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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29425 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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when I see that a character is changed from being White in the source material to Black in the adaptation, this is a deliberate choice made by the production company

I can imagine a world where this is not always the case. If skin color is not relevant to the story, and the change does not stand out as extremely unlikely (for instance, black characters in historical fiction happening in medieval europe), a production company could have a casting call that's open to multiple/all races.

But in the current cultural climate, I would have a hard time believing that's how any instance of "race-swapping" happened.

We can't race swap anymore without the metanarrative causing irritating discussions. It really doesn't help that Shonda Rhimes ruined 'put black people in fancy clothing' by inserting racism analogues, instead of just ignoring race and letting black actors dress and talk posh.

If the performance is strong enough the race or even gender swaps become secondary, like Idris Elba as Heimdall or Steve whatever as Corlys Velaruon or whoever played Jet Black in live-action cowboy bebop. There are a few gender swaps too, like Katee Sackoff as Starbuck, but I can't think of many.

Anyways, after initial kvetching, the blackness of the portrayal became secondary to the other criticisms of the media in question, because the flipping was relatively unproblematic.

Contra anything made currently where race and gender are front and center: maximal irritation without a good enough product to overwhelm criticism means everyone just shits on it and defenders are few. Dustborn and Valid@te are clowned on for being the woke shitpiles that they are, but BG3 literally has race swapping into an ANIMAL which is bestiality, not just furry, and it turned into a selling point of the game.

Also note that deliberate race-swapping can still make good art. Both Spike Lee & Mel Brooks made "Where did we go right?" movies where the premise is that terrible stereotypes actually sell great. (Bamboozled & The Producers)

"X But it's a $Demographic Movie" doesn't have to suck. It's still all in the execution.

Mel Brooks and spike Lee, notably, do not have products which mostly meet current year standards of political correctness(even as they are by no means conservatives).

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