domain:youtube.com
P-Necromancer
3m ago
Oh, it's absolutely ubiquitous. Some describe it as a common trademark of fascism... but I think you might actually see it more frequently from the critics of fascism. It's been the narrative on the alt-right since that term went mainstream: they're both incredibly dangerous and total losers. Hell, it's the narrative on the literal Nazis, as can be observed just a little upthread. They were not merely evil but utterly incompetent in all respects. Safe to say, I think, those same people don't believe the allies overcommitted to fighting the Nazis and really didn't have to try that hard.
But... it's not actually a contradiction? One of the more common arguments you see along this line is anti-anti-immigration: 'Nativists believe both that immigrants are lazy welfare parasites and that they steal jobs from hardworking Americans!' But groups have multiple members: there could be some of each. And often the 'strength' and 'weakness' can co-exist. Are guerilla fighters strong or weak? They can't beat their occupiers face-to-face or they wouldn't be guerillas. But guerilla campaigns have driven occupiers out many times. How about terrorists or incarcerated criminals? How about a world-champion MMA fighter... sent to the front lines in Ukraine? How about Harvey Weinstein? How about an IRS auditor? In some contexts these people are very dangerous and in others they're very weak.
I think you see it everywhere because it's often true; it's the complaint that misses the mark by equivocating over definitional boundaries until it looks like there's a contradiction that doesn't really exist.
BurdensomeCount
—Your em dash is showing...
4m ago
Is a jury in Miami really going to buy that Trump is 10 billion dollars poorer as the result of that article
One good thing I have only recently come to appreciate about English law is about how it limits restitution to damages the claimant can reasonably show they have suffered. Sure the claimant can make grandiloquent claims about how they have lost multiples of their net worth or projected lifetime earnings but such claims have a very real cost to your credibility before the court unless you can rigourously back them up (and the burden of proof is on you here) which in the end helps in keeping both sides honest.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
5m ago
No. You are still missing the point I was trying to make. By all means, perhaps it matters that the characters are white. My argument is that (the pro-race-blind-casting position is that) it shouldn't matter if a character who is theoretically white within the story is played by an actor who is visibly black. This is precisely what I meant about Hobbit genetics being neither here nor there to the debate: I am not denying that the Hobbits are meant to be white. I am saying that you can cast a bunch of black actors as white Hobbits.
Are you saying that when we see black actors on the screen or the stage, we should imagine they are actually white (if the characters are supposedly white)?
I am not sure if you're trolling or serious.
Like, first of all, are you proposing that this is actually the intent of casting black women as Viking leaders and black people as elves and hobbits? Like, the director was thinking "This black actress is actually playing a white Swedish man, but she really nailed the role and the audience will get that she's actually supposed to be a white man? And the audience watching black elves and hobbits will just imagine them being white?"
I think that is extraordinarily unlikely. I don't think anyone from the director to the actors were actually thinking that, and they certainly didn't intend the audience to think that, and imagine if anyone did say "Actually, their characters are really white." That would... not be accepted. It would be black erasure. It would be white fragility for being unable to imagine characters as anything but white. It would #hollywoodsowhite and white supremacy. Come on.
There is a thin argument to be made for affirmative action in casting, and likewise a thin argument based on historical inequity to say "It's okay to cast a black actor as a historically white character but not okay to cast a white character as a historically black character." I don't really agree with this (I think some roles don't matter much - a black James Bond, sure. A black King Arthur? Please. Hamilton was a special case where casting everyone as black was intentional to make a point) but I get why the one provokes outrage and the other we're just supposed to accept.
But when you go all-in on detaching race and physical appearance from any kind of historical or fictional verisimilitude, but only ever in one direction, that doesn't seem like affirmative action, that seems like a fuck you that they are basically daring you to object to. I am not fond of the frequent alt-right claims of "humiliation rituals," but goddamn if this doesn't feel like it.
BurdensomeCount
—Your em dash is showing...
8m ago
George Floyd was not a good man, but he did not deserve to die.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
9m ago
retractors need to ask more questions like "Is it detrimental to a film's artistic worth for a white WWII pilot to be portrayed by a black actor?"
I think the point is precisely this. Yes, it is.
