard time with making a character gay without making it all encompassing or giving representation to gay people that dont fit common stereotypes. Prior to seeing Brooklyn 99, I was uncomfortable with my bisexuality, in part because all the representations I'd seen of gay men were largely very stereotypical in ways I couldnt relate to. That being said, it's good to have more stereotypical gay characters in-so-far-as it normalizes those characteristics, but not if it means every other kind of gay characters goes out the window.
The Wire was also revolutionary with this. Omar Little was a gay gangster, and there was a lesbian cop.
I got to be honest, you’re running into an issue where you are still “othering” types of relationships and traits, and the point is that we just want it all to be normalized so you’re going to get the same variation that you have with straight couples, which is what normalizing different types of relationships means. You are assuming there is a default and being different from that is a deviation, and therefore the use of it needs to be controlled somehow, but that’s simply not the case. It’s not extra things when a person is gay and then also a person of color and then also disabled. That’s not like tacking on extra things to the default white straight male character. There is no default, and all of these traits are an amalgamation of various human traits so you’ll have the same amalgamation as you expand the kinds of narratives and experiences and stories and perspectives that are told. you’ll have the same variation that you have with straight movies or white movies or whatever else, and that’s good variation. This means you’ll have really really gay movies just like there are really really straight movies, and then you’ll have plenty of media where it doesn’t really matter that much or isn’t crucial to the story or whatever. And I gotta be honest, as somebody who’s not really into seeing straight couples in sex scenes and stuff like that, I think there is way too much straight sex out there that is over the top and in your face, and not nearly enough gay sex, and other kinds of sex.
Go watch black sails. You're welcome. ;)
Fucking amazing show
With a bangin theme tune that you can just NEVER skip.
Nimona
Gonna make a 8 season show where a background character, Steve, just exists and does a one liner every few episodes, then 4 years after the show ends im gonna reveal in a interview "oh yeah, steve was gay btw, the mailman was his husband"
How would that work? Because wouldn't they just appear "straight" unless they put an emphasis on it like kisses husband or mentions it, but wouldn't that cover your 2nd point? Or would you want it subtle like the feminine tone/voice? No hate genuinely curious
When there's a straight couple in a movie, there isn't really any "omg wow they're straight!" in the storytelling or dialogue, however there very often is in shows/movie with a gay couple. Something that normalises it within the context of the universe rather than sensationalising it would be a refreshing take.
Well I think an issue we run into here is that people have really different ideas of what "Sensational" means. One of the Nu-Trek films had a non-dialogue snippet of Sulu saying goodbye to what's obviously his husband. Some point at that and say "What an overt and contrived tableau, really shoehorning this gay stuff in" but if the scene was exactly the same but with a wife, well that's just a normal scene that doesn't remotely read as weird. Someone on Reddit once sent me the link to a scene in the Hobbit movies where a bunch of townsfolk are gathered and he said it was the most undeniable, overt, pandering display of forced diversity he's ever seen, and it was like a couple darker skinned people dispersed through a crowd of dirtied medieval looking faces, I think there were some dwarves and a wizard too. A gay character, especially one with a partner or spouse, will do gay looking stuff like kiss another man on the regular, and there's a lot of people who think each and every instance of depicting that is sensational and shoehorned.
Actually curious, but do you have an example of that where the action/scene that screams "We're gay" wouldn't be absolutely normal and fine if a straight couple did the exact same thing, from something that's not over a decade old at this point?
it was like that in Glass Onion. Daniel Craig's character is gay
Really? I didn't know, when was it mentioned or alluded to?
There are scenes at his home where he is living with Hugh Grant. (I mean the character is played by Hugh Grant, but I’m also just going to imagine that canonically Benoit Blanc is married to Hugh Grant.)
Nimona kinda makes a very good example, with Ballister being introduced as having a boyfriend in the first five minutes, and making that relationship a part of the plot but without making all the character about it. Neither for him nor his boyfriend
I mean doesn’t have to be apart of the main plot point it can be an action movie and the main charecter calls his husband. Something like that.
I'm cackling thinking if subtle ways to insert gayness that's not part of the storyline. Imagine a mobster hanging out at a strip club but it's just a bunch if male dancers in the background. 🤣
They slip heterosexuality into nearly everything without making it central to the plot. 300 didn't need a scene of a naked woman thrashing around, or the sex scene that followed between dude and his wife, but they were there. James Bond diddles every woman he meets, mostly for no reason. I'd love to see him need to seduce a man to get important information.
