Cobretti2 said:
Again you bring up history, just because it was bad doesn't mean you overcorrect it to catch up. Throughout time all colours of people have oppressed and killed others, be it because of race, religion, sexuality or simply wanting more land. Do we forever hold a grudge against that history or do we try to move forward and do the right thing by all? We are supposedly much smarter then our ancestors so should we not be making smarter decisions for all humanity? You bring up sport. NBA is a good example where now majority of the team is black. The question is why is that the case? The simple answer is they are better basketball players and athletes. Now NBA is a sport that is watched world wide as entertainment. Does that suddenly mean fuck we should cater to the viewing audience so they feel better and have a white dude, an Asian dude a Latin dude and 2 black guys as the starting line up for a team? Absolutely not, we watch sport to see the best of the best play it. Now how did basketball and NFL to an extend suddenly become so black dominant? Is it perhaps because it all starts with education. As time went on they were given better opportunities to complete high school and go to college and then get drafted to play at that level. Perhaps acting is the same now. Maybe need better opportunities to be accepted into acting degrees, maybe they don't want to study acting as there is plenty of other more interesting things for them to do. Maybe they are already represented based on total population like curl has said, who knows. You brought up a few black actors but I can list way more in the last 4 decades that I did not feel were tokens as their skills on screen showed why they had those roles. Their roles in those movies/shows felt natural as can be and not once did I think here we go again he only got the part because he was black because hey no one made a big deal about allowing a black person to you know earn a living as an actor. Let's see of the top of my head, Carl Weathers Forest Whitaker, Morgan Freeman, Cuba Gooding Jr, Laurence Fishburne, Mekhi Phifer, Wesley Snipes, Danny Glover, Samuel L Jackson, Jamie Foxx, Don Cheadle, Sidney Poitier, Ossie Davis, Chris Tucker, Idris Elba, Richard Pryor and James Earl Jones all have had great acting careers in leading roles in movies, television and even voice acting. When you're hot you're hot and everyone wants a piece of you no matter what colour you are. Bill Cosby one minute on top of the world, next doing prison time. Again to me when you make a big deal of race of that actor instead of their ability it takes away from their credentials because its like an up yours into people's faces, guess what we went black because we wanted to piss you off and not because they are talented. It is no different then atheists attacking religious people just to get a reaction. It isn't needed humanity is one race we fucking need to start acting like one species. |
Or one group of people just need to get used to the fact that they don't live in a monolithic world where everything revolves around them.
Black/latino/Asian/native American/mixed people have navigated Hollywood being 95%+ white for decades and those audience demographics have also accepted that they don't get to see many people on screen that look like themselves for a long time, so now that they get a few roles here and there, why is it such a concern of yours that they need to be lectured and "put in their place"? Where you actively as concerned when the situation was reversed? Who is really being hurt by an Ariel being black when Disney has already made like 3 or 4 Little Mermaid movies with a white animated one? Why is that something that some people feel they must tear down? How many white actors get roles all the time based on just their looks and really not much else?
Of Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper and Matthew McCoungahey and Margot Robbie and Scarlett Johansen are they really actually the best actors in the world or are they getting their parts in large part because of how they look? This is a business where Ashton Kutcher gets nearly as many lead roles as Denzel Washington, Channing Tatum gets more chances than Sidney Poitier, Megan Fox was a bigger "star" at her peak than Angela Bassett ... is that based on acting ability? So I sorry I don't buy that "well PoC shouldn't want parts based on how they look", when white people have been getting parts on the basis of how they look for decades on end and that continues to this day.
It's not even like when there is the odd, small numbered role that gets race swapped to a PoC that there aren't still plenty of roles for white actors. They still get the majority of roles do they not?
It was different when white actors were stealing jobs like Prince of Persia or Emma Stone playing Asian roles because it's not like there were 50 other roles for a Persian/middle eastern or Asian actor to get instead. When that happened, it was effectively locking out entire ethnicities because those types of roles would be the only role they'd have a realistic shot at. Look at Mena Mousoud who played Aladdin in a movie that made a billion+ dollars at the box office, he can't get a role in other movies even despite being in such a blockbuster, now if that role of Aladdin was give to a white actor, which they probably would have done 15 years ago, dude would even be locked out of that.
If a white actor like Emma Stone misses out on a Little Mermaid role or something, they have 50 other chances at other parts as they are heavily favored over a PoC actor in 80%+ of their auditions guaranteed. Like maybe the people who are getting a stick up their ass about this should chill the fuck out, there's still a white Star Lord, white Peter Parker, white Ethan Hunt, white Thor, plenty of white actors like Jon Cena and Jason Satham have been added to the Fast series to make up for Paul Walker's absence, no less than 3 (4?) concurrent white Batmans (lol), there's been 11 Star Wars movies and the lead in all 11 of them is white, etc. etc. there are still the vast majority of movies that have a white lead. One doesn't need to act like a baby when other ethnicities get a chance at a big role 1/10 times (and that's being generous) or lecture groups of people on why they shouldn't want to see themselves reflected in some of the media they consume.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 13 July 2023
