WandererintheWilderness
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User ID: 3496
WandererintheWilderness
21d ago
But you did say his name. You typed "Floyd", right there in your message, clear as a bell. If you had some objection to typing out the full "George Floyd", well, I think that's pretty silly, but no one's asking you to do that; you could just have removed "Fentanyl" and said "Floyd's crime wave".
WandererintheWilderness
21d ago
"the convention ought to be broken but only in casting in the correct direction in the progressive stack"
Yes, but I parse this as "the convention ought to be broken. separately, we should introduce a whole new convention about never making casting decisions that reduce the pool of roles available to POC actors". The reason a white actor playing a historically black character would be lambasted is not that it would break the norm of physically-realistic casting; the outrage you would get in such a situation would very much be rooted in "how dare you take this part away from deserving black actors".
WandererintheWilderness
21d ago
So there is no distinction between fantasy and a straightforward historical drama for which factual depictions are expected?
Perhaps there historically has been (although people sure didn't use to shy away from casting John Wayne as Genghis Khan). I am simply saying that the pro-race-blind-casting position is to reject the expectation of realistic depiction; not to surrender historical accuracy itself. The smart pro-race-blind-casting argument isn't "you should be allowed to make a movie where Cleopatra is canonically Chinese" but "you should be allowed to make a movie where Cleopatra, a Greek woman in-universe, is played by a Chinese woman". i.e. you should look past the fact the actress in Chinese in the same way you look past the fact that she's speaking modern English instead of subtitled Ancient Greek.
I sympathize with saying that this is a distracting burden to place on the audience. But people keep complaining "but Cleopatra wasn't Chinese. casting a Chinese Cleopatra would be inaccurate", and that is the position I am trying to defeat. "Cleopatra is canonically speaking Ancient Greek, but the audience doesn't understand it and the actress can't pronounce it properly anyway, so we'll depict the dialogue in (non-diegetic) modern English" -> "Cleopatra is canonically Greek, but Chinese actors need jobs and Hollywood doesn't make that many meaty historical dramas about Chinese history, so we'll cast a (non-diegetically) Chinese actress as Cleopatra".
WandererintheWilderness
21d ago
You have chosen an especially poor example with Rings off Power, because it belies either an ignorance about the purpose behind Tolkien’s work, or else an intentional disregard for it. Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories are intended as an ersatz mythos for the historical peoples of the British Isles (…) To the extent that this matters to you, it should matter that the actors involved at least plausibly physically resemble somebody belonging to, or descending from, those peoples. It matters that they’re white in a way that it doesn’t matter if the actors in a Star Wars film are white.
No. You are still missing the point I was trying to make. By all means, perhaps it matters that the characters are white. My argument is that (the pro-race-blind-casting position is that) it shouldn't matter if a character who is theoretically white within the story is played by an actor who is visibly black. This is precisely what I meant about Hobbit genetics being neither here nor there to the debate: I am not denying that the Hobbits are meant to be white. I am saying that you can cast a bunch of black actors as white Hobbits.
If a director set out to make a Harriet Tubman biopic and chose to cast Saiorse Ronan in the title role, there is no amount of “she just really crushed the audition, and I’ve always wanted to work with her” that would suffice to excuse what would be (correctly) interpreted at a slap in the face to black Americans. They own Harriet Tubman’s legacy in a way that white people obviously don’t. She means something to them, it’s important for them to see themselves in her, and pretty much everybody understands that.
Well, yeah. Notably, however, this is a very different argument from it being wrong because Saiorse Ronan is physically too different from the historical Tubman and casting her would be unrealistic. The outrage would be rooted in the racial politics of denying a job from some other, black actress who rightfully "deserved" it more than a white actress ever could. If, say, a black actress with dwarfism were to be cast as Harriet Tubman, this would scarcely be more physically accurate than casting Saiorse Ronan, and yet I predict you'd see much fewer complaints.