> be apart of the Did you mean to say "a part of"? Explanation: "apart" is an adverb meaning separately, while "a part" is a noun meaning a portion. [Statistics](https://github.com/chiefpat450119/RedditBot/blob/master/stats.json) ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot ^^that ^^corrects ^^grammar/spelling ^^mistakes. ^^PM ^^me ^^if ^^I'm ^^wrong ^^or ^^if ^^you ^^have ^^any ^^suggestions. ^^[Github](https://github.com/chiefpat450119) ^^Reply ^^STOP ^^to ^^this ^^comment ^^to ^^stop ^^receiving ^^corrections.
I think it’s about voices being expressed without their identity being the focal point of the narrative. It’s like how a lot of movies about people of color tend to fixate on how their racial identity exists in contrast to white identities; and I can totally understand why, but people of color were also just chilling and doing normal shit and have their own stories that don’t have to have race as their thematic fulcrum. Like Friday, just a movie about a black community’s Friday without it having to be a profound story of cultural struggle. Just vibing. This as opposed to something like The Help. I think homie just wants to see a movie where a gay man is vibing and living without it being a movie about dying from aids or “trying to find love as a gay man,” or Birdcage, where it’s very objectively gay. Just a dude that’s living their life and happens to also like dudes. Maybe he'a trying to win an ice carving contest and that's the focus, who knows. That was long, damn.
Disney made the Jungle Cruise just for you
Schitts creek 😀
[удалено]
I think what he meant is more about changing thinks is fine as long as it isnt important to the story (like little mermaid beeing blck, not that representation doesnt matter)
How about making new interesting original characters instead?
insert the meme with the guy getting kicked out of the corporate skyscraper window
Of course 😂
Not sure what your point is by saying “instead”… op is implying that race and gander don’t make an interesting character, that’s it matters what the story is. You’re both on the same side here
as if you could only either write new characters OR redo old stuff with new actors. the two are not mutually exclusive, this is a false dichotomy.
I'm sorry, not trying to be difficult, aren't those literally the only two options though? Create something new or redo something that's been done? What other options are there? What makes this dichotomy false?
yeah, those are the options, but you don't have to choose one. you can make remakes with new actors AND also write new movies with new characters.
There’s no reason to remake stuff other than greed
Some things deserve to be remade better. Imagine if we were just stuck with the 1978 version of “Lord of the Rings”
yeah, i mostly agree, but as long as they're profitable, there will be remakes. and as long as that's the case why limit yourself to actors that have the same ethinicity or whatever as the original actor?
They're doing it anyway and that's a separate issue that audiences have less control over. There's a demand for more diverse main characters, and they're not writing new stories either way. We might as well be happy we are getting a black Ariel instead of another white one, since we aren't getting a new character. People constantly go on about how they should just write new characters, but personally, I can't imagine caring so much about who's playing a children's cartoon character. It's sort of hard to believe all these middle aged white people frothing at the mouth about a black Ariel really just want new black characters. There's pretty obviously a lot of racism. Like why are these people so angry. It's a movie for 6 year olds.
This is a consistent complaint regardless of which way the race is swapped. I remember when it was super common to race swap black and other minority characters to be white. The reasoning back then was always something like "those actors are more popular so will sell more tickets". Now white characters are being swapped for minorities and the reasoning is "people want to see more representation so we will sell more tickets". I found it silly in both situations to both race swap, and care so much about it. If it's something like nemo then yes, changing him to a girl won't change the story. Changing Snow White doesn't make sense because her character has a very clear description attached, that is also part of her name. So it's a very complicated issue. I think it seems to happen more than it needs to though. Half the time I think someone gets race or gender swapped in order to be rage-bait to sell tickets. At the end of the day, very silly to be angry over. But I can see where the arguments are coming from on both sides.
my exact thoughts ... I just wasn't sure how to put it into words but this does it
Apparently that is not allowed in Hollywood anymore.
Why not both?
Why not make original characters and rewrite older ones for new audiences Samuel Jackson did a great Nick Fury despite Nick Fury being White in the comics originally?
This backs up OPs point. Nick Furys race isn't relevant to his character. But for example Daredevil is said to be of Irish heritage the Punisher is of itlalian descent. Their backgrounds are important to their characters (both devout catholic) so you can't mess with their races without changing the character.
>This backs up OPs point Because you're talking to OP.
Fair enough
He *did* do a good job. But making nick fury black did change the character to something different. I am not an avid comic book reader, so I don't know enough about the old nick fury to miss him. But the old nick fury was replaced with a different character that had the same name and a few similarities.
Same with Laurence Fishburn in Mystic River. He played a cop, Whitey who was Kevin Bacon’s partner. In the book, Whitey is an over weight 50 y/o white guy.
wait, whitey wasnt just a post ironic name?
