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I think you are pointing to a real thing. I do find the whole dynamic frustrating and perhaps you're only addressing the right wing side of it because you think it's what this community, especially in the context of this thread, needs to hear. But it does feel quite incomplete without addressing that it is in response to what really does seem like an obsession among progressive creatives to add representation to every type of media. No, that some right wingers fell for it does not say volumes about their enemies or however that quote goes but this might be a good time to look at the whole dynamic from a top down view to better understand why partisans believe what they do.
The argument/values conflict at play I think is the left with "representation matters" and the right with either "You're retconning our culture and we don't appreciate that" or "This is not actually an accurate representation" or even "Hey this stuff is starting to look really cynical, it's starting to seem like you don't care at all about the myths you're rewriting".
To steelman the Left's representation narrative.
Straightforwardly representation just matters. It's important for young minority kids to be able to see themselves as agents in society capable of anything. Majority people don't have this problem and cannot easily understand how disempowering it is to grow up never seeing anyone who looks like you represented in the media you consume. The epitome of this is that reddit story of the black kid seeing Mile Morales and exclaiming "He looks like me!". This is the kind of story that ultimately melts ours hearts and even my black cynical heart lightens three shades at the thought*. It costs very little to get minorities this representation and many of us just straight up find joy in it for its own sake even if it might be partially vicarious.
There already is an overwhelmingly large amount of white representation in society. It's not hard to find images like this poking fun at the concept. Just for the sake of variety exploring other identities and cultures is valuable. Most of the super heroes are cis hetero white dudes as is historical canon, as are contemporary figures just because of demographics. And if your for some reason want to watch all white media you can settle for merely 40% of new content or look to the back catalogue.
These media products always had ideological components and preachiness, you just didn't notice because it was preaching your ideology. Did you not notice how every villain for a decade was a cell of brown middle eastern terrorists?
To Steelman the Right's 'stop shoe horning' narrative
Our culture and myths actually matter, cynically retconning aspects of them completely divorced from their context is cheap and the outcome is almost always mediocre because you're prioritizing ideological soap boxing over quality.
It's very uncomfortable that your idea of progress seems to, at all times, consist of minimizing the existence and representation of people like me. It may be unfortunate that other races/gender/ect have less representation than us but it was never an explicit goal of ours**. It's tremendously difficult to shake the frame of "us vs them" when your absence is celebrated by 'them'.
There seems to be a kind of cynical element where you are going out of your way to offend us as a marketing technique. You release some new revision of an old IP custom designed to be maximally antagonistic towards us hoping that there is a backlash, and sometimes generating one yourself, in order to trick people into thinking consuming low quality corporate produced slop is meaningful political action.
Conclusion
Now this 'Chevalier' movie actually sounds pretty solid and like it doesn't deserve the scrutiny from the right it got. But for every Chevalier that seems to be a half dozen 'Velma's. In a better world without this culture war front I don't think it would have gotten that scrutiny. But we don't live in that world.
I'd appreciate refinements on the basic generalized arguments on each side of this debate. I think there is a kernel of truth in both but they're kernels deep in the center of massive irritated swellings of culture war.
*My black cynical heart refuses to let me get through this without a foot note that the The Walt Disney Company trademark probably paid good money for me to see this reaction on reddit.
**ours being contemporary mainstream conservatives. Please don't quote me some historical racist diatribe about keeping undesirable out of the film industry that zero mainstream conservatives today would endorse.
arguing against both steelmen
I don't think representation matters for either 'empowering' or improving outcomes of minorities in an already anti-racist society. In terms of being motivated or moved by media, consider how anime, which is thoroughly culturally japanese, is loved by whites, blacks, and others worldwide.
On the other hand, 'minimizing white people' is only really bad to the extent it represents confused or malicious tendencies among those minimizing them - by the same logic above, it doesn't really do anything other than that. So directly and vocally pushing back against black representation isn't effective, and just makes you look kinda dumb like "LESS BLACKS IN VIDEO GAMEZ".
And it seems unlikely imo 'offending as a marketing technique' is a contributor to even 10% of casting lots of ethnic minorities, or 'woke themes' in shows generally - it seems like a big change for a small effect, I haven't seen any internal-to-production accounts of that (whereas I have seen some internal accounts of cartoons or tv shows being written or cast by 'crazy wokes'), and the explanation of 'people who really want diversity' is much simpler
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I did notice how for approximately one decade, the demographics of terrorism were accurately portrayed (in the ballpark of 75% Muslim) on a small number of TV shows (24 and Homeland being the only notable ones) which likely gained popularity for that reason. Note that "accurate" is perhaps overstating things; from what I recall, seasons 2-5 of 24 (season 1 was pre 9/11) had about 50% Islamic terrorists. The primary terrorists on Homeland (at least in season 1) were 50% white.
Both of these shows were both heavily criticized for this.
I'll also note that even on these TV shows, the portrayal always very carefully exemplified the George W. Bush ideal that the problem was Islamic terrorism, not Islam. Frequently Islamic terrorists were merely pawns of evil Dick Cheney-ish white people (season 2 of 24 - Halliburton engineered the attacks to start a war in the middle east and sell weapons) and Muslim anti-terrorist agents were nearly always included in the cast. Characters who were unreasonably suspicious of good Muslims were frequently portrayed.
I also noticed that before and after that, most terrorist villains were explicitly made European to avoid offending people.
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