rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

that's basically what elmo is saying

as i read him anyways

not to be faux naive but the idea of somebody rejecting a fictional character based on their skin color is just too ludicrous for me to take seriously

this would all be easier if we could see their birth certificates

american teens betrayed, deceived, tricked into caring about fictional black people

I think this nails it. It's not the projection, it's the rage and betrayal. It's fucking awful, really.

All these people are basically saying is that they can't identify with -- or sympathize with or be emotionally involved with -- a black character like they could with a white character -- even when they are the SAME fucking character portrayed in two different media. I think that's pretty racist.

i mean, putting aside that they willfully disregarded the description of the character's race to begin with

Even if these are like 12-14 year olds tweeting this shit, that's a fine age at which to be horrifically shamed about saying asshole racist stuff.

I think this nails it. It's not the projection, it's the rage and betrayal. It's fucking awful, really.

OTM. even absent any overt rage at the betrayal, an awful lot of people seem to be saying that they're outright incapable of caring about or feeling sympathy for a black character. maybe i'm naive, but that's shocking to me.

if you must read ahead, read the wiki summaries of the books

this is insane

Even if these are like 12-14 year olds tweeting this shit, that's a fine age at which to be horrifically shamed about saying asshole racist stuff.

I don't know about that. Kids of that age committing crimes would be granted some sort of anonymity, usually, it seems a bit off to be shaming them nationally for this when it would be easy enough to blank out their names.

My objection isn't so much their age, though, it's the inherent confirmation bias involved in scouring Twitter for objectionable material and then writing it up as a news story. It doesn't matter if it's "actress + racial epithet", "i'd let Chris Brown beat me" or "Muamba + LOL", or whatever, you're going to uncover some nasty people saying nasty things whatever you go looking for. It's horrible and depressing but doesn't, in itself, demonstrate much about society.

The earlier stories about Hunger Games communities online being split over the casting had more to go on than simply reproducing the tweets of random idiots.

at some point confirmation bias is overwhelmed by, well, confirmation

we have probably reached that point with this

Possibly, but i'm not sure there's much of a sense of that from the article. The difficulty with this approach is that it's impossible to tell how widespread a viewpoint the individuals are representing. The film has got great reviews, took tonnes of money and the stars have been widely praised in the fan communities. How many racist idiots does it take to tip the balance towards it having a negative reception?

that's a fair question, but in this case i think it's appropriate to draw attention to the blatant racism, regardless of how many or how few people are promoting it

Absolutely. The casting, and the (frequently racist) reaction to it, is definitely something that needed to be discussed. I think it was pretty well analysed before the film was released, though, and i'm not sure what this particular article adds.

i think the point is that it is p much always worthwhile to call attention to how casually racism has been adopted by horrible youth?

like ok i guess an article pointing out that some idiots on twitter are racist is obvious or subject to confirmation bias (btw who cares) but that's ok because the problem with the world isn't that there are too many articles about racists, it's that there are fucking racists

like, you say that the casting and reaction to it was "something that needed to be discussed" as it is now an issue that has been covered, accounted for, sorted. that might make sense if it was the casting of a dumb movie that was the actual issue---it wasn't, and the real problem is extant and ongoing.

xp i have learnt recently that despite the truism that the book is always better than the movie, this is actually not always the case. cf game of thrones.

this is wackily wrong, i never understand the sentiment. it only makes sense when you're limiting yourself to remember the classic novel adaptations and not like, 80% of adaptations that make a decent movie out of a forgettable book or story (the godfather! gone with the wind! shawshank redemption? l.a. confidential? etc)

anyway back to racism

exactly - for example, seeing Ford Prefect portrayed by Mos Def was kind of a shock, since I remembered the book describing him as a tall, proper Englishman, sort of the antithesis of cool

obviously it all matters very little, though I do think the Asian community complaining about the movie 21 had a point, since in that case their ethnicity actually did matter in the story

― Estimate the percent chance that a whale has ever been to the moon? (frogbs), Monday, March 26, 2012 5:15 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think this is silly too; it does matter. even if thresh and rue were written in the novels as white, people still wouldn't have a right to complain about casting them black. whitewashing happens all the gd time and there are already much fewer roles available to POC (and those roles are typically stereotypical/one-dimensional). reversing the trend isn't a bad thing. and adding mos def to a movie is always a good idea (i hope i'm not the lone be kind rewind fan here).