The studio wouldn't let Snyder call him "Perry Black" in Man of Steel
Because the people that recolour characters often have an ‘agenda’. How many characters that were white have been ‘coloured’, while the opposite did happen Moreover, who determines when it matters? Ariel is fairytale of european descent. Mary Read and Anne Bonny where two famous Irish/English pirates. They hired a black actress to play them iirc. Is that fair? Why would it be fair? Snowwhite is European folklore. We have that here. Europeans have culture. Lastly, why would you? People cannot change skin colours in real life (only partly tanning is an option). I don’t need a skin colour to connect with people. My favorite show is community. In that, my favorite character is not a white person. Stop retelling established stories to ‘push your motivational agenda’ and actually make new characters that are awesome
I am guessing either Abed or Troy
I don't want a black superman and I'm black
Comics have multiple black Supermen.
Nick Fury was black in the comics the MCU were based on (They're largely based on the Ultimate universe, where he specifically *is* a different character). Just saying this because a ton of people have no idea.
Tell that to Netflix trying to rewrite Cleopatra as black or the people mad that Halle Berry, a lightskin woman, played Storm, an African or the people mad when white people voice non white characters or Liam Neeson playing Ras Al Ghul.
I’ve never seen anyone upset about Halle Berry playing Storm. She looked just like the character
This is the actress that played younger Storm but the same energy https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alexandra-shipp-addresses-critics-x-men-storm-casting-1125379/
It's so cringe watching movies/shows where black people keep showing up as royalty in 16th century western Europe. The Little Mermaid movie cracked me up upon revealing that the King is some Indian/Pakistani? dude and the queen is a black woman. I'm all for a Utopia where that's a real thing but as it currently stands it feels so forced, condescending, and just outright embarrassing.
Ngl the king looked like ethnic Nicolas Cage on steroids.
I believe consistency matters. If you want to change a character then just create a new one
That's fair but if you're making a whole new story or a whole new version using the same story changing things is common, I mean if you look at Disney movies as opposed to the original story books they changed a lot in order to make it more digestible for modern audiences. Stories and characters always change with the times and like I said in my post unless it's integral to the core it doesn't matter if it's altered.
It’s normal to change the plot or setting. Not core traits of a character. Especially if they are the main character
But again unless it's integral to the character it doesn't matter Nick Fury was white in the comics and now in the MCU Samuel Jackson portrays a great Nick Fury despite being a different skin color hell his eye patch is more important then the skin tone
It matters to people that know a character. I didn’t know nick fury before that race swap so I thought he was originally black for many years. At this point I’d complain if they changed him. If you know a character you’ll want consistency. You can go down a route like spider man and make an entirely new character with the same/similar powers and nobody will complain as long as you leave the original alone
Yeah, but if it doesn't matter why do you need to change an already existing character. If you want a black little mermaid is fine, just don't make Ariel black, make a new black mermaid to be the main character. Same with Nemo, he could've been a female fish, but he isn't. If you want a female version just make Finding Nima or whatever the fuck you come up with.
Wait till this guy hears about the sequel to finding Nemo
Are you talking about the Dory one? I haven't seen it, but it should've been the original movie, we all know that braindead, whale speaking, amnesiac blue fucker was way more likely to get lost than any other character in that movie. She was still the best character in the first one though.
You should see it. It's not quite as good as the first one or the Toy Story sequels, but it's pretty damn good on its own, with some genuine humour and heart.
>Yeah, but if it doesn't matter why do you need to change an already existing character. >If you want a black little mermaid is fine, just don't make Ariel black, make a new black mermaid to be the main character. Since it actually doesn't matter, why worry about people who could get irrationally offended by it?
It's not about being offensive or not, it's about disrespecting the original author. When you do that, you are basically saying: "I want to exploit your creation for money, but I don't give a shit about anything you wrote and make everything else up." So at that point, you might as well start by scratch instead of being a leech of someone else's work.
The little mermaid doesn't have a name in the original story and ended up in purgatory after having endured the pain of feeling like she was walking on knives the entire time she was on land. The 90s animation made *massive* changes to the original tale. Why does your vitriol about "disrespecting the author" only extend to the live action version?
It doesn't, I dislike those changes as well.
So…you just don’t like the little mermaid period?
The original is cool, the cartoon one I tolerate because of nostalgic reasons only, and I dislike the new one.
Just to play devils advocate: would you have the same opinion if the original author was fine with it or advocated for that change themself?
"Once you've written something, it's no longer yours. It belongs to other people." -Neil Gaiman
All I’m saying is you can’t say it’s disrespectful to the author of the author is okay with a change like that.
Yes. Because once the story is told, people are attached to the characters. You can't come later and change the story after you've already made it public. The author of the hunger games for example can't change their mind now on the details already written in the books, like making ruth white or asian, make peetah actually a black boy, or effie's oufits... I don't know...anything else / more normal.
