Diversity and Representation in Media

Saying it's "against misogyny" isn't close to the same as saying it's against "sticking it to toxic masculinity", though. Also one would think it's a fairly noncontroversial thing to bring up.

Edited by AlleyOop on Apr 8th 2020 at 6:06:21 AM

Does he? Peele's been very open about how his films relate to race and current day politics, including directly linking Get Out to liberal white racism, "post-racialism", the expectation of a Hillary Clinton administration, Travyon Martin's death, and so on.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Apr 8th 2020 at 2:57:17 AM

I've never seen shipping and ships as a big deal. They've never been that important. Why is it that what people ship is now some kind of big deal?

That is more after the fact, he wasn't promoting the movie based on that specific mindset. Get Out was marketed as a horror film with obvious racial undertones, but nobody understood exactly how until it came out. And that's where the line is, I think, as telling your audience what to take away from your movie is different than giving your perspective on your own movie.

x3 - Yeah, but he doesn’t go yelling about how if you don’t see it you’re racist.

Leslie Jones likened the creation of Ghostbusters Afterlife to supporting Trump. That’s the sort of thing that makes everyone look bad.

Edited by Beatman1 on Apr 8th 2020 at 6:11:36 AM

I think it's more that he's mostly stuck to small projects rather than large franchises (and wants to stick to that for the foreseeable future) so his words aren't put on a wide fanbase stage to be picked apart by millions. Peele's works haven't shied away from discussing racism at the advertising level. His and Nia DaCosta's upcoming Candyman reboot has a trailer depicting non-black people getting killed for misusing black culture.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Apr 8th 2020 at 3:21:54 AM

I think is more that peele is seen is direction about racial issues as sort of artistic decision rather than a promocional one, is more "this is what I have to said about racism" and less "I will stick to the white culture, come and see it!" as the latter have a air on insincerity on it.

A lot of it I will guess is topicalism, which the idea that a movie have to reference current stop right now, at time it works(it can help people understand the time something is made) and at time it come as attempt to kept people by referencing stuff everyone is taking about.

I think there is a bit of an issue of creators getting slightly-inflated egos and thinking they're more progressive than they are...which tends to actually be fueled by people complaining about them.

This also tends to make it hard for a work to stand on its own merits and essentially divides its fans and non-fans along political lines. If you like the work, it's because you're a feminist; if you hate the work it's because you hate feminism. This also creates the problem of turning opinion on the movie into a moral crusade rather than something that should be a bit of a matter of taste, and it also tends to polarize opinions on it.

This is something I suspected would have happened with Captain Marvel (and to some extent it did): that people would hate it simply for having a feminist message, and that people would love it because it has a feminist message and stuck it to the anti-feminists.

Really, it's impossible to make an apolitical story, because a story gives some reflection about society and what's wrong and right. Even attempting to make a story apolitical is itself a political statement, as it calls attention to what subjects the creator believes is political and why they're not included in the story.

I understand why some creators want to speak out about the messages of the films and what kind of politics they want to promote. In an age where Misaimed Fandom is more prevalent than ever, it's important to sometimes address what message your work is trying to say and not have people misconstrue it.

Yeah this create a charge on the movie that hyped a lot, for all the talk about Capitan marvel for example, the movie ending be your typical marvel origin story, it was safe and bankable just like every other damn marvel movie from the last decade and...that it.

Hell like someone said, they gender lifed mar-vell and them kill her and nobody give a damn.

Edited by unknowing on Apr 8th 2020 at 7:08:50 AM

I liked Beastars because the political issues cover numerous things, and because they're animals they have no 1:1 in societal issues to RL ones due to carnivores having animalistic need to eat meat, and society had to find a way to adapt to that for them, not to mention bias different animals have for other species.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Apr 8th 2020 at 4:18:12 AM

Shipping can be fun if you find the right circles and just live and let live, have fun with your pairing and ignore things that aren't fun. Multishipping and crack shipping is great. Sadly not everyone can do that.

For fandom, I feel that (especially on Tumblr) people feel the need to Morally Justify Why They Like This when sometimes you just like stuff because you like it, and You Preform Politics Through Fandom instead of actually being an activist or making a difference IRL.

