Diversity and Representation in Media

Journey to the West adaptation: I suppose it's living in Asia and consuming Chinese-language media that makes me an outlier on this front, but after many, many, many Journey to the West adaptations I am perversely glad that this one has extra incentive for me to not care.

An ode to Marvel's and Kate Leth's Hellcat, wrapping up its run on its 17th issue today.

Speaking of comics, this is some advice by a comics retailer about how comic book sales are measured and how to effectively increase purchase or boycott.

Today I debated whether or not to make my own lunch or get a cheeseburger. I went with cheeseburger and encountered a fine fellow wearing one of these shirts that's been going viral as of late. I told him it was a cool shirt, he was glad to hear it. The moral of the story is that cheeseburgers cure racism.

...I get half of those names and their relationship with anger over whitewashing.

Scarlett Johansson (Ghost in the Shell, blatantly whitewashed), Emma Stone (Aloha, similarly whitewashed), Tilda Swinton (Doctor Strange, ditto), and Matt Damon (The Great Wall, not technically whitewashed but still a movie set in Ancient China starring a white dude).

Or to sum it all up, White Centrality.

"Because Diversity is only A-OK so long as a White person's the VIP!"

Also as an American that's read the full book as, all 100 chapters cover to cover, (skipping though the bullshit poems bookending each chapter,) and even wrote on its TVT page, the book is like Greek Mythology in how sanitized the adaptations usually are that I imagined how Tarantino would do it.

Basically something like "O Brother Where Art Thou" in allegory where Sunny Wakefield (played by Samuel L. Jackson, of course,) is a framed/repenting convict being sent cross-country in a prison transport with (White, Latino and/or Asian version of Baije and Wujing) with Tripitaka an ingénue nurse/lawyer/advocate or something along those lines where she believes in him while the bunch of them Journey to the West (Coast) amid racist cops and other freaky enemies in the process.

Unrelated to the (immediate) above, but still relevant to the thread: Yesterday a Wiki Walk brought me back to that infamous Flavorwire interview with Mathew "It's hard being a White guy, seriously you guys!" Klickstein that was so indefensibly ignorant that it perfectly sums up what I call a Marginalizing Mentality toward depicting anyone not a Straight White Guy where nobody else can exist unless you're defined by categorically what you are and it's only if it's set in the location you're "supposed" to exist in *Cough* Ghettoization *Cough* 'scuse me, Ghettoization like a Native American only appearing in the Southwest and Indian-Americans not existing in the 'burbs, otherwise "I'd be offended if I were Indian." FFS...

edited 28th Apr '17 7:21:45 AM by K2Misfit

So the Death Note producer doesn't get the implications of his film

https://www.themarysue.com/death-note-producer/

edited 28th Apr '17 12:54:07 PM by windleopard

What implications? Seriously, they changed the setting. This isn't a white guy running around Japan. The framework was moved.

This isn't whitewashed. Not in the conventional sense.

I think it's a plausible argument to complain about the setting shift and the fact the movie does not have any Asian-Americans in it but I do think that article is making a lot of assumptions. It arrives to the tortuous conclusion that Light being a white man mass murderer would empower white privilege rather than serve as a critique to it (which is possible but there's literally nothing to indicate Light is any less of an asshole this time around) and that (spoilers for the death note manga) Light will kill L. Which there's no guarantee of, since almost every adaptation took the story a different way.

edited 28th Apr '17 1:23:34 PM by Gaon

I can agree with that second part. Given that I've heard literally nothing about Near or Mello being cast, there's really no guarantee that Light is going to kill L. It wouldn't be the first live-action adaptation to take a different direction. Hell, YMMV on how much that even counts as Light's victory in the first place. He only achieves it because not one but two immortal death gods show up to help him, one of which is totally willing to kill L for him.

Rem killed L, not Light. Light just benefitted off the ridiculous number of advantages thrust at him from ever direction.

Death Note has an underlying power imbalance running through it. L and the police force are forced to try and piece together everything that's happening from scratch while Light basically has every advantage thrown at him throughout the story. L has to make sense of the arcane events occurring, while Light has a neat and handy rule book. L has to make use of ordinary tools of investigation while Light has an invisible god-entity that can float around and do stuff to help hide him.

Light has a huge privilege handicap from the start. All he has to do is not f*ck up. Despite this, L still manages to match him through hard work, masterful tactics, and sheer genius.

The series is often compared to a chess match, but the thing of it is that L starts the game with half as many pieces as Light does.

edited 28th Apr '17 1:36:11 PM by TobiasDrake

Christ, the Mary Sue is awful.

And is literally unable to see where half of Light's pieces are at any given moment. That's a great point, the fact that Light actually has as much trouble as he does is a serious failing on his part. Blowing the lead when you begin in the enviable position of "being the only person who knows magic is real and you have access to it" is almost sad, really.

edited 28th Apr '17 1:40:39 PM by Larkmarn

8 films by female directors premiering this summer, from superheroes to global warming to cannibal dystopia.

On Death Note news, according to the testimony of Edward Zo, the upcoming adaptation didn't consider Asian actors for its roles and openly said so to those who tried to audition, including himself.

