The Big Picture: Skin Deep

[rutger5000]

I never gave all of this much thought, mainly because I don't really care. But I totally have to agree with the point being made, I don't think it's the main point to be made.
Has anyone considered that the guy might just have been the best guy to take the role? I don't know the character, but I'm picturing this bad-ass God.
And just look at the picture of the guy. Can anyone say that that picture doesn't depict a badass God? Can someone actual say that a white guy in that role could have looked equally badass?
I'm not saying black is more badass then white, but in certain roles it is. If I'd wanted to portray a badass cop I'd go for a white man (mainly because of Bruce willis and Nicolas Cage (if the cop was a dirty one)). If I'd go for a badass God I'd go for a black man.
We all make assosiatiance with race, and there is nothing wrong with that. (Of course it is wrong if those assosiatiance are too negative.) And some general assosiatiance fit certain roles better.
And sorry for my horrible spelling, I don't have spellcheck.

 

[ostro-whiskey]

For a supposedly academic discussion why does Bob think racial inequality is based on melanin levels.

It is based on cultural and technological superiority. The simple fact is nothing in nature is equal, those who cannot kill will always be subject to those who can.



We are living in a humanitarian dark age, in a few generations when the benefits of dialectic reasoning are re introduced into mainstream society you will all be mocked by your descendants.

 

[DearFilm]

So according to Bob, embracing double standards is the only real way to treat our popular culture's derth of interesting or complex minority characters. So changing a Norse god's race was preferable to creating a new character who is black. Thor had an entire Earth-based realm that was set in modern day America, and yet it was less culturally diverse than Asgard.
This strikes me as a kind of racism in and of itself. It is as though you do not trust minorities or those who write them to create a new and unique character on their own, so you have to "gift" them characters who have already been created. You are allowing them to "prove" their racial equity only through the appropriation of another race's character. It's like if a black African chef wanted to prove his worth in a French kitchen, but rather than let him make his own recipe, gave him a recipe already perfected by a white French cook. This betrays an astounding amount of condescention on the part of anyone who argues this way.
Honestly, some characters can be changed and can benefit from said change in the long run. I think Spider-Man as a young black kid from Queens makes a lot of sense and could be interesting because this is the real world, and that character is set to reflect modern ideas and experience. A Norse god, however, seems to resist this change. Instead, we should be trying to create characters grounded in a racial identity, so "appropriation" instead becomes "creation."

As a comic book fan, AND someone who is incredibly adverse to changes (Often the smallest incongruities between a book/comic and movie is enough to downright piss me off; it's just me), I'd much rather have a inconsequential character have a race lift rather than an entirely new character introduced into a years-long continuity.

So did you take umbridge with the inclusion of Lucius Fox or Rachel in The Dark Knight?

You mean the Lucius Fox that has been part of the Batman canon since the late 70s?

And just like that, I lose my geek cred.
Still. Rachel.

Actually, to begin with I didn't actually like the idea of Batman having an honest-to-god love interest. But the movie(s) were good enough that I could ignore the small discrepancies.

Also, you have to ask yourself: is it really worth getting worked up over a Batman movie that isn't directed by Joel Shumacher?

As long as it isn't Brett Ratner, then yea, I think we're golden.

 

[Idocreating]

The Shawshank Redemption. In the book, Red is a redheaded Irish convict, hence the name.

In the movie, he's Morgan Freeman. Sometimes changing a character's ethnicity can do wonders for them. Or maybe that's just the power of putting Morgan Freeman in a role with a lot of narrating to do.

 

[hdgehog6]

Dead-frickin' nuts-on right!

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

1. thank gawd this wasn't about that crappy John Ritter movie

2. you are only half right. As it is ok to play a traditionally white character with an actor of another race and it is just fine to replace a traditionally colored character with a white actor.

Your double standard argument is the same white guilt crap that public schools have been force feeding their inmates for the last 30 years. "Racism against white people is just fine because SLAVERY!" The reality is that most slaves were black because the slave trading peoples of africa were most economical source of enslaved people. You can bet that if Europe had a viable slave trading economy in white people most of US slaves would have been white and there would have been a ton of dumb rationalizations for it just like there were for black slavery.

