goku the krump dancer wrote: ↑Sat Sep 25, 2021 2:51 am
@Demon Prince
Well yeah that's why I said it only matters depending on what type of story is being told or the premise I should say. The Boondocks wouldnt be what it is if you turn the Freeman family into any other ethnicity but black, critiquing the culture through the eyes of the people of said culture is the whole point.
Then you have Cyborg from DC whos is black, pretty much "just because" which is also great, he doesnt have to be but he is, as with Static, Storm, Spawn, Bishop, Blade and Luke Cage. All interesting characters who just so happen TO BE black, they arent black because the story requires them to throw their fist in air every time they're on screen/panel thank god. T'Challa is different though because, while he's no freedom fighter, the story still requires him to be black seeing as though his story takes place in Africa and it'd be hella jarring to say the least if he were anything other than black.
The tokenizing starts when you do race/gender/sexuality swaps for no real reason other than to try make more bank off people who dont really give a shit anyway, though like I said not all Tokens are created equally. Token Green Lantern John Stewart has his own distinct personality from Hal Jordan, Token Batman Barbra Gordon isn't just Bruce Wayne with a vag, she's her own unique person. Then you have less innovative characters like Miles Morales whos just AfroLatino Peter Parker (two birds with one stone right) or RiRi Williams whos just Black Girl Magic Ironman but with all the personality of a bucket of paint.
Very strongly disagree on both Miles and Riri, I think they both have their own distinct personalities. Miles especially showed that in the animated film and in the video game.
Also I have to disagree with the notion that there's no value in minority characters playing roles that were originally white, while it is always preferable to have original works starring minority characters, having non-white and non-straight male actors playing roles originally played by straight white men/women is a big deal to a lot of other folks out there. Hell Nick Fury was originally a white dude in the comics and few would argue that giving him a race-lift was a vast improvement for his character overall.
I will defend the 2016 Ghostbusters on my friggin deathbed, hell i'll be totally honest and say I actually liked it more then the original film, there I said it, and i'm not the only one that feels that way either. One podcast I regularly listen to has a trans-female as one of the hosts and she openly admitted to liking the reboot more because she found the humor more appealing(as did I), I don't think it was lazy at all and I definitely don't agree with Kunz's assertion that the existence of these gender and race-swapped reboots somehow gives racist alt-right assholes more credence or whatever, because assholes like that are going to complain no matter what. Leslie Jones would've been sent racist death threats on social media even if she hadn't starred in that film, because that's just what these assholes do, the onus should not be on filmmakers, actors, writers, directors etc to coddle these alt-right dipshits. I for one like those types of movies and TV shows(One Life to Live being a prime example of how to do a reboot right, and the producer of the original show was involved with it, so you can't dismiss it as a lazy rehash either).
Certainly wouldn't call it safe or lazy in the least, hell I remember in the mid-2000s when Hollywood assumed that female led action films were done just because a few had bombed(I remember Jinx from "Die Another Day' was planned to get her own spin-off movie, but the failure of films like Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life, Elektra, Aeon Flux, and Charlie's Angels Full Throttle made the studio cancel the spin-off) and so they avoided making female-led action films for a while because of it.
Adamant wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 10:46 pm
White Americans, that is. The rest of the world has always considered it a hilariously idiotic and mockable term that only illustrates how far up their own asses most Americans are.
Well the rest of the world does not know a whole lot about black history, so they are mistaken on that front, that term definitely has it's place and I wouldn't call it idiotic or mockable, just a bit overrused, I generally don't use it myself because it sounds a little too formal to me.
Anyway I don't take a direct offense to the term, it's just that if someone verbally referred to me as such, I wouldn't know how to respond. It would just feel awkward.