He had some more to say on Twitter, regarding Masi Oka (producing / acting in DN) claiming "the studio couldn't find any Asian lead actors who spoke good English".

On another topic, the new Netflix series of Dear White People has just premiered.

edited 29th Apr '17 2:00:22 AM by Tuckerscreator

A step outside of Hollywood - last Wednesday, in France, another movie named Django, was released. You probably guessed that it is not a Western, but a biopic on the life of extraordinary musician Django Reinhardt. He invented the jazz manouche (Gypsy jazz) and, well, he was gypsy.

As you can guess, even in France, actors with Roma ancestry aren't exactly commonplace - to say the least. In the end, the role went to Reda Kateb, an actor of Algerian ancestry but whose mother was European - basically, Kateb does not qualify as white.

I honestly don't know what to think of it. It's not whitewashing, yet he is not Roma. The Wikipedia page for "Actors with Romani ancestry" don't even include a single man in his age range - and the actors with Romani ancestry on the list (Charlie Chaplin, Michael Caine) very much look white.

It should be noted that Kateb's breakthrough role was in Jacques Audiard's A Prophet, where Audiard decided to give roles to unknown actors that would, according to him, make tomorrow's French cinema (it starred Tahar Rahim, who like Kateb has North African ancestry).

Hmm...I'm conflicted on this. I admit a good deal of ignorance in the matters of Romani representation.

Then my question is: how the fuck did Tony Gatlif pull it off countless times?

I mean, the guy makes movies about the Roma for 25 years or thereabouts now. And being of Roma ancestry himself, he had no problems casting non-Roma actors as Roma characters when necessary, like James Thierree (incidentally, Chaplin's grandson).

edited 30th Apr '17 2:02:16 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

I presume it might possibly be like if, say, Ghost in the Shell had cast Halle Berry instead of Scar Jo. A more lateral move, both on improving inclusion and reinforcing exclusion. So it's not as bad as it could be, not as good as it could be either. Worst case scenario is a rift forming between two marginalized communities that don't need division against each other (similar to what's pushed between Black and Indian communities as a result of Guerilla.)

I will say, though, that probably there is a difference from a Roma director like Tony Gatlif casting a non-Romani actor in their own films, as they would be best suited to deciding for themselves who is believable as a depicter of their people and who is not. In contrast to a white director being the one making that decision, without any experience as to who is believable.

I recognize Reda Kateb from Zero Dark Thirty. It's pretty good that he's part of a push to bring new faces to French cinema, though I wonder if Django and Zero Dark (where he played an Al Queda terrorist) means this push has involved relying on "the Ambiguously Brown slots" in order to get said actors further up the slope.

That situation reminds me of how they cast Tony Revolori, a Guatemalan American, in Grand Budapest Hotel to play a guy named Zero Moustafa who I don't know if he has a confirmed identity but is most likely Middle Eastern. While it's not ethnically accurate I wouldn't consider it whitewashing specifically either unless the actor is dramatically lighter-skinned than the real Django.

edited 30th Apr '17 7:38:18 PM by AlleyOop

Science fiction and the born sexy yesterday trope

https://www.themarysue.com/born-sexy-yesterday-trope-sff/

Okay, I must admit I'm salty because of this YKTTW but seriously, coming here and just posting a link (to the Mary Sue, no less) and not describing it at all?

C'mon, friend. That's just not helpful.

Sorry I genuinely didn't realise this was a problem

Yeah, it's called Link-Discuss and is generally considered a no-no.

The link itself is just describing what happens in the video - I know sites need clicks to pay their writers, but that drives me up the wall.

Relatedly, can we cut it out with the "wow [insert website or other topic here] sucks" type comments that don't have any other actual criticism or analysis? It's not really helpful if you don't explain why you have a problem with something, and it seems like a quick way to get us shut down as a complaint thread.

Yeah, I have to confess it gets somewhat irritating to have like three different people all commenting "wow Mary Sue sucks" every time one of their articles gets posted, without any further substantiation for their argument. It's not hugely constructive.

To be fair, they do.

But that's because most of their articles, including the ones on this page, oversimplify complex issues in favor of painting items as offensive with a broad brush. A trope applied one way may offend, applied another it may not. But according to the Mary Sue, all examples are offensive, you should feel bad, and there's a pompous air of moral superiority over it.

They also never really expand on genuinely interesting reflection regarding depictions of race/gender/sexuality in media, mostly just acknowledging that issues exist, hinting vaguely at a potential solution, then- OH MY FUCKING GOD YOU GUYS MARVEL JUST RELEASED A NEW TRAILER FOR GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 2 ISN'T BABY GROOT JUST THE CUTEST.

I hesitate to use the word "white feminism", because there's a huge disparity between the words in the term and what the term *should* actually mean (hint: it has nothing to do with whiteness), but if there were ever a website more fitting of the term, it would probably be Mary Sue. I mean it'd probably literally be Huffington Post, but in a more symbolic sense it'd be Mary Sue.

edited 1st May '17 7:14:53 PM by InAnOdderWay

I disagree. Look at all the heat they raised about Ghost in the Shell and Doctor Strange.