(Also, in an ideal world, I, for one, believe a director who sincerely wanted to make that movie for the reasons you ascribe to him ought to be able to make it and not be branded a racist for having made it. That's neither here nor there because I'm trying to steelman the pro-race-blind-casting position as it actually exists, not mount my own argument, but I thought it would be worth clarifying so we know where we stand.)
I think you recognize that there is an explicitly redistributive aspect to modern race-swapped casting.
Indeed I do, and I've recognized it explicitly in this thread.
you also have to justify making it work one way only
Well, that's where the usual affirmative-action argument comes in - "black actors deserve as many job opportunities and chances to shine as white actors, and they won't get them unless you go for race-blind casting and compromise on the convention of casting for physical resemblance". Notably, this argument works even without ascribing racist animus to any casting director - it's just an emergent consequence of e.g. most historical dramas being based on western history.
And you can certainly reject that argument if you want, for all sorts of reasons. I don't buy it all the way myself (I personally don't find race-blind casting distracting, and would encourage more productions to use it if it were up to me; but equally, if a director is really committed to a lifelike historical vision, I think that's their prerogative and it doesn't make them a racist, which is a hot take these days). The point I wanted to make is just that "the convention ought to be broken" is the serious pro-race-blind-casting position, which means the endless arguments about the plausibility of black WWII pilots or black Hobbits are a distraction. If they want to be taken seriously - and granted, that is an uphill battle to an unfair degree - retractors need to ask more questions like "Is it detrimental to a film's artistic worth for a white WWII pilot to be portrayed by a black actor?", and to make fewer snide comments about the apparent population genetics of the Ring of Powers Shire being implausible, which is, again, missing the point on a level with complaining that a Muppet doesn't look like a real barnyard animal.
The real bullshit is something like the London blitz containing black characters.
I find this perspective a bit baffling. Have people forgotten how the artifice of fiction works? The idea that what we see on-screen has to represent the literal truth of the fictional universe, hidden-cameras style, in every detail, is a very modern idea and a pretty dumb one. It's how you get people making convoluted theories about code-names and plastic surgery to explain how James Bond turns into a different guy in-between movies. It's just a recast, bro. The 'real' James Bond looks neither exactly like Sean Connery nor exactly like George Lazenby. They're actors. Stand-ins. Race-blind casting in historical dramas works in the same way. A black actor is playing a character who, "in-universe", the audience is expected to understand wasn't actually black.
If you find this sort of thing immersion-breaking, fair enough. I certainly understand the appeal of television which leans really hard into hyper-researched realism; Rings of Power must particularly rankle because the Jackson films were built on this sort of thing. But complaining that black RAF pilots are "historically inaccurate" makes about as much sense as complaining that if Kermit is supposed to be a frog, he shouldn't look like he's made out of felt.
WandererintheWilderness
22d ago
Oh, there's potential, but it's not going to scratch that whodunnit itch. It's something else.
Look. The rate of adoptees who go on to ruin their parents' lives and their own is high. It's much higher than polite society acknowledges, or many prospective adopters realize. Granted. But it's nowhere near 100%. For a considerable number of children, it's exactly the life-improving, beneficial change that adopters want to give, and it works out good-to-great. Many more sit in the middle, with adoption neither a massive mistake, nor a miraculous cure-all - those kids might never make anything much of themselves, but at least they got a happier childhood in the bargain, and the parents have nothing to regret even if they might, perhaps, have hoped for grander outcomes.
So yeah, the firefighter analogy still seems apt to me. If there's someone stuck on the top floor of a burning building, and I decide to go in there - I know there's a good chance, a really good chance, that we'll both die today and I'll have thrown my own life away "for nothing". But I'm going in anyway, because I also know there's a solid chance I'll save their life. Ideally I'll get them out without injury to either of us; more likely, they'll sustain some severe burns before I can get to them… but hey, it would still beat letting them die. Taking that gamble is what we call "being a hero". In the movies the life-or-death gamble always pays off. And that's a nice story. But celebrating and encouraging heroic behavior in the real world involves acknowledging that sometimes the dice are against you and you sacrifice yourself "for nothing", and that's just the way of it, and it doesn't make it worthless to try.