Note that I don't think replacing a character previously depicted as one race with another IS racism but that is where you are going with this. Scholarships only for black kids, great. Scholarships only for white kids, racist. Black professional organizations, activists. White professional organizations, assholes. Ever heard of two wrongs don't make a right? Racism in the past wasn't right, racism today isn't right either. No matter how you try to sugar coat it by calling racism "affirmative action" or "reparations."

The correct answer is that it is just fine to portray a fictional character with someone of another race and people need to stop whining about it. And Idris Elba is an awesome actor so he would be an asset to any production.

Oh and if you care about actual real slavery happening RIGHT NOW check out http://www.antislavery.org/english/ and maybe there is something you can do.

 

[nomad240]

i found that kinda funny in all honestly. I also enjoyed how movie bob ignored information such as blacks selling other blacks to the white people as slaves or the fact that slavery existed prior to there ever being a north america it's alled "indentured workers" and they started building america... it was mostly for the poor people in england and france who wanted to go to the "new world.. but couldn't afford the ticket so they were offered a free ticket to the new world if they plugged in a certain amount of time working in fields or construction and at the end of their time they were free people to walk the world and start homes of their own most probably getting jobs from their previous master to pay for the house or the land for them to build said house.

and very quickly is it ignored that whites also helped black slaves escape north to canada. or the more " racial friendly people."

and just to be clear I'm not a racist (( because I know that words will be flyign my way.)) I just poitning out the humor in misinformation.

I assume that History wasn't your major in college.

The presence of African slaves on the North American continent pre-dates the arrival of the British or the French and their white indenture servants by close to 100 years. The Spanish, who were the first to attempt settlement of North America, owned slaves, most notably at St. Augustine, the first permanent settlement in North America and the oldest city in the United States.

And indentured servitude isn't anywhere akin to slavery. The hallmark of a slave is that they are their owner's property. An indentured servant wasn't ever anyone's property and, when their contracted period on indenture was over, they were free to go about their own business.

ha ha Not even close this was stuff I dug up on my own because I just love history so yeah I more than likely missed that sorry.

yes but I'm also talking about the world ruling evil white man always putting down the other ethnicities.... (( for those of you who can't tell this is scarcasam)). and I honestly thoguht the first North american settlement was Jonestown( I think that was the name... you know the one the disappeared?) Also Also the viking Beat your spanards there too.... well I think it was Newfoundland.....I think...

and if you didn't read what I wrote about indentured Servitude I pretty much sai what you said slavery is just instead of letting them go after a set amount of years you keep them!.

Also again ignored the fact about blacks kidnapping other blacks to sell into slavery.


AND I forogt to write this in my first post I saw the thor movie... and even though I do not like Thor. I really enjoyed the movie... my only complaint was the asian guy in the warriors 3 the accents seems a little too heavy and more thn a little forced out of the actor...

the black dude was Awesome he gave me chills

 

[Wrds]

While I agree that the casting was great I'm still not ok with a double standard, never have and never will. Just because this isn't an ideal world, doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for it.

Not that I think a comic movie is battlefront for that.
We shouldn't excuse double standards on the precident of past atrocities, that's detrimental to the growth of society.

It creates situations where young white men with above average grades can't go to the university of his choice because he can't afford it, while a minority with the same grades gets a full scholarship.
Just something to ponder bob.

 

[nomad240]

I don't have time to read this whole thread, but I'll offer my two cents anyway:

At first I was going to say it was a bit dumb to cast a black actor as a Norse god ? the invention of a culture that had likely never even heard of Africa, much less knew what its inhabitants looked like. I would actually be totally open to the idea of a black Superman, since he's from another planet and could literally be any color in the sRGB field for all the difference it would make. Keeping a Norse god white would make more sense than most of the casting choices in Hollywood these days.

That's what I was going to say. But then I remembered two words: White. Jesus.