If the film is creating a dramatic version of a historical event, I believe it's fundamentally important to try and nail a depiction of the time and place -- including important demographic features like race. Hoffmeister's point is that putting black actors in the shoes of white historical figures robs the white people who actually did those things of credit, and gives it to people from another background, which distorts people's understanding of what history was like, in a way that would never be tolerated if it happened in the other direction.
I don't think people should be getting their opinions of the racial dynamics of the past from Hollywood, but nevertheless they do, and it's important that people not distort history unless they have an explicit artistic reason to do so, and "we would like to hire more black actors" is not an artistic reason, it's an HR reason, and a political reason.
I'm as angry at dramatizations that mislead in terms of plot and storytelling as I am about racial features, I just think the race-swapping is a uniquely silly element that's not about Hollywood being sensational -- which is something you can make an artistic argument for, however weak -- but about it being political. I agree with you that people should be able to make race-swapped movies about historical figures if they want, particularly if they have an artistic vision for it, but that's not what's happening and it's not applied fairly.
That's my view on the RAF situation -- and the critical point about this is that your comparison to Kermit is totally inapt, because Kermit the Frog isn't real, and the RAF pilots who save Britain from German bombers, and the British victims of the Blitz, were very, very real. We're talking about historical events that caused suffering and generated heroism among real people, in the real world. Titanic, for instance, is an interesting one -- and it's telling that this major film depicted the Titanic's passengers as very white and aimed for a realistic depiction of the dress and style of the period, even as it showed a love story that never happened.
Again, people shouldn't get their history from Hollywood dramas. But they do.
You wrote this:
Have people forgotten how the artifice of fiction works? The idea that what we see on-screen has to represent the literal truth of the fictional universe, hidden-cameras style, in every detail, is a very modern idea and a pretty dumb one.
It's certainly a modern idea, but so is the motion picture! "What we see on-screen" as a concept is very new, and so of course the ideas that exist surrounding it are new!
What people are responding to is the artistic concepts that have developed in response to a novel media; the motion picture has tropes, values, and consistent patterns as an artform, and violating those patterns involves a certain amount of intention. If people violate them to explore artistically, that's cool. They're not doing that, and it's detrimental to the artistic value of a film that they aren't.
What are those patterns?
Hollywood goes out of its way to depict the world -- real or imagined -- as convincingly as possible. They invest in massive CGI scenes to give people the impression that spaceships can travel faster than light. They burn render farms at full utilization to convince viewers that a beat-up old camero you see on the street could actually be a giant humanoid robot from the planet Cybertron. They have invented all manner of prosthetics to make Klingons from the planet Qo'noS seem plausible, and to convince people that Alex Murphy died and became a cyborg.
Your point that "what we see on-screen has to represent the literal truth of the fictional universe" is simply how Hollywood operates. That's what directors love about film! It's what actors are challenged by! It's why special effects are such a fascinating industry! And it's the unique blessing of the camera and the editor; the ability to carefully curate the experience to put the audience in the world as convincingly as possible. It's why people are enchanted by movies!
Pixar used to make fake bloopers for their movies -- yes, their animated movies -- because they knew that this enhanced the audience's feelings that what was happening on-screen was real, that the characters were, in a sense, "actors" in a live-action movie. That's how devoted Hollywood is to convincing people of the absolute reality of what's on screen!
What you're talking about, with "black actors can play white Hobbits", well, I simply do not agree in any way that this is the actual belief system of race-swapping casting. The point is that the Hobbits are themselves black, and always were. What you're arguing is not a steelman of the real views, it's just your own views that you're attributing to them. Which is fine! I like your views a lot better than theirs! But it's just not their views, and you're doing your own understanding, and your argument's strength, a real disservice to say that they are.
Actually, what you're talking about sounds like a play, which is a medium that grew up in a time of thespian scarcity and often acting troupes that had to make the best with the members they had. Obviously female roles were often played by men in certain time periods!
Plays require audiences to submit to what you call "the artifice of fiction" more intensely. That's the unique artistic opportunity of the play. But note that race-shifting historical figures in plays today is often an explicit artistic choice, not a "we chose the best actor for the role": Hamilton is exhibit A of this. Crucially, in Hamilton, there was an artistic purpose (however good or bad) for the race-swapping, and no one was under the impression that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton weren't white. With many historical films, that just isn't the case, and understanding of the historical figures' backgrounds are less ubiquitous.
