"Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" is the first thing that comes to mind for me. I just felt that whole movie was one big double-standard in terms of critics suddenly giving critical acclaim to an over-the-top action movie. The fact that it was Chinese seemed to mean a lot to a lot of people; I can say with a high degree of certainty that if something with action that ridiculous had been made in America, it would have been panned. Yet so many were sold by the sheer exotic nature of it all. I wanted to like it too when I first watched it but couldn't get past the part where the princess was chasing the bandit and yelled, "Give me back my comb!" or something. It sounded too silly, in my opinion and took me straight out of the story.
Lately, I don't get why everyone is raving about "Hamilton". The premise confuses the hell out of me. Without even addressing the fact that it's mostly Hispanic and Black actors portraying White historical figures, I'm more or less over culture juxtaposition. "Samurai Champloo" was fun for me because it was whimsical for the most part about juxtaposing hip-hop into Edo Japan. Tarantino's shenanigans are fine as well in my opinion because it's mostly non-diegetic stuff like the soundtrack or voice-overs. I draw the line somewhere around "A Knight's Tale" because then we start to hear the directors saying, "These are the things that people in that time would have liked if it were modern times." No, you have no way of knowing that. With "Hamilton" I already can't stand most hip-hop, so I see no reason to give the play a pass. Next, I read a few things the writer had to say on Tumblr - specifically about how all non-Whites were robbed of their history by Whites, and the play is his way of bringing people of color into history. For starters, I can't stand when people speak of race as though everyone of a similar skin tone belongs to a hive, acting as one unit. Secondly, I resent the guilt-tripping; there are so many ways to speak of slavery and colonialism without treating modern history as if it happened yesterday, with the people of color today being the same as the victims of the 18th century and the oppressors of the 18th century being transposed neatly onto all White people today. Finally, the whole damn play is such a historically inaccurate mess. People like Alexander Hamilton have been deified by their supporters practically every day since their deaths, that today some of the "history" we see is little more than hagiography. The play's writer even says how we shouldn't worship the founding fathers because they were slave owners, yet he goes and paints Hamilton as a glorious martyr and Aaron Burr a sympathetic character cut from the same cloth as Hamilton? Really? Aaron freaking Burr - the guy who tried to found his own country by conspiring with Spain? He was a renowned firebrand of the times and frankly a megalomaniacal nutcase.
