Soundwave said:
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.
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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.
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Curl has already touched on the population and actor distribution today so I won't repeat it, but will say they are already fairly represented
The actors you listed all have sex appeal to men and women hence why they are chosen. They are not the greatest actors but they are not the worst. Not different to Jessica Alba and Halley Berry in their primes as an example.
As for why John Cena and Jason Statham got picked is purely because of popularity, Cena from wrestling fan and Statham just plays bad ass roles. Hell if you have an issue with that take it up with Vin Diesel (a man of colour) who decided to make a business decision and pick the best people to sell tickets. Look at Asian countries they are all coloured people but they still value fair skin people in their culture more then the darker ones. Bollywood even has fairer skinned Indians as main lead actors over their. darker counter parts. Hell my wife hates her father because he used to bleach herd with skin products to make her fairer as darker wasn't seen as attractive, where as to me it was the opposite.
Denzel is picky on the movies he takes on and wants to be the MAIN role. He also enjoys doing his theatre work so isn't over committing to things. I bet he could be in triple the amount of movies if he wanted to Laurence Fishburne and Forest Whitaker both have 120+ acting credits to their name, double that of Denzel so there is plenty of work to be had. You don't always have to be the main actor can be equal role with 2-3 other people.
Now this is why I say the media make things racist.
Zoe Kravitz, voiced Catwoman in Lego Batman. She did a fantastic voice.
The direct for the new batman movie wanted her to take the role as Catwoman in the movie, however there was scheduling issues with Zoe that meant she may not be able to do the part. So Matt Reeves said he wants to find someone like Zoe to feel the role. Now the media took that as oh he wants a coloured woman to play Catwoman and made a big deal out of it wen no such words were used by Matt Reeves, instead of focus on the great job she did with Lego Batman. To me it also made no sense because Catwoman has been played by two black women in the past so it wasn't such a bi deal then why make it a race thing now? Guess want no one was up in arms about a coloured person playing the role then, Halley Berry got it because she just won an Oscar and was on top of the acting world as an actress. Sadly the movie was poorly executed and killed her career.
Now why I think Hollywood has become tokenism. Snow White is the latest example of it as no real thought went into selecting the right actors for it, which also was mentioned today in the thread.
Snow White, well it's in the name, however that isn't even the biggest issue. Let's look at beauty. Snow White is meant to be the most beautiful in the land, and the Evil Queen is jealous of it. Yet they cast a hotter looking woman as the Evil Queen, so that is another balls up. Yes I know there is makeup that can be applied, but FMD you picked one of the most popular and best looking actresses atm for the role. Now wait there is more... like one of those cheap infomercials you see at 3am on TV. The DWARFS have all been replaced with coloured people that are NORMAL height. FMD, people talk about equal representation. A story that was written in 1812 and has a LONG history decides to go all token champion on the story and kick the smallest minority in the world dwarf people in the head and say you are not wanted. The one fucking story that dwarfs have been represented for over 200 years means nothing to Hollywood. It is hard enough for people with dwarfism to get jobs as is in roles and here was the perfect opportunity to cast them (guess what they come in various colours too). So to make themselves feel good in their office, they committed a bigger injustice and fucked over an even smaller minority, which is estimated to be 30,000-60,000 people in America.
This is also why I keep sounding like a broken record. You can't over compensate the actions of the past (in any historical event not just movies). All you can do is learn from human mistakes in the past and try to be better moving forward. Over compensation will just mean that you made another group feel shit for something they did not cause and eventually that group will eventually get pissed off with it and react. It is already started. People have abandoned going to cinema and watching Disney's movies because they trying to be a white knight that no one asked for.
As I also said many great coloured people have been in movies in the 80s-00s (I used this period as that is what I grown up in) and never did ever feel like those actors were tokens because Hollywood and media didn't make a big deal out of their colour. They talked about their acting ability or popularity etc. There was 30 years in my life of condition to think all people of any colour are humans and now all we hear in the media (mainly from America) is colour wars on the news about real events, about movies etc. I don't understand why they trying to divide everyone. The more divide the media pushes the more credibility a Donald Trump person gains. We seen how popular he got and become president. Now if this stupidity doesn't even then I can see someone just like Hitler becoming the president of the US, then we shall see the chaos that it brings. To end, in the words of Eddie Murphy everyone should fuck everyone till we all the same colour might be the only bloody solution that solves this problem if we do not grow intellectually as ONE RACE, the human RACE irrespective of skin tone and work together to prosper.
Last edited by Cobretti2 - on 18 July 2023