Of course, that cesspit drowns out a lot of good discussion on racist trends, bad writing, and how stuff can be improved on.

Hell, if someone wrote a dark Reylo story that full on shows how messed up that relationship would be, I would give it a read. But sometimes people can't admit they're into screwed up stuff, or even do a moment's self reflection.

Part of that I think is that tumblr is know for always analyzing racial and sexual stuff in politics and shows in demanding better treatment which is good stuff...but them kinda apply the same to fandom and to other people, devolving in a sort of "bad stuff exist because you put it there".

"Really, it's impossible to make an apolitical story, because a story gives some reflection about society and what's wrong and right. Even attempting to make a story apolitical is itself a political statement, as it calls attention to what subjects the creator believes is political and why they're not included in the story. "

This is true to a extended, what people more feel about political is topicalism, made stuff to reflect what is happing now rather than just made a story with standar morals and that stuff, I see this because at times this kinda sound like a excuse to broke a story and criticizing for it.

There’s also “fans of the toxic ship harassing and insulting John Boyega while making themselves look like the victims”. That being said, harassment of Reylo fans who simply like the ship while knowing it has flaws is unacceptable and deserves as much criticism.

Bare in mind that none of these even need to apply for a minority character to get heat. The Finn controversy began before the film had even been released and we had people threatening to boycott TFA just because a black guy was one of the leads.

I think this is the root of why Anna Diop's Starfire got so much hostility. The quality of the costuming aside, I can't take the complaints about her looking like a hooker seriously when comic Starfire has worn "clothes" like this◊. Unsurprisingly, Diop's Starfire has either been called ugly or been subject to slut-shaming despite having had sex with Dick Grayson, a guy she has a mutual attraction to and is her main love interest in the comics, a grand total of once.

I've seen these same types of people talk about how they enjoy stuff like Berserk, horror movies and the Watchmen comic which are as far from fun as you can get. Or rather the idea of fun just means light-hearted, overtly humorous fluff rather than just fun being something people find entertaining which can apply to anything from comedies to political dramas to horror. They'll complain about how there isn't any joy in entertainment when the reality is that there is simply more variety and not everything is going to appeal to their tastes.

Edited by windleopard on Apr 8th 2020 at 10:40:02 AM

A lot of people decaying fan serving and pandering have very little self awareness on how much they like it when it suit them, for them people just put stuff that look appeling just because while pandering to other is a overly external effort that it feel tacked.

What's that meme I often see? "I no understand why thing not about me"? Or something? I feel that applies. No one minds fanservice when it's targeted to them. Even I catch myself bothered by it when I see big boobs and lingering shots in video games, but don't say the same about the ripped video game men I swoon over... though, I'd at least admit that the sexualization of men is FAR rarer if almost unheard of so they're not quite the same thing.

Or another one that intersects with a lot of our discussions; Everything in media is political. You just don't notice until it's not catering to your political tastes. Showing a "Nuclear Family" isn't political because it's 'Normal' and 'Expected' but showing a gay interracial family with adopted kids is 'Pushing an Agenda' no matter how 'normal' that is in real life.

My father and friends bemoan how much I complain about lack of gay male representation in media over nearly a decade now and how representation has gotten better, I always ask them to name for me three gay male leads in a film in the last ten years. They can't think of any. When I ask for what representation they think has 'gotten better', they'll bring up that the partner in their cop drama is black or the victim of the week in a murder show had a husband. Not even a name usually either. They don't notice the lack of representation because they aren't lacking in representation and are incapable of seeing the inequality.

That too. And usually if there's a queer lead it's a story about that, not 'action story about a hard boiled dude and his husband'.

That’s not just queer people, it’s most minorities. Too many minority stories are about the issues of being a minority, rather than characters that just happen to be a minority.

Random example - I remember two movies in the 90’s Latino magazines pointed out as having Latin leads. Fools Rush In, a film about a white guy and a Mexican woman having a shotgun wedding and forcing to deal with each other’s cultures, and Desperado. The latter film didn’t need to say anything about the culture of the minority, it just was. And stuff blew up. And it was awesome.

