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
The Encounter that ended the Dogma
As someone who like some of those, I find that insulting (though I kinda think Hunchback II has a simialr thematic dissonance to the original movie)
Most of the DTV sequels are bad because they don't really speak to/continue the themes of the original films in a compelling way and have low-stakes conflicts which arent interesting.
Hunchback 2 is one of the worst since it literally feels like the only reason it exists is "quasimodo needs a girlfriend".
Killing in the heat of battle is different than making a cold conscious decision to track someone down and kill them. Neither's particularly good but killing in the heat of battle doesn't have the same malice or coldness.
Anyway the disregard for Asian characters shot them in the foot since if they'd taken the time to you know dig into the characters (like Peter Shinokoda said they were planning to do) it would be easier to get invested.
Edited by LordYAM on Mar 20th 2021 at 8:03:46 AM
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I do like a few of them too. Particularly Lion King 2 and Aladdin and the King of Thieves.
Edited by windleopard on Mar 20th 2021 at 8:50:38 AM
It's one of my favorites. (granted so is Return to the Sea and King of Thieves).
That does remind me, Cinderella 2 and Milo's Return were failed attempts at launching TV shows, while Stitch! and maybe Return of Jafar were more successful (in regards to launching TV shows bit). I wonder what caused them to fail or succeed and more germane to the thread how did the TV show spinoffs (Tangled, BH 6, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, Hercules, L&S) handled the cultures that inspired their source materiel or diversity?
It probably helped that the Stitch sequel and Return of Jafar were actual movies, and served as a gateway, or "pilot" to the actual shows they launched.
Where as with Cinderella 2 and Milo's Return, they kinda jumped the gun, made 3 episodes, realized they couldn't go further than that for whatever reason, and released them as movies. Making them being abandoned tv shows that much more obvious.
Edited by Brandon on Mar 20th 2021 at 11:20:25 AM
Like creepy stories? Check out my book!Here's something interesting.
The Magic School Bus
was recently rebooted. I wasn't following it at the time but but it seems people took umbrage with the new visual style and the fact that Ms Valerie Frizzle was replaced by her sister Fiona
. One of the reasons for this was due to Fiona having straighter hair and nose than her sister. And apparently, Valerie Frizzle was something of an LGBT icon for people.
The thing is, I honestly had no idea Ms Frizzle was seen that way at all I noticed people complaining about her replacement. This is actually the second time this has happened with me; the first time was when Shang got cut from the live action Mulan Disney film.
Has anyone else experienced this?
Edited by windleopard on Mar 20th 2021 at 7:47:16 AM
Personally, as a bi WLW I always saw Ms. Frizzle's lack of a husband as indicative of her being a celibate free spirit who didn't need a romantic partner of any kind chaining her down, rather than her being queer.
After that my next assumption, this time as an ace person, would be that maybe she's on the aro/ace spectrum as opposed to lesbian specifically. And I do find it a bit annoyingly amatonormative that some people jump from "lacks explicitly obvious heterosexual interests" immediately to "that means they must play for the other team".
Regardless I think "Ms. Frizzle's new design is homophobic" is mostly a joke, and only a few humorless folks, the type who are pathologically obsessed with fandom discourse and headcanons, are taking it that seriously to begin with.
Edit:Ahh, it's from The Mary Sue, so
is right on the money.
Edited by AlleyOop on Mar 21st 2021 at 10:06:23 AM
Not to mention the new Ms. Frizzle (a relative of the original, incidentally) is voiced by Kate McKinnon.
I find the lightening of Tim and Keesha's skin color far more problematic though.
Edited by Brandon on Mar 21st 2021 at 11:32:42 AM
Like creepy stories? Check out my book!People do sometimes use “homophobic” as a synonym for “thing [they] don’t like”. And I don’t mean making logical leaps to justify why the thing is actually homophobic, I mean it’s a tongue in cheek way of calling it bad. It’s a joke.
The wording is a joke, I mean. Not liking it isn’t. And it does get complicated in cases like this where it could have either meaning depending on what the person posting meant.
Edited by SapphireBlue on Mar 21st 2021 at 11:35:44 AM
From what I saw it was mostly a joke, though there was some genuine distaste with Tim and Keisha’s lightening, and Ms. Frizzle having a more generic and arguably less Jewish-coded design compared to her predecessor’s curly hair and hooked nose.
Edited by Tuckerscreator on Mar 21st 2021 at 12:01:33 PM
Yeah, I got the impression it was mostly a joke, possibly a play on the fact that both V As are lesbians (the moral guardian outrage to Mc Kinnon's casting a few years ago is hilarious in that context). The whitewashing as well as the downplaying of various character's larger noses and curly hair is definitely the bigger problem. Plus, the sequel character designs are just kind of... bland and ugly? Presumably to make the animation cheaper.