Casting white people as Yahweh? Casting black people as Yahweh? Sure, why not. Unlike the Norse pantheon, tons of non-Jewish people did and still do worship him (and not just the Christian version; there are black people and white people who have converted to Judaism), so his public image has changed with the times. But Jesus? There's absolutely no argument as what race his earthy form was. Yet even in the 21st century we have him being played almost exclusively by Caucasian actors. And, frankly, I'm genuinely concerned about the motivation behind it ? more than I will ever be by the casting choices of a guy named "Shyamalan."

So yeah. I'll start complaining about black Norse gods when Hollywood stops casting white guys as Jesus forever.

I still think the majority of your video was just a fancy way of saying "BAWWWWWWWW I have white guilt and you should too" though. Feel free to take either or both of these points as a qualification against the other.

Three words for ya man

Jesus CHrist Superstar!

a hippy musical version of jesus's life (( according to the Bible))

not saying jesus had to be white but the guy they casted had an awesome set of pipes and he deserved it!

 

[JDKJ]

i found that kinda funny in all honestly. I also enjoyed how movie bob ignored information such as blacks selling other blacks to the white people as slaves or the fact that slavery existed prior to there ever being a north america it's alled "indentured workers" and they started building america... it was mostly for the poor people in england and france who wanted to go to the "new world.. but couldn't afford the ticket so they were offered a free ticket to the new world if they plugged in a certain amount of time working in fields or construction and at the end of their time they were free people to walk the world and start homes of their own most probably getting jobs from their previous master to pay for the house or the land for them to build said house.

and very quickly is it ignored that whites also helped black slaves escape north to canada. or the more " racial friendly people."

and just to be clear I'm not a racist (( because I know that words will be flyign my way.)) I just poitning out the humor in misinformation.

I assume that History wasn't your major in college.

The presence of African slaves on the North American continent pre-dates the arrival of the British or the French and their white indenture servants by close to 100 years. The Spanish, who were the first to attempt settlement of North America, owned slaves, most notably at St. Augustine, the first permanent settlement in North America and the oldest city in the United States.

And indentured servitude isn't anywhere akin to slavery. The hallmark of a slave is that they are their owner's property. An indentured servant wasn't ever anyone's property and, when their contracted period on indenture was over, they were free to go about their own business.

ha ha Not even close this was stuff I dug up on my own because I just love history so yeah I more than likely missed that sorry.

yes but I'm also talking about the world ruling evil white man always putting down the other ethnicities.... (( for those of you who can't tell this is scarcasam)). and I honestly thoguht the first North american settlement was Jonestown( I think that was the name... you know the one the disappeared?) Also Also the viking Beat your spanards there too.... well I think it was Newfoundland.....I think...

and if you didn't read what I wrote about indentured Servitude I pretty much sai what you said slavery is just instead of letting them go after a set amount of years you keep them!.

Also again ignored the fact about blacks kidnapping other blacks to sell into slavery.


AND I forogt to write this in my first post I saw the thor movie... and even though I do not like Thor. I really enjoyed the movie... my only complaint was the asian guy in the warriors 3 the accents seems a little too heavy and more thn a little forced out of the actor...

the black dude was Awesome he gave me chills

LOL!!

Jonestown is where all those people drank the cyanide-laced Kool Aid.

Jamestown is the English settlement that disappeared.

Niketown is where you go to get those limited edition Free Run+2 ($150).

 

[maximara]

So according to Bob, embracing double standards is the only real way to treat our popular culture's derth of interesting or complex minority characters. So changing a Norse god's race was preferable to creating a new character who is black. Thor had an entire Earth-based realm that was set in modern day America, and yet it was less culturally diverse than Asgard.
This strikes me as a kind of racism in and of itself. It is as though you do not trust minorities or those who write them to create a new and unique character on their own, so you have to "gift" them characters who have already been created. You are allowing them to "prove" their racial equity only through the appropriation of another race's character. It's like if a black African chef wanted to prove his worth in a French kitchen, but rather than let him make his own recipe, gave him a recipe already perfected by a white French cook. This betrays an astounding amount of condescention on the part of anyone who argues this way.
Honestly, some characters can be changed and can benefit from said change in the long run. I think Spider-Man as a young black kid from Queens makes a lot of sense and could be interesting because this is the real world, and that character is set to reflect modern ideas and experience. A Norse god, however, seems to resist this change. Instead, we should be trying to create characters grounded in a racial identity, so "appropriation" instead becomes "creation."

