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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38240 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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Yeah, when I pay attention it usually bugs me that they're openly using this tactic to deflect negative press even when the overwhelming amount of criticism is leveled at the work's basic quality.

The Critical Drinker hit on a salient point:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ngqO9Hp19_4

Its like they hate their audience, or at least know that pissing off the audience is just as good a way, maybe better, to grab attention as pleasing them. And if you go in knowing you'll probably never please them...

The part that is most insufferable is when they blatantly race-swap an existing character (with weird tendency for targeting redheads), especially when their race is arguably a salient part of said character's identity, then kafkatrap anyone who dares notice it into either agreeing that its an improvement or outing themselves as a closet racist.

They will mock you for asking honest questions like "doesn't this contradict the lore?" or "what else did you change about the story?" or "couldn't you have written an entirely new character just as easily?"

Further, they'll act as though the race-swap is de-facto normal and expected and the person questioning it is the one who must justify themselves.

"Why does their race matter? You seem to care an awful lot about something minor like the character's skin color." Well I dunno, YOU seemed to care enough to make the decision to swap out the races in the first place, and clearly made a deliberate, calculated decision as to which skin color to swap to, so I conclude that it matters enough to you to set aside concerns like staying true to the source material or selecting the "best" actor for the part, so I'm just curious as to the logic that went into the decision.

And if your logic doesn't seem to advance the quality of the work itself, I believe I'm allowed to use this as reason to be skeptical of the end product's quality.

And yet, if any series were to race-swap a minority character, especially if to replace them with a white character, this would presumably be seen as blatant erasure and grounds to protest and boycott whatever media company did it.

Like hey, why can't the new Black Panther be white? Or Asian? Since we're saying the rules are all made up and the points don't matter, there's no reason we shouldn't be symmetrical about this.

Further, they'll act as though the race-swap is de-facto normal and expected and the person questioning it is the one who must justify themselves.

A very annoying progressive tactic I now see everywhere I would like to know the genesis of. Is there a handbook somewhere teaching people this stuff?

You see it in trans discourse too: "why do you care so much about people's genitals?" Laughably hypocritical given the activists' fixations.

And yet, if any series were to race-swap a minority character, especially if to replace them with a white character, this would presumably be seen as blatant erasure and grounds to protest and boycott whatever media company did it.

Well, you don't need a media company to do that anymore, just a GPU cluster. But that might still be grounds to get your Twitter account suspended? I'd like to hope that Twitter doesn't actually have a "making the Little Mermaid a redhead is evil" policy, rather that people who gloat over a redhead Little Mermaid are just also likely to commit violations of some serious policy as well ... but I'm not optimistic.

Saw that, and honestly its the funniest possible way to respond to this clusterfudge.

"Well we think it was silly to swap the character's race, so we are going to use this magical computer program to change her appearance and make this version available to anyone who might prefer it."

̶"̶"̶R̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶E̶"̶"̶

instabanned

KINDA similar to that Mod that removed the pride flags from the Spiderman Game. Why does people choosing to modify the content they consume in the privacy of their own home warrant such a visceral overreaction?

"REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"

As a boo, this is obnoxious.

Oddly enough, I think Starship Troopers is the only IP where not one, but at least two adaptations (the Verhoeven movie and the Sunrise anime) got away with making Johnny Rico white-skinned, despite him being at least part-Filipino (granted, as someone who is half-Filipino and is pretty white-skinned, maybe this isn't too unrealistic).

He's also from Buenos Aires, which is insanely pale for a "latin american" place...

For some reason you can get away with having originally East Asian and SE Asian characters played white actors; you couldn't possibly do it with black characters. This is blatant double-standards, and I feel it especially acutely as the father of two half-pinoy kids.

TBH if the woke have any strong point, it's that this stuff used to be common in the other direction too

The movie 21 about a real life card counting Harvard ring whitewashed almost the entire crew of (you guessed it) Asians into whites.(Can you imagine the reaction today?)

IIRC the most famous Native American actor at the time, Iron Eyes Cody, was an Italian.

John Wayne played Genghis Khan for God's sake.

At least Wayne regretted The Conqueror (and probably not just because it possibly gave him lung cancer).

but aren't Asians honorary whites at this point? I would imagine that we are approaching the reality of Asians being as white as Italians or Irish.

I really don’t think that’s a common perception.

They're honorary whites when their interests cut against other minorities (e.g. slots in exclusive schools) but people of color when their interests clash with whites (e.g. in whitewashing controversies)

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