But the artifice of fiction, as you describe it, was a time- and medium- based limitation of the theatre that audiences understood. In the world of Hollywood as it exists, to avoid making "what we see on-screen" different from "the literal truth of the fictional universe" is to violate the expectations, schemas, and assumptions the audience brings to the medium. That can be a fertile ground for artistic exploration! But you're not arguing that race-swapping is occurring for artistic reasons. You're arguing it's occurring for political and economic reasons -- and that the actual artistic vision is irrelevant to who people see on screen! That's not Hollywood's way.
But, I'll make you a deal: when Hollywood makes a Transformers movie where some guy just goes off-screen and goes, "bur-cha-church-cha-cha-ba-ba-ding-ding-church" and the frame cuts from a semi-truck to a guy in a haloween costume of Optimus Prime, we can talk about race-blind casting of historical figures and characters from tightly-constructed fictional universes.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
25m ago
No. You are still missing the point I was trying to make. By all means, perhaps it matters that the characters are white. My argument is that (the pro-race-blind-casting position is that) it shouldn't matter if a character who is theoretically white within the story is played by an actor who is visibly black.
Buddy… appearance is part of acting. One uses one’s physical body to portray actions, emotion, intent, etc. This is also why we use costuming and make-up to alter actors’ appearances to better fit the story we’re attempting to tell. The hypothetical “steel-manned pro-race-blind-casting advocate” would readily acknowledge the absurdity of making a Pride and Prejudice film in which one of the actors (and only one) decided to wear a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and cargo shorts while the rest of the actors wore period clothing. The only artistically-defensible reason to do so is if one were trying to make some sort of meta-commentary. And sure, I could definitely imagine an artfully-done version of this, intentionally poking at the conventions of filmmaking and storytelling, forcing audiences to confront their own expectations, etc. That’s its own genre, though, and is obviously very distinct from genres in which verisimilitude is valued and important.
What you’re failing to grapple with is the distinct expectations that separate different genres. The Muppets can get away with what they do because they’re in a specific genre in which verisimilitude does not, and cannot, exist as an expectation. There are no real-world analogues for talking frogs and green furry guys who live in trash cans. The conventions of the genre have specific demands and expectations, and the audience is already bought into them. What you’re now asking audiences to do is alter their expectations such that all genres throw out previous expectations of visual verisimilitude, and adopt ones closer to madcap puppet comedy. And you don’t seem to have a coherent artistic reason why, since you don’t seem to have properly internalized why so many genres had that expectation in the first place.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
26m ago
@fmac thinks that you (plural) would be interested in the following summary of the several mods that I've written for Victoria 3. I am inclined to think that this comment is both too narcissistic and too niche to be interesting, but whatever. Maybe I'm a bad judge and you'll find this comment more interesting than this week's court-opinion summary, which seems to have fallen rather flat.
In an effort to make this comment less narcissistic, I will emphasize that you do not need to be a 1337 h@xx0r to mod this game. It's just editing plaintext files, not compiling code like some other games.
Premise: In the vanilla game, slaves are created from poor people in countries with the Debt Slavery law, and thence are exported to countries with the Slave Trade law.
Problem: It makes no sense that countries with Slave Trade do not enslave their own low-acceptance (i. e., discriminated-against) people.
Solution: In a mod that I have written, a country with Slave Trade now will enslave its own low-acceptance people (using the same logic that the vanilla game uses to re-enslave recently-freed people when slavery is abolished and then reinstated).
Premise: In the vanilla game, a colonizing AI country will spread its focus across up to five different colonies, depending on how much population it has. Colony growth also is capped, so focusing on a single colony is detrimental.
Problem: I don't see any reason for these mechanics. Splitting focus between multiple colonies only increases the chance that multiple countries will split a colonial state, which I dislike. And what's wrong with rushing a single colony?
Solution: In a mod that I have written, a colonizing AI country now will focus on only a single colony, and the cap on colony growth is removed.
Premise: In the vanilla game, the AI will never incorporate a state that contains fewer than 100,000 people.
