drmanhattan16
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User ID: 640
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
One of those women was an important character in the original trilogy, I hope you're not forgetting that. She was an important leader then and it's certainly not implausible she would be leader of the rebellion by that point.
But that's beside the point. Ignorance has yet to be ruled out.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
But when they're going all-out on "We cast a BLACK actress" then it's not about "this is the best actress for the role", it's about a different set of values.
Yes, as I said, progressives are de facto hypocritical on this topic. But this selective raceblindness can and probably is still out of a genuinely-held if compartmentalized belief that race doesn't matter to the character, so there's a free lunch to be had in also promoting an IRL social goal.
People keep asserting maliciousness, that's what I don't like.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Esmeralda was a white girl raised by gypsies in the book, but in modern productions she must always be a person of color. There were a bunch of angry articles written a while back after a college production of Hunchback cast a white girl as Esmeralda.
Sorry, which college production? When I search for this, I find a case of this happening in a high school. Moreover, how many people have even read Hunchback compared to seen the Disney film, in which Esmeralda was decidedly not white? In contrast, the Peter Jackson films are still the way most if not all people have engaged with LOTR at a first pass.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Fair enough, that example does seem to be a case of social commentary, in which case, I would agree that there is an obligation to get things right. But not all media is trying to do social commentary.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Setting it in Miami isn't the worst the movie could have done, and he did keep the plot, the characters, and the language.
Right, so why can't we say something like "Making the characters look like a sampling of New York City's elite isn't the worst thing, they still kept the plot, characterizations, and language" for LOTR?
It's for cheap novelty and attention.
Why can't it be the view that race is irrelevant to character? That a black Anne Boleyn is the same in a fundamental sense as a white one?
And before someone tells me that progressives are hypocrites because they don't tolerate the whitewashing of a character, recognize that they, like all people, are more than capable of compartmentalizing their beliefs. That they do this in no way suggests that they also don't actually believe it.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Additionally activists tend to see these swaps as permanent and will demand black Aragorn in all future adaptations.
Sorry, where's the proof for that?
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
The Little Mermaid is another example of what I'm talking about. I don't know what the Star Wars example is.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Romeo and Juliet is not that cohesive, imo. Language is informed by many things, you can't expect people from modern America to talk like Shakespeare's characters. If anything, it should bother people just as much that the language was not updated to reflect modern American English.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
What do you mean by setting? I doubt you mean the actual geography.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
What is the BBC media you are referring to? A cursory search does not tell me.
As for fictional characters, I don't think it has been conclusively shown that there is any obligation for them to claim they aren't adhering to the original depictions.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
That sounds like a Russel conjugation. "I show reality as it is, you show a vulgar political display." Hardly that convincing, nor do I think it requires a hatred of white consumers.
Race matters in Tolkein in a way that white progressives, by virtue of their white upbringings, simply cannot grasp. Ignorance is not malice.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
What kind of "woke replacement" do you think insists the original character was the new version?
I would understand if they did changed something but insisted it was historically accurate. But that is about a fraction of the complaints about "woke replacement"
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
You know, this brings to mind Romeo + Juliet, a film that uses the exact same dialogue as Shakespeare's play, but changes the characters and setting to one that is familiar to Americans.
Would it be unreasonable for a British person to complain about this for the same reason? It's not inconceivable, the movie is partly a cultural and national swap in the same way Aragorn was race swapped - the original most certainly did not conceive of the character(s) this way. I say "partly" because they kept the same dialogue, and language is an important part of placing a culture.
And yet, I suspect most Americans don't mind this, perhaps because it was a swap in their favor, but probably because Shakespeare just isn't as big a culture war topic. Are the British upset about it? I doubt that as well, but maybe I'm wrong. I don't follow their media critics.
@problem_redditor says precisely what I suspect is the real belief of many here - that there is nothing illegitimate about X-swapping, only with the intentions behind it.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Yes, that is also an option. The point I'm getting at is that if you decide the truth is irrelevant, then you can justify things that people don't want. I assume that Butlerian is probably not in favor of European laws that ban Holocaust Denial.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
In your opinion, does a person who sets unreasonable goals for being persuaded from a moral position still get treated as having full moral agency? I think such a person becomes less human and more like a machine - giving predictable results from inputs. In this sense, I imagine that any kind of support I provide is akin to pushing a button, and I hold some moral responsibility for the actions.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Does everyone in America really need to be right about something that happened on another continent 80 years ago?
Doesn't this cut both ways? "Who cares if the Holocaust even happened - there's a known history of anti-Semitic hate and violence across Europe and America in their pasts, so we're better off just banning it legally to avoid further violence."
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Does your answer change if it is solely by your support that another person is able to take an action you deem immoral?
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
You're mostly correct. It's not specifically about capitalism, I would ask the same in a barter economy. And the point of making it a Funko Pop is to highlight that it is not in any way a necessity. The collector will not die if the collection remains incomplete. This allows for the argument that all of the seller's purchases are unethical.
As a metaphor and mediation for "how closely do my purchases need to be tied into a bad act, at either the seller's intent or my own understanding of the results, before that purchase becomes immoral", I think this serves a purpose, but I don't think it reveals much, even as a method to explore one's own intuitions.
The purpose is to offer a series of choices that escalate, not to flesh out my own intuitions. I want to have a conversation about which of the collector's purchases are ethical, along with how we go about deciding that.
And... well, it just seems kinda superfluous. We aren't at questions whether funding Hitler's specific efforts to kill undesirables is moral, for a variety of pretty obvious reasons.
Perhaps there is someone out there who believes that we have no obligation to others we have not explicitly and directly made an agreement with, so there is nothing unethical about giving someone money even if it is guaranteed to result violence against an unknown third party. I don't want to restrict the arguments one can make.
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Okay. But that is one person, is this a more widely held opinion?
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
No, I mean where is the proof that the people founding America intended it as an ethnostate?
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
It was, in fact, founded as an ethnostate, exactly the same way that Sweden was. The men who founded the country said so at the time, and the history of the demography of the country supports that reading.
Where was this?
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
Well, we don't have argument Y3 yet, so...
drmanhattan16
2yr ago
No, not my point.
Suppose you refute Y1, then steelman and give them Y2. What stops you from also mentioning "Oh, by the way, Y2 is also false for the following reasons"?
Sure, I'd love if they at least tried something like that. But the harshest complaint here is consistently that this is down out of intentional malice, and that's what I don't agree with.
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