That may have been true at the beginning of the decade but a combination of minority creators becoming more prolific and self-aware means that while Sturgeon's Law means at least some works are going to fall prey to that, it's more and more commonly a stock dogwhistle trotted out by alt-right types like Comicgaters to come down upon any work seen as too transgressive for their assimilationist viewpoint. Even works that aren't guilty of that will be accused of tokenizing their main characters for committing the crime of authenticity (e.g. acknowledging that even privileged black people will stumble up against racism, or depicting male homosexuality with the same level of candor as heterosexuality, or just acknowledging a different viewpoint and cultural behaviors from majority group norms), because it'll offend sensitive majoritarians. So knock it off.

Or maybe don't, because that idiotic viewpoint happens to be a great segway into a video that I just found that discusses the issues with the New Warriors reboot regarding authenticity and playing it too safe.

Tl;dr: She believes that the creators are 100% sincere about their desire to be progressive and to reclaim those terms but that, rather than the cynical attempt to score PC points (or dogwhistling Stealth Parody against minority-focused media that dares to be too minority-focused) that rightist critics treat it as. As a result they ended up playing it too safe to avoid offending either side and in the process watered themselves down so much that they just pissed off both, as regressives would never accept them, and because they'd decry anything they made on that front as overly focused on the issues of being a minority, aren't worth giving any attention to in the first place, while queer audiences are disappointed at what feels like an insincere and milquetoast attempt to placate them even when it does seem to be made in good faith.

Edited by AlleyOop on Apr 9th 2020 at 10:33:42 AM

It doesn't help that those are the types of minority stories that will get mainstream attention. There's a reason we have so many jokes about how the Oscars only care about black lead movies that are about slavery or racism.

Edited by windleopard on Apr 9th 2020 at 7:28:43 AM

Exactly. If you want gay people to have stories for them, then what writers should do are the characters where being gay is a clear part of their background, but it doesn’t define it. If they have issues with a husband, are they different from a straight character and their issues with a wife? There’s probably more common ground than many would admit, and zeroing in on that is what connects. Some might say this is overly ideal to present a minority as not having issues that affect them in real life, but you could also argue ignorance of these items is a piece of escapism in and of itself. That is assuredly a case by case basis. Obviously there are plenty of great stories that don’t work without the focus on these issues, but the ability to tell more than one type of story, to do more than one type of work, is the core of diversity I would argue.

Then again, Jadakiss was rapping about this phenomenon in 2004 (“Why did Denzel have to be crooked before he took it”, referring to him not winning an Oscar until Training Day), so this is nothing new.

Edited by Beatman1 on Apr 9th 2020 at 10:45:25 AM

But that's just the James Cameron approach of writing female characters, and while it's not necessarily a terrible one, for obvious reasons it's also a method that's going to be very limited in scope, at least until authors are more willing to write male characters who partake in stereotypically female-associated plotlines.

Yeah, and that’s on the writers for being stuck in the bubble. For introducing these characters but not being willing to go beyond what they view as a stereotype. Of course this is where things like authenticity come into play (hiring writers and actors who are the things in the story, rather than having someone assume such).

I’m not saying don’t write stories about minorities dealing with racism or homophobia, that’s just as racist or homophobic. Denzel Washington himself argued such when he was in Training Day. I’m saying you need to write the stories where gay men and gay women, black, Latino, etc, get to be action heroes, comedic leads, etc, in addition to stories about the minorities experiences. Too many people think of it as a case of “either, or” when it should be a case of “in addition too”. Variety in entertainment is the main way groups will get recognized, rather than being cordoned off into a stereotypical “Token” section.

Edited by Beatman1 on Apr 9th 2020 at 11:02:00 AM

I wonder if this might be one of the reasons race lifts happen. Most of the characters who get race lifted don't necessarily need to be white and their stories tend to not revolve around race anyway. Smallville's Lana Lang, for an example, never had any stories about being an Asian-American woman and her character is white in the comics.

Well, Denzel actually had won an Oscar several years earlier for Glory. Also Jadakiss's song goes on to claim 9/11 was an inside job, so, um, not exactly the height of informed questioning there...

In other news, Auli'i Calvalho AKA the voice of Moana came out as bi.

And here's a trailer for the upcoming The Half of It.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Apr 9th 2020 at 1:54:54 AM