Diversity and Representation in Media

Speaking of X-Men, the jackasses from the far right have begun targeting the new season specifically w/ Morph, who is a shapeshifter who has changed to other characters regardless of gender, who is now being described as nonbinary (not to mention now being voiced by a gay actor).

https://www.cbr.com/morph-creators-x-men-97-backlash/

The showrunners of the original cartoon were interviewed about it and they could only shake their heads in disgust at the idiots who did not (or more likely refused to) get the core theme of the X-Men and Mutantkind. One of them, Julia Lewald even said that they were too subtle back in the 90s and that series contained Graydon Creed publicly professing that the only reason he hates Mutants and wants them genocided is the simple fact that they exist.

As for old cartoons allegedly not having political messaging, the entire 1980s cartoon lineup had political messaging up the wazoo. Even in DnD where Eric being portrayed as a complainer who's always wrong was itself a political message. I rewatched GI Joe's original run during the pandemic and it had among other episodes, Cobra helping a crooked mayor win reelection by portraying him as a "Law and Order" candidate while Cobra hired street thugs to harrass people while claiming to represent said mayor's opponent and another episode had Cobra hijacking every TV satellite on Earth so they can monopolize TV and allow them to broadcast pro-tyranny propaganda unopposed. That same episode even had Cobra Commander edit King Kong's ending so the ape lives to terrorize New York and had an actor inserted in the new ending to deliver a speech on how it is futile to stand up against tough enemies. There was even another episode where Baroness was manipulating news anchor Hector Ramirez (a Geraldo Rivera expy) into reporting on an anti-GI Joe hitpiece disguised as an "anti-Military Industrial Complex" and a "pro-fiscal responsibility" report.

Edited by KRider on Mar 26th 2024 at 12:59:31 PM

Republicans aren't far right, because first of all the term far right is relative. Second because most Republicans haven't heard of Project 2025. I haven't heard of it before. Trump is obviously selfish, narcissistic and dishonest.

I think assuming that everyone who disagrees with you has the opposite opinion is a fallacy. There are a whole spectrum of opinions between far right and far left.

An anti prejudice Aesops is very centrist, and mainstream in the 90s. A lot of people who don't follow politics would have no problem with that.

It has been argued that the first Black Panther was conservative.

I think that very few people are against representation, it is that they want other things that conflict with representation. For example, people who want historical accuracy in historical films don't like historically inaccurate casting. In the case of Marvel, they don't want generic white guys, they want specific heroes.

It made sense that the X men team was international, because of how they got their power, and they were all brought together to the one school.

Denial can only get you so far in most things.

Agreed

It may have been centrist back in the 1990s, and while it is true that there is racism in the far left (and I will leave it at that) but fast forward to the 2009 when Obama was elected and even rewind back to minority-led movies in the 1970s such as Blaxploitation movies, anti-prejudice messaging has always tarred by rightwingers as "leftist nonsense"

Edited by KRider on Mar 26th 2024 at 1:12:00 AM

Oh hey this is veering too close to USA politics. Which is still a banned topic. Can we drop it now?

Right then.

Moving on, would you guys like to see some inversion of the Migthy Whitey trope by instead having a person from another ethnic group change the course of history with a Caucasian group?

Hey here's a topic for discussion.

So the Acolyte, is currently showing a black woman as a member of the Sith.

How do people here feel about the Sith's commitment to diversity and inclusion?

Rumor is that she might not technically be a Sith, and also the only one.

That is believable. Although, blackploitation films are by definition not mainstream. But I think it is important to keep things is perspective. Actual far right people are a small minority. There is a lot of support for Trump, and that is concerning, but I think there is a difference between those involved in politics and actual fans.

At lot of fans care more about the characters they grew up with than the suits in Washington.

I also think there is a change in that, it used to be people would make something political, but say that it isn't and now people will play up the political aspect.

The GI Joes examples seem to be caes where one could miss the connection to real world politics.

Edited by ry4n on Mar 26th 2024 at 1:32:34 AM

Dude, he said to drop it or this gets locked.

Well, the same way there are POC Imperials.

Remember that canonically, Palpatine's Empire does not discriminate against women or people of color.

Heck, one of the top officers in the Empire is a black female lesbian.

Rae Sloane.

Not to be confused with Rey Palpatine.

x5 Do you have any examples in mind?

x4, As for nonwhite Dark Side characters, don't have any strong opinions towards them. We did have Moff Gideon and Elia Kane in Mandalorian who're black and half-black respectively after all.

Edited by KRider on Mar 26th 2024 at 1:45:30 AM

Uh, was discussing the potential of it, but it's based on a short Xiran Jay Zhao made where they get transported to Revolutionary France.

Edited by LoneCourier0 on Mar 26th 2024 at 9:59:45 AM

They, Xiran's pronouns are they.

Oh shit, sorry, got mixed up with the character and author.

Edited by LoneCourier0 on Mar 26th 2024 at 10:00:22 AM

Oh ok, so it's supposed to be a person from 1 ethnic group getting transported to the past of another ethnic group? What almost popped into my mind was Amakusa 1637 where 6 Japanese teens from modern Japan got transported to Shimabara in the year 1637 just when the Tokugawa Shogunate was about to genocide the Christians there.

And speaking of the Tokugawa, have any of you been watching Shogun lately? One thing that is a pleasant surprise is that every Japanese character there is played by an actual Japanese actor and they didn't pull off Memoirs of a Geisha-style casting.

