TV/Movies Megathread

[Syt]

It's not just me thinking things are going to go Taj Mahal with the Germans right?

Oh, they're dead meat for sure.

[Josephus]

Better Call Saul this week - bit of a weak episode, IMHO. The German guys ... the architect is a German actor and his German bits feel very natural (he's from Kiel, apparently), but the German by the workers sounded almost like voice actors. It was not natural dialogue.

The flashback at the start was likely Feb/Mar 1993, because that's the only year both Al Pacino and Emma Thompson were nominated for an Oscar.

It's not just me thinking things are going to go Taj Mahal with the Germans right?

All gonna go pear shaped, tits up...etc.

[Syt]

There's a rumor that the production company for the Witcher series has put out a casting call for Ciri to be played by a woman of color.

So naturally Slavs get their panties in a twist, e.g.:

https://imgur.com/t/gaming/uz97RVW

[Valmy]

Damn. I would hate to see what that person might write if the rumors were true.

[Oexmelin]

And this is why my medievalist colleagues must now address the issue of white supremacy in their classes.

[grumbler]

More people looking for reasons to be offended.  Mythical monsters don't belong to anyone.

[celedhring]

Can't you even culturally appropriate a fantasy world? 

[Valmy]

Can't you even culturally appropriate a fantasy world? 

I mean yeah if it is some sort of folklore.

But even so I don't think this applies here

I mean cultural appropriation is more than just casting John Wayne to play Genghis Khan...despite that being a hilariously terrible idea. It is when some large powerful entity just takes something wholesale and takes all the credit for it. Like, in a wild and crazy example, some record company getting Elvis or somebody to play another culture's music.  At least that is my understanding, it is a fairly nebulous term that is...um...appropriated for all sorts of meanings

[HVC]

And this is why my medievalist colleagues must now address the issue of white supremacy in their classes.

People were pissed about a black starfire too for the new DC tv show. i don't think it's always racism (although a lot of the times it is) its just that fans are weird and get heavily invested. They're fanatics after all.

That being said it's a stupid tv show based on a game. people will live.

[Valmy]

Yeah they should just be happy if the show is not a complete trainwreck like it is likely to be.

[celedhring]

Yeah they should just be happy if the show is not a complete trainwreck like it is likely to be.

Yeah, not really confident with the showrunner they picked up. The Defenders was really mediocre.

[viper37]

And this is why my medievalist colleagues must now address the issue of white supremacy in their classes.

That's a sure way of creating a cohort of easily offended young adults who find prejudice everywhere.

You don't cast blacks because they're black and need to be casted, that's just stupid.  It has nothing to white supremacy to resist the urge of americanizing everything in the world.  I thought a nationalist like you would have understood that.  I am extremely disapointed.

Slavs are massively white.  Not black or yellow or pink or green.  Most of the characters in the Witcher series are white, slavic in their ways.  There's a strong analogy to what that girl is writing about: the strong neighbour preying on its weaker neighbours, fucking up their economy, their politics, killing their peasants, inciting hatred among groups for its own purpose, the disunity of these small neighbours, etc, etc.

I'd be really pissed off if Netflix did a series on a black D'Iberville.  Or an asian Louis XIV.

That would be totally, totally retarded.

Portraying John Wayne as Ghenghis Khan is stupid.  Using a white actress to portray an asian actress that looks white isn't cultural approriation, no more than a Toronto restaurant offering poutine on its menu is.


That is Ciri:


If you want to create a black monster fighting hero, please do so!  Call her Buffy the Vampire Slayer even.  Call her something else.  Invent your own story.  Use characters of all diversity.

Their excellent Frontier show is a good example of excellent casting choices.  There's no black merchant in Montreal, that didn't exist in 1790.  There's no ninjas either.  Indians act like indians of the time acted in the North, the lead actor does look like he could be Metis (even if he's Hawaiian), that is just perfect, imho.

There's no more need to blackwash stuff then there is need to whitewash it.

I really, really, really hate that new tendancy to cast blacks everywhere just because they're black.
But we've been down that road before and you will, again, disagree with me.

[Valmy]

I will say that I do think that it is a bit ridiculous. Black Panther showed that there is a lot of interest in African stories. Why not make a show about some kind of African mythology if you really want to cast black actors? I am sure we would rather see that than another godawful video game adaptation anyway.

[The Brain]

The Americanization of everything is a bit annoying at times, but if you don't like a show then don't watch it. Problem solved.

[Oexmelin]

That's a sure way of creating a cohort of easily offended young adults who find prejudice everywhere.

Err. The students who get offended in these classes are the bunch of racists who take offense at the mere suggestion that there were people of color in medieval Europe.

The fact that Ciri has been designed as white should not preclude the fact that she can be reinvented as whatever color one wants. Because it's a bloody fantasy world. Jesus has been thoroughly reinvented for centuries as lily-white, and few people apparently object... At this point, many characters exist as collections of traits that ought to go well beyond skin color. There is little reason why Captain America, or Batman, or Hamlet, are white, except the fact that they were born of a time - no longer ours - when there were little to no representations of heroic people of color, and the fact that they have been carried through time by the sheer wealth of explicitly racist states and empires. James Bond mat very well be a black man soon, and that will be awesome.

So, yes, I will happily denounce the Americanization of shows when they make every story conform to the *tropes* that they recognize, or make every show about themselves. The skin color of a character does not change the cultural content of show itself. To be offended by having a black person in what would essentially remain a heavily Slavic-inspired fantasy world, is to acknowledge that black people cannot truly be Slavic, and that their skin color renders the whole thing more unbelievable that a white dude with cat eyes, shape-shifting dragons, and magic potions. I find that selective offense disturbing.

As for historical drama, it is indeed more complicated. To be offended by an Asian Louis XIV is to assume it would actually require *more* suspension of disbelief, than the fact that I can plainly recognize Gerard Depardieu under a wig. If I can accept one as serious, and the other as ridiculous, I think it warrants some introspection. However, a show in which issues of race would have a role to play may want to conform more to the historical situation. In the case of Frontier, this was a precisely a world where issues of Indigeneity played a crucial role in how the characters would be treated.