Problem: I'm not really a big fan of this limitation. Yes, the sparsely-populated territories of northern Canada and northern Australia are legally "unincorporated" even in year 2025. But Rhode Island barely had reached a population of 100,000 in the time period of Victoria 3. Am I really supposed to believe that Rhode Island should not have been incorporated until after year 1830?
Solution: In a mod that I have written, the minimum population for incorporating a state is set to 1—i. e., effectively removed.
Premise: In the vanilla game, several different fonts are used—Garamond, Open Sans, Noto Serif, a custom font called Paradox Victorian, et cetera.
Problem: I dislike seeing a zillion different random fonts.
Solution: In a mod that I have written, the game uses only Open Sans.
Premise: In the vanilla game, in order to avoid losing its "civilized" status (as opposed to "uncivilized", like China and Egypt), the Ottoman Empire must complete four of seven available missions. One of those missions, "Tanzimat: Urbanization", requires that 75 percent of the Ottoman Empire's states be both incorporated and urbanized.
Problem: This doesn't make much sense to me. What's wrong with having unincorporated states?
Solution: In a mod that I have written, "Tanzimat: Urbanization" requires that 75 percent of the Ottoman Empire's incorporated states be urbanized.
Premise: In the vanilla game, an AI country will incorporate a state if a culture that calls that state region a homeland shares a trait (whether a heritage trait indicating race or a cultural trait indicating a non-race characteristic) with a primary culture of that country.
Problem: Under this criterion, both a fascist Britain with the Ethnostate law and an open-minded Britain with the Multiculturalism law will incorporate all European states and all Anglophone states (including the black ones in the Caribbean), with no regard for whether the cultures living there are actually accepted. That doesn't make any sense.
Solution: In a mod that I have written: The AI incorporation logic is disabled. Instead, a country (whether AI or human) will automatically incorporate a state if a culture that calls that state a homeland is accepted under that country's current laws, and will automatically disincorporate a state if no culture that calls that state a homeland is accepted under that country's current laws.
Premise: In the vanilla game, most countries start with all or nearly all of their states incorporated. It is generally expected that a country will have most of its states incorporated.
Premise: In the vanilla game, once a civilized country has acquired a bunch of land in Africa, it can organize that land into a "colonial administration" country, which is created with all its states incorporated.
Problem: These two mechanics are completely contrary to the AI incorporation logic (whether vanilla or modded) that I described in the previous section! It makes absolutely ZERO sense that the British and Dutch East India Companies have incorporated all of their states at the start of the campaign, despite having NOTHING in common with the Indian and Indonesian cultures. Also, when the mod that I described in the previous section is enabled, the complete absence of incorporated states in the two aforementioned countries causes some problems.
Solution: In a mod that I have written, if a subject country has zero incorporated states, then it is automatically annexed by its overlord. In a different mod that I have written, the colonial-administration mechanic is disabled.
Premise: In the vanilla game, up to five autosaves will be retained, and any older autosaves will be deleted.
Problem: A campaign of Victoria 3 lasts for a hundred years! If you've set your autosave interval to six months, you will not be able to look back even one decade to see how the world has evolved.
Solution: In a mod that I have written, the autosave limit is set to 99999—i. e., effectively removed.
Premise: In the vanilla game, if a state region is split between multiple states that belong to different countries, a state will receive the unmodified name of the state region (e. g., "Guyana") if it includes a majority of the state region's provinces, and will receive a modified name ("British Guyana") otherwise.
Problem: If one country owns almost all of of a state region and another country owns just one or two provinces (such as a treaty port) in the same state region, it can be difficult to realize that the state is split, because the first state will have an unmodified name and the second state will be very small and unobtrusive.
Solution: In a mod that I have written, the threshold for a state to have an unmodified name is increased from 50 percent to 99.9 percent—i. e., effectively never.
Premise: Several different factors affect an AI country's enthusiasm about the prosecution of a war. In the vanilla game, one of these factors is time. An AI country becomes more interested in ending a war as time passes: −100 when the war starts, increasing quickly to +0 at 10 months, and then increasing gradually to +100 at 110 months.