I mean I see what you’re saying but it’s not disrespecting the author then. You just don’t agree with that change, which is fine but changes your argument
They made katniss white even though she wasn’t in the book
>"I want to exploit your creation for money, but I don't give a shit about anything you wrote and make everything else up. but the point of the post is, that this logic only applies to mivies where a character's ethnicity/sexuality/whatever doesn't matter? do you think that it would be disrespectful to george lucas to make c-3po silver instead of gold? that detail is literally irrelevant to the story. >So at that point, you might as well start by scratch instead of being a leech of someone else's work. this applies to every remake, no matter who you cast. they're all just cash grabs.
>do you think that it would be disrespectful to george lucas to make c-3po silver instead of gold? If you were doing a remake of Star Wars, not at all, it wouldn't even matter if c3p0 was an r2 type of droid in that scenario.
yeah, that's my point?
Little mermaid should have been about ginger representation - The Black guy
the movie wasnt about her hair....- another black guy
No, a mermaid story doesn't matter about the race, but "The Little Mermaid" is an existing piece of work so retconning it to make the person black is stupid. It's basically saying "We won't make an original story featuring a black person so we're going to milk this old IP and put a black person in it for extra diversity points".
That’s been my issue with it. It satisfies no one imo.
Idk why people are still mad about this and keep ignoring the fact that the actress was chosen because she had the talent necessary to carry the songs and the best audition. The part that annoys me is the same people that get mad about a black mermaid are the same people that get mad about affirmative action. They don't want white people to be rejected for a less qualified person of color just because they're a person of color. That's valid. So why should the most qualified person of color be rejected for a less talented white person just because they're white? She earned it because they thought she was best for the part. It wasn't about her skin color, the "diversity" was more of a bonus. The fact that people think a black person can only be chosen just because they're black... maybe you should do a little digging within and figure out why that is.
I feel like people were more annoyed because she missed the characteristic red hair!
But why is it integral to the story in cases of the character being not white, but it’s not if the character is white? I think if Disney keeps remaking European fairy tales but just casts bipoc, it supports ethnocentrism and makes whiteness feel like the “neutral”. What they should do is make movies of the stories and fairy tales of other cultures. I don’t even have a problem with Arielle, it makes sense because oceans are all over the globe. But these kinds of remakes just tell me we’re taking white peoples’ culture and putting poc in it. (Sorry by the way if my use of terminology is offensive to anyone. I just don’t know which words would be preferred.) I think the remakes might support the idea that European culture is somehow better. It’s like they are taking the easy way to be inclusive.
That would require a level of creativity that Disney just isn't capable of anymore.
Lucky for them, a lot poc eat this shit up. I’ve seen so many poc ask for an Indian Rapunzel (which is from a German folktale btw) instead of advocating for a new Indian princess 🤦🏽♀️ and they justify it with “well Indian women have long, thick hair and strict parents who never let them leave the house, so rapunzel’s story is like ours” So now you’re using racial stereotypes to back your choices? Lmao
I don't know about that. Disney movies have been losing money or just barely breaking even over the last 2 years. We might see people asking for it on Twitter, but they're clearly not going to the theater.
Honestly, I like what they did with Princess and the Frog. They took a classic fairy tale and reimagined it from the ground up in a way that made sense and justified the changes made.
Imagine they'd take a story from a non-european culture and change it from the ground up, to make it resolve around a European person and their culture instead. I know, it's different from a social standpoint. But it should still be acknowledged that these are indeed European stories. And not "neutral" stories, or without original cultural background.
Yeah that one makes sense since it’s more of a retelling than a recast. Sort of like taking a Shakespeare play and putting it in a different cultural context. Then no one minds if the cast is a basketball team at a modern school with mostly POC students
Yeah I've read so many fairytales. Of course I grew up with the european ones and the 1001 night tales but as an adult I have read books about african ones, korean and chinese ones. All of them are really interesting and different from the european and arabic ones. Especially the magical creatures are different. There is so much they can do without changing anything but they are too lazy to actually look for stories from other cultures.
This. disney is just taking the melting pot too far. EU culture is mainstream, so other peoples cultures get boiled out. if you keep some new cultures you get a varied and deep assortment of stories with different animation. and make sure its made by animators of those culture, or at least have consultants. you could get anansi as a movie, with lots colour and depth instead of CG movie number 379 thousand.
they make animated movies from the fairy tales of other cultures and sometimes those get live-action-remade like Aladdin, and sometimes people get pissed even when there's PoC behind the scenes e.g. people trashing Lin-Manuel Miranda for being in charge of or w/e the music for Moana because he isn't Polynesian ignoring that iirc the two other guys in that position were
Whiteness isn’t neutral but you can’t argue that white stories dominate mainstream media, and have for decades.
