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Friday Fun Thread for October 28, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Do you ever get that weird feeling, where you see a perfect opportunity for something you don't like to be done perfectly? Or like, for a group of people you don't like to make their point? Like, when I read a news story about Chinese camps for Muslim prisoners, or the Rohingya, I'm like "Where the fuck is ISIS on this one?"

That's the feeling I got watching The Mask of Zorro; the original silent starring Fairbanks Sr.. My local symphony did a showing of it with a new original score. It was amazing, but the whole time I'm thinking, when we're stuck with constant social justice reboots and capeshit how have we not gotten a lefty Zorro reboot? Zorro is Mexican Social Justice Batman! He is literally, in the original, Batman* but Hispanic and fighting for the rights of oppressed indigenous laborers. A villain comments to another villain that if you're looking for Zorro, just beat up a native and Zorro will show up. Then that exact sequence of events happens, because it's a 1920 silent film and the plot is pretty simple: he beats up an Indian who is minding his own business, and Zorro shows up and slices a Z into his ass and tells him to never touch another native again. The original film is so modern in its combination of violence, social justice, and wry comedy.

So rather than rewrite an existing superhero, why haven't the kind of people who are always talking about how we need more Latinx superheroes given a reboot to this? While Zorro is typically portrayed as a white Spanish nobleman, it doesn't feel like a betrayal of the character, or even much of a change most would notice, to make him Mestizo. It's so weird to me that it hasn't been done.

*He's also, canonically, Batman's spiritual godfather: the 1920 Fairbainks Mask of Zorro is the film that Bruce Wayne's parents went to see the night they were attacked.

The one I want to see is a modern film series featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel (he's the inspiration for all these masked dual identity superheroes).

Scarlet Pimpernel

This sounds like something people see a dermatologist about.