Racebending

I'd hardly call the best selling media mediocre. That's why it's best selling after all. Now, if you want to call it some what bland and not oriented toward challenging things, that's a fair assessment.

Mediocre = Qaulity

Best selling = units sold.

Why on earth wouldn't I? The Boondocks is the finest adult animated show to emerge in years.

I've heard it argued that The Boondocks makes racism worse. Call it the Chappelles Show principle: if you make a show that mocks racist stereotypes, your most racist viewers will see it as confirmation of their ideas. (On the flipside, a show that has characters who could be classified as "ethnic," but that isn't about "ethnic" issues, is at least slightly helpful through its inclusiveness.)

The most racist viewers wouldn't be rehabilitated by a TV show anyway. I don't consider it a particularly great loss that Bobby Adolf Byrd Jr. couldn't manage to get a good interpretation out of it.

By the way, The Boondocks is totally about racial issues. Just not all the time, and it doesn't always take itself seriously.

edited 18th Jan '12 1:09:47 AM by Gwirion

What? I'm a Left-wing activist, of course I'm not going to claim that protests are ineffective. Even if the change they seek isn't implemented right away, a protest contributes to the general social progress towards that goal.

(As a side note, I have similar reasons for voting for my party even when they don't stand a chance in that particular election. The number of votes matters, even if your candidate isn't elected. It still encourages others with similar ideology to become active, and it sends the message to the other parties that there's a number of people who support this general type of politics, so the other parties might shift towards what your candidate represents.)

You also won't hear me saying that boycotts are ineffective. Do you ever buy Fair Trade? I don't know about the US, but in Finland, Fair Trade products sell so well that some types of products are actually cheaper if you buy Fair Trade than if you buy a major brand (the price comes down because the profits made by Fair Trade enable them to purchase sufficient production facilities and infrastructure which, together with the benefits of mass production, bring the price down); and even the ones that aren't, have adopted more green and labour-friendly standards sometimes because that way, they get back at least some of the customers they've lost to Fair Trade and the like.

So it definitely does get results, though I'll admit the progress isn't necessarily very fast.

In any case, my post was more about condensing Deboss' argument as I saw it than expressing my own opinion.

If you want to hear what I think, the problem has to do with the other point that Deboss has made: producers and studios think that people are more likely to buy tickets and DVDs and so on if the main cast is predominantly white. This is a social issue and can be influenced through conventional action (awareness campaigns, protests, talking about it to people you know, etc,) as well as "protesting with your purse," as it has been put. So I'm not saying that people should stop complaining or anything.

edited 18th Jan '12 1:49:28 AM by BestOf

These are the types of movies I would go see. It's why I'm planning to go see Red Tails in fact. Stuff about racial problems? Not interested. I'm not a fan of such movies. I much prefer explosion based drama rather than social driven drama.

There's other issues with a lot of certain mentalities behind such things. Namely that it's hard for them to test certain aspects of movies for proper return rates. Most films are expected to turn a profit on their own (or get awards). Films that are expected to turn a profit tend to be either massive or by the numbers for the most part. Films that are award oriented are more likely to involve minorities, but are less likely to be the film equivalent of a staple.

edited 18th Jan '12 1:57:13 AM by Deboss

The 'I just want the most talented actors, regardless of race' and 'affirmative action is racist' arguments miss a key point - that movie casting is not, currently, a level playing field. Minority actors are massively underprivileged, marginalised, and restricted to limited, stereotypical roles. Is this because they can't be trusted to perform as well as white actors? Because they're only capable of playing walking stereotypes? Fuck no. The movie industry, as is, cannot be relied upon to pick the best actors for a role as much as the whitest ones. It's a classic market failure, where free, unregulated competition leads to the disadvantaged getting shafted.

The purpose of affirmative action, therefore, is to rebalance the field, to address this disparity in privilege and grant minority actors the opportunities they would not otherwise have. It's far from perfect - any form of government intervention is always going to be something of a blunt instrument - but the core philosophy is not inherently racist.

You can count me in the "affirmative action is not racist" camp. The idea is to level the field for people who in the current system are disfavoured because they belong to some minority. After enough people that got their chance through affirmative action have succeeded, the prejudice against them is expected to have largely disappeared, and at that point the affirmative action policy can be reverted. It's not supposed to be enforced forever.

I'm not so sure about that. Success isn't a guarantee of quality. Just look at how well The Da Vinci Code did; not a very good book (in my opinion at least), but it was a big seller on the basis of the controversy it provoked.

I don't think one could say that The Da Vinci Code is one of the best books ever written, solely on the basis of its sales. Nor could one claim that MC Hammer must be the greatest rapper of the 1990s because he had a Diamond album, or that the most recent Harry Potter movie was the best film of last year because it had the best box office returns.

I'm sure there are bases for arguing any of those points, but I'm not sure that commercial success is a very good one.

edited 18th Jan '12 5:16:58 AM by TheGloomer

And they'd much rather take your $13.50 for recycling a storyline previously told eight hundred times than come up with something earnest, risky, and provocative that interrogates real issues of the world we live in. My man, you're a godsend to Hollywood producers.

edited 18th Jan '12 9:37:23 AM by Gwirion

I agree. I think the boondocks is a hilarious show, it takes all those racial stereotypes and plays them straight, but in a way that shows exactly how foolish those stereotypes are.

