bottom line reads: "Respect the ethnicity of the character" :michael-laugh:
My favourite "controversy" has to be when there was a "leak" that The Witcher TV series might have a person of Asian or African descent playing Ciri. The usual uproar happened and people were saying how there's so little representation of Polish people in Western media that they should cast Polish people. In the end the TV series cast a white British woman to play the role and suddenly erasure of Polish people wasn't an issue anymore.
It also seemed to deliberately invert the ending of the 1995 movie to instead make a statement I've only been able to interpret as pro-cop propaganda.
It also had to explain that the Major was placed into an artificial body after dying in an accident and not just because she chose to, because female characters having that kind of agency over their bodies is inconceivable.
In most versions of GITS she had the accident as a child, so it makes sense that the agency was taken from her and creates the conflict of whether she actually wanted it or not. Its odd that they decided to change that when it is core to who she is
Maybe I missed it, then. I've only seen the original movie and I never got the impression from the dialogue that her body was anything other than her own choice, but that's only my interpretation. Even so, it didn't spell it out explicitly right away like the Hollywood version did.
She had that kind of conflict in the 1995 movie too. She worries if her memories are real or implants the police put in her to make her more easily controlled. The scene where she's wandering around the city silently is really good, because she spots a person through a window who looks exactly the same as she does. So there are other people with her very same mass produced body.
The 2017 character also seems to have this conflict, but strangely just accepts it and continues working for the cops. The 1995 character rejects her own identity and merged with the puppet master to become digital, because she was detached to the point of no longer trusting anyone except maybe Batou.
You imposed your culture on the rest of the planet, now you either cater to the other Citizens(TM) :im-doing-my-part: of your empire who want to see themselves in the culture they compraron, or else their second-class-citizenry status might hurt their feefees a lil bit.
Also, something about expanding markets, free publicity from seething hogs, and trying to have something new in yet another boring remake of the remake.
https://www.quora.com/Is-Johnny-Depp-actually-of-Native-American-ancestry
No he is not. He is what Indians call a wannabe or pretend Indian
Pretendian
in the game he's supposed to be the "grand vizier Jaffar" but :SickoSultan: alliterates so I also nominate that.
I actually remember a pretty big backlash against GITS and Last Air Bender for casting white actors as characters that were clearly Asian. Depp playing Tonto was less criticized but that was more....I think everyone was less concerned with the red face and more the "who the fuck asked for this" part of the whole thing. Prince of Persia was probably the least criticized but there was definitely still talk of it in the zeitgeist. In fact I'm pretty sure that the backlash Disney got for both of those last two was a pretty big part of why they approached the Aladdin reboot the way they did.
At risk of sounding slightly like the scummy film you find floating around in places like stupidpol, I do think media companies like Disney and Amazon intentionally lean into this culture war shit. If not when making casting decisions, then definitely by the time it comes to marketing. It is no secret that outrage is the primary driver of social media engagement, and social media is the ONLY place you can market to younger generations effectively. So you get the bigots outraged at your product, then you get the liberals and anti-racists outraged at the bigots for being outraged at the product, then you get to turn what would otherwise be YET ANOTHER unremarkable remake of stale IP into a thing that everybody is suddenly extremely invested in. Something that would otherwise be mundane takes on a political significance and life of its own. I mean, we kind of watched the same thing play out (with much lower stakes) with the short-lived but inescapable controversy about Grogu eating babies. Everyone's suddenly talking about another Disney property - and not only on the monopoly social media platforms. It trickles into every dark corner of the Internet, including this one. The discussion truly becomes viral.
I think it's absolutely cool to see BIPOC actors and actresses being cast for roles like this, but I think the media companies are extremely cynical about how they deal with this. They get to claim the moral high ground and wash their hands of a long list of sins (protecting sexual predators, boosting fascist politicians, enclosing the creative commons, monopolizing entertainment, etc. etc.) At the end of the day, nothing fundamentally changes about the institutions which make up Hollywood. These are the stewards of imperial cultural hegemony. We get to see more Black princesses and starship commanders, but the media is being produced by the same studios, being financed by the same stolen wealth, telling the same stories of nationalism and patriarchy, and the bigoted meltdowns we see in response to moments like this are all a part of the advertising campaign.
Just a new spin on the old "No Such Thing As Bad Press". It literally doesn't matter whether people like your product or hate it, just so long as everyone is talking about it.
But I'd counter that this isn't strictly about provoking a hate-on. I think a lot of this actually pretty cowardly. The last few big Disney animated films - Moana, Frozen, and Encanto - still ended up pissing off the same white nationalist crowd that they ostensibly were going to appeal to. Frozen, in particular, got crazy blow back from the Far Right seemingly entirely because they didn't make the main characters "normal" enough. This may just be Disney execs throwing up their hands and conceding Whitey will never be happy.
Add to it that the live-action Disney story reboots have all been trash. I feel like they're adding this shit to cover for the disappointing nature of the original products. They're just phoning this shit in.
But I’d counter that this isn’t strictly about provoking a hate-on. I think a lot of this actually pretty cowardly. The last few big Disney animated films - Moana, Frozen, and Encanto - still ended up pissing off the same white nationalist crowd that they ostensibly were going to appeal to.
Well that's the thing. They don't care about social justice. What they care about is the assimilation and commodification of culture. Any other public position they take is only done to maintain public relations and/or ensure their IP monopolies are extended indefinitely. From the reactionary crank's perspective, any media which represents their bugbears in a positive light is the product of a global conspiracy to sow de------cy. If you wanted to piss them off, the best way to do it would be to do literally anything which aids the liberation of oppressed people. But they are fragile and will take offense with their own shadow. They find themselves enraged by Disney despite the fact that Disney is doing everything it possibly can within the cultural space to rationalize and uphold the institutions of colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism.
Inb4 the Gamergate crowd starts defending the live action last airbender movie or 4kidz Americanization as "taking out the wokeness".
no fucking way wtf prince of persia main cast literally 1/6 not anglo
There is no such thing as “white characters”, there are black characters, and it would be racist for white people to portray them, but it does not go the other way. White people are not a group, or a race, or a culture. Black people exist because white people used blackness itself as a justification for slavery and colonialism. Thor isn’t white, Santa Claus isn’t white, Jesus especially isn’t white, people will continue to portray them with non white and non cismale actors, and the moment some chud director tries to do an uno reverse by portraying a historical or fictionally black character as white they are going to literally get murdered and I will be laughing.