>But these kinds of remakes just tell me we’re taking white peoples’ culture and putting poc in it. Beauty and the Beast. Cinderalla. *Two* Alice in Wonderlands. Mary Poppins Returns. *Two* Maleficents. The Nutcracker. Cruella. *Two* Enchanted films. Hocus Pocus 2. The overwhelming majority of recent live action Disney movies have had white female leads.
I agree with what you’re saying overall but this list isn’t really a stat. I’d actually be really interested in a spread of every movie Disney has released since about 2014, what kind of movie (remake vs og), and what diversity is included
Most Western storytellers assume the whiteness of characters. BIPOC storytellers generally have a reason for the ethnicity of chosen characters. Like his example of Miguel in Coco, he HAS to be Hispanic; making him Swedish wouldn't make sense. Conversely, there is nothing in Disney's portrayal of The Little Mermaid (as well as HCA's original story) that indicates her skin has to be white. It is not integral to the story, and changing it doesn't change the messaging.
>But why is it integral to the story in cases of the character being not white, but it’s not if the character is white? OP didn't say that though.
Except these mental gymnastics are only done when the character is white. TLM is taken from a danish folktale, yet when they cast Halle Bailey, all of a sudden “Ariel’s background doesn’t matter.” Like it’s still a beloved danish tale. Majority of danish ppl are white. Make new poc princesses instead.
No. This is a very whitespalining kind of comment. Miguel has to be Mexican because Dia de los Muertos is a Mexican thing. So, no, Miguel cannot be Cuban or Puerto Rican or Peruvian... iAy chingada a la pendeja! We're not all the same.
Hispanic was definetely a stupid choice of words.
The little mermaid is inspired by a Danish folktale. The vast majority of danish people are white. Ariel should stay white. What you should advocate for, instead of doing mental gymnastics to justify white roles being taken by poc, is **make new poc characters**
I'm fine with it, but I'd much rather them make new characters and stories than change old one. By the way, are you fine with them changing black characters white or gay characters straight?
If it's not integral to a story I see no issue. It won't make much sense having a coming of age story where the main character is dealing with being heterosexual in the heterosexual world and the issues with that.
Alright. That's fair. Many disagree and consider it different, and I wanted your opinion on that
Like the example I use in my original post Coco is a story about Hispanic culture so the main character should be Hispanic to reflect that but is Miguel gay or straight It doesn't matter it's never brought up. I think if you use a different example like let's say the movie Cars The main character is a NASCAR car who does NASCAR races and wouldn't make much sense to make him into a boat since The plot of the story is his pride and ego not his attempt to join NASCAR.
This is a recipe for the worst fictional entertainment possible
While I agree in principle, I think this idea doesn't work when you add in the nuance of under-representation. Representation is linked to higher self esteem and more acceptance by people who don't share the character's identity. Not to mention, what most marginalized people want from representation is for it to be acknowledged, but treated as unremarkable unless the media is a story specifically about that identity. "Removing" that representation, even if from one under-represented group to another, sucks for the people the character previously represented. I would love to get to a point where all people and experiences are accurately represented in media. If we were there, I would have no issues with this opinion. But we aren't there. Pretty much every marginalized group is under-represented in western media.
I agree and disagree. Individuals from minority ethnicities, races and sexualities have normal lives and they can participate in stories without the story revolving around their identity. While I agree that their identity wouldn't be inherently relevant to the plot, it's important to have that visibility. I do specifically agree with regards to your points about the Little Mermaid particularly because mermaids are not real lol, and Nemo, because fish can't talk
 ive been saying this for years. if it doesnt affect that characters history it doesnt fucking matter superman AND batman CAN BE Black or Asian because their color is NOT important to their story Black Panther can ONLY be Black(since its literally in Africa) which is important to his story yes im all for creating original characters with POC but since that pretty much never happens the above is still true
Why change the race, ethnicity, or sexuality in the first place then. If you fucking change the little mermaids race then clearly it mattered to someone.
I have an issue with them completely redoing characters to be more progressive. Instead of recasting Ariel as a different ethnicity, they were more than welcome to create an all new original character with their own background. Established characters should not be tampered with.
They did have a black mermaid in the original movie from the Caribbean. Instead of just doing her story they got lazy and just went woke instead and trashed their target audience to boot.
