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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   31425 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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Content advisory: untagged spoilers for like a dozen movies below!

The other day I watched A Man Called Otto, Tom Hanks' 2022 remake of a Swedish movie (En man som heter Ove, based on a book of the same name) about an elderly man whose suicide attempt is interrupted by an Iranian immigrant, who gradually teaches him to live again. The Hanks edition hits a variety of CW notes; the Iranian is replaced with a Hispanic woman, the Swedish ending depicting Ove's reunion with his deceased wife in the afterlife is gone, and a homosexual character is replaced with a trans character (hashtag-gay-erasure). But there is one CW note in particular that really stood out to me. At the end of the movie, Otto dies and leaves his house and his car to the Hispanic woman, as well as enough money to fund the education of her three Hispanic children.

Maybe this would not have stood out to me had I not coincidentally recently re-watched the 2013's middling dystopic sci-fi, Elysium. If you've not seen this one, it is a story about an unusually talented blue collar laborer played by Matt Damon, presumably because everyone liked him as an unusually talented blue collar laborer in Stillwater, Good Will Hunting, and, uh, that artist guy in Titanic maybe? (Kidding!) Anyway this time blue-collared Matt lives in a Los Angeles peopled entirely by Mexicans (except for him), who spend most of their time trying to cross the border of space (illegally) so they can get high-tech medical treatment aboard the space station where all the billionaires moved when Earth got too crowded or warm or, who knows. For unimportant reasons, Matt finds that he's dying, so he goes to his coyote uh human trafficker spaceship launching ex (crime) boss to... Jesus Christ, who wrote this movie? Anyway, the moral of the story is that Matt gives his life to save the life of a young Hispanic girl while also making everyone on Earth a "citizen" so that suddenly the boundless healthcare resources the billionaires have been hoarding for no reason at all can be immediately deployed to cure all illness on Earth, the end.

So this got me thinking about other movies I've seen with the same central beat: selfish single white male with nothing to lose learns to care again by temporarily filling the role of mentor or savior to a not-white young person, then gives (often, loses) everything so the not-white youngster can inherit a brighter future. Gran Torino (2008). Snowpiercer (2013).

But while many lists of "problematic white savior" movies include these titles, I feel like there's a distinction to be drawn where the not-white character is treated as a successor, rather than as a success. In Finding Forrester (2000), there's a not-white successor, but the "white savior" doesn't especially give anything up. In The Blind Side (2009) the "white savior" isn't looking for a successor (despite the professed concerns of the NCAA).

And I don't think that it's quite the same phenomenon as "expendable man dies for the woman he loves." Never mind that I already mentioned Titanic (1997)--the Bond movie No Time To Die (2021) might be what I'm talking about if Bond had died to save Nomi instead of Madeleine, but (to the best of my recollection!) he did not. I suppose Luke Skywalker biting it to preserve Palpatine's bloodline might be an example of what I'm talking about--definitely would if Rey was not-white, and definitely would if the sequels had focused more on Finn becoming a Jedi.

So I feel like I've identified four clear examples of the trope I'm spotting (to review: A Man Called Otto, Elysium, Gran Torino, Snowpiercer). I know better than to expect TVTropes to have a "non-straight-white-hypercapable-male successor" trope, but I did look around and do not think that Changing of the Guard, Take Up My Sword, Taking Up the Mantle, White Man's Burden, or similar tropes quite apply. Likewise, many people will identify the trope I have in mind as a (correspondingly problematic) "white savior" story, except that most "white savior" stories aren't BIPOC successor stories. Rather, this is taking the expendability of men--long a cultural staple in the West--and mixing it up with a not-even-remotely-subtle hint at White Replacement.

I think the reason I even noticed the pattern is that I have a long fascination with Rudyard Kipling's infamous poem, "The White Man's Burden." Specifically, the people I know who regard the poem as highly racist almost always also talk a great deal about "privilege," without ever seeming to notice the noblesse oblige implied by the idea of checking that privilege. There seems to be a deeply unresolved contradiction in "woke" spaces, whereby whites are simultaneously obligated to elevate others, and forbidden from even imagining they have the capacity to do so. In the trope I'm trying to track, the acceptable excuse seems to be that the (grizzled, lonely, etc.) white man gets something from the successor, namely a "new lease on life," such that he can then return the favor by then literally dying and dedicating his entire legacy to assure the future of someone else's children, children who are not even his co-ethnics.

(TVTropes does have a Cuckold page, but this is also not quite what I'm talking about... I think!)

So here are your discussion questions for the day:

  1. Is there a name for this trope already? Have I missed a TVTropes pages somewhere? A RibbonFarm article? An obscure media studies dissertation?

  2. I can't watch every movie, or even remember all the movies I've watched. Can you think of any other movies/TV shows/other media to add to the four I've identified?

  3. I also can't think of any inverted examples. Can you think of any media in which the trope is inverted? How often do hypercompetent heroes "of color" learn to love whites and then give up their lives to ensure that several white children can afford to go to college? (Does the Wizard from Shazam! count, maybe, kinda?)

  4. Perhaps most importantly... is there any possibility at all that the phenomenon isn't blatantly deliberate agenda-pushing?

Naturally, you are not limited to these questions--this is a discussion board, not a MOOC. But I've managed to stump myself so I'm interested in what you all make of this.

I think the White Man's Burden poem is pretty clearly sarcastic, even if some people took it seriously. Kipling is saying that white people shouldn't be killing themselves in order to civilize anyone else.

(I think the reason that a lot of people miss the sarcasm nowadays is that the poem isn't against colonialism. It's against a particular justification for colonialism. He's not saying it's wrong for white people to rule, but rather that white people shouldn't rule in a way that doesn't benefit themselves.)

I think you're wrong on that. It reads as sarcastic to the modern eye, but he was perfectly serious about taking up the white man's burden, for the benefit of "those ye better," even though they'd blame and hate you for it.

There's an entire stanza pretty explicitly warning that it's something of a bad deal. At least in my school days, the concept and the title was discussed but the poem itself was never read nor analyzed. It just becomes a totem of wrongthink.

Take up the White Man's burden—

And reap his old reward:

The blame of those ye better,

The hate of those ye guard—

The cry of hosts ye humour

(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:—

"Why brought ye us from bondage,

Our loved Egyptian night?"

I'm not sure people would understand the Exodus reference at this point either.

I think the White Man's Burden poem is pretty clearly sarcastic, even if some people took it seriously. Kipling is saying that white people shouldn't be killing themselves in order to civilize anyone else.

While the poem can certainly be read that way (death of the author and all that), Kipling himself really can't. Rather, Kipling saw imperalism as a kind of noblesse oblige, especially in connection with Western influence on humans around the world. In addition to this poem, Kipling directly addressed then-governor Teddy Roosevelt on the matter of the Philippines:

Now, go in and put all the weight of your influence into hanging on, permanently, to the whole Philippines. America has gone and stuck a pick-axe into the foundations of a rotten house, and she is morally bound to build the house over, again, from the foundations, or have it fall about her ears.

For Kipling, empire-building was a matter of "you broke it, you bought it." A nation simply cannot stand on the world stage, in trade or military or diplomatic matters, without inadvertently impacting humans outside its borders. Some of those humans, not being the subjects of powerful nation-states themselves, are rendered horribly vulnerable to the resulting externalities. The responsible thing to do, then, is to take those humans under your collective national wing (says Kipling). Like children, they may whine about it, but it really is for their own good. And like a sullen teenager, you might whine about it, too, but that's the price of a seat at the grown-up table: you have to clean up your own messes.

In my experience, contemporary "decolonizers" hate the poem because it comes very close to illustrating a common contradiction in their worldview. Decolonizers actually agree with Kipling, at least 90% of the way. Every single demand that wealthy nations "redistribute" wealth is a demand for empire-building, for wealthy nations to take vulnerable nations under their wing. But such demands are routinely accompanied by insistence that no cultural demands be made, no changes be wrought, no missionizing of religion or appropriation of culture or...

But those are just the organic things that happen when wealth is "redistributed." Send dollars to Samarkand, and those dollars will be most effectively spent on importing American goods, American workers, American culture, whatever. Send food, and you will put local farmers out of business. Send military supplies, and you will empower a warlord. Buy their sand for manufacturing, and they run out of beaches; refuse to buy their sand, and their children go hungry. As Thomas Sowell says: there are no solutions, only trade-offs.