Edited by Pseudopartition on Mar 21st 2021 at 2:05:55 PM
Sharon Stone recalls producer who told her to "fuck my costar" for "chemistry"
Sharon Stone has never been especially well-treated by the Hollywood apparatus. As the breakout star of Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct, Stone was instantly accelerated from being a struggling performer with a string of near-misses into a sort of living symbol, embodying, in the part of serial killer Catherine Tramell a particularly vigorous blend of America’s never-ending obsessions with sex and violence. Stone lobbied aggressively for the part, and then—as noted in excerpts from her upcoming memoir, The Beauty Of Living Twice, released by Vanity Fair this week—had to live through the moment at the film’s debut screening, when she learned that Verhoeven had lied when he told her his camera hadn’t captured images of her genitals in the film’s infamous interrogation scene. Surrounded by movie executives and agents who had also just watched the scene in question, Stone did what anyone, understandably, might: “I went to the projection booth, slapped Paul across the face, left, went to my car, and called my lawyer.”
“Yes,” she notes a little earlier, “There have been many points of view on this topic, but since I’m the one with the vagina in question, let me say: The other points of view are bullshit.” Stone goes on to talk through the complicated calculus of the moment—one no male performer is likely to have been asked to make:
Then I thought some more. What if I were the director? What if I had gotten that shot? What if I had gotten it on purpose? Or by accident? What if it just existed? That was a lot to think about. I knew what film I was doing. For heaven’s sake, I fought for that part, and all that time, only this director had stood up for me. I had to find some way to become objective…So I thought and thought and I chose to allow this scene in the film. Why? Because it was correct for the film and for the character; and because, after all, I did it.
By the way, you probably don’t recall, but my name wasn’t at the top with Michael Douglas’s on the poster.
Stone is similarly frank about the many, many other moments in her career where men have talked down to her, used her, or encouraged her to go far past her limits in pursuit of opportunities afforded to male performers as a matter of course. Here she is on the topic of an unnamed film producer:
I had a producer bring me to his office, where he had malted milk balls in a little milk-carton-type container under his arm with the spout open. He walked back and forth in his office with the balls falling out of the spout and rolling all over the wood floor as he explained to me why I should fuck my costar so that we could have onscreen chemistry. Why, in his day, he made love to Ava Gardner onscreen and it was so sensational! Now just the creepy thought of him in the same room with Ava Gardner gave me pause. Then I realized that she also had to put up with him and pretend that he was in any way interesting.
I watched the chocolate balls rolling around, thinking, You guys insisted on this actor when he couldn’t get one whole scene out in the test.… Now you think if I fuck him, he will become a fine actor? Nobody’s that good in bed. I felt they could have just hired a costar with talent, someone who could deliver a scene and remember his lines. I also felt they could fuck him themselves and leave me out of it. It was my job to act and I said so.
It’s bracing, ugly stuff, fascinating dispatches from a performer who spent decades in the trenches ahead of the progress carved out by the #Me Too! movement. You can read the full excerpt over at Vanity Fair; The Beauty Of Living Twice is out on March 30.
A short but interesting interview of Korean singer Lim Kim where she notably mentions how Americans perceive Asians and how she’s trying to break some of the stereotypes about Korean women and Asian women in general. I only knew her through her more poppy early work (though it was already pretty distinct) but her latest songs are… something else for sure.
Also, that t-shirt.
It's always interesting to see Korean perspectives on K-pop and on how places like the US perceives Korean artists and Korea in general. To complement the above, "K-pop" as a term in itself (as detailed in this article by Haeryun Kang
) has been debated by critics and non-idol musicians for being overinclusive and misleading (everything that's Korean is labeled outside as "K-pop" but at the same time it's also used interchangeably with idol music, with no clear definition of what it actually means) or even unnecessary (why do we need to label Korean pop as "K-pop" as if separate from pop, as if US music was called "A-pop"?).
There's also (again, just complementing Lim Kim's statements) how other musicians such as Tablo from rap group Epik High have criticized
the way K-pop is pigeonholed (by both media, detractors and some fans) as somehow more corporate and lacking in creative freedom than industries like the US, often erasing the creative work of many Korean artists both within and outside of the idol sphere, based on generalizations from the actions of a few companies. As argued by journalists such as Hyunsu Yim
and (again) Haeryun Kang
, the "dark side of K-pop" narrative and the way every scandal and tragedy in the industry is attributed to "K-pop" outside of Korea (just like how Western media tries to attribute K-pop's success only to the Korean government or other "exotic" explanations) also comes from orientalist stereotypes, such as Asians being "robotic" or lacking in agency.
The character Echo might be getting her own series after her appearance in Hawkeye on Disney Plus[1]
