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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   31449 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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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?

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