He's not saying it's wrong for white people to rule, but rather that white people shouldn't rule in a way that doesn't benefit themselves.

No, he's saying that it's time for America to grow up and start doing the hard work of a mature empire: the thankless task of bringing the Enlightenment (and, you know, Christianity) to the many humans who were still enslaving each other, engaging in cannibalism, and dying of curable diseases in their mud huts. The "white" part, on which people of course focus inordinately today, is just a historical accident. It's the "white man's burden" because literally no one else had taken it up. Here's a more modern rendition (circa 2012 because G7 doesn't fit as well). It came out a bit sarcastic but you can hopefully imagine someone writing it earnestly, and understand how such a person might be the modern day equivalent of Kipling on this matter.

Take up the G8's burden--

Send forth your currency--

Offshore your workers' lifestyle

Across the migrant's sea.

Build schools and homes and fact'ries,

For someone else's child,

But keep their culture vibrant!

It must not be defiled.



Take up the G8's burden--

You owe the world your wealth.

It's your fault they are weeping,

Your fault they're in poor health.

Your Western ways are costly,

Too costly to ignore,

And so you must export them

To every other shore!



Take up the G8's burden--

Too long you have denied

Your global obligations,

Your diplomatic pride.

You're lucky, and you're privileged

(And a xenophobe at heart),

So give some folks asylum

From the conflicts that they start!



Take up the G8's burden--

Not "colonial" in nature--

Instead a kind of penance

For your melting of that glacier,

For your raping of the landscape,

For your scorching of the skies--

For those who strove to prosper

Owe to others now the prize.



Take up the G8's burden--

It's time to pass the buck,

To burn your blue-necked workers

Because--who gives a fuck?

Comes now, to rate your credit

(Expecting not your thanks)

The only voice that matters:

The judgment of your banks!

For Kipling, empire-building was a matter of "you broke it, you bought it." A nation simply cannot stand on the world stage, in trade or military or diplomatic matters, without inadvertently impacting humans outside its borders. Some of those humans, not being the subjects of powerful nation-states themselves, are rendered horribly vulnerable to the resulting externalities. The responsible thing to do, then, is to take those humans under your collective national wing (says Kipling). Like children, they may whine about it, but it really is for their own good. And like a sullen teenager, you might whine about it, too, but that's the price of a seat at the grown-up table: you have to clean up your own messes.

It was particularly explicit on the part of European powers that the Americans would deal with their neighbors or they would, to the point where the French would invade Mexico during the American Civil War. American interventionism of the period was very much informed by Europe.

Ok trying to find counter-examples going through my letterboxd:

Sicario - Emily Blunts Character is kind of the protege to Benicio Del Toro...and he does not let her girlboss her way past him. This one probably is more interesting along a masculine/feminine valence rather than a racial one.

Tenet - I mean, technically it ends with Pattinson handing off the reins to John David Washington...but that's in the past, the future will be JDW handing off the reins to Pattinson! (probably doesn't count)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - They went with Shia, a young white guy! Granted this was 2008. But also not really - at the end there's this (really good) moment where Shia is about to pick up the fedora and then Ford walks by and takes it from his hand, almost like a "nope, no torch for you".

Not quite related but recently watched Touch of Evil (1958) - there is a fascinating thing there where even back in 1958 the American Police Captain is the corrupt one, and the virtuous Mexican detective is the good guy - Worth noting in this case the Mexican is being played by Charlton Heston (!) which is also funny.

1 Not that I know of

2 Children of Men (2006) fits the trope perfectly. Disney's Up (2009), Creed (2015) and Intouchables (2011) fit almost perfectly the trope, except the men do not die in the end

Biutiful (2010) also shares many of the same elements, except for most of the filme the main character does not act as a mentor, but rather as an abuser for ethnic minorities. He regrets and seeks redemption by leaving all his possessions to one of them before his death.

Me Before You (2016) and The Fault in Our Stars (2014) also have many of the same elements - with the dying-man mentor that gives everything they can to their intellectual protégé - however do not envolve ethical minorities - the low-self-steem-girl and the depressed-seriously-ill-girl do that role, respectively. Million Dollar Baby (2004) has similarities too.

3 The Green Mile (1999) sort of fulfills the trope. Except the saviour is disadvantaged in every way.

4 If the goal is to tell a story about the exchange between the two total opposite characters - the dying wise mentor's succession to the vulnerable one just starting their life - it is almost hard to tell it without picturing them as, well, opposites. And while ethnicity, age, gender or background do not necessarily have to be all different (few of the films have all the elements combined), the more the betterer! and you may end up with an accumulation of differences. Nothing can be more different than the old, grumpy, well settled white man and the young, vulnerable, foreign, optimistic, ethnic minority girl.

So, I don't think the way these stories are told is really a calculated effort to push an especific agenda. The characteristics of the characters are more of a necessary setting for the story to happen.

That is not to say that whether these stories are told is just as fortuitous, though. Maybe these scripts get a better chance of being produced in the first place, because these stories fit into a narrative of promoting said minorities and/or appealing to an audience who wants to see these groups more represented in films.

Most recently, Top Gun: Maverick appears to buck this trend. The mentor/mentee relationship is Tom Cruise/Miles Teller, and then at the end of the movie Tom Cruise realizes "No I actually don't really have to hand things off to you". They kind of both save each other.

If you've not seen this one, it is a story about an unusually talented blue collar laborer played by Matt Damon, presumably because everyone liked him as an unusually talented blue collar laborer in Stillwater, Good Will Hunting, and, uh, that artist guy in Titanic maybe? (Kidding!)

I'll engage with the rest of the post later, but I realized that The Departed wasn't a movie about multiple personality disorder like a third of the way into it.

Just checking my memory: That's the one where Matt Damon is secretly groomed for a job in the police and a gang by the gang and the police, then becomes an undercover officer and a mole and has to investigate himself and himself? The most unbelieveable part was when his girlfriend was assigned as his police psychologist. That's a clear conflict of interest.

No, that's the one where DiCaprio is secretly groomed for a job in the police and a gang by the gang and the police, then becomes an undercover officer and a mole and has to investigate himself and himself.

Speaking of the girlfriend/police psychologist, I made a reverse mistake to orthoxerox when watching the film, thinking that they were 2 different people. I found myself wondering why they decided to add another contrived parallel, not only casting 2 very similar looking actors as the 2 lead roles, but also casting 2 very similar looking actresses as love interests to those characters. It was close to the end of the film that I picked up that they were the same person.

Maybe The Green Mile would qualify as an inversion? A miraculous black prisoner helps a white prison warden grow, imparts long life on him, and then is executed?

It's a bit off, though, in that the execution was less of a "heroic sacrifice" trope and more of a "brutal world destroys the best of us" trope.

Another possibility is Katsumoto in The Last Samurai.

If you're counting The Green Mile, then you have to account for The Magical Negro trope. The Legend of Bagger Vance comes to mind in the same vein.

2013's middling dystopic sci-fi, Elysium

Oh, that movie was so disappointing. It's by the guy who did District 9, so I was expecting something eye-rollingly heavy handed in its messaging, but at least fun to watch with an interesting premise, and instead got... this. Politics truly is the mind-killer!

I think that Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse qualifies. The first Peter dies and has his mantle taken up by the black Miles Morales. The second Peter doesn’t die for Miles but it’s clear he’s prepared to, and his story is that of a white screwup being redeemed by tutoring a non-white replacement.

This is a good example in part because it reminds me of the first time Miles Morales took over for a dead Peter Parker, back in the Ultimate Marvel lineup in 2011. The whole Ultimate Marvel Universe was aggressively jumping the shark at that point, but I remember my biggest gripe was that Morales had these new electric powers? It was reminiscent of the Red/Blue Superman moment for me, since I mostly enjoyed Ultimate Spider-man to that point. But saying anything about it mostly just got me called a racist.

I’m not an expert but it seems to happen a lot in modern comics. If you want an innocent explanation it probably looks something like:

  • People are bored of our classic hero (or younger demographics aren’t showing enough interest).