I don't see how you can possibly argue against this unless 1) you preposterously believe that an overwhelming majority of adoptions wind up net-negative for all involved, 2) you think even adoptions that don't blow up the parents' lives have a negligible positive impact on the children, or 3) you think improving the children's lives has no positive value and base the EV of adoption purely on the potential harm to the parents. 1) would be incredibly dumb and 3) would be skin-crawlingly evil. If it's 2), I'd like to see some solid evidence, because it'd be a pretty counterintuitive claim, what with the foster care system's track record being a massive horror story of its own.
But this poor family made a terrible decision because they've been lied to about reality their entire lives.
They made a brave decision without realizing why it was brave, i.e. there's a lot of danger involved. That doesn't make it terrible. Had they walked into it with open eyes, it would have been admirable. Insofar as it's not their fault alone that they had a poor understanding of the odds they were facing, sure, they're entitled to some sympathy when things turn out poorly in a way they never anticipated; but not infinite sympathy.
Picture a guy who signed up to be a firefighter because he'd observed that everyone admires and compliments firefighters. One day, things get bad, and as he's being roasted alive in an out-of-control inferno he whines: "man, I thought this job was going to be all about rescuing cats from trees and collecting praise just for existing! I'd never have signed up if I knew it involved actual peril". If the fire dept's recruitment drive genuinely downplayed the hardships and hazards of the job, sure, he gets a degree of sympathy from me for the injuries he sustains. But once he starts saying "no one in their right mind should ever become a firefighter! it's a terrible idea! you could be horribly injured! stop praising firefighters and encouraging people to join up!", no, sorry, gotta stop you there. You have a right to be a coward, everyone does, I'm not a firefighter myself - but you can't start preaching cowardice as an ideal. That's wildly antisocial.
WandererintheWilderness
22d ago
"Invasive species" is strong language, to be fair. Yes, African-Americans were brought over to the US, but this was a few centuries ago and by now they're as native as the rest of the immigrant US population.
Well, the metaphor was about the small scale, about white couples adopting black orphans. The idea is that the singular black child is "invasive" in the gated environment of the white family's hearth-and-home. An ugly sentiment, but not really historically falsifiable either way.
WandererintheWilderness
22d ago
While unquestionably a horror story and about adoption, I don't think this is the kind of "adoption gone wrong" the thread is about, which focuses on cases where the adopted kid turned out to be 'bad seed' no matter how much nurture was applied, and consequently wrecked the innocent adoptive parents' lives - not the other way around.
Well, yes. But ultimately the problem is people forming their worldviews based on fiction instead of balancing their intellectual diet with non-fiction or, better yet, first-hand experience of the real world. It's a problem as old as Don Quixote, and I don't think the correct lesson to take from Don Quixote is 'how dare those irresponsible poets fill their ballads with giants, virtuous knights, and loyal servants? we need more books about windmills and scumbags to fix impressionable readers' sense of reality'.
(Granted, biases might still cause writers to limit themselves to a particular kind of man biting a particular kind of dog. But that's a whole other conversation than one about realism.)
WandererintheWilderness
22d ago
While there are obvious political-correctness-related reasons for this, you do have to consider the 'Dog Bites Man' angle. I wouldn't want detective shows to reflect real crime statistics, because most of the homicides making up those statistics are boring and obvious. 'Who shot this low-rent ghetto drug dealer? Well flip my dickens, it was this other low-rent ghetto drug dealer.' Right. Not exactly gripping drama. When it's an intelligent, wealthy man hiding a dark secret using an intricate fake alibi - then you have good drama, precisely because it's unusual relative to the real world.
WandererintheWilderness
30d ago
Plus, most of the Internet is liberal-aligned by default, why would they be specifically drawn here? I imagine those who do are attracted by the quality of discourse, if nothing else.
