But don't you see? The idea of the Asgardians body hopping is hardly a new one as you mention that alternate universe within the comics have done so. And since the movie are their own separate continuity from 616, why should they have to adhere to those rules, when other universes get to mix it up? The defense of keeping Heimdall white is either borne of an inability to see non-white actors as anything but the cliche roles we've kept them too (which, in itself is a form of prejudice, whether we like to admit it or not), or the tired and true cry of "Not my canon!" And both are ignoring the reality that times are changing, and movies need to catch up, and the this movie isn't a direct adaptation of the comics. You may not like it for purism sake, but you can't honestly argue that it's wrong. And as such, the casting becomes a matter of taste - and as that's subjective, there's no clear winner until the movie comes out. And even then, opinions aren't required to change...Therumancer said:Okay for the easier one first, your entirely wrong about Thor. It's been suggested in the past that the various "gods" might be aliens, largely because there was some concern decades ago from Christian groups about the comics promoting paganism. This definition has been used in elseworlds-type stories like the whole Earth/Universe/Paradise X series, but has never remained in the canon very long as anything other than a theory. Indeed we had an entire event involving Ragnarok and the end of Asgard involving Thor where everyone died while he took a "homey don't play that" approach to the whole thing by refusing to participate in the prophecy and forcing the overgods hands leading to it being undone (long story). Not to mention the interrelation of the Asgardians with various supernatural/magical forces including demons. They are definatly a magical/supernatural group of deities.
What's more the origin of Thor was pretty straightforward with Doctor Donald Blake finding the hammer and becoming posssesed by the spirit of Thor. That's why he's blonde, it has to do with the host body. A lot of the later contreversy came about when they stopped doing the "power of" thing so much and had Thor walking around as a god all the time, claiming to be a god, etc... but it did die down.
Now you might ask "why couldn't Heimdall be possessing the body of a black guy", the answer to that is quite simply because it's one of Thor's unique tricks. It's been exploited several times over the years in cases where Thor has been transformed into a frog for example and managed to keep his power. Various very powerful norse gods can shapeshift or use illusions, Loki, and The Enchantress could appear as any ethnicity they wanted to, Karnilla (Asgard's Sorceress Supreme) could doubtlessly do it but I don't remember her ever assuming other human forms off the top of my head, and Odin can do pretty much anything, but gods like Heimdall, Fandral, Volstagg, Baldur, etc... don't have that kind of power. That's why it usually comes down to a celestrial slapfight between the more powerful gods, and the rest get casually mopped up whenever someone defeats Thor, Odin, and occasionally Sif if she's even around (tends to be forgotten).
I've gone on long rants about Thor in the past, both related and unrelated to this topic. I *DO* know what your talking about, and why it's been suggested, but it's not the general case in the canon.
If you want to get technical you could have a black Thor and justify it better than a black Heimdall because we've had Thor in the body of women and stuff before at various times. He was also using the body of an EMT guy for a while like during the "Worldengine" story arc Warren Ellis wrote. You might also remember part of the brawl during "Infinity Gauntlet" where Thor got reverted to a mortal and was floating through space dying, but then the host managed to again grasp the hammer, turn back into Thor, and re-enter the fight.
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As far as the rest goes, let's just say that to address a lot of those specific points would make this post a LOT longer than it needs to be and get increasingly off topic as we'd start to talk about those points more than anything, and totally derail this discussion.
The problem with what Bob is saying is that he's saying that someone who believes that casting Heimdall as a black guy and claims it's political correctness is being a jerk. The use of the 'N' word or anything like that doesn't come into it. Bob is saying that the casting is a sign of being "progressive", and that anyone who claims it's politically correct is being a jerk and isn't worth being listened to. That's the entire problem with his attitude.
Now, I disagree with you about the split on gay rights and it's actual percentage. I think the situation is a lot closer to 50-50 than you'd like to believe, and the fact that the media presents your numbers as being close to the truth usually is one of the big arguements made for left wing media bias. HOWEVER let's say that you are right and that the issue *IS* divided 70-30, with the favor going to the pro-gay side. 30% of the population is a HUGE number of people and while they definatly aren't going to be setting policy, by the arguement being made they shouldn't be allowed to get any representation of their point of view?
I'll go one further by saying that in past decades most "liberal" issues had the overwhelming majority against them. During the turn of the last century what do you think the anti-gay sentiment would have been in the USA? 90% or so? What about the percentage of racists, or any other social group that has overcome massive pressure? By Bob's arguement and the one you seem to be making the people who spearheaded the reform should never have been allowed to get any kind of representation of their point of view at all because they were so hugely outnumbered. What's more they caused chaos in society, right up there with hate speech sine they were fighting to overturn what the majority of people wanted.
It's not a one way street, the basic arguement made by a lot of left wingers is that they are right in their own minds on the issues they support, and thus any alternative viewpoints need to be demonized and surpressed as hate speech. Even if they had the left-wing super majority that is being claimed (they don't) they still have no right to claim that the guys who disagree with them on any grounds are "jerks" and unworthy of having their points of view represented or given "equal time" just because they disagree with them.
Due to some recent issues I've come to question certain aspects of my own free speech ideas. However I still believe that "freedom of speech" does not mean the freedom of people to say only what you want to hear.