  • We need something new and fresh. Maybe a gender swap or a race swap, which makes them obviously unique and also gives me warm fuzzies. Let’s also give them a cool new trick (eg lightning powers) that we can market.

  • To keep the old fans on board and introduce the change, let’s have a handover. Maybe the old guy can mentor them a bit, show the old fans he approves, then conveniently die and leave the whole thing to his replacement.

Truth be told, there’s probably something to the above but I’m not actually that much of a quokka. There’s some political stuff going on here, I think, not just the straightforward minorities-good-whites-repent propaganda but also the cuckold fantasy as you say of having someone younger and more virile than you show appreciation and desire for what you have whilst simultaneously promising to take it off your weary shoulders.

Perhaps most importantly... is there any possibility at all that the phenomenon isn't blatantly deliberate agenda-pushing?

I think probably many of the examples you gave are an example of agenda pushing. I haven't seen Elysium or A Man Called Otto, but based on your description, they probably are. Especially A Man Called Otto, because Hollywood is saturated with agenda pushing these days.

But I didn't think Gran Torino was leftist agenda pushing. It was just a tale of a man who finds at the end of his life that he doesn't really like his own selfish family, and that he can make new ties and help the immigrants he previously resented. The reason I don't think this is agenda pushing is:

  1. In the movie, the main people he's saving the immigrant family from is other immigrants. He doesn't portray all southeast Asian people as flawless but needing help, only the family he grows to like.

  2. He helps the boy by teaching him to be a stereotypically American man. This involves fixing houses, standing up for yourself, and making friends with car-people by talking about how you've been metaphorically anally raped by previous mechanics (it's been a 15 years since I saw this, but if I remember correctly, he literally taught the kid to say that he's been "bent over and fucked" on previous deals or something)

  3. There's a lot of Christian symbolism, like Clint Eastwood dying with his arms out in a cross, if I remember correctly.

  4. Isn't Clint Eastwood conservative or libertarian?

Asians (whether east or south) are in a weird place for wokeness anyway, where they are sort of minorities some of the time and sort of not.

Also, the minorities that are being helped by the white savior (Hmong) require help to protect against other minorities (black urban decay).

I remember I quite liked Gran Torino, but I will admit I've only seen it once, in theaters. I will agree that it doesn't seem quite the same as A Man Called Otto or Elysium, neither or which I've seen.

I can't watch every movie, or even remember all the movies I've watched. Can you think of any other movies/TV shows/other media to add to the four I've identified?

I'm pretty sure the last Wolverine movie was this trope.

I also can't think of any inverted examples. Can you think of any media in which the trope is inverted? How often do hypercompetent heroes "of color" learn to love whites and then give up their lives to ensure that several white children can afford to go to college?

Maaaybe Dr. Strange. They essentially let a white man appropriate their entire Monk vibe so that he can become a super hero in the West.

Reversed in the sequel, in which Dr strange plays second fiddle to Miss America, a latino girl from an alternate universe with two lesbian mothers who can punch holes in space time.

I think it's an interaction of a few things, a big one being an old trope about an old bear male figure coming out of retirement for one last score/mission/whatever. Most of the Bond films, most of Eastwood's ouvre, Taken, Black Samurai, True Grit, Nobody, etc. This is, at core, a male fantasy of an aging yet skilled/dangerous man become cynical about the structure his violence has served. He finds a new mission, a new cause and allows himself to be consumed by it, because it wasn't the cause itself he cared about, just the fight. Possible death is treated as penance for any misdeeds or guilt held over from the first, less moral cause, an opportunity for redemption. It's a moralistic view of male violence, a feeling that those who live by the sword should die by it.

Now let's add to this Hollywood's complete inventive drought. They have no ideas and so are resurrecting old franchises left and right to try to get some content. This means a lot of old white male protagonists who have to be dealt with somehow, and half the story is already written. So, Han/Luke have to hand things off to new actors. Cheaper actors. Newer actors who fit the social and political prejudices of the elites, which is mostly anti-white racism and class snobbery.

It is sometimes done well (Gran Torino is a top-5 all timer IMO). But these days, few directors have the chops of Eastwood, the writing has gone to hell in a handbasket, and so we get this cheap propaganda about how all the old heroes are shit and need to be replaced by strangely competent kids who somehow never have a thing to learn or struggle at. This is then sometimes mapped onto racial lines because, well, racist elites. But they do it with gender as well, see the aforementioned Star Wars, the current Indiana Jones etc.

This pattern repeats. An old property, a white male protagonist and some sort of minority successor. We started with Harrison Ford, but we're getting Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and just the name tells you everything you need to know. The woke-washing is at least partially a defense mechanism because they know the products are terrible and rehashed, likely to generate criticism. Moralizing about their artistic vapidity is the best defense they have.

One of my favorite action films is Ronin, not only because Sean Bean's character's death is very real but not physical or because it has an absolutly bonkers car chase, but also leaves me wondering is this a straight take on:

old bear male figure coming out of retirement for one last score/mission/whatever

Or a subversion where the bear was never really retired at all.

not only because Sean Bean's character's death is very real but not physical or because it has an absolutly bonkers car chase,

I absolutely loved one of the car chase scenes in that film which IIRC involved them driving full speed against traffic in a tunnel, and what really sold the scene for me was how actually scared the actors looked in the car during the scene. There was none of the suave Bond-style confidence of navigating death-defying stunts with nonchalant ease, these characters looked like they were barely holding on not to freak out given the sheer danger of what the characters in-universe were doing.

I think it's an interaction of a few things, a big one being an old trope about an old bear male figure coming out of retirement for one last score/mission/whatever.

For Otto and Gran Torino, I think there's actually a more specific sub-trope here about a widowed, childless (or at least functionally childless), outwardly-seen-as-cantankerous old man resigned to retirement and death revealed to be complex and charitable to a younger character in need of a father figure, ultimately becoming the loving parent of an ad-hoc family. My initial thought on watching Otto was to compare it to Pixar's Up, which hits many of the same plot beats, but the resulting family consists of a (white) eight-year-old and a talking dog.

In this case, I think at least part of OP's trope may be that modern Hollywood is very reluctant to portray minorities (and also women) with strong negative personality traits: I have trouble imagining a film portraying a minority lead as "cantankerous" or "grumpy" regardless of later character development without accusations of racism. Honestly I'd be happy to watch such a movie, but I can't think of an example.

I believe the kid in Up is actually Asian (at least, I and others read his appearance as Asian and the character's voice actor is Asian).

but the resulting family consists of a (white) eight-year-old and a talking dog.

The scout kid (Russell) looked Asian in the movie and was voiced by Jordan Nagai whose apperence and surname reveal Japanese ancestry.

I would like to suggest an alternate theme here - that instead of a monolithic antiwhite hostility being the driving force behind these tropes, there's a great-replacement-adjacent but ultimately pro-western eregore flexing its wings. The idea is indeed that whites are on their way out, but instead of relishing their fall, that western institutions should be reformed and redeemed in order to be inherited by new generations of nonwhite successors. The inheritence bit being the crucial point - don't burn it all down! Dont cut off your civilizational nose to spite its current white face! And most importantly, leave the institutions standing so that the current owners (with their newly minted diversity credentials) are not displaced.

The undisputed champion of this trope must be Lin Manuel Miranda. Within 30 seconds of learning about Hamilton, I thought 'damn, they really want young nonwhites to buy into this America thing, guess they're getting spooked about who's going to fund their pensions'.

Elsewhere, Moana has the hypermasculine but clownish Maui revealed to be the direct cause of all the world's problems; his atonement is a footnote to the story of the female protagonist mastering all of his skills, using them (along with her innate goodness and wisdom) to repair the damage he foolishly caused, and then passing those skills on to her people so they can reclaim their rightful place in the world.

Encanto, meanwhile, deals with class conflict and the divine right of aristocracy. After some central-american revolutionary-types (for no reason at all) purge their village, a mysterious gift is granted to the family matriarch that separates her family from the common people, both in terms of giving them exceptional abilities* and also a really nice house where they don't have to do most of the chores. But that's ok, because they will selflessly devote their abilities to the good of the people, who will be loyal and devoted in return - which is only fair, as 'they have no gifts but they are many'. And ultimately, the matriarch's gift is be passed down to her granddaughter so the system may be perpetuated.

