News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
Do you feel equally uneasy when you watch old movies in which white actors portray non-white characters?
Or what about fiction, like "The Hunger Games," in which Katniss is described as "olive-skninned" in the book, but was played by Jennifer Lawrence?
Have you ever expressed your discomfort at the portrayals of Jesus as a white dude with blue eyes all over the place?
I'm not addressing you personally. But those who are vocal about stuff like this are sheer hypocrites.
Personally,
Holy shit, yes. I don't always notice it, but when I do, it absolutely makes me uncomfortable.
I've always understood "olive-skinned" to refer to people from the European Mediterranean area, which, from an American perspective, are often considered white. As such, it doesn't really bother me that much. However, if the author meant for her to be middle-eastern or northern African, then yeah, that does kinda make me a bit uncomfortable.
I grew up with blue-eyed Jesus so it doesn't bother me because I'm used to it. If I was used to seeing black or middle-eastern Jesus, then yeah, I'd be uncomfortable with it. As it is, I'm more amused by the fact that Christians can't get it right than I am uncomfortable with it.
Tbh when it comes to this specific example, I don't really care. I generally think it's better to cast characters as they were originally intended (black characters should be black people, queer characters should be queer people, etc), though I also understand that sometimes exceptions have to be made. I'm mainly replying because I wanted to chime in and say, "hey, not everyone who thinks characters should be cast in accordance with their original race, sex, gender, etc, is a bigot."
Or at least I don't think of myself as one. Maybe I still have things to work on though.
Edit: tbh I think a lot of these kinds of casting choices are rage-bait. They're not doing it because they want to give minorities more opportunities to perform, they're doing it because it generates free advertising. Because of that, I honestly wonder if it's doing more harm than good.
The little mermaid wasn't written as a particular race from what I know.
She's HALF FISH. The human part could be whatever colour you want.
Yeah, but in MY HEAD she's WHITE and my FRAGILE EGO can't handle it otherwise.
No! Only white and Danish!
Mm, white danish. That's the one with the white cheesecake goo on the top, right?
I mean, I would suggest she'd be like green or blue or something, like regular fish. You know, camouflage for being underwater. Something down there in the briny deep has got to have a taste for mermaids.
(For top accuracy, all Little Mermaids from this point forward must have a strong resemblance to a manatee. Is Kathy Bates from Misery available?)
You're alright. We're not all-evil or all-saints. I'm not perfect either.
One thing about "casting as rage-bait," hmmm, I think it's a bit more positive than that. It's probably a "what-if" scenario, rather than "let's generate some rage!"
Like that time they did Ghostbusters with an all-female cast, or when they kill Hitler in movies.
Intentionally doing it because of race is far more likely to be a positive thing than fishing for rage bait, even if the positive thing is getting more money because people like the increased diversity. Fishing for rage bait is way too risky for Hollywood.
People like increased diversity when it’s tasteful and meaningful and adds value to the finished product. Unfortunately, I keep seeing examples of people associated with movies continually adding distasteful and meaningless pandering instead, continually dangling rage bait by insulting men (especially white men) on camera, then continually acting surprised when their movies continually make no money because people won’t watch a movie if you continually tell them it’s “not for them”. So no, I would argue that it’s not “too risky”, because if it wasn’t, they wouldn’t keep doing it.
Yep, it’s sad to see how people fall for it. At least don’t go see any play or movie if it’s bad, regardless of controversy.
I see your point, but it is also a little weird when a previously established black character is made white, or at least less black, in the casting. Apparently during TMNT's grimdark period, before the cartoon, their April O'Neil was bi-racial. Baxter Stockman was black, but when the TMNT cartoon came out in 1987, both were white.
I wasn't familiar with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles until the very kid-friendly cartoon, so it didn't bother me. I mean, this was my first introduction to these characters, right? I had no idea. But fast forward to now, when it's very strongly canon that Baxter Stockman is black, and the 1987 Baxter Stockman, who's a hybrid of Dr. Brown from Back to the Future and Jeff Goldblum's bug in The Fly, does seem a little... off.
I hear you, man. In the end, works of fiction are just that. Something somebody came up with. Imagine a five year old telling you a story, something completely made up. Would you pay too much attention to that? What's the difference between a kid and an adult coming up with something they pulled out of their imagination?
Not too different, really. And yes, I know the adult has studied and have way more experience. But ultimately, he or she wrote down something they made up.
So what does it matter if a character is black, red or white?
In the Earthsea miniseries almost every character is played by a white actor while all but one in the book are black.
The one white character, Tenar, is played by a half-chinese actress.
I am not aware of anyone close to my age bracket that watches old movies like that, and I am not young. I would imagine a good chunk of us would avoid them all together, considering that we know that the movies were racist. I know I do, at least.
Like, I don't care if anyone says Othello is worth watching, I would simply refuse to give it a chance.