I watch GOT and honestly it was a blessing then it didn’t go to a black Woman. The Sand Snakes/Dorne is regarded as the worst arc in the series due to horrible sexist writing and just bad story telling.
“If you have to have someone who looks like you in the media in order for you to relate then maybe you’re the one who’s racist"
“children don’t see/care about race"
“Color doesn’t matter! It’s about the actor/story!”
“there are bigger issues to talk about than representation”
“they whitewashed because they need to make a profit and attract their target audience”
“historical accuracy”
“It’s a European fairytale/story so of course the characters will be white!”
“whitewashing isn’t real”
In case anyone’s wondering about the Earthsea thing?
I’ve read the books. Most of the cast should have been brown; Vetch (who, in the books, was Sparrowhawk’s student mentor and close friend who happened to be a fat dude rather than being the pudgy comic relief) should have been black. In the sorry excuse for a miniseries? Everyone except Ogion (and there are probably nasty implications to the one black dude being cast as the Wise Mentor™ figure) is white. (Also of note: the cast being that white was against Le Guin’s wishes.)
The moral of this story, of course, is that white fans feel entitled to every role except a few stereotypical ones…but will jump to all sorts of bizarre conclusions in order to avoid examining or even admitting that. (To paraphrase another of Le Guin’s works: head on backwards.)
Thank you for this! This issue of Representaion Matters is probably going to have to be argued with each and every generation of White people, who are used to having media pander to their wants and wishes.
Ursula K. Le Guin (may she rest in peace) was so disgusted (link) by the whitewashing of Earthsea, among other issues, that she vowed never to allow any other screen adaptations of her work except with her active involvement. She knew that this meant, in practice, that she would never get another call from Hollywood (link). That’s how you know where the media industry’s priorities lie, that they would forego adapting the works of a beloved author rather than respect the diversity she represented in her works.
This might come as a shock to some people but I don’t think KK is evil. I think she’s just lazy. Like I’ve stated before, one thing that bothers me is when people promise something and then don’t deliver on it. KK said she was going to make Star Wars diverse and she didn’t. Yes, she gave us Finn, Poe and Rose but that was it. No diversity behind the camera, no diversity in female leads and no diversity in merchandise. I have found only one shirt with Finn on it and it’s from Tee Turtle.
This is one of my personal reasons for wanting KK gone. She made promises and then didn’t deliver on a single one of them.
I think that’s something people get confused about in the conversation about racism. They think calling someone racist means calling them a bad person. While there are obviously racists who are evil, racism is so pervasive that you don’t need to be evil to be racist. All you have to do is not challenge conventional wisdom, and not examine your own ingrained assumptions. All it takes is, as op pointed out, intellectual and moral laziness. Racism is evil. Racists, not necessarily so.
Acknowledging Jewish people are POC, and that Jewish heroic leads are hugely important and breaking down barriers: ❤😍👍💕👄💖🌹
Citing the casting of white-passing Jewish actors in lead roles, and of other minority actors in bit roles, to deny that a franchise has a representation problem: 😩☠😡😬👎💢💔🌵
@leia1998 if u don’t find a whiteguy attractive u r antisemitic hunny!! because adam is jewish-coded!!
It will never stop being funny to my Jewish ass how many people believe they’re progressive for thinking “big nose = big Jewy Jew”
The bigger the nose of your wank focus, the bigger your love of the Jewish people #trufax #JustAllyThings
Acknowledging Jewish people are POC, and that Jewish heroic leads are hugely important and breaking down barriers: ❤😍👍💕👄💖🌹
Citing the casting of white-passing Jewish actors in lead roles, and of other minority actors in bit roles, to deny that a franchise has a representation problem: 😩☠😡😬👎💢💔🌵
@leia1998 if u don’t find a whiteguy attractive u r antisemitic hunny!! because adam is jewish-coded!!
Taika Waititi actively made sure not only Māori but other indigenous identities, specifically aboriginal Australians, were represented in his film since they were filming on their ancestral lands.
he invited the Yugambeh mob to welcome them and even had a Māori Kaumātua (elder) to perform a Karakia, “a kind of open-up ceremony from [his] side of things as well.”
he hired an Aboriginal water company to supply that water on set
he wanted to make space for indigenous filmmakers and thus had 8 indigenous interns on set to learn and gain film experience
yes, Taika is a lot of fun and super goofy. But that doesn’t mean Ragnarok doesn’t stand for something bigger. Taika is not only the first Polynesian man to direct a superhero movie, but he is also the first indigenous person to do so too. While he is barrel of laughs and a half, please don’t forget what Taika brought to the MCU. (x) (x) (x)
Y’all can gush about m night shyamalan all you want but the biggest plot twist I’ve ever witnessed is Ben stiller releasing some crusty mummy from a sarcophagus and it ending up being the fine ass Rami Malek
No, the biggest plot twist was that they actually cast an Egyptian to play an Egyptian character.