Problem: The quick increase in peace desire before the 10-month mark (before the battle fronts and the participants' economies have had a chance to get settled) makes sense, but the gradual increase in peace desire after the 10-month mark does not make sense (is duplicative of the factors for angry population, war-ravaged land, and high debt; often causes an AI country to make a white peace when it is on the precipice of victory).
Solution: In a mod that I have written, the gradual increase in peace desire after the 10-month mark is eliminated.
Premise: The USA starts the game with the Legacy Slavery law. In the vanilla game: If the USA experiences a civil war caused by the anti-slavery movement, then the other side becomes the FSA (Free States of America) and enacts Slavery Banned immediately (without going through the normal law-change process); and, if the USA experiences a civil war caused by the pro-slavery movement, then the other side becomes the CSA (Confederate States of America) and enacts Slave Trade immediately.
Problem: These forced law changes are unnecessarily heavy-handed. If the CSA wants to enact Slave Trade or the FSA wants to enact Slavery Banned, then let it; if it doesn't, don't force it.
Solution: In a mod that I have written, the aforementioned forced law changes are eliminated.
Premise: In the vanilla game, some important countries are formed through the "major unification" mechanic. Most prominently, in order to form Germany, Prussia normally declares a "Unification War", which automatically (1) annexes all German members of its sphere of influence and (2) declares war on any non-sphered, non-former-unification-candidate countries that hold German states (i. e., France, but not Austria-Hungary).
Problem: This is disgustingly ahistorical. Historically, Prussia did not attack France for Alsace-Lorraine. Rather, Bismarck tricked France into attacking despite being weak!
Solution: In a mod that I have written, all major unifications are eliminated and must be formed the normal way (by acquiring the required states through means other than a unification war).
Premise: In the vanilla game, different still-uncolonized states in the North American frontier are claimed by different countries, and therefore are not colonizable by other countries. The USA claims Wyoming, Nebraska, and Kansas; Mexico claims Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas; and the Republic of Texas claims New Mexico and Texas; while Nevada, Colorado, and Oklahoma are claimed by no one.
Problem: Historically, Nevada was claimed by Mexico, Colorado was claimed half by the USA and half by Mexico and Texas, Oklahoma was claimed by the USA, and only half of New Mexico was claimed by Texas.
Solution: In a mod that I have written, Nevada is claimed by Mexico, Colorado is split into two state regions of which one is claimed by the USA and the other is claimed by Mexico and Texas, New Mexico is split into two state regions of which one is claimed by Texas and both are claimed by Mexico, and Oklahoma <del>is claimed by the USA</del><ins>is not claimed by the USA (because that causes problems with premature annexation of the Indian Territory, due to the game's limited mechanics), but instead the state region of Texas is extended through the Oklahoma panhandle (as it historically was prior to 1850) and the Indian Territory is expanded to eliminate all uncolonized land in Oklahoma</ins>.
Premise: In the vanilla game, canals can be built in the state regions of Panama and Sinai, and nowhere else.
Problem: Historically, the USA actually picked Nicaragua for a canal, and switched to Panama only after getting a lower price for the assets of France's bankrupt Panama Canal Company.
Problem: Due to Victoria 3's focus on states rather than on provinces, if Colombia refuses to sell the Panama Canal Zone to a great power that wants to buy it, the great power then receives a claim, not just on the Canal Zone, but on the entire state region of Panama. The same applies to Sinai. This is absolutely nonsensical.
Premise: In the vanilla game, armies can march from Colombia proper to Panama.
Problem: Historically, this was impossible.
Solution: In the same mod (necessary due to limitations of map modding): Panama has been split into three state regions, western, central (Canal Zone), and eastern, and the eastern state is disconnected from Colombia proper in the invisible pathing system. Nicaragua has been split into two state regions, northern and southern (Lake Nicaragua), and the Panama Canal events have been copied-and-pasted for a Nicaragua Canal. [Sinai has been split into two state regions, eastern and western (Canal Zone).](not yet complete)
Premise: After the USA annexes northern Mexico, the annexed states become homelands of the USA's primary cultures. The Yankee culture gets California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, while the Dixie culture gets Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
Problem: Historically, California could have been divided into a free north and a slave south. And I find it unfair that Dixie doesn't get a window to the Pacific.