Naraburns has a good post downthread about Gran Turino having a similar arc. I think a lot of the "The Future is Female/lgbt/nonwhite' media can be taken in this light, not exactly as a condemnation of western culture but as a plea to preserve it, in spite of the flaws of its creators.

*There's a whole cast of east-coast upper-class tropes: the motherly doctor, the beautiful socialite, the perceptive journalist, the workaholic who carries donkeys around (not too much of a stretch to be a business executive)... and how could we forget, the brilliant but tormented visionary who really always wanted to be an actor. Oh Lin Manuel, you scamp.

The elites are always looking for fresh blood so they don't have to pay off the social debts they owe to the existing lower classes. Populations are like money in this way. You can inflate away your debt if you control the supply.

You should see how The Kids These Days react to Avenue Q.

Which I really enjoyed.

I hadn't heard anything about that, how are they reacting?

From r/Theatre a month ago:

The song “Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist” is, when looked at through a current day lens, pretty fucking gross. It absolves the audience of whatever racist ideas they have because, hey, everybody does it, and it doesn’t mean you go around committing hate crimes! It’s very much a white liberal version of progressivism, and it takes for granted the idea that racism being bad is a forgone conclusion. Avenue Q means well, but its time has passed.

Racism obviously existed, but it was easier then to believe we were making progress against it. That belief made shows like Avenue Q, which frames racism being bad as a foregone conclusion, possible. It was palatable to the primarily white audiences that would go see it, in the same way that the era made TV shows like South Park and Chappelle’s Show cultural phenomenons. This idea that you can believe in progressive politics and also say wildly racist things as long as you make it clear that it’s “just a joke” was a hallmark of the 00’s, and we aren’t in that time anymore. The show is dated and it would need a very heavy rewrite to be relevant again.

The show depicts a specific malaise with politics and society from 20 years ago, and some of that still holds up. But it also is rooted in a (largely white, middle class) understanding of race and racism from the time, where racism is a personal failing (and a potentially minor one if joked about) and not a major systemic problem.

Basically a bunch of very serious “we used to laugh because we didn’t know how racist it was to seek a colorblind society, what privileged fools we were” with some hemming and hawing about Trump and DeSantis.

Here’s one I’ll respond to specifically:

I get that this pushing of the audience’s buttons about racism is the intent with Christmas Eve, but in a post-Trump world I can’t get behind it. It comes from a place of assumption that the audience will have a problem with that sort of racism, and I don’t think it’s realistic or responsible to trust general audiences like that right now.

This person is literally upset that there might be racists in the same audience as them, actively being racist by laughing at the Asian immigrant and getting away with it without anyone to lecture correct them about how wrong it is. This is a level of paranoia the CIA would have been giddy to inspire during their MK-ULTRA experiments, a level of internal division the Soviets would have loved to sow during the Cold War.

It reminds me of one of the most insightful moments in Cerebus The Aardvark. Bear, Cerebus’ drinking buddy, is discussing a pop culture fiction with Cerebus at the bar. Cerebus gets more and more upset, and finally Bear figures out why. “You’re not upset because I don’t like the thing you enjoy,” says Bear (I’m paraphrasing). “You’re upset that I do like it, but not in the same way as you.”

and it takes for granted the idea that racism being bad is a forgone conclusion.

I am really confused by this. Is the poster arguing that racism might not actually be bad? It reads so easily into "progressives are just as racist as everyone else" rhetoric.

My interpretation of the post was that that the poster believed that, 20 years ago, there was a naive belief that we could take for granted that everyone agreed that racism was a bad thing that we were making progress at defeating, which Avenue Q seems to be invoking by saying that Everyone is a little bit racist. That is, Avenue Q is saying that we're all on the same page - helplessly forced to be (at least a little bit) racist, but presuming that the audience sees that as a shameful thing to try to fix. And the comedy in the song comes from everyone agreeing that being racist is bad, but also everyone having to come to terms with they themselves being racist, even if a little bit.

The poster seems to want to contrast this to the true and correct view of now rather than 20 years ago, where we recognize that there really are significant amounts of powerful racist racists out there who really do think in stereotypically racist ways like "black people don't deserve human rights," not in the "little bit racist" way of, say, cracking a joke about Pollacks. There's a bit of leap here, but the poster seems to think it's "gross" that the musical is poking fun at "racism" by calling out these little bits of racism for humor, which sweeps under the rug the obviously much more significant factor of racism from truly racist racists (that the enlightened people of 2023 recognize which the ignoramuses of 2003 couldn't).

He's arguing the musical is taking it for granted that everyone believes racism is bad, but since we live in a cis-heteronormative white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, that view is mistaken.

That would explain it. It's just worded so weirdly, imo.

there's a great-replacement-adjacent but ultimately pro-western eregore flexing its wings

This seems right to me. I think that the Hamilton/Moana/Encanto analysis is interesting, and perhaps I should expand my thinking to focus more on the idea of the "successor." There are surely many movies about white men passing some torch or other to their biological sons, and a "great replacement is real (but please inherit our political traditions!)" could be a natural evolution of those tropes, in an era that tries to downplay heritage (only, at times, to get hoist on its own petard, as in the case of Rey Palpatine).

Hamilton though, being an expensive broadway musical, mainly influenced the opinions of young white women and homosexuals. By casting all the villain characters (British) as white and making the protagonists non-White, it set up clear tension between the two with one side coded as losers. Hamilton reads to me as an obvious example of taking a positive white story (that everyone learns about) and subverting it shamelessly so that the viewer’s feelings can be altered for a social-political purpose. In this case, regardless of some original intention, the effect was that white girls and gays from affluent families were shown a revisionist story in which their white ancestors were evil and the heroes of a tale they heard as children were changed to an array of black and mixed race characters who speak, act, dance, and sing their stereotypical cultural art forms. The positive valence for these minorities increase, that of their white ancestors decrease, and they are left being less interested in the American Revolution (who are filled with the well-mannered white people specifically portrayed as bad).

There were black British characters in Hamilton (see here where the British soldier is a black woman). Also, the primary antagonist is Aaron Burr, not King George III, played by a black man. Unless by "all the villain characters" you literally mean just King George III, which makes me confused on the plural.

And King George III is played by Jonathan Groff, who is quite openly gay.

Antagonist is not synonymous with villain. Aaron Burr is Hamilton's antagonist, but he's never the villain.

If there is a "villain" in Hamilton, it's Thomas Jefferson (he was certainly the villain from the point of view of the real Hamilton) - who is also played by a black guy.

Fair that the two are not synonymous, but Burr is also portrayed as a villain, albeit a sympathetic one.

Edit: Sorry, I misread you. What would be sufficient to show that Burr is a villain and not just an antagonist in Hamilton? At the bare minimum, a whole lot of viewers seem to identify him as a villain, so if the casting choices were made to avoid having audiences see a black actor as a villain then they failed.

In order to be a villain, he would have to be villainous. He would have to portray values that are antithetical to the values of the audience, such as acting in a cruel and wanton manner.

I would argue Burr is closer to a foil than a villain, whose role is filled by George.

Thank you for clarifying.

I thought Aaron Burr's ambition, portrayed as unbridled by beliefs, principles, morality etc was supposed to be that.

Honestly his Act 2 character reminds me of Commodus' lines in Gladiator (obviously Commodus is a far more straightforward villain for a whole host of other reasons, but his virtues are similar).

But I have other virtues, father. Ambition. That can be a virtue when it drives us to excel. Resourcefulness, courage, perhaps not on the battlefield, but... there are many forms of courage. Devotion, to my family and to you.

Fair enough. Maybe he's more villainous than I gave him credit in my one viewing of the staged musical.

What counts as deliberate agenda pushing? If I happen to Notice that white people seem to need less help going to college and setting up their life absent intervention than Hispanic people, and so I decide to set up the dynamic in the movie according to how I see it - the white guy helping the Hispanic guys because it'd look weird the other way around, is that "deliberate agenda pushing"?

Speaking of inverted examples... aren't "The Black Guy Dies First" and "Vasquez Must Die" tropes for a reason? Genuine question, I haven't been tracking death/saviourhood ratios by race.

