And by “thrown in the pillory” you mean “get a few dirty looks,” right?
White fragility is real, dude.
I’ll repeat myself:
I had an idea once to race-switch Storm from the X-Men (sorta). The gist is that the African Goddess she’s always invoking is more responsible for her powers than we knew. Said Goddess is pissed that Storm has become a world-adventurer rather than concentrating on her people. So the Goddess gives the powers to the person at the time who just happens to be trying the hardest to help the Goddess’s people.
And at said time, its a tireless, penniless white male Christian missionary.
That story-line alone would keep Slate, Salon, Buzzfeed, HuffPo et al in business for years to come.
Wouldn’t know. I’m not white.
Nah, i mean A selection of click-bait outrage pieces, and getting yelled at if you run into the wrong privileged liberal arts major.*
- granted its not really being thrown in a pillory.
No, it’s really not. If you dress as a racist stereotype, and people yell at you for dressing as a racist stereotype, I’m not gonna lose too much sleep.
On the other hand, if a white kid dressed as Coco, I’d be real surprised to see him get much pushback; or if a white dude cosplayed as Necalli, I’d expect very little pushback. And if somebody yelled at them for it, I’d be a lot likelier to think the yeller was an asshole.
It’s the difference between donning a wig or hat to represent a specific character, and donning a wig or hat to represent an ethnic stereotype.
Already seen this: a few redheads complaining that - never mind skin color - there aren’t enough real redheads being cast in redhead roles. I pointed them at Karen Gillan and told them to wait for the live-action version of Brave.
I’ve been thinking about that. Lots of insecure white people are losing their shit over a fictional half-human being played by a black actress. Imagine if there was a real Superman, with all the powers and heroics and chiselled good looks and the glaiven, who was black. They’d Freak. The Fuck. Out. Probably conspire to bring him down just out of their own insecurities. Could be an interesting story.
There was a children’s television series called “Tinga Tinga Tales” which covered some of these, although many of them have been filtered through Kipiing’s “Just So Stories” and similar Western retellings.
To be fair, the example you gave is of an actress whose most prominent role had her shave off all her hair and paint her skin blue.
Otherwise, I agree.
I think of her mostly for her Doctor Who role, plus there’s a new Jumanji movie out.
It has been done- quite famously, as well. Patrick Stewart played Othello in 1997, as a white man.
There were a few times he ended up in Tinyville (Middle of the USA) and it would get mentioned, “damn, I’m used to swinging off buildings and here the trees are taller than the houses”.
Gyrate,
What is “glaiven”?
It’s a gratuitous Simpsons reference I threw in. Pay it no mind.
I was under the impression that you consider the various white Peter Parkers the same Peter Parker, but you really see the retellings of the origin story as happening within the narrative?
Why is “Peter Parker isn’t white” quantitatively different to you, while “Aunt May is young now” isn’t? And was there some explanation for why inside the continuity?
I’m fine with the answers “It’s just how I feel”, “That’s not what I mean” and “…”, by the way. I just still think you’re creating elaborate justifications for an emotional response to a particular type of change in a world where making big changes isn’t usual. (An emotional response you share with many, but that doesn’t make the arguments less post hoc rationalization.)
It’s incredibly easy to find articles in mainstream publications (the New York Times; People) discussing whether it is appropriate for white children to dress up as Black Panther. There was a similar discussion about Moana. I’m not going to do an exhaustive search, but there are very clearly a number of people who believe that it is inappropriate for a white child to “dress as a specific person” who is not white.
I tend to agree with you that it is broadly beneficial for white children to imagine themselves as non-white characters. But, I would think a well-meaning white person who is exposed to these articles (especially one who embraces the importance of affirming to the experiences of non-white voices) who might conclude that they would catch flak (or that they should simply make their children abstain out of sensitivity to non-white children).
Edit: I don’t think this applies to casting a black Ariel or really any situation in which to “change” the race of a character.
Oh come on. They made GOD black 16 years ago and no one gave a fuck.
Heh…ok how about if I’m dressing up as an actor who is a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude!
So it seems the Little Mermaid situation has already been discussed in my absence but I would like to take a second and applaud Disney/Freeform for their response.
Specifically this bit: “…the character of Ariel is a work of fiction. So after all this is said and done, and you still cannot get past the idea that choosing the incredible, sensational, highly-talented, gorgeous Halle Bailey is anything other than the INSPIRED casting that it is because she ‘doesn’t look like the cartoon one,’ oh boy, do I have some news for you…about you.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/disney-s-freeform-stands-by-halle-bailey-s-little-mermaid-casting-in-open-letter-to-critics/ar-AADZjaP?li=BBnb7Kz
95% of all famous literary/movie figures are fictional. 99% if you’re atheist.
I was about to take what you said at face value. Then I followed your link.
First, the People link, since it didn’t require a login. Dude, that article is 100% sourced off the NYT article you linked to. It’s just sloppy journalism: “Read my article that’s just a summary of an article written by an actual reporter, so I’ll get the ad revenue instead of them!” [edit: oh shit–the article continues after a point where it looks like it ends, and they do quote some randos on Twitter complaining about white people dressing as black superheros. My bad. In my defense, this is the line that I thought was the end of the article and really wasn’t:
As for the NYT article, there is not a single person quoted in that article who “believe[s] that it is inappropriate for a white child to ‘dress as a specific person’ who is not white.”
The actor and the director of Black Panther are an enthusiastic YES, as are most of the folks quoted in the article. There’s one professor who says, “As parents, or even as the people creating costumes, we need to be very aware of what that says.” Her quotes in the article are pretty unclear, but I think she’s suggesting, later, that when white kids dress up as Black Panther, white parents should take it as an opportunity to talk about race with their kids.
Not based on a reasonable reading of those articles, they wouldn’t. As I said earlier, c’mon, people, think it through.
Never go full racial stereotype.
Queens, the area that the original comic book Peter lived in until he married MJ and moved out of Aunt May’s house, is hardly sky-scrapery. Yes, he generally operates within the core of the city, but there’s a hell of a lot of other cities which are built up the same way - transfer him to LA, Toronto, or Tokyo, and he’d have no problem finding areas to swing off of skyscrapers…or areas where he couldn’t.
And he doesn’t actually need skyscrapers for swinging - anything above 3 or 4 stories is plenty (and even lower buildings would do in a pinch, just with a smaller arc) - any large city in the world would give him plenty of room to swing.
He’s optimized for large cities, yes, but nothing about Spider-Man requires that city to be New York…A Peter Parker who lived in another city would be a slightly different character, yes - just as one who lives in an apartment, or one whose Aunt May is closer in age to him, or one who never met Gwen Stacy is - but the fundamentals - his power set, the core of his personality, his personal history - all fit comfortably in a different character.