Solution: In the same mod (necessary due to limitations of map modding), California is divided into two state regions, northern and southern, and the southern portion goes to Dixie rather than to Yankee after the Mexican–American War.
Premise: In the vanilla game, the Corsican culture has three traits: European, Francophone, and Italophone.
Problem: Francophone??
Solution: In a mod that I have written, the Francophone trait is removed from the Corsican culture.
The mods can be downloaded here, if anybody cares.
zoink
30m ago
And the extra frustrating thing is the series has dealing with increasing diversity built right in! If they could have just been patient the could have had a few really heavy handed episodes on it, and they would have made sense.
erwgv3g34
45m ago
I haven't seen this show, but all the praise being lavished on it makes me go "Really? Do none of you remember the likes of St. Elsewhere, for example, which also trod this path of 'slice of life reality in a hospital serving lower economic area'?"
People don't watch old shows. They just empirically don't.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
57m ago
Yugoslavia.. there was a fair bit of pitched combat there, no?
Pitched, yes, but would you consider those fighting "armies" — particularly if you contrast "insurgencies" as something distinct, as your comment applies.
In any event, you seem to have a pretty narrow and idiosyncratic definition of what constitutes "a real war"; one which, it seems to me, most people do not share.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
Yes, but I parse this as "the convention ought to be broken. separately, we should introduce a whole new convention about never making casting decisions that reduce the pool of roles available to POC actors".
This is a bad parse. The convention is not being broken for reasons separate from "woke" concerns. And it's not all about the well-being of the POC actors either; part of the point is to portray more POC characters.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1hr ago
native underclass
WandererintheWilderness
1hr ago
"the convention ought to be broken but only in casting in the correct direction in the progressive stack"
Yes, but I parse this as "the convention ought to be broken. separately, we should introduce a whole new convention about never making casting decisions that reduce the pool of roles available to POC actors". The reason a white actor playing a historically black character would be lambasted is not that it would break the norm of physically-realistic casting; the outrage you would get in such a situation would very much be rooted in "how dare you take this part away from deserving black actors".
Goodguy
1hr ago
"Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument."
It's a good rule, whatever your political opinions are. If it is violated often enough, this place will just become another cesspit like Reddit or X, where most of the political discourse is just attention bait and emotional venting.
WandererintheWilderness
1hr ago
So there is no distinction between fantasy and a straightforward historical drama for which factual depictions are expected?
Perhaps there historically has been (although people sure didn't use to shy away from casting John Wayne as Genghis Khan). I am simply saying that the pro-race-blind-casting position is to reject the expectation of realistic depiction; not to surrender historical accuracy itself. The smart pro-race-blind-casting argument isn't "you should be allowed to make a movie where Cleopatra is canonically Chinese" but "you should be allowed to make a movie where Cleopatra, a Greek woman in-universe, is played by a Chinese woman". i.e. you should look past the fact the actress in Chinese in the same way you look past the fact that she's speaking modern English instead of subtitled Ancient Greek.
I sympathize with saying that this is a distracting burden to place on the audience. But people keep complaining "but Cleopatra wasn't Chinese. casting a Chinese Cleopatra would be inaccurate", and that is the position I am trying to defeat. "Cleopatra is canonically speaking Ancient Greek, but the audience doesn't understand it and the actress can't pronounce it properly anyway, so we'll depict the dialogue in (non-diegetic) modern English" -> "Cleopatra is canonically Greek, but Chinese actors need jobs and Hollywood doesn't make that many meaty historical dramas about Chinese history, so we'll cast a (non-diegetically) Chinese actress as Cleopatra".
WandererintheWilderness
1hr ago
You have chosen an especially poor example with Rings off Power, because it belies either an ignorance about the purpose behind Tolkien’s work, or else an intentional disregard for it. Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories are intended as an ersatz mythos for the historical peoples of the British Isles (…) To the extent that this matters to you, it should matter that the actors involved at least plausibly physically resemble somebody belonging to, or descending from, those peoples. It matters that they’re white in a way that it doesn’t matter if the actors in a Star Wars film are white.