(D&D Honour Among Thieves did have the Hispanic barbarian woman as the only casualty of the finale. White guy protagonist then spends the one-use resurrection tablet on her instead of his white wife as he was planning, because he realized she's practically the real mother to his white daughter now and he cares about her as a platonic friend more than his wife).

Speaking of inverted examples... aren't "The Black Guy Dies First" and "Vasquez Must Die" tropes for a reason? Genuine question, I haven't been tracking death/saviourhood ratios by race.

What horror movies can you think of where the black guy dies first? I can think of Candyman, where the Candyman becomes Candyman so the movie can have a plot, and the shining, and that's about it.

Have you read that list? It is more confused than extensive. Chock full of non-horror movies, chinese and latino guys dying first and "well the first man to die is black, but a bunch of women get murdered before him".

it happens in From Beyond, the spiritual prequel to Re-Animator, and that is also the only example I can really think of.

Oh yeah, also an excellent film.

Chris Pine's wife was black, dude. The daughter was black-ish with big poofy hair.

Georgia Landers is paler than me after a sunny day, and Chloe Coleman doesn't look even slightly African even after I double-checked. I'm sorry I haven't developed the one-drop radar pure-blooded European-Americans apparently wield.

Georgia Landers is paler than me after a sunny day

Hair, lips, nose. There are phenotypes, you know, not just skin colors. Albino africans still look unmistakably black.

If you're truly darker than she is, you're pretty swarthy yourself. Looking at pictures, she's as dark as any arab, and very clearly mulatto.

She will be totally in place in the godfather as southern Italian wife. Or some time piece situated in Costa del Sol...

There is a weird type of skin color that could mean anything depending on culture and behavior and other cues.

Southern Italy you say. Perhaps, near to Sicily?

What counts as deliberate agenda pushing?

Hard to say--movie people don't usually come right out and say "I am pushing an agenda here" (though sometimes they do). But I think it's fair to engage in some pattern recognition on the matter, however inescapably speculative it might be.

That said, Elysium in particular does not seem at all coy about agenda-pushing in other ways, and the same is true of Otto and Snowpiercer, so it doesn't seem like a stretch to imagine these scripts were agenda pushing in this way also.

Speaking of inverted examples... aren't "The Black Guy Dies First" and "Vasquez Must Die" tropes for a reason? Genuine question, I haven't been tracking death/saviourhood ratios by race.

Black Dude Dies First has largely fallen into Discredited Trope territory, I think. Vasquez Always Dies is more interesting, but both of these have the same problem as I observed with the "white savior" trope and its cousins. Based on conversation in this thread I think that focusing on death was me getting too attached to one particularly dramatic, but not essential, feature of the phenomenon I'm trying to grip. To fully invert the trope, we need a non-white person (really, a woman, but--) having their humanity restored in some way by a relationship with a young white person (ideally, a boy) to whose flourishing future they then dedicate their life/resources/etc., possibly by dying. The best examples that have been called to my attention so far are two Denzel Washington movies, Book of Eli and Man on Fire.

(D&D Honour Among Thieves did have the Hispanic barbarian woman as the only casualty of the finale. White guy protagonist then spends the one-use resurrection tablet on her instead of his white wife as he was planning, because he realized she's practically the real mother to his white daughter now and he cares about her as a platonic friend more than his wife).

This isn't quite the phenomenon I'm after, I think, but "choosing your daughter's Hispanic barbarian surrogate mother over your long-dead wife" is in the same neighborhood, thanks.

That said, Elysium in particular does not seem at all coy about agenda-pushing in other ways

What makes you say that?

What makes you say that?

The incredibly heavy-handed immigration narrative, the incredibly heavy-handed anti-corporation narrative, the incredibly heavy-handed healthcare narrative, the incredibly heavy-handed...

Well, I don't mean to belabor the point, but like... have you seen Elysium? Other than the guns, it's basically "American Leftist Narrative: The Sci-Fi Movie."

I have, just wasn't clear on what you were referring to.

Fridged wife was black, kid is halfway between, FYI. Chris Pine was in the unenviable position of having to pick who to to resurrect and couldn’t rely on race to make an easy choice.

Fridged wife was black, kid is halfway between, FYI.

I saw that movie, not two months ago, and I had to go check IMDB because I thought you were bullshitting me.

People get conspicuously upset when I say things like "I often fail to notice race unless it is highlighted in some way," but here we are.

FWIW, watched the movie not two weeks ago and while I remembered Chris Pine's wife was black it did not register the barbarian was latina.

If I happen to Notice that white people seem to need less help going to college and setting up their life absent intervention than Hispanic people, and so I decide to set up the dynamic in the movie according to how I see it - the white guy helping the Hispanic guys because it'd look weird the other way around, is that "deliberate agenda pushing"?

They don't "happen to notice" that black people are criminals more often, that women can't beat men in fights, and that in fact not every relationship is interracial.

All of that looks weird, yet they persist in pushing their alternate reality. Almost as if being realistic is not their motivation

black people are criminals more often

More often compared to what? In general? Do black people constitute more than half of all criminals?

The racial angle has only started getting weaponized over the last decade or so. IMO, your observations are more so a coincidence than malice.

In old Hollywood, the MC HAD to be white. This meant that any alternate race had to be cast in a supporting role. Now, every artist loves contrast and race is the laziest way to add contrast. So the white man was the hero, and the "sidekick who inherited it all" ended up being of some other race.

If you try to make every important character white, then you get the Hangover or 21 Jumpstreet. Movies where each white person can only be differentiated by making them lean very heavily into a stereotype, to the point of caricature. 21 jumpstreet - The fat ugly guy and the stupid jock. Hangover - The wierdo nerd, the chad and the vanilla. Seems tired in comedy, but practically impossible to pull off in a serious genre.

It certainly became more malicious as time went on. The hero was an LA liberal. So what other types of "white" are there. LA hates republicans, so you couldn't have someone who signaled republican. As republican started meaning rural-blue-collar-christian, there weren't a lot of white stereotypes to play into. So you start getting situations where the other race is the inheritor. Now ofc, the racial dynamics are explicit policy in the woke era. But, that's a more recent phenomenon.

Now ofc, the racial dynamics are explicit policy in the woke era. But, that's a more recent phenomenon.

One thing I wondered when writing my post is how much of this emerges organically from growing restrictions on what Hollywood will do. The recent diversity requirements for Oscars, for example, mean visible racial diversity has to be high on your casting list priorities (unless your story focuses on non-straight-white-men, apparently?). But that will influence the ways characters interact, and even the way they're written (Sam Jackson's Nick Fury started out as a badass, but in Secret Invasion he has been reduced to a man obsessed with racism, to the point of complaining about riding on segregated trains that would not have existed within his fictional lifetime, and demanding a black military officer (who may have been replaced by a shapeshifting alien, but--) help him as a show of solidarity against old, white politicians).

Terminator: Dark Fate

(Disclaimer: I am ONLY discussing T1, T2, and DF here because it fits this trope.)

Sarah Connor fought Skynet’s Terminators, first for her own survival and then her son’s. She prevented Skynet from coming into being. She became a true action hero in T2, a mama bear, right up there with Rambo and Ripley.

But she tried to kill Miles Dyson so he wouldn’t invent the militaristic Singularity. Miles was Black, and he died helping her kill Skynet. Thus, she isn’t allowed a happy ending.

DF picks up after the Los Angeles adventure in T2. Sarah and John flee the country to the tropics. A Terminator, Arnold model, emerges from the water and slaughters John Connor, successful in his mission at last. She saved the world but lost her only son, her motivation for fighting.

Hollow and defeated, she lives her life as a fugitive from the law until one day she gets a message pinpointing where and when a Terminator will emerge from the future. She shows up, kills it. This keeps happening until she saves the life of a Hispanic girl, the newest target.

It turns out Sarah only killed the first militaristic Singularity, Skynet. They’re going to keep happening as long as humans try to make smart machines. This one will be called “Legion” and has time travel and Terminators too.

On the run, they commiserate about being the targets of Terminators and losing family. Sarah waxes angsty about how meaningless it is that this girl will spend her life just trying to keep her son safe. The androgynous augmented woman warrior from the future tells Sarah that no, this girl is herself the future savior of humanity, the future general who takes down Legion.

