Chrkeller said:
Who knows. Honestly I think most people just like to complain and will find reasons (real or imaginary). To be clear I think it is a major problem on both sides. I blame social media for being an echo chamber of negativity. |
The thing is that even though I disagree with them, I could pretty clearly articulate their reasons, since they were well explained. Fat suits have been traditionally used in a way to mock the overweight. Shallow Hal, the Nutty Professor, etc. They have contributed to negative stereotypes of obese people. There also are obsese actors with few opportunities, and this takes away from those actors.
Again, I disagree with these arguments, but they are logical and consistently applied when and only when fatsuits are being used. So this does seem to be the actual issue.
On the other hand, I don't believe anyone has clearly explained the issue with black Ariel. People say it's because of changing the original story which is somehow bad, yet the Disney version is already a huge departure from the original story. Moreover, there have been tons of changes to other characters in Disney remakes or similar projects, and nobody has objected except when the change involves race, gender, or sexuality, which are often the basis for discrimination. And, unlike with the example of the fat suit, which I can reasonably speculate causes actual harm in the world warranting objection, nobody can point to any sort of real harm caused by making Ariel black.
Unlike the fatsuit, in this case, the argument that changing the story is somehow automatically is bad is not logical and not consistently applied. So, it doesn't seem that is the real objection. Likewise, the argument that pandering is bad is similarly stupid because all movies are designed to make money and to appeal to certain groups, and the CCC (Cancel culture conservatives) never complain when they are being pandered to.
Cobretti2 said:
Ah yes I forgot about gender and sexual orientation in my comments too. She-Hulk, Eternals I seen so I will comment here. I agree the negativity on these was over the top. I found them both enjoyable. When the writer last week said he got about 365 bux for it, people were slamming him that he got over paid. The reality is, there is a lot of men out there who are just fuckwits who just hate women because simply they can't get one. If you look on these forums we had a couple good contenders of this in the past who are now not on here (well actively posting). The posts of these men are easy to find as you always see them blaming women for everything and those memes with two guys drinking coffee and they each say to each other "women" and laugh. Freedom of speech is the biggest human fuckup in history, because it allows dickheads like Andrew Tate and Jon Zherka to exist in the public eye, intoxicating the less intelligent people of this world. The sexuality one is just weird, as I personally don't even think about people's sexuality in movies lol, so why complain about it. The only time that it's been in my mine is during a bond movie, i.e. when is he going to get together with the woman he is rescuing, but that was part of his character and part of the plot. Most movies don't have a plot that revolves around a person trying to sexually seduce a person of the opposite sex. |
It's not so much hating women. It's more hating women when they go outside certain roles, and hating that the media world no longer revolves around them.
That's why She-Hulk is a good example. Because She-Hulk is a show that is very much marketed specifically to females or at least to feature issues relevant to females and address them from the female perspective. It is largely focusing on Jen's internal struggles which are very much influenced by her status as a female in a male dominated (lawyer) world. The awesome thing is that this is intentionally used to mirror the struggle of launching a show that is unapologetically female in the male dominated superhero space. Predictably, the usual suspects hated it from episode 1, which made it great when they constantly made fun of them in the subsequent episodes, since they knew the hate was coming.
Compare this to something like say Kill Bill. Kill Bill has a strong female lead, but she is staying within the role of femme fatale. She is a sexy and mainly cold blooded killer. Kill Bill is made to typical male sensibilities, so people were pretty much ok with it. There is some subtext about men using and manipulating women, but it's enough in the background not to make a splash.
So, hating women is an oversimplification. It's more a hatred of anything that defies typical gender roles. Also, and perhaps more importantly, it's a hatred and fear of media which is designed for groups that have other viewpoints, because this shows that they are no longer the only group that matters, and that they no longer wield 100% of the power.
I'm pretty sure this is really the crux of it. I love Disney, but I'm pretty sure they don't do anything out of the good of their heart, they do it for money. They are obviously making a conscious effort to diversify their roles, and the reason is because they thing that they will make more money this way, whether they are right or wrong. As much as they want to scream go woke and go broke, companies are continually trending in this direction. I don't think they're doing it because they are great people, or that they're afraid the kids won't think they're cool, they're doing it because they think that's what's best for business (again, right or wrong). And, that indicates that the groups of people who would like more diversity are viewed to have more power than they did. The Ben Shapiros and Ted Cruz's of the world don't like that.
Soundwave said:
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. |
30 years was probably generous, but that's when I feel, just based on my intuition that they really started making more of a push for diversity. Not when they're finished.
I think it's pretty well established that representation has a significant impact. When they were arguing against segregation they had the famous clark doll experiment, where they had black children play with dolls. They frequently said the white doll was good and well behaved and that the black doll was bad, ugly, and so on. That's not about media, but it spawned a lot of studies that showed similar results related to media portrayals. As a former teacher, that definitely lines up with my anecdotal evidence. Which is why changing a role from an underrepresented group to an already well represented group is not the same as changing a role from a well represented group to an underrepresented group.
Last edited by JWeinCom - on 25 July 2023
