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With race swapping, the thing is that it's not all bad and not all good and its that simple. People who completely reject or embrace it are wild.
One of the complexities is that it can take a few forms.
One form is re-examine the story in a different cultural / racial frame. This is completely fair, but you have to allow that people who don't prefer the new frame, or lament the opportunity cost of telling that story in the old frame aren't necessarily racist!
I love Cats! and try to see it when it's on tour in my area. If one year, a major production decided to do a hip-hop remix of the musical, I have no fundamental opposition to such a thing existing. But I can practically assure you that I would find it unappealing personally. However in a world where there were infinate Cats! musicals touring my town every week, I would actually prefer some of them be off-the-wall remixes in every way. But in the real world of scarity, Cats! productions are closer to zero sum. I either have to choose to pay to see a production I like less or not see it at all this year. Suppose, due largely to politics, it became trendy to mostly go forward with the Rap Cats version in the future*. Am I not allowed to be disappointed? Movies based on IP are even more zero sum.
(*There's actually a real analogy. Post George Floyd I will essentaily never be able to see the real cats again because songs were cut and rearanged due to 'racial' concerns about pirates.)
The other kind of race swapping is culture neutral. done in a way where the color or the skin is completely immaterial to the character portray. there is nothing at all wrong with this on its face. But there are three concerns.
Ultimately that's what makes it intolerable for me. I don't have a problem with one adaptation doing "what if we tried changing the race of characters in this to challenge their expectations?" But now the entirety of culture seems to be about racism. Every single recent show or movie it seems, if somehow they can't make it all about racism, they will at least try to fit in a subplot or even just a line to remind you of it. Recently I watched The Nun 2, a horror movie about a spooky Nun-impersonating demon happening in 1950s France. What does racism have to do with it? It makes no goddamn sense why, but in this one the main character's sidekick is a an afro-american girl who was sent to a convent, all just so they could fit in a line about how it was better for her to become a nun out in Europe than be black in america. For the rest of the movie, all the things her character does could have been done by other characters.
I mean the typical suspicion is that this has become necessary to secure funding or to be allowed to have a chance to win an award, but it's so damn transparent; it breaks immersion entirely. At this point, it's so overdone, even if it were done with innocent intent, I will resent it. And it's hard to believe it's done with innocent intent, because it would be hard for one not to notice just how oversaturated every aspect of culture is with this message already.
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