Sarah Connor, the white waitress-turned-warrior woman who defeated Skynet in a time war, is devastated. She lost her son after he was no longer vital to humanity, and she’s on the run for crimes she committed to keep him safe.

This Hispanic girl, meanwhile, will someday be hailed as conquering hero. If she doesn’t strangle Legion in its crib, she’ll at least put it down with extreme righteous violence. She’s Sarah and John Connor wrapped up in one person.

The cuckolding of old and wrinkled Los Angelina Sarah Connor is made complete when it turns out the T-800 who killed her son became a really chill dude and has been feeding her the coordinates of Legion’s Terminators all along. The cuckoldry is doubled by Arnold’s doofy ass having become stepfather to a gun-loving Texas family.

Sarah gave it all, every ounce of strength and will and legal recourse, and her son besides, and the week she finds out she’s been the sidekick to her son’s slaughterer is also the week she finds out her son’s place in prophecy has been pre-empted by someone nonwhite, non-American, and non-male.

Logan is in the same vein; it ends with Wolverine dying in battle against a younger version of himself in order to save a group of Latino kids, who are the next and only remaining generation of mutants in the world (the original generation of mutants in the first X-Men was all-white with the exception of Halle Berry's Storm, and in this movie it's revealed that all of the X-Men are dead because Xavier had a seizure and accidentally killed them all).

That definitely qualifies!

Whether it be Elysium or A Man Called Otto, the trope is the White Cuckold Complex, although I imagine it’s a bit too spicy for there to be a TvTropes article on it.

The implication being that white heterosexual men can only redeem themselves, justify their purpose in life, by self-sacrifrice in favor of vibrant minorities. Another example would be Children of Men.

@DaseindustriesLtd commented about a month ago:

The one good white father figure, if he exists… dies a martyr, willingly, to make way for hot-blooded folx of color, often his adopted children ushering in a new era. He is not to have any white heirs of his own, certainly not decent male ones (it's okay to leave a daughter though).

The loosely-based-on-a-true-story McFarland, USA comes to mind, where Kevin Costner’s character (literally named “White”) coaches a plucky, ragtag group of downtrodden latino cross-country runners to glory, with his teenage daughter serving as the mutual romantic interest—perhaps girlfriend—of one of the runners. This romance was an invention of the movie, of course.

Children of Men is the most striking example for me - the political parallels are so on the nose that they gave me an almost visceral reaction to what was happening on screen.

I think you're making the same mistake as @naraburns is with Gran Tourino in that you're trying to interpret a more conservative or right-wing story through an explicitly left-wing lens and it's causing you to miss the point.

It's not a coincidence that the chief villian/antagonist of the film is not the police-state but Chiwetel Ejiofor's radical Marxist who wants to use the first pregnant woman in 17 years as a means to a political end. While the Christian symbolism in the film is substantially toned down compared to that in the book, both are an explicit rejection of the sort of nonsense you see espoused by guys like Land @The_Nybbler and @KulakRevolt. "What are your principles worth if this is the end they bring you to?" They ask, and Children of Men offers an answer. The lord lays before us blessings and curses. Those who live by the sword may die by the sword but there is also an argument to be made that selling out any hope for the future in exchange for worldly riches and comfort is an even worse fate.

Clive Owen's character, Theo's whole arc (and that name is not a coincidence) is going from a nihilistic alcoholic/hedonist to being someone who actually cares about people other than himself. The contrast between hopelessness and hope.

Edit: Clive Owen, not Owen Wilson, but there is also an image.

I think you're making the same mistake as @naraburns is with Gran Tourino in that you're trying to interpret a more conservative or right-wing story through an explicitly left-wing lens and it's causing you to miss the point.

I'm not interpreting this movie from a left-wing perspective at all - my self-described political position is populist distributism, and my personal view is that the left/right distinction is increasingly and effectively meaningless in the modern day, a relic that is slowly being replaced by the far more meaningful distinction between populism and elitism. Of course, the fact that I believe in HBD, oppose immigration in nearly all forms and am not a fan of Islam means that I wouldn't be welcome on the left anyway - do you seriously believe that a reading of the film that could uncharitably be described as "cuckservative pornography" would be acceptable in a left-wing context?

Irrespective of that, I think my interpretation of Children of Men is actually right wing - if you accept that Trumpian conservatism is right-wing, and while I'm very open to the idea that Trumpism is not actually a conservative ideology, I think it most definitely qualifies as right-wing. I make no bones about my distaste for the conservatism of the era, but I also think the movie is actually a perfect encapsulation of those values.

"Your people are not having children - this problem cannot be fixed and trying to do is a waste of time. But these other people are having kids, and if you give them your values then you don't need to feel bad about not having or mistreating your own children, because it is your beliefs that really matter and not your own posterity."

The only way I could make this a more pure summation of the conservatism of the time would be to somehow work "go get involved in forever wars in the middle east and support the outsourcing of productive industry" into it! My view of the conservatism of the time is that the Republican party was the manifestation of the values of conservatives, and a vehicle for them to effect political change and have their views represented, but that manifestation was co-opted by others who directed those desires for representation into little more than a cover for graft, venality and military adventurism which was not in the best interests of the party's base.

It's not a coincidence that the chief villian/antagonist of the film is not the police-state but Chiwetel Ejiofor's radical Marxist who wants to use the first pregnant woman in 17 years as a means to a political end.

It might not be a coincidence but it absolutely confirms my own reading - how many of the immigrants conservatives were throwing open the doors for in those days were coming from socialist or marxist countries? The conservatives are given a windmill to tilt at, and the unsophisticated base (just to be clear I am not targeting conservatism specifically here - the base of both wings is relatively unsophisticated) eats it up because a significant portion of the conservative identity of previous years was defined by opposition to communism, socialism and marxism.

"What are your principles worth if this is the end they bring you to?" They ask, and Children of Men offers an answer.

Yes, and the answer that Children of Men offers is the same weak cuckservatism that was crushed in the eyes of the public by the Trump campaign. "The ending of your bloodline and people is not something that can be stopped. The Key to Tomorrow is refugees and immigrants, and you should give up your life to make sure they continue to have kids in the hope that they remember and carry forward your ideology." The wages of this view is death - what more can be said? If you're a believer in HBD then the utter futility and fecklessness of this view is made even clearer by an understanding of the genetic foundations that underpin political beliefs and positions. Oh, look, the name of his dead child gets reused for the one he saved - what a perfect summation of the cuckservative position! Sure, none of your children will be around in the future, but you get to make sure that the people who dispossess yours keep using some of the names you used, and they aren't on the side of your opponents in the culture war. That is the end that those conservative principles were headed towards, and I think it is a wondrous blessing for the world (and, to say the least, the conservative base) that such a suicidal ideology has been demolished and a Trump tower built on the ashes.

The lord lays before us blessings and curses. Those who live by the sword may die by the sword but there is also an argument to be made that selling out any hope for the future in exchange for worldly riches and comfort is an even worse fate.

The very premise of the movie is a giving up of hope for the future - the British are a defeated, dying people who have no hope of restoring themselves. There's no dealing with or grappling with the question of why, or any attempt to reverse this - their posterity has been given up and abandoned, and this is one of the background assumptions underlying the entire movie. They don't even get worldly riches or comfort in exchange for the trade! They're just dying out, and don't you dare ask questions about why or how - THAT is hopelessness, a refusal to even begin to analyse the existential problems facing you because you believe that there is no possible answer.

Clive Owen's character, Theo's whole arc (and that name is not a coincidence) is going from a nihilistic alcoholic/hedonist to being someone who actually cares about people other than himself. The contrast between hopelessness and hope.

Theo at no point earnestly cares about anyone other than himself in the movie. He is not a heroic man who is moved to care about others, but a defeated man who jumps at the opportunity to perform the role and identity that he created for himself, even though the original motivating reason for that role is no longer present. He cares about Key solely to the extent that doing so allows him to revive and perform his own identity, and this is something more important to him than his own actual physical life. Self-sacrifice is a powerful concept and deserving of respect in the right context - but this is not that context. Unmoored and disconnected from his own dying culture, he gives up his life in the preservation of another because he has no real values and no hope for the future at all, viewing the act of giving up his own life for the sake of another as a noble deed worth doing despite the lack of context which makes self-sacrifice worthwhile.