LA Confidential book is sweaty thrillride, movie is a damp piece of shit

in this weird case, mos def's american imperialism dominates, like if will smith was cast as james bond.

actually, is mos def canadian?

no

twitter definitely makes it easier to document racist reactions.

pity. canadian/australian usurping of brit roles would be acceptable.

i love the l.a. confidential movie but the point is ppl don't realize there are a lot of good book-to-film adaptations simply because they don't realize how many movies are based on books

russell crowe & guy pearce also do very good non-american performances in it.

giggling a bit at the idea of canadian mos def tbh

mos dehf

There it is.

kudos

the point is ppl don't realize there are a lot of good book-to-film adaptations simply because they don't realize how many movies are based on books

the point is LA Conf is a signal example of a packed, bustling book being made into a dull, dumb movie, you pwned yourself

Now this is an oddly timed subject: Lady on the flight next to me into boston here was reading LA Conf the entire way.

(I, on the other hand, finished a collection of Batman Confidential reprints)

Quite exciting, I know

Also, Whilce Portacio's art hasn't exactly improved over the years

white jazz should be a movie but its totally unfilmable

God its been a loooooooooong time since I came across the name 'Whilce Portacio'

say it quickly and it's like laughing

didn't he go back to the Philippines for like 10 years and become a dentist?

xp I'm not sure I know how to pronounce it correctly!

Lenny Kravitz is v. v. pretty

kind of can't believe there are straight women who aren't attracted to him, he should break through all kinds of anti-black and anti-Jewish bigotry

like "whyce" iirc

the point is LA Conf is a signal example of a packed, bustling book being made into a dull, dumb movie, you pwned yourself

not in my experience! one of my fav 90s movies precisely because i can never stop watching it once it comes on cable. (dumb maybe, but not dull.) it's also very pretty.

like, you say that the casting and reaction to it was "something that needed to be discussed" as it is now an issue that has been covered, accounted for, sorted. that might make sense if it was the casting of a dumb movie that was the actual issue---it wasn't, and the real problem is extant and ongoing.

tbh, i'd agree if the article was showing that this is something that was transparently much, much bigger than the sample size it looked at. It may well be but showing that there are at least eight prejudiced kids on Twitter doesn't necessarily expose the baseline racism of America.

In August 2000, Portacio fell into a diabetic coma as a result of a failing pancreas. He woke up a week later, thirty pounds lighter, and unable to walk, stand or even draw. Only six months later was he able to pick up a pencil and draw. According to his blog, "My mind could see what I wanted to draw but my hand couldn't accomplish it."[6]

In 2006, Portacio returned to his artistic duties at Wildstorm on Wetworks vol. 2, which was being written by Mike Carey. Unfortunately, Portacio's reputation for being unable to maintain a steady work schedule caught up with him again as Wetworks vol. 2 suffered from numerous delays and Portacio ended up leaving the book with issue #6, but he continues to illustrate cover art monthly since leaving as the book's interior artist.[citation needed] The new Wetworks series was short-lived though, lasting only 15 issues. He also began art duties on the new monthly DC Comics series Batman Confidential.

http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/Batman%20Rules%20of%20Engagement%20Andy%20Diggle%20Whilce%20Portacio%20and%20Richard%20Friend.jpg

the way he did bruce wayne's face always seems so off

Also, speaking of filmic adaptions of books, can I just say that it drives me nuts that my dad the retired English teacher favors the first two Harry Potter films the best, since they were the "closest" to the books in that Chris Columbus pretty much just had the cast reading the book line by line onscreen? I mean, really, effing Alfonso Cuaron did the third flick, and he goes for the drab Columbus ones.

Note that this is a piece with my father's rather clueless and hilariously reactionary political stances, so there you have it.

Whilce looks like such a friendly chap in the pic on his Wiki page tbh

Also presumably it was made clear to Chris Columbus that Home Alone or no Home Alone, if he tried anything "interesting" with the first two Harry Potter films, he'd never work in this town again.

Vague relevance to this thread = the awesome decision to cast Cho Chang as scottish, increasing her dimensions to 2.

Yes!

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/320219/20120327/hunger-games-movie-racist-tweets-twitter-racism.htm

racist-tweets-twitter-racism