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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   38184 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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I actually think that is most people’s gripe. They know something is wrong but have trouble sorting it out so they latch onto things like “not historically accurate” or “ruins the immersion” when in reality it is that the creator of this new work hates you the white consumer and therefore wishes to vandalize works you love with vulgar political displays.

Maybe at its most base level that is the case, but there is really far more to it than that. Say the film retained its original setting but introduced a single modern American as Romeo. This would ruin the story to a much greater extent than a full retelling does for numerous reasons.

In the Wheel of Time show, canonically anyone can and does have children from any race. They literally changed the rules of reality for diversity, despite the fact that the main character is a different race from the rest of his hometown, which is a major plot point.

Fantasy nations should mostly be somewhat racially homogenous, maybe with exceptions for big cities. I would much prefer a fantasy movie starring 100% black people made by people who hate me to one starring an unnaturally diverse cast made by people who don't hate me. At the end of the day I just care about my own suspension of disbelief and I think a lot of other people do too.

I would much prefer a fantasy movie starring 100% black people made by people who hate me to one starring an unnaturally diverse cast made by people who don't hate me.

An adaptation of a Shakespeare play that had an all-black cast could be great. Peter Brook's version of the Mahabharata - 9 hour stage play then 6 hour TV mini-series then 3 hour movie - had that kind of unnaturally diverse cast because he felt it was a universal story, not just one applicable to India (I don't know how Indian people felt about this, I'd understand not being too gruntled about having Asian, African and white actors play historically Indian characters). It was a good effort, but it was definitely not the original.

You could make a version of the Three Musketeers that was all-Asian (in fact, there was a Korean TV series that did just this but was dropped after the first season). It'd be odd, but it would work way better than having the traditional version except now d'Artagnan is Korean but he's also still from Gascony.

That being said, casting a black Porthos for the 2014 BBC version of the Three Musketeers worked extremely well, but they were careful to give him a back-story to explain this. They didn't just drop in black Porthos and nobody blinks an eye.

Original African or Caribbean legends/myths with appropriate character art, or shows, or movies, would be great. Taking white characters and race swapping them isn't for anybody's benefit in the long run.

An adaptation of a Shakespeare play that had an all-black cast could be great.

Like this one

Oooh, that could work really well. Orson Welles had imagination and theatrical vision to spare. Caribbean island (cough Haiti cough) as the place where a warlord believed the promise of witches about becoming king? Translates over with little difficulty!

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.

The difference matters a great deal.

Firstly, it keeps our worst impulses in check. It is too easy for people to assume the worst of others and also generalize off of that assumption. So "some progressives hate white people" becomes "progressives hate white people".

If we're here to culture war, by all means, go ahead and engage in this kind of generalization. If we're not, then it's actively harmful to the effort.

For a close to home example, I don't think anyone at The Schism "hates" white people in the way, say, Hannah Nikole-Jones or Tema Okun does, but I think many of them would engage in a lot of hemming, hawing, and sanewashing why those attitudes make sense in context, or why they should be tolerated (but the opposite equivalent wouldn't be, a la the fiasco last month with Impassionata- I strongly doubt the mods would've tolerated a right-wing rant half as long), etc etc. Or why slurs are so much worse at certain targets, but basically don't matter towards others.

Do you have any evidence to support these claims? I find that the mods there are very hesitant to give out bans at all or even warnings for that matter, and as @drmanhattan16 notes, there's been plenty of right-wing or at least anti-progressive ranting in the sub over its lifetime. I vaguely recall @gemmaem discussing this hesitancy in a comment early on, though I'm having trouble finding a link to it with the reddit api fiasco making searching for old comments a bit troublesome at the moment.

I agree TheSchism is a place with a viewpoint and that that viewpoint leans to the left. I think it's the culture of the sub that enforces that far more than the moderation though. The only bans I can recall for things other than personal attacks were given to left-leaning posters, which makes me wonder if I'm just overlooking instances where right-leaning posters actually got less leniency or if it is the culture of the sub biasing the expectation of how right-leaning posters would be modded.

a mod whose name I don't remember and is no longer on the mod team list

I'd guess mcjunker, since I don't recall any of the other early mods having been particularly active.

or crossed the "no violence" line

The rules prohibit "glorifying violence", which isn't the same as "no violence". TW clarified that pretty early on.

This is probably a distinction without a difference, as it is impossible to be a Right Wing poster without choosing one of terminally depressed, cryptic and mysterious, or occasionally advocating positions that will require violence to implement. The first is antithetical to Right-ism, it is against the Coalition of the Comfortable elements of Conservatism and completely abhorrent to anything like Fascism. The second violates the rules of TheMotte, and presumably theSchism as well. The third is the only real choice.

I don't think you can advocate for anything much to the right of Mitt Romney without advocating violence. There is no non-violent path forward for the far right in today's world.

But attributing it to ignorance gives it too much credit and is pretty uncharitable in its own right.

Ignorance isn't exactly the word I'd use either, I think you're right that it paints too rosy a picture. I think progressives, like all groups, are guilty of having Crystalized Metaphysical Heuristics, and they aren't completely unaware of what they do, but they are only as good as any other human group at updating beliefs. It's made worse by the fact that they don't optimize for truth for its own sake.

"Some progressive hate white people" -> "other progressives provide cover for, tolerance for, ignore, and generally let such bigotry spread; their beliefs cause them to be indifferent to such complaints" -> "to an outsider, there is little discernable difference between progressives that do or do not hate white people because the results are likely similar."

I concur! But I think it can and should inform the response when engaging in intertribal dialogue. "Progressives hate white people" gets no traction, "progressives are indifferent to white people, and indifference is an insidious thing" has a chance to go somewhere.

(but the opposite equivalent wouldn't be, a la the fiasco last month with Impassionata- I strongly doubt the mods would've tolerated a right-wing rant half as long), etc etc.

There was a rant only a few months ago in which the poster effectively called the concept of privilege, but more importantly its public practictioners, idiots. It's not particularly "right-wing", but it's far more hostilely-written than one would except for a forum characterized as "for lefties who may have some issues with social justice". That person is not banned and the discussion went on for a while.

But it really isn’t just Toilken. It’s The Little Mermaid. It’s Star Wars. See other examples in this thread.

The Little Mermaid is another example of what I'm talking about. I don't know what the Star Wars example is.

Let me make your white male heroes of yesterday a dead beat dad and a bitter old loser while the real heroes are a woman, a black man, a rebellion lead by women, and a Hispanic dude. Oh yeah and the villains are all white too.

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.

Yes but the natural place for her would be in the new government (and that might be more interesting).

But yes you can always hide behind “they don’t actually mean anything; sure they keep doing the same thing over and over again but it could be ignorance.”

But I think for example you could find evidence in statements like:

https://bleedingcool.com/movies/diversity-behind-camera-star-wars/

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