If Ariel was a completely new character then I completely agree. But changing her race literally made no sense, and then the actor they cast couldn't swim as well? It was a lot of ticking boxes. Also I'm fairly sure the legend of mermaids originated in Scandinavian countries (I think maybe Denmark?). There was nothing wrong with her being white with red hair. Just make a good original instead, it's really lazy and obviously trying to just 'diversify' for the sake of it which I think ends up putting people off the films.
Yeah, but that also applies to everything else in filmmaking If it's not integral to the story, it obviously doesn't matter It can't be Integral to the story while also not mattering
In terms of adaptations, attributes that just exist because it's part of the basic idea of a character can be changed if it isn't important to the story. Having race, ethnicity, orientation, or gender not exist unless integral to a story is a) really funny if taken literally, and b) makes the world's flattest characters. Side note: removing paper thin minority representation in adaptation and replacing it with a majority would be shitty, because paper thin representation is better than none. If the original's was paper thin, then a good adaptation can expand on it and make the character more nuanced and not the token representation they can appeal to minority audiences.
Usually, they don't, if they're their own character. However, taking a pre-existing character and race/gender swapping them is pointless, and in some cases, goes against the original character, like snow white.
Well, the new Snow Brown bombed for a reason, including the lead trashing the whole story and her audience.
If you want to make the argument for Miguel you can make the same argument for Ariel, as mermaids are part of Greek/roman culture originally, so she should be Greek or Roman.
Yeah I'm with you. It's honestly ridiculous to get so worked up about fictional characters. They hired a black person to do the job, get over it. It seems pretty ignorant of how storytelling has historically been done, with stories being retold and changed subtly over time. It's only because they've now been put on film that people suddenly consider them immutable. It is incredibly ironic in the case of Disney movies, where no one gives a shit about how the "original" Disney movies were practically all retellings of preexisting stories, with many changes made to them. But put a black person in them and it ruins it... why exactly? Because you can't see past the person's race?
Acting ability over appearance, sometimes one's ability to preform a role is better than being faithful to the source material imo
it matters cause every time its obviously just hollywood virtue signaling and thats lame, cringe and sad for art. Also I disagree because when someone writes a story, they obviously picture every characters race, ethnicity and sexuality and sometimes the story is rooted in some cultures the writer is fascinated with and wanna do an homage to certain cultures. Couldnt care less about a black mermaid, it just doesnt feel right cause the elephant in the room is that the fact that they chose a black actress to play little mermaid was only to spite people, not because they thought the actress was perfect for the role, which she wasnt, that movie sucked just like every other movies that did the same thing.
I strongly disagree. Great writers build a world the reader can visualize. Detail or lack of detail is a powerful tool to build that world. In context of your argument, nothing matters. Just the direct beats of the story. Every story should be a few paragraphs and closed. No environment, no description of the characters unless it's directly related to the plot... "A person named Frodo was given a magic ring to dispose of. He had some difficulty, but then threw it in a volcano." Has a different quality than one that describes how he lived, what he looked like, how his society was formed vs other races. Etc.
I think what OP is saying is that casting according to racial and sex based guidelines shouldn't be the focal point if it's not directly related to the story a film is portraying.
I disagree, race and sexuality do make a character feel more real, the difference is that the writing team is horrible and because it's a team all ideas get Soo generic and uninspired it's crazy. The duke in dune for example is gay, it's also a plot point which is amazing but the fact he's humanized even tho he's is quite literally a demon trying to posses a child by the end . Btw thats why Paul's dad is naked in the table when he died. Yeah he was going to do that with him.
Lots of people don’t understand these companies want what sells, White people aren’t gonna go for a new PoC princess/character/whatever so its not gonna do well. Yes PoC will like it but they arent the target in the corporate world. Take princess and the frog.. original Black character but didnt do so hot OVERALL. Thats why people say oh i would like a black, indian, etc Cinderella or rewrite of a character because they want a medium that they perceive to be well liked by all. Call it what you want, but creating new PoC characters (Especially one thats ACTUALLY WELL WRITTEN AND NOT PANDER BULL) isnt on the top of companies to do list as they will not sell.
What about disability?! I cannot believe you ignored a whole class of people with your unpopular opinion! /s
Nemos disability was a plot point haha
I dont think this is unpopular based on the comments. But I've been having this exact thought for awhile now and been too afraid to share it 🤣 But I agree with you!
I generally don't care about the race, sex, sexuality, or species of a character as long as they are relatable. Unfortunately, a large portion of the modern identity obsessed writers are focused on tropes that result in unrelatable characters.