Please understand another thing as well, I am not saying that Bob does't have the right to these opinions or to express them. I just don't think they belong on THIS platform, because The Escapist is a platform for escapism and nerd culture, not for political rants. You might not believe it, but even if you brought out an "Anti-Bob" to argue exactly the opposite side of things in an "equal time" sense, I'd be against it because that isn't what this site is for. Bob is here to share his insights into geek culture and the hobbies of the wierd, that's the purpose of the site, not to grind his political axes, and that's pretty much what he's used "The Big Picture" for twice now.
When I call this site and check out these articles and videos, I do it to get away from crap like that, not to have it spoonfed to me. Sure we might talk about stuff like this in the forums from time to time, but that's not a product of The Escapist itself, and what Bob has in his videos is since they are hosting him as a draw.
We'll probably wind up having to agree to disagree on a lot of this (and I apologize if I misunderstood what you wrote), but understand that my problem isn't so much the content, though I have addressed it, as much as the fact that I don't think it belongs here as a feature. I think Escapist management should pretty much keep Bob on-topic, and I don't think that's exactly going to be a blow, because the guy has other platforms where he does other videos like "Game Overthinker" and such where he can go off on politics and stuff.
The viewpoint you're arguing of left-wingers is just as strong in right-winger. No one likes to think their wrong. But it happens.
I'm not saying the 70/30 on gay rights is actually full-blown support and acceptance by the people. It's that a majority of people that are 'for' the rights are a mixed group of the actually cheer squad for gay rights, and people who just don't give a flying fuck. My mom sees no issue that gays shouldn't be allowed to marry; but she's still sure they're going to hell. I support that a terrorist has the same legal rights as any other criminal we arrest. Doesn't mean I support terrorists. I just realize that it would set a dangerous precedent to declare that people who are "really bad" don't have rights. It'd be a countdown until we started applying that logic on any group we didn't like (as we already are doing in some of these case, as we're discovering).
And yes, a lot of liberal ideas, in the past, were hugely unpopular. And guess what? The nay-sayers were, eventually ignored, and progress was made. Integrating schools and the military was not at all a popular idea. The public was pretty up front with how much they didn't want that. But that didn't make them right in their opinions. Why? Because they claimed to support the principles of freedom and equality that America stood for, and then turned around and kept entire pockets of their own people beneath them. The law called them on their hypocrisy and made these unpopular ideas law. But your argument is that we should just sit around and wait for everyone to full-out agree before we make any moves. Even if one side holds views that are wrong, because it's only "fair". In an issue like abortion, then yes, both sides deserve equal time because there is no black and white stance that will be full proof. But on the issue of gay rights? We'll have to agree to disagree. You can't proclaim yourself a citizen of a nation the celebrates freedom, when you're stepping on the rights of your own people because you think they're gross. No where did I say an unpopular opinion is automatically wrong, and should be ignored. But an irrefutably wrong opinion should be. If an opinion can be shown as wrong through facts? Then it doesn't need to be treated as a legitimate school of thought - and that goes for both sides. Liberals quited down pretty quick when the current Pope was sworn in, and the talk of him being a Nazi sympathizer was stirred up. They cried all over that the Church had screwed up something spectacular with this pick. But they got slapped with the truth of his childhood in the Hitler Youth program did not mean he was a Nazi - because that was a mandate for children in Nazi controlled areas. And the reasonable liberals shut up and sulked over it. You're not seeing that on issues with the right. Again, I'll use the subject of Obama's religion. An overwhelming majority still hold to the notion that he's a Muslim. They hold that view in the face of hard truths: the controversy over his Christian preacher saying racist remarks, and Obama's own word. But, the truth isn't good enough. And this isn't just the fringes of that side of the spectrum doing that. It's public figures, elected officials, and so on. If a journalist refuses to listen to one of their guests when s/he start in on that issue - they don't have to. They don't have to entertain a blatantly wrong thing. Fair Game would demand that the journalist do just that, however. It promotes false equivalence.
I think a lot of this annoyance/outrage coming from many (whom I'm assuming identify as conservate/right) is born of the big difference between the right and left and how they self identify within their social 'tribe'. Conservatives lock ranks and support one another no matter what - such solidarity is an admirable trait, but it does have the nasty drawback that the more extreme members are inadvertently given the position of being a representative of all. I've always asked of my more right-minded friends why they put up with goofs like Beck and Palin being their public voices, and the response is usually something like "We back our own."
And not to say the left is a bastion of awesomness. I've seen how damn hard it is to get liberals to rally together to be a focused force on many an issues. The right's flaw is an almost blind devotion, but the left suffers from being easily distracted like a group of squirrels. A real lack of drive is their biggest issue. My liberal friends will have a strong opinion on an issue, but they fizz out pretty fast. They don't expect to get the same level of fervor by their fellows, as a conservative battle cry does.
At the core of your complaint that you didn't want to have to deal with this on the site...but you were given fair warning that Big Picture was Escapist giving Bob an avenue to do whatever he wanted. And he did say that he was going to use it as a soapbox. He's been pretty up front with where his views on things with sly remarks and tangential remarks in his movie reviews. Which reminds me, you can't really argue that he's all for the PC crowd when his Black Swan review was him calling out the PC crowd on the whole "hot lesbian" scene.
I do understand where you're coming from, though. I just wonder if it warrants the anger (or disappointment) at Bob because of something he has no idea of. He got an extra segment, and he was given a blank slate, he just happened to pick an idea that isn't universally loved. You can always take the extra minute to check the forum responses after he posts to see if it'll be a subject that you care to listen to him go on about? And now that you've got an even better gauge of his views, you can make an even more informed decision as to whether you want to click play.