No. You are still missing the point I was trying to make. By all means, perhaps it matters that the characters are white. My argument is that (the pro-race-blind-casting position is that) it shouldn't matter if a character who is theoretically white within the story is played by an actor who is visibly black. This is precisely what I meant about Hobbit genetics being neither here nor there to the debate: I am not denying that the Hobbits are meant to be white. I am saying that you can cast a bunch of black actors as white Hobbits.
If a director set out to make a Harriet Tubman biopic and chose to cast Saiorse Ronan in the title role, there is no amount of “she just really crushed the audition, and I’ve always wanted to work with her” that would suffice to excuse what would be (correctly) interpreted at a slap in the face to black Americans. They own Harriet Tubman’s legacy in a way that white people obviously don’t. She means something to them, it’s important for them to see themselves in her, and pretty much everybody understands that.
Well, yeah. Notably, however, this is a very different argument from it being wrong because Saiorse Ronan is physically too different from the historical Tubman and casting her would be unrealistic. The outrage would be rooted in the racial politics of denying a job from some other, black actress who rightfully "deserved" it more than a white actress ever could. If, say, a black actress with dwarfism were to be cast as Harriet Tubman, this would scarcely be more physically accurate than casting Saiorse Ronan, and yet I predict you'd see much fewer complaints.
(Also, in an ideal world, I, for one, believe a director who sincerely wanted to make that movie for the reasons you ascribe to him ought to be able to make it and not be branded a racist for having made it. That's neither here nor there because I'm trying to steelman the pro-race-blind-casting position as it actually exists, not mount my own argument, but I thought it would be worth clarifying so we know where we stand.)
I think you recognize that there is an explicitly redistributive aspect to modern race-swapped casting.
Indeed I do, and I've recognized it explicitly in this thread.
An aside, but I still don’t understand this phenomenon either, how he came to be seen by so many people as the image of the “evil right” (as opposed to the “dumb or incompetent right”).
Well, it's in the paranthetical!
He seems like an actual smart guy and he's virile and articulate. That means that he's perceived as having the ability to implement right-wing policy without the dysfunction that follows Trump. Trump is considered a "gross old pig baby with cheeto spray-tan" -- that's how he's described in caricatures -- but Vance is a handsome guy with an Indian wife. He could win moderates, even some women, in a way that Trump struggles with.
But he also comes from the VC world, and there's a lot on the left that's incredibly skeptical of capital, seeing it as a spooky, hidden power base that influences the world without many checks or balances. So not only is he smart, but he's a capitalist, "striking from a hidden base" to influence the world. I'm guessing he prompts the same kind of "this guy is spooky" vibes that Republicans often feel about people like Soros, and Democrats have long felt about the Kochs.
Incidentally, my idiosyncratic-but-liberal fiancée actually likes Vance quite a bit, she sees him as flawed but sincerely wanting to help the country.
I have a friend who doesn't like Trump, I think she sees him as a pig who's not focused enough to solve problems without making a mess of things. Her guy in 2024 was DeSantis.
I do wonder if we'll see an increased vote total for the GOP among women after Trump's off the ballot, and particularly once he's passed off this mortal coil and doesn't wield influence over the GOP.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
Yes, the supermercado was bustling. Something tells me this isn’t a Hispanic neighborhood. The actually poor whites and blacks won’t eat rice and beans.
Meat theft is definitely a thing, it’s easy for everyone and the social class a rung or two above the junkies that they have access to eats as much meat as they can afford.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1hr ago
The point I wanted to make is just that "the convention ought to be broken" is the serious pro-race-blind-casting position
No, it isn't. It varies between "the convention ought to be broken but only in casting in the correct direction in the progressive stack" and "we aren't breaking the convention, there really were all these black people in Britain who were covered up by racist historians" (to be fair the latter was Dr. Who).
Pongalh
1hr ago
But complaining that black RAF pilots are "historically inaccurate" makes about as much sense as complaining that if Kermit is supposed to be a frog, he shouldn't look like he's made out of felt.
So there is no distinction between fantasy and a straightforward historical drama for which factual depictions are expected? You don't think an East Asian Cleopatra would be massively distracting and rightly so? Or that a morbidly obese Marilyn Monroe would be a non-starter?
James Bond and LOTR. Both are fantasy.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
1hr ago
and to make fewer snide comments about the apparent population genetics of the Ring of Powers Shire being implausible, which is, again, missing the point on a level with complaining that a Muppet doesn't look like a real barnyard animal.