I highly doubt Clint Eastwood was trying to hint at white replacement in Gran Turino. By reducing everything to white and not-white, I think you're missing some nuance in terms of dying urban white ethnic communities, romanticism for the glory days of blue collar Midwestern America, what the real meaning of American values is, etc etc.

It's honestly a very conservative movie and there's plenty in it that doesn't just skirt boundaries today, but outright leaps over them. For example, Clint gets out of his beat up old American truck to point a gun at a bunch of young black men -- acting like stereotypical hoods, of course -- then subsequently chastises a young white kid for acting black (although not in so many words). It's also the last movie I've seen to feature what used to be a super common phenomenon of blue collar American men calling each other very offensive slurs as a term of endearment/form of screwing around for fun. It actually is still decently common in the right circles, it would just never be portrayed positively or innocently in a movie anymore.

I guess it can be confused as a movie for Great Replacement messaging, but only because the replacement has already happened in a lot of American urban areas. Clint represents a relic of a piece of America that is already gone, it just happens to pattern match to modern fears.

Edit: To add on a bit more....

I think Gran Turino is ultimately about how the last generation of American immigrants has some important things to pass on to the current generation of American immigrants. It is absolutely positive on American values and, indeed, the thing that the movie portrays the Hmong as superior to Clint's own family at is exactly that: family. It doesn't really make Clint seem worse than the Hmong, just Clint's family, who have gotten selfish and stopped caring about their father (ignoring and dismissing him, to the degree of wanting to stick him in a home and forget about him).

It still portrays everything about those values in Clint as, if not superior to what the Hmong family has, at least having some important things to pass on to the Hmong children about being Americans. Clint's actual children have abandoned that aspect of their heritage and so he passes it on to someone who will have it, instead.

I highly doubt Clint Eastwood was trying to hint at white replacement in Gran Turino.

Maybe so! But what about the writer, Nick Schenk? Wikipedia suggests:

In the early 1990s, Schenk became acquainted with the history and culture of the Hmong while working in a factory in Minnesota. He also learned how they had sided with the South Vietnamese forces and its US allies during the Vietnam War, only to wind up in refugee camps, at the mercy of North Vietnamese Communist forces, when US troops pulled out and the government forces were defeated. Years later, he was deciding how to develop a story involving a widowed Korean War veteran trying to handle the changes in his neighborhood when he decided to place a Hmong family next door and create a culture clash.

And I guess I would add--it's not that the hint is deliberately "white replacement" so long as it is in some sense a matter of "making way." In discussing with others in the thread, I'm increasingly persuaded that a better way for me to frame this trope is "white dude has his humanity restored by relationship with non-white/female/etc. successor, and in the process realizes that his highest calling is to benefit them." And also that my focus on the white dude's death is probably me being too specific about which costs the white dude is depicted as paying.

A move can teach "racism is bad" by curing it, but in order to show the racist character's redemption, the newly-non-racist white dude is inevitably going to give up something, and maybe give up everything. Can someone be non-racist and also be as indifferent to one's minority neighbors as one's white neighbors? A Man Called Otto walks an interesting line here, too, as Otto is clearly depicted as a misandrist, but totally cool with everyone at the level of their individual characteristics.

(Interestingly, the so-called "anti-racist" view does seem to be that it's not enough to just not be racist--you have to actively work to benefit the BIPOCracy.)

To me, Clint’s character wasn’t redeemed. He had lost purpose. He had nothing to do. He was longing to do something that matters again. Retirement rendered him meaningless because he defined his being by purpose.

He got a purpose again; he didn’t find his highest purpose.

Clint's actual children have abandoned that aspect of their heritage and so he passes it on to someone who will have it, instead.

This.

The whole point of the ending of the film is that while Walt's blood children/grandchildren may a bunch of ungrateful moral degenerates, his spirit and values and legacy will live on in Tao, Sue, and the Young Catholic Priest for whom he served as a friend and mentor.

So it's a positively-spun Great Replacement narrative, as was originally claimed.

The young catholic priest was white

And is celibate and will not procreate or have descendants of his own.

No its not, because its about the immigrant kid becoming more "American" than it is about America becoming more "diverse."

Walt starts the movie as a racist and ends the movie as a racist. But he's not racist in the conventional blue tribe college educated democrat sense of the word espoused by both white nationalists and the woke. No "blood and soil" here walt is racist in the way that guys like Frederick Douglas, Teddy Roosevelt, and Rudyard Kipling get called racist (and race traitors), for going on about hyphenated american and the white mans burden.

Apparently a lot of critics saw this in Knives Out, where the wealthy WASP author leaves his estate to his diligent South American nurse instead of his spoilt kids.

Of course, that interpretation only makes sense of you subscribe to the American view that Spanish people are their own race instead of just another European ethnic group...

South Americans are heavily mixed with natives, hence most of them are no longer white.

That's true in some countries but not others, the average person in Argentina is very much not mestizo.

And Ana de Armas (born in Cuba) who plays the nurse certainly isn't. She's as European as Mitt Romney.

She has an illegal immigrant mother in the movie so I think it's clear what they're going for without having to break out the 23 and Me results.

She's a fair skinned Latina, not white. Whiteness is about pure European heritage. Biracial people that pass as white are still not white, for example.

Mitt Romney is white, as far as I know none of his ancestors are non-European or descended from Europeans. Does he have a Mexican grandpa I'm not aware of?

Mitt Romney is white, as far as I know none of his ancestors are non-European or descended from Europeans. Does he have a Mexican grandpa I'm not aware of?

Romney's father was born in Mexico, which as far as I know has birthright citizenship. The fact that it was in a Mormon settlement started by his great grandfather fleeing American anti-polygamy laws in 1885 probably complicates things, though.

If you met me there is zero chance you'd describe me as anything other than white. I find myself extraordinarily doubtful whether you can visually identify who has "pure European heritage" out of a group of North Americans.

I probably would think Buck Angel is a dude, it's not about outward appearance it's about what you are. For sex, its chromosomes, for whiteness, it's ancestry

Ana de Armas

Two seconds on Wikipedia and you'll learn she's the grand-daughter of Spanish immigrants on her mother's side. Now, maybe her father has some admixture of Native American blood, but going by the demographics of Cuba it's highly likely he's Spanish-descended all the way through. So yeah, guy, she's as European as Mitt Romney.

De Armas was born in Havana, Cuba, and raised in the small city of Santa Cruz del Norte. Her maternal grandparents were migrants to Cuba from the north of Spain (El Bierzo, (Leon) and Palencia)

An autosomal study from 2014 has found out the genetic average ancestry in Cuba to be 72% European, 20% African and 8% Native American with different proportions depending on the self-reported ancestry (White, Mulatto or Mestizo, and Black)

In the 2012 Census of Cuba, 64.1% of the inhabitants self-identified as white. Based on genetic testing (2014) in Cuba, the average European, African and Native American ancestry in those auto-reporting to be white were 86%, 6.7%, and 7.8%. The majority of the European ancestry comes from Spain.

Now, if you really want to insist that de Armas is a "fair skinned Latina" go right ahead, after all I'm sure you would also class Meghan Markle as Black as Michelle Obama.

It doesn't say anything about her father, is he native Cuban? I would assume so.

Whiteness is not a self-id thing, it's genetics. A drop of poo spoils the milk.

Meghan Markle is black. And don't capitalize it, it's uncouth

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I am sure that the Koreans, during the Japanese annexation of Korea, would be relieved to learn that the Emperors of Japan are in fact Korean.

You're arguing the one-drop rule? Well, I suppose historical survivals do crop up now and again.

The Native American or Indigenous population in Cuba (amongst other areas) was Taino, and they seem to have been either exterminated or so intermarried into the replacement African labour (because the Taino kept dying off when the colonists tried putting them to work) and/or the incoming Europeans that they don't exist anymore.

Now, maybe Ana's father claimed to be one-sixtyfourth pure Taino prince(ss) (as I believe dear old AOC was doing recently in her laundry list of 'new identities I'm claiming today') but if we're talking "one drop", you have to accept "dilution".