Kinda. Out of places where I can go and find people who disagree with me and test my mettle against them, it's the one with the best quality of discourse.
WandererintheWilderness
30d ago
I think if you're toeing the PC line 100% then why would you choose to be here and be uncomfortable?
Mainly, it's a kind of test I put myself through. I want to believe true things; I want to be sure that, where my beliefs and the consensus align, it is because the 'PC' position genuinely seems correct to my best judgment, not just because it's what everyone else in my bubble is saying. Thus, I find it useful to get into civil arguments with dissidents and contrarians so as to regularly confront myself with their best counter-arguments and, having faced them with open eyes, reassure myself that I still just don't find them convincing at all.
Secondarily, insofar as I believe my opinions to be correct, and that it's better for other people to believe true things, engaging with my opponents is a chance to change some minds and - essentially - "redeem" some of them. Bodhisattva-style. But this is more of an ego-stroking, self-congratulatory justification and if I'm being dead honest, most of the actual motivation is coming from the first thing. Helping people see the light on the margins is more of a positive externality.
(Also: I guess I do have a few points on which I differ from the, like, bog-standard Blue Tribe catechism. But there are many individual subjects where my genuine opinions involve nothing I wouldn't and haven't said in the presence of the most mainstream leftists you can imagine, and I still get into Motte arguments about those, so I think the point stands.)
WandererintheWilderness
1mo ago
"Boaty McBoatface" winning the online naming poll tells you nothing surprising about the crowd, or how polls work, but it does tell you something surprising about the judges (they're very hands-off). What's interesting about the grok stuff isn't that people would try, or that the untampered-with algorithms would comply - it's that the enormous filters and correctives most AI companies install on those things didn't catch the aberrant output from being shared with the users. Either the "alignment work" wasn't very good, or it was deliberately patchy. Hence culture war fodder.
WandererintheWilderness
1mo ago
Seems to me a natural and healthy part of the human psyche, actually.
It might be healthy for the species at an evolutionary level, while still being bad news for your life prospects at the individual level (and for the prospects of a community if all its members are pre-selected for abnormally high scores on that trait).
WandererintheWilderness
1mo ago
This only holds for climate scientists trying to come up with new global models. Useful climate science looks like trying to make specific predictions about specific areas on a specific time scale in the context of an extant model, so that human infrastructure can anticipate and adapt to disruptions to established patterns.
(It's the difference between "AI risk researchers" who come up with yet more convoluted thought experiments on how to do timeless bargaining with omniscient gods, and "AI risk researchers" who are actually creating code to interpret and control what's going on inside neural networks. I can see why someone would be fed up with the former, but the latter is actual expert work that needs doing, and - so long as they sub-optimally remain a package deal - justifies the existence of the overall field.)
And if the Earth gets warmer this isn't a crisis
Come on. It would suck for far more than "penguins and polar bears". It'll suck for the current balance of worldwide agriculture, it'll suck for coastal population centers, it'll suck for vast swathes of land that are already near the threshold of unlivable, and, oh yes, it'll suck for all the currently temperate areas which will inherit the latter's status as the arid "well, you can eke out a living there, I guess" hell-holes. This is true even if you're correct about global warming opening as much hitherto-frozen land for settlement up north as it will ruin further south. We'd be looking at a major reshuffle in what countries control what kind of territory and resources, which may not favor the West much. (Indeed, odds are it wouldn't: we'd been dealt a good hand already, to the point that some view sheer luck of the draw on Europe's local climate as, if not the secret to Europeans' worldwide success, then at least a crucial prerequisite. We can really only go downhill.)
Even if it turns out net positive in the end, it needs to be anticipated and planned for in order to mitigate the damaging side-effects of the disruption itself. Which is exactly what I had in mind when I spoke of "global implications" and why we need climate scientists. I agree that the Earth getting warmer isn't x-risk. But there's far more to whether a crisis is worth averting or mitigating than whether it'll literally wipe out humanity. (Particularly if we're talking about a specific country's incentives rather than Homo Sapiens's as a whole.)
