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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   17161 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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Uh, Domino was well-cast, that actress has good physical presence and doesn't, to my knowledge, race-bait.

Uh, Domino was well-cast, that actress has good physical presence and doesn't, to my knowledge, race-bait.

To an extent I agree, but it doesn't change the fact that almost certainly she was cast because of her race. It reminds me of when Billy Dee Williams was cast in "The Empire Strikes Back" back in 1980 in response to criticism that the Star Wars universe was too white. Unlike a lot of DEI movie characters, Lando Calrissian had a lot going for him: He was an interesting character, he wasn't a race-swap; he didn't follow the usual tropes of being wiser and/or more brilliant than any of the white characters around him. But the problem is that these sorts of casting choices normalize and legitimize diversity casting. And suddenly producers are inserting so-called "magical negro" characters everywhere, even in productions which are set in medieval Europe type settings.

In my view, accepting a race swap of this Domino character is accepting the camel's nose a little bit into the tent.

Williams was good in the part, he pulled off Calrissian's character who was from the same dodgy background as Han, was caught between a rock and a hard place, and was charming but slightly unreliable, while not being a one-note villain. You understood why he did what he did, while still condemning it, and then he does the right thing in the end.

I liked the Vitiligo forming the domino mark on her face, and I'm just not attached to the canonical race of marvel E-listers. I'll save my ire for Black Aragorn.

Yeah she did a good job in the film, I agree. Unfortunately, the casting choice or the desire to diversify limited the pool of qualified stunt performers, with fatal results.

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