Diversity and Representation in Media

Asian-Americans or the Japanese? these are two distinct groups. I would guess the "asians don't care" is more accurately phrased as "the japanese don't care".

That was something I was going to bring up actually:

This is a very small sample size so I'd be hesitant at taking it at face value, but I thought the video was interesting enough to post.

edited 2nd May '16 9:51:34 PM by wehrmacht

That mostly comes from the reaction of Japanese people in Japan. Whose opinions on the matter are naturally going to be different since they're not minorities in their community. For them seeing Japanese people in film is a matter of course so to them what Hollywood does isn't a big concern.

To me it's rather insteresting, the interplay here.

I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, ignoring these peoples' opinions about how they feel about their own depiction in film is arguably quite racist as well. Non-Asian, non-Japanese, etc, shouldn't usurp their place to speak about these people's own race.

On the other hand, there was a time when The Jazz Singer was praised by black people because, as The Rap Critic puts it, they had nothing else onscreen to represent them. At least this blackfaced guy was dancing and having fun, not pillaging and raping women. As blockbusters like Transformers 2 have shown, audiences who only see the colorful pictures will often eat up anything even if it's stupid.

And on the other other hand, as I pointed out on the last page, Asian actors and producers who've actually worked in film are pretty upset about having parts they're suited for taken from them.

edited 2nd May '16 10:05:08 PM by Tuckerscreator

Yeah it seems like the strongest criticisms tends to come from Asian Americans, though it's definitely not limited to us. For the Asian nationals who feel less strongly about it, it's probably because as non-minorities in their own countries they're already used to seeing themselves as the default that the lack of additional on-screen representation doesn't affect them as much^* incidentally this is probably why East Asian fanartists tend to frequently incur the wrath of overzealous social justice-minded fandom police for things like not portraying a dark-skinned character below a certain shade of darkness, drawing humanizations of non-human characters that look too "white", or having canonically white characters as their favorites; the importance of media representation is Values D Issonance to them. So the Germans Love David Hasselhoff effect that emerges from seeing their culture represented in Hollywood probably is less a sense of an imbalance being corrected, and more of a treat from seeing themselves appreciated by outside cultures.

edited 2nd May '16 10:54:01 PM by AlleyOop

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they legitimately thought this would be less racist.

So basically 'assume stupidity not malice.'

Yeah I agree more with the first half of the quote than the latter, though it's possible since studios tend to be 10 years behind the curve on social issues that they might think that as well. Honestly the reality is that white audiences probably don't give a crap about the Ancient One enough at all that the character's race would matter one way or another.

While we're on the subject of IM 3 was anyone else bothered by the fact that the bad guy and all his mooks were people with physical handicaps (in the case of the mooks war vets) and the evil science McGuffin was what cured them.

I mean we're never even made to feel any sympathy for these people. It's just presented like they're jerks who joined a terrorist so they could get cured.

I recall a mention on the Unfortunate Implications page that The Spoony Experiment thought it was pretty disrespectful, but I haven't seen his review.

I think it's a consequence of the movie aiming for too many themes and not sticking hard enough to them. It's a provocative thing to criticize the US for abandoning its veterans and to do it by building the dejected veterans up as tragic villains. It is not the first time that former military vets have turned against their own country. But none of this is resolved in the ending, instead it's just: "Tony and Pepper get cured, and that kid gets free product placement."

edited 2nd May '16 11:22:38 PM by Tuckerscreator

They didn't even bring up the 'abandoned by their country' angle.

it get solved by "they stop killian and the extremist" which it show how little matter as result, at least Agent of SHIELD did a better job(not much but it did)

To add to the Disney/LGBT discussion, remember that the guys in charge of the MCU have said that we might get one LGBT character in a movie in 10 years.

edited 3rd May '16 3:28:00 AM by LordofLore

There already is one. He is called Joey.

Who?

You don't watch Agents of Shield, do you? It is practically the flagship of diversity in the MCU by now. Joey is an Inhuman who can melt stuff...he also happens to be a gay Latino. Though is love life has become a little bit complicated lately. It is a little bit inconvenient if you are pulled away from your date just when you intent to go upstairs for an emergency.

Juan Pablo Raba, I recall him faking being gay to live in a career woman's apartment. Hehehe, he is now not on telenovelas anymore.

No I do not.

"Asian-Americans In Theater Speak Out With #MyYellowFaceStory."

I'm kinda torn on this. While it's good that people are calling this stuff out, it's not gonna change anything. I almost kinda wonder what the point is. To make people aware? Well, okay, that's good, but what happens then? Nothing, because the majority of people - or at least the majority of Americans - are either gonna brush it off or not care in the slightest.

The thing is nothing changes if you don't say or do anything. It's easy enough to give up, but with that kind of mentality stuff like the civil rights movement doesn't happen. Either way, it's not good for people to keep silent about this if it bothers them.

edited 3rd May '16 7:55:15 AM by wehrmacht

The Civil Rights Movement involved things like marches and the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. People went outside and picketed, speeches were given, and correct me if I'm wrong, but there were even riots if memory serves. Things that made people realize, "oh crap, we might actually have to do something about this."

Not to say that they should just keep their mouths shut, but I fail to see exactly what sharing stories around the Twitter campfire is going to accomplish. No Hollywood producer is gonna see this, realize the error of his ways, and fix up accordingly, because the truth is, they just don't care. They stay in their own little bubble that reflects what makes sense to them and them alone. I give it a few months, if that, before this whole thing just fizzles out and we keep going like we always have been. Just like with #FreeKesha.

This is a problem that's gonna take more than a hashtag to fix.

edited 3rd May '16 8:53:28 AM by PhysicalStamina

I don't think people are necessarily expecting this incident in particular to make some huge monumental change, because yes these things don't happen overnight. It's just a small chip in a pile of complaints about the status quo that should, eventually, make a difference. It's certainly preferable to staying quiet.

It also seems to me that some executives do care or at least don't feel they're taking a risk by trying to be more inclusive or respectful. It's just a lot of them are still clueless, but I don't think they will be forever. I'm sure bigoted or indifferent executives will always be around but provided people care and make it known that there is a problem I do think the tendency will be for things to improve or at least not get any worse than they already are.

Takei's conflating the issues. There's two controversies that run very close together.

• Marvel set the monastery in Nepal instead of Tibet in order to avoid pissing off China.
• Marvel cast Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One because they feared the character played too much into racist "Magic Asian" stereotypes, but wanted a woman in order to provide at least some representation to an underrepresented group.

There's so much outrage going on that the two are getting melted together in the midst of it, but they aren't the same issue. Any argument based around "Marvel cast Tilda Swinton because China hates Tibet" has, by nature, lost track of the point.

edited 3rd May '16 9:05:17 AM by TobiasDrake

Though I do believe that the issues are somewhat correlated, your point still stands.

It's a really bad example though, because it's conflicted in a lot more ideas than simply "Hollywood not understanding what Asians are exactly". It's tied up in international business, and demographics, and pleasing certain groups at the risk of alienating other groups, and releasing information, but also promoting actors properly and getting their just dues.

It's a clusterfuck that's a really bad hill to die on, and one that's unlikely to make any real change, whereas something like #Oscarssowhite actually did force some serious conversations about how Hollywood deals with race and gender.