A thread for discussing representation and diversity in all kinds of media. This covers creators and casting decisions as well as characters and in-universe discussions.
Historical works and decisions are in-scope as well, not just recent news.
Please put any spoilers behind tags and clearly state which work(s) they apply to.
This week, producer Ross Putnam started a Twitter account called "femscriptintros
", where he puts up examples of how women are introduced in the screenplays he's read. And nearly all of sound like terrible porn or are too concerned with emphasizing said lady is beautiful despite whatever traits she may have. Here's a Take Two podcast made today where he talks about it.
(Edited April 19 2024 to add mod pinned post)
Edited by Mrph1 on Apr 19th 2024 at 11:45:51 AM
Rock on, Gold Dust Woman
Is the original Foxy Brown any good?
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
It's something of a cult classic, especially in blaxploitation films.
Rock on, Gold Dust Woman
Cult classic does not necessarily equal good.
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
it's a living
It means you may like it if that's the kind of thing you like, but it's hard to make a recommendation without knowing your tastes.
Popular blaxploitation movies tend to be campy, and while camp is good and fun sometimes, I'm not sure if modern works will be interested in playing it straight. Luke Cage was decidedly a very non-campy series after all. At the same time, I'm worried that camp may have been a large part of Foxy Brown's charm and without it the series becomes a lot more generic aside from the name.
I feel like they would be heavily inspired by Tarantino's Jackie Brown
it's a living
Sonequa Martin-Green (Sasha from Walking Dead) will be playing the lead in the new Star Trek.
Kudos to comicwriter on the Star Trek thread.
Ooh!
This is great news in my book. I've been screaming from the rooftops that the new Trek series should have a woman of color as the lead character, and they have not disappointed.
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."
Alright! I hope this series does the Star Trek legacy proud and keeps up the social consciousness.
Michi Trota rebukes this review of Rogue One and other outcries of the 'too many woms'.
Now I love this show and there's a lot I will defend, but this is not one of them
http://www.themarysue.com/floriana-lima-latinx-not-about-color/
https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2016/12/12/the-disappointing-truth-about-supergirls-maggie-sawyer
I'm not caught up on the show. Did they claim she was ?
She refers to herself as "non-white" in one episode and the advertising referred to her as latina.
Italians are sometimes (for some reason) considered non-white. It... kind of boggles my mind. But did the advertising really say she was Latina? I only skimmed the NOC article and I never saw it claim that the advertising claimed she was Latina, just that the network "tricked" people into thinking she was which is... odd, I suppose.
EDIT: I dumb. The guy specifically said she was Latina in an interview. Leaving the original post up so you can see my shame.
edited 15th Dec '16 7:11:48 AM by Larkmarn
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
Screaming Into The Void
To be fair, there are people from Italy who are not white, and I feel like that goes ignored a lot because of how American-centric the internet is. But it's still a screwed up situation, especially since Latin American actors often have a difficult time finding roles. And as I understand it, casting people of Italian descent to play these sorts of roles happens on a regular basis. (edit: gotten around to the NOC article now and they have a very long list, it's worse than I thought)
At the same time, apparently people were stalking the actress's family when sorting this out, and I cannot stress how absolutely not okay that is. And ties into a context where a lot of fans nowadays don't seem to understand the concept of boundaries.
The Rogue One complaints are awful, but also make me laugh my ass off because there's literally one women in the movie. And the supporting cast that isn't "strong enough" is mostly non-white men... people are just so goddamn transparent. Anyway, I look forward to seeing the same whining levied at the new Star Trek show, go Sonequa and Michelle!
edited 15th Dec '16 9:20:35 AM by Pseudopartition
This depends on what you mean by Latin. In Europe, "latin" includes Spain, Portugal, most of Italy and even sometimes southern France. Latin languages are French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. And Lima is a Portuguese surname, which probably means she also has Portuguese ancestry - there is a big Portuguese diaspora in Europe.