You have chosen an especially poor example with Rings Of Power, because it belies either an ignorance about the purpose behind Tolkien’s work, or else an intentional disregard for it. Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories are intended as an ersatz mythos for the historical peoples of the British Isles; the various peoples and factions of the world are rough stand-ins or symbolic idealizations of the various ethnic groups and their myths which have coalesced into the modern (white) peoples of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. (And, by extension, the Celtic and North Germanic peoples of Continental Europe.) Gondor as a rough analogue for Roman-Celtic Britain, Rohan as the horse-obsessed Anglo-Saxons, Elves as the remnants of the pre-Aryan Neolithic peoples, etc. To the extent that this matters to you, it should matter that the actors involved at least plausibly physically resemble somebody belonging to, or descending from, those peoples. It matters that they’re white in a way that it doesn’t matter if the actors in a Star Wars film are white.
You dodged Nybbler’s pretty incisive point about a non-black actor playing a historically black individual. If a director set out to make a Harriet Tubman biopic and chose to cast Saiorse Ronan in the title role, there is no amount of “she just really crushed the audition, and I’ve always wanted to work with her” that would suffice to excuse what would be (correctly) interpreted at a slap in the face to black Americans. They own Harriet Tubman’s legacy in a way that white people obviously don’t. She means something to them, it’s important for them to see themselves in her, and pretty much everybody understands that.
So then the question is, are white people allowed to own any historical figures or stories of their own? Is it right and fair for white British people, a great many of whom are directly descended from RAF pilots, to expect that a casting director honor the reality of what those men looked like, sounded like, etc.? Is it fair for Brits to want to see themselves reflected accurately on screen? What about their fictional/mythical but still important figures? King Arthur? Sherlock Holmes? Jeeves and Wooster? Mr. Darcy?
I expect that your answer might be, “Sure, but that doesn’t mean any individual casting director has any obligation to care about that.” But I don’t think you actually believe that. I think you recognize that there is an explicitly redistributive aspect to modern race-swapped casting. A desire to make up for past wrongs and throw a bone to non-white actors who’ve had a relatively rougher go of it than their white companions. Isn’t that why you would “encourage” directors to keep doing it if you had the power to do so?
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1hr ago
Wake me up when it's been independently verified that OpenAI didn't train on the test set again.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1hr ago
I think the MAGA base genuinely cares about seeing justice come to the children and young women victimized by this pedophile cabal. This sentiment runs deep among social conservatives.
I have a pretty hard time believing anyone with any real power cares about child sexual abuse qua child sexual abuse. And I don't mean this as a partisan claim. The Catholic Church of course had a big visible scandal, but left and right organizations alike prefer protecting power over protecting children. On a smaller scale, it's a common story (and I personally know examples, which, due to my social circle, likely all vote Democrat) for children to report their own parents covering up their abuse at the hands of an adult their parents apparently cared more about protecting than their own child. While reducing the abuse of children sounds like a great goal to, well, probably nearly everyone, in practice calls for it seem to only actually get used as a cudgel against the outgroup, and even then rarely to any significant effect.
The main reason why similar items targeted towards men and women sometimes have different prices isn't for the purpose of trickery, it's because prices are heavily determined by factors like economy of scale. People value product differentiation enough to sometimes buy the more expensive product, so companies make it, and then they charge a price that recoups the money they spent on manufacturing/shipping/etc. another product line.
The actual overall "pink tax" seems to be approximately zero:
Gender-Based Pricing in Consumer Packaged Goods: A Pink Tax?
It is one of those issues that tells you much more about the speaker than the subject. Why is there a "pink tax" meme? Because many people view the world through the lens of feminism, so when they see a male-targeted product that happens to be cheaper than the female-targeted product next to it they believe this is an injustice and a systematic issue. Feminism's influence as an ideology means the "pink tax" then becomes a political issue, the subject of discourse and even legislation, without ever doing the first step of finding out whether it actually exists. Even if it existed it would probably just be a result of something like women statistically valuing product differentiation more so there's many smaller product lines, but we don't even have to move on to that argument because there isn't a notable difference in the first place.
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