Truth be told, i’ve never read farenheit 451. I just read some kind of adaptation of the book where everything was the opposite : the world was all about books and all the tech was banned. The heroine was a deaf and mute girl.
ok i found the novel. it’s a french novel published in 1998, i don’t think there is an english translation. the novel is called Virus L.I.V 3 ou La Mort des Livres. I read it a long time ago so i couldn’t remember the plot really well, but now that i read the summary, i remember that it’s not just an “opposite farenheit 451″.
in this novel, the world is divided between the Lettrés (people who only care about paper books and literature) and the Zappeurs (who only use screens and who sometimes get cybernetic implants to enhance some of their abilities). The Lettrés are the one who run the world, but a mysterious Zappeur has created a virus that “kills” books.
The heroine, Allis, is a deaf and mute girl. She’s a Lettrée but she has to use screens to communicate, so the leader of the Lettrés hires her to infiltrate the Zapper community and find out who created the virus and how to stop it. If i remember correctly, she convinces a group of Zappeurs that she wants to become one of them to be able to get a cochlear implant because she’s deaf (even though i don’t think she actually wanted it). and of course during her mission she realizes that the world is not as black and white as she thought, and she becomes friends with the Zappeurs.
anyway it was a novel targeted toward young readers so the story was pretty basic and there was a predictable romance, but the concept is cool and i remember liking it a lot when i was in middle school.
Is this Baby Boomers vs. Millennials: The Book? 😂 Though I’m sure it wasn’t generational im the book, since the heroine was a young Lettrée. It’s a cool concept!
Well if you want a generational conflict, there was also that french novel about young people under 25 y/o who start a revolution and start killing everyone over 25, and then Paris is divided in 2 cause it literally becomes a civil war.
The two main characters were a nonbinary person named Silence, the first to spark the revolution, and L’Immortel, a black boy determined to make Silence pay after they killed his girlfriend. And there is a war, and all the kids chose a new name for themselves and have become snipers, and the more adults you kill the more famous and respected you are.
The novel was very dark but from what i remember there was some deep and interesting reflexions on the generational gap, the way adults treat children, and the problems it can create.
I’m actually working on generational issues for part of my job and that’s super interesting. And a nb protagonist, wow! What was Silence’s pronoun in French? A French nb friend said it’s hard to find a working pronoun in their native language so I’m curious.
It’s also kind of sobering how English-centric our “international” discussions about books and fandom are and that there are whole trends and developments in other languages we’re missing. What gets translated is a tiny fraction of the whole.
Actually, Silence doesnt say outright “I’m non-binary” (esp that the book was published 10 years ago so im not even sure ppl knew what it meant outside of lgbt circles), but no one in the novel knows if they’re a boy or a girl (and i dont think anyone ever asks them), and Silence never specifies it either, and the author took great care of never using pronouns or gendered words/adjectives when talking about them ; which is incredibly difficult as french is a very gendered language. To this day I’m still wondering how the author managed to write 300 pages without ever referencing to Silence with a gendered word.
True! There are so many interesting books and concepts all over the world. Even i mostly read english or american stuff these days, i dont really read french novels anymore, which is too bad! It’s also too bad that this novel didnt get an english translation.
No pronouns or gendered words? MAD respect, even I have some inkling how hard that is in French. And for a protagonist too! I’ll have to ask my friend if they know about this novel, enby representation is so hard to find.
One of the French books for younger readers translated into Korean was Le Voyage De Théo, which was about a teenaged boy with leukemia (I think) traveling to major religious centers around the world with his free-spirited aunt. He had a very cute Senegalese girlfriend, too, though he kinda cheated on her with an older girl during his travels🔪 It was a fun premise and story, even if I do find it fucked up in retrospect that such a seriously sick boy was carted around the world in basically a faith healing trip and not even told his diagnosis.
Other than that, classics like the Le Petit Nicolas books and Asterix were introduced to the Korean market and well received, though I am told the jokes in the latter were not fully translable.
L.J.'s Obsessions 