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Notes -
I remember awhile back I was arguing with someone here who was denying that Knives Out, which entailed a Hispanic immigrant disinheriting a white family from their family house, was actually a celebration of demographic replacement. Even with the final shot of her holding a mug on the balcony that says "my house", looking down on the white family that lost their inheritance to her...
People love that movie! If Hollywood can create a movie that is fundamentally a celebration of the demographic replacement of White people, and people love it and applaud it, then AI will be able to do better. And good luck getting Gemini to create a compelling move or story that turns the tables on a story like this, it will just refuse to do so.
The ‘hero’ in the movie is Daniel Craig playing a white Southern gentleman. And the maid - Ana de Armas - is surely white unless you really take the ‘Africa begins at the Pyrenees’ definition. Her grandparents immigrated to Cuba from the north of Spain and her parents were part of the white upper class in the Cuban caste system (which persists, of course, even under communism).
/images/17085501930250692.webp
I think Rian Johnson did in the end consider making the hero of the story a white man a bit of a mistake, and the beginning of Glass Onion is partially an attempt to recitfy it.
(Blanc is revealed to be gay. So he's still whate, still male, but he's not all bad, see?)
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This is exactly what I'm talking about 2rafa, Hollywood films are sophisticated enough that someone like you can come along and say "you're being paranoid, look Daniel Craig is a hero of the film and he's white and likable, and the maid is white-passing."
Whereas with Gemini, they let the mask slip, you cannot doubt that the content is being directed to diminish the representation of white people in the prompts. Although eventually they will also improve the output such that people like you will be able to respond the same way- "no, no, there's no anti-White alignment here because this character who helps the POC win the inheritance is white, etc."
You may have forgotten scenes like this:
Of course, the final shot of the film is Marta looking down from the balcony with a mug that says "My House."
The casting of Marta is part of the subversive intelligence of the film. Marta is an avatar for demographic change. The fact they choose a white-passing upper-caste beautiful actress instead of, say, the median Guatemalan, is part of the intelligence of the film. You are more attracted to her, she is less foreign-appearing, she becomes the "face" of demographic change to the audience, which is directed to support her (and through the hero played by Daniel Craig). AI is going to employ similar techniques, and we already see it with the images Gemini is rendering. And when they get batter at it, you are going to say "that's not the message of the film, look at how the white character helps the POC win the day at the end! No subversion here!"
I’m not accusing you of being paranoid and I largely agree with your original point. Knives Out is a progressive propaganda movie, but it’s on the basis of class rather than race. The family don’t have their unearned wealth because they’re white (they’re not descendants of slaveowners or something) but because of their mystery novelist father’s capitalist success. The message of the movie is that the son does not deserve the wealth of the father, that inheritance is inherently unjust, that the generational transfer of wealth is not just arbitrary but unfair and must be corrected. Sure, there’s some progressive waffle about immigration and race and the alt right son, though that’s largely played for laughs in front of a progressive audience. But the core of the message is essentially Occupy Wall Street, Wealth Tax Now. There have always been white hispanics in Hollywood, but I can’t imagine someone’s aesthetic sympathy for Mayans is improved by the casting of a Spanish actress in this movie; most Americans encounter illegal migrants at least somewhat regularly; they don’t look like Ana de Armas.
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The actress may be one thing, but the character is another.
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I really didn't like Knives Out because of how simplistic the plot felt to me. I never really thought about race in that movie. But I've heard someone say they liked that you could tell if someone is racist because they've disliked that movie. It broke my brain enough (and I was basically "outing" myself as a racist if I questioned this) that I didn't try to get any elaboration.
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