I do like parts of your arguement, but I think we'll have to wait a while for any new substantial ethnic characters in the realm of comics, and I tell you why. Many of the most famous comic book characters, the ones the cartoons and movies are made from, are very old, the youngest about thirty years. many of them predate even the earliest days of racial sensitivity, and DC has been known to have vocal racist (as in, edit background characters so that they were white, moved all black people in the universe he wrote in to a segragated island, racist) writing characters. When the first batches of ethnic characters came around in the 70's they were laughable stereotypes, such as Apache Cheif (who's power had nothing to do with his name or Native American garb), The Samurai (who's powers had nothing to do with his name or somewhat Japanese clothing), Black Vulcan (Insert smae bullshit here), and El Dorado (See before). Marvel did better at times, but they were still far from perfect. The Falcon, was a pimp or something at one point and Luke Cage was a jive-talking mercenary.

To be fair to DC the minority characters they had in the comics at the time weren't much better: Super-Chief (1961) with the meteorite gives you super powers stick, John Stewart (1971) basically a black Hal Jordon, Owlwoman (1977) the Hawkwoman want to be, Rising Sun (1977) with Ray like powers, Black Lightning (1977) and bunch of does any one even remember them characters. Let's not forget that is when we found out in the comics that Black Manta was black.

Marvel was better only that it gave us Storm (1976) who was her own person rather than a knock off and even she had a origin that was and still feels like a Tarzan serial and not in a good way.

 

[Realitycrash]

Holy CRAP over 700 replies in less than a day -.-

 

[Kenji_03]

Skin Deep

Sometimes embracing a double standard is the right thing to do.

Watch Video

Good point on "Double standards are near our only real standards" as well as highlighting the imperfect world to counter our perfectly logical rationalizations.

This is why I love your shows.

 

[beema]

Bob has white guilt!

In some respects I agree with you Bob, but in others I see this as some bullshit affirmative action compensation for stuff our ancestors did.
In this specific example it's a little different -- just pick the best guy for the role. He's heavily costumed anyways.
Mostly I'm just sick of people saying everyone should be treated as equals (even if they are not), and then giving favoritism to a minority because they are a minority (btw, we will all be minorities in the US compared to hispanic people pretty damn soon). I don't really have a problem with this happening -- I just wish people would call it what it is and stop lying to themselves and everyone else.

 

[JDKJ]

From the images ive seen said black actor looks good. The only thing I'm having trouble getting my head around is the explanation as to why this particular double standard is ok. "its fine because we wronged them generations ago" feels like a loose connection at best. But then this might just be because over here aussy "natives" are still using that excuse for every little thing under the sun and we just keep paying up.

Just saying, feels odd to see that particular defense brought up over a movie

Maybe if your government didn't treat the Indigenous Australians like shit for hundreds of years, they wouldn't have so much grounds to complain and your goverment wouldn't be forced to make good. And the wrongs aren't "generations ago." As recently as the 1970s, Indigenous Australian children were being forcibly removed from their families and relocated.

 

[nomad240]

i found that kinda funny in all honestly. I also enjoyed how movie bob ignored information such as blacks selling other blacks to the white people as slaves or the fact that slavery existed prior to there ever being a north america it's alled "indentured workers" and they started building america... it was mostly for the poor people in england and france who wanted to go to the "new world.. but couldn't afford the ticket so they were offered a free ticket to the new world if they plugged in a certain amount of time working in fields or construction and at the end of their time they were free people to walk the world and start homes of their own most probably getting jobs from their previous master to pay for the house or the land for them to build said house.

and very quickly is it ignored that whites also helped black slaves escape north to canada. or the more " racial friendly people."

and just to be clear I'm not a racist (( because I know that words will be flyign my way.)) I just poitning out the humor in misinformation.