WandererintheWilderness
1mo ago
Many kinds of scientists are irrationally prone to thinking their particular specialty is the most important thing evah, but AI risk is still a real thing, space exploration is still a real thing, deadly viruses are still a real thing, etc. I think the same is obviously true of the climate. Global warming isn't going to literally set us all on fire by 2035 but climate change is still an ongoing phenomenon with massive global implications and it needs to be studied. So long as you don't follow them on X, I think most scientists still produce more light than heat, if you'll forgive the expression.
WandererintheWilderness
1mo ago
Why don't you think that climate science is useful science?
Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Mitch McConnell to have voted for the 1986 amnesty earlier in their careers
I did mention the "geriatric forebears"! Three out of these four people are in their 80s. The sole exception is a sprightly 74. These are no longer the people on whose trustworthiness the party's long- or even mid-term trustworthiness depends. They will be dead or in care homes long before they get the chance to recant on any deals made in the 2020s. This is what I meant by "no longer relevant".
Does that mean we can put any discussion of reparation to rest too because there's no such thing as group responsibility for past sins so long as you run the clock long enough?
Well, that doesn't follow. I wasn't talking about holding the son accountable for the sins of the father, but about the pragmatic question of whether the son is or isn't committing the same sins as his father today. The thread was discussing Republicans' ability to trust Democrats as a practical issue - that's not the same thing as granting that Democrats may be sincere today, but refusing to negotiate as punishment for past defections.
All of which said, yes, I do in fact believe there's no such things as group responsibility for the sins of past generations, and that "reparations" are a bad idea. (If some groups today are more disadvantaged than others, they should receive help proportionate to the extent to which they are disadvantaged. But there's no reason the distant descendants of their oppressors should be uniquely responsible for providing that help, and it shouldn't be regarded as something "owed" to the disadvantaged descendants of the oppressed, except insofar as all citizens are collectively responsible for the welfare of all other citizens - which applies just as well to someone whose family was ruined by a freak meteor crash twenty years ago as by slavery or segregation. I really dislike the justice-based/"punitive" framing.)
WandererintheWilderness
1mo ago
So, if we're hearing about HBD less in a period of right-wing ascendancy, as compared with a period of left-wing ascendancy (e.g. when Black Lives Matter defined the discourse,) that strongly suggests the defensive explanation is true.
Does it? The anti-HBD side as you define it could just as well say that the pro-HBDers have gone quiet because their guy is already god-emperor, so they no longer need intellectual grounding to "construct systems of white supremacy" instead of getting on with oppressing non-whites directly.
(Of course, I don't believe either side of the meta-debate.)
WandererintheWilderness
1mo ago
This would, again, make a lot of other wars into genocides,
Yes, yes it would. A majority of historical wars were genocidal in intent; wanting to exterminate your enemies is in fact an extremely common motivation for warfare, and if it's not what you start out wanting, you sure want it once the bastards have butchered thousands of your lads on the battlefield.
A lot of the confusion about Israel-Palestine and Ukraine-Russia comes from the relevant countries and their advocates protesting that they're not engaging in Unprecedented Evil Behavior, just fighting wars like they've been fought for thousands of years. And in a way, they're right! But "the kind of wars our ancestors have been fighting since the Neolithic" is in fact what we've been trying to ban out of existence once and for all, because they sucked. There is an under-discussed gap between people who think of the modern notion of war crimes in terms of "the World Wars were anomalies, we need to ban the sort of thing that went on in WWII to ensure we only fight normal wars like we had before", and people who think of the modern notion of war crimes in terms of "the scale of the World Wars showed that we urgently need to ban a whole lot of things that had been rampant in practically every war until that point, but never made quite so starkly obvious in their horror than when they were implemented on an industrial scale".
Shame on the government for allowing a fentanyl crisis to fester and claim lives, you might equally say.
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