The only way I can see it confirm racial bias is if some moron watches it and takes all those goofy stereotypes as being played seriously, in which case they have problems a TV show can't fix. Let's take the "Nigga moment" spoof, where two black guys who are all gangstered up bump into eachother in the street, and get into a firefight over a stupid little shoulder bump. The point of that scene is not "stupid darkies fighting over the littlest things" it's "You need to be stupid as hell to act like that."

But don't knock other shows out there, I personally think Red Tails looks like a good movie, and I want to see it. Maybe some people out there want some deep drama that specifically tackles issues of race in our society, but that isn't really the type of movie I want to watch. I don't believe in forcing Hollywood to drop anvils on people, it's about what the viewers want, not some moral standard that Hollywood is supposed to uphold.

If people want to make movies about a specific topic, let them. If they don't sell well, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

edited 18th Jan '12 9:55:14 AM by Barkey

I think there's no denying that Hollywood casting in general tends to be racist. What's far more difficult is determining whether a specific movie employed racist casting; since something like 70% of the American population is white, even if all casting was color blind, you'd still end up with quite a few movies where, thanks to the law of averages, all/most of the main cast will be white. As such we're in a sticky situation where we can say the problem exists, but it's rare that we can actually pinpoint who's to blame.

However, I don't see a problem with taking a Japanese story and changing it to be set in America. People already brought up the relatability issue, but it's also just plain easier for an American film studio to convincingly portray an American city (even if they're filming in Canada) than to portray a foreign city. This is provided the Japanese setting is not important to the story, of course.

And to people who say "But if they kept the Japanese setting it would have been a great way to give some Asian actors exposure!": you're approaching this from the wrong angle. Let's say you're a big honcho at a film studio, and you've got enough clout to say, "No, we're not gonna Americanize the movie; it's gonna stay set in Japan." If you had that much power over the creative process, you wouldn't need to set a movie in Asia in order to cast some Asian actors; you could just supervise the casting process on various movies and, when you see an Asian actor who's good for a part, give them the job.

edited 18th Jan '12 10:02:30 AM by RavenWilder

We're talking about Asian Americans, Raven. Not Asians in Asia. The whole point is that Americanizing should not mean whitewashing.

edited 18th Jan '12 10:05:45 AM by Gwirion

When it comes to the whole racism of Boondocks, I can't say I've watched the show, so I'm not going to comment on it, but I have heard of Chris Brown (or some comedian with a similar name) who stopped doing certain routines that made fun of black people, because he felt white people were laughing at them a bit too hard.

I think it's one of those things that are always going to show up, no matter how clever or in depth you make it. People who see it and just take away the racists part. No point in trying to avoid it.

I think.

The name you're looking for is Chris Rock.

The Boondocks makes fun of stereotypes, but it also takes great care to show the people behind the stereotypes, and how they got to be that way.

edited 18th Jan '12 10:15:09 AM by Gwirion

Chris Rock. Yes. Chris Brown is the Rihanna person. Thank you.

Nevermind.

edited 18th Jan '12 10:25:16 AM by Gwirion

@ Raven Wilder

I usually tend to refrain from accusing any specific movie of racial casting because, as you say, it's hard to say in a specific case whether it occurred. Certainly from a statistical standpoint it's clear that there is whitewashing going on.

But the thing is, America may be 70% white, but then I would expect 30% non-white. However, that's not what we get. It's odd to me that Hollywood is still stuck in the mode of "Cast white people as good guys, non-whites as bad guys". They've gotten better with black actors at least.

I find the "People can't relate with someone of different ethic" thing racist and untrue

I'm a bit surprised that no one's mentioned this here yet, which has some pretty big relevance here:

@Best Of,

My point wasn't that protests don't work. My point was that protests that hinge on the system working as it's supposed to don't work.

I.e. you can't boycott the system if doing so requires that the system functions properly, as obviously, it doesn't function properly.

Also, ironically, I actually just heard of "buying Fair Trade" today, funnily enough...

I don't accept your premise that working a protest within the system doesn't work. Plenty of companies have gone greener and more labour-friendly because of boycotts and competition from companies like Fair Trade that make ethical issues one of their selling points. The idea is that doing this stuff forces companies to take ethical and social issues into consideration when they decide what they make and how. If paying your employees a million dollars extra per year earns you $1.1 million a year, then what you do is you pay your employees that extra buck.

All we need is a statistic that demonstrates that some people are gonna prefer a product if they know it was made ethically, and as I said, many companies already are benefitting from that.

The same could be done with movies, especially as studios seem to like to make movies even if they don't think it's gonna make very much profit, just as long as they're fairly sure it's gonna make some profit that the people involved in the project on the studio's side couldn't be making with as low a risk in another production.

Kevin Smith made this point in his talk in London (it's available on DVD.) He said that if he could show statistically and with media specialists that a production that he's planning that would cost $1 million would almost certainly make $1 million and a dollar at the box office, the studio would probably cough up the cash.

Now, sure, he was exaggerating the disregard for risk, but the point, I believe, is probably valid.

edited 18th Jan '12 2:52:55 PM by BestOf

Well, of course, in this case, the idea of the system being broken extends past economics, into the larger sociological issue of racism itself.

There is no will to start such a boycott movement, because people simply accept this idea as normal. It's merely another extension of racism that is still quite unfortunately institutionalized in modern governmental and societal systems...

Yeah, so that's something you try to influence by means of raising awareness, traditional protests, etc. Talking about prejudice against casting non-white leads is one good way to raise awareness about the general issue.