So to me it looks like someone who has a specific definition of what "latin" means. Florian Lima is not latin-American, but she is latin alright.
edited 15th Dec '16 11:01:36 AM by Julep
The character wasn't defined as "latin", she was defined as "latina", meaning that she or her ancestors are from Latin America. Italy and Portugal are not in Latin America. Pretty simple. You can argue that some Southern Europeans might consider themselves people of colour in an American/Canadian context, but not all of them do (and they still aren't latinx).
Kind of wished they'd just left her as a white woman. I wouldn't be nearly as annoyed if she weren't advertised as a latina and didn't specifically say she was non-white in the show.
It's kind of like how the Estevez family are technically Latinos and Latin Americans (and self-identify as such) due to their strong Galician heritage, even though they are white Europeans by US standards.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Yeah the big issue here is that she described herself as "nonwhite" when it's not really the case, and a strange choice to make when Maggie Sawyer has always been non-Latina white as far as I understand it in the comics and other adaptations like BTAS. But again it's really complicated from what I've come to understand, as someone who is not Italian or Latin by any stretch. I'm going to repost some stuff I said in the MCU thread about this:
However anecdotally a lot of Italian Americans would argue that they have a weird liminal place between white and nonwhite in US culture. They're white enough to be considered Acceptable Targets (see the incident of the "wop burger" and other anti-Italian slurs), but not so much that they can escape the kind of persistent cultural stereotyping that's more common among nonwhite American groups when other whites descended from non-Germanic groups don't have to deal with it anymore. It's possible that may have colored Lima's self-identification, if she's not an outright mixed race Italian.
And if we're going to critique her about playing Latina characters in general, technically Italians are a form of Latin in the same way Spaniards like the Estevez family who are often accepted as Latinos also are (most Argentinians for example are of pure European ancestry, often Italian, and they're definitely classified as Latinxs) so if she was playing white Latinas exclusively then it wouldn't have been a wrongdoing, and conversely if her Latina characters are exclusively nonwhite then it may be a case of the above. It's too complicated and multifactorial for either of the "is white" or "isn't white" groups to declare wrongdoing unless there's more information on this from places that are not Tumblr.
You can chalk the last paragraph of that as more or less a case of technicalities.
edited 15th Dec '16 11:25:09 AM by AlleyOop
it's a living
She might not be Latinx, but I doubt she's passing for white in the current racial climate on TV in America lately.
They could and probably should have just left her background ambiguous, let the audience make their own assumptions. The name Maggie Sawyer could also imply more than one ethnicity in her background if the character is Latinx.
edited 15th Dec '16 11:32:10 AM by Unsung
But as far as I understood, it is a promotion problem, not something in the show? Because Lima can clearly play a non-white character.
I do not know her entire genealogy, but if his father was born in Italy from Brazilian parents - then wouldn't she qualify as latina? A good friend of mine was born in Argentina from Italian parents, grew up in Brazil before moving to France - and is white. How would he be called then?
So the new Passengers turned out to be a sexist disaster.
It’s not so much that the film ignores the small detail of Jim effectively murdering Aurora by bringing her out of sleep; we know it’ll come up soon enough. It’s that it reduces it to an obligatory narrative convenience designed to predictably draw the lovers apart ahead of the third act – the sci-fi equivalent of Meg Ryan finding out that Tom Hanks was secretly the owner of the big bookstore chain that was putting her out of business.
edited 15th Dec '16 1:31:28 PM by Tuckerscreator
Wow. That is heinous.
People on reditt have been saying that this would have been a better premise for a horror movie.
The Dragon of the Eastern Sea
Wait.
You've Got Mail was a bad movie?
aw I loved that movie
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you
Who says it's bad ? it's one of the best rom coms ever.
It's just that 'I work for the chain stealing all your business' is kind of a lot more forgivable than 'I've domed you to die on this ship. '
That's kind of a shame of Passengers. A simple rewrote of making him waking her up an accident and Aurora being much more mad about it would have fix the plot.
Foxy Brown is being rebooted into a tv series at Hulu. [1]