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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   5184 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 18, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Okay, I want to focus on this part, since it undergirds the rest of your comment.

It's difficult for me to think of a lower status take than consternation about, say, the casting decisions in the Little Mermaid remake. There's a few layers to that -- the content is for children, and these live action remakes are kind of shameful to have any investment in even before getting to the politics that is easily read as a kind of adolescent, race-fragile myopia.

One of the primary concerns of the left regarding representation etc is about programming tailored to children as well as the messages it purportedly ends up conveying (which is part of why race-swapping is happening in kid-tailored IPs as well), so if such a leftist were to go on to subsequently believe that being concerned with children's content reads as shameful it would come off as at least somewhat hypocritical to me. It is entirely possible to be invested in a piece of entertainment solely on a "meta-level", so to speak.

With regards to "adolescent, race-fragile myopia", it might be easy for people to read it as being that. In most cases, I think it would be entirely a strawman of the position based on wilful misunderstanding, but anyone certainly can form whatever ideas of their opponent they want independent of the things said opponent actually expressed (sadly a common occurrence in the current climate). That doesn't mean discussion about woke ideology being forced into every production under the sun is inherently unwarranted.

Unless I've misunderstood, this doesn't seem to be a criticism of the take itself so much as it is "if a position can be argued not to look good on X level, you shouldn't even try to argue it at all" which is an idea that doesn't resonate with me whatsoever and is very disconnected from my method of approaching things. It's a focus on aesthetics over all else, which is a consideration that in my view shouldn't inform anyone's decisions as to whether to argue something or not. If there's a valid argument there, it should be promoted regardless of how dignified the take looks on an instinctual, knee-jerk level, and the challenge is getting people to see your point of view.

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