The racist backlash to The Little Mermaid and Lord of The Rings is exhausting and extremely predicta

That will certainly draw an audience. Many that never saw the original will now hate the Bolivian Army

 

You sure about that?

 

Maybe, just needed the trailer to confirm. Disney remakes historically haven't been good. One notable exception was Mulan, thought that was fantastic. The new Pinochio isn't too bad. But most of their stuff hasn't been great.

 

I've got a granddaughter who turns 4 in two months. She's really into Little Mermaid, almost as much as she's into Frozen.
My daughter showed the trailer to her today. Her reaction was what I expected: She loved it, wanted to watch it again and again and can't wait for the movie.
Made no comment about how Ariel looked.

 

Ahhh. Made me smile to read that. Beautiful

 

I'm asking this because I want to be better.
Is it truly racism if some mythical Hollywood movie changes the race of the actor/actress and as the viewing public don't like it?
Would it be racism if' as early stated, they changed the shaft actor to a white guy?
Would it be racism if they put a black guy as Bruce Lee?
Made a Seinfeld remake with 4 Asian people?
Had 2 white guys play Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in a Bad Boys remake?
I don't particularly think that if you don't like that it makes you racist. Am I wrong here?

 

Look I’ll likely be taking the family to see it hoping it’s not a complete disaster like the live tv version but if you you don’t think these castings are intentional you haven’t been keeping up with Hollywood politics. They openly talk about not hiring writers and actors because of their caucasity. It seems they think since this was done to other races in the past it’s only equitable to do it to the whites now. I don’t blame black folks for this nonsense it’s a white liberal plague.

 

Since hollywood has run out of new ideas, I guess they could just remake every movie with minorities and trannies, it's a win, win. They could get all the black folks and the woke white libs money both at the same time.

 

If you aren't making a movie where racism or race is part of the plot, I don't think the casting matters all that much. You wouldn't cast a white actor to play Shaft in a blacksploitation film because that would be absurd, but in a film about a fantasy world, there's no reason everyone has to be white with British accents. Didnt matter that Denzel played Macbeth, because race as a concept isn't really part of the plot. People have remade Shakespeare outside even the time and setting of the original plays without much objection, and men played all the female roles basically until the 20th century in those too, and that was considered "normal."

 

So you still didn't answer the question. Is not liking these roles being changed to different races in itself racist?

 

I think that if you think because a white guy played a role in 1950 or cartoon made decades ago was colored white, that its now a white part in perpetuity you have some serious issues to say the least. Like if you think the original is better in terms of quality, fine, it almost always is. But the idea that certain things that have nothing to do with race belong to a certain race is definitely a little racist. Things are always going to be remade or reimagined, and its not like white people are shut out of entertainment. They still get most of the parts!

 

Don't add variables! Recognize the superior mind, borne of superior unapologetic genetics, with their clever abstract hypotheticals meant to trap your lesser mind

 

Sometimes I think bright line rules are tough because context and intent matter IMO. Let's take sex instead of race, for example. Bill Maher made a reference to a movie - I think it's The Aeronauts - where it was based upon a true story but they changed the characters to make one of the men a woman. I get that they want to be diverse, but that's a situation where I understand the complaints about deviating from real events to make what some people see as a political point. But even in that context, I think it would be strange to view that as a sexist attack against men. On the other hand, so much about Bruce Lee's early life and his moving to America involved his Chinese ancestry that I would really question the intent of anyone who decided to make a movie about him where he was a White guy from Ireland. The mermaid thing is weird to me, although there are many Americans who say they've become tired of seeing so many minorities, gay people, etc., in the media.

 

Excellent. Much better than I could've articulated. I will add one minor thing which is not inconsistent, just an addition. We should all recognize that we are not necessarily the target demographic. Disney properties are weird things, because they both want to expand their appeal to new generations and audiences while still recognizing that their legacy properties retain a lot of meaning to adults that watched them as children. That's a hard line to toe.

But ultimately, the intended audience for this work is probably on the younger side. Maybe not children per se, but certainly not older people. There's a lot of power in representation, and there's a lot of pre-existing representation for the dominant groups.

And things land differently. My daughter is now 26. I didn't have to hear "Let it Go" all the time when Frozen came out like I would have if she was younger. But even females her age were cognizant of and moved by the fact that the story emphasized the bond between two sisters rather than defining the lead female character in reference to her romantic relationship with a male. That was powerful for them in ways I don't understand.

But here's my main point, which I took too long to get to. We have masses of media these days. That can be a negative for building societal commonalities and community. But it does mean that there's not much opportunity cost to each independent decision in media creation.

There will probably be four other remakes of The Little Mermaid in one form of media or the other in the next 15 years. You will be almost invariably be able to take your choice. I think many of those that complain (in good faith, which is a minority of complainers) still view each production through the prism of there being one dominant societal depiction of any story.

So Ariel is now "black". But that's just not the case any longer. Media is highly segmented. Ariel is still white in prior versions and likely will be again. And anyone that has raised children will tell you that prior versions are rewatched. A lot. Disney Plus is not removing the old versions. They remain available. (Not getting into Song of the South)

All of us likely have more than enough media to consume within our preferred taste and genre no matter what it may be. Obviously there could be exceptions. But if there's an audience that will pay dollars, media creators will create content. There's a whole cottage industry of stories designed to appeal to evangelical fundamentalists. Good for them.

What we don't have as much anymore is the dominant societal depiction - THE official Ariel, etc..

I analogize it somewhat to watching our favorite team when I was growing up. My beloved Gators were on TV one, maybe two times a year. Most of the times it was just Otis Boggs on the radio. There were three networks, and if they didn't carry your favorite content/team, you didn't see them

Now everything is on. I haven't missed watching a Gator game in years. I've occasionally had to shell out a few dollars but I don't have to miss watching.

So I don't need to resent the teams that get more frequent national coverage now, largely a function of current success, because it keeps me from seeing my beloved Gators. The only reason to resent them is if I want the sports media to present the Gators as among the elite. I know that's important for a lot of people. I won't deny enjoying that coverage when we merit it. But I don't resent being deprived from seeing my team, because I get to see them. And I'm confident that if they do well enough, they will be held up as an elite team will all that means.

The correlations are never perfect, but the same thing is largely true in popular media. The two highest grossing movies of late that have saved theaters are Maverick and Minions. I haven't seen the latest version of Maverick, but it least travels on IP that was traditional conventional "red blood" American. The point is, if it's good enough, it will become a dominant property. If not, it may stick to being a niche production appealing to a specialized audience.

We all have the content we desire. The question is whether we want to feel that we are part of THE official dominant culture, THE Ohio State of pop culture, which is what I "hear" when I hear these complaints. Same energy. But dominant status has to be earned now in a way that it didn't used to be.

 

You need to get out more

 

I mean to me it seems clear that libbie ass Hollywood is doing their best to “redo” or “reboot” American history in a way. That is my beef anyway. It seems predictable that libbies hate a certain white America and they have the power to attempt “changing” the whites.
They did a black Annie movie and I recall it bombed. Just come up with some original ideas already.

 

But you and your cohort are too smart to be tricked so easily!

 

Yup, even conservative filmmakers always make white men the bad guy, like in that Hunter Biden movie. They should have cast a black guy as Hunter to really stick it to the libs.

 

I thought skin color didn’t matter?