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Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the culture wars to me is that I repeatedly see attacks on principles so fundamental we don't even have explicit definitions for them, and then the battle lines that get drawn up are nowhere near that critical issue. Examples:
Censorship: in every HN thread people immediately start arguing about whether tech companies should be regulated to allow all speech, or whether private companies can do whatever they want and only the government is prevented from infringing on freedom of speech. Admittedly there is a "freedom of speech" principle at play here that does have a name, but everyone seems to have forgotten that it meant we were supposed to be tolerant of opinions that we don't agree with, which has almost nothing at all to do with terms of service on huge tech platforms. I think Scott is one of the few people I've ever seen address that directly (both in tolerating the outgroup and another article more directly about free speech). But there's a second issue even more central to censorship by big tech platforms: they all claimed to be huge proponents of free speech, gave soaring speeches during the Arab Spring about their high minded principles. Abandoning that is something that should cause us to withdraw a lot of trust and goodwill, even if we agree with their new policies. (Also, suspiciously, the two options people argue about both involve giving government and corporations more power: regulate big tech, or give up on free speech as a general principle. Don't get me started on astroturfing.)
Downthread there's a discussion about diversity casting in TV and movies. The most common argument I hear against it is that it's not appropriate for the setting, and the most common argument I see in favor is that people should be able to see characters that look like them. Those both sound fine to me, as far as they go. The deeper issue here only clicked for me when my facebook friend said to a Mermaid-traditionalist "if you're arguing that a Black little mermaid doesn't seem to fit the role, are you going to say the same thing when a Black woman applies to a job?" And I realized, right, the original claim was that Hollywood (mostly implicitly or systemically, less-so explicitly) racistly excluded people who weren't white and pretty. Which sure looks true - I was blown away when I started noticing how many things failed the Bechdel Test. But now we've replaced that with explicit, proudly-advertised activism, yet the battle lines are drawn such that we've just flip-flopped on who's wearing the fig-leaf of "[white/black/gay/trans] Ariel seemed like the appropriate artistic choice". Meanwhile we've damaged two deeper principles: keeping politics out of where it doesn't belong, and actually meaning it when we said that we wanted race not to matter.
Also downthread is a debate about whether it's okay to spell out racial slurs here. And I remember the wave of renamings that started with what seemed like a ridiculous objection to "master/slave" used in the context of IDE hard drives, and ended a few years later with those terms actually being renamed in a lot of technical contexts. In both cases the battle lines are drawn along "these words hurt people / replacing them causes more harm than gain". But the deeper issues to me are about injecting politics into places it shouldn't be (same with fast food joints becoming politically loaded), and the notion that we shouldn't taboo words at all. There was a brief period a few years ago when atheism was winning and we were all proud of the fact that we could say curse-words and anything else we wanted without the sky-fairy torturing us forever. Now we've flipped sides on that too.
Ultimately this boils down to two problems I worry a lot about. One is that the whole idea of having principles at all seems to have much less support than it should; people simply don't notice or care as much as they should about flip-flops or even expecting anyone to state or stand by a consistent set of principles at all. And while this isn't a place with obvious battle lines, I've noticed people quietly excusing it here and there. It's not immediately obvious why it matters to have principles! And I think this is why it's easy for people to discard. But it's really important! Principles are what let us be predictable agents, able to work with others who aren't part of our tribe and don't share all our values. That seems, like, utterly critical to any kind of functioning society, but I had to re-derive it for myself because nobody seems to talk about it.
The other is that the principles that people are discarding are so fundamental, so dyed in the wool for civilization, that we don't have explicit names for them or standard answers as to why they should be preserved. I noticed this when I saw JBP proclaim "tell the truth" as one of his 12 rules for life -- it was like, oh, right, that's really important, isn't it? How did I lose sight of that? Things like "words shouldn't be redefined by political fiat", "leaders should be held to high standards of personal integrity", "you should be prepared to explain yourself and lose status when you abandon a principle you endorsed", "don't inject politics into non-political contexts". All those seem to me like load-bearing walls for civilization, and we shouldn't dismantle them just to get an advantage in some other debate.
To end on a positive note, I do think this is an addressable problem. But we have to be quicker to look past the officially endorsed battle lines, find the valuable nameless things that are being sacrificed, contemplate them long enough to describe why they're important, and then defend them directly. That's actually been a silver lining for me: now there are a bunch of load-bearing pillars of civilization I've actually noticed and contemplated. I just wish it wasn't because someone was trying to burn them down.
