Race swapping and whitewashing

[Soundwave]

JWeinCom said:

Look at the reaction to Barbie. A female is playing a character has always been female. No race swap/gender swap/etc.

Yet the usual suspects still have a problem with it and are whining about it being woke, a term they still cannot define.

That's the thing about it, and why this topic really needn't be taken seriously. Because it has nothing to do with anything political, or whatever you want to call it. What it is is that there's a group that has, up till about 30 years ago, been exclusively catered to. Now that the universe is not revolving around them anymore, they are throwing a tantrum. They are using raceswapping as a trojan horse because it's an argument that makes intuitive sense, although not if you put any thought into it, but that's not remotely the issue. The issue is that they're not the only ones who matter anymore. And if there is any big scale project that is not catering to them, they'll find a problem. 

What's that saying? 

"For the privileged, equality can feel like oppression"

When you are used to having everything revolve around you, and it suddenly doesn't then tends to be a reaction akin to a spoiled child. 

Your 30 year number is generous too, white men have had entertainment basically revolve around them for the better part of up until 8 years or so? Even today they are still the primary represented group in most big budget Hollywood media. 

Walk a mile in someone else's shoes sometimes, I was watching this dude's video and imagine being in that person's shoes, your animated representation is so bad that basically most of the characters that are supposed to be your ethnicity are animals. 

If you were a white kid, can you image for even 5 minutes what it would be like if all the cartoons you consumed basically only showed you in animal form for the most part? I never thought of it that way, but when you take a little while to mull it over, you realize, yeah that is pretty fucked up. And I agree this stuff does affect kids (the point he makes at 1:20 in). I'm sure non-white kids love video games, animated movies, superheroes, etc. as much as white kids do, but when you never see yourself represented or it's only mainly in animal character that's coded to be a certain race it probably does have a psychological affect. You come to understand at a very young age your "group" of people are basically "the other". 

So when you're that angry white dude complaining about like a black Disney character ... maybe take a minute to think about that. You get plenty of representation, what you're railing about might mean the world to some 6 or 7 or 8 year old who isn't used to seeing themselves represented much. I don't give that much of a fuck about The Little Mermaid, but I can understand how the live action version may mean the world to many 5-15 year old girls some where who aren't used to seeing themselves represented in that way. Bet you don't feel so big about it when looking at it through that lens.

Last edited by Soundwave - on 24 July 2023