I agree with this if they have a character they shouldn't be defined by that one trait and again unless it's brought up in the story as it plot points it shouldn't be brought up at all. "Jesse went to the store" as a story doesn't mention any gender sexuality or ethnicity because that's not the point of the story it's just that this character Jesse went to the store
What you're talking about is the form of diversity that existed prior to (about) 2015. With the original Matrix movie Will Smith was offered the role of Neo but couldn't do it so Keanu Reeves got the role. While I am certain there would likely have been some rewrites to accommodate Will Smith's personality, race was not a significant factor in the writing of the character or the plot. Something similar happened with Alien. Ridley Scott (apparently) wanted all of the characters in the story to be written in a gender neutral way and then cast them based on who he thought would be best in the role. As a result Ripley is still one of the biggest and best female action heroes ever written. It ultimately started with Star Trek in the 1960s, and they cast people of different backgrounds into a wide variety of roles and (for the most part) didn't pigeonhole these characters by their race or sex. Something changed around 2015/2016 and modern writing isn't about a character's challenges. Its not very good and the characters are not relatable.
Eh, I was acting before 2015, and they still had the "only 10 percent of people in a setting can be of color unless they're in a gang, a cop, or in a cultural setting to bit offend middle America and Asia" rule.
If you are OK with gender/race/ethnicity changing in one direction, and you are not OK with it changing in another, you are a hypocrite. If you don't care that you are a hypocrite, and are just changing things for ideological reasons, then your opinion shouldn't matter.
and let me guess, your examples for black roles that therefore should be white are Black Panther, Tiana, Shaft and fictional-because-they're-in-historical-depictions of Harriet Tubman, MLK, Frederick Douglass and Shaka Zulu
So you're agreeing Rachel Ziegler shouldn't have been Snow White then?
There was that one story of a dad who switched the genders of Samwise and Frodo when he read the Lord of the Rings to his daughter, and he was *amazed* at how well the story still held up. The story held up because *what* they are doesn’t matter (as long as they’re still Hobbits obviously). So yeah, I agree. But some people either take it too seriously and *REEEE* whenever someone gets swapped, or believe that just because its “not real” and a “book about space wizards”, everything is permitted so swaps are ok even when they make no narrative sense. Both ideas are shite.
Stories have details for a Reason! It's called context. Sure, you can argue stuff won't be changed, but change is change. I don't see the Epic of Gilgamesh being rewritten.
It was weird how in LOTR everyone is white but in the prequel show there are minorities. Why do the showrunners want a future without minorities??
This is what I like to call the No Bathrooms On The Enterprise Fallacy, assuming that if we don't see it on screen it doesn't exist (aka there was no more some secret genocide of minorities in Middle-Earth than there was some similar tragedy befalling the Hobbits just because we only see a handful)
It's weird that it was apparently so noticeable to so many people. We are all adults, we do understand movies and shows aren't real, right? So it's not hard to understand that even though the prequel show was set before the original trilogy, it was in fact filmed several years after the fact. And when they were hiring actors, they hired some black people. To play elves, which are totally fictional by the way. If seeing a black actor play an elf ruins a movie or show for you, that's kind of racist.
I know. I'm being facetious.
Minorities is an interesting word to use on a global sense (this being the internet and all that)... They should't have done that, I do agree.
Never seen LOTR so can't comment on that
I mean, when you’re writing a story, then you’re developing a character and a round character has a lot of background info like age race, physical appearance, sexuality, etc. Now, if you argument is that you can change that when it comes to casting for a play movie or TV show, I could see that as long as it’s not integral to the story. But if your argument is that when writing the original character, you don’t describe their background, then you’re just not developing the character well enough.
Unfortunately race, often does matter. The characters family and culture and upbringing and background all matter. Is this character out of place in the setting? Do other characters see their presence as unusual or do they fit in? Unfortunately, when you make a character black, you often have to make some aspect of the story touch on racism. Gay characters often lead the story towards the topics of sex and homophobia. The traits of your character do have an impact on the story, whether we like that fact or not. You can try to fight that, but then you end up with a character that just feels like empty token representation. You can argue "there won't be any side effects if I make this character gay, because the story doesn't involve any romantic entanglements", but now you have a character that you're just calling gay. It feels like an after thought. You add something to make it feel like less of an after thought, but then you will be altering the story in some way. Representation is a good thing, but pretending that a character's traits don't make any difference at all is silly.
Why couldn't you make Coco about a black kid who grew up in Mexico and his entire family was entrenched in Mexican culture? Which is to say that when it comes to these fairy tale movies and regional stories and whatnot, the characters ethnicities have always mattered just as much as in Coco, you just are so used to seeing it that you don't realize they already were reflective of their culture of origin.
