Racebending

To comment on something on the last page, the characters in Akira were not drawn "looking racial ambiguous", they were drawn looking Japanese as the Japanese artists would see them.

This article goes into it in more depth, but basically Japanese people see "Looking Japanese" as the default, and so any character drawn without significant racial markers is seen as Japanese.

They make money by performing a service to society. Otherwise, they need to be extorting people somehow (such as subsidies or something). If people are willingly giving them money, which they are, then they're providing a service of some kind. And I don't think they're providing much of a fake service either.

Because they're doing the service they are supposed to be doing. If you want to change it, do so by changing your purchasing habits. I, however, will continue to treat the race of the protagonists as a nonfactor and judge what I will purchase based purely on how much I think the movie will entertain me.

Again, somebody thinks reading Rand (and Friedman) is a substitute for understanding how socioeconomics actually work.

And somebody thinks referencing writers instead of reading what somebody else posted is an argument. If it's how socioeconomics actually work, then we wouldn't have this problem now would we? We'd have fixed it wouldn't we? Now, are you describing how socioeconomics actually work, or are you complaining that the world doesn't match your normative statements of such?

You're describing a situation in which markets are infallible, which is so far removed from reality I don't know where to begin at.

Topic is racebending, guys, not economics.

Well, the argument being given is that racebending occurs because of the profit motive, which is an economic argument.

I'm not describing such, I'm describing markets reacting to stimulus of those who purchase from them. I'm saying they have no moral obligation to do what some people consider to be the correct thing to do without financial incentive. Nor are they perfect, far from it. It's little more than a machine to begin with, trying to manipulate it in certain ways are doomed to failure (namely trying to convince them through moral means).

In particular, they've gotten a bug up their ass about their demographics needing to identify with the characters (and thus, the character should be as similar to their demographics as possible) which is I don't really buy.

Edit for ninja: my argument is that racebending occurs because of an assumption that they've made as a core part of their cast selection process. While it's entirely likely that this assumption was true, and may still be true, I don't buy it as a whole. However, changing it would require them to reassess some of their core assumptions, which I don't think they're willing to take great risks on. I think they're running on old data and that trying to convince them to change it with anything short of large amounts of raw data is unlikely.

I also don't think they're going to put much effort into figuring out if it's actually the one aspect of the movie that they could change since such would require a large investment. That and if racism no longer became much of a problem, they'd have to find something else to create lots of drama about.

edited 17th Jan '12 11:02:31 PM by Deboss

Well, again, if we cannot do it through simple moral incentives, then we must bend the market—or change its operation method entirely—to fit the morality.

The morality is more important than some fools making money.

I fundamentally disagree that there is a moral issue behind this. I feel that the issue is due to old bad data and them playing it safe.

Look, Flyboy, Deboss already answered you. He's saying that Hollywood is a profit-making machine and the way to make it adapt to your moral opinions is to direct your consumption.

Boycott films that break your rules and if enough people do that, Hollywood will change. I assure you that you'll get at least the same quality if you buy European or Asian films, and that'll give you plenty of options in terms of what you buy without forcing you to buy stuff that breaks your rules.

If you're willing to go beyond boycotting, go and buy some films with a non-white protagonist without reference to the film's quality. You'll discover some good films and you'll get some shitty ones, but some Hollywood clerk looking at some statistic is gonna go "look, people actually do buy films with non-white leading actors! Well, how about that! Let's cast more diversely from now on! (Simplified.)

Many of us have already adjusted our spending habits to support a diversification of the mainstream media. That doesn't mean that we should stop talking about it. Spreading awareness is a large part of the battle.

edited 17th Jan '12 11:09:36 PM by Gwirion

I hope the irony of someone who usually acknowledges about how conventional protests against entrenched establishment will generally fail miserably is now saying that a simple boycott will do anything substantial isn't lost on you, Best Of.

It doesn't work for any other business. Why would it work here?

I don't think simply buying non-white protagonist films will help overall. Simply put, a lot of films are built on a segregated demographic mentality. Essentially, films tend to have one type of ethnicity present overall, period. Unless one character is a token, you tend to wind up with a cast that is almost all the same ethnicity. There are exceptions (Romeo Must Die is the only that jumps immediately to mind), but the assumption I've seen is that same "the protagonist (and all of his allies) need to be the same ethnicity to identify with".

Hollywood cares about absolutely nothing but making money. They believe that white actors sell more tickets. What can stop this from happening?

Tyler Perry.

Stop white people from being the default in American minds?

That was a joke btw.

The only time race matters to me is when it is a all non-white cast. That's when I find something else to watch.

May I ask why?

Several reasons.

It's like a movie in the ocean and not a drop of water insight.

Fuck racial comedy. Mimes are better than that shit.

It's kinda racist.

Thank God white movies have token minorities so that brown people won't ever have to feel the pain that's been thrust upon you.

Pretty sleepy so your post is making little sense, but the gist of it is that... Brown people feel bad when there is no token brown person?

No; brown people feel bad that they're only represented by stereotypes who are only there to fill a quota.

They are? Then why do the worst stereotypes come from brown writer and directors ie: Tyler perry? Are they not connected to this hive mind brown people magically share? Are they secretly not brown?

For the same reason that the best-selling works of white media are mediocre trash with questionable morals, I suppose. Lowest common denominator and such. For every Tyler Perry, thankfully, there's an Aaron McGruder. It's not like black people are unaware of how crappy these movies are. Don't Be a Menace was a parody of horrible stereotypes within movies targeted at black audiences.

You are being sarcastic, right?

edited 18th Jan '12 12:31:49 AM by Gwirion

The creator of the boondocks. Really? You consider him a positive thing?

Yes. I was being sarcastic. I got annoyed at the whole "all brown people" rhetoric.

edited 18th Jan '12 12:37:52 AM by TheDeadMansLife