Edited by KRider on Mar 26th 2024 at 2:12:17 AM

I didn't like Avatar, and I don't think changing the race of the main character would change that.

The main thing with those sort of movies, is that they usually are about the white character learning about how awesome the other culture is. Granted that is less true in older versions.

I think whether one likes the Black Knight with Martin Laurence depends on how you like the humour. Interestingly, most copies of A Yankee in King's Arthur's Court are more fish out of water, and don't have the biting criticism of medieval culture that Mark Twain had.

There are a lot of stories that would make good films with diverse characters, both from history and legend. However, Hollywood only keeps adapting the same source material.

I don't get the fuss about villains having minorities or queer? Evil can come from all sides. You can be a minority but be sexist/classist, a gay but racist/classist, etc. If anything naturalizing the concept means that everyone has attained equality in some way where everyone is united in morality than race.

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at.

I support the Sith being Equal-Opportunity Evil. They hate Jedi, not specifically LGBTQ+ people and minorities.

If you have power, then you can sign up.

No one here is arguing that villains can't be diverse.

Heck, it's in vogue to have villain groups specifically be people who were let down by a corrupt system that the heroes keep up.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 26th 2024 at 10:01:17 PM

I would NOT use the wording you did, but villains can be fun and awesome to play, there is major appeal for any actor of any race. Like in Smile Precure, one of the upsides was Keith Silverstein (Who is Black) who gushed about working on the show saying it was awesome, he played the villain Wulfrun/Ulric in the dub, and he took the chance to ham it up. And in the end, it was revealed Wulfrun was forced into evil, he was actually a cute little fairy who everyone hated for representing the Famous Big Bad Wolf from Fairy Tale Stories.

Also if Smile Precure is ever redubbed uncut I hope he returns (He's no stranger to Uncut Magical Girl anime, he worked on Viz' Sailor Moon Dub) I REALLY HOPE the dub removeS the part where Wolfrun says "I WILL PAINT YOUR WHITE FUTURE'S BLACK!!!" that was awful.

Edited by AegisP on Mar 26th 2024 at 7:06:29 AM

Wolfrun is like the most popular villain Cure if what I heard is true. I don't watch but I certainly know him.

W/ regard to representation in media being safe enough for minorities to be depicted in any role other than protagonists, I'm reminded of Evil Dead Rises and how trans male actor Morgan Davies became the Unwitting Instigator of Doom and how, according to this pinknews article, a trans actor like him/them being cast to be said moron wasn't treated as a big deal.

https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/04/25/evil-dead-rise-trans-character-danny-morgan-davies/

It's Cure Villain, Villain Cure implies a villanous Pretty Cure like Dark Pretty Cure or any of the Psycho Rangers teams we've had over the years, or any of the villains that became Pretty Cure in the end.

EDIT: Speaking of which, Pretty Cure recently broke down a taboo and allowed a cis gendered male to become a Cure. And an adult female, but the cis gendered male Cure stands out a lot more.

Edited by AegisP on Mar 26th 2024 at 7:32:04 AM

Oh yeah, Cure Villain. But yeah, I know him even if I never watched the season he came from.

Spoilers for Behind Her Eyes below.

I've always thought that representation is in a good place when we can have good villains from minorities in a way that doesn't feel prejudicial. Like, if we can get to a point where there a trans villains who don't seem to be transphobically-written, then that's a good place for representation to be. Because by the point where there starts to be good transgender villains, there should also be a lot of good transgender heroes (if there was nothing by transgender villains in fiction, then that obviously wouldn't be a good place for representation to be). If there's a point where there's enough good transgender protagonists that a, well-written, trans villain feels ok (not that having trans villains at the moment isn't ok, it's just that I imagine many trans people would also want good heroic trans characters), that's a good place for representation to be.

I mean, I'm not trans, so I don't want to speak on the behalf of all of trans people. But I think this applies to all minorities (I just use trans people as the example as that seems to be the representation that media is currently struggling the most with). For example, speaking as a gay man, I love that there's starting to be a lot of good homosexual heroes and also enjoy that there's starting to be some good (explicit) homosexual villains.

That's why I love the twist in Behind Her Eyes, that the gay character is the villain. I can see why some might see it as homophobic, but when I watched the show I never thought it was implied that him being gay is linked to him being evil, you could replace his role with a straight woman and nothing would change, it's just nice to have a horrifically evil gay person who isn't horrifically evil because he's gay (though I can see why people see unfortunate implications in regards to trans people with that twist, given the nature of it, while I doubt anything was intentionally done to be transphobic, I can see how it can be read as that).

Probably a better example is Hazbin Hotel. If there weren't any LGBTQ+ characters, then having two of the main villains (Vox and Valentino) being explicitly LGBTQ+ would probably be hard to swallow. But they're in a series where the protagonist is bi with a girlfriend, and all but 3 of the main characters are shown to be LGBTQ+ (and two of those 3 have been confirmed LGBTQ+), so it's easier to swallow. Maybe that's why people react better to LGBTQ+ villains in shows like Hazbin then Behind Her Eyes, the latter doesn't have any other (explicit) gay characters. Regardless, I think that representation's at a good place when there's minority villains that don't feel offensive or like the only representation there is.

That's a much clearer explanation of what I was getting at. When we're at a point where minority villains, especially from already largely underrepresented minorities such as trans people, feel about as strange as a villain with blonde hair or brown eyes, that's when we know that representation of those minorities is at a pretty good place.

Edited by king15 on Mar 26th 2024 at 7:13:14 PM