Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

I was referencing this:

As Cynical Ben mentions in his follow up post, TCW did this on multiple occasions all things considered. I can think of a lot of episodes that pass the mentioned test, all with multiple female leads/villains. A lot more than two actually if we broke it down.

I just think credit should be given where credit is due, thats all.

 

The striking thing is more that it's happening so early than that it's happening at all, I think.

 

It's designed to confuse people.

 

And with the main cast, too.

 

The most surprising thing about a 22-minute cartoon passing the Betchel test is that people actually had a minute-long conversation period.

Edit: Oh, I checked and the conversation can actually be any lenght. I don't know where I got the one minute from but I could have sworn it was there to ensure the following doesn't count:
"Hi, whatzzap?"
"Hi. Just killing female aliens"
"Oh, me too. Well, see ya"

 

Some Star Wars art by Jake Murray http://jakemurray.deviantart.com/

 

Artist Phil Noto did this cool sketch recently on his blog for a TFA trailer poster (minor spoilers if you're among the 0.001% who've not seen the trailer yet). Is it a spoiler to say this film has the hope of breaking major diversity barriers, especially in the sci-fi genre?

Spoiler

 

On the subject of the trailer, I thought it was kind of neat that

Spoiler

John Boyega's character was the very first thing to appear in it (if you don't count some sand).

 

Wow, yeah if you take the trailer as it's own entity, it is much like Rebels in that it is Star Wars with the absence of white dudes. Just as the crew of the Ghost has a perfect score by Coop's no-WMH standards, so does the trailer---no big three, just a black guy, a white lady, and a Latino guy. Well, and a shrouded Sithy person of indeterminate gender/race.

 

And to think, when the cast was announced there was such a huge uproar over the majority of white males there seemed to be. Glad that they've proven everyone wrong with the VERY FIRST pieces of film featuring no white males.

 

Someone over in the Disney thread speculated based on body language that the indeterminate Sith-lite is played by Gwendoline Christie, but I don't agree. It's too slim to be her, Brienne of Tarth is rather more broad in the shoulders than that. Though it might be Lupita Nyong'o...

 

Too tall, I think. I'm guessing either Gleeson or (more likely) Driver.

 

Well, Driver is the obvious answer. I was going with one along the theme of the thread.

 

My first thought on seeing that stormtrooper in the start of the trailer wasn't "ooh, diversity!"

It was "Is that guy still combing the desert?"

 

There's still going to be white guys all over the place. We know that Han and Luke are in it, and also Mad Eye Moody Junior and weird looking guy from Girls, plus Max VonForgotwhathislastname was. The only two women they announced from the start were Carrie Fisher and Daisy. Gwendoline and Lupita were added later on. So....they haven't proven anyone wrong, except to have a trailer that appears more diverse than the end product will be.

 

By the way, I don't know what's more sad/awkward, the racists complaining that a stormtrooper is black or the racists complaining that stormtroopers are clones and should look like Jango Fett...under the assumption that Fett was white.

 

"You people"? What's that supposed to mean?! First it's "you people" and then it's "sandpeople ride in a straight line to obscure their numbers" and then it's "we don't serve your kind here" is that what that is Jello, huh, huh?!?!

 

Just like the real world.

 

I shall still doubt it not just being so utterly stupid that none of that will save it, it is a JJA movie after all. You know this guy.

 

What?

 

Intresting enough many of those extras that played the ANH Stormtrooper where indeed black as can be seen pretty nicely in the Making Of ANH books.

 

To me a sad part of this is that the folks who want the Legends universe to continue will continue to be villainized around the internet while large sites like TF.N will never offer up a front page article on these racist fans.

No effort will be made to distance the fandom as a whole from its racist fans in the way #WeWantLegends has been vocally tackled.