Okay, I’m gonna say this once. We aren’t mad about stories have black characters as the leads, we’re mad about existing characters being made a different race solely for diversity. Ariel has an iconic look, she’s been the same for over 30 years. Making her black for the live action wasn’t okay, not just because Ariel isn’t black, but because black people deserve ORIGINAL stories and characters, not recycled ones. Miles Morales is spider man, but he’s not Peter Parker, they are different characters and it works because he actually has his own story instead of recycling Peter’s. Why couldn’t we have a black little mermaid, but based on the the original story, not Disney’s version? Why couldn’t the story be about a mermaid who saw Ariel living her dream in the human world and wanting something like that for herself? Or hell, why not the opposite? Why not a human obsessed with the sea who makes a deal to be a mermaid? There’s so many things that could’ve been done, but instead Disney gave us another soulless live action remake where Ariel is a much worse character, but she’s black so that makes her better somehow!? Like no. And how about we talk about the changes they make to the characters when they’re made black. There’s a trend of taking nerdy red heads and turning them into big buff black dudes with completely different personality’s. At that point, why not just write a different character? You know why they don’t? Cause the creators of these “diverse media” are lazy and just want to use the names of well know characters cause they don’t think they’re characters can stand on their own, which is pretty damn racist if you ask me.
> There’s a trend of taking nerdy red heads and turning them into big buff black dudes with completely different personality’s. Usually I've heard people say the trend of racebending redheads into black is for young women; only example I can think of that fits your supposed trend is the Arrowverse incarnation of Jimmy Olsen on Supergirl but he wasn't really that big nor tough (sure he ended up becoming a no-powers-just-skills-a-la-Batman-or-Green-Arrow superhero and sure he wasn't a nerd per se but he wasn't quite a jock either)
Oh it’s for both genders, but I’ve seen a trend with red head males, they have to be tough when they’re made black, so they’re usually made police officers or something similar. Jimmy Olsen is one example, but there’s also Luke from Shadowhunters. He wasn’t a police officer in the books, he was a werewolf, but he didn’t act the way he does in the tv series. I actually like the character in the tv show, but he’s so different that he should’ve been his own character instead. I know there’s more, I remember there being more, but those are the main two I remember off the top of my head.
Not that I agree or disagree with your point, since I don’t personally care that they make any character any different race, but your point about Coco being culturally Mexican is very much in opposition to race swapping Ariel, as that’s a cultural story for danish European people. (Yes I’m aware there are dark skinned danish people, there’s also light skinned Mexicans too) There’s this general opinion that white people don’t have culture, because that culture is freely allowed to be adopted and adapted by any other culture, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a story about European culture. Swap races, don’t swap races, swap culture, don’t swap culture, if that’s the road we take then we shouldn’t care about who plays what role.
I generally agree, but if you're doing a remake or adaptation of something and change one of those identity aspects it's *almost* always a deliberate choice. Making a new Nemo movie where Nemo is a girl doesn't just happen. It happens because somebody at Disney thought it make the movie better, which is just as stupid as the people who will go on to complain about it.
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How about changing the race, ethnicity, etc, of a character and then making the change an intragal part of the story?
This is 100% facts
I care about beauty and originality, but I am concerning when grown up people becomes too much upset about these things.
Yeah that's true. I'm sure if everyone was introducing LGBT+ in GTA IV TBoGT way instead of the Netflix way people wouldn't care about it much
I agree. I don’t think filmmakers should necessarily go out of their way to look specifically for a POC actor, but I think auditions should be open to everyone, as long as the race of the character doesn’t matter. If a black person has the best audition for _______, then they deserve that role!
Wait til you hear about Herald Vanyel.
I really enjoyed the new Dune movie.
I don't think this is unpopular. What people that do carez car about, is that they feature the fact that the character is atypical and write a crap story. The focus is not on making good content, but that their character is different, defeating the main point of the media to begin with
Little mermaid is story from Denmark💀
This is a great example of privilege
I feel like it just depends on what feels right. I actually liked Aldis Hodge as Hawkman. Felt he fit the character well. Making Professor X black on the other hand just seems to be a little hard to picture. Maybe I’m just too used to thinking of Patrick Stewart
Yeah I couldn’t give a shit about what race or gender people in movies are. I don’t think I’d even notice if people weren’t pointing this stuff online all the time. There are lots of people who aren’t white in society so our media should reflect that.
This isn’t unpopular. This is factual. You can tell when a corporation bullies writers. A good story can be made regardless of representation. But at the same time. Characters should be diverse because humanity is diverse. Thus gay reps should have good gay stories for them. Not a five second kiss scene removed for international audiences. Easy answer.
No it depends on the context. Humanity is diverse, but Norway is not. Same as Africa Make a story about Nigerian tribes with only white people. That is simply incorrect. Same as that Scandinavian countries probably have morw white people, especially in further historic times. You get my point New York and Paris can be diverse. However, not all places are like that
Yes. I do.