What are under-appreciated values you see that routinely get sacrificed to Moloch in the culture war?
That's what grinds my gears; the smug assumption that the only reason anyone could possibly object to such race-swapping is because they're a horrible racist. (Payne and McKay are playing that card, too, in their most recent interview; "no, people aren't objecting because we are ten-time losers who can't write for shit, it's because they're racists!")
And would your Facebook friend who is so eager to change things up for the sake of diversity be happy to recast Mulan so that a Black woman could get the lead role? And if that's different, how is it different? "The Little Mermaid" is a story by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, however it was adapted by Disney. If they're going to recast Ariel, then every cast member should be Black for internal consistency and coherence.
Can your Facebook friend explain to me why new Black Ariel is still a redhead, and not having her own ordinary beautiful natural hair?
Nobody is objecting to "let's do a new movie about a black mermaid" if they can write a good story and hey, maybe there are even folk tales and legends about black mermaids, who knows? But this isn't about 'let's give little Black girls a character they can identify with, so they can dress up as Ariel for Hallowe'en', it's about wringing every last penny out of their property by re-tooling it to get another extension of marketability.
That wasn't atheism winning, that was Christianity no longer being a sufficient cultural force to stop people saying "fuck the sky-fairy". So long, of course, as it was the Christian sky-fairy you were mocking; the Jewish, Muslim, or other indigenous traditions sky-fairies were out of bounds.
When it lost you money to support gay rights, companies didn't support gay rights. When it lost you money not to support gay rights, companies slapped rainbows and photos of same-sex couples on everything.
People assume that there's some sort of racial issue behind the Ariel situation because: A) the scenario is so inconsequential and B) the arguments against it are either weak or slippery-slope assumptions. This doesn't mean that anyone who is anti Ariel is racist, but it does leave the door open to wonder why anyone would be so vehemently against this move.
Most Disney princesses are white, including Ariel. Mulan isn't. Disney is (openly) pro-diversity, so it makes sense that Disney would want an Asian princess too.
There aren't any rules or reasons as to why the recasting of one character should lead to the recasting of all characters.
Why does Ariel's hair have anything to do with race of the character? Moreover, Ariel's red hair was one of the characters' defining features in comparison to the other princesses of the time.
The functional difference between "let's do a new movie about a black mermaid" and "let's do a remake about a black mermaid" are quite inconsequential. Both versions exist, and given that we're talking about a children's character, both characters existing has no real ramifications for practical life.
Look, I hate the shameless antics of Disney as much as anyone, but is that really what this discussion is about? What does Ariel's red hair have to do with Disney's endless greed? And did this penny-wringing really start with Ariel? More importantly, if the Ariel was white, would this still be an example of Disney's greed?
They're not wrong--but "racial issue" doesn't mean "the complainer is racially prejudiced".
If companies prioritize race above things that otherwise lead to better quality works, and if this manifests by creating a black Ariel, that's a "racial issue". If they do so by race-baiting their audience so they can make more money, that's greed.
What evidence is there that this is the case in this situation, what if they simply thought a black actor was the best fit for the part?
What evidence is there that they thought a black actor was the best fit for the part?
What does “best fit” even mean in this context? Most faithful depiction of the original character? (Clearly not.) Most likely to win an Oscar? (Considering their progressively racist policies, probably yes.) Most likely to appeal to the fans of the original movie? (Probably not.) Most likely to gain media attention? (Probably yes.)
There's not really any evidence either way. So I will default to 'they chose them for normal acting reasons' not that they chose her as a diversity hire.
The actor they thought would do the best job representing the character that they wanted to depict. Presumably whether they were white or black was neither here nor here in terms what they envisioned for the character.
Why should perfect physical representation of the character described necessarily be a goal? Why not cast a black actor if you thought they were the best, was race ever a factor in the original fairytale?
Race was a factor in so far that in the vaguely-defined epoch in which the fairytale is set, Danish princes didn't commonly marry black women, so a black Ariel would be out of place for reasons unrelated to the original fairy tale.
But why stop at race? Is age or sex a factor in the original fairytale? Let's make Ariel an old man played by Robert de Niro; he's a great actor, arguably objectively better than Halle Bailey, and if you oppose the idea of a young Danish prince falling in love with an older man, you're an ageist homophobe. So you'd be okay with swapping Halle Bailey with Robert de Niro, right? Or if not, why not?
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