I assume that History wasn't your major in college.

The presence of African slaves on the North American continent pre-dates the arrival of the British or the French and their white indenture servants by close to 100 years. The Spanish, who were the first to attempt settlement of North America, owned slaves, most notably at St. Augustine, the first permanent settlement in North America and the oldest city in the United States.

And indentured servitude isn't anywhere akin to slavery. The hallmark of a slave is that they are their owner's property. An indentured servant wasn't ever anyone's property and, when their contracted period on indenture was over, they were free to go about their own business.

ha ha Not even close this was stuff I dug up on my own because I just love history so yeah I more than likely missed that sorry.

yes but I'm also talking about the world ruling evil white man always putting down the other ethnicities.... (( for those of you who can't tell this is scarcasam)). and I honestly thoguht the first North american settlement was Jonestown( I think that was the name... you know the one the disappeared?) Also Also the viking Beat your spanards there too.... well I think it was Newfoundland.....I think...

and if you didn't read what I wrote about indentured Servitude I pretty much sai what you said slavery is just instead of letting them go after a set amount of years you keep them!.

Also again ignored the fact about blacks kidnapping other blacks to sell into slavery.


AND I forogt to write this in my first post I saw the thor movie... and even though I do not like Thor. I really enjoyed the movie... my only complaint was the asian guy in the warriors 3 the accents seems a little too heavy and more thn a little forced out of the actor...

the black dude was Awesome he gave me chills

LOL!!

Jonestown is where all those people drank the cyanide-laced Kool Aid.

Jamestown is the English settlement that disappeared.

Niketown is where you go to get those limited edition Free Run+2 ($150).

Ha ha sorry my bad... well I guess the kool aid thing was still pretty bad but I was talking about jamestown XD

 

[DirtyMagic]

I heard "dedicate a whole episode to Samurai Pizza Cats" and my mind drifted off...

 

[Dark.Kantian]

Never was an issue for me.
First question: was Heimdall portrayed effectively?
Answer: Yes. Excellent casting.
No more questions.

Hell, they could have had an Asian play Heimdall, the only question I would have is: can he bring on the bad-ass? Do I get the sense that I'm looking at one of the most bad ass motherfuckers in Asgard?

Now, if it was the case that there was a white guy that could have done just as good a job (or better) and was turned down (indeed, because he was white and they wanted a black Heimdall), then I'd have a problem. But, from my limited knowledge of actors, I cannot see anyone else doing as good or better a job.

As such I don't think its even legitimate to treat this as a case of "substitution" of black for white. I find it had to imagine that they sat down and thought: "Which white character can we make black in this movie?" Its really, I think, about who's the best man for the job? And they made the right call.

 

[tangoprime]

The idea of allowing slavery to serve as a justification for future "correction" to modern day disparities in popular culture is that it makes slavery a kind of law, a defensive legal precident that can be applied to certain situations. By never allowing the spectre of slavery to recede, and in fact encouraging it to remain, we are both keeping old wounds from healing, and creating a situation wherein sooner or later someone will have to ask:
If we are not allowed to forgive the horrors of the European slave trade of Africans organically, at what point should the statute of limitations be put into play.
Will we, for all hypothetical millenia to follow, always be yoked to the distant sins of those who came before us?
And what of people like my family, the Italians and Irish who came here in the early 1920s, who never had any part in America-based slavery? Why am I being yoked to the crimes of the same culture that killed my father's ancestors?
By allowing the past to dictate and rule our present, we are denying ourselves the chance to naturally heal from the wounds inflicted in that past. We are instead turning everything into a fabrication, a balance which we are constantly adding tabulations to.
Not to mention, by keeping slavery in the fore of our race relations consciousness, we are failing to address more modern problems like educational and economic disparity. We are so busy trying to earn forgiveness for the crimes already done, we are failing to effectively prevent those crimes still being perpetrated.

This.

 

[Fwee]

Here's a question with a hypothetical Avengers movie:
Would you rather see Bruce Banner cast as a crappy white actor to stay accurate, or have the same character played very well by a black actor?