One drop in a gallon of water is homeopathy, and it's generally agreed that isn't real medicine. Or do you treat all your aches and pains and sniffles with dilutions? On the basis of "one drop of poo spoils the milk, one drop of active ingredient in a hundred part dilution cures my ills"?

You seem to be trying to see how edgy you can be. Your posts throughout this thread are low quality and seem merely to be trying to get a rise out of people. If you really want to argue one-drop racial politics, you can argue that, but make substantial points. And you are allowed to capitalize or not capitalize black as you see fit - and again, if you have a problem with capitalizing it, you can write an argument for why you don't like it, but don't try to tell other people what to do because "it's uncouth."

You've already been told to stop doing this. I am now pretty convinced this is a trolling account, but being ever too lenient, this ban will be for two weeks. Next one, assuming you come back with the same pattern, will be permanent.

I don't think you can reasonably conclude that Ana de Armas has any non-European ancestry. She's completely indistinguishable from a native resident of Spain. Her mother's parents migrated from Spain, and her father looks completely Spanish.

I compare her to Mitt Romney because while his ancestry is English and hers is is Spanish, both of those places are in Europe and both ethnic groups are equally European. The fact that you classify him as 'white' and her as 'latina' really highlights how bizarre both labels are.

A better solution would be to list 'European' and 'mestizo' on the census. That would more accurately capture the difference between Europeans from Latin America (like de Armas) and mestizos like Raymond Cruz.

Whiteness is about pure European heritage.

This has never really been true (until, perhaps, very recently, as a result of the Great Awokening and people turning "white" into a slur). It's something that gets discussed to death but it's not actually a very interesting debate, it just diverts discussion into an argument about words instead of a discussion about substance.

I don't think pretty much anyone in actual Europe would actually think of Ana de Armas as anything other than white.

I think we should retvrn to Ben Franklin's terminology and establish that even Swedes are swarthy, to say nothing of Spaniards, leaving only Anglos as truly white (and truly European, for some extra absurdity).

This will let us move on to more interesting and consequential distinctions.

I always get a laugh when people try to redefine the countries best representing the "blonde hair and blue eyes"-stereotype as "not actually white".

"The pigmentation of both hair and eyes is lightest around the Baltic Sea, and darkness increases regularly and almost concentrically around this region."

Simply excluding peninsular people narrows things well enough doesn't it?

More comments

Clint is an actual conservative, though, so I can trust a conservative interpretation is closer to the actual intended meaning of his movie than I would with Knives Out.

He's still a Hollywood actor/director, and it being a "this is how to roll over and die happy about the Great Replacement" story doesn't make it not an example of the trope

Knives out 2 - Glass Onion also plays into that same 'diversity-person good, white man unfathomably evil' trope. So I am more inclined to trust that accusation.

The more parsimonious explanation is, I imagine, that no matter how Clint personally feels about it, you cannot do some combinations of castings. Or at least it seems you'd need some special circumstances to pull it off.

Whites can be whoever in principle, but you are de facto not allowed to make an all-white story. And in every story that needs a villain, you risk having your colleagues raise eyebrows if you cast a non-white-cishetero-male actor as the main one. Likewise for stories of successors and dying old heroes. So, these little constraints of politesse add up to an overwhelming message that whites are disproportionately bad and will die out, making way for a vibrant, diverse, talented new humanity. Is this done consciously?

I think it can't not be, these media magicians aren't autistic race-blind engineers, they live their whole lives thinking about implications of artistic messages, that's kind of their job.

But most participants need not bother thinking about this part in particular.

It actually is still decently common in the right circles, it would just never be portrayed positively or innocently in a movie anymore.

Still common in Australia, I believe.

In real life, yes, that happens, though it depends a lot on the demographic or subculture.

In Australian television or movies?

Not so much.

I suppose I was reacting more to the idea that it's a subculture thing now, when it's...pretty mainstream, I think.

Maybe 'subculture' is the wrong word, but I feel like there's a significant class and gender aspect to it? I wouldn't do it to a woman, and I wouldn't do it with a bunch of well-educated university types. But I would expect it to be common and comfortable among tradies, for instance.

I Am Legend and Man on Fire are clear inverted examples.

Yeah, see downthread for some further discussion on Man on Fire as well as Book of Eli--apparently Denzel Washington owns the inversion here!

I Am Legend doesn't seem to quite fit, though maybe depending on which ending you liked (in one, Smith lives). But the female lead is Alice Braga, who is Brazilian, so it's only inverted if you regard Hispanic as "white." Which many people do, and with good reason, but... probably not Hollywood.

Charles Tahan isn't.

So is Birdbox, where two black men and one asian man sacrifice themselves so that a white lady and two white kids can survive in the end.

Man on Fire is really such a ridiculously good movie, too. Denzel runs circles around Smith as an actor.

Perhaps most importantly... is there any possibility at all that the phenomenon isn't blatantly deliberate agenda-pushing?

Competent non-white men putting incompetent white men in their place seems like agenda pushing. At least naively, a competent white man dying for someone else seems like it should be glorifying white men -- it just doesn't feel that way from your examples, since that's clearly not the goal of the creators of the movies.

But also I don't think A Man Called Otto is a very good example, since he's not choosing to save her and/or secede the future to her -- he just dies from heart failure. If he explicitly gave her his house and went on living, then I think you'd have a case for "Hollywood is trying to convince white people to just surrender everything to nonwhites". But in this case I think the point was just to give a touching ending that was somewhat faithful to the original story.

An example of a non-white savior saving a white person is Lee Everett from The Walking Dead, who altruistically protects Clementine with his life; Clementine then goes on to be Lee's successor (in both a narrative sense, and in the sense that you literally play as her, so she's literally making making the choices that Lee would have made).

(I also want to give Uncle Tom's Cabin as an example, but I haven't actually read it so I'll let somebody else make that case and/or tell me why that's wrong).

he's not choosing to save her and/or secede the future to her

No, but he's still making way for her (and her children), in a more literal as well as a figurative sense. I think maybe part of what I'm tracking here is "white savior" characters who... aren't? Like, they kind of maybe look that way, but really their successor restores their humanity in some way, and then they see that the human thing to do is give everything to/for their successor.

It occurs to me that Pixar's Up could be this if Carl had died to get Russell home, and could also be this if there were a post-credit scene where Carl left an inheritance for Russell. But maybe I've made a problem for myself by focusing on dead men, maybe there are more clear examples where the men aren't shown to die but the implication is still that they are "making way."

I also can't think of any inverted examples. Can you think of any media in which the trope is inverted?

Closest I can think of is "Man on Fire" with Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning.

I think The Book of Eli (2010) with Washington and Mila Kunis might also qualify, but it's been a while since I've seen it. Notable perhaps also because the book in question is a Bible.

Based on my memories Mila's character takes up his mantle as traveling last Christian at the end of the movie. It qualifies.

Also Denzel is a Christian, so I imagine they pitched him "last Christian preserves the last Bible on a mission from God and machete battles anyone who interferes" and he was hyped.

That sounds like an inversion of the trope in multiple ways! Interesting that Denzel Washington should have starred in two that people remember.

he is that good of an Actor. Part of the old guard.

Closest I can think of is "Man on Fire" with Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning.

I have not seen that one. Reading the summary, I'm not sure I see Fanning's character as a "successor" or "inheritor" in this case but otherwise I agree that it gets most of the way there.

If you haven't seen Knives Out, I highly suggest it as it is without a doubt the most explicit type of story along the lines you are describing here. I won't spoil anything but you will find every single trope you have identified smacked over your face repeatedly, Rian Johnson completely lacks subtlety in that film. Yes, it is agenda pushing and it always has been. They know what they are doing, and it means what you think it means.

I do think Knives Out would have been a lot better if the nurse really did turn out to have murdered the old guy, or at least 'mercy killed' him. That she had managed to scheme a way to fool the detective and trick the heirs into making themselves look guilty.

Oh, well.

Totally agreed, and I called the twist to my wife from the very death scene - "The twist is that you thought she did something wrong, but it turns out she did nothing wrong at all."

I did see that one! I suspect I did not think of it because the dead guy in that case is not really a PoV hero, so I don't think the audience is plainly intended to identify with him. But in all other respects, yes, that is definitely a "not-white successor" movie.

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