I’m encouraged to see so many in this thread who don’t give a fuck about skin colour, it gives me more hope in humanity :)
I feel like this is one of those fake culture war flashpoints that was invented for people to get angry about, but doesn’t really matter and doesn’t impact the quality of the film (usually… I think that cowboy actor playing Genghis Khan back in the 40s or 50s was dumb as shit). But before the Internet outrage culture, Xena Warrior Princess made Helen of Troy black, and no one batted an eyelash. When they made Boomer an Asian woman in Battlestar Galactica, no one gave a fuck. But the amount of manic offence and outrage that’s been taken over black Elves/Dwarves is hilarious, sad, and stupid as fuck. A flaming manic tantrum of virtue signalling over stuff that doesn’t matter.
On White Washing.
I think the main problem of white washing wasn’t so much that Matoko was played by Scarlett Johansson—that was a legitimately good casting choice and they were lucky to get her. White washing was a macro film industry problem where it was rare to see a person of a non-white skin colour or non-white ethnic background in American cinema or TV that wasn’t a stereotype, a foreigner, a token role, or cast in a category film/show (egregious examples include kung fu and blacksploitation).
I can empathize with people who feel they’re not a part of the culture because there was less than 3 of them on 9 seasons of Friends, despite New York City having 2 million of them (black, Latin American, or LGBT). I get that. A show like Friends is basically the main “this is New York” for a lot of the world for nearly a decade. But white men spinning on their heads in rage because a character in an adaptation/remake of some story written in the 1920s or 30s has been made into a black person… Nah! :D
On the positive side, it seems histrionic outrage culture in gaming fandom has gone down significantly from the GamerGate era. But the hissy fits are worse than ever among the dogmatic “true fans” of streaming shows and films. Some of them even threaten cast and crews with rape and murder—fanatical dogmatism exceeding the most